Clovis Chitwood Heavy Industries

Every week I have great intentions of posting a little something everyday. Of course that never happens. So here I am again on Friday summing up the week. Well last weekend was pretty nice. Let’s see what did I do Monday, besides work. Oh yeah I worked. My sister was having problems with her email so I went to take a look at it. Of course it started working by the time I got there. C’est la vie. Okay I can pull that phrase off in conversation but it just looks pretentions sitting there on the screen. Other highpoints of the week include doing the second CineGeek podcast and finishing my The Air That I Breathe review. I’ve turned in some less than stellar reviews. Not that I’m expecting perfection, but even I have some standards. So I’m trying to make a point of putting more effort into these. I’m really proud of the last two, this one and the one for Red Violin. Of course there is always the possibilty that it may be completely unjustified and misplaced pride.

There are two gun shows this weekend and I’m going to miss them both. Don’t have anything budgeted for guns right now so there’s not much sense in going. It’s fun to look around and drool though. I’ve still got to get my AR to the range. That’s going to be interesting, pulling the trigger the first time on something I put together for the most part. Of course the part that actually matters the most, the installation of the barrel extention on the barrel, was done by a professional so there’s probably less risk involved than the first time I fired the Nagant, the Makarov or the CZ-52.

What am I doing this weekend? Well I’m not sure about tonight, Maybe, Get Smart, maybe Love Guru maybe nothing. I’m not even sure if we are going to Opry Mills or Green Hills. I guess i should ask more questions. Tommorow is a little more nailed down.  Up the Yangtze and the midnight showing of Repo Man at the Belcourt. I am interested in anything about the Three Gorges Damn project. I’m awed, horrified, intrigued, dumbfounded about the whole thing. I’m not any kind of enviromentalist but that thing even scares me a little bit but you listen to the engineers who are working on it and they have such an optimism about the whole project and what it will mean for China that you start to kind of turn your thining around, but then you hear about the archelogists who have been working non-stop the last several years trying to recover and document what they can. The sheer unprecedented human scale of the thing awsome, in the traditional sense of the word, as well.

That should be enough for an interesting weekend.

Last weekend was Hulk on Friday, Party at Fred and Mylena’s( I know that I’m butchering the spelling of her name) and family all day Sunday. Sunday was a triple threat. My Brother’s birthday, my Grandmother’s birthday and Father’s Day. We all drove up to see Grandma, who was in decent spirits, She seems to be much better physically, even has that bit of sparkle in her eye, but she’s a a hundered miles and fifty years away. This time we she knew all of our names but she was calling Dad her brother. Besides wanting out of her wheelchair, she forgets that she can’t walk, she seems satisfied. I don’t know if thats a blessing or a curse. On a much happier topic, dessert. It was almost like it was my birthday again on Sunday. Amy made cherry pie for my Brother and Father. I don’t eat cherry pie, so she made a S’More Pie. It was delecious. There was I lot more I wanted to say about last weekend put this is all I have time for now and if I don’t put this up I won’t put anything up.

Last Weekend, saw The Incredible Hulk on Friday night. it was okay but hanging out at Kalamata’s and Maggie Moo’s before and after was more entertaining. I loved the opening shot. and the way they rehased the origin in the beginning credits. I loved the old school lab where they crammed Bruce’s brain full of gamma rays. I loved all the little hints about the broader Marvel world, and I’m sure I missed most of those, but besides a few scenes early on I just didn’t really care that much. It’s a fun action movie, but I guess I’m just getting tired of wathcing CGI monsters wail on each other or maybe my organ of suspension disbelief is atrophing in general. Every time that Bruce got big or the Hulk got small I’m wondering where is all that mass coming from and where did is it going. Should there be a huge sucking noise as cubic yards of air are sucked in and a huge fireball from where it’s transformed into green flesh. I can believe someone drinks a potion, gets bitten by a spider, passes through a weird belt of radiation, intentionally shoots himself in the eye with gobs of gamma rays and weird things happen. Maybe they get stronger, have more stamina, they’re senses become sharper, their baldspot grows back in. It’s all extremely unlikely, but I can kinda of believe it. The Hulk is just flat impossible.

Just finished The Air That I Breathe. I’ll write a review tommorow which should be up on Cinegeek later this week.

Oh, yeah saw Hulk Friday night. It was okay.

More later on both

I know, blogwise the last week has been all style over substance. I’ve got my theme nearly nailed down now so hopefully I’ll get some actual content up this week.

Till next time…

“Negative it didn’t go in”

Well here’s the new theme. It’s not comletely nailed down but it looked good enough to put it up. More later, I’m going to bed.

“Hello this is Clovis Chitwood Heavy Industries technical support how may I help you?”

“Well, I’m calling because you software is running much slower since I upgraded.”

“Which version did you upgrade to?”

“Version 13.666, it’s running much slower than version 13.665. Is there anything we can do to speed it up?”

“Sure, we had so many complaints about version 13.665 being so damn fast we put a “Turbo™” button in the user configuration screen. Just go to System, Setup, User Configuration. In the bottom right hand corner do you see the button labeled “Turbo™“. Is it glowing red?”

“No it’s blue.”

“Okay click the button then.”

“It turned red.”

“Good now you are in “Turbo™” mode. Now you’ll find reports on the printer before you even knew you wanted them.

“What’s this slider bar underneath the turbo button?”

“You mean the “Turbo™” button?”

“Yes, it’s labeled reliability.”

“That’s also new for version 13.666 it’s the “Reliability™” control. Slide it to the right to increase your reliability, slide it to the left to make the software more buggy.”

“It’s set at 30%, right now.”

“Yes that’s the default.”

“So all I have to do is slide it to the right and I’ll get less error messages.”

“Yes and you won’t have to reboot every twenty minutes either.”

“But it only goes up to 50%”

“Well nobodies perfect.”

“Why in the hell is it set at 30%.”

“Job security. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Good news at work. The co-worker who is moving to Mississippi is going to be able to work from home. I’ve got mixed feelings, but on the whole I’m happy about it. If for no other reason she will pave the way for me to be able to move out to the boonies sometime in the future and not have to worry about being able to make a living. Well I’ll still have to make a living I will just already have a job.Of course if the whole thing falls apart it could end up poisoning the well for another decade. Like I’m ever going to actually up and move to Wyoming, but Trousedale, Jackson or even Overton county just got a lot more attractive.

This should be an interesting weekend. It’s Father’s Day and my Brother and Grandmother’s birthday this weekend. I don’t even know if Mom and Dad are in town this weekend. Hulk on Friday, I think the there is a group seeing a matinée of The Happening on Saturday. King Kong outside Saturday night. It’s the original I would really like to see it, and if I remember right there is something going on in Nolensville Saturday as well. Oh well All I really care about is King Kong Saturday night and it won’t upset me too much if that ends up not happening. As long as we all get to hang out for awhile I’ll be happy.

You may have noticed that the site format has not changed since I switched to WordPress. It’s a little more complicated than I figured, but PHP and CSS are worth learning so I’ll get there.

Well don’t cross the streams

I really wanted to bust it open and play with the mercury. I refrained. I bet there’s not enough to really have fun with anyway. Not like the switches in those old style thermostats. I always wanted to stick them in my guitars so that the would automatically switch off when they went vertical. Maybe if I ever upgrade my thermostat I’ll savage the one in there. I wonder if you can still buy them? The old school thermostats or the mercury switches. Ever look at one of those old thermostats. They are pretty clever. They use a spring to measure the temperature. As it gets hotter the spring expands. That’s what made is so complicated to make an accurate spring powered clock. Temperature changes would cause the spring rate to change and the clock would go faster or slower (or was it the rate changed as the spring unwound?). The solution was to make a main spring of two different types of metal that had different rates of expansion. That way the differences would cancel each other out. Those guys were clever. What made the spring the bane of chronometerers makes it perfect for thermostats. You just position the mercury switch, oh yeah I never explained what a mercury switch is did I. A mercury switch is a glass tube with a wire embedded on each end. It is partially filled with mercury which is conductive. When the switch is vertical the mercury collects at the bottom of the switch and there is no connection. As you tilt the switch towards the horizontal at some point the mercury comes into contact with both wires and completes the circuit. So you just stick the mercury switch on the spring so that when it expands the switch goes from on and off. If you look in the thermostat you will see how adjusting the temperature control moves the switch around on the spring. The cool bit is if you watch the thermostat with the cover off and the lights out if you move the temperature control at the point the mercury makes contact with both wires there is a blue flash through the little tube. Of course those new fancy computerized thermostats still can’t switch automatically from heat to cool and you can’t amuse yourself in the dark with them. So much for progress.