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I went on a tear at the post office a month or so ago and bought sheets of weird values of stamps.  I thought I’d use them more but have taken to using online postage printing to send most things.  I want to get some use out of them so I’ve started sending people things that they’ve left here or what have you as a way to use them.  Here’s some objects and how much they cost to send:

Copy of Shaq-Fu: 2 Rockafeller Statues of Wisdom, an American Red Cedar, a Bighorn Sheep and 2 Tiffany Lamps.

Graffitied Magic Card: Mother Theresa, Breast Cancer Survival Awareness, 2 decorative tea kettles, and a Navajo Necklace.

Copy of the Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm: 2 Richard Wrights, a Bighorn Sheep, and 2 Harriet Beecher Stowes.

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The fudge from yesterday was quite good.  Not “salvage an otherwise shitty day” good, but nonetheless good.

I headed to Chris Fosmire’s house with the parts of the Bucktail for assembly and adviserly merriment.  I got there and laid out the parts and 1/2 the group assembled inserts while the rest of the group folded.  If I had my stuff together, I would have collated the center sheets and either stapled them or at least sorted them.  Midway through, we realized that some of the households were to receive two copies of the newsletter which happened because of a glitch in my formula for determining if the two people had the same address.  Finally, someone noted that some of the content was cut off by the fold because of how much paper was in the middle.  I was hoping this was going to be my last Bucktail, the magnus opus of newsletter generation for Ajapeu Lodge and the last time I’d have to fabricate content on behalf of a youth but I can’t let my legacy end with such obvious flaws.

I look forward to seeing what I will have done wrong in 2012 to keep me on until 2013.

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I wanted to wake up at about 9 AM today to go to camp and take pictures at the Lenape Klondike Derby but popped my head off of my pillow around 2:30 PM and realized I had pretty much wasted the day.  I could have salvaged it by cleaning or planning a night out, or even working on second job stuff, but I had committed to the path of failure and I would follow through on it.  Lunch was a hot dog, and after using my treadmill, I decided not to shave nor did I cut my hair as I had planned.  I didn’t get the mail, I put off finishing a white paper and went to bed around 3 AM after playing video games and going food shopping.  My only redeeming act was attempting to make fudge and that I will not know how that turned out until tomorrow.  I eventually got to sleep by thinking that some sort of cosmic balance ruled and somewhere, some nerd just proved Goldbach’s Conjecture or made it to 3rd base.

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I received a list of about 20 tests to perform to characterize a product and I started picking them off one by one but had a question and walked over the requester’s office where he was happily munching on the fudge I brought in.  He asked me if I had tried any of the fudge brought back from a meeting, I told him I made it and he froze up.  I asked him about a test method and how tricky it would be and he told me to not do it, so I returned to the list.

About 2 hours later, I had another question and went to his office to find him drinking a Pepsi Max.  I told him it was odd that we both liked Pepsi Max and brought in 20 oz bottles as well, he said he got it from a meeting so I pressed him for the location.  He said the refrigerator and again froze up on finding out he was consuming something of mine.  He again told me to skip the test about which I had a question as well as two others.

I wonder if I could convince him that I supplied the building’s toilet paper.

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I woke up at about 4:30 AM with the hope of getting to work at around 6:00 but was stymied by

I was happy to find out that the large branch on my car was not also in my car.  The network of side streets that comprises my commute was a no-go so I stuck to main roads at about 20 miles per hour and arrived around 7.  I thought nothing of fire engines on the road but found out they were from when the transformer that fed our building exploded leaving work with no power, which would very much complicate my printing.

Power returned around 7:30 but our print servers had reset so the first 20 copies were consumed into the ether.  I got rolling around 8 AM with very few in and one of them was a secretary that had some light copying to do.  My mission was clear, to make small talk until my printing was done.

Me: It looks like we’re the only ones who made it in, where did you drive in from?
Her: Oh, I’m somewhat local.
Me: Have you been in the area long?
*an hour later*
Her: And that’s how we got the second ferret.

By then the printing was done, and the strength of my bond to Scouting had been confirmed.

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Part of the reason I like working with the Order of the Arrow so much is that what I do for them is very discrete, I take pictures, run auctions, update web pages, and publish the lodge newsletter: The Bucktail.  This gives me a bit of a soapbox for my views and I have no hesitation in using it.  This year, I waged war with fonts.

From the 2010 drop list:  “The following brothers have failed to pay their 2010 dues and will be dropped at the end of the calendar year.  They have been listed in shameful Comic Sans.”
From the 2011 drop list:  “The following brothers have not yet paid their 2011 dues and must pay to maintain active status in the lodge.  They have been listed in the respectful but unremarkable Century Schoolbook.”

I dropped “shameful” from the final copy but were space available I would have listed fully paid members in Tahoma and those who’ve paid ahead for 2012 in a fine Garamond (ligatures are what separate men from animals) or even the timeless Bodoni.

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My mother came by to do some task to fill time in the day and we began with a back-and-forth regarding a set of full size bedding she’d given me which I asked her to take back.  This ended with “but one day, you’ll need them” and I replied “and on that day, I’ll buy them”.  The difference between a hoard and stockpile seems only to be creativity and I’m a bit too inventive for my own good sometimes.  Later, she asked to see the pictures I had taken during Christmas at her house and we had a bit of a back and forth.  She seemed to be under the impression that the camera out of the box was the biggest determiner of photo quality.

Me: *changing white balance*
Mom: Why are the colors different now?
Me: I adjusted the white balance, lights have different colors and what we see as white rarely is.
Mom: Is that why indoor pictures all look yellow?
Me: Yes.  Now I’m adjusting the clarity on the picture of your sister.
Mom: Why would you do that?
Me: Negative clarity tends to clear up the skin a bit.  Otherwise everyone looks like they’re 80.
Mom: That seems like you’re changing the picture, that’s not what it really looked like.
Me: I can use a similar process to reduce the wrinkles around your eyes.
Mom: Ooh, that is nice.

For Valentine’s Day give your lady the greatest gift of all: A photo with selective softening in areas where a line-detection algorithm notes high contrast surrounded by an area of low contrast.

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I received a rice maker that needs a bit more babying than I like from my kitchenwares. Rather than consider it a set it and forget it piece I now consider it closer to a potholder, something that does a job for a short time but which isn’t to be relied on forever. Today I tried to make Rice-a-Roni in it and that only reinforced my belief as after 20 minutes I came down to a smear of flavor packet-augmented sauce pouring over the floor as gluttonous rice bumped the top. Something in the mix provided more protein than I wished and, after the dish settled, I got a giant gelatinous mass of rice. While not the texture I wanted, it did have the benefit of being highly sculptible.

SPOOOON!

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I’ve been looking forward to simply throwing myself into the tasks of my second job, to experience the simple rush of knowing that hours have dripped by as you’ve been engaged in a battle of wits with a piece of unthinking, unfeeling silicon or stitching together the work others in a novel way to solve a problem.  Instead, I descended into a world of obscurantist one upsmanship.

The first iteration of the software I was using had a detailed but broken setup that clocked in at about 4 pages.   The main page had a “use this instead” link that led to a piece with 2 pages or so of instruction.  This page also had a “windows users, get the latest and use this” which led to a page with another piece of software with a 1/2 page of instructions which wasn’t too revealing.  I did some Googling and found an update for that suite which by far had the best documentation: A text file with four lines of text, of which 2 referred to folders that didn’t exist in the download or that referred to a file not created as part of the operating process.  You win, French programmer’s documentation guy.

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Yesterday I received back a package of books I sent someone that looked like a sledgehammer had gone through the center of the package.  I reboxed the returned package and set it out today.  On the doorstep when I returned home was the second box I had sent out which also looked like a sledgehammer had gone through the center of the package.  Both were returned from a redistribution center in Atlanta.  If you’re in the area, be on the lookout for a postal worker that looks like The Incredible Hulk, Thing, or the Juggernaut (I’m a Marvel fan).