Creepy Guy by the Water Cooler

You know that creepy guy at work that is always hanging out by the water cooler? Well, I have been working from home quite a bit, and I have a water cooler. By default, that made me the creepy guy by the water cooler. Notice, I said “made” and not “makes”. I have the problem solved! Now there is the pictured creepster to take my place.

I also always wanted an aquarium. However, I didn’t want to worry about keeping up with it, figuring out what kinds of fish get along, deciding on salt water vs fresh water… you get the point. Now there is no need. I have a maintenance free aquarium!

All joking aside, it is always fun to play around with paint. What started as a face drawn with a Sharpie turned into various attempts with paint. If you want to play around with this, I have a few suggestions:

  • Roughen the surface: the aquarium jug images rubbed off fairly easily when transported for refill, so I lightly sanded next jug and it was much more durable.
  • Acrylic paint seems to work fine. I used the cheap acrylic paint from Wal-Mart.
  • If you are going to look through the jug at the painted images, be sure to think it out and paint in reverse order. For instance, paint the things that will be in the foreground before the things in the background.
  • On the fish tank, my wonderful wife had the idea of drawing the outline of everything in black and then filling in the color. I think it turned out great that way. You don’t even have to be careful to keep inside of the outlines because you won’t be able to see it!

This wasn’t the most intricate DIY project in the world, but I thought it was fun and added some color to the pantry. I can’t wait until I break one of these jugs so we can paint another!

If you try it, you can celebrate with some good old fashioned fire water when you finish!

Be Careful What You Bet For, A Love Story

My wife Eva is a beautiful, caring, smart, funny, creative, sometimes shy woman. When I decided to propose to her, I wanted to do it in a way that would be memorable, but not put her too much on the spot. If she wanted to say no, I wanted to make sure she wasn’t pressured into saying yes. How do you make a memorable proposal to a beautiful, caring, smart, funny, creative, sometimes shy woman without making her feel forced into it? It all starts with a simple bet.

One night during dinner, we were joking around and somehow the subject of pencils came up. More specifically, the number of sides a pencil has. I was sure pencils had 8 sides, she was sure pencils had 6 sides, so we made a bet. I do not remember her side of the bet, but mine was to get married if I was right. She thought she knew the number of sides of a pencil, and she thought I was joking about the bet. She was right on one of those accounts… a traditional pencil has 6 sides, but I wasn’t joking about the bet. She forgot about the bet, I didn’t.

We went on “hanging out” for months and months. One of the things we enjoyed was sitting on a patio somewhere with beer and a crossword puzzle. I’d mostly read the clues and scratch my head, she’d mostly answer the clues, and it was always entertaining.

I finally decided that I had to make a plunge and see if we might be right for each other. I tracked down her dad’s phone number to ask for her hand. His response was something along the lines of “That is fine with me. I’m not sure it will be fine with her.” I had to find out.

I initially planned to make an engagement ring, but I finally opted to go with something more professional. I don’t think that JB Weld does much to enhance the beauty of a diamond. I learned more than I ever cared to know about diamonds, and I bought a ring.

Now back to making a memorable proposal to a beautiful, caring, smart, funny, creative, and sometimes shy woman. I knew I had lost the bet regarding the sides of a pencil, so I cheated. I found https://pencilcraft.com/ , who makes custom labeled larger-than-life pencils. They make them with real erasers and real lead, but only in the normal 6-sided variety. I hired them to custom make an 8-sided 4 foot long pencil. She lost the bet… she couldn’t back out… I was going to prove that they do make pencils with 8 sides.

What else does a guy with a ring and a GIANT eight sided pencil need to propose to a beautiful, caring, smart, funny, creative, sometimes shy, woman? More of a plan.

I started exploring options to present the ring to her, and I discovered that I could remove the eraser from the pencil and carve out a place for a ring. How to work dinner conversation towards a giant 8 sided pencil that happened to be holding an engagement ring? A giant 6 foot crossword puzzle of course (ala the Sky Mall magazine that used to be in airplanes, remember those?).

Here is how it all played out.

We went to a Benjy’s: a great restaurant where I happened to know Chef Mike Potowski. I had previously purchased the giant 6 foot crossword puzzle, wrapped it, and wrote a note from the chef saying “I knew y’all liked crossword puzzles… thought this was funny… you might get a kick out of it…” I left the gift and the larger-than-life pencil with the restaurant’s wait staff before picking up my future wife for dinner.

At some point in dinner, the waiter was instructed to bring the “gift” crossword puzzle. Eva was quite confused about the “gift”, but it was Christmas time and she shrugged it off. We opened the crossword puzzle, looked at it, laughed a little, and continued eating.

The waiter came by later, and he asked about the gift. We told him it was a giant crossword puzzle, and it was a shame that we didn’t have a giant pencil to start solving it. “I might be able to help,” he said as he walked back to the kitchen to get the giant larger-than-life pencil with the hidden ring. When he returned with the giant 8-sided pencil, Eva was confused. She didn’t remember the bet, and she just thought some of my normal jackassery was afoot.

We continued eating and started looking at the crossword puzzle’s clue book. I wanted to show her that the giant pencil was functional, so I wrote “marry me?” on a page in the clue book. She read it and slowly looked up in confusion as I pulled the eraser off the giant pencil revealing the ring. I think she said no then yes, or yes then no, then maybe yes… I can’t remember. The whole time the waiter was prepared with celebratory champagne to bring us, but I kept shooing him off. She wasn’t prepared for the proposal, and it turned into a very long dinner. There were lots of tears shed, and Eva was nice enough to lend me her napkin so I could wipe my eyes.

She finally said yes, we drank our champagne, and we were engaged for a little while. Then we weren’t engaged for a little while. Then we got a marriage license, my dad got ordained, and we were married!

I know that I usually post DIY type info, and this isn’t that. It is just a way to document what led to the best event in my life.

For the purists out there, it should be noted that the pictures were taken at a later date… I ran off the papparizi before dinner to reduce unwanted pressure on my marvelous wife.

Boats and Beer, a PSA

Have you ever heard of Shipwright’s Disease? Though I don’t have a ship (or even a boat) it is something that I have been plagued with my entire life, and I personally consider Shipwright’s Addiction to be more appropriate. I was made aware of the affliction years ago, and I am seeing its effects more and more as I grow older. In lieu of an actual definition, it was explained to me this way:

  • You have a boat with a light bulb that needs changing.
  • You remove the light bulb to discover some corrosion.
  • You figure that if the light bulb is corroded, the rest of the wiring might have issues.
  • To remove the wiring, it is necessary to remove some of the paneling.
  • While the paneling is off, you decided to go ahead and replace it.
  • The new panels make the carpeting look old, so you decide to go ahead and replace that.
  • You realize that you can’t have a boat with new panels and new carpet but an old engine, so you decide to rebuild the engine.
  • If you are already taking apart the engine, why not make a little more power.
  • If you are going to make a little more power, why not make a LOT more power.
  • The inside of this boat with new carpet, paneling, and a more powerful motor is great, but it just doesn’t match that old faded gelcoat on the outside.
  • AND, it goes on. I am sure you get the point.

 

So I explained the boat half of the title. How does it relate to beer? Most recently, Shipwright’s Addiction has surfaced through my whim to brew beer. I decided it would be fun to drink a beer that I made myself, so I wisely bought only the most basic brewing kit… pretty much some buckets, some malt extract, and some yeast.

That’s when things started to go pear shaped.

I didn’t want to heat up the kitchen too much while brewing, so I found a propane burner on Craigslist that came with a mash tun for brewing all grain.

In order to utilize the mash tun, I needed a better way to cool the wort. My Craigslist purchase of a wort chiller came with some more brewing “stuff”. The volume of beer I need to brew to justify the equipment required a way to dispense a larger volume of beer. I went to Craigslist and purchased a kegerator. The kegerator wouldn’t fit the size of keg I had acquired, so I built a bigger kegerater. My bigger kegerator had empty space, so I needed to  more kegs… and CO2 bottles… and a CO2 filling station… and it kept going. It is really not my fault. Craigslist is obviously to blame.

In the end, things went from two buckets, some malt extract, and some yeast to almost everything shown in these pictures, and more. I even had to obtain an extra tool box and make shelves to hold all of the beer paraphernalia.

While I typically try to make  my posts helpful for the DIYer, this one isn’t. It isn’t even about boats or beer. It is a Public Service Announcement for those related to DIYers.

If your loved one is afflicted with Shipwright’s Disease, you can’t fight it. You can’t stop it. The best you can do is to keep them away from hobbies and sources of enjoyment, limit their internet usage and access to Craigslist, and give me all of their stuff when it becomes too much to bear.

How I Found Myself with a Foundry

Ever wanted to know the steps to building and using your own foundry? It has been quite a few years and involved some jackassery, but as I recall it went something like this:

 

  1. Start working on a Lotus Esprit and realize you need a unique washer that is hard to come by (about $5 if available).
  2. Buy a metalworking lathe to make said spacer.
  3. Discover that the lathe is missing a part.
  4. Get frustrated that the part is just an aluminum block but costs $100 with shipping.
  5. Realize that the part wouldn’t be too hard to cast.
  6. Source aluminum flashing, ceramic wool, ceramic paper, sodium silicate, nichrome wire, a temperature controller, a crucible, and castable refractory mortar (totaling well over $100).
  7. Assemble sourced items to resemble a foundry.
  8. Obtain approximately 100 cans of Miller Lite.
  9. Drink approximately 100 cans of Miller Lite.
  10. Melt approximately 100 cans of Miller Lite.
  11. Sand cast the part for the lathe.
  12. Use the lathe to make the $5 washer for the Esprit.

Seems legit, right? I have a kiln now and will probably never use the foundry again, but I am glad I built it for two main reasons: it was a lot of fun and it was really dangerous!

I am including some pictures, but I am not going to include detailed instructions on actually making it. It is unsafe, and doing anything like this is a very bad idea. However, I will include some generalities and observations in case anyone wants to use any of this for a more rational project.

  • A good source of nichrome wire is from the heater elements of an electric dryer, and it seems to be good to about 2000 F. It is important to do your homework on the length. It must have enough resistance to limit the current or it will be annihilated as soon as it is powered up.
  • Sodium Silicate (or water glass) is really neat stuff. I used it as a stiffener and makeshift adhesive for the ceramic paper, but it can also be used for making things fire resistant.
  • Ceramic wool seems to be good to at least a couple thousand degrees Fahrenheit. It is also a good thermal insulator. I had no problem touching the outside when it was 1700 F inside. You can also see that the electrical tape around the flashing didn’t melt or deform after operation.
  • I heard that ceramic wool became readily available due to technology development for the space industry. That might be a rumor, but I would rather perpetuate it than research it. Feel free to let me know if I am wrong, and you will be eligible for today’s Pettiness Award.
  • The crucible is not shown, but I initially used a cast iron pot to hold molten aluminum. I do not know if anything leached from the cast iron into the aluminum, but it hasn’t effected the functionality of the part.
  • the whole thing ended up fairly light weight. I remember it being about 20 lbs.
  • If you are thinking about making something like this to avoid buying a part, don’t. Just buy the part.

Feel free to comment if there are any questions. I don’t think I will ever use this again, but I might use some of things I learned for another project. Anyone interested in a portable electric “wood fired” 1000 Fahrenheit pizza oven?

Healthy Pizza or Unhealthy Hummus?

I have had an ongoing love affair with pizza as long as I can remember. I have had a disdain for foods like hummus for almost as long. That is quickly changing (my dislike of hummus, not my love of pizza). Strangely enough, this change is partially due to my engineering background.

I’ve always thought pressure cookers were a neat concept. Why not? They use physics to trick mother nature into allowing water to boil at a higher temperature. I never had one to play with, but my sister bought me and my wife an Instant Pot for our wedding. It seemed that beans benefited the most from this process, hummus is mostly beans, so here we are.

Returning to my love of pizza: over the years, I’ve experimented with pizza variants. One of the biggest disasters was my attempt at making pizza sausage. Note that I wrote pizza sausage, not sausage pizza (image to the left). To all of the naysayers that said it would never work, you were correct… at least thus far.

Now to pull my stories of pizza and hummus together. While looking for bean and hummus recipes, I discovered that there were people making pizza hummus. I thought that would be a great way to test out our new pressure cooker, looked at some recipes online, picked one, and started playing around.

The base recipe came from www.wholenewmom.com, but I decided to make some changes. You can see some of the iterations in my notes to the right (no, I am not a doctor). I really liked the last batch, so I am finalizing the recipe.

 

Pizza Hummus

  • 8 oz (half bag) of dry garbanzo beans cooked 45 min under high pressure
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • a bunch of peeled garlic (8 -10 cloves)
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 3/8 cup  +/- water from the cooked garbanzo beans
  • Small can tomato paste (8 oz)
  • 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
  • 2 tsp red peppers
  • 1 tsp fennel
  • 4 tsp basil
  • 1 1/2 tsp oregano

Put all of the ingredients in a food processor and beat the heck out of them.

Procedurally, I have learned some things that might be helpful:

  • I find it necessary to mix for much longer than I would have thought necessary, 10-15 minutes on high.
  • Some people peel the beans for a smoother consistency, I just pummel them into submission.
  • Since the garbonzo beans seem to take the longest to beat down, put them in the food processor with the oil and start abusing them while you measure everything else out.
  • I minced the garlic when I began playing with this recipe. Now I just peel it and throw it in while the food processor annihilates the garbanzo beans.
  • Once close to the final amount of water, a little bit goes a long way towards adjusting the consistency. Save some of it to slowly add at the end to obtain the desired consistency.
  • The red peppers add much more heat to the hummus after it sits for several days.
  • I started grinding up the last 4 items in a coffee/spice grinder (red peppers, fennel, basil, oregano) to increase the smoothness. These also seems to release the heat of the red peppers immediately.
  • Use the food processor to thrash the garbanzo beans just a little more.
  • The hummus will thicken upon cooling.

If things go well, a post in the near future might be titled “Healthy Wings or Unhealthy Hummus.” Any guesses what it will be about?