20 October 2013
Morgan Freeman's Makeup
20/10/13 09:29
The other day I was reading about the movie The Hobbit. I was curious when the second part was coming out. Mind you, I have yet to see the first part. I’m waiting for all three and then I'll pick up the directors cut on video and watch them all at once. Anyway, as I was reading the article I noticed that Bilbo Baggins is being played by Martin Freeman. Because it was early in the morning and I wasn’t quite awake yet, for about half an hour I thought they’d cast MORGAN Freeman as Bilbo. I just kept thinking “Wow, they did a heck of a makeup job on him”.
It’s been that kind of a week.
Work is going well. What I like the most are the things I get to take apart, reassemble, test, and experiment on. A while back I think I mentioned the song Grease-Stained Hands by Notre-Dame de Grass. (I’m sure I even had a link to an online video of it but I can’t find it at the moment.) Well, the best part of this week was getting grease on my hands again. Actual black gear grease, raw aluminum tarnish, O-ring lube. IT work is fine but it’s very clean. It feels really good to be working with motors and gears, and grease, and machined parts again. Putting mechanical parts together to make something that actually does something, moves, climbs, grabs, that sort of thing. It’s also nice to work in a team. IT work tends to be very solitary. Now I’m part of Quality Control and work with Production, the Machine Shop, Engineering, Shipping and the rest. The days go fast as there’s always something different to do; assembly, testing, packaging, writing, I’m busy all the time. Now I even own a pair of steel toe shoes. OK they look like a cross between light hiking shoes and tennis shoes but they have a steel toe.
It feels like I’m doing real work.
Driving to work has been different. We’ve been fogged in all week. Sometimes in the afternoon we’ll break out into a little sun but mostly it’s been foggy, damp, and still. A deep inversion has trapped the humidity and cold air close to the ground under warm clear skies aloft. Friday afternoon it was 6C in Vancouver but 16C up at the Whistler Ski Resort (42F and 62F respectively). We’ve even got an air pollution advisory, something we almost never get here. My cousin Mike mentioned he’s been out fishing a few times when the fog suddenly rolled in. He had to feel his way along the shore at his slowest speed to get back to the marina.
We have a new addition to the house. A cute little blue bouncing baby iPhone 5C. It’s smart, and fast, and has a great camera, and does all sorts of things like e-mail and web, and games, and writing, and documents, and it’s Marsha’s. I understand you might be surprised that she got the new phone and I’m stuck with a phone that displays calls in hieroglyphics. The thing is she needed a new phone while I almost don’t need a phone at all. She’s getting calls from people, and monitoring things, and gets mobile e-mail, and FaceBook, and such. I get one call a month, and it’s usually from a telemarketer. She has contacts all across the country and in the US, and is in demand for volunteering, and projects, and such at all hours. I, on the other hand, don’t know my neighbours' names, Oh and Marsha has a new job where she works from home, so having a new phone is very helpful.
And that’s why she got the new phone.
A funny thing happened at the store though. We’d settled all of the details and paperwork and such, the only thing left was to transfer her data to the new phone. She has many dozens of contacts she didn’t want to have to recreate. (For comparison, on my phone I have 5, and I never call them.) Anyway first, the salesperson had trouble finding a cable that would plug into the old phone. Apparently the old one comes from before the development of interchangeable parts. Finally after a long search she located a cable and plugged it in so she could transfer the data. Unfortunately the iPhone kept dropping the connection. Does anyone remember the Seinfeld episode about the slow-talker? I think this was what the problem was. The LG was so slow that the iPhone kept thinking it was done, or possibly it just got bored. Either way it would hang up and they’d have to try again. It took several tries before the data was safely ensconced in the new blue marvel. Then we took the phone home and I got to set it up on our network, download assorted software, and connect it to e-mail.
Marsha the social butterfly has three e-mail addresses. (Two are for work-mga)
All of this IT work reminded me of why I’m glad to be working with real stuff, real gears, and real grease on my hands again. With mechanical parts they either fit or the don’t. Parts are either broken or they aren’t. None of this “it’s set up right but it won’t work because the server isn’t happy” stuff. Things are a lot more cut and dried.
And finally you might have come across this but of science news this week. A group at Connecticut College has tested rats response to Oreo Cookies.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131015123341.htm
The part that made the headlines was that Oreos are addictive in the same way some hard drugs are. This is no surprise to me, or to anyone else that goes for The Black Fairy (la fée noir). What was lost in much of the reporting though, and the part I found most interesting was this
“While it may not be scientifically relevant, Honohan said it was surprising to watch the rats eat the famous cookie. "They would break it open and eat the middle first," she said.”
That’s right. Even rats eat the middle first. It isn’t a cultural thing, apparently there is a neurochemical that makes us unscrew Oreos to get at the frosting. It goes way back too. Neanderthals did the same thing 100,000 years ago. Well the same except that they were breaking open bones not Oreos. And I guess they wanted to eat the marrow rather than frosting. But it’s kinda the same thing though, sort of. Well, OK not the same at all.
Overall, my health is doing well. We go to see the Oncologist on Tuesday.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: A picture with the fantastic camera in the iPhone5C.Look at the amazing detail on the mountains on the mainland.
(Yes - the fog is still quite dense, but it has gotten better. Yesterday we could not even see the neighbours.)
It’s been that kind of a week.
Work is going well. What I like the most are the things I get to take apart, reassemble, test, and experiment on. A while back I think I mentioned the song Grease-Stained Hands by Notre-Dame de Grass. (I’m sure I even had a link to an online video of it but I can’t find it at the moment.) Well, the best part of this week was getting grease on my hands again. Actual black gear grease, raw aluminum tarnish, O-ring lube. IT work is fine but it’s very clean. It feels really good to be working with motors and gears, and grease, and machined parts again. Putting mechanical parts together to make something that actually does something, moves, climbs, grabs, that sort of thing. It’s also nice to work in a team. IT work tends to be very solitary. Now I’m part of Quality Control and work with Production, the Machine Shop, Engineering, Shipping and the rest. The days go fast as there’s always something different to do; assembly, testing, packaging, writing, I’m busy all the time. Now I even own a pair of steel toe shoes. OK they look like a cross between light hiking shoes and tennis shoes but they have a steel toe.
It feels like I’m doing real work.
Driving to work has been different. We’ve been fogged in all week. Sometimes in the afternoon we’ll break out into a little sun but mostly it’s been foggy, damp, and still. A deep inversion has trapped the humidity and cold air close to the ground under warm clear skies aloft. Friday afternoon it was 6C in Vancouver but 16C up at the Whistler Ski Resort (42F and 62F respectively). We’ve even got an air pollution advisory, something we almost never get here. My cousin Mike mentioned he’s been out fishing a few times when the fog suddenly rolled in. He had to feel his way along the shore at his slowest speed to get back to the marina.
We have a new addition to the house. A cute little blue bouncing baby iPhone 5C. It’s smart, and fast, and has a great camera, and does all sorts of things like e-mail and web, and games, and writing, and documents, and it’s Marsha’s. I understand you might be surprised that she got the new phone and I’m stuck with a phone that displays calls in hieroglyphics. The thing is she needed a new phone while I almost don’t need a phone at all. She’s getting calls from people, and monitoring things, and gets mobile e-mail, and FaceBook, and such. I get one call a month, and it’s usually from a telemarketer. She has contacts all across the country and in the US, and is in demand for volunteering, and projects, and such at all hours. I, on the other hand, don’t know my neighbours' names, Oh and Marsha has a new job where she works from home, so having a new phone is very helpful.
And that’s why she got the new phone.
A funny thing happened at the store though. We’d settled all of the details and paperwork and such, the only thing left was to transfer her data to the new phone. She has many dozens of contacts she didn’t want to have to recreate. (For comparison, on my phone I have 5, and I never call them.) Anyway first, the salesperson had trouble finding a cable that would plug into the old phone. Apparently the old one comes from before the development of interchangeable parts. Finally after a long search she located a cable and plugged it in so she could transfer the data. Unfortunately the iPhone kept dropping the connection. Does anyone remember the Seinfeld episode about the slow-talker? I think this was what the problem was. The LG was so slow that the iPhone kept thinking it was done, or possibly it just got bored. Either way it would hang up and they’d have to try again. It took several tries before the data was safely ensconced in the new blue marvel. Then we took the phone home and I got to set it up on our network, download assorted software, and connect it to e-mail.
Marsha the social butterfly has three e-mail addresses. (Two are for work-mga)
All of this IT work reminded me of why I’m glad to be working with real stuff, real gears, and real grease on my hands again. With mechanical parts they either fit or the don’t. Parts are either broken or they aren’t. None of this “it’s set up right but it won’t work because the server isn’t happy” stuff. Things are a lot more cut and dried.
And finally you might have come across this but of science news this week. A group at Connecticut College has tested rats response to Oreo Cookies.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131015123341.htm
The part that made the headlines was that Oreos are addictive in the same way some hard drugs are. This is no surprise to me, or to anyone else that goes for The Black Fairy (la fée noir). What was lost in much of the reporting though, and the part I found most interesting was this
“While it may not be scientifically relevant, Honohan said it was surprising to watch the rats eat the famous cookie. "They would break it open and eat the middle first," she said.”
That’s right. Even rats eat the middle first. It isn’t a cultural thing, apparently there is a neurochemical that makes us unscrew Oreos to get at the frosting. It goes way back too. Neanderthals did the same thing 100,000 years ago. Well the same except that they were breaking open bones not Oreos. And I guess they wanted to eat the marrow rather than frosting. But it’s kinda the same thing though, sort of. Well, OK not the same at all.
Overall, my health is doing well. We go to see the Oncologist on Tuesday.
Doug & Marsha
PIX: A picture with the fantastic camera in the iPhone5C.Look at the amazing detail on the mountains on the mainland.
(Yes - the fog is still quite dense, but it has gotten better. Yesterday we could not even see the neighbours.)