I can do the same...Stop drinking liquids!

Damn Steve.  If only it were that simple 

Took an intro course on a Stratasys Fortus 3d printer today. It makes 3d printing a very simple and reliable affair, but holy shit do their proprietary parts cost you for the convenience! The cartridges are roughly 10x the cost of standard spools and the printing tray (which Stratasys apparently recommends you only use once) are $20 a pop. The printer itself is also $45k, so I guess I won't be buying one for myself

Rescued a kitty.  Not the one I went to get, but that one get rescued, too, so double-plus-good.

Working name is Skye

As we have found, cat names can change as personality dictates. Oh, and because cats don't give a fuck.

Hi Skye, and good work Dusty!

black cats are best cats

Congrats on the new companion Dusty.

I hope you guys have a long and rich relationship.

Sitting on the deck enjoying 75F temps, a nice breeze and Debbie's awesome flowers. Tis a good day.

Today we said goodbye to our huge black walnut. I will miss that tree but it was 90% dead and had to go. At least it was taken away to become lumber.

^^^ Sad, indeed, Chris.  But, I gotta ask - what about that stump and roots?  Did tree guys leave them?

 

I lost a beautiful Chestnut tree in Maine many, many years ago, but it was self service.  Managed to fell it with chain saw without having it fall on house or nearby phone/power lines, and pretty easy to then cut and split into firewood, and mulch small stuff in rented chipper.  The stump and roots were a six month project, however.  Timing was good, as tree came down in October, and remains were left to deal with in the following spring (yay, early snow).  I remember taking a whole weekend to finish the job come next May.  

They will come and grind it during the week.

Watching them pull it out with a 120 ton crane over a building was awesome.

Went to our delayed-from-July-3rd town fireworks tonight.  Boring, up until a very nice finale.

Hi Skye!  Cool cat.

I changed the oil in my new-to-me Mazda3.  For the first time.

Opened up a box containing a relatively minty Nikon F5 and 16 rolls of Kodak Tri X 400 black and white film. Will have chemistry and other gear for developing film at home on Monday. Splitting a film scanner with a classmate of mine. Haven't decided which one for sure but hopefully sometime soon. As great as the xt1 was, I hadn't used it for 2 weeks and whenever I did use it in tough light, the metering worked maybe 10% of the time. In even light I preferred it slightly to the D800 but the moment you put a light source behind a subject or shoot with the sun in the background, it would completely black out the subject. No matter what I did, I could not get the metering to work properly. The d800 although not as much fun to use just gets everything right the first time. Focus locks on immediately and meters perfectly regardless of the light source positioning. 

 

Had dress rehearsal for a Bob Dylan tribute concert I'm playing in over the next three nights.  It's sounding great, though I had a squabble with the other drummer (we take turns playing).  He's an old guy, and I guess that for decades he's been counting the intro to "All Along the Watchtower" wrong, placing the downbeat 1/8th note behind where it's supposed to be.  Trying to explain to him that it's not the guitarists' fault that it's a sloppy mess wasn't fun.  Maybe I wasn't super diplomatic after having a couple of beers, but seriously, there are few things more obstinate than proud musicians.  It's tough to walk the line between "you're really good and I respect your playing" and "but you're playing that one thing wrong and it's screwing everyone else up".

So true.  (Not from my own experience, but from listening to stories my friends tell, and from what I've observed myself even at concerts.)

I've been traveling to Michigan since 4:30am after being in the ER until midnight with Alden who had an extreme allergic reaction to something we had for dinner. He's fine but that was no fun. He had hives over his whole body and really bad ones from his chest to his knees. Luckily he didn't experience any real breathing difficulty other than a racing heart. I nearly died as a kid after a bee sting caused my throat to swell shut.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right? Plus, we now have Epi pens.

Unholy carp, that's awful!

^ This.  I'm glad to hear Alden's okay.  I hope his school doesn't give you trouble about having Epi pens in building like my friend's nephew's school.

Edited July 17, 201411 yr by Salt Peanuts

Yeezh.  Glad everything is okay, now, sorry he/you had to go through that (he-that/you-worry).

Ouch. Glad everything is OK now.

That sounds like a scary time, Al. I'm happy it's OK now.

Oy....glad he is OK, now YOU get some rest!

Glad to hear he's OK.

 

I hope his school doesn't give you trouble about having Epi pens in building like my friend's nephew's school.

 

Are you shitting me? Fuck them.