It's been a while, yes.
Mostly I've been working, but there has also been an interesting pause of sorts on multiple political fronts. I'll say something about that soon. I'll have to because, from my perspective, there is an interesting and unusual power shift taking place. Hell, I may be wrong again, but we'll see.
For now I thought I'd mention something on the Oldsmobile front.
Due to workload, I'm prevented (in general terms) from getting Oldsmobile-related things done. Most of my usual free time is immediately after work. I am variously prevented, however, from using that time for car work.
Firstly, the car area is out in the open, so I am at the mercy of the weather. Then there is the after-work problem - it is always at an awkward time of day. After second shift its too dark. After third shift... well, I just dont care to be hammering away at 8am; that strikes me as bad form from a neighborly perspective. [I don't know why I care - the neighbors seem to hate me] That leaves what daylight remains after first shift, which is workable. The problem there is that the first-shift guy (the "day-slave" as I call it) gets run around and generally abused such that I'm often feeling too drag-ass to do anything constructive.
I do keep some car parts indoors, and for some time I have rather wished that I could do some things inside. Most of what I need to do involves grinding rust off of parts, and that would generate airborn mettalic particles which would generally be bad for everything from the carpet to my stereo equipment. I do store some flammables in the bathroom, and have been cleaning some small parts, but it really hasn't been that fruitful. Not like it should be.
Yesterday I realised that there was a fairly simple solution: I can work indoors, I just need to prepare for it properly. {ooops, pepsi evaporated again} What I intend to do is fabricate something like a blasting cabinet. The purpose of such a unit is to contain and recycle blasting media. I don't have a media blaster, and I don't intend to buy one, but I would like to restrain any metal particulate matter to the area in which I am working. What I mean to build is more in the vein of a glove box. Well, a glove box the size of a large blasting cabinet. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner, since I already have a majority of the materials I will need: plastic sheeting, wood scraps, and a table with a metal top. I have previously used my small Hoover 'cannister' (its not a proper cannister, but I call it that) vacuum for car/shop related jobs so that will serve for cleaning the interior of the glove box.
Of course, a commonly recurring theme will re-appear now as my current impediment. I need to clean up a bit in here to make room for this endeavor. Funny how that keeps happening. Its a goal that I seem to approach tangetially. Or is that asymtotically?
I'm starting to beleive that the Zeroth Law of Termodynamics is wrong. Simply stated as an equation; E > 0, or entropy is positive. It is expressed as "entropy increases" with the implication that it perpetually increases. One expression of that law is the phrase "nature abhors a vacuum." If entropy increases, then disorder propagates and displaces order, and a vacuum is a nice orderly lack of anything in particular. I think I'll go ahead and take that one further. I think the situation is much more pronounced than that.
Its not that nature abhors a vacuum.
Nature abhors my vacuum.
That would satisfactorily explain the mess in here.
