Monday, July 11, 2005

Grrrrrr-illing

You know those electric "George Foreman" style grills? They should add "impossible to clean" onto their list of features. Does the top hinge open 180 degrees? No. Can you remove the grilling surface? No. Can you at least remove the heating element before you wash it? Nyet. Here is a conversation between the designers of this worthless piece of flotsam:

Designer 1: "Hey George, I've got an idea! Why don't we submerge this household electrical appliance in water to clean it!"

Designer 2: "Great idea, Bill! Afterwards, we can go out dressed in knee-highs and call each other Nancy while whalloping each other upon the head with large frozen haddock!"

Designer 1: "Sounds good to me, lets call it a day"

Me: "Morons."

Thursday, July 07, 2005

The Great McAlpin Redecking Project -- Day 7


The Flush-R-Ator
Originally uploaded by The Faderjockey.

First, a bit of housekeeping. Old photosets that are chronicling previous days have been archived into one large photoset, as Flickr (my image host) only allows three photosets per standard (free) user. I will continue to house the most recent day's activites in a different set, and move those photos to the larger archive, when I post a new day's photos.

So, this is where we are. The deck is down, and ready to be painted. The next day or two will be paint-prep days for me. The crew has gone away again and it is back to just me once more. The next step in the process will be to crawl the stage and check each nail to ensure that they are all flush with the deck, if not countersunk. In the day's photoset, you can see my wonderful invention, the Flush-R-Ator, which will help me in this process. Included are also more clean-deck pics, another shot of the "Grand Canyon," and some pics of the damage done to the facing of the stage when the crew tried to shoot nails into concrete. A 2x4 and some j/c later, you get the white-ish mishmash shown. Hopefully, a little more j/c, a sander, and some glossy black paint will leave the spot looking spiffy. We are nearly there!

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Too funny for words

Okay, I had to interrupt the flow of the blog, and give you guys this link. Do your keyboard a favor, and don't read the linked page while drinking any sort of liquid near your computer. You will do some damage if you do. I promise.

The page is another blog article, with screencaps from a pirate copy of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith that had been translated from English into Chinese, then subsequently subtitled in English from the Chinese translation. A game of international telephone prompts hillarity. George Lucas just called; wants to talk about a career in screenwriting.