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Tag Archives: work

There’s a killer on the road

His brain is squirming like a toad…

Um…ok, so I’m not actually going to write about The Doors or Riders on the Storm.  I AM going to write about road hazards.  In particular, nails on the road.

WHY ARE PEOPLE LITTERING OUR ROADS WITH NAILS?!

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Thank you.

Ok, so that wasn’t it.  But anyway, if you came by at noon to look for a post, you’ll note that there wasn’t a new one.  That’s because I was dealing with various things.  One of them was…a nail in my tire.  In fact, it’s the second nail I’ve picked up driving to and from Clib.  I am THE ANNOYED.  Even now, when everything has been fixed already.  I am still THE ANNOYED.

The first nail I picked up was driving to and from Clib, as I implied before, but when I noticed something was amiss, I was in bumper to bumper traffic on a stretch of the freeway that was under construction.  I do not blame the construction on the freeway for the nails.  You generally don’t use nails when constructing freeways.  A lot of concrete though.

Anyway, I mention the construction zone because it took away the shoulders of the freeway.  That meant that there wasn’t any place to pull over and put the spare on.  It’s also hard to do when you’re in the left lane and people in LA drive like they own the road and are mortally offended when you signal that you want to get into their lane.  So, this boils down to, I had to drive on that tire.  And in doing so, I ruined the sidewall.  Which means I couldn’t patch the tire, even though the nail was very clearly punctured the middle of the tread and would have been very patchable.  Except that I ruined the sidewall.

Moral: Do not run on a flat tire because you’ll ruin the sidewall and then you can’t patch the tire even if it were patchable to begin with.  Then you will have to buy a new tire and it will be very annoying because your dealer won’t actually have it in stock and you’ll have to order it and it will cost a lot and you haven’t even had the car for two months.

Today’s nail in the tire actually occurred several months ago.  I noticed that I had a slow leak in one of my tires.  I looked around to see if I could see a nail or something, but I couldn’t find anything.  I felt around the tire for stray breezes too.  But it was a slow leak and it wasn’t something I could feel.  So…I drove on it.

Now then, you might be surprised that I drove on this tire that had a leak in it especially after my last experience.  The difference was here was that it was a slow leak and I could keep ahead of the leak.  I was putting air into that tire every 3-4 weeks and every time I did that, I would look for the nail.  I finally found it the last time I put air into the tire a week or so ago.  It was very small.  It was right in the groove in the tread.  It looked like a small pebble or something that had lodged itself into the groove.  But it wasn’t.  It was a nail.  And it was nary 0.25″ away from the sidewall.

Why do I mention that last part?  Because a hole nary 0.25″ away from the sidewall is not patchable.  You can try plugging it, and actually, that’s what the nail was doing, but you can’t patch it.  And a plug is not as reliable as a patch.  So I had to buy yet another tire.  And I was annoyed.

But since I knew my dealer wouldn’t have the tire in stock, I called ahead and asked them to put one on order for me.  Actually, I drove by too to show them this nail so precariously close to the sidewall.  My service person immediately agreed with me that the tire was not patchable and put a tire on order for me.

Yay.  I hadn’t even put 20k miles on these tires yet.  And I’ve had to replace two of them.  Yay.

STOP THROWING NAILS ON THE ROADS!  Gosh.

I decorate! Duncan cake edition

I just did something really ridiculous.  Even for me.  That’s saying something.  I mean, I think I have a very refined taste in ridiculous.  This was…very ridiculous.

So, what did I do?  I just decorated a cake.  In my hotel room.  Somewhat on a whim.  With a technique I’ve never used before.  With no preparation beforehand.

Yup.

You might wonder why I would have done something like this.  Well, it’s because Mr. Arachnid is leaving today.  For good.  It’s his last day on the project.  And yesterday, for some reason, I decided to look up images of Duncan.

Perhaps you have no idea who Duncan is.  I cannot blame you.  I did not know of Duncan’s existence until I was assigned to this project.  Duncan is a valve with eyes and arms and is the mascot, of sorts, of Emerson’s DeltaV, their distributed control system.  I have grown to quite dislike Duncan.  I see Duncan as the personification (valvification?) of DeltaV, a control system I very much dislike.  All of it is just…dumb.

But you cannot speak ill of Duncan, especially when he’s verifying your programming.  It’s bad luck.  Duncan will more than likely throw you an error.  Or several errors.  They may even be severe errors.  But he will not tell you what they are.  And then he will shut everything down and not save anything that you have done.  Duncan is kind of a jerk.  We all think this.

Now then, Mr. Arachnid and I have a fairly similar sense of humor.  When we were talking earlier in the week, we both somehow settled on Duncan being a type of Pokémon, we haven’t figured out what type, but he evolves from valve to actuator to controller.  And he always looks like he’s in the midst of a severe hangover.  And so I drew this hungover Duncan.  And then I somehow found that there are Duncan cakes.  And then I decided I HAVE to get one of these cakes to properly send Mr. Arachnid back home.

Of course, he’s leaving today and I had the idea only yesterday and bakeries generally require 48hr notice for custom designs even if it’s just decorating and not a custom cake and so I have to do this myself but I am in a hotel and not even a suite this time so I have no counter space at all nor do I have any kitchen appliances with me nor do I normally decorate cakes because I much prefer making the cake over decorating it but Mr. Arachnid absolutely needs a Duncan cake.  So what do?  Store bought cake and royal icing.

The cake I saw used buttercream, or something similar to frost.  But the cake itself was Duncan shaped and I didn’t have the luxury to make a Duncan shaped cake.  Also, I didn’t really like the spikiness of the frosting.

DuncanCakeFromRoseHulmanStudent

This photo was from a graduating DeltaV class or something. Links to source.

I wanted something smoother and I didn’t want to make buttercream frosting.  Then, I remembered how they’ll often decorate cookies with royal icing.  People will use a thicker royal icing to outline a shape and then use a thinner royal icing to flood fill the outline.  I figured I could make a shape on parchment paper and then transfer it onto the cake after it had dried.  Also, royal icing is white, so it’s easy to dye different colors.

I had no previous experience with royal icing, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.  Having read this post on decorating with royal icing, I embarked on my plan to make a Duncan cake.

I quickly sketched out a hungover Duncan.

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and got to work making the icing.

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I made the icing entirely by hand.  I bought a small mixing bowl, a really dumb whisk, meringue powder, powdered sugar, and gel food coloring and made a half batch of icing and dyed it all the colors I needed.  I travel with plasticware, small plates/bowls, and ziploc bags so that helped.  I also normally buy a gallon of drinking water the first day, so I had that on hand too.  My arms are surprisingly not sore from beating icing.

Here’s my attempt at hungover Duncan.

WP_20130523_002I forgot to put the two black stripes on until after I took the photo.  I also got rid of the beer or whatever bottle because it was more work than I wanted to put in for that bit of brown.  So now, Duncan just looks sick for no reason.  I don’t mind.  Duncan should be sick.  He deserves it.

Icing Duncan got to dry overnight by the AC and I stuck him on the cake in the morning.  Tada!

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Royal icing, once it dries, is pretty brittle.  I, unfortunately, cracked his head in transport.  Duncan has a splitting headache.

One of the most ridiculous things I have ever done.

Oh, and the cake is an Artisan Tiramisu Cake from Vons that I smoothed out a little, mostly by picking off the whipped cream florets.  A ridiculous cake for a ridiculous exercise.