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I really shouldn’t share this, because it’s awfully rude, yet absolutely and completely innocent: So I found myself in the checkout line at the grocery store last night holding a package of Italian sausages in one hand and a box of condoms in the other. My ability to be nonchalant when being stared at is not up to that sort of challenge, so I took a hop skip and a jump over to the self checkout line.

So a Hong Kong company called Artificial Life has developed and is now trying to market a “Virtual Girlfriend” software product that is supposed to run on cell phones. It’s a virtuapet for grownups evidently and, get this, you have to shower it with virtual gifts… flowers, diamonds, etc. The twist is that it costs you actual money to buy said “gifts,” which, of course, don’t actually exist, but make your virtual girlfriend happy. So basically what it boils down to is… “Here, I’ll let you buy a picture of a girl to put on your cellphone, and then you can keep sending me more and more money cause if you don’t the girl in the picture is gonna start to look sad.” That would take about 5 minutes of programming prowess. I would mentally condemn the company to ignominious death, but, you know what? People actually buy this kind of garbage and they think its fun.

Why didn’t I think of that?

Here’s the article at MyWay.

Parts List:

2 inch PVC:
8 X 45 degree elbow
1 X 90 degree elbow
2 X Tee
2 X end caps
2 X 1 inch inside diameter threaded bushing
1 X 3/4 inch inside diameter threaded bushing
1 X 1/2 inch inside diameter threaded bushing
1 X 10 foot pipe

Other Parts:
1 X 1 inch inlet and outlet valve
2 X 1 inch transition coupler
1 X 5 foot 1/2 inch PVC pipe
1 X 1/2 inch threaded pvc adapter
1 X 1/4 inch inside, 3/4 outside diameter iron bushing
1 X 1/4 inch brass coupler
1 X 1/4 inch quick connect brass air fitting
1 X small momentary switch
1 X 9-volt battery
1 X 9-volt battery holder
pvc primer and cement
teflon tape

So I decided to go with the octagon shape for the base. I thought it would be kinda cool looking. It would actually be a little easier to build the base in sort of a W shape (that way you’d get rid of the 45 degree elbows and use two 90’s in their place. You’d also need a coupler in place of one of the tees for the air inlet.) with the valve in the middle and the inlet in one of the outside “legs” but far be it from me to choose the easy road! I actually only used about 4 feet of the 2 inch PVC pipe, but the store only had it in 10 foot lengths so I’ve got six feet to build another one of these launchers or some other project down the road.

Prep:

First, I made sure my various threaded fittings would go together the way I wanted them to. Then once the valve and inlet assemblies were put together:

I laid out all the parts on the floor to get sort of a sanity check of my design before cutting or gluing anything. It looked pretty good. I glued the bushings into the tees and the 90 degree elbow which would go at the outlet of the valve at this point.

After laying all the parts out in the approximate locations where they would end up I did a little measuring. There was about 1 3/8 inches of space for the pipe to slide in before it hit the stop inside the fittings so I decided I would cut 3 inch sections for most of the way around the octagon. I would need two sections longer than that to accomodate the length of the valve assembly. 8 inch sections would do for that. I could actually have probably gone with 2.75 inch sections instead of the 3s and 7 inchers instead of the 8s but I wanted a little room to fiddle.

I own a 10 inch power miter saw so cutting the 3 and 8 inch sections of pipe and keeping the ends square was pretty easy. With a little care it shouldn’t be hard to do it by hand, either. With all the sections cut I dry fitted the whole thing together once to make sure it would work out the way I wanted it to.

Final Assembly:

Glueing up the joints is easy but takes some time. It should have taken even longer than it did, but I ignored the instructions on the glue to wait 30 minutes before handling. I gave most of the parts about five minutes cure time before moving on to the next joint. Having already glued the bushing into the tees and the 90 degree elbow, I decided to start building the octagon from the tees outwards. There were two tricks to the process, the first being to keep everything lined up so that the octagon would sit level once it was all glued together, and the second to make sure that the last two things glued were the ends of the 8 inch sections that would tie the whole thing together. Glueing the 8 inch sections was a bit tricky because the pvc cement hardens fairly quickly and I had to do two joints at once right at the end. In the end one of the 8 inch sections didn’t go all the way into the elbow so my octagon is slightly skewed, but I think it sealed all right:

I’ll know for sure when I get it up to launch pressure of between 90 and 110psi. The last step was to glue the section of 1/2 inch pipe into the fitting with a threaded end and screw it into the bushing at the end of the 90 degree elbow.

I waited two hours for the joints to cure, then pressurized the assembly. I built it up to about 60 pounds then tried the valve. It seemed to work pretty well. That was the end of the first build day. I haven’t got a switch for the valve yet so I’ll update this post once I’ve done that.

Here is the finished product sans paint and the switch:

I ordered a fun switch from thinkgeek and I think I’ll use it as an “arming” switch wired in series with a momentary pushbutton for the launch switch. I’ll mount them in some sort of case from Radio Shack or maybe build my own.

I got to work about 20 minutes ago. Why was I so late today? Let me tell you a fable:

A wealthy landowner purchased a certain number of steel exterior doors from a home improvement store. The store only had one door in stock at the location where he purchased them, but never fear, the others could be transferred from the store in the next kingdom to the south. So, the landowner brought the first door to the place of his property and caused that it should be installed, painted and fitted with hardware, trusting that the further 3 doors would be made available to him the next morning. When the next morning came, a herald came with the news that the 3 doors had not yet started there journey from the southern kingdom, the same that afternoon, the next day and the next. Finally after 5 days the landowner sent his faithful servant to make the journey himself and shepherd the doors to the resting place. The servant approached the door-seller at the first store and made known his wish to obtain a refund for the doors so that he could, according to store poilcy, journey to the store in the southern kingdom and re-purchase the doors. The refund was provided in the form of a “gift card.” The servant made the arduous 12 minute journey to the far off southern kingdom and approached the guard at the gate who said go to the mill where the doors are stored. The mill worker was courteous and found the doors but initially said “I don’t think we can give you the same 10% discount you got in the northern kingdom.” What?!! The servant incredulously explained that it was a mistake made by the staff of the very store he was standing in that caused him to make the journey and retrieve the doors himself, and that the southern store was lucky the wealthy landowner didn’t just take his business elsewhere. Finally the mill worker relented and grudgingly gave the 10% discount. After loading the doors on his cart and making the return journey, the servant released the doors to those who would put them in place and made his way to his day job.

Blows me away. Idiots. And through all the phone calls and everything else they maintained this facetious sort of “wish there was something more I could do, sorry for the inconvenience” attitude, as if it wasn’t the simplest thing in the world to load three doors on a truck and bring them to the right location the day they were supposed to do it. Duh.

Last Friday and Saturday we attended Lindon Days, which is a yearly fair/carnival/festival thing in the town where I grew up. It wasn’t too great this year because they changed a bunch of things that had always been good, moved things around that didn’t need to be moved, scheduled things so they would conflict, etc., etc. However, there was one shining high point, and that was the Rocket Range. I’m surprised I had never seen anything like this before, or even thought of it myself, because I have always like model rocketry. They let each kid build a paper rocket, decorate it the way they wanted, apply control surfaces (fins) however they thought would be good, then launch them using a compressed air launch pad constructed from PVC pipe and activated by a momentary switch. The launcher had a sort of pressure chamber made from 2 inch pipe and pumped up to about 90 PSI, a solenoid controlled valve, and an upright launcher made from 1/2 inch pipe that the rockets would slide onto. It was so cool! These little paper rockets (an 8 1/2 X 11″ sheet rolled around a 1/2 inch dowel with a foam nose cone and paper fins) would shoot about 150 feet into the air and then fall gracefully back to earth. I vowed the moment I saw the thing to build my own launcher. Of course, I’ll chronicle that project here for anyone else who might be interested. I’m going to buy most of the parts this afternoon.

I finished reading A Certain Chemistry the other day, and while I’m not sure yet how I feel about the ending, I can say that it was definitely the best book about infidelity that I have ever read. I’m pretty sure, actually, that it’s the only book about infidelity that I have ever read. I would only trust such a subject to an auther like Mil Millington. He has an uncanny way in his writing of displaying how excruciating it is to be human, and though I don’t know him in any way other than reading his work, I trust him. On one of the very first pages he uses the phrase “a tiny eternity” to describe a pause in conversation. I was hooked on this book from those words on. I can’t think of another author I’ve read that could possibly make the story of a man cheating on his girlfriend funny, but he manages to do it, while at the same time providing insight into the agony of guilt that the cheater experiences while leading his two separate love lives. I don’t know what it feels like to cheat from personal experience, and according to Mil’s website he doesn’t either, but it can’t possibly be any different from the way he describes it in his book. I don’t think I could ever have it in me to cheat on my wife… it’s just not the kind of person I am and I can’t picture myself ever even having the opportunity, but aside from all that, A Certain Chemistry taught me that it is not worth it.

So as all things, this thing of mine has finally run its course.
I am not going to get a notebook computer in the foreseeable
future. And, as a result, I’ve decided to try to get used
to posting via email from my palm Tungsten E. I just got
it all setup and this is my first post. Maybe it will work
for a while. I guess we’ll find out.

So we saw The Bourne Supremacy last Saturday night. It was good, but I still stick to my opinion that they should have followed the original stories more closely… especially in the second film. Supremacy felt cold and impersonal; where the book had Bourne fighting to get his wife back from kidnappers the movie was mostly about revenge. Erica said she felt like it was just a two hour car chase with a couple of fist fights thrown in for good measure, and I can see where she’s coming from. The first one had its requisite chases and fights, but it also had some character developing dialogue sequences. I can only think of one thread of further character development in the second movie and that was that he felt bad for a previous job he’d pulled and he had to figure out the details so he could go and apologize to one of the victims. Like Matt Damon said recently, I don’t know where they are going to go for the third movie, they didn’t even bring the Carlos element into the story in number one, so what is left for number three?

Just thought I’d say hello. One of our managed service customers is having me look at a couple of items tonight. He’s got an amanda (tape backup manager, not my sister-in-law) problem and a mysql issue. I think the mysql thing is taken care of now. The amanda thing should be as well, but it’s gonna take at least an hour of waiting around to find out for sure. I really don’t feel like staying up since I’ve already been on this for almost 4 hours tonight. The customer is pretty freaked out about getting a good backup, and I understand his pain, but it so totally sucks to be stuck staring at a computer screen with nothing to do for 80 minutes! That’s how long this process took last time it ran. Ugh. The one positive side, I guess, is that I have learned several things about amanda tonight that I didn’t previously know. Of course, I am so shagged out that I doubt I’ll remember them in the morning.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve been sorely tempted the last couple of days to find a laptop to buy, then get a GPS receiver for it, so I can add the tag “Current Meatspace Coordinates” (the way Randy Waterhouse does with his emails in Cryptonomicon) to all my posts, as well as truly be able to post from wherever. Mind you, it would be nice to have a laptop for several other reasons as well, but alas, it would be a heinous thing for me to try to afford one at the moment, having just put a $5500 dent the size of a ‘92 chevy truck in our plans for paying off all our debt before buying a house. No rest for the wicked and you never know what you want till you realize there’s something you’re missing! “Someday, lad, all this will be yours….” “What, the curtains?” I really better go to bed and work on this backup stuff some more tomorrow.

About two years ago we got a call from a company wanting to give us a free vacation for attending their presentation. We decided a free vacation would be nice so we went. Of course it was a timeshare presentation and though it was appealing we didn’t buy in. We got the free vacation to Vegas and used it. About six months ago we got another invitation, this time from a resort in Park City. We went and they gave us a free stay at their resort, which was beautiful and comfortable. Haven’t used that one yet. About two months ago we got a third invitation, this one saying “Come stay at our resort for two nights and we’ll give you two other vacations free for listening to us.” So we went this last weekend. This one was in Park City also and, I’m afraid to say, was nothing like the other one we went to. The place was built in the 80s and recently renovated. The exterior of the hotel looks like a big white box from one side and nothing short of bad apartments from the other. The rooms were decorated nicely, with a fireplace, rustic armoire and a leather couch, but the bed was heinous. We only stayed one of our two nights. We attended the presentation which was actually sort of enjoyable. The salesman was courteous and seemed to be genuinely friendly, something we hadn’t experienced before, and didn’t seem to be personally insulted when we said no. He didn’t try to pressure us into buying a smaller package or anything like that either, which was nice.

So now we’ve got three hotel stays, one each in Park City, Las Vegas and San Francisco, to use in the next year. Gonna be a busy one. Of course the problem is that, though the hotel stay is free, the rest of the expenses are not paid. So we save $150 to $300 but have to take the time off work and pay for food, transportation, etc., etc., etc. At least we get to travel a bit. The concept is getting a bit old though, I don’t think we’ll attend the next presentation we get invited to.