The Big Think

Bleah. Second day of car shopping. Salesmen all treat you like you’re either an idiot and don’t realize they are charging more than $3000 over sticker/blue book value, or they act all offended and indignant that you did your research. When I pointed out the other day that their price was waaaay over invoice price, the salesman said “yeah, you can get all sorts of bad information on the internet”. He quickly changed the subject when I told him my information source was the online NADA bluebook and edmunds.com. Hey, it’s called the internet, y’know? Ever heard of it? It gives customers a bargaining tool.
Met the prototypical salesman today; smarmy, loud and obnoxious. They kind of guy who kept using our names in every other sentence [why do they think that's okay?] All he was missing was the gold tie and the tendency to point at you when he talked about this “cream puff” of a car.

Ick. We kind of had fun with it, though: we knew that, no matter how hard the salesman worked or how much he tried to talk us into his office, we weren’t buying today.
This book details how to be a smart car buyer. Rule #1 is do your homework. Car salesmen absolutely hate to see someone come into their dealership with a binder full of notes. We’ve stuffed ours full of contact info, notes, prices, other dealers, etc. Lots of hilighted text in case the salesman slips a look at it. We can quickly look up the actual price of a car, street price, retail vs. private seller, and invoice price. Need to add current rebates and current dealer holdbacks. I occasionally pulled the notebook out and pointed to something in it today when the salesmen started to get especially pushy. Erin would just look at whatever I was pointing at and nod silently. Heh, psychological warfare- I thought the salesman’s head would burst! Rule #2 is control the situation: No matter what a salesman says or does, DON’T go into his office (the lion’s den). I found it quite funny to watch the salesman get 20 steps away and turn around only to see us wandering around looking at other cars. I could tell he was frustrated that we couldn’t be talked into “deal mode” within our first five minutes. The tendency when someone says “follow me” is to follow, and suddenly you find yourself being handled. I hate being handled. As a car buyer, you need to make it clear that you are in charge, it’s your checkbook, and you won’t be going anywhere until you’re good and ready thankyouverymuch. I think I’ll just wander around out here on the lot a few steps from my car ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

It was amazing the attitude change that took place after a few attempts to get us into the den. The salesman got a little pushier and tried to convince me that my information about the competition was wrong- even to the point of telling me that the competition lies outright. He even interrupted me several times when I asked for clarification on Toyota’s 10 year powertrain warranty. Then he brought his very meek and polite counterpart salesman over to work us (see “good cop-bad cop“). It would have been quite funny to witness if it hadn’t been such a sad illustration of just why people hate the car buying process and don’t trust salesmen.

We’re treating these first few visits as a desensitization period. We’re getting a feel for which dealerships sticker more, who has the pushiest sales reps, and who tries to pull fast ones. Even met a man and his college grad daughter out to buy a similar car to ours. We traded business cards and will keep up with each other via emails on good deals. Talked a bit about getting a “package” discount if we buy 2 cars at the same time. Hey, it’s worth looking into.
But for now we’ll just get used to the whole salesman vibe by visiting a bunch of dealerships within about 50 miles and getting used to being polite to the smarmy salespeople.

In the meantime, go here for a fantastic look at car salesmen from the inside. Why- seriously, why- would any normal person want to do this for a living?

Some amazing and humbling facts about the servicemen who guard our unknown soldiers. link

1. How many steps does the guard take during his walk across the tomb of the Unknowns and why? 
21 steps.. It alludes to the twenty-one gun salute, which is the highest honor given any military or foreign dignitary. 

2. How long does he hesitate after his about face to begin his return walk and why? 
21 seconds for the same reason as answer number 1.

3. Why are his gloves wet?
His gloves are moistened to prevent his losing his grip on the rifle. 

4. Does he carry his rifle on the same shoulder all the time, and if not, why not? 
He carries the rifle on the shoulder away from the tomb. After his march across the path, he executes an about face, and moves the rifle to the outside shoulder. 

5. How often are the guards changed?
Guards are changed every thirty minutes, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

6. What are the physical traits of the guard limited to?
For a person to apply for guard duty at the tomb, he must be between 5′ 10″ and 6′ 2″ tall and his waist size cannot exceed 30.” 

Other requirements of the Guard: They must commit 2 years of their life to guard the tomb, live in a barracks under the tomb, and cannot drink any alcohol on or off duty for the rest of their lives. They cannot swear in public for the rest of their lives and cannot disgrace the uniform {fighting} or the tomb in any way. After two years, the guard is given a wreath pin that is worn on their lapel signifying they served as guard of the tomb. There are only 400 presently worn. 

The guard must obey these rules for the rest of their lives or give up the wreath pin. The shoes are specially made with very thick soles to keep the heat and cold from their feet. There are metal heel plates that extend to the top of the shoe in order to make the loud click as they come to a halt. There are no wrinkles, folds or lint on the uniform. Guards dress for duty in front of a full-length mirror. The first six months of duty a guard cannot talk to anyone, nor watch TV. 

All off duty time is spent studying the 175 notable people laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. A guard must memorize who they are and where they are interred. Among the notables are: President Taft, Joe E. Lewis {the boxer} and Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy, {the most decorated soldier of WWII} of Hollywood fame. Every guard spends five hours a day getting his uniforms ready for guard duty.

On the ABC evening news, it was reported that, because of the dangers from Hurricane Isabelle approaching Washington DC, the military members assigned the duty of guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were given permission to suspend the assignment. They respectfully declined the offer, “No way, Sir!” Soaked to the skin, marching in the pelting rain of a tropical storm, they said that guarding the Tomb was not just an assignment, it was the highest honor that can be afforded to a serviceperson. The tomb has been patrolled continuously, 24/7, since 1930. 

Starting the process of getting Erin another car. We’re looking for a late model (2003-2004) white Toyota Corolla LE Automatic with less than 20,000 miles on it. Cruise is our only preferred option. If anyone has any information on a car like this, please let me know.
We’re willing to travel up to 1000 miles to get it as well.

NASA is finally getting smart. After Monday’s success with SpaceShipOne, NASA is considering offering cash prizes to private companies who attain certain space milestones.
Space.com has an interesting article about it.
“What we’re looking for is innovation like what Burt Rutan brought to the table”
The article goes on to say:
Some of NASA’s roughly $16.2 billion annual budget should be earmarked for privatizing space, the report concluded, suggesting even that Congress consider prize money for commercial spaceflight milestones.
Not to be an I-told-you-so, but this is exactly what I’ve been saying for the last 5 years. The government shouldn’t be the only one in the space business. Their job is to provide incentives for competition, do basic research, and help fund infrastructure (think of the interstate road system). Space travel stopped being about prestige as soon as Neil stepped on the moon. Now it’s time for development, and fortunately technology has caught up with the vision.
NASA’s announcement is a wild contrast to their attitude of the recent past. During the 90’s the agency seemed to go out of their way to protect their turf by suggesting that it would be many, many years before space travel could be done by “mere” civilians-if ever. Either they didn’t take into account the rate of technological advance, or they were trying to buttress their standing as the only space game in town. With thousands of the smartest rocket scientists in the world on their payroll, you can bet it wasn’t the former. In fact, NPR had an interview with NASA historian Alex Roland on Tuesday. Roland couldn’t say enough discouraging things about the Rutan flight. He called it a “stunt”, derided their business model, and called SS1 “worthless” because it couldn’t even reach orbit, much less geosync. Hey Alex, I’ve got two words for you: Alan Shepard. The government spent billions of dollars and millions of man-hours to do exactly what a few home-builders accomplished in four years in the Mojave desert for 20 million. And Burt Rutan has said an orbital flight is on the drawing board.

There are many good people at NASA, and many of them joined the agency because they believed it was the only way they could make a contribution to humanity’s space efforts. My hope is that Monday’s private flight will show them that the game just got a whole lot bigger. Hopefully this will encourage some healthy competition among NASA and its prospective, ahem, competitors. And hopefully NASA will remember that the space program is not about keeping your budget intact and your people employed.
The vision is a whole lot bigger than that.

What to get the gadget freak in your life who has everything. heh

The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven

If you use AIM or iChat, start a chat with “infocombot” and type any of the following:

deadline, hitchhikers_guide, leather_goddesses, lurking_horror,
planetfall, shade, wishbringer, zork1, zork2, zork3

You can play any of these text-based adventures through your IM client! Cool.

Finally! Here are some pictures of the custom bench I just finished. It was my first fine furniture commission and I’m very pleased with the results. The client loved it, too, and said that they’d be back for more! If you don’t mind me tooting my own horn, here’s a quote from them:

I just wanted to tell you again how much I love the bench! It fits in the space perfectly: when I walk around it, it is in no way obtrusive. It
feels like it was meant to be there, which is exactly what we wanted. The shoes all fit perfectly, including my tall boots. And, of course, it is as
beautiful as it is functional. I could not be more pleased. It has only been here for a few hours and it feels like it has been there forever - such
a great fit! Thank you again for a job so very well done,

Really made my day. Does this mean I’m a “professional” now?
Here are some pictures:

The bench is an original design. It’s 64″ long, 15″ deep, and 18″ high. It’s sized to fit a small inlet in the clients house. The short shelf is designed to keep a few pairs of shoes off the floor (they have a problem we all have- too many shoes on the floor). Taller boots can go under the right-hand side under the curved wood. The bench is solid African Mahogany with mortise and tenon construction. The top has a semi-hidden “I-beam” construction to keep it from sagging. This makes it possible to have a top only 1″ thick with the strength of a much thicker (12/4) top.
The wood is sanded to 220 grit and finished with Bartley’s Dark grain filler, 3 coats of Minwax Mahogany gel stain, and 3 coats of Minwax wipe-on satin polyurethane.

Here’s a close-up of the shelf.

And here’s the bench at the foot of our bed.

And here’s a shot of the bench in the client’s house.

Here’s a shot of me working on the mortises for the legs. Hours of painstaking chiseling after I roughed out the holes with my router.

Success! I had a great time working on this project. My wife was sad to see it go, and wants me to build one for her! Best of all, I gained a lot of confidence and was able to make some money on the project.

Now for the next project…..

Even thought I built this about 2 months ago, I’m just now getting around to posting these pictures. I finally got sick of crouching down on the floor to use my Ridgid compound miter saw (CMS). I had seen plans online for a CMS station that incorporated fold-up wings for longer pieces. Instead of buying these plans I just decided to wing it and design it myself (using the rough dimensions of the space I had available as well as the dimensions that would let me get the most out of my available wood). I’m pleased to say that this whole station- plywood, walnut trim, hardware, casters, knobs, hinges, and drawer slides- only cost about $80 to build. I had an old piece of ash plywood lying around and used a lot of walnut I still had that I used previously on my router table and wall mounted tool cabinet. Here are some pictures (click for larger pics, but be warned, I’ve started taking pics at 2megapixels so the larger pictures are quite large… don’t click unless you have broadband)

This is a 3/4 view of the whole station. Note the fold-up wings, excessive use of walnut trim :), and cool drawer/doors.

Here’s a closeup of the right-hand wing. It incorporates a T-track assembly with a left-to-right tape measure for quickly cutting pieces to length. Again, I got crazy with the walnut trim, but that only added a few days of work.

This third picture shows the drawer and doors in an open position. Note the micro-adjust feature of the CMS mounting platform. I saw this in passing on another station someone had brought into Woodcraft. Liked the idea and stole it. Also of note is the fact that this was my first “real” drawer. Previous attempts had been of embarrassingly shoddy construction. I’m quite proud of this one. It’s made of 1/2″ ply with a piece of 1/2″ maple for the drawer front. The drawer and doors are all trimmed in walnut. The drawer runs very smoothly on its slides.

Close-up of the micro-adjust platform assembly.

Finally, here is the CMS station with my router table and hanging tool cabinet.

I had a lot of fun putting this together. It went together in about 4 days, matches the rest of the shop tools well, and is very convenient to use. Finally! No more bruised knees from kneeling on the ground to use my saw!

The official numbers are in. This morning SpaceShipOne reached an altitude of 328,491 feet, or 62.2 miles above sea level (just over 100KM). This officially qualifies test pilot Mike Melvill for astronaut wings. A personal wish: that Melvill will refuse the NASA astronaut wings. After all, the X-prize is about getting government out of our way so that we can go to space. Why not start some new traditions? Now would be a perfect time.

In the meantime, some more pictures:

What is so wonderful about this picture is that all three of the craft in the photo came from the mind of Burt Rutan. He not only designed SS1, but also its ferry plane (White Knight). The third plane (bottom of the photo) is a personal favorite of mine. It’s a Beech Starship (full-size photo here). Rutan designed the Starship way back in the 70’s. The forward canard wing eliminates a dangerous wing-stall condition that is inherent in all conventional empennage-based aircraft designs.

The next pic is my favorite, and qualifies for my personal “picture of the year” award:

History: Designer Burt Rutan, Pilot Mike Melville, and the entire team at Scaled Composites have successfully flown the first civilian-designed spacecraft into space. I got up early this morning to watch the coverage on TV. In fact, I came thiiis close to buying a ticket to LA and renting a car to go to the Mojave myself last night. If I had known that the movie was going to wrap early a few weeks ago, I probably would have gone. Nevertheless, I still got to see it. Look for a follow-up flight within the next 2 weeks so that Team Scaled can win the X-prize.
The brothers Rutan (Dick and Burt) have accomplished today something as big as what the brothers Wright did 101 years ago. It’s a small step, but a significant one. Burt has already publicly stated that he intends to design a craft that can go into full earth orbit (at mach 25 compared to the mach 3 of today’s flight). That future flight will be the equivalent of Charles Lindbergh’s accomplishment.
But tomorrow will come in time. Today is SpaceShipOne’s day.

Ad Astra Per Aspera

Some nifty free fonts.

Happy B-day! And good luck with the new job tomorrow!

A FAQ about tomorrow’s SpaceShipOne launch in Mojave, Ca.
It’s at 8:30am central time… don’t miss it!

Had a nice do-nothing day today. It was great. Went to church, then Fry’s, then Barnes and Noble, then watched TV and read. Ahhhh. More tomorrow.

If I were wealthy, I know where I would be spending my next two days.

This looks really useful.

We finished the principle photography on “Faith and Bullets” this afternoon. 14 days of production is behind us! The last two days have been a real whirlwind while we try and get everything done before the equipment has to be returned, but it’s been fun. Overall I’m glad I did it. I learned a lot about how to (and how not to) make movies.
Now for a long shower and a well deserved rest. Back to being a night person!
(I’ll post pics from the set in a day or so)

I couldn’t put it better than Belmontclub:

In an age when bravery itself is suspect and achievement considered a kind of oppression; when every new technology is hedged around with anticipatory restrictions it is wonderful to know that some men at least would like nothing better than to rise on a column of fire toward the beckoning stars. For every successful flight of this nature slips not only the “surly bonds of earth” but also breaks hidebound modes of thinking. It departs not just from a place but from a time. It takes us not from where we ought to be, but to where we belong.

Monday is the day….