Fun Days Ahead

Good Morning everyone. I apologize for the lack of posting lately. I've been fairly busy lately prepping for school (now only a week and a half away, wee) and taking care of some things around the homestead. Hope I didn't miss too much.

So it's Halloween in a few days. I love this time of year. We all get to indulge a little and go back to our youths and play dress up, eat poorly, and drink up a storm! Enough about my toddler years, though. Halloween had a revival for me in the last couple years. I didn't really do a whole lot for it for a long time, but last year brought me back. Last year Halloween fell on a Saturday which was perfect, and playing in Vancouver at that time was Evil Dead: The Musical. We managed to get tickets for the early show Halloween night, great seats in what was called "the splatter zone." This was an area of about the first 5 rows, where during a blood bath ending to the play itself, blood was sprayed at the audience from the stage, from jets above the stage, and from the actors walking out into the crowd down the aisles. The amount of blood sprayed on the crowd apparently was in the range of about 15 gallons or so per show. Wife and I went dressed up as an unfortunate bride and groom who'd had a bit of a falling out on our honeymoon, ending with me with a screwdriver in my head, and her with gaping neck wounds. We did ourselves up very well, knowing that by the end of the show, our costumes would be 100x better.

Here is where we were sitting, after the show.

 And our completed costumes. As you can see, both our laps got quite a drenching. I actually turned my face upward at one point! Totally awesome.

The show itself was hilarious, we loved it. I would have seen it again if I could. If it's in your area, I highly suggest checking it out. It's a great time. For a list of upcoming shows, check out their website:

http://www.evildeadthemusical.com/site/ 

Since the show was downtown, we basically just left the theatre and joined the party. Next door to the theatre was a pub, so we went in there and had a few drinks and mingled with other halloween partyers. Then we went outside and just kinda walked around. There were hundreds of people downtown that night on Granville, and the costumes walking around were fantastic. We had our picture taken about a hundred times with people who loved our getup. Great fun. This year won't come close, but we're gonna try!

Picture Post!

It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, and after last night's hockey game (both watching the Canucks and then playing in my own) I am much too tired to come up with anything interesting to talk about, especially after yesterdays brain breaker. So here are some random pictures for you guys. Enjoy.

Zzzzzap

So lately I've been taking some time during the day to open up the books and get a bit of a head start for school coming up. A few of the textbooks we require can be used in different levels, which is great. For instance, a couple of our large textbooks cover all kinds of material, so we can use them each time we attend. Some of the smaller, more narrowed down content books we still need to buy, but that's not so bad.

For Year 3 Heavy Duty Mechanics, the subject is Electricity, Carburetor Fuel Systems & Diesel Fuel Systems (Mechanical & Electronic). I'm still not sure why we still cover carburetors, it's pretty antiquated technology. Year 3 is supposedly the hardest of all the 4 levels we have, since it's based mostly on electrical theory. A lot of people struggle with it. I have a pretty good base of understanding of it through work and dabbling a bit in other classes. So far I've been studying the math behind Series, Parallel, and Series-Parallel circuits, which is basically finding Volts, Amps, Ohms and Watts based on diagrams. Back to grade 8 math, really.

There's the formula wheel for what I've been studying. W is for Watts, I is Inductance (Amps), R is Resistance (Ohms) and E is Electromotive Force (Volts). I've been making up a lot of circuits and going through the math to get my head wrapped around it. There's a formula you can use called the Voltage Divider Rule, which allows you to solve for voltage across one or combination of series resistors without first having to solve for the amps. It goes:

(R1 x E) / (R1 + R2 + R3 etc.) = V1

It's fairly simple really. If you're like me and you never do math outside of shopping or cooking and baking, then it's gotta be worked into the brain before I can remember it fully. 

 So for this particular circuit, looking for the voltage drop across R1, the forumla would read:

(3Ω x 12v) / (3Ω + 5Ω + 4Ω) = V1

Which would then work out to read:

36/12 = 3volts.

So, the voltage drop across R1 is 3 volts. The next formula would read:

 

(5Ω x 12v) / (3Ω + 5Ω + 4Ω) = V2

60/12 = 5volts.

Voltage drop across R2 is 5 volts. The next formula would read: 

 (4Ω x 12v) / (3Ω + 5Ω + 4Ω) = V3

48/12 = 4 volts.

I just happened to pick numbers that work out to 12 for the resistance, so it worked out fairly easily. I've been entering all kinds of numbers in my practice to make sure I don't take it too lightly.

So, since in a series circuit, the sum of all resistors equals the total resistance (RT), we can now figure out what the amperage is. In a series circuit, current through each resistor is the same. So the formula goes:

VT / RT = AT

12/12 = 1amp. 

Isn't that fun? 

Vancouver's Turn For A Bad Night

What looked like a promising start for the Vancouver Canucks less than a minute into the game thanks to Daniel Sedins goal turned ugly fast as they went on to give up the next 6, and lost 6-2. What was worse than the score wasn't only the porous defence, a really bad game in goal by Luongo, and no finish by the forwards, but an altercation with a fan by Canucks centre and enforcer Rick Rypien.

Rypien was being led off the ice after a 2nd fight (2nd wasn't really a fight, more of a scrum where Rypien threw a punch after being held back by linesmen) and while leaving the ice, lunged and pushed a fan who was at the railing of the dressing room tunnel. No one is yet sure why he did it, but teammate Manny Malhotra is quoted as saying "I just think the fan got a little bit too involved," Malhotra said. "There's just no place for that in our game. "There's boundaries that should never be crossed. We're in our area of work. We are all for the hootin' and hollerin' and supporting your team and saying whatever is tasteful out there. But as soon as you cross that line and want to become physical with a player, we have to make sure we take care of ourselves and we're protected."

I can't see where the fan did anything at all to provoke the attack. He was leaning a little bit and applauding (no doubt with tongue in cheek), probably jawing something, but this should never happen.




League will most likely rule today on if there will be a suspension and how long/how much that will be.

The Wire

So since I've been laid off I've been watching this show. I've been crazy about a number of HBO shows (The Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Carnivale) and my buddy kmad said I should check this one out. Even stated it might even be better than The Sopranos. That's a bold statement for me, since I consider The Sopranos one of the best of all time. Consistently though, I've heard good things about the Wire.

The first season was pretty good. Not amazing, but interesting, and kept me watching. The 2nd season for me was great. Very interesting. I like the crime they come up with, and all the organization that goes behind it. I find that fascinating. To me, season 2 was where it picked up big time. Then season 3 came along, and it was mostly politics with a shitload of new characters. I was curious as to why I suddenly cared about all these new people. It kind of went from a nice tidy season 2 to all over the damn place. It wasn't as good to me.

I stuck with it though, I'm not about to give up on it just because of a lame season. So I'm halfway through season 4, and suddenly all of those boring characters from season 3 are lighting it up. Even Prez is interesting now.

It's a good show, but I don't know if it will supplant The Sopranos or even Deadwood for me, but we'll see. Deadwood was pretty epic. What are your favourite shows?

Monday Monday

Like a great band once said, "Monday monday.... " Yes sirs, lyrics to live by. Anyway, I had a fairly eventful weekend. Friday night hockey was great, had 1 goal, played pretty good. Saturday was the day of my wifes birthday party at our place. We spent most of the day tidying up the place for company and then prepared some finger foods. Had a great time, I hope everyone else did too. Had more beers than I was anticipating but what can ya do.

The idea was that we were going to have a pumpkin carving contest. As the drinking went on, we felt that wielding little saws and knives was probably not the best thing, so a few of our guests took to decorating one of the pumpkins with a sharpie. I think it turned out rather nice:

Amazing! Proud to display. Should keep the kids away on halloween.

When I drink I like to show people stuff I own that's cool. Here are 2 things I have and treasure that I will share with you.

This is my Tonka truck. I found this at a Value Village one day. It's in great condition. I had one of these when I was 5-7, and I wore the wheels off running around with it. It's awesome.

This is my NES Action Set. I found the box with the styro still inside it at the place I was staying with my in-laws. When we moved, I took it. I found the manuals and the game and a couple other things on eBay, and the console is my own from when I was younger. I know the gun doesn't match the box (I have to find a gray one) but I'll find one eventually. This thing makes me nostalgia hard. I love it.

Equipment Accidents

Now since I work on heavy equipment (when I have a job), it's in my nature to become interested in most things regarding it. Not everyone gets as crazy as I do, I mean, I know a lot of people who just stop thinking about it once they leave work. Me, I'm incredibly interested in it, in all shapes and forms. I have collections of service manuals, training material, etc. I love it.

I'm also interested in the more morbid side of things. I think equipment accidents are fascinating. It's not cool that in most of these someone was probably injured or killed, but like everyone else, I slow down to look at car accidents. I present to you some of the images I've saved over the years. I don't know the story with most of them, but most speak for themselves.