The Awsome Blog

Adjust the hue on your monitor for Green Eggs and Ham

It’s a new year again, and man, it’s harder than ever to keep up writing these things. This is the Awsome Blog for January, 2011! In this issue Mark makes breakfast, gets a light and starts writing again. Not just blogs, also other things.

December is a time to be with family, enjoy your heritage and reminisce about places you’ve been to and wish you still were. On that list: Disneyland. Anyway, as the holidays approached, I began to miss some of the better parts of the Deep South. If you’ve ever asked me what I miss most about that region, you’ll know that I quickly respond “The food.” So naturally when I start to feel homesick, I make myself this: grits, fried eggs (hard, sunny side up), and Louisiana style sausage, all sprinkled liberally with Tony’s Creole Seasoning and served with a cup of strong, black coffee. See? I’m not starving and I can cook. I can even hold back the mountain of breakfast-related jokes of dubious quality.

Need a light? Actually, I still need a butane lighter for my cigars.

After my cheap Energizer pen light broke, I was left flashlightless for a period and pondered a number of possible replacements. It was right about this time that someone, without knowing my plight, send me the perfect flashlight right out of the blue. This is a 4Sevens Preon LED flashlight. It runs on a single AAA battery and puts out 60 lumens. Pretty crazy for such a tiny light. The craziest part, though, is that the guy who engineered this flashlight is someone I know. In fact, I stayed in his house for one night before going to Puerto Rico in the summer of 2007. Sometimes I have to remind myself that that was three years ago. Anyway, this light is thin enough and short enough to fit perfectly clipped to the top of my front left pocket on my pants. A normal sized pen in that spot often gets bent or broken because it is too long, but the Preon is just right. I love this light and highly recommend it, and not just because I’m distantly connected to the company. Thanks a bunch to the person who gave it to me. Check out this and many other excellent LED flashlights from 4Sevens at their website, 4sevens.com.

As you may have guessed from the amount of text on this blog, I enjoy writing when I get the chance. Of course, between lots of hard work and my Netflix account, I really don’t have much time for it. But, in order to facilitate my writing when I do get the chance, I got this (relatively) new program called Scrivener. It’s a fantastic writing program that anyone intending to write more than a half dozen pages should be using. It makes organizing large writing projects a snap. This program, developed originally for the Mac, just hit version 2.0. After gaining a surprisingly large following on Mac, the push has finally begun to develop the program for Windows and Linux. Betas are available for those systems, though you have to poke around the forums to get them. Check it out at literatureandlatte.com.

As always, if you have any questions, additional information or feedback, feel free to reply by posting a comment. See you all next month.

In my own little corner I can grind whatever they tell me to grind. Hardly romantic.

It’s finally eggnog season, guys! This is the Awsome Blog for the month of November, 2010. In this issue our hero averages 65 hours a week, gets relocated and finally gets into the Astro Boy thing.

So I can’t talk about the stuff I’m making on the Internet, but it should be okay to show a picture of my work area. Previously, my team at work was crowded into a small back section of a huge building that was already overcrowded. Since this was horribly non-conducive to our work, we were moved to another building in the same complex. Our new, much larger work area included a brand new grinding booth for me and my fellow grinders. This booth is made of two-inch galvanized tube and long, clear plastic strips so you can walk through the perimeter of the booth at any point, but none of the sparks or dust from the various power tool we use gets thrown outside our area, instead being trapped by the plastic curtains. My new area is far from opulent, but it is a nice upgrade from my previous booth, which was slightly smaller and had curtains that were no longer clear, but kind of a translucent beige. My new, larger booth is also divided in half with a clear plastic curtain like what the perimeter is made of. This allows my grinding team divide and conquer our assignments more effectively without getting in each other’s way or flinging metal shavings in each other’s eyes.

Astro Boy is all grown up! Or at least his story is.

Many of you have probably heard of Astro Boy, but I doubt that many of you actually know anything about him. Astro is an android built to look just like the deceased son of Dr. Tenma, who created Astro. When Dr. Tenma realized that Astro was a poor substitute for his real son, he sold Astro to a traveling circus, starting a long life of adventure for the little robot. The story of Astro Boy, known as Atom in Japan, has been told many times in comic books and cartoon shows since 1951, and is considered one of the most influential animated characters of all time. One short story from the Astro Boy series, “The Greatest Robot on Earth,” was recently adapted into a new comic book crime drama called Pluto. This story is a fascinating mystery story with lots of great action and several interesting political and social issues constantly under scrutiny. It is also noteworthy for mostly focusing on Europol Agent Gesicht, making Astro Boy only a supporting character. I have been collecting the volumes of this story this month and so far have four out of eight. It’s a really great story and I highly recommend it to everyone.

As I mentioned, I worked an average of 65 hours every week this month, so naturally I didn’t have much time to write a super long post. I did get two full days off for Thanksgiving, which I celebrated by lying in bed and watching Reno 911! all day. Don’t worry, I didn’t relax too hard. I also helped a housemate tear some windows and roof vents off of a decaying 1948 Prairie Schooner. That was an interesting day.

As always, if you have any questions, additional information or feedback, feel free to reply by posting a comment. See you all next month.

It's really hard to get a good image of a small room in one shot. This will probably require a photostitch.

A day late and a dollar short. This is the Awsome Blog for the months of September and October. In this issue, I move into a new place… and work a whole ton.

Check it out: after a month of working and earning money, I found a place to rent on Craigslist. It’s a single bedroom in a house. I have three housemates (including the guy who owns the place) and pretty much none of them are ever around when I am, so I usually have free use of the kitchen and big screen tv in the living room. Here is a quick photo I snapped of my room. I plan on building a desk and a couple of other items, but right now it’s livable, and I have more important expenses coming my way. Mostly rent and groceries.

Work smarter, not harder.

The process for moving was pretty fun. Most of my stuff was stored inside a job box (an over-sized toolbox designed to hold large tools and be kept at a job site, also called a gang box) and I had a TV wrapped in a tarp strapped to the top. The whole package was stored at the Ministry Conference Center. I put it on wheels so that it would never get in the way of the work, and as a result it was moved several times, finally ending up in Building 7. Rather than mess with loading the box by hand, we asked Peter T. to use the Skytrak to simply place it in the back of Anatoly P.’s truck. Anatoly was the first person I asked to help out with this, and he was really awesome. Also helping out that day was Jeremy L., but he mostly had to help out because a bunch of my stuff was stored at his place, and the only way for me to get it was for him to bring it over.

Work is very long and tiring these days. An average week is 58 hours, but I did one 72 hour week, which was super grueling. Naturally that makes it really difficult to get a post done on time, so I ended up totally skipping last month! Sorry about that, but I should be able to keep up now that I’m getting used to the work load. And getting up at 2:45 every morning.

As always, if you have any questions, additional information or feedback, feel free to reply by posting a comment. See you all next month.

That siding makes for the perfect dry erase board.

What would you do for money, Honey? This is the Awsome Blog for the month of August, 2010! This month, our hero becomes a master chef and (unrelated) finally gets a job! But first, it’s time for Faces of 8.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about the Ministry Conference Center (MCC), and it has undergone drastic changes. You can see here that the front of the building is pretty much finished. The outside material is made up of limestone tiles along the bottom, meticulously leveled around the outside of the entire building, and above that corrugated aluminum siding of a lighter brown in the middle and a darker brown up top. It looks a bit plain now, but don’t forget that it will be lined with beautiful treas and red brick pavers to provide some nice contrast. By now the exterior tile work should be completed, and the aluminum siding should be done within the next month or so. On the inside, the floor is nearing completion, but could take until the new year to finish. The walls of the main conference hall have been finished, textured and painted, but some columns still need to be wrapped with drywall. It’s hard to believe the huge number of small things that must be done. The guys in charge really have their hands full coordinating all of these tasks. The goal is to be done with the whole thing by the beginning of November, but that may require a miracle. Keep it in your prayers.

These are super good. Like, super, super good. Oh, man I get hungery every time I see this.

This month I have been staying at various places to avoid having to pay rent from my non-existent funds. As I mentioned last issue, I spent some time with Jeremy L. and his wife in their apartment. In order to make myself useful, I cleaned the front of the house every day, washing dishes and sweeping the floor. I also tried a few recipes. I made quesadillas for the first time, and made hamburger patties from scratch. Those hamburgers were super good, by the way. I also made biscuits. It turns out biscuits are pretty simple. Now I had just gotten a bunch of really good peanut butter and was anxious to cook with it so I did a bit of research and discovered a way to swap out peanut butter for regular butter. With this information, I was able to invent my own recipe: peanut butter biscuits, seen here on the left. Of course, good biscuits need some good spread, so after poking around in the fridge I realized that there wasn’t really anything to put on my biscuits besides butter, so I simply made my own strawberry jam from scratch. Yes, that’s right. I did a bunch of research, invented my own recipe and made strawberry jam. Have a look at it in the picture down and to the right. This also came out amazingly good. It was a tad runny, and I have not been able to determine if that was due to overcooking or undercooking, so further experimentation will be necessary. If you’re lucky, you might be around when I attempt mango jam.

Ignore the label. It was my only mason jar.

I finally got a job! Yay! I am a grinder for Accurate Metal Fabricators. Right now the company is really under the gun to get several large projects done, so I will be working 12 hour days for a while, starting at 4am. Of course, my only means of transportation is my bicycle, so I have to be up by 3 and out the door by 3:15 to be at work on time. That’s why this post is both late and short. I’m trying to get to sleep in time to get some decent rest before work. Also, now that I have an income, I will be looking for a place to call home. To clarify, home is where my Netflix goes. Anyway, finding an apartment or room for rent may take a lot of work, and I may not have much energy for that soon. We’ll have to see how that goes.

Also new this month: titles! Every post now has a title. This is for the purpose of correcting all permalinks. Some of the earlier posts would not link at all without a title.

Next month we may get to see some pictures from my new job. Hopefully from my new apartment, too. As always, if you have any questions, additional information or feedback, feel free to reply by posting a comment. See you all next month.

A pretty cool cat, but honestly I've had some much better roommates.

Look what the cat dragged in! This is the Awsome Blog for the month of July, 2010. In this issue, Mark rides a train, doesn’t get a job and makes more excuses. But first, this is a cat.

This cat is named Breadsticks (not my choice) and for the last three weeks she has been my roommate. After I arrived in California, I spent a week with my good buddy and former boss Anatoly P., after which I relocated to Jeremy L.’s apartment. Shortly after I got there, he and his wife were given a kitten and named her Breadsticks, after a food that is often craved. Now it should be mentioned that I am not really a cat person. Cats are kind of fun I guess, but if I had my choice I would always pick dogs. I know a lot of people love cats and will disagree with my reasoning, but based on my extensive experience with many dogs and a good many cats I can safely say that dogs love their owners, but cats do not. This can most clearly be seen when you come home. When you come home to a dog, he or she is happy to see you. They aren’t expecting a treat, they’re just happy. Cats, on the other hand, usually don’t care when you come or go. Breadsticks does respond to the sounds of the door opening, especially since I hung a string with a jingle bell from the doorknob, but she never approaches me just to say hi. Anyway, cats are still fun to play with, and I like Breadsticks, but I hope to one day have a dog. And feed it cats.

I've never seen so much rebar in my entire life.

As I mentioned in the last issue, I traveled by train back to California at the beginning of this month. There were no problems with my massively overweight trunk on the train, but after I picked up my luggage from the baggage claim it was a bit difficult to get around with all five pieces. Eventually I had to get a little help from a retired marine who I happened to bump into.

On the way out of New Orleans, we happened to pass by a new highway under construction and I was lucky enough to snag these two excellent cross sections of the process, especially the second one. In the first one we see the process of assembling the rebar cages and tying the rebar together. The yellow scaffold is a pretty heavy duty deal, so the rebar is probably placed on that rig by a crane, then moved piece by piece to the cages below by hand. You can see plywood spread out on the rebar cages where the crews can use wire to tie the rebar together. If you look closely, you can see that the yellow scaffold is on some sort of rails and can be rolled back and forth, possibly by means of some mechanical drive. Of course, I was only able to see this on a holiday, so no workers were around and I was unable to see any of this stuff in action.

Football, anyone? Wait, time out, a car's coming.

In the second picture, a huge section of the actual road concrete has just been poured. We can clearly see the finished rebar cages on one side and finished concrete encasing the rebar on the other side. In the middle is a different yellow scaffold, also on rails, probably for the purpose of screeding the concrete (leveling it out). In the upper right corner we see a new kind of scaffold that probably hangs down to ground level so that workers can climb a ladder straight up to their work area. At this spot, the ground is probably 50-60 feet below, so the faint of heart need not apply for this job. I strongly considered applying myself, but then I remembered that I really would hate living in New Orleans.

Seeing the smooth surface on that big, wide river just makes me want to water ski.

I’d say that once again, riding the train has proven to be a totally worthwhile experience. I met a bunch of really cool people and saw some awesome landscape. Here’s a shot of that river I didn’t quite get on my last train ride. Pity it was so foggy that day, but whatever. I’ll take what I can get.

I’m still looking for work in the Anaheim area, but as it says in the book of Psalms, “Those who sow in tears / Will reap with a ringing shout.” My hunt continues, and my friends are supporting my search. I am extremely grateful to those who are helping me in this time of zero income, and I understand that at this point the debt is not something I can just pay back. I talked to one of my friends about this and he told me “Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service. But until that day, accept this justice as a gift of my daughter’s wedding day.” So to the ones who are helping me, thank you, and I hope one day I can either repay you with equal kindness or pay the debt forward to the next generation.

This post was two days late, and that’s just bad form. The problem is that when you’re doing nothing it’s hard to suddenly do something. Anyway, stay tuned for more updates and maybe some news from the Ministry Conference Center next month. As always, if you have any questions, additional information or feedback, feel free to reply by posting a comment. See you all next month.