bang camaro

I'm currently sitting at the masq waiting for bang camaro to start playng. the first band, sgt (somethbing or other) was a pretty decent southern rock band, complete with camo netting on the drumset. band #2 , corgi, is absolutely horrible. so horrible that I'd rather type out a blog post on my phone than listen to this ass anymore. its really bad. very bad. in summary, they suck.
their bass player is sitting in a chair. and my nephew is better.
their drummer has no energy ... his cymbals barely move when he hits them
and the singer/guitarist thinks he's alice in chains, but he's ... so bad I can't think of a witty pun.
bang camaro is gonna rock though.

coffee scoop

For my first turning project after getting back into the game, I decided to go small and turn a coffee scoop. It comes in the same sort of kit that the pens do, where you buy the brass parts and turn the handel out of whatever. I started with what appeared to be a really nicely patterned wood blank that I had laying around, but by the time I turned it down to size, there was no more interesting grain patterns left. So I bailed out on that before I assembled it, because it was really boring looking. And lets face it - if you're making your own coffee scoop, "boring looking" isn't really a desiralbe quality. The 3 plastic ones I already have were "boring looking" - I might as well have just stuck with those.

50 cents for a new brass tube insert later, and I found a piece of (what I think is) ziricote or bacote that was too short to make 2 halves of a pen, but plenty long enough for a coffee scoop handle in my pile-o-randomness. The end result is pictured throughout this post. I think it came out pretty nice.

Coffee Table

I'm pretty much finished with my new coffee table. Given that it will take a lot of abuse, I want to put several more layers of polyurethane on it before calling it "officially done", but it's pretty close. Since the shop (garage) is so dusty, I've been applying the finish up on the dining table, so I had to put off the finishing project, what with Thanksgiving and the whole "needing the dinner table for dinner" thing. Women!

I used cherry for the legs and aprons, and imbuya veneer over MDF for the table surface. The more observant of you will remember that these are the same woods I used in the speakers I made several months ago. What can I say -- I really like the way they look together. Plus I was relatively certain that I wasn't allergic to either of them, which was a big deal for a "first forray back into woodworking." Sawdust, in general, is an itchy thing which tends to dry out skin, so naturally my mind went into paranoid mode as I was cutting the parts, but fortunately I didn't break out or anything.

The legs are made from 2 glued up pieces of cherry, totalling about 2.75" square. The outside edge is rounded over, and the inside faces are tapered to some degree that I found pleasing to the eye. I was intending on making them as close to 2" square as I could, but once I got done planing the 8/4 stock, they just seemed a little bit too narrow, especially when I considered how they'd look with the taper. I think I made the right choice -- the thicker legs add a nice visual balance. The aprons are inset about a quarter of an inch, which I also think add a nice look.

One of the legs came out a little crooked during the glue-up (I need more clamps!), but not enough for a casual glance to notice. Overall, I'm pretty pleased. We may have to turn into a "coaster-using" household, though, which would pretty much be impossible to enforce with 50% of our friends and 66% of the household members.

molting follow-up

I've pretty much finished molting. I went back to the office for the first time on Monday, after working from home for about 3 weeks. I have to say - I got accustomed to having a fireplace in my "office". I'm going to miss that. That and spending more time with Judi. But mostly the fireplace.

Here is the latest udpate on the whole skin peeling off / rash thing.

1. The dermatologist says it's (was) the most severe case of erythema multiforme (minor) that she has ever seen that didn't involve the patient (me) winding up in the hostpital due to it (the rash) either spreading to places like the esophogus (and therefore having breathing issues) or organs, or from getting some sort of secondary infection due to the large areas of missing skin (think burn victim, if it helps to visualize).
• After my first visit, she actually called me at home a couple days later to make sure I was doing okay. At first I thought this was a really nice thing for a doctor to do, but then I came to the realization that it was because she genuinely believed I should be way sicker than I was, which worried me somewhat.
• She also took my case with her to a local convention (I'm assuming a convention with other Doctors, but possibly it was dragoncon), and apparently all the other people there (presumably Doctors) agreed that I should have been way sicker than I was. So.. yay me for being special!
2. Treatment involves "staying comfortable" and keeping the skin moist. And letting the rash run its course. And trying not to scratch yourself while you're asleep.
3. In many cases the thing that triggered it can never be determined. Once everything settles down for good, I'll seek out an allergist to see if my "exotic woods" theory might hold any merrit. The trouble with my "exotic woods" theory is that the rash wound up in places that the wood had no contact with. And if it's something I breathed (wood dust) I should have had some breathing issues, which I didn't. Years of troubleshooting computers prevents me from accepting the fact that sometimes you can't determine the source of a problem. My "best guess" currently is that I had a contact reaction on my arms, neck, and to a lesser degree on my chest and ankles, where it first appeared. Then I figure I must have also been allergic to (something in) the ointment that I was given initially to dry out the skin. As I rubbed the ointment on, the rash grew and grew to new surrounding areas. Whether this is the case or not, the description fits the symptoms. I'll find out eventually once I determine if I'm allergic to those things.
4. I have the blood of a 20 year old, apparently. (I was told this as she was looking at the results of some bloodwork). And I'm otherwise healthy. Just a little itchy now and again.
5. And that's about it.

Taco Bell's statistically invalid promotion

So Jacoby Ellsbury just stole second base in game 2 of the world series. Taco Bell has a promotion that says everybody in the United States can have a free taco.

This has to be one of the most horseshit offers ever, both in spirit and statistical impossibility.

Lets look at the numbers.

• Offer is limited to 2-5pm local time on October 30, 2007. (180 minutes)
  
• Of course, most people are at work between 2 and 5 pm on a Tuesday. This is the "horseshit in spirit" reasoning. The MLB broadcasters even mentioned that they'd serve more between 2 and 5 AM.
  
• As of July, 2007, there were 301,139,945 people in the United states. (source)
• 202,360,787 between ages 14 and 65
• 12% live in poverty. Poor people are more likely to give a shit about a free Taco Bell Taco. 12% of the US population is 36,136,793
  
• The last 5 times I went to Taco Bell, it took them 5-10 minutes to complete my order.
• Lets be generous and say that they could turn around an order in 5 seconds, assuming everybody is just getting their free taco and nothing else, and that everybody pays attention and moves forward in line in an assembly line fashion.
• Lets be more generous and pretend that each store just continuously cranks out tacos and puts them in a big pile at the register, and everybody can just take one and go. Conceivably (but not practically) they could deliver 90 per minute, if every customer was running in unison through the queue and grabbed their free taco with the skill and precision of a relay racer receiving the baton handoff.
• As of 2006, there were 5,608 Taco Bell locations in the United States. (source) The numbers have been in decline for the past several years, and Taco Bell's food continues to suck, so there's no good reason to assume that that number has increased significantly in 2007. Again, though, we'll be generous and round up to an even 6000.
• So using the actual numbers and realistic estimates from above, 5608 stores can serve a taco every 5 seconds (12 per minute) for 180 minutes.
  
• 5806 x 12 x 180 = 12,540,960 tacos available.
• So there's no way "everybody in America" is eligible. They can't statistically be eligible. Not all of them. Each of them, individually, can *think* they're eligible. But they'll be wrong. Most of them can't be.
• Statistically, 96% of America is ineligible for this promotion.
  
• In other words: Look at the 12 people on your left. Look at the 12 people to your right. One of you is eligible.
  
• Remember, there's 36 million people living in poverty. That's only enough for 1 out of every 3 poor people.
  
• Using those generous numbers from above... 6000 stores can each serve 90 tacos per minute for 180 minutes.
• 6000 x 90 x 180 = 97.2 million tacos available.
• Again, there's no way that everybody in America is eligible. We're up to about 33% of the population give or take. Close to half the if you only include ages 14-65, but that's only if you concede that old people and kids don't matter, you ageist jerk.
• So now, look to your left, and look to your right. Now "only" 2 of you aren't eligible.
• 1 of you is eligible if you knock over the little kid or grandma next to you. (ageist jerks only.)
  

Some summary bullet points.

• Taco Bell states that 100% of America is eligible for this promotion.
  
• The actual number is closer to 4%
• Thus, Taco Bell is confused about the difference between 100% and 4%.

Nice job Taco Bell. You're 100% awesome!

Also, there's a rumor that Taco Bell taco meat isn't really beef at all (hence, that's why they call it "meat". It being made from "whatever" meaty goodness is in the scraps pile.) This is of course ridiculous. I'm pretty sure Taco Bell meat is made from 100% USDA Beef.