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reticulate menorah
Tuesday, September 20 2005
I replaced the sparkplugs in the Toyota pickup today, hoping that by some miracle that was its only problem. It wasn't. I was able to haul a festering load of trash to the Hurley dump (four miles away over fairly flat terrain), but there it was again, that unpleasant metal-on-metal sound every time the engine was called upon to do anything the slightest bit strenuous. And whenever it was left to idle it would inevitably stall, more quickly at high engine temperatures than at low. I don't think I'll be using the truck for anything except trash hauling missions from now on.
Just before I left the dump, some numbskull drove up with flags flying and ribbons all over the back of his SUV. I don't know if he saw the "oh fuck" message in magnetic ribbons on my tailgate as I limped out of there, but if he did I hope it made his head explode.
This afternoon I was at Catskill Animal Sanctuary trying to get a remote building's computer to use the shared internet connection of the main computer, in a double-wide trailer some 200 feet away. In the past I'd tried doing this with an existing buried ethernet cable, but I've come to believe there's a problem with that cable so today I tried doing everything wirelessly, using one of those nifty DWL-800AP+s reflashed as a DWL-810AP+. At first I had trouble, which I thought had something to do with the DirectWay (satellite) nature of the internet connection. But then suddenly it started working! I was overjoyed; how many hours had I spent over the last two years attempting to achieve this one little thing?
On the way home, I carried five two by eight foot sheets of one inch thick styrofoam in the car, yet another amazing hauling feat possible with a Honda Civic four door.
This evening I worked on another copper pipe menorah, this one a wedding gift for Dina (who is getting married in Isræl soon; I'll be attending). I'd been thinking about the design of this particular menorah for a couple months. The idea I had was to take the design for one of my assymetrical, dendritic menorahs, and make it as reticulate as possible. A reticulate pattern, for those who don't know, is a dendritic pattern where the branches can join each other at or near their ends.
Except for the actual soldering, I did most of the work in the teevee room while Gretchen watched the last game of the women's professional basketball season. It was Sacramento versus Connecticut, and we — or more especially, Gretchen — were overjoyed when Sacramento won. I was so busy with my nascent menorah that I saw very little of the game, though I heard the sound, often joined by Gretchen's reflexive cat-flushing screams.
Today's menorah.
Other angles.
The ghost left on the HardyBoardTM where I soldered the menorah together.
The new rails on either side of the steps into the laboratory from the teevee room. Those two parallel copper-colored lines heading off to the right are the pipes connecting the solar panel to the basement. Happily, our building inspector doesn't enforce a requirement for tightly-spaced balusters underneath such rails.
The smart new rails on the steps up to the laboratory deck. These are a little floppier than the other pair, but they're much better than I expected they'd be.
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