Anger

Why do I feel like this?

An overwhelming sense of rage and betrayal,

A tsunami of red-eyed emotion ripping forth to destroy.

Like the bitch who trained me,

The cruel blacksmith who beat me into her image,

I lash out at people who show me

The slightest sense of weakness through emotional connection.

I am cruelest to those who deserve it least and I despise every movement I make that mimics hers to the letter.

I want nothing more than to feel myself again,

Bur I look in the mirror and see only her reflection glaring back at me.

Theres nothing I have to offer.

No resource or emotional commodity that hasn't been taunted it rotten by her touch.

All I have to offer is contagion,

But somehow my goddess still smiles at me.

Her voice, her eyes, her touch like at phoenix's tears, washing away disease like it never occurred.

I just want to be lost in her...

Вспоминая красоты

O, what wondrous miracle is this?

This porcelain goddess who fills my vision,

Haunts my waking dreams and inhabits my thoughts.

The corners of her mouth quirking in a smile, at my glance,

Cherry lips opening in a silent gasp at my touch,

Cheeks reddening ever so slightly at my whispered words.

Hair falling around her face as she looks at me beneath her,

Light behind her head silhouetting her with an auburn halo,

Piercing blue eyes shining out from within.

Financial Stability

So today we went to the Mall. Where shopping led me to a surprisingly disturbing realization about myself.

No, no, let me start earlier...

In December 2006, I joined the United States Air Force. Among the items provided us over those six weeks were 4 sets of BDU uniforms, 2 pairs of Black leather boots, a 4-dimensional green duffel bag...and a pair of New Balance 498 Cross Trainers.

Not being a very active person, I never knew the importance of getting new athletic shoes periodically, so I wore my NB498s for everything even remotely athletic. Squadron PT, after-hours raquetball, mowing the lawn, I wore them all the time, each outing getting them more and more broken-in, scuffed and stained.

Simultaneously, I grew up in a fairly low-income family. Clothes, shoes and outerwear were chosen as much for their thrifty price point as their functionality, and fashion was taken into account not at all. Add in that I've always been on the bare edge of making it, financially, so I've never had spending money, really at all, and shopping is not something that crosses my mind.

So when Jill suggested (nay, demanded) that it was time to buy new clothes, as my 1 pair of long pants (ink-stained and ragged-hemmed jeans) and my 2 pairs of shorts (one khaki and covered in spots of plastic from casting, the other olive green and mended from the multiple times Lilith has torn a hole in them) we suitable for someone who was homeless, rather than a 40+ hr/wk employee of a well-paying video game company, we went shopping.

I ended up with a new pair of jeans, and 3 pairs of shorts in varying colors, the rationale being that it was going to get hotter before it got cooler, and we could go shopping again in the fall. Throw in some new socks and boxers, and the butcher's bill was a mere $120, much less than I feared it would be. But that was all just lead-up.

Today, I was putting on my trusty NB498s, futzing around with repairing a broken lace when Jill again laid down the law.

"Those shoes are disgusting. You've had them for 5 years now baby, they're worn out and look terrible. We need to go get you new athletic shoes."

A little arguing for argument's sake, and off we go to Lakeline Mall, bent on shoe conquest and acquisition.

Journey's? Too skater-oriented. Hot Topic? Too goth. Where the hell does one go to buy athletic shoes in the mall? Oh right, The Finish Line.

The guy at TFL was a very good salesman. He listened to my tale of woe about not knowing what type of shoe I needed for my walking/running style, measured my foot, asked me to sprint the length of the store to watch my run, then pointed out over a dozen styles that would work, ranging from the Clearanced $25 rack to the $150 top-of-the-line, wisely pointing out a pair of $130 shoes that he was currently wearing as being quite comfortable.

I tried different pairs on, noting that while I wore a 10.5 in casual shoes and boots, he'd measured me at an 11. Some more talking with Jill about colors and styles and we agreed that the model the salesman had suggested were the most comfortable, and while he had a white and green pair on, the black and blue ones would fit in better with my current wardrobe choices (I don't have anything in bilious green). I balked a little at the price, but Jill didn't seem to care, something that blew my mind, as she's normally very reticent to spend money.

Then it hit me.

We have the money to spend.

Bills are paid. Savings has been increased. Nothing waiting in the wings. The extra money's just there. Spendable.

So we bought the shoes. They're quite comfortable. And I was sitting here playing some World of Tanks in my comfy new cross-trainers, then something else hit me.

These are the most expensive item of clothing I have ever purchased.

I did a quick inventory to make sure, costumes and garb are right out: Pinstriped Dress Slacks: $80, Legend of Zelda Hoodie $65, Steel-toed Work Boots $50... hmmm okay, that's not working, lets throw in garb and costumes too, but only the stuff I didn't make out of raw materials: Felt Steampunk Hat $35, Zombie Hunter ABUs $100, hell even my Ren Boots were only $125...

This really makes me nervous for some reason. Although it shouldn't.

Project: Carapace - Day 4: Settling into the swing of things

Day 4: Settling into the Swing of Things

Chainmaille progression was virtually nil today. Tweaked a few things to ensure that rings were butted tightly and that the pattern was even on the piece that I am calling "Front Yoke". I got about 55 rings into "Rear Yoke" before setting it down to work on leather. I'm finding that if I work on one thing for too long, the muscles I'm using for that particular task get extremely sore and then work over the next few days is painful.

I started punching holes in my lamellar plates in earnest today. Brent and I had already marked all the plates with the hole pattern, and I bought a 5/32" round hammer punch at Tandy to make the holes. It's a little bigger than Brent's 9/64" punch, but the visual difference should be invisible once everything is dyed and starts getting laced together.

About 20 plates in (read: 160 holes punched), I started noticing this black grit all over the table and my pieces. A little investigation revealed that it was bits of the 1-pound rubber mallet I was using in conjunction with my punch. Each strike was ripping off bits of rubber, and each hole took between 4 and 6 strikes to make, so the mallet was quickly disintegrating.

I went to Mall-Wart to pick up a polyurethane-headed mallet like Brent got from Tandy, but no such luck. All the soulless mega-mart had were more rubber mallets. On the way back home, I drove by an AutoZone and thought, "They have mallets at auto parts stores, maybe they have non-rubber ones!" And I was so right. There in the tool section was a one-piece, cast urethane dead-blow hammer, a lovely 2 pounds with steel shot in the head to add force and reduce recoil vibration. It was a little pricey at $13, but it looked like just what I needed, so I was willing to drop the dough.

I got back to the house with the mallet and tried it out, checking after each hole for marring of the striking surface or any signs that the mallet wasn't going to last. But I shouldn't have even worried, because aside from some extremely minor indentations, the mallet still looked new after punching another 20 pieces. Now keep in mind, the rubber mallet wasn't brand new, but it was in almost-pristine condition when I started. Here's a comparison of the two mallets after they each punched 160 holes:

The angle of the photograph actually hides some of the damage, because the rubber mallet (on the left) is actually indented over an 1/8" of an inch into the surface, but the dead-blow mallet has barely any marks.

Another benefit of the new mallet is that at double the weight and with a harder striking face to transfer more force into the punch, each hole takes 1 or maybe 2 (on the thickest plates) strikes to punch the hole, cutting down my time spent on each piece. With the rubber mallet, it was taking at least 90 seconds to punch each plate, now I'm creating all 8 holes in 30 to 45 seconds, and there's less repetitive motion strain on my wrist and elbow.

So with some anime playing on TV to keep me interested, I got down to work, setting up a rhythm to keep everything flowing nicely and at about midnight-30, I had a nice block of 100 plates fully punched and ready to dye tomorrow.

The plan tomorrow is to set up an assembly line of sorts. Brent and I will finish punching the other 200 cut plates, then design, mark and cut the pair panels for the shoulder straps as well as the 6 to 8 belts for the side closure.

After those are cut and punched, we will start the dye process. In a large bowl, we'll start submerging sets of 10 or so punched plates into the dye/water solution. I want to get a mottled effect on the armor, so once each set is submerged, pieces will be individually removed and excess dye dried off before the next piece is pulled from the dye bath, so the pieces from each set which are pulled out first will be lighter than the last pieces to be removed. There will be no purposeful pattern to the assembly of the pieces based on color, once they've been dyed they'll all just be thrown in a bag and selected one at a time at random to be added to the armor. The random selection will create a nice mottled effect to the finished vest. The shoulder straps and closure belts will be more traditionally dyed, using a foam brush, as I'm not too worried about their coloration.

Once dying is complete, we will start oiling each piece with neatsfoot oil and and begin lacing them together using suede cord, likewise oiled. I think the best method will be to oil each piece as it is selected for lacing, that way there is no confusion about which have been oiled or not.

Project: Carapace - Days 2 and 3

Day 2: Chainmaille and Lamellar

I didn't manage to get much done with the mail today, working on expanding the piece I have was frustrating, as it didn't look like I was doing anything after an hour of work, but I actually ended up doubling the size of the piece.

I put the mail aside and went over to Brent's place to work on the other armor project, Leather Lamellar in a style found during archaeological excavations in Visby, Sweden.

My main holiday gift from my parents, other than the 9-button boots they bought me at TRF, was a gift card to Tandy Leather Factory, which I used to purchase a whole saddle skirting hide, which for those not super-knowledgeable about leather, is approximately 20 square feet of cow hide, at between 12 to 16 ounces thickness.

The weight of leather assumes that a square foot of 1/64" thick leather weighs 1 ounce, so the saddle skirting I purchased is between 3/16" and 1/4" thick.

In the picture above my hide has had about 1/3 of its square footage cut into the pieces for the lamellar using a strip cutter set to 1 1/4" width. After each strip is cut off the hide, it is measured into about twelve 3" pieces and cut, creating the individual plates with only about 1" of waste per strip.

Day 3: Things begin to take shape

Back to work on the chainmaille, I started to form the shoulder straps, a pair of 16 ring x 16 ring squares on either side of one of the long edges of my main rectangle.

The plan is to duplicate above piece, then attach the duplicate to the original at the 16x16s to form a neck hole, shoulders and the beginnings of the chest and back. Next the edge that is on top in the photo will be extended, then widened in a T shape. The arms of the T on the front side will be attached to the T on the back, forming armholes and creating basically a very short vest. From that point, sleeves can be created, and the "hem" of the vest can continually be extended downward until it reaches the desired length, or I run out of rings.

My 5am math says that I've used 1492 links so far, which is scary, because that represents a little over 1/5 of my total rings, and also represents about 6.8 pounds. I can tell you that hefting it one-handed certainly doesn't feel like almost 7 pounds, so maybe I'm just exhausted and adding poorly. The real concern is that if this is 1500 rings, then the duplicate will bring it up to 3000 rings...wait a minute, I am completely wrong here. I've only used 746 rings. That means weight for this is only 3.4 pounds, which feels a lot more correct, and is only an expenditure of about 1/8 of my rings.

So, ~750 rings for the front, means ~1500 for the whole yoke, another ~1200 for the T extension, bringing the total to ~2700 for the mini-vest, a little over 1/2 of my total rings. If each sleeve is about the size of my 1/2-yoke, thats another ~1000 rings for each sleeve, bringing the total to ~4700 rings or about 93% of my rings, with a shirt that only hangs to just under my sternum.

Looks like I'm going to need to buy more rings in any case, even with my most frugal estimates of ring usage, which brings up my other concern: Ring Lord has stated that they will be discontinuing the 12ga rings when their stock is gone, which means I need to buy up their remaining 15 pounds before someone else does, but I'm not sure where the money for it is going to come from, because I certainly don't have the tools or means to coil and cut 12ga steel here at the apartment.

Back to leather this evening at Brent's, we had already cut 25 strips from the hide, creating about 300 individual plates, which were then marked with the "Visby" hole pattern, as shown below.

Of the the pieces, from left to right three different hole methods were used: Drilling with a 9/64" from the rough side (back) to the smooth side (front), drilling from front to back, and using a 9/64" hammer punch from back to front.

None of the methods produced satisfactory results, as drilling from front to back causes the ugly shredding of the leather seen in piece #2, and hammer punching from back to front causes the unfortunate puckering seen in piece #3. The old tried-and-true method of front-to-back hammer punching will produce the best results, and will not be significantly slower than drilling.

Using the test-punched pieces as templates, we marked all 300 pieces with the Visby pattern, and will begin to punch them in the next step.

That's all 300 pieces marked and ready for punching. To speed up the punching process, I will go to Tandy tomorrow and pick up my own punch set.

A quick test-threading of the pieces we punched/drilled brought up an interesting issue we hadn't considered with the rectangular pieces. Of the lamellar found in Visby, the pieces were lozenge-shaped, not pure rectangles.

When we threaded the three leather pieces together using the middle holes, the top and bottom holes of pieces 2 and 3 were obscured by the edges of pieces 1 and 2, respectively, explaining why the Visby pieces have the curved edges. While I'm not about to go back and trim 300 plates to give them rounded edges like the "Standard Piece" above, Brent commented that we could either use a hammer chisel for making belt ends to make them look like the "Centre Piece", or just punch the middle 4 holes closer to the edge of each piece than currently marked. I think I might try to do a bit of both, and look for a tool at Tandy that would do the job (a hammer chisel with a 4" gradual curve would be perfect), or borrow some fucking shears from Blue and just cut the pieces manually. *winces* Either way, it's going to be a shit job, and we're not even to the dying yet...

Project: Carapace - Day 1

I never update this as I should, but with a major project underway now, I'm making a commitment to update this every day I do any significant amount of work on it.

Day 1: Chainmaille

One of my holiday presents from my in-laws was surprisingly heavy as it was laid in my lap. I had my eyes closed as instructed, so when the 23 pounds of steel was deposited there, it was a pleasant shock.

The rings were fabricated and cut by the good folks at The Ring Lord, and are 12-gauge mild steel wire, wound to 1/2" inner diameter, for an aspect ratio of about 5, perfect for making sturdy, but not stiff, European 4-in-1 mail.

By the measurements of The Ring Lord, there are ~720 rings per square foot of finished material using the 4-in-1 pattern, but I believe that was measured with the material in it's most compact form, as I am about 300 rings in at this point, and have a piece that is 20"x3.5" when fully expanded, which is how it will be when worn, so I'm estimating more like 600 rings per square foot.

Nevertheless, some rough measurements on my own body with a tape measure says I'll need a 3'x2' panel for chest and another for back, and then a pair of 1'x2' panels for sleeves, for a total of about 16 square feet of material for the finished piece, minus the links missing for a head hole, so about 9600 rings.

My gift of 23 pounds gets me an estimated 5000 rings, so I'll probably be purchasing another 10 pounds at least, but only after I finish using these that I have and see where I am.

iOS 4.2 has already pissed me off...

...not so much the software itself, but Apple/iTunes' lack of a real backup process.

Below is a copy of the letter sent to Apple about my most recent issue, where I lost approximately 10GB of user-created (i.e. ME) music and video due to their "backup process" not actually backing anything up...

Now that the new iOS 4.2 has been released, I decided to upgrade my 3gs from 4.0.

When I first connected my iPhone and attempted to start the upgrade, a dialog box appeared: "This update will overwrite all information on your iPhone. Make sure you have created a backup before applying this update." or something to that effect.

Not wanting to lose the 10+gb of music and video that I had recorded, I right-clicked on my iPhone in the iTunes sidebar and selected backup.

iTunes churned away for a bit, then informed me that the backup had been completed successfully, so I proceeded with the iOS 4.2 upgrade.

A couple of phone reboots, and an "unknown error" that crashed iTunes later, the update was complete.

To my dismay, my ~12gb of data on my iPhone now only showed as ~1.5gb, with all of my music and video missing.

I immediately attempted to restore from my backup, which returned 90% of my photos (but not all), my downloaded apps and about 50% of my contacts to the phone, but still no music or videos.

Called support. Spoke with a Tier1 agent, who was very willing to help, but unable to actually do anything. Then she mentions that "oh yeah, you can't back up music or videos from the iPhone." Miffed and confused, I asked to speak to her Senior for clarification on this seemingly-illogical claim. When "Steve" got on the phone, he confirmed that yes, despite the dialog stating that if a user wanted to save their data, they should create a backup, the "backup" really only contained contacts, text messages and the like, and that Apple had never included media in the backup process. He then made the contradictory comment that Apple had made this specific decision to NO LONGER back up media from the user's device due to "complaints from users that their iPod and iPhone backups were using 20-30gb of additional space on their hard drive." Which is exactly what a REAL back up will do, as it is BACKING UP an exact copy of the data from one device to another.

So not only was "Steve's" comment in direct contradiction to his earlier statement that Apple had never offered a media backup from iPod/iPhone, it also flies in the face of smart computing practices AND good business sense.

Basically, what this bug report boils down to is that as a musician, videographer and computer professional, the complete lack of your software's ability to perform a real backup, combined with the either poorly-worded or purposefully-misleading dialog boxes in iTunes that lead the user to believe their information is being stored, is completely unacceptable.

At the very least, the dialog windows should be rewritten to inform the user that no media information will be backed up.

The correct solution, on the other hand, would be to offer users the option of doing a "quick backup," containing only the basic information currently saved by your poorly-designed "backup" process, or a "full backup," containing a 1-1 copy of the user's device.

I would sincerely appreciate a detailed response to this issue, as this is an extremely distressing lack of coverage for anyone who uses their iPod or iPhone to create new media.