I was up and about early this morning and I decided to run down and check the Business Mailbox early before it got busy since I haven’t checked it in a few days.  So I head out, hop in the car and as I’m backing out of the garage my gas light comes on.  Its early still, so I figure I’ll hit the gas station and fill up the car before it gets too busy there as well.  So I head off on my merry way.  As I’m standing at the pump at the gas station filling the car, I notice a truck come roaring in off the main street.  It pulls to a stop at the pump next to me and the passenger door flies open.  I figured it was someone that needed coffee or the restroom or something.

Imagine my surprise when the woman comes straight for me with paperwork in her hands.  She approaches the car and starts to give me the Pitch about a free message from God and offers me a copy of the “Watchtower”

Really?

In the middle of the gas station?

And you pulled off the street specifically to annoy me with this?

I told her I wasn’t interested, and she immediately turned and accosted the woman on the other side of the pumps who was filling her car. After getting a “Not interested” from the other woman, the fanatic returned to her truck, climbed back into the passenger side and the vehicle pulled out of the gas station and merged back into traffic.

THIS is why some religions have negative reputations.  Aside from the arrogance of thinking that everyone wants to share your religious beliefs, pulling off the street and into a gas station for the EXPRESS purpose of trying to give me your paperwork is absolutely out of bounds.  Are you people nuts?  I have a No Solicitors sign up at the house that keeps most folks out, so now you figure its OK to accost me when I’m out?  Do you people have no shame?  And before people tell me that this was an isolated incident, let me remind you that this ONE person is the one I came in contact with.  And this person just represented your entire religion to me this morning.  Great Job there!

And just to make sure I’m equal opportunity today, I decided to stop at the grocery store to pick up a few small things I forgot last night while we were there.  As I’m walking to the door I notice a brand new Mercedes that is parked ACROSS 2 handicapped spots right in front of the store.  Like 90 degrees across them.  Blocking the closest 2 out of the 3 handicapped spots.  No handicapped plate, no handicapped tag, nothing.  And as I get up parallel with the car, this woman comes walking out the front doors of the store with a Starbucks cup in her hand.  She disarms the car, gets in and pulls out.

Remind me why I cannot have an RPG or some C4 charges?  If anyone deserved to come back from her coffee run to a smoking crater it was this woman.  There were probably 6 cars in the ENTIRE parking lot.  Yet it was apparently too hard, and too complicated to actually park her car properly before she went in to get her coffee.  And I totally understand.  She drives a brand new Mercedes with personalized plates, and she is obviously a busy person and MUCH more IMPORTANT than the rest of us.

And she is still an inconsiderate person.  Some days I really wonder about the state of humanity.  Apparently we are just doomed.

1. My desk for the last few years has been a wasteland of junk, randomness, and various stuff. About 3 months ago, I realized that it was just not working for me and I cleaned. I mean, really cleaned. Blew it up and started over would not be too strong a description actually. I moved shelving around. Organized paperwork, cleaned out filing cabinets, and generally finally got around to throwing out items that I’ve been saving “just in case”. I realized that I do not need computer parts from 10 years ago. Technology has changed and those parts are truly obsolete so they were dumpstered. I also realized that piling paperwork up on the desktop was not actually accomplishing anything. Things just got stacked up higher and higher and I never actually looked at them once they went into the pile. So I changed all that. Paperwork got filed. filing cabinets were cleaned out and organized. And while I still have one cabinet to go through and tidy up, I ended up with huge amounts of space. I have a desktop I can use for actual work now. And anything that is not currently “in process” is put away. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot. But I have discovered that I *feel* like I’m more efficient. (Which may just be a placebo effect to justify the effort cleaning.) Either way, It seemed to help.

2. I figured if a little neatness helped the physical desktop, maybe it would help the computer desktop as well. I’m not sure I’m ready or willing to dive into re-skinning the desktop or any of the really exotic things that can be done with programs like Rainmeter or Samurize. I figured it would be best to start small and work figure out what I needed. So I decluttered my desktop. I moved all of the common applications that I use to a RocketDock application launcher bar. Again, its only anecdotal at this point, but it *seems* to make a difference. I seem to be less tempted to wander off and tinker with other things in the middle of a project. And I’ve discovered that it seems to be faster to actually get to where I want to go. I’m either using the application bar, or the built in search in Win7. And more surprising, I’ve discovered that I don’t really need all of the random text files laying around on the desktop that I used to have. I’m currently playing with OneNote and trying to keep all of my work related notes there so I don’t have to go looking when I need some information.

I’m sure that I’ll end up making some adjustments moving forward, but so far, restructuring has helped me feel like I’m accomplishing more. And even if my productive has not actually change, at the very least I have more room to work, which is always a plus.

Usually I dont post too terirbly much about work related things here, but this has been consuming a good chunk of my time, and its turning out pretty nice if I do say so myself.  This is my latest client project.   We are creating a “replica” Department of Public Safety Car for a collector overseas.  All of the logos and striping are completely custom to avoid issues with the “real” cars. (Which are still in service)  But everything is similar enough to confuse everyone that has seen the car in person.  Almost every part of the car has something on it.  From small striping above the windows and on A-pillars and bumper ends, to the gigantic stripes and logos, roof lettering, trunk panels, and a million little parts here and there.  It should look pretty good when it goes home though.  And after dark, it lights up like a christmas tree.  I am looking forward to sending this on its way and getting back to some basic projects with regular material that is easier to work with.   Its been an interesting project though.

Thrashed for several days in a row to get the Ambulance put back together and managed to get it done just in time for the Super Chevy Show at the beginning of April here locally.  Had a blast out at the drag strip for 2 days.  Spent most of Saturday wandering around and watching the various racing going on.  (a 1/4 mile run that is done on 2 wheels at over 130mph is INSANE BTW.  The guy the drives the wheel-stander does not make enough money doing that sort of thing.)  Sadly it was windy and fairly cold most of the day.  Still enjoyed myself though.  Little bit of drama near the end of the day when one of the jet powered dragster drivers crashed near the end of the track.  Found out later that he was “OK” and after some surgery and therapy they expect him to drive again.  Pretty amazing when you consider he was moving at more than 230mph when he crashed.   Ended up coming home Saturday night slightly congested from the wind and the dust.

Went back on Sunday and spent some time talking with Hayden Proffitt.  Absolutely could not have been nicer.  Scotty and I spent over an hour chatting with him and we enjoyed every second.  And while I never had the opportunity to see him race like Scotty did, talking to him was amazing.  He was warm and friendly and really amusing.  The man is hysterical to talk to.  Talk about a living legend in the drag racing world.  Absolutely the highlight of the weekend.

Ended up with a nasty cold after the weekend at the track.  So I spent the following week doing absolutely nothing but sleeping and sucking down soup and hot tea.

Ran a cut only job for one of my regular clients, which is fantastic right up until the cutter is finished and I have to weed all of those little stickers.  Just not excited about weeding these days.  Apparently I need to work on convincing clients that they want full color prints instead.

Designed and printed a prop validation sticker for my Bluesmobile.  And if I do say so myself, it came out fantastic.  Printed on reflective, it just looks like its supposed to.  I have to be careful to make sure they are plainly marked as props as they could easily be confused for the real thing.  They are that accurate looking.

This week is trying to get back in touch with some clients that I have proposals out with to see if we can get things firmed up and moving again.  Beyond that, I’ve been putting more time into some of the websites that I run to tighten up operations and streamline them.  Once I get the bugs worked out, I’m hoping to roll out regular content on some of those sites and see about building up the “brands” more than we have done in the past.

So its been busy, but nothing really exceptionally blogworthy.  Aside from meeting Mr. Proffitt, its been business and usual.  (With a bonus cold thrown in there for good measure.)

Hopefully more entertaining things are on the horizon.  Only time will tell.

bluesmobile-pushbar plans

Free for personal use.  Not for sale or resale.

To complicate things further, there are no plans for something like this. And reference photos of the actual movie cars just make things less clear as they used multiple cars for filming, and almost all of them are slightly different. So what does that mean? LOTS of freeze frame work with the DVD player. Lots of walking back and forth to the garage to measure, check, and remeasure things. And a HUGE amount of trial and error.

Most days it is fun though. There aren’t many vehicles that you can build that are supposed to look beat up and crusty. And the dirtier it gets the better it looks.

My specific car was originally built for the House of Blues in Orlando Florida. When they were finished with the car, they returned it to the builder who I then purchased it from. And to be clear, it looked good when I got it. The guy that built my car (and the 12 others for HOB) did a great job. It looked good in photos, and it looked pretty decent in person. It just wasn’t as correct as I like my cars to be. I played with it as is for a while, and then decided to work on it in small chunks. One of the perks of a car like this is you can jump in and go anytime you want to. You don’t have to worry about it being clean. Because of that, I didn’t really want to do anything that would take the car out of service for a huge span of time. Using that philosophy, I’ve done a lot of little things to the car.

The pushbars are almost the icing on the cake at this point. In all of the photos and all of the replicas that I’ve seen over the years, all of them were lacking in the pushbar department. To be fair, some were close. But still lacking in some small details to the ones on screen. Its taken a huge effort, but I’m just about ready to release a full set of plans for a screen accurate set of pushbars. From there, I’m hoping to release paint guides, as well as some positioning guides for where everything goes. I could probably write a book, but the market for this info is so darn small, it would almost be more trouble than its worth. So I’m releasing the info to the community of builders, in the hopes that it can help someone. Stay tuned for more info and updates.