My trusty sidekick & I have finished our first website!

It was really a close collaboration with the authors of a book about beloved childhood stuffed animals and amusing tales about them. Most people have a digusting little teddy somewhere bearing some terrible name that they have held onto since childhood – this is a celebration of that amusing tradition!

Professor Von Pinaple-Pabsst, by nate_marsh.

Here’s a character that was created during a Saturday BBQ. I had only a small part to do with his actual construction but was the designated photographer once he was “born”,
You can note from his elaborate hairpiece, bushy mustache and saucy monocle that he is a rich aristocrat professor – a real renaissance man!

Happy Cat!, by nate_marsh.

I uploaded a whole set of photos from the weekend’s festivities at the sander-dome – http://www.flickr.com/photos/nate_marsh/sets/72157594517861768/
It was awesome!

teaser, by nate_marsh.

The sander is complete. Sadly I cannot reveal the finished product, we simply cannot afford to take the chance that some brazen competitor could view her splendor and use it against us – trust me: she is glorious!!!

Plain Racer, by nate_marsh.

Just one day left till race day! We are putting the finishing touches on the platform the theme this year? Global Warming!

Ankara on the Hill, by nate_marsh.

This is actually one of my favorite photos. It is a panorama taken from the Roman Citadel located on a lava outcrop that overlooks most of Ankara.

This photo is taken looking out to the north (I think) to a part of the city that is less developed with hundreds of traditional red roofed houses. I am sure many of these are mud brick and it is unclear if there is some governement pressure to move familys out of these homes into more modern developments. On the way out of town, you can see thousands of razed houses that once dotted the hillsides. Most did not have modern amenites, like running water and were likely unsafe during earthquakes – I wonder if that was the rational for the big move.
Anyways, I love Ankara, it is an awesome city.

I gave some of my blood today, what the tech there call a P4, a full batch of platlets and then a pint of blood, just for good measure. One of the reasons that no one goes through with this proccedure is that it literally takes hours. The actual needle-in-arm time was a freaky 111 minutes. The mad-scientitstesque blood sucking machine, with it’s nest of piping, has a sweet monitor that shows exactly how long it should take, based on a number of factors.
Do they enter your stats in there, like pulse, blood pressure, etc. and then it sets the pumps accordingly. The nasty part is this wacky citrus stuff they pump in when the repump your colder blood back in after straining out the platelets. The taste of orange is particulary strange when it comes from your bloodstream, weird.
The oddest part of the experience was those sheets they give you after you feel everything out. They are supposed to be anonymous barcodes, you choose either use my blood or do not use my blood. I’m not the smartest guy around, but even I can tell that the barcodes are very different and easy to spot from some distance. One has two dark lines in the begining, the other has just one. I poked around in the trash and found some of the other discarded forms, you can see plainly that some people said yes and some no. The tech handling the forms and drawing the blood should be able to tell just by glancing, weird.

I may have the fancy college vocabulary and the metrosexual jeans, but I was actually born on a farm in rustic Lewisburg, PA. Let me tell you, you had no choice in that place — you grew up quickly. The garden needed to be weeded & while mommy was busy, someone needs to play with all the baby ducklings or the kitties and sometimes baby bunnies. Yeah, those were the days!
One day when I was still quite young, around 4 – 5, I was out haying the fields, driving our 1957 John Deere with the triple blade cutter (with the safety guards removed) and sipping on a cool Yuengling (we drank that insead of milk, milk is for girls). This was probably my 4th or 5th of the morning, it being hotter than the Devil’s titty. There had been reports of a pack of escaped grizzlies in the area, but I needed to get this field do before the man from the bank came back to take our house.

Actually that’s not entirely true, (continue reading…)