There and Back and There Again. Overwhelming Busyness

I've beend doing a pretty crap job of keeping up with the bloggage lately. I haven't been too too busy, but here's the short version of what's happened since the last time I wrote a significant update on the goings-on in my life as part of this summer's four-way-cross-country trip. Here's the route we took:



Along the way we saw 5,265 miles, nineteen different states, six different hotel rooms, and countless bits of roadkill. Fun.

When last I wrote about this little adventure, we were in Petaluma for a week or so. After that week we flew back to Seattle for the second of our three wedding receptions. I tried to avoid billing it as a wedding reception for several reasons, but with the venues and the menus and the dress and the cakes and so on, it's hard to call them anything else. I'll post again about the Seattle party when all of the pictures come back, so for now, here's a picture of one of the two cakes:

Ana had it commissioned at Mike's Amazing Cakes. They make just about anything you can think of in the form of a custom cake. In this case, Ana was trying to come up with something that was uniquely me and, while plenty of people have stormtrooper armor or sailboats or snow dogs, mine is the only chrome Miata in the world.

Anyhow, once the party was over we spent the next day waiting for Ana to recover from her hangover while I loaded up the car. Somewhere along the way I spotted a little stowaway:



The following morning, after doing a dog count and making sure we were actually leaving them all behind, we were on the road again:



And finally driving into California for the first time this year:



We arrived in Petaluma and I set to work getting ready for the third of three wedding receptions:

(trust me, that picture makes sense if you were there)

A few days later my sisters arrived:


After a slow night of drinking and catching up, we all went our separate ways to prepare for the following day's festivities.


There's a lot of pictures I'm still sorting through from the Petaluma Party, so stay tuned.

The First (and Possibly Last) Drill Since My Return

I mentioned in a previous post that I was frustrated on account of my latest drill weekend. Here's a brief synopsis of what happened:

After weeks of travelling around the country and trying to relax, it was time to shave, get a regulation haircut, and dig up my uniform. I finished all of these things for the first time in quite some time on the Friday afternoon before my scheduled drill weekend. That Saturday I woke up in Petaluma at ridiculous-o'clock in the morning so I could drive down to Alameda in time for morning muster. Since I'd been gone for quite a while, I gave myself a little extra time in case I got lost on the way.

Bear in mind that the unit I'd been drilling with since 2005 has been decommissioned. The last thing they were able to do before I shipped out to Afghanistan was to reassign me to a new unit. In the hustle and bustle of being processed for mobilization and deployment, I had just enough time to meet a few of the folks at the new unit, shake hands and trade email addresses, and scoot out the door.

At the time they were meeting at a separate location a few minutes down the road from the Navy Operational Support Center (NOSC) where I had been drilling for the previous two years. Being a creature of limited imagination, I went to the same location in the hopes of finding the unit where I'd left it some ten months prior.

They were not there.

Not only were they not there, the building was locked and dark and when I asked a passer-by if he knew anything about it he said he'd never seen a Navy person in that building in two years of working there. Suddenly I was in a bad episode of the Twilight Zone.

Well prepared for such an occasion, I headed over to the NOSC to ask WTF. Upon arrival I got the standard runaround during which I learned that A: my unit has been relocated to another city altogether, and B: their drills have been rescheduled and I was in the wrong place on the wrong weekend. So it turns out I'd gotten the world's worst haircut for nothing. Awesome.

Since I was already there and all dressed up, I wandered to the NOSC Admin office and asked if there was anything they needed me to do now that I was back from deployment. This started me on a bonus runaround during which I was reminded of all the reasons I've hated being in the military. I got to stand in a couple of hours worth of lines so that I could have half a dozen different petty officers tell me that they couldn't help me, I was in the wrong place, and the previous person had told me wrong, only to be sent to another line where the couldn't help me because I was in the wrong place and the previous person had told me wrong.

The final straw was when I stopped by medical to drop off my records and the corpsman behind the counter mentioned that they were really busy and could I please come back on Monday. This is a drilling center for reservists. Usually these people have day jobs on Monday through Friday. I told her she could call me if she had any questions, but no, I would not be there Monday.

Added to these little bits of aggravation was a whole shopping list of administrivia that I'm apparently delinquent on. It turns out that being deployed to a war zone doesn't give you a buy on all of the minor stupid shit that they would've had me doing during my routine drill weekends (mainly filling out forms and sitting through powerpoint presentations). So I've got twenty days worth of websites to page through and certificates to print out proving I've been schooled in topics ranging from Alcohol Abuse Awareness to Small Arms Safety to the Flavor of the Week in Naval Terminology.*

While I was there I put myself in for a six month leave of absence. I'm not sure if I'll go back. If I do, I'll have to find a new unit to drill with, a new NOSC to drill at, and start the whole pain in the ass all over again.

So that's that.

I'm thinking of transferring to the Merchant Marine Reserve program so I can still serve in some capacity and at least earn points toward retirement. We'll see how that goes.

*Naval Terminology has an odd way of morphing from something useful to something completely useless. Example: years ago someone coined the term Command and Control to describe systems used for, you guessed it, command and control. Simple and straightforward that. You hear it and instantly understand it. Then some time later, some jackass** decided it sounded cooler to say C2. Okay I guess. But then some other jackass** decided you can't have Command and Control without Communications and it became C3. Add another jackass** and it became Command, Control, Communications, and Computers, or C4. Then, because brevity is the soul of wit, the Navy had to make it longer. With the diligent work of another jackass**, a moron**, a fucktard**, and at least one idiot**, it became Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaisance, or C4ISR. Note that C4SRI has just as many syllables, making it just as ponderous and time-consuming to say, as Command and Control.

While I was gone, the Brits actually took this term one step further, coining C4ISTAR, or Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaisance. With just a few more improvements, this will become the superacronym that includes every single thing the military does.

I figure by the time my six-month leave of absence is completed, it will have grown again into Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Confusion, Telephones, Internets, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, Reconnaisaince, HUMINT, SIGINT, Intelligence, Information, Intuition, Indecision, and Special OPerations, or C5TISTARHSI4SOPs for "short." At that point, nobody will be able to understand what it means anymore and they'll commission a study at great expense to find a useful term to describe can be defined as the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commanding officer over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission. I'd help them out, but I'm sick of the process.

**Admiral

Follow Up: Goofy Project #1138, Trey's Helmet

Success! Sort of.



After grinding a lot of material out of the inside of Trey's helmet, I was able to get it on his head. The problem is, it only looks right from certain angles. If he looks up you can see his chin poking out from under the bottom. His eyes aren't in the right place either:


Since I can't get my sister to change the size of her kid, at some point in the not too distant future I'm going to have to make a slightly larger size version of this helmet. Possibly two.

Impractical Military Vehicle of the Week: the Russian "Tsar" Wheel Tank

In 1915, a group of Russian engineers set out to build this particularly unusual armored fighting vehicle. At 40 tons, it was the largest tank in the worl at the time and had a ten-man crew.

Here's a drawing:


And here's a photo of a model:


The entire thing was designed as a gigantic tricycle. The large front wheels were about 30 feet in diameter and were each driven by a separate 240hp engine. The idea was that the large wheels would carry the vehicle over any obstacles encountered on the battlefield.

Here's a photo of the prototype on the testing grounds:


The main problem: while the large front wheels would've done a fine job of carrying this thing over battlefield obstacles, the weight on the tiny rear wheel was so great that it would constantly sink into any mud, sand, or even slightly soft ground. After a few miserably failed demonstrations, the Russian high commission decided that it was underpowered and (because it presented such a large target) vulnerable to artillery fire.

The prototype remained in the same spot where it had failed it's operational tests until 1923 when it was dismantled for scrap.

Goofy Project #1138: Trey's Helmet

INTRODUCTION:

For those of you who don't know, I've had a couple of costume parties lined up this summer. One was held at a fairly classy venue in Seattle while the other will be in Petaluma at a bit more kid-friendly location. My sister will be bringing her kids to the second one. Since she has two kids (and a husband) she will get to make four separate costumes. I don't know what she or her husband or her daughter will be dressed as, but a few weeks ago I found out about her son Trey.
Apparently she picked him up from school a while back and asked him how his day went. He replied, in the most serious tone an elementary-schooler could muster, "Mom," says he, "I've decided what I want to be for uncle Shawn's party."

"Oh?" she asks, "What's that?"

"Boba Fett"

So I get a call not long after that and my sister asks if I have any of the parts for the Boba Fett costume. I told her that while she was right to guess that I have the costume, she was wrong to guess that I'd have it in midget sizes.

At the time I was still camped out in a Washington, DC hotel room, needed a small project, and decided there was nothing I'd like more than to manufacture a miniature Fett helmet or two. I told my sister the rest of the costume would be up to her, but I'd be able to at least take care of that part. And so I began with...

Stage 1: The Prototype

Surprisingly, the most difficult part of the Fett helmet to get right is the dome. My original plan was to fabricate the entire helmet using the Pepakura program and any of a number of readily-available 3D models of the character. Once the dome was built, I decided that I didn't like the way the rest of the model was coming together and ditched it in favor of a scratch-built version using various thicknesses of sheet styrene. Once it was all cobbled together, it looked like so:

Then it got a healthy dose of primer:

Then a bit of Bondo and a lot of sanding to perfect the rounded dome:


At this point the wyf and I had left Washington DC and driven to New Orleans, so there were a few days' delay before the prototype got it's final coat of primer:


Then it sat in the back of the car for a few more days before I got around to adding these annoying little notches and other details on the backside:


Then I painted it lightish red like I tend to do with my prototypes, before moving on to...

Stage 2: Moldmaking

When you've got one of something and need lots of somethings, there's nothing easier than RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanizing) Silicone Rubber. It comes in a wide variety of flavors and colors and makes amazingly flexible, long-lasting molds. Depending on how it's mixed, you can pick up even microscopic details. It's expensive, but it's also worth the money. I buy mine from http://www.jgreer.com/, because they've got the best prices I've found as well as top-notch customer service.

The trick with moldmaking is to choose a mold material that works with you and to work around it's potential drawbacks. Silicone is expensive, so you want to use as little as possible. The problem is that it's also very flexible, so you need to build it up thick. The solution: a jacket and mother mold.

The jacket is the flexible rubber part that will pick up all of the minute details on the surface of the "master," also known as the prototype or original. Here I am coating the master with uncured silicone:


Once the jacket has cured, the next step is to build a rigid "mother mold" that will hold the jacket in place. I'd go into greater depth explaining this, but you can just google the term "mother mold" and you'll find plenty of tutorials. I'll write up my own some other time.

Once I had a working mold, I made my first casting. Since the undented version is styled after Jango Fett, the first copy had to be modified to make the Boba Fett helmet. In this pic you can see the new dented helmet on the left and the lightish red prototype on the right:


Stage 3: Funding

Like I said, silicone is expensive. While it's nice to have a helmet cast in urethane resin (also expensive) the only way for me to afford it on my current budget is to share the costs with similarly intense costumers who have a bit more cash and less time than me. Once I'd made a mold of the undented and dented helmets, it was time to crank out a few more and sell them. Here's the production run along with a few leftovers from other projects:


Stage 4: Painting

You can see in the photo above the one helmet painted silver in the foreground. That was casting #1, my nephew's helmet, at step 3 of what would end up being at least a thirteen step painting process. Step 1 was priming it. Step 2 was lightly sanding and then priming it again. Step 3 was painting it the best metallic silver I could find in a spray can. Steps 4 through 11 were masking off and spraying the various shades of green, grey, black, red, yellow, buff, and son on. Step 12 was to apply all of the hand-painted details with tiny little brushes. Finally, step 13 was to dust it lightly with three different versions of primer (rust, black, and grey) and then touch up the bare metal parts with silver paint again.

Here's a shot of the helmet around step 7 with the visor taped in place:


Before you ask, yes the visor is supposed to be green. The visor for the helmet used in production was made from a dark green welding faceshield that was cut to fit the t-shaped slot. It caused a few problems in some of the green screen effects shots when... Nevermind, I am a huge geek and nobody needs to know this stuff.

Once all that's done, it's time to glue in the visor:

The blue masking tape keeps me from coating the green visor in glue too. Once the glue is cured I have to touch up the areas of the paintjob around the visor. I suppose the smart answer would've been to glue the visor in first. Oops.

Stage 5: Upholstery and Whatnot

You can't have a helmet without some kind of padding. Usually I don't stop there. In fact, the last helmet I actually finished (Ana's Coast Guard HALO helmet) had headlights, port and starboard sidelights, and a defogging system with built-in ventilation fans. When I finish my next one, it will have all of that and a rear-view camera system, voice amplifier, wireless intercom, and a drinking tube. Fortunately, this little guy isn't going to need all of that.

Instead I've decided to settle for a simple headliner fabric glued to the interior of the helmet to make it a tiny bit easier to wear as well as a bit of foam rubber wedged into the top to add a bit more comfort.

Stage 6: Delivery

When my sister and her kids finally arrive, it will be time to wedge the helmet onto my nephew's head. The result? Stay tuned.