An I-Iwi Silence

... That's actually what it was called... Only in relatively recent history has it become known as an "eerie silence".

I only discovered this on my recent trip to Hawaii, and I'm pretty sure most people have no idea, so I'm "sharing" :)

So, that modern phrase of an eerie silence before something sinister happens is in fact a derived term and it has a Hawaiian origin.
It comes from an endemic species of bird that lives there... The "i-iwi"

photo credit: the American Bird Conservancy... borrowed from the website:

                                      https://animaloftheday.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/iiwi/

Interesting related facts are that the iiwi is part of the Honey-Creeper family and is endemic to the Hawaiian islands and while it used to be common all over the islands, these days its confined to the temperate and very rugged highlands because tropical mosquitoes that carry some very nasty avian diseases cant live up there... and mosquitoes were only recently introduced to the islands by humans.
And the iiwi is part of a large group of endemic Hawaiian birds (about 50 in total) that are all descended from a single ancestor species; the Eurasian Rose Finch. Interestingly, studies suggest that the original pair of Rose Finches somehow managed to arrive on Hawaii about 5 million years ago, and from there have evolved into 50 new species that all exploit slightly different ecological niches in the varied climatic/vegetation regions of the islands... And that means that (in the simplest form of a geometric progression) that it took about 900,000 years to differentiate one species into two different ones... That seems like an excessively long time to me for an animal with a relatively short lifespan since Id have expected it to take only about 50-100 thousand years... So, that suggests that there may have either been lots of intermediate species that went extinct for their own reasons or that other factors have interfered and evolutionary processes have had some pretty long "stable" periods on the islands and there have been some occasional but very  "disruptive events" that prompted the bursts of rapid evolution of the birds...   Or, I could be completely wrong because I'm not an evolutionary scientist and don't really know what I'm talking about
... Just between you and me, I suspect its that last option :)

Rosefinch (Carpodacus erythrinus)... Image borrowed from Wikipedia.

Anyway, back to the main story line:
So, the iiwi lives happily on the islands for a few hundreds of thousands of years after its species has evolved there. Then along came the Polynesians who only managed to sail there canoes there for the first time about 800 years ago!... That's really really recently! (I bet most people don't know that!)
It was only about 550 years later that British navigator Captain James Cook arrived at the islands and made the first European contact with both the land and the people (in 1778 I believe).
But, in that 550 years, the Polynesians developed their own cultural peculiarities (though much of their culture is shared by many other Pacific islands including as far South as New Zealands Maoris)... And that phrase I mentioned at the start of this post "iiwi silence" is a tinny little piece of that Hawaiian heritage. You see, the newly arrived Polynesians set about doing what all humans do when they come across new places and new things... They named everything as seemed best to them, which is how the iiwi got its name, but they also utilized the natural resources however they saw fit too, and for the iiwi, that meant they used its bright red feathers as clothing/decoration in the form of beautiful feather cloaks for their royalty. A single cloak could have up to 250,000 feathers in it! Incidentally the New Zealand Maori have a very similar tradition with cloaks made out of Cassowary/Kiwi feathers and added Kakapo green feather highlights... The Hawaiians used the yellow feathers of the mamo bird as highlights (It was an extinct species but I think I read somewhere that it had been recently rediscovered in some remote Hawaiian local??).
... but I digress again...
So, anyway, the Hawaiians learned all about their new land and all about the plants and animals in it... and they learned about the iiwi... And it turns out that the iiwis tend to move around their habitat in groups of a dozen or more birds (I'm not sure if its an extended "family" or just a community), and that they have an interesting habit of defending themselves as a group too. It seems that when any of the group detect a threat of some sort, they communicate it to their group with a call, and then the whole group goes completely silent. (I think usually its the Hawaiian hawk or 'io since I don't think there are any endemic non-avian predators on the islands that have been there anywhere long enough to have co-evolved this behavior in the iiwis). And then they promptly attack the threat as a group too... Individually the little iiwi isn't much of a threat to the hawk (though it does make a tasty snack), but in a group they can fend off the threat, much as we all have seen crows doing to hawks and other threats.

Image of 'io (Buteo solitaries) borrowed from Wikipedia site.

So, anyway, the native Hawaiians noted this and to some extent seem to have adopted the strategy for their own defence against threats... Which of course are most usually other humans!
... And once Europeans discovered the islands and started interacting with the Hawaiians, as always happens, there was some "cultural appropriation" on both sides of the equation and we "Westerners" acquired the phrase in the English language... and after a bit of miss-hearing and passing on of the phrase between multiple people, it became the phrase we have today... Eerie Silence!

... and one last interesting anecdote is that Captain Cook himself seems to have fallen victim to the proverbial iiwi silence when he was speared to death by a group of angry native Hawaiians on a beach during a return visit in 1779... Some accounts of the incident suggest that there was in fact a short period of apparent silence and stillness from the group before they suddenly attacked the English captain and his men!  ...


Things you didn't know :)
Cheers

Grant







...just to note that while there are many actual facts in this little tale, the main premise of the story is entirely fictitious... I made it up for fun :))

The Contractor Who Came In From The Cold

Its been ten years since I had permanent, full time employment...

There were a bunch of factors that led up to my "change in employment status", and in my change in employment outlook. The main factors were that Id been having a more and more stressful time at my job working as a team manager for a  higher management that was becoming more insecure, and less technically relevant... and that was coupled with a sudden downturn in the Tech industry and the foreshadow of the big economic crisis of 2008.
And so in early 2007 I was unemployed and frankly, relieved to be!

And after wandering around the Americas for about a year, and having "the time of my life" just spending time introspecting and without commitment, I "landed" back in Vancouver, but still with out much of a "plan". And at that point, I was approached by someone from my old employer (but in a different functional group) about doing some contract work for them... I was happy enough to take them up on the offer because I needed some income but wasn't at all sure what kind of "career" or full-time role I wanted... And it worked out well...
And that more or less led me to my "lifestyle" of the last 10 years with periods of contract work (with minimal responsibilities other than the quality of my own work) interspersed with long solo trips to remote and interesting places.

... And its been a great lifestyle but one suitable only for someone like me, with solid financial status, no dependents, and a well developed ability to spend most of my time alone and without social support/interaction.
But, as I'm sure anyone reading my blog babble has thought and noted, I do feel significant stress on a pretty regular basis (though it is on a long time cycle of every few years rather than every few months or weeks).  Its the price of the lifestyle... Contract work is not always available conveniently when I want to be working... and the situation gets harder to manage as I get older and am "less employable" as viewed by employers who don't already know me.

And so I find myself considering my options.
And over the past six months Ive been working (on contract again) in the same group and with the same people who I was working with 10 years ago when I was last employed full-time.
And it turns out the group is needing to grow again,
And it seems they have a bit of a "gap" in their succession planning with no current employees being senior enough to step up to a full project management role...
And there is currently a dearth of available senior electrical engineers here in the Vancouver area.
And my work friends from the past, who are all managers now them-selves, look at me and say , "Hey why don't you come back and manage this new project with us?"...

Hmmmm.
And so I consider what the job would be like...
And I think back and I remember what it was like working as an Engineering group manager last time...
With project schedules that constantly slip-out at the start and intermediate dates but don't slip at the end dates, and with upper management who constantly ask for reworked schedules that are "accurate and detailed" down to a day or two of granularity over a period of six months with a team of 8-10 people ... Completely ridiculous for a an Engineering Validation team whos job it is to find unknown bugs in hyper complex systems, with limited documentation; and when we find the bugs we have to investigate and find resolutions for them too... But it has to fit in that "fixed" schedule of course!
This is all nothing new though... Its always been the same irrational story... Its called "being a manager" in pretty much any Engineering company.
And I see my friends who as I said are now experienced managers, and I look at them and think "wow, those guys are so competent at whet they do, they are way better at it than I ever was!"  And I see how stressed they get by the conflicting demands on them. And I remember how that stress level made me "an angry person" all the time!... And I'm wondering why would I want to do that to myself again??
But I'm also thinking that well, yeah, nothing has changed in 10 years... The system is the same with the same faults and strength and I did it once and I can do it again. Its a forgone conclusion that "I'm gonna get burned" by the company's irrational schedule management systems...
But I'm older and wiser now; and I know I'm gonna end up as "the bad guy" in the schedule meetings! I know they are irrational!... I know I cant change them to plan better!
And if I know all this, then when the "finger of blame" starts getting waved around by people, and they direct it at me, I know I don't have to take it personally... But I also know that its oh-so-easy to sit back and say "I wont be affected by other peoples opinions" while I'm imagining the future and am not actively embedded in the situation... I know that that "outlook" will not last more than a few minutes when I'm actually experiencing it!  :)

... And so I'm weighing my options... The insecurity of contracting, The increasing difficulty of getting work as a low-level Engineer as I get older. The guaranteed high stress levels of going back into a management role, but the secure and higher income of the job...

And Ive come to my conclusion...
I'm gonna take the shitty stressful Engineering Manager job!
The overview of the plan is that Ill take the job and help my friends out for a few years... But I intend to do it only for 3-4 years. Im gonna take the bigger pay cheque and the constant employment and squirrel the money away for the next few years so that I can "secure my retirement". After that I hope to be in a position to never "have to have employment" again!... I can work if I want, but only if I want :)
In the mean time though I know I'm gonna have a less than relaxing few years... I'm gonna try really hard not to take things personally when things get rough at work (as they of course will). And I'm gonna work at bringing a couple of their current mid-level engineers up to full speed to be able to take-over my role as soon as possible. I'm hopefully gonna be contributing to a project that I feel is worthwhile and "adding something positive to our world" (though there is never any guarantee of that). I'm gonna definitely be aiming to do a good job for my team and help them each grow in the way they want to at work (and that is always "contributing something positive to the world").

And well, that's the hope. And that's what I'm gonna be doing for a while...
Signing employment papers next week (or so they tell me).

Lets see what happens ... Life is always a wild ride :))

Paid to Slide

A couple of months back, not long after the start of the Skeleton season up at Whistler, I got a call from one of my sliding buddies (Matt). He wanted to know if I was interested in helping out with a film project that was looking for some skeleton athletes. It was just going to be a few days work but it needed to happen very promptly and they were looking for some sliders to help out.
At the time I had just started a work contract after more than eight months without any work at all, so I was certainly interested in a little extra money... though at this stage I had no idea what the pay grade might be.
Now I'm not actually a particularly gifted skeleton athlete (way too old and slow to be competitive), and though I can happily slide from the top of the Whistler track with any kind of ice conditions (even most experienced sliders will not start from the top of the Whistler track because its so fast and powerful...dangerous), I would not have thought that Id be on anyone's list for being paid to do it!
But it turns out there were some "extenuating circumstances" that made the difference:
1) It was very early in the season and there were very few of us sliding at Whistler at the time.
2) The project needed people who could slide from the top of the whistler track
3) It needed to happen within about two weeks
4) They needed three sliders, all with similar build and size .. So we all look like the same slider when we have our helmets on. (because we can each only do about 6 runs a day from the top of the track before we get "sled head (concussion issues), and they need as many runs for shooting as possible.

So, there were some phone calls made and there were some slight adjustments to my working week so I could take an extra day for the weekend of "shooting", and I was able to confirm that I could do what they needed, when and where they needed it. And after that there was some running around to get some custom spandex suits made up (nothing fancy, just a plain blue so that all three sliders looked the same) and some documents were emailed around and signed and emailed around some more... And now I officially have an "Agent" for the film industry!

It turned out that they couldn't manage to get three local sliders who looked similar enough, so they ended up getting one of the sliders from over in Calgary (Mark) to fly out here to Whistler for the shoot.
Now, of the three of us, I was definitely the "third string", so I was only going to need to be on set for the actual shooting days, which was fine by me cos the other guys are definitely better sliders than I am, and I can only get a bit of extra time off work to do this.
So, about a week or so after the first call I find myself up at the sliding track early in the morning while the film crew with all their equipment and trucks and people and catering services etc are running around the place doing their thing...

Film crew and all their gear filling up the car park at the top of the track.

The project that we are filming is for promotional material for a Virtual Reality experience being put together by one of the large Asian electronics corporations (they have viewing goggles and 360degree video cameras that they want to sell to the consuming masses). The theme of the project is the VR experience of Skeleton sliding, which seems like a good idea to me since it really is an adrenalin rush to do it but its way too inaccessible for most people due to the need for training and access to the very few tracks in the world... And its all intended to coincide roughly with the upcoming Winter Olympics in Jan 2018 which will of course be the peak of the general publics interest in such odd activities as Bobsleigh and Skeleton... So that gives them about a year to take the raw footage from the shoot and do all the CGI and post production work that is needed.
In slightly greater detail, the intent is that the "experience" will start out with a regular entry to a skeleton run (run along the ice with the sled, then lunge forward at a sprint to land on the sled and start taking the steeply banking corners of the track as the speed builds... and then they want to get a little "creative", so there are going to be lots of coloured lights and the rider will kind of leave the reality of the sliding track and head off into a virtual reality ride through a psychedelic universe??? or something like that, and after a minute or so of that, they will come back onto the real world track and the coloured lights will fade away and the run will end at the bottom of the track.

The story board

Right so that's the intent, and the riggers are running around stringing up all sorts of coloured lights in the track and really, all there is for me to do is mostly sit around and wait till they need me to do a run.  Oh, and when we do a "run" we have to wear the camera rig... Which isn't as bad as it could be. The rig is an aluminium back plate with about a 20cm high post in the middle of it and on top of the post is a collection of 4 or 5 small camera cubes (very much like GoPro cameras but with better lenses) arranged to get a full 360 degree view of the run and record it in high def'...

The camera rig

Tech's messing with the rig. 

Mark and Matt each wearing a rig.

We sliders had some concerns about that post sticking up because it could really cause injuries if we accidently rolled over during the run, but after a couple of tentative early test runs, we figured itd be OK because the tech people on the film crew found that we went too fast for them to get good definition in the video... so they wanted us to go as slow as possible... So if we were going to be going really slow (and slow is about 110kmh-120kmh) then there was virtually no way we could crash :)
So, in order to go slow, the track crew (who look after the ice on the track) just let the frost build up on the track for a couple of days (which really slows us down when we slide).
The only other tricky part of the whole thing was that the camera rig weighed a couple of kilograms, has a significant wind resistance, and it isn't centred on the sled... With it sitting between our shoulders, its about 40cm forward of the balance point, and when we are going 100Kmh, that smallish object (10cmx10cmx10cm) actually has a lot of wind resistance...just try sticking your hand out of a car window at 100kmh and you can feel how much force it generates. The trick with that is that the weight wants to tip the sled forward (unstable), but the drag which only comes into play as the speed builds up, wants to tip the sled backwards. So for the first section of the track we are unstable and tipped forward but for the second half we are overstable and tipped back... It would make for a terrible run on fast ice but since we were on very slow ice we could manage it without too much bother.

So, for a couple of days I hung around at the track and watched filmy people do their "shooting" thing and occasionally Id get to do a run on the track with very slow ice and all sorts of fancy coloured strobing flouro' and LED lighting... (I have to say the lighting was really quite good and I wish we could keep the track lit up like that all the time :))  ) But it was actually quite boring most of the time.  As I said though, I was the third string slider and I think I got only about 6 runs in two days ... about half as much as the other two guys.

Matt and Mark waiting around for the director to give us the call to slide.

Mark waiting at the start block

Matt setting up for a run

Matt being released very slowly on one of the first runs

But I felt it was well worth the experience, and a few weeks later I got a cheque in the mail for several thousand dollars for my efforts!  I was super pleased with that since it has effectively paid for all my equipment and sliding runs for the last three years and fuel costs for the last couple of years :))

The only picture of Me at the start... I had the camera and so I took most of the pictures :)

 
So now, if anybody needs me for something filming related, I can just ask them to contact "my agent" I guess :)

...my stardom awaits!

Back in the Saddle

Update on my "situation" time.

Well, on the employment front, after more than six months off Ive got another short contract as an Engineer with my usual employer ... This is great news since it means that they are still willing to use contractors which I was not at all certain about since the company had been acquired by a larger company since I last worked there.
Ive been working again now for over a month and while its with a group I don't usually work with, I'm settling in well and enjoying it.  In truth though, a big chunk of the satisfaction is coming from a bank account that is now slowly increasing rather than rapidly decreasing :)
And my contract currently goes till end November only but there is plenty more work they need done (till end Feb or so) so there is a good chance Ill get an extension which I'm not counting on but which I would be very happy to get... we shall see.

On other fronts, its heading into winter again and I'm preparing to get back in the saddle of a Skeleton sled too.
My neck has been giving my quite a bit of discomfort for the last six months or so but I think that has a lot to do with me using non-optimal glasses for some of the things I do and so Ive got some new glasses and it seems to be helping a bit... But that not withstanding, Ive really been sitting-on-the-fence about sliding again this season.
I was feeling like I probably would not slide this year and then my friend Mat decided to buy a new sled and sell his old one... And well, since I had a job again... I couldn't help my self, so I bought myself a beat up old skeleton sled!

Now Skeleton sleds are about as rare as hens teeth in the Vancouver area. there are a few more of them in circulation at the Calgary track which is the base of all Canada-wide sliding activities. And because of their scarcity they are pretty expensive items... A brand new one from the leading manufacturer (Bromley of UK) will set you back well over $10,000. There are 3 or 4 other big names in sleds about and a few less known ones too but there are only a few dozen of each sold in the whole world each year.
Anyway, I am now the proud owner of an aging Davenport sled (which were the world leading marque about 20 years ago) and its worth about $1000 or so. Its been used quite a bit and there is some slack in the bushings now so it rattles a bit but other than that and the beaten up fibreglass base, its in pretty good nick.
And of course, me being me, Ive given it a bit of a renovation over the last few weeks...

So fist I took it all apart and had a look at it mechanically. Here is what the "skeleton of a skeleton sled" looks like:

It looks like just a few bits of steel welded together that you can bolt some runners too... But its actually a carefully engineered set of pieces that allow us to steer by body-weight shift...

 The front runner attachment point... Not much to see here other than the runner bolting in to one of the main stringers along the side of the sled at the front... The U shaped bar on the left is a front "bumper" which is the bit that hits the ice wall at about 130kmh when we steer it wrong :)

And at the back end you can see the runner bolts in again and there is another smaller bumper too... But there is some other stuff here too: Like at the front there is also the cross-member to be seen that keeps the two sides of the sled attached to each other but its not just a flat piece of steel, its actually a very slim "I" beam profile... and this stops the cross-member being vertically or horizontally flexible but allows it to be "twist" flexible... very important.  And there is that bolt sticking out the end of the stringer... Which allows us to squeeze the runner from the ends which makes it bow into a vertical curve and the whole runner/stringer becomes a spring bed that is balancing on its mid section on the ice ... as we rocket along at 130kmh.  And there is another bar ther tht is attached to the back of the stringer... That's the steering paddle... It allows the pilot to put lots of "emphasis" on one rear corner of the sled runner with pressure from one knee ...and twists the chassis to lift the opposite runner off the ice at the same time.

 And the "saddle" is what we call the padded metal cage on to of the sled that we lay our chest down in when we slide (arms on the outside of the cage and griping the steel bars at the back edge (so we don't fly out of the sled when we get air in the corners cos we mis-timed the exit... at 130Kmh.

But that saddle isn't one piece... Its split in two with an axle connecting the two halves at the front... again this allows the weight shift to maximize differences in loading the back corners of the sled so we can steer.

But all the intricacies of the chassis aside, I only slightly modified it by adding larger knee paddles (cos I'm taller than the previous owners and my knees were hanging off the edge :)
But the ratty old belly pan needed lots of work (it was cracked and crazed from years of use.
So I stripped off all the old coatings and paint and sanded it all down. Then I got some slow set epoxy and some black pigment and put a layer over the whole thing... Its self leveling and very penetrating despite its high viscosity so it filled all the old divits and worked into all the tiny hair-line cracks in the old gell coat. I'm hoping it will also stay just a tiny bit flexible so that it wont shatter like the old gel coat did as it aged... Stuff takes forever to cure though... It dripped off the edges for over 24 hours I kid you not.

So that was my base coat but it seemed a bit dull to just have another plain black sled, so I went surfing the internet for some sort of art to put on it... And came up with this... Dragon motif.

 Its maybe a bit fanciful I thought, but what the heck... I can always sand it down and start again if I don't like it :)

So, I made a simple stencil by cutting it out of paper and taping the paper to the sled pan. Then I sprayed adhesive over the stencil and quickly removed the paper... This left me with a sticky image of a dragon on the sled pan. Then I put gold leaf on the glue (what doesn't every one have a gold leafing kit laying around??? I know I do!)  And then I added a perimeter of glow in the dark paint to the image by hand ... cos I like it when the dragon glows as we ride up to the top of the track in the back of a cold wet pick-up truck in the dark of night ... Clearly I'm a child at heart :)))

 And then I put another layer of epoxy (clear coat this time) over the whole thing ... and waited another three days for it to cure...

And then I bolted the tray back on the chassis, put the padding back in the tray, and put the top cover back on the sled... And I guess I'm ready to go sliding again... Head first at 130Kmh and about 4Gs for about 60 seconds with my face just cm off the ice :) ... Lord preserve me from my own foolishness!  :)

Yep, Back in the Saddle indeed.

Another Table Top

Years ago, I bought a "Turkish Grill" (which is a large copper bowl on a low stand) to use as a fire-pit on my deck. And I built a stand for it to raise it up to about 50cm off the deck so that it would be comfortable to sit around in deck chairs (as we do here, rather than on our haunches as I imagine the original users would have).

And then I also got creative and built a perimeter "table" that was about 30cm wide and got some small and expensive coloured glass tiles and made a nice mosaic pattern for the table-top...

Skip forward about ten years and that perimeter table-top that I made has seen better days. It was built by gluing the tiles to cement board and then grouting in the gaps, but over the years it has not stood up to the test of Vancouver winters with lots of rain and freeze-thaw cycles etc, and its become rather tattered about the edges... And I have to admit that though it looked nice, it was not actually very functional since it wasn't wide enough to use as a real table, and cold drinks do tend to get rather hot when placed only cm from a fire! (yeah, maybe I didn't really think the whole thing through in the original plan :)

So, its time to either rebuild it or throw it out. And since I spent so much on those pretty tiles I decided I should try the rebuild path...

So, first I had the laborious task of peeling off each tile and individually scraping off the adhesive and the grout... It took me about a month to slowly work through that task!... There were about 5000 individual tiles to "process"!

The original perimeter table-top

Detail of the original mosaic pattern.

Its supposed to be the sun in the centre and ocean waves around the edge.

 But rather than duplicating the old design, I decided that it would be better to just make a dedicated table for use on my deck, separate from the Turkish grill/fire-pit. I figured that a table of about 1m diameter would be good, and I wanted to duplicate the same style of mosaic pattern cos I liked the original a lot.
So, first I did some arranging of tiles to try to determine what the new repeating pattern of tiles should be...

Initial pattern for 30degree repeats.

More detailed pattern.

Then it was time to build the table...
I decided Id try to cast the table-top out of reinforced concrete so that it would last better in the winters here... And to ensure the tiles were really solidly bonded to the concrete I decided to build the table in an inverted layer-cake fashion.
So, I made a 4-5cm high perimeter wall with a strap of flat steel and "glued" it down to a sheet of melamine board with bees-wax. Then I covered the board inside the perimeter with a thin layer of bees-wax so that I could stick the tiles down and slowly build up the full mosaic pattern.

The perimeter, the segmented circular plan, and the tub of all the tiles.

The melamine board covered in wax ready for pattern building.

 Then over the next week or so I spent hours sitting on the deck pushing tiles into the layer of wax after the sun had warmed it up and made it soft.

The final mosaic pattern finished and ready for the concreting stage.

Then the big day came and I got a bag of high strength concrete mix (contains higher percentage of cement than usual as well as synthetic fibres that give it lots more tension strength than regular concrete.
So, first I mixed up a small batch of the concrete but I added  lots of black grout mix to it and removed lots of the larger gravel from the mix (before adding the water) with a sieve. I spread this over the tiles and worked it in to all the gaps.
Then I immediately mixed up another batch of the concrete with full aggregate and somewhat less grout, and spread that over the first layer. Then I laid a couple of sheets of wire mesh with a 1.25cm square pattern (pre cut to fit inside the perimeter circle) and poured more concrete over the top and made sure it was well "bonded" with the previous layer of mix.

... And then I found I was out of concrete but my slab was not thick enough ... (typical lack of full planning by me )... so I rushed off to the hardware store and got another bad of concrete mix (slightly different type but still with fibre reinforcing) and mixed it up and filled the last of the perimeter.
Then it was time to wait...

I waited three days and then, with the help of a friend, flipped the whole cured assembly upside down and left it on the deck again for the sun to warm it... It warmed the dark coloured melamine board and softened the bees-wax that was gluing all the tiles to it and I was able to peel the board off to reveal my ne mosaic table top... A bit of work with a propane torch and a polishing rag and voila!
I have a new table top that is extremely heavy!

Then I looked on the local buy and sell site and found an old cast-iron table base that someone was getting rid of, brought it home and spent a couple of hours stripping off the old crappy paint and rust. Then I sealed it up and put the table-top on and the final product looks great :)

The end result.

Lets hope it lasts a bit better than the last one :)

Serfing Holiday

Not a project this time, and not a typo either :)
I'm referring to my just-finished contract as a part-time minimum-wage worker... Being a modern-day peasant... Essentially working as a modern Serf in a feudal system.

My last Engineering contract finished in December and I've been waiting/looking for another Engineering job since then... I'm kinda specialized in my recent work history and there are few companies in Vancouver that need my skills, so I just have to wait till the right opportunity comes along.
In the mean-time however there isn't much to do and the priority is to not spend money!... I've done pretty much all the "home based" projects I can think of and the ones I have done, I've dragged out over several months to maximize the time spent and minimize the money.

Anyway, a few months ago, I decided that Id try some minimum-wage type work to help a bit with finances and use up my spare time... and I figured it would be a good experience to see first-hand just how privileged I am as n Engineer :)
So, I applied for a seasonal type job at a couple of places where I thought I might be engaged by the work, and I was fortunate enough to be offered a job fairly promptly, and for the last three months Ive been working about three full shifts a week in a minimum-wage job (actually just above minimum wage as its technically defined here in Vancouver at $11.30 per hour)

And having completed my "tour", these are my thoughts about the whole experience.

Well, first off I should describe what type of work it was since there are many different types of "minimum wage" jobs. It was not manual labour (which I'm a bit old for and doubt my body would put up with for long) but it was work that meant I was on my feet and actively walking around all the time. It was a local sales outlet for a specialty tools company, and for the most part, all of the employees do all of the jobs (there is not much specialization in different activities)... So, I restocked shelves and took phone calls and served customers and operated check-outs and gave advice and took returns etc etc.. I did a fair bit of everything :)

And I can tell you that after a full day of running around constantly doing all that stuff I was always pretty pooped, and my feet were really killing me... every time!   And for that full day of effort I took home a bit less than $100... And the tax man ends up taking about 25% of that in personal income tax too!
So, when they say minimum-wage, they mean it... I did my own calculations on the matter of personal finances and I can say with a pretty high degree of accuracy that a person can survive on that income (assuming they work a nominal 40hr week)... The money earned will cover basic living costs and includes accommodation, food, transport, health, mobile phone, and some money for clothing replacement etc... but it is very minimal and a single person living alone would not be able to afford to live in the inner-most suburbs of Vancouver and certainly could never afford a new car of any sort or aspire to save enough money for any sort of property ownership dreams.  It would be easier if the person shared accommodation but still... Its a pretty subsistence way of life.

But adding to the "basic struggle for survival" situation, it would also be really difficult to extricate oneself from that state... All your days are full up with tiring work that leaves you just beat... It would be really hard to find a way to get a better job... There is no time to go looking and no way to pay for or acquire skills needed to get a "non-minimum-wage" job. There is virtually no way to be able to save up enough money to go back to school or to be able to invest the capital needed to start your own little business of some sort... Its tough... You would absolutely need to find a way to share transport, food and accommodation costs with a couple of other people in order to get ahead at all.

But that's not my biggest "issue" with the whole experience...
My big disappointment is on a much larger scale... Its about the way we (we the "western Democracies) practice Capitalism...
The company I was working for is not a big corporation; its a family owned business that has slowly been building and growing for over fifty years... Its kind of a "model" good family business done the truly Canadian way... And to be sure, I liked all of the people who worked there and that includes the managers and the full timers and the part timers... all good people who cared about each-other etc.
And yet, with all that, the vast majority of the jobs in the company are dead-end minimum-wage type jobs.
The company pays just above the legal minimum acceptable wage.
And its a moderate sized company (about 1000 employees across the country) but the management structure is pretty flat so there is about one senior position for every 10 employees, and one manager position for every 100 employees or so.
And that means that in any kind of career progression, only the top 10% of employees will ever have any chance of moving ahead to the next level...
And that traditionally is how our capitalism works... the best workers get rewarded with promotions and that provides the motivation to the workers and the competition that is needed to maintain innovation and efficiency too...
But the actual experience of it is not nearly as rosy!   As any worker knows, within a short time on the job, you know who the top 10-20% of the workers in a given area are, and if you are in that group then that's great, and there is some hope for you... But if you are in the other 80% then there is NOTHING but the job as it is.
There is in fact de-motivation!
Instead of being motivated to try to improve the company performance (by more efficient practice or by more sales or better processes etc) you are in fact motivated, because no-matter what you do you will never get promoted and will only ever get minimum-wage, to do as little as possible!
Your only real goal is to aim to not get fired, and that usually only means avoiding being amongst the least productive/valued 10-20% of workers.... If you are not in that group then your only motivation becomes "how can I do less work".   Oh how sad!
And its all because the company's whole purpose is to funnel profits to the owner... There is no attempt to share any improvements or company success with the employees at all... And that accounts for the vast majority of jobs as practiced in Western Democratic Capitalism!

But what about the sales-people in most corporate jobs who get a limited salary and are paid significant bonuses on their sales results I hear you say? ... Hmmm yes, well, we all know what the caricature of the car salesman is, and we all more or less apply it to "sales-people" in general... And its not a very flattering caricature... And the reason is that because when you motivate people that way, they become extremely "self" focused and are motivated to ignore/abuse other people in order to benefit themselves...
In short, with heavy bonussing on making sales you get a focus on only making sales... They are not team players and don't support anybody or any thing that does not get them personally a sale. It works with sales-people because that's their only job but its very hard to put a bonus plan together that effectively motivates other types of job... As an engineer in silicon design/manufacturing companies I'm very well aware of this...
Almost all professional companies have a bonus system and some kind of profit sharing plan for most/all of their employees... And it certainly helps...
But sadly only slightly... By and Large its still the same problem with the middle performing 80% of the employees being effectively motivated to do as little as possible, and the company focussing on generating profit that is funneled to the top (ie the owners or in the case of public corporations, the shareholders).
And the system works... and its better than pretty much any other system that has been developed!
But my issue is that it is absolutely wasting the potential and focus and effort of about 80% of the people employed!
The biggest problem with effectively motivating that middle 80% is that its almost impossible to put together an effective bonus structure... Its either too complicated to put in the hard metrics (because the job "productivity" has so many different aspects and many of the factors affecting "productivity" are outside of individual employee's control) or the people "managing" the bonus assessment (the employee manager) are incompetent or unaware of the full scope of what their individual employees are always doing... Ive seen it being attempted for about 20 years now in my engineering jobs, and without fail the annual "performance assessments" are an incredible pain in the ass for minimal increased employee performance!... And its all compounded of course by our human nature which is essentially to cheat the system if we can to get more than our fair share!
In short, its not that the corporate executives are always screwing over the employees... The employees are just as bad and are just as likely to screw over the executive if given half a chance!

And so, sadly, I can say with surety that the existing system really sux, but that its virtually impossible to define a simple and effective alternative that is better!

The end analysis is that its not really our Capitalism that I despise, its our flawed human natures... but there is nothing new there    :(

So much for my Serfing Holiday.

Another Coffee Table

I'm still unemployed (well mostly anyway), so I did another project...
There was a lovely large slab of Maple burl at a wood place that I saw and I decided to do something with it.

The problem however was that the board was too warped to be used as a single piece. It is a common problem with thick lumps of wood in that the shape changes as the wood dries out after being cut and what started out as a flat board just after having been sawn, becomes a warped monstrosity after a couple of months of drying.
And even then if you plane away the warp to make it flat again, it is very likely to re-warp again simply because you have removed some of the wood that was generating "internal stresses" that created the old warp... so now it will un-warp somewhat... which makes the nicely re flattened board that you just made, warp again!
So, there isn't really a lot you can do about it all.

I decided that rather than try and fight with the large warped board, I would cut it into smaller sections that would have less warp and would require less planning and flattening etc.
So, I cut it into three sections. Two were about 60cm x 45cm and one was 60cm x 30cm.
But since it was a slice of burl (which gave it very interesting grain and figure patterns) it had a few voids in it and especially near the edges of the two larger pieces. So I set about cleaning them out of debris, painting them gold, and then filling the voids with a clear epoxy (like I did with the previous smaller piece of burl that I used for the dresser table top.

Then I planed all three chunks flat again and I had three pieces that I planned to arrange into a coffee table top. I wanted the coffee table to be 150cm x 60cm (5'x2' in North American parlance) so I had to use some other timber to "fill in the gaps". I chose bloodwood which is a rich red in colour.
Note though that no-matter what the freshly cut colour of the beautiful exotic wood you choose, after exposure to UV and IR light for a couple of years they all turn to one or other shade of brown... Its a shame but all those beautiful bright reds and purples (Paduk, Bloodwood, Purpleheart etc) end up as more or less the same dark-brown!
Anyway, as I said, I decided to contrast the golden coloured Maple with the deep dark-brown of Bloodwood.

The next problem however was how to rejoin the three major pieces of the table in a way that was very strong, easy to do with minimal tooling, and would result in an attractive end product?
I decided to use very large dowels... 25mm diameter maple dowels that are 25cm long.
OK, that will be good and strong, but the trick is to get very good alignment between all the dowels in a joint and both adjoining slabs... If you get it wrong then the slabs will not slide together and/or they will end up with a bend at the joint.
It would be pretty easy to drill all the 25mm holes in straight and parallel if I had a big drill press, but all I have is a hand drill!
I solved the problem by building a wood jig that allowed me to drill the four holes into the edge of one of the slabs in a way that would ensure they were at least parallel.
Then I started by drilling the four holes into a "joiner" piece and continued into the edge of the slab. After that was done, I took the joiner piece off the edge of the slab I just drilled, and clamped its other edge to the other slab I wanted to join it to... and then I "back-drilled" into the edge of that slab using the four holes in the joiner piece as guide holes. Then, just to give myself some "wiggle room", I sanded down half of each of the four dowels into a slight cone so that once it was all assembled, there would be a little bit of up-down play in the alignment of the two slabs.
Then I repeated the procedure with another joiner piece for the other end of the table.

Then it was time to assemble the beast. I mixed up a batch of slow-set epoxy and slathered the four dowels with it as well as pouring it into the holes in each slab. Then I quickly slid the dowels into the holes of one slab, slipped the joiner piece over the dowels and upended the other slab onto the first one and slid it down over the dowel ends... That was all done rather hurriedly as you can imagine, and then the whole thing was laid flat on a good level surface for 24hr to set.

I used glad-wrap and masking tape to stop all the epoxy leaking out and sticking everything to everything else :)

Once that was done for one joint, I repeated the exercise for the other joint.

So, now I finally have a pretty flat slab of tabletop :)

 

So then there was another round of planning everything flat again and then sanding it smooth and slicing off the slightly uneven edges, and rounding off the corners... And then I was ready to coat it. I was going to use the epoxy coating again, so I brought the slab indoors and set it up on my existing coffee table in the living room (with suitable drip catching) and set about mixing up a large batch of epoxy which I spread over the whole tabletop.
Now I put it on in an even coat but since there were two different sorts of wood as well as various sized voids that had already been epoxy filled, the new layer of epoxy was absorbed very unevenly (I knew it would be this way). So, after I coated the bottom side of the table, I did the same to the top side of the table... with the same very uneven result.
Then I took the whole thing outside again and sanded/planed it all smooth again on both sides, but being careful to NOT sand through to the bare wood again... So now I had a smooth epoxy layer to work on. I took it back inside, mixed up more epoxy and recoated first the bottom side and then the tops side again.

And this time I got a nice smooth finish that reflects like glass :) Its not quite perfect but if I want I can sand it again with very fine grit and then polish it  (with finer and finer grits) to get it like a mirror.

I'm pretty happy with the outcome. It took me a couple of months to slowly work through all the steps involved because the epoxy always takes at least a day to set up and I must have mixed up at least thirty odd batches for all the void filling, panel joining and surface coating.

But, now its done and I like how it looks (and I think it will get better with time as the bloodwood darkens)

... There is just one small problem though... There is nowhere left in my house where I can put it... I already have a coffee-table that I like!

Typical me... just doing something to keep busy, not because I "need it"... I'm clearly either very privileged or very lacking in foresight or in fact both! ...

Just like most of the people I know :)