The Joy of Coldworking (book)

The Joy of Coldworking
A guide to grinding, smoothing and polishing blown and fused glass
Johnathan Schmuck
$49.95
Available through warmglass.com or the Bullseye Resource Center (although as of 6/27/09 it wasn’t listed in their online store)

No, the book’s title is not an oxymoron, at least not for author Johnathan Schmuck. The dude actually likes to grind and polish glass, and since his writing gives no sign of mental deficiencies I must conclude he knows what he’s talking about.

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Bye bye, S-G-I

Silicon Graphics finally tumbled to the bottom; it’s being acquired by Rackable Systems for a piddling $25 million. At the height of its glory SGI probably spent that much on year-end holiday celebrations.

This isn’t a huge surprise, I suppose. SGI pretty much slid through the gamut of I call the 9-step marketing plan to oblivion that seems to hit most hot high-tech companies:

1. Here’s a brand new thing. Seems pretty cool.
2. Here’s the hottest product on the planet!
3. We’re Gizmodagon. We’re hot. So are our products.
4. Breakthrough innovation from the company that brought you Gizmodagon I.
5. Gizmodagon. Products that just work better.
6. Gizmodagon. A name you can trust.
7. Gizmodagon. Our people make us great.
8. We’re not your dad’s Gizmodagon anymore.
9. Gizmodagon. Now available at Walmart.

If a high-profile tech company gets to #7 without a massively effective overhaul–and I can count on two hands those that have–I figure they’re pretty much toast.

Not that SGI wasn’t filled with great innovators, or that there wasn’t a heckuva lot of prestige in owning their products. There was–I have an SGI LCD panel that’s still a thing of beauty, even if it no longer works. But yesterday’s expensive new server is today’s flower box.

SGI just never seemed to get past waiting for data center guys to toss out those nasty-cheap Wintel boxes and crawl back home. It’s too bad, too: The earth missed out on a lot of very cool visualization stuff when SGI lost relevance. Let’s see what Rackable does with what’s left.

The show at Guardino’s

OK, so I’ve now had a full-fledged panic attack. Everyone should have one at least once; it brings a different perspective to the subject at hand.

But the show reception went pretty well. At least, it was still packed more than an hour after it was supposed to close and Donna, Guardino gallery’s owner, finally started turning off the lights to get people to leave.

For me, the highlight of the show were the lovely folk who did indeed turn out to see the show and me  (and provide moral, or maybe morale, support). Thanks to Bob, Roxy, Kat, Donna, Ed, Sunny, Mom, Suzi and Robyn for finding great words of encouragement. We added substantially to the crowds, and everything was great and much appreciated.

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Locust-pocust

Take one little insect that couldn’t hurt you if you swallowed it,* multiply it by billions, and what do you get?

A lot of terrified, starving humans in an empty desert.

Locust swarms are back in the news. I find them fascinating, mostly because, years back, Mom and I had our own swarming adventure with cicadas. It was a tireless, unrelenting orgy of bugs blanketing Kentucky and Tennesee, so loud you literally had to shout to be heard in a closed car, driving 60 mph down the highway.

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Tis the season to be whacko

Fa la la la LA. La la la laaaaaaa.

Must be something in the air. Or maybe the water. Whatever it is, the criminal class in glassland appears to have slid a notch farther off the rocker this week:

• Guy tries to rob a downtown Portland carwash. He pulls out his gun, drops it, and the gun comes apart on the carwash floor. Carwash employee now remembers that he’s holding a pressure washer, so sprays the gunman full force in the face. Gunman grabs up the pieces of gun and flees, empty-handed.
• 88-year old woman is puttering around in her kitchen when a naked stranger steps through the sliding glass door that she left open for the dog. He backs her into the living room, things are looking grim, then she grabs his testicles and “gives them a good squeeze,” according to the police report. eeeeeeeeeek. He backs off immediately, limps into his car and is arrested.
• PDX bomber discovers that it’s a lot cheaper to call in the bomb threat without actually making the bomb (and besides, fewer people get hurt). Local terrorist task force is less than impressed with his frugal ways so they arrest him anyway. This is the same fellow who accused Clinton of authorizing mind control experiments, the Pentagon of killing his brother with radio waves and Bush of genocide in Portland. (gee, he’d have gotten at least one out of three if he’d just left off a prepositional phrase)

Portland’s always been a tad whacko when it comes to crime. Not that crime in Portland can’t be just as awful and nasty and horrific as anywhere else–it can. But it can also be about a million miles out in space. A colleague contends that this is because Oregon lost federal funding for mental health facilities a few years back, so had to send all the inmates home. “Now,” she says, “they’re all living under the Burnside Bridge.”

I would have sneered at the notion except for an incident a couple of years ago while taking a night class down in the Pearl. A bike-riding classmate showed up late, bikeless, and with a limp. She’d started across the Burnside Bridge, she said, when a “half-naked crazy man” ran up screaming, grabbed her bike and threw it over the bridge and into the river. Then he thanked her and walked off.

“Are you OK? Did he hurt you? Did he get your wallet? Did you call the cops?”

She’d turned her ankle as she fell off the bike but was otherwise fine and no, he hadn’t made a grab for her wallet so she didn’t call for help. “He just didn’t want my bike on his bridge, I guess.”

I guess.

A mother’s sacrifice

Was reading the New York Times this morning and ran across this headline:
TO BUY CHILDREN’S GIFTS, MOTHERS DO WITHOUT.

Now that’s a heartstrings moment if ever I read one, bringing to mind the Grapes of Wrath, the Great Depression, parents starving themselves so their children can eat. I knew the economic crisis was bad, but…wow. I read the story, and decided the headline needed some editing:

TO BUY CHILDREN’S GIFTS, MOTHERS DO WITHOUT DESIGNER JEANS

The story goes on to explain that mammas throughout the US are foregoing buying luxuries for themselves so they can load their children up with toys at Christmas. While daddies are probably also sacrificing, it’s the mammas that are hit “hardest.”

“I want her to be able to look back,” one mamma sighs, “and say, ‘Even though they were tough times, my mom was still able to give me stuff.” *

This brave mamma is sacrificing the purchase of a pair of designer jeans so her daughter can have a $260 play kitchen and other goodies. If she desperately needed a pair of pants so that she could step outside without copping an indecent exposure rap, great. Given the picture, however, we know she’s got at least one pair.

Awwww, c’maaaaaaan, people. I can’t decide if somebody oughta fire the headline writer for overdramatization, fire the reporter for not even remotely picking up on the real story, or send that mamma to, say, Somalia, so she can watch real sacrifices and stop whining.

Is this truly what we’ve come down to? Surely we’re not so shallow that we equate “great personal sacrifice” with “buying an off-brand until the economy recovers.”

I dunno. Maybe all this busted economy stuff is God’s way of telling us to get real.

Jobs, jobbed

I really had to chuckle over this one: Bloomberg accidentally published their Steven Jobs obituary, much to the consternation of the high tech world (and probably Mr. Jobs).

Most people don’t realize this, but large publications usually keep fill-in-the-blank obituaries on file for celebrities and assign the newest reporter-in-training the job of keeping them up to date. That way, if someone famous dies, it’s relatively easy to add a few lines about where/how/why and quickly get out an obit.

A friend had the update job for awhile, and said she was given a list of “at risk” celebrities, i.e., anyone past 60, sick or doing dangerous things, for frequent updates. I’d imagine that the recent news about Jobs’ bout of pancreatic cancer and weight loss dumped him onto the “at risk” list and somebody hit the publish button by mistake.

Ooops.

Vidiotic summer

Vidiocy [vid-ee-uh-see] -noun, plural -cies
1. Performing a criminal or criminally stupid act in front of a video camera or other electronic device, thereby ensuring you’ll not only be caught, but look like a moron in the bargain.

2. Of or pertaining to the state of being a vidiot.

[Origin: 2008; video + idio(t) +-cy ] Related word: hypervidiot, i.e., one who videotapes themselves in an act of vidiocy and posts it on the Web.

Ave Andrea

It’s not funny, not funny at all. But there’s something gently ironic in it, nonetheless: Andrea Pininfarina has died in a road accident. He and his family designed some of the most beautiful sports cars of the last five decades (such as my second most favorite car, the Dino 246GTS). These cars became synonymous with power. Gorgeous, voluptuous power.

Mr. Pininfarina died when a car crashed into his motor scooter.

Do your counters glow in the dark?

Here’s a kinda gloomy thought: You work and save and rack up multimonths of angst and near-bankruptcy to give your kitchen one of those homeshow makeovers…only to discover that you’ve got your very own Manhattan Project.

Read a story in the old grey lady about the increasing tendency of granite countertops, especially the really unusually beautiful ones, to emit not only radon but also radiation. Turns out they can contain stuff like uranium, and the EPA is getting a tad concerned. My favorite quote from the article: “It’s not that all granite is dangerous, but I’ve seen a few that might heat up your Cheerios a little.”

Imagine: Now you can cook your steak right on the counter! And when it’s done, don’t light those candles; just turn off the lights and eat by the romantic light of your kitchen countertops. Look at all the energy you’ll save!

Gee. Kinda gives “green living” a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?

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