10000 spit balls, wet oat meal, and 2 laws

What do you get when you combine all of the above? A Popcorn Textured ceiling and a BIG mess!

This weekend I thought I would tackle the job of patching Mackenzie's Popcorn ceiling, come on how hard could it be. So I went to Home Depot and bought 2 cans of spray on Popcorn texture and a can of primer.

I then went to work. First I cut away a square for me to repair. Second, I picked most of the crap that fell and put it in the garbage can. Next, I sprayed the square with primer. then waited 10 minutes and applied another coat of primer. Then I waited 30 minutes and went to work on applying the texture.

The can said to "curtain" off the area. At first I thought...psshhh, I don't need to do that. Then I thought...ya I better do that. So I curtained off the 2 squares I had prepared. Then the wife decided she wanted to watch. Then the "fun" began.

You are supposed to apply this stuff in 1/2 second spurts. So after shaking the can for what felt like 10 minutes I was ready to apply the texture. What came next is not for the faint of hurt. So I pulled the nozzle and out exploded what seems like what can only be described as this:

Invite 10,000 of your friends over. Then feed them a bunch of oatmeal, but while they are chewing the oatmeal have all 10,000 of them spit out their spit balls at the same time. All aiming at the same place. oh and you are standing right under that place. Now this is where the 2 laws come in. The first one is Newtons Law 2nd law, the one having to due with gravity. Remember you are applying this stuff to the ceiling. So gravity is working against you here. And then apply Newton's 3rd Law, the one about for every action there is an opposite.........anyway you get the point. When the "texture" HITS the ceiling some of it sticks, but apply Newton's 3rd Law to the rest. The stuff that didn't stick, bounced off the wall with the same force, and I do mean force, that was applied to it in the first place. OK so when the 3rd law ran it's course the 2 Law started kicking in. Gravity was taking it's toll on the stuff that did stick initially. So now the "texture" starts dropping from the ceiling. Lovely, and to top it all off, this stuff stinks!

So now I have 10,000 oatmeal covered spit balls either falling on me or bouncing off of the ceiling and hitting me. Oh what fun!

The good news is that on the 2nd square I learned some stuff. The stuff isn't as messy and works much better if you keep the nozzle further from the ceiling.

So after all of this I think I repaired Mackenzie's ceiling, I can't tell yet because the smell makes me sick, so I haven't looked yet. But it still smells 18 hours after being applied, and i have the window open.

Karate Demo

A couple of weekends ago we did a karate demonstration at a local street fair(Red Lion, PA). Today I received some pictures of me from the street fair. I have never seen a picture of me breaking before so i was very excited when I saw the pictures. I had posted previously about breaking concrete with my arm(elbow strike), well this time I decided I would use my foot. The results were much better, i think. Only got a bruised heel. Anyway here is a picture from the demonstration. In the picture I am breaking 2 concrete scallops, each weighs 22lbs.

For a better view click on the picture. Let me know what you think.

For My BlazeNet Peeps...

A little background. When I worked at BlazeNet we had to put servers together and rack them in server racks. This would be fine as long as you could find the tools needed to do this, but being able to find the tools was often the hardest part of the task. Usually we had to make due, with tools that weren't really the right tools. Or we could go upstairs and beg for a screwdriver, which was normally not well received.

Well I am now at a new company, but I am still doing the same things(plus a few other things). So today we got a new rack, myself and another person had to install the rack. Well he also came from a place that tools were sparce, so we cringed when we found that we needed tools. We then called the facilities guy who supplied us with an ajustable wrench, but we needed other tools. So we went upstairs to ask for a tool, when one of the managers told us that all we had to do was go to the file cabinet in the lab and there were tool kits there and we could each have our own. WHAT? We could have our own tools? That is unheard of, so we went and looked and wouldn't you know it...toolkits for each of us.

So now I have my very own toolkit. It is a nice one too, a Jensen Computer Technician Toolkit, as seen above in the picture.

Lacking...

...it seems like my blogs have been far and few between lately, so i thought I would write one. Not about one thing, but about a couple of things that I have noticed or thought about lately.

First, I was at the grocery store the other night picking up a few things. And I don't usually go to Giant Grocery stores, long story, but I happened to go this night. As I was waiting to check out, the cashier asked the guy in front of my if he had his Giant Bonus Card. His reply struck me as the best comment I have ever heard. He responded with.."No, but I have this little tiny one." Now you be the judge, but come one that is a pretty good response.

Last night I found myself with the wife and a group of people from her work at my first York Revolution Baseball Game. It reminded me of a couple of things, baseball is boring to watch in person, York isn't half bad, and the stadium is quite nice. But the one thing that caught my ear was the vendor walking the stands. I could have swore he called out, "Oatmeal, popcorn, crackerjacks!", but the wife insists he said, "Cold Beer, popcorn, crackerjacks!" York lost by a score of 7-2. It was tied going into the 8th inning and they were only down by a run going into the 9th inning, but managed to lose by 5, ouch!