» School Projects

The most Dangerous Project for a 12 year old...
Ok, 8th grade (yep, American with chagrin) Physical Science II class.

"Build a project related to class". Went to in school library and found book on "Fun Science Projects for Teens". Hmmm this looks interesting, "Carbon Arc Furnace".

What this was, was a home-built way to "melt soft metal using electricity".

You see all you have to do it take two batteries apart for the carbon rod inside, mount them to two wooden posts, run lamp wire from a home power outlet, through a OPEN GLASS CONTAINER OF WATER and salt, then to the two carbon rods, when the rods are brought in proximity the electricity jumps across and heats a flat ceramic tile held above it.

The teacher looked at my finished device, dubiously, and asked if it was "safe", of course I said yes. Do I want the lights turned off for effect? "Ok".

Cue me bringing the two rods together holding TWO THOUSAND WATTS of electricity about 12 inches, apparently a death-proof distance, in front of my face (in the dark).

This thing makes the Van de Graf Generator demonstration done in most science class’s cry in shame at their impotence. It made a lighting bolt sound and a 1/4" diameter arc 1 1/2" wide. No one in his or her right mind would let an ADULT build or operate this thing.

Suffice to say I blew the lights in SIX classrooms and permanently was called "Einstein" for the remaining five years of public school.

ADDENDUM: As an after thought I thought I would add that the lampcord was connected to the carbon rods by rapping them around and twisting the wire, the lam cord in the beaker of solution was two bare wires hanging and unsecured the in beaker. The two rods were moved together with my hands less than 1 inch from the rods, bare wires, and beaker leads.

So:

Touch a carbon rod: Die (teacher goes to jail)
Touch a wire: Die (teacher goes to jail)
Knock over the beaker whilst wiggling the contraption and spilling electrified liquid: Die (teacher goes to jail)
Unsecured beaker wires falls out of beaker and touch it:Die (teacher goes to jail)
Looking Directly into High Intensity Ultra-Violet (X-ray) radiation for too long: Blindness (teacher goes to jail)


Footnote: I just decided to build another one THAT"S how cool it was.
(Sat 15th Aug 2009, 11:45, More)

» Failed Projects

CB Bicycle
On around 12 years old I had a CB radio that was used to communicate the most inane drivel ever to drivel out of a driveling 12 year old. Anyway...one day, for reasons best long forgotten (finding girls houses) I decided that it would be awesome to mount this on my bike and triangulate for the aforeforgotten reason (girls). Using the various finely crafted machining facilities, tools, and superior fabrication materials at my disposal (garage floor/side of coin as a screwdriver/scrap metal junk left around) I somehow managed to mount the CB between the handle bars.

Needing to obtain an battery and antenna proved no problem as my neighbor conveniently left one of each secured to his new car in his locked garage. One butter knife later and the garage side window lock was free...and so were the battery and antenna.

Now the bike I had had one of those impressively useless metal "book racks" on the back, you know the kind with the 400 ft/lb tension hold down spring, but the design and capacity to hold somewhat less than one comic book. To a twelve year old this is MORE than sufficient to support a 20 kg battery and antenna, and it did until...

Driving down a steep grass hill at full speed the front tire dropped fully and resolutely into a deviously unseen hole followed by "slow speed" of the rear tire, battery, and 8 foot antenna attempting to be the first to travel to the moon unaided by rockets but instead pivoting on the front axle, snapping the bike rack neatly on both aluminum support twigs, and nearly skewering, decapitating, and crushing me simultaneously.

I couldn't believe it! (Man was I dumb at 12.)

Was my mother at home to comfort me when I dragged my bloody body and this mass of metal wreckage back? No...but the neighbor was, and didn't that battery and antenna look familiar...
.
.
(Sun 6th Dec 2009, 13:18, More)

» Festivals

Quiet Riot on the Island
In the army, anything can happen...

Weekend arrives, one of the other soldiers knows of an outdoor all day rock concert 50 miles away and as I have the only car...

Cue new guy (Joe) to the unit asking if he can join us. Five crammed into my car and Mike on his motorcycle we get there under cloudy skys. Mike immediately flips his motorcycle climbing the hill (mountain) to the campsites. We spend the night on a steep hillside during a torrential downpour in a tent with a 6 inch river running through it. Next day the show starts and we begin accelerated intoxication.

Midway through the day the new guy causes some trouble. Mike walks up behind the new guy to yell at him and he turns around and delivers the most perfect punch right on the jaw of Mike who then fell backwards and cracks his head (I can still hear it) against the corner of a two foot stone wall. Blood everywhere and our first thought is, yep dead. However Mike is instantly on his feet and delivers a beating like you never saw to the new guy, who we then drag behind some trees.

Fifteen awesome bands later Quiet Riot (the headliner) is set to begin playing, however the police show up and tells them the concert permit has expired and the show is over. Cue the cops and the bands management engaged in some animated discussion while we prepare for disappointment.

Five minutes later as police drive away, lead singer announces that though they were scheduled to play a 20 minute set, they were ordered to stop or pay a $10,000 fine, he then says in his rock star voice, "We didn't come all the way out here for nothing, Fuck the $10,000, Fuck the Police".

Then on this little island in a lake in Tennessee, they played three hours of the most headbanging rock I have ever heard, called previous bands in to join them, invited and got girls to dance topless on the stage, shot dozens of towers of flame 30 feet high, smashed guitars and threw them into the water. Awesome Event!



Quiet Riot one month after the release of their first album playing 50 feet from shore on a little island on a fresh water lake in Tennesee in Spring.
(Sun 7th Jun 2009, 21:28, More)

» I don't understand the attraction

StripClubs
Why Why Why, would anyone think that they would rather spend a single second of their time looking at a smoking hot girl rather than spending that second banging ANY girl. Each bachelor party I am bored to death and frustrated at the uselessness of "looking but not touching". I can not resolve how weak you would have to be to want to sit in your chair like a sheeple and not take action, and yet, still think it is enjoyable in some way.
(Sat 17th Oct 2009, 16:53, More)

» Asking people out

Well not exactly my story...
But a friend of mine of well-limited I.Q. and well below average looks, (tested 88 in high school and 10-scales about a 3-4 when he pulls in his gut) had the highest pull percentage of anyone I ever knew...and I was in the army and knew many and their exploits. Now he was a simple guy and absolutely sincere and never acted like he cared about the women in any intensive way and, in fact he had no concern about the looks of the women or anything about her.

What mystical strategy got him 98%+ results? He would wait about one hour after the clubs open, well before women were even showing effects, then, when the music was really loud would always go to the VERY FIRST GIRL at the end of the bar and say "Wanna Fuck"? Upon failure would go to the very next girl "Wanna Fuck?". No set-up, no nothing, no banter AT ALL. Now as you can imagine each following girl saw the reaction of the previous girls and he would be wiping drinks off with napkins but HE NEVER STOPPED.

Nearly every time the sixth or seventh girl (we used to take bets which one), who by now KNEW the punch line even though they could not hear it, would accept and out of the club they would go.

I saw him get the most random assortment of girls you could imagine, from two-ton crane hoisters to models and I witnessed him do this successfully for TEN YEARS.

MORAL: Every 6th or 7th girl (on average) has the same opinion about looks, sex, and spending 4 hours in a club as he had.

Supplemental: He never worked a lick, never spent more than the cost of getting in and one drink (99% of the time that was borrowed from us), and never felt even the tiniest bit embarrassed about the process. Every time this guy went with us was hilarious, embarrassing and occasionally humiliating, all for us...he wasn't worried what we thought either.
(Fri 11th Dec 2009, 8:48, More)