Nothing to see here

Well, I clearly suck at this. Last week I was basically out of commission. I had to sub at the box factory while someone was on vacation as well as tutor every day. This forced me to get up early and had me occupied until about 4pm every day. I also had softball playoff games every day at 7, so any free time I had was spent taking naps. As for the two weeks before that, I have no excuse. So pretty much no carving took place last week. But I made up for lost time this weekend. I put up some more vacation pictures last night and just put up a large carving update today. I had planned to be through all the vacation pictures by now, but, as I said, I suck. One more batch to go, and then I'll give you some extra info on Ric. He's moderately famous. Or at least more famous than anyone else I know personally.

As for Jesus, my plan is to have the carving finished in the next 2-3 days and then start painting. If all goes well he will be complete by Sunday. My schedule is fairly open this week, with just one last championship softball game tonight and one hour of tutoring on Wednesday since everyone is on vacation, so I should be able to finish on time.

What are the chances someone will read this after I've been gone for three weeks?

I am back from my trips. I got back late Wednesday and promptly sleep all day Thursday. I made sure I did nothing Friday. Saturday I attended a graduation party and Sunday was the annual my-mom's-friends-from-high-school party. Which brings me to today. On one of thos days I put up the few Denver pictures I took. I've also started putting up pictures from California. Started because there's 515 to choose from, so they're going up in groups as I find the time and, more importantly, the desire to go through them. I also started working on the Buddy Christ again today, so there's a few of those added, too. Nothing else to report for now, but I should have something later in the week.

Told you I'd post more

Clearly I'm a lying asshole. Rather than post more often I've gone ahead and given you nothing for over two weeks. Then again, we never agreed to any posting rules, so calling me a lying asshole was very rude. I haven't really been doing anything important. Mostly I'm just a boring person, so I have nothing to write about. But today I bring you an epic tale taking you on a journey not only across a country, but into the soul, to a place where the pain of living is overcome only by the insurmountable fortitude of the human spirit, and to the edge of reason, where the only salvation is the divine. Come on, try not to click that. I dare you.

Our tale beings with the journey of a young man. Let's call him Max. It's his middle name really, but that's what I call him, so you should call him that too. So Christian departs in the early afternoon on Wednesday, July 1, 2009. Oh, Christian is his first name. Christian Max Caterina. Ok, so my brother goes to Pennsylvania. But why would anyone go to that hell hole, you ask? A fair question, but one with a reasonable answer nonetheless. Pennsylvania is the ancestral home of his girlfriend. Maybe. She lives there. Ancestral sounds more epic.

But what sets this journey apart from any other? Ah yes, that age old event that we all face at some point in our lives: major spinal surgery. Faithful followers may recall that our hero (me, not him) was able to coax this from a simple wooden dowl with nothing but his force of will:


As mentioned in this album's description, this mystical flower is likely the only thing that could ensure the success of the surgery. So Max took the flower, ever so carefully, and left on his quest to align the spine. Well, he'll just be sitting there really, hoping for the best.

That portion of our story should come to an end in just one day, but when will we know the ending? For me the answer is tomorrow. But for you, not so fast. Wait, I'm going to see Mike and Judy tomorrow, so for them, also tomorrow. But anyone else, not so fast. Because tomorrow I depart on my own journey. The first leg takes me to the new Hurlewang home. A magically unfurnished place where I will certainly have the pleasure of helping my "hosts" move into the place of hosting. I will toil under the burden of their harsh regiment of games and stuff until I escape on Monday to The Land of a Thousand Sunshine State of California.

There I will meet up with a band of follow travellers, who go by the names my brothers and sister and the girlfriend of my other brother who goes by the name Lucia. There we begin the true purpose of this journey: to visit family in California, some of which I have not seen in over seven years. You see, they use to make the trip out here quite regularly, but as they have grown older, gotten married, and had children they are able to do so with greatly diminished frequency. And as we get older, aren't married, and have no children it's now our turn to do all the work and spend all the money to go see them. So this is where I will be until July 15th. Until then you get no new pictures or posts. Though the posting thing you should be use to by now. But before I go, I drink from my deep reservoir of faith and ask my Buddy Christ to watch over everyone in my absence. But since he's only really half finished I only expect half of you to make it.


Ok, I'm done. That took an hour to do. Go back and read it over and over for an hour so we're even.

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

Greetings you reader types. How are you? Doing ok? You want a soda? You may be wondering if my post title is just a really awesome random string of words. No, that's dumb. I'm too clever for that. But first, I will digress.

My (relatively) intense tutoring schedule abruptly ended this week. I just have a few hours next week and then nothing until mid-July. As such, I may find myself bored enough to put stuff up here more often. No promises, though. +/-

I have completed flower carving today. I will begin painting tomorrow. This calls for a flower picture. And a sexy hand.



Now, I return to the title of this post. As is my habit, I've started preliminary planning for my next thingy before the current one is totally finished. As advertised, my next creation will be a carving of Buddy Christ. Buddy Christ made his film debut in the movie Dogma. He was introduced by Cardinal Glick. If you've somehow never seen this movie, you can watch the relevant portion here:

The words in my title straight from the mouth of the late, great George Carlin, who I think you all recognize from the clip above. So I think it ties everything together nicely. Plus maybe I'll get some traffic from people that actually worship Jesus or pork chops. Let's hope I can carve this one as well as I drew it:



Peace be upon you.

Of Balls and Jesus

Ball in cage is complete. Really, it's been complete for the last three days, but I got lazy. And some family people showed up for the weekend. But now it's stained and finished. The ball is trapped and it rolls around, so I consider it a success. I can tell it will be something that mesmerizes Mike for years.

I'll still be working a bunch for the next three weeks or so, so I'm holding off on my next big thing for now. Instead I will be working on a flower complete with stem and flower parts. I will be interested to see if this one is better than the last one I made nearly nine months ago.

I do, however, have something in mind after I finish this flower. I have yet to use my relatively new hobby to blaspheme, but that's all about to change.

Doesn't it... pop?

Ibis completion day

Ok, so it took a few more days than I wanted, but the ibis is done now. It was really done on Monday, but I decided it needed another coat of white late last night. It magically stands on its own two feet. And you thought my four years at an engineering school were a waste. Here's a picture.


Are you out there Aziz? I tried calling you the other day. I miss you. Call me. I have a bird for you.

haha tricked you I'm still alive

Now that I've surely convinced everyone this isn't worth looking at anymore, I can finally post. Don't worry, it's going to be short. I just haven't been doing much carving, and so I don't have much of anything to say. It's been a mixure of work and arabs keeping me from the wood. Things get a bit crazy for me this time of the year, as parents realize their children are failing math classes and it might be good to maybe do something about it with less than two months of school left. I'm also doing a lot more SAT stuff this year, and that's coming up in early June. To add to all that, arab Mike was here yet again for work, and after entertaining him all week we drove to Maryland few a couple days to see asians. That concludes my list of excuses. Now, my jew friend is coming back from Miami in about a week, so I'm really going to try to finish this bird by the end of the weekend. I'll update you on my failure at that point.

titletitletitletitletitletitle

You may have noticed a decline in the amount of carving I've been doing. There are reasons for this. I will list them now. Mike was back for another week. Work is entering a busy time. Yesterday was Easter. But things should pick up some this week as Mike is not visiting, some schools have the week off, and it is not Easter.

Nothing else to report. I just want you guys to know I was quite proud of your commenting this week. I think this one is my most commented photo ever.

You can also check out Mike's contribution to the Ibis.

I can't think of good titles

Birthday weekend is over. It was a success. At least for me. I assume everyone else had fun, but I'm most important, so it was a success. For those that don't know, which may be exactly two of you, Mike and Sophie have birthdays on March 26 and mine is on the 29th. So we decided to get everyone together this past weekend. Everyone means Mike and Judy from Colorado, Victor and Sophie from Maryland, and Eric and Chrissy from Connecticut. As my place of residence is most centrally located, everyone came here. +/-

I was finally able to deliver these three creations:


I've had Brutus the Buckeye since January, but he's finally found his way to Eric, the Ohio State Buckeye's fan. I was able to pass off the dragon and the Hermes as birthday gifts for Mike and Sophie respectively. I think the real Hermes has already tried mating with the wooden Hermes. And the wooden dragon has already burned three villages.

Speaking of gifts, I was blessed to receive this from Victor and Sophie:


For you lame-o people out there, that is an Edward Cullen figure. Edward is the super sexy vampire from Twilight. Look it up. No more time to explain. I've got to go stare into his eyes.

Oh yeah, I started planning the Ibis, but I don't think I'll start carving until this weekend.

Quick hits before I stay

Got some guests coming here this weekend, so nothing from me until after that.

Hermes is complete.

I might actually take a week off from carving to work on some other stuff, so maybe nothing from me for the next 10 days.

Laterz.

I'll be back....is what I should have said earlier because now I am back

My analysis of the problem turned out to be correct. New power supply arrived today and things are running well. I decided on continuing pictures as I go since the problem was quickly resolved and half of you probably don't even realize I had no computer. If you've been dying to see a couple hundred wooden feathers it's your lucky day.

Tastes like burning

I'm sleepy, but I feel obligated to write something. My carving schedule has been a bit inconsistent this last week or so, as you may have notcied from the gaps of days between pictures. But I'm entering the home stretch with Hermes, so I resolved to spend more time working on it/her. This makes sense when you consider that I need to finish by next Wednesday. So today was going to be the start of the glorious process of feathering an entire foot tall bird. Luckily my computer shut off an hour before I had to go tutor and it would not turn back on. I'm hoping the faint odor of burning was just the power supply dying. So rather than work on the bird, I spent most of my time investigating computery things and hooking up my old computer all sandwiched around four hours of math. I feel like I used the word "so" too many times.

You might be thinking that this really has nothing to do with carving. Aside from eating up a bunch of my time it wouldn't really, except for the fact that all my pictures are on a computer that won't turn on. If it was the power supply things should be back to normal in a couple days. There likely won't be pictures put up until that point. I may not put them up anyway until after Hermes is complete. We'll see how things go. If something else was burning I may just /wrist and be done with it. HAVE GOOD NIGHT EVERYONE!!!

generically titled post to honor generically titled baseball stuff with dionysum

What up what up. Working on Hermes now. Hermes is a female spirochete. That's not true, but it sounds kinda like parakeet. The truth is I have no idea what Hermes is other than bird. The real question here is why have you named your female bird after a male god? I'm speaking to the mainlanders here. How many people are thoroughly confused at this point? I hope at least one of you. So yeah, working on a bird.

I'll probably update the coming attractions stuff tomorrow, but up next will be another bird. I normally don't like to do two similar things in a row, but my boy Azziz (pronounced Ozzie (this is an inside joke that only he and I will understand (note the rare use of triple parathenses here, somthing only a pro can manage (pro at what I have no idea)))) is graduating from law school in May. He goes to The U and has settled on some bird related to The U with some symbol related to The U on it. Anyway, check for something on that tomorrow.

Finally, EMG has started a baseball blog. For those of you that care about baseball, check it out. I linked to it in the read or else section. My hope is there will be some trash talking here or there once the season starts. Or now. Hahahahah Carl Pavano. And you can't come back at me with A-Rod. That's just too cliche.

There were actually a lot of respectable (which means insulting to normal people) comments the last two weeks. Unfortunately they're kind of spread out. But if you're bored start here and then when you run out of those you can move to here.

AND THE DRAGON COMES IN THE NIIIIIGHT!!!!

I have actually been doing stuff the last few days even though there haven't been pictures. One thing I was doing was considering my options for the wings. You can see more on that in the pictures I added tonight. While pondering I was also painstakingly filling in tiny unpainted spots between scales. I didn't think this would be interesting so I haven't been putting up pictures of that. I also started work on the next project. My feeble system of photo organization can't handle two current projects, though. I believe I have completed the dragon, so expect a bunch of pictures from the new thing to show up tomorrow.

Victor was kind enough to post some encouraging comments this week. Check them out. Oh, and earmuffs before you start reading them.

And if you'd like to understand the title of this post you should view this.

Can I resuse titles if I wait a long time between posts? I want to reuse "What? Oh, this thing. Right."

You were wondering if I crapped out on this idea. A combination of me not feeling like it and me not having anything interesting to say means I've neglected posting for weeks. So I guess I did crap out, but not forever. I'm not sure crap out is grammatically correct. Judy, help me out here. +/-

Anyway, I finished carving the dragon tonight. Tomorrow I will be painting. I'll be putting up pictures as I go rather than one large update, so check in often. Or don't. It's not going to be that exciting. And it's not like they're going anywhere. You can look whenever you want really. Shut up. Here's a dragon picture.



There were some riddles, but as far as I can tell only Mike is enjoying them lately, and he's gotten them right so I'm going to skip the solutions this time. Complain here if joo got a problem.

I live dangerously

I feel so guilty for being sick I've decided to give you another post after less than a week. I'm so thoughtful. This one is rife with danger and intrigue but no intrigue really. And SAT questions. +/-

First the danger. My glove has become increasing tattered. This week things got real bad.


Being ever so safety conscious I ordered some new gloves. But alas, I immediately cut that thumb.


It's deeper than it looks, but my toughness kind of cancels it out. Thankfully the gloves arrived a couple days later before I could manage to remove the entire finger.


The one on the right is roughly three times cheaper so I'm going to try it out and see if it's more than 1/3 as safe.

I've updated the coming attractions with two new projects.

As for the dragon I received some encouraging words from Judy, a rare commentator. Victor had to jump in and ruin the good vibes, though.

There were also two more SAT questions. Mike is now 3 for 3 on these. He's like a really smart high school student trapped in a 27 year old who was eaten by an ogre. Here's number one and here's number two.

Answers below.

Six Cards

Answer: 2/15

To add up to three the first card can be 3 or less. This means 4 out of the 6. Whatever the first card is, there's only one card that will work for the second one to make them add up to 3. 1 out of the 5 remaining. So the chance the cards up to 3 is 4/6 * 1/5 or 2/15 or 13.33..%.


Geese

Answer: 280

We can say there were originally x geese. If 1/5 of them leave, that means 4/5 are left, so ater 1 pm there are (4/5)x geese. Then 1/8 leave, so 7/8 of those remain. Now there are (7/8)(4/5)x geese or (7/10)x geese. At 3 pm three times as many leave as at 1pm, so (3/5)x leave meaning there are now (7/10)x - (3/5)x geese, or (1/10)x geese. (1/10)x must equal 28, so x must be 280.

What? Oh, this thing. Right.

No, I didn't stop doing this thing. I was sick last week and also working a lot. As a result, I can come up with more excuses. I really was sick, though. But I'm back now!!! +/-

Also, there's not really much to report. Not anything interesting anyway. I'm working on the dragon. I'm feeling good about it. Like it might be really awesome. After some direction from Mike and response from me I think I have the design nailed down. Uh, give me a sec while I see if there was anything interesting since last time.

Ok, there were a couple riddlish puzzles and an SAT question. First riddle here. Eric cheated and used Excel, and I don't think anyone else tried it.

Here's the second one featuring everyone's favorite band, U2, and everone's favorite constructed tool, a bridge. Mike had a unique solution.

Finally, the first of six SAT questions I copied from real tests while sitting around for an hour after someone cancelled the other day.

So here's answers for those three.

Cows, Geese, and Chicken

The answer is 3 cows, 31 geese, and 56 chickens. There are probably a lot of ways to do this, but I just used a system of two equations.

cows + geese + chicken = 100
15*cows + 1*geese + .25*chicken = 100

Substituting and solving for cows gives

cows = (3/56) * chicken

Since it doesn't make sense to have fractional animals, and there can't be more than 100 of any animal, chicken must be 56, so cows must be 3 and geese must be 31.


U2 and the Bridge of DOOOOOOOM

Bono and Edge cross first, taking 2 minutes. Bono returns, taking 1 minute. He gives the flashlight to Adam and Larry, who then cross, taking 10 minutes. Edge takes the flashlight and goes back across, taking 2 minutes. He comes back with Bono, taking another 2 minutes for a total of 17. You can switch Bono and Edge throughout this and still do it in 17 minutes.


Triangle of DOOOOOOM

First consider a right triangle with the two legs being 6 and 7. This has area 21, so obviously 21 is an answer. Any other configuration results in a smaller area, so 24 is impossible, but 13 is obtainable.

Back and better than some previous state but perhaps there was some previous state that was still better than the current state

I'm still feeling lazy, so this is going to be short. Florida was fun. See more in the new Florida New Year's photos. I've removed the Eric Visit from public view, but it's available through the link on the right to you, my faithful viewers. As an added bonus I've put the original Florida trip back up there as well. You know, in case you are really super bored and want to see those again.

Ohio State lost the Fiesta Bowl, which puts a damper on the Brutus the Buckeye thing, but I don't really care. I think mostly Eric cares. He was, however, kind/bored enough to ask a question about frogs and stones and love and betrayal, but I accidentally erased it. Oops. That's all I got for now. Like I said, still feeling lazy.

Year end something or other

Well, I've been doing this carving thing for roughly four months now. Sometimes it seems like I'm not really getting much better, but I guess when you look at it from that perspective I'm doing fine. I don't have any more reflection. It's fun and I do it. Pretty simple really. +/-

The lion is finished, so for now enjoy these pictures. You can see the full set with all your comments in the finished projects section.

Completed lion:

The lion was always for my sister, but thanks to some fortunate timing and manipulation of the rules it was also able to fulfill my secret santa obligation. Of course, I have to make it extra entertaining, so I carefully boxed her gift and wrapped it with some nice Christmas wrapping paper. When she opened it she saw this:


She tends to cry when she's laughing hard. I didn't hurt her this time. She is also insisted on keeping the full block of wood that cost me $14. Couple more of her with the lion(s).


My brother also cheated to get me as his gift receivulator. He got me a sharpening stone for my knives.



The oil is freshly squeezed from my hair. I think it's olive oil.

On the fun riddle front there were really only a couple things this week. Mike sumbitted this guy, which no one actually answered. Are you going to let him win like that?



I gave you these two as well.

As usual, here are some answers.

For the triangle problem, the key is to realize that the two things aren't actually triangles. The red and green triangles in each picture have different slopes, so they don't actually make a straight line when joined up. One line is slightly indented and one bulges slightly. This accounts for the one missing block.

For the pool problem start by figuring out how many pools each pipe can fill or empty in one hour. This comes out to 1/3 and 1/6 filled and 1/9 emptied. Together they fill 1/3 + 1/6 - 1/9 pools in one hour. Multiplying by the .64 hours we want we get .25.

For the pyramid problem the fact that both must have the same mass means that the one with 1/7 density must have 7 times greater volume. While it helps to know the formula for volume of a pyramid, V = (1/3)Bh, it's enough to know that volume has units of some measurement cubed. Since all measurements in a scale model must increase or decrease proportionally, height will increase as a cube root of volume. This means the original height of 6 gets mulitplied my the cube root of 7, giving a final height of 11.48.

I'll be going to Florida for a week on Sunday, so nothing new for at least that long. When I get back I'll update the preview section and start something new. In the mean time feel free to entertain each other in my absence. By that I mean fill this thing up with racial slurs and jokes about moms and faces and what she said.

Needs more cinnamon

It was another week filled with riddles and puzzles. I shifted away from math heavy questions to more logic based stuff. Some of you spent up to three hours answering some of these, while others spent up to three hours writing computer programs that would answer for you. At least you didn't spend that time working at your jobs where you get paid to work. +/-

You'll find the first question here. There's still some math involved in this, but I think everyone was able to get it. Mike also posted another problem in the comments. That one is entirely logic based.

For whatever reason people decided to be mean in this picture and in the next one. At least keep the criticism focused on my I-talianess like everyone else does, Mike. When you make fun of my wood I cry.

I kept up the logic theme with this question. Victor was able to get it in roughly three hours, while Mike spent that much time relearning Prolog and having a computer solve it. He was thoughtful enough to include his code for everyone else to enjoy.

I gave you two puzzles near the end of the week, which you can find below in "Two for one fun." Again Mike was able to write a program to solve these, but so far no one else has solved them.

Mike has also provided something for you to think about this week. The picture below says it all.

AND FINALLY, AND THIS IS IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE OF HOW IMPORTANT IT IS, I LEAVE YOU WITH A VERY SPECIAL VIDEO. ENJOY.

Solutions to last week's questions are here.

Address question:

The address of Mr. Street is 14 Main Street.

There are 8 possible combinations of answers on the three questions:

Case: Which block? Even? Square? Conclusion
A first yes yes 4 or 16
B first yes no many
C first no yes 1 or 9
D first no no many
E second yes yes 36
F second yes no many
G second no yes 25 or 49
H second no no many

Now it turns out that we only shoud consider cases A and G (because then the question about whether there is a 4 in the number makes sense). In case A the real number should be larger than 20, odd and no square. But then it would be impossible for Mr. House to know the correct number.
So we're left with case G. Mr. Street lives in the first block, with an even number, which is not a square. There is only one number which has a 4 in it, number 14.
Mr. House was told by the passer-by to go to number 25. But Mr. Street lives on 14 Main Street.


The fish question:

The answer is the German, but the process takes too long, so I'm not going to go through it all.


Long division problem:

The letters and numbers match up like this:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
F L O W S U N D E R

This might take too long to explain, but I'll give it a shot. F has to be 0 because of the last subraction where D-D=F. U is 1 more than S and N is 1 more than U because both subtract to nothing, meaning in each case one was borrowed before the subraction. Similarly, E is one more than D because in the second subraction E-F=D. Since F is 0 E must have had one borrowed first. L is the letter that needed to borrow this one, so it must be less than D. From the last subraction D-N=L didn't need to borrow from the U, so D > N. L did have to borrow from N in the second subraction though, so L is also less than N. From all of this we know that so far the letters SUN and DE must be next to each other with DE being higher than SUN. We can write those borrowed subractions involving L as the equations 10+L-D=S and 10+L-N=U. Some rearranging tells us that D+S=N+U. With the fact that SUN must be together, this means DE must follow right after the N. The only numbers that now work for these letters are S=4, U=5, N=6, D=7, and E=8. From here it's relatively simple subractions to fine the other letters. There are also probably other ways to figure this out.


Two for one fun puzzles:

For the first puzzle it works out this way:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
A D E G C I H F B

There are only two ways to add to 33. Either 98763 or 98754. G must be 4 though, because the other 8 spaces total 21 and 20 and the numbers 1-9 total 45. So the 33 is made by the numbers 98754. This leaves a total of 12 for the other spots, made by the numbers 1236. The only possible combination for 17 that works with the above facts is 467, so H must be 7 and I must be 6. This leaves 7 more in C and D to complete the 20. 3+4 is not possible because the 4 is used, so these must be 5+2, with the 5 in C and the 2 in D. Now the only remaining numbers that work for 15 are 483, so E is 3 and F is 8. This leave a for A and 9 for B.


Second puzzle:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
F A E I B G D H C

This one is a little tougher.The 22 and 15 include everything except H, so H must be 8. There is only one way to sum to 34 and that's with 98764. This leaves 1235 for the other spots. 4 can't be part of 22 or 24 because it is too small given the constraints that A, B, E, and F are some combination of 1, 2, 3, and 5. This means the only place 4 can go is I. The 24 also can't have both 6 and 7 for the same reason. This means 9 must be part of 24. The 9 can't be part of the 15 because this would require 123 to be the other 3 spots for 15, but the one of those spots is shared with 34 which can't have 1, 2, or 3. This puts 9 at C. The only way to reach 24 is 9753, so D is 7 and G is 6. To reach 15 F must 1 and E must be 3 and to reach 22 A must be 2 and B must be 5.