Diary of a Mad Scientist

I’ve FINALLY discovered the point of twitter posts after reading some by a friend who does a good job of it (many people seem to post fairly uninteresting stuff like what they had for dinner and how they liked it). I go through my day sometimes having micro-adventures, and it’s not always enough stuff to write a real blog post about. Plus I can post from my phone easily. I started thinking about this when I started going to a daytime machinist class at a community college, where most of my classmates are straight out of high school and say, let’s just say, “the darnedest things". Rachel Burton said she should have written a book about her similar experiences with very young fellow students in mechanic school.

http://twitter.com/girlmark

I just got the go-ahead to do a Biodiesel Essentials class in Wilmington, sponsored by Cape Fear Biofuels. More info coming shortly.

Biodiesel Production Essentials
Class dates Dec 6-7, 10am-5 pm
$120/$108 earlybird registration discount
www.girlmark.com/tour

Really bad shop fires and deaths keep following me around, none of them related to biodiesel (see blog about Chatham Alignment burning down and the tow company owner dying after dealing with me). I’ll post a longer blog about the ‘fire in between’ that happened this summer- it’s eerie how many of these things there were in a short period right after I was present.

So… my ex-shop NIMBY in Oakland had a fire, which caused a horrible and inevitable eviction process. Tom had just moved ALL of his stuff in there from our other ex-shop. They’d been trying really hard to get me to put my stuff in there in storage and vacate our former space at Xian. If I hadn’t been as sick, I might have gone for it, I was there a lot this spring and really liked a few of the new tenants and the fancy woodworking studio one of them set up.

And, you guessed it, one of the guys near the fire is a mechanic who worked on my van quite a lot.

I have about one mechanic left, and he’s due to work on the VW next week. Uh oh…

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First of all, here are some reviews of NIMBY that describe it well- a shop and huge, illegal performance space:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/n-i-m-b-y-space-oakland

And, a couple of dirges:

http://www.nimbyspace.org/

And another writeup right after the fire:

NIMBY CATCHES FIRE
>
>It was a refrigerator-type container, 2nd level, in the back lower
>bay. It’s the one that had the rickety staircase to a 3rd level
>container. Alan and Ryan’s shared box was underneath, though Alan was
>mostly moved out.
>
>The container was rented by a new tenant, just moved in yesterday.
>She apparently did timelapse photography with candles, but the fire
>was most likely started by her space heater, which she left on when
>she went home at 4:30 this morning.
>
>Simon, Gimpy, and Annie attempted to fight the fire when it was
>detected. They broke the window out of the container, and emptied
>about eight dry-chemical extinguishers in there. However, they ran
>out of fire extinguishers and were unable to continue to control it.
>The fire department was called, and they got the fire under control.
>Actual damage includes the container that burned, the empty one on top
>of it, and possibly some of the stuff underneath.
>
>Nobody was seriously hurt. Everyone on the scene has some minor smoke
>inhalation, and Simon burned his hands on the door.
>
>According to Simon, after the fire was out the fire marshall spent
>about 15 minutes walking around the warehouse listing code violations
>into his cellphone. This was without opening any containers.
>Everyone was told to leave the building. It’s now padlocked and
>sealed, and only Snook is allowed to enter. It’ll apparently be like
>this for a few days. The OFD will be doing a detailed inspection of
>the entire premises, and calling in inspectors from other departments
>as well.

Aah, Labor Day at the Piedmont Biofuels Industrial plant, when hardly anyone was around, and Chef Satanica shows up with steaks to throw on the recently-pre-seasoned-with-burnt-pig-flavor gas grill. Dead holidays are some of the few times when the plant resembles an actual ‘normal’ industrial factory at an off hour. The rest of the time the campus there is teeming with life at all hours, sometimes putting the ‘park’ back in Industrial Park, especially when people’s kids come around after school to skate or otherwise play on the paved driveway. This time it was just a few farmers at work, ignoring the holidays since farmers don’t do days off, their dogs lounging around the facility that gave away the fact that this wasn’t just another ‘plant’ setting.

When the cats are away a few mice will… have the run of the place in the blazing heat and use the oily-smelling offices and plant kitchen as an air-conditioned refuge.

But, more importantly- look what’s on the grill: I learned this trick on Infopop from Big Mike- grilled pineapple. It’s the most amazing addition to a cookout. I just about died eating this amazingness