SinDoc

I have several friends who work in IT. One on the server side went to India a few years back for 2 months to train a brand new call center (who would've guessed)for L-brands. He said it was an interesting but fun experience but was very happy when it was time to come back home.

I had considered the possibility of a career switch into programming, as my buddy makes a ton more than I ever will. I haven't because I can't afford to go back to school to "properly" learn how to code, and it is quite unlikely I could get my foot in the door otherwise. I have been slowly yet surely teaching myself how to code in Python, which syntax wise, I find MUCH easier to understand vs VB/VBA. I have messed with shell scripts, but our IT really frowns upon that and last time I started executing things using PowerShell, I got a stern talking to by our divisions IT department head to please not. He also strongly suggested I stop using BATCH files . I guess when you start using PowerShell to mess with registry items to fix something, it really, REALLY upsets IT.

Adlai is probably more savvy than I. I was approached with a problem at work one day with our quoting process and they wanted a solution that didn't cost them $1000+ a month in license fees, so I offered to try to do it myself. A year and a half later, I had taught myself how to code using VBA (and some python) and built an Access database from the ground up to solve said problem. I now get stuck with anything Access related and since VB/VBA more or less works with the entire 365 suite (it is Microsoft's programming language after all), I get all kinds of weird request from others for Excel. Some are as simple as showing them how to write a certain formula to achieve what they are after (VLOOKUP does tend to through people for loops sometimes), others want full blown automation that does a large chunk of their job with the click of a button. Thankfully my being helpful hasn't resulted in anyone losing their job yet. My friend who is an actual full stack programmer has had the unfortunate experience of that being the end result of something he has made because the tool made the person redundant. I could go for some password tattoos. Maybe I wont forget them all the time then! Slightly funny side story. I once kept forgetting my password for admin rights on my database, so I planted it within the code. Now if I can't remember it, if I run a discontinued block of code, the error it outputs is the password.

Purely a post for my ranting so I can contain my madness into a single area. Will contain blacksmithing stuff as well as non-blacksmithing stuff, so Everything Else seemed to be the correct spot. I haven't gotten to forge in about a week or so. Been trying to get my bathroom back in order, but motivation is on 6 week backorder like everything else is now. When I thought I was finally going to have time to get out and fire up the forge again, I instead spent the evening on my laptop developing a new feature for the Access database I built for my work that my boss requested as I was walking out the door. So rather than enjoying some forging time, I got to stare at my laptop and write a couple pages of code and spend the remaining bit of my evening debugging . Being the "techie" at work was fun at first, but now it can be a tad annoying at times. Trying to get other things done or am working on something else when people come to me asking if I can write them a macro or a new function for their excel workbook that makes some aspect of their job easier. I am all for helping, don't get me wrong, but boy can it be frustrating when I want to do other things. I have spent the majority of this morning developing a fresh Excel workbook for the boss that will import data from other workbooks, compile the data, then spit it back out into a nice, neat and organized report sorted however they specify then load it into tables and Pivot charts. Will probably spend the rest of evening working on it to get the charts and layouts working nicely as well. Once this is done, I get to root through my database and try to find what record a salesman corrupted and borked an entire job so it can be re-accessed by others. Then I have to try to come up with more verifications before records are committed to prevent it from happening again. I need a raise.

That sounds like an extremely unfun thing for the tank crew Billy.

The company I work for (CED) never went all in on the work from home, even for us office people. During the bad spikes of cases, we did split crews were half were working in office and the other half worked from home. While it was nice to work from home, it was rough. Motivation to stay busy was in very short supply and to make the matter worse, I didn't have the tools to properly do my job at home. Hard to work on jobs when I had no printer, let alone a plotter and only a 24" monitor.

Was that the weapon commonly known as the Paris Cannon per chance?

St Petersburg is one of the places I would like to visit. The other would probably be Moscow of course. I play a game that is from a Russian dev and (supposedly) uses actual areas in Russia for their map design. Pretty fun, yet hardcore FPS (Escape From Tarkov) and is probably one of the best shooter games I have ever played.

Oooo that reminds me! Have you ever heard of Project Thor? Long story short and simply put, it is an idea on more or less dropping/firing Tungsten rods from space to cause massive kinetic impacts. When the rod hits its target, it would be moving several times the speed of sound (I think somewhere like 6-8 times). The kinetic energy would then more than likely obliterate whatever it hits. The idea is fascinating yet terrifying.

You mean to tell me that you guys don't ride bears around all day shirtless with a bottle of vodka in both hands? My whole life is a lie! On a more serious note, Russia is actually one of the countries I hope to get to visit at some point in my life.

I wonder how much of the anvil would survive reentry into the atmosphere. Wonder if it would burn up completely, just lose a little mass, or be completely fine. We must science this!

Frosty, all I can now picture is one of the older hulk movies where he fights tanks and chucks one a few miles away.

I am surprised our wonderful northern neighbors haven't quietly put up a privacy hedge along the border so they don't have to look at our mess down here lol. Too nice to put up a privacy fence because they don't want to offend you, so they go hedges under the pretense they just want a nice row of shrubs.

Each shot costing somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million? Sounds like the most expensive ammo in history!

We built a trebuchet for physics class in high school as a class. When it was all done, we launched bowling balls from the parking lot to the opposite side of the football stadium, so a couple hundred yards at least. Was all kinds of fun.

I imagine a 100+ pound anvil would do wonders launched from a trebuchet.

I imagine hearing the whistle of an anvil soaring through the air at a high speed would be both fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

Based on your twos description, seems like I wasnt far off on my saying it sounded like something you two would do Makes much more sense they would fire it that way. I couldnt wrap my head around how you would shove an anvil in a barrel lol.

O poison Ivy. I don't get it very badly anymore for some reason. Probably something to do with my constant exposure to it growing up. Poison oak will still get me though. I was also foolish enough to listen to my late grandfather about using bleach to get rid of it. Scratch it all open then pour bleach on it. Yeah, that was not smart at all. I have heard of horror stories about people burning yard waste and discovering there was poison ivy in there. Good way to kill someone in a very horrific manner. My wife hates me, as I don't get affected by poison ivy, I don't get sunburns and allergies don't attempt to end my life every year.

Was at the parents house with the kids this weekend, and they were watching some movie with Reese Witherspoon and during one scene they were firing anvils out of cannon and large ones at that. My first thought was how in the world do you design a cannon to fire something as oddly shaped as an anvil? Secondly, how much dang gun powder would you need to launch something 100+ pounds like 50 yards? lol. I think the movie was Sweet Home Alabama, but who knows. Just thought the scene was funny. Also, not gonna lie, it seems like something Thomas or Frosty would try to do.

Per our meeting this morning, copper is up to $4.55/lb. Between the price of lumber and copper, I am highly considering selling my house as spare parts.

That's not a bad idea Iron. I am all about energy efficiency, so only have LED lamps around the house lol. I think I still have a 120W heat lamp from when my Uromastyx was alive that I could rig up a socket for to stick in there. I have noticed that the side walls have become fairly warped as well, once again probably as a result of me not doing a cycle correctly.

Wanted to report back since it has been a bit over a month. I am getting better with holding the hammer more loosely so the impacts aren't felt up my arm (stupid median nerve) and have only had one instance of the hammer trying to take a vacation and fly away. Still a little rough with it, but overall it has made forging more comfortable on the hands. Next step is to try to get my darn tongs to actually hold onto something. I think grinding it and making the "teeth" more pronounced will help with that as the bar stock I have been working keeps wanting to wiggle out and turn into a very hot projectile doing somersaults. The tongs were meant for flat stock, yet struggle to hold on to them. I have also learned that my anvil isn't very good and is a borderline ASO. It has several dead spots and I have noticed when working that unless I work in very specific spots, the hammer doesn't rebound at all when working, which I am sure doesn't help. I am looking to get a chunk of RR, since another anvil is a bit out of my budget range at this time. My current anvil will probably go back to being a garden ornament.

I have a hack saw but don't think it is quite long enough lol. The piece has long since been de-barked and it has been sitting inside drying out for probably 4ish years. I may just go rent a chain saw for a half hour and slice a couple pieces off of it. Make it a CUT above the rest!

This is all an experiment for me, but was highly curious if cherry should be stabilized or not. I didn't think it would need it being a pretty hard wood to begin with. I wanted to somehow cut some pieces out of that log, attach them to the tang via pins and epoxy then sand to a nice texture and stain/seal it.