The 3rd Dimension – So little to say and so much time!!!

The past few weekends I have been working on a new hobby – industrialization. Typically I’ve been making customized molds in an attempt to create things with my WTF sludge that I’ve chemically refined over the last 3 or 4 blog postings. The jar of wtf sludge in the garage needs to be utilized somehow – eh? I’ve tried many moldmaking mediums – gelatin, clay, sand, plaster of paris, silly putty, modified moldmaking gelatin rubber and I have had marginal results with most of these right up until my new golden boy – Silicone Rubber. Silicone rubber is the composition of that newfangled baking pan you see at the baking aisle of most stores. You’ve probably seen it before – it’s the plastic looking muffin pan that sells for 12$ when there is a metal one next to it for 4$. The prices for silicone molds themselves are equally atrocious – 4$ for a small handheld mold of a watermelon. What gives???

Ohhh buy me I only do the same things as my cheaper counterparts at 300% the price. Anyway, that metal pan isn't flexy like me baby

I decided to investigate by making my own Silicone Rubber molds. A quick googling of the stuff made me realize the first barrier to entry – cost. Silicone rubber is some expensive stuff – around 20 – 30$ per lb! No wonder those damned one time Zzzz molds are 6$ apiece. Regardless of this fact I had a 40% off coupon from Michael’s art shops so I bought a pack of Aluminite’s Amazing Mold Putty for 12$. The putty is food grade so I can make chocolate and cookie molds of whatever twisted creation I decide to pull off. Quick note, only some silicone rubber mold putties are food grade so don’t go killing yourself with non food grade ones. Anyway the putty is excellent and I highly recommend it. It is the best moldmaker by far out of all the other options available. The degree of reproductive copying is uncanny. My first test was to make a chocolate 40 tooth Lego gear – Mmmmm – mechanical engineering in Chocolate.

Oh the foood of your choice will end your life toooniiight...

I haven’t casted chocolate yet – that’s a story for another day – but the reproductive detail captured in the mold was very satisfactory. I saw all the gear teeth and holes and such come out though I had to stick in some last second putty from the top to seal some of the holes fully. On second thought now I’m considering 40 tooth gear shortbread cookies – Mmmm. I’ll just tell people these are “Danish” cookies (cause Lego’s are indeed made in Denmark). The sheep will note the unusual Danish shape, think “oh those crazy danes!”, and om nom it. The people in the know will nod their head and smile as they chow down on a piece of manifest master engineering.

So assuming this all goes well and my hands don’t burn off beforehand I will be making a foray into “Silicone Valley”. That reminds me – I was going to write a short epic story novel thing entitled “The secrets of Silicon valley” but I’ve lost the chi to pull it through. The story would be inspired by my days in computer science, the many people I knew from families with tech backgrounds, and the Paul Graham articles on starting your own tech startup – highly recommended articles by the way even if you are not a techno. They give you an inner glimpse of why things are the way they are in the valley. Genius. Oh also my experiences regarding looking for a job in tech and my classes back in college. The story would not be about those topics in general but I’ve been in the tech paradigm long enough to get a general idea of how these people live. My experiences in the past have given me an image of the tech world that is half sensationalist and half reality – the perfect blend of truth and fiction – the fuel for movies. I think it’s not the life for me but it sure makes for some great epic reading and/or moviemaking!

Anyways the crux of the story would go like this: It’d be a narrative or whatever fancy word er story maybe like pulp fiction with 3 parallel lives or maybe focusing on 1 and then panning on the other 2 every so often. One person would be a established tech exec in his late 40’s who works 25 hours a day who did it all just for the money, another would be a budding megagenius techie fetishist maybe 18-24 yrs old wanting to make it big but is a social outcast and generally off kilter with mainstream society who no one takes seriously at all, and the third would be a senior tech maybe retired like 50yrs+ who likes his career and who has raised a typical american family with kids around their mid 20’s. These characters would be all male since that’s the perspective I’m writing it from and the perspective I understand the tech world from. Most techies are male- the female perspective would be radically different anyway and I couldn’t write to something I haven’t experienced.

The first guy is married to a pretty trophy-ish wife where she is neglected because of his career and slightly abused/damaged because of all the stresses placed onto her by the bs overflowing from her husbands life. The couple have no kids but live nicely in a fairly large manor house in a rich neighborhood somewhere out there. On the outside they look like they have everything but on the inside they are both living in an ironic sort of hell where the more you have actually translates into having less sanity. The husband constantly is overworked at the office and at home right afterwards with nary a moment to spare. The abandoned wife feels forlorn and helpless and usually cheats and sees other men secretly to give her some sort of meaning to life. Many scenes of the husband abusing the wife verbally and then after a mad fit going back to his home office to sit in front of the computer for another 12 hours while businesspeople and VC’s constantly call and pester him. The wife picking out pretty dresses  and trying them out in the mirror before sneaking out to a date with some unknown man off a personal’s ad. Both afraid and ignorant of the truth of who and what they are – unhappy. The poster couple for American consumerist culture – if you have me then you’ll be happy! – right??? They are rich but on the other hand they are struggling to make ends meet in regards to their well being.

The second guy is a teenage kid with a knack for every technology. He’s owned and programmed and hacked just about everything tech has to offer. He has 4,340 posts on the techie forums and 19 stars by his name. His alias has achieved “legendary” status in the online world. Behind the glossy LCD screen he is a master and God of his own making. On the outside of the screen in our reality though he is a disheveled young frail teenage outcast who lives in a typical meh family. He spends his days – no matter how sunny they are – hacking up a new open source driver or programming and calculating the anti anti derivatives of n for a new game encryption algorithm. Everyone at school thinks he is weird though and he really doesn’t have any friends save for one or two acquaintances who are also into tech but even find him a bit too much to handle. He is probably a total stereotypical nerd but more of a Seattle grunge look rather than total wuss. No one is going to push him around  because he doesn’t exist in their eyes. He is like pigeons in the park on a warm sunny day – they are just background noise to that hot girl you’re checking out on the grass. His family doesn’t understand him and leaves him be. He only works at his part time minimally to keep the internet connection up. He has ideas that could revolutionize society – algorithms which can beat our modern mathematical problems. Too bad he doesn’t believe in himself either. He’ll choose to retreat to the online reality where he is loved and appreciated. The fortunes and affections he reaps though are all electronic – in the world outside the chip he has nothing to show for it all. If someone could only understand him and put him in a rightful place  in the real world then we may know a technological breakthrough that will ensure everything is never the same ever again. The answers to many of our problems are staring us right in the face – in the eyes of a misunderstood boy who no one understands. Until we realize this fact we will always look for something right in front of us. The multinational corporate/mili-industrial quasi etc system which is set up to foster competition and scarcity will always make sure he’s on the bottom rung.

The third guy would be an elder in the world of tech. He liked it when he was younger enough to go through with it until retirement – a very rare occurence to stay in one tech company for your entire career. He’s moved up the ladder at his job being one of the core people (not important but not neglected maybe middle tech management or applications) and married his high school sweetheart early on. They’ve had a family who are now in the mid 20’s – the age of definition and becoming. Due to the man’s exposure to technology and all things radical he is very progressive and left leaning in his thoughts and teachings. His family is very “conscious” and eats organic foods and saves the whales and such. As a consequence to their success they’ve all lived a somewhat sheltered life somewhere in the boonies a bit further away from the cities and suburbs than most – maybe the outer edge of the suburbs. His challenge now is fitting himself and his family into a world which is not as progressive and forward as he is. He’ll probably have 2 or three kids of both sexes. His son is handsome but has trouble understanding why the world is not as excited as he is about intellectual pursuits. He goes through many hollow girlfriends who don’t share his passion for conscious living and critical thinking. He wonders why the world is the way it is and why people are willing to accept it as is.  His daughter is very pretty but also has a similar air of innocence about her in which men constantly trick and take advantage of her to fulfill their own lusts over acquiring a beautiful daughter of a tech magnate. She’s the proverbial sheep thrown into the wolves den or whatever they call it. To her the world is perfect and ideal and once again perfect but the people around her only want to drag her into their own lives to fill in a void only they themselves can fill. The wife of this family feels somewhat left out since she’s a typical American lady who doesn’t care too much about technology and such. She is progressive but at the same time regressive – she sees technology as a fact of life and not a fetish. She’s well enough to think on her feet but human enough to feel and intuit her way through life. Their neighbors are the mirror image of them – successful, with children; a similar family but raised in a strict religious fundamentalist setting. This family does what they please on Sunday while the other family is off to church and then to the social meet afterwards sponsored by the Christian fundamentalist group. See their heated debates when they both take out their trash at the same time and start judging each other on the way they live their lives. See them argue about who is the controller at the helm – God or Man. This man of the house has to manage this melting pot of belief systems and deal with the dramas his family members bring into his life. Dramas which are spawned of a modern time – ones in which he has no idea how to deal with such. Will he have the character to brave these new waters or will he crumble to the backtides of a progressive wave? How far forward do you have to go before you are finally where you should be? Is it enough to be yourself or must you be a bit of who you are not to finally be at peace?

This narrative techno-drama will show us the nature of the beast. How technology seperates us from the truth of nature and Gaia and the world of the natural order. Every person in this story has a tension in their lives – the tension of being seperated from an aspect of God which is nature. I wanted to write this narrative because of the sudden rise of many pure fetish technologists who suddenly have taken up interests in yoga, meditating, rock climbing, hiking, etc… It is like they are trying to inflate a part of themselves that has been killed when they plugged into the box with all it’s electromagnetic radiation. The part of them which thinks the world can be conquered through reason, thought, and brute force computation alone without the need of art, instinct, and the soul factors of consciousness. Though these are high concepts too abstract to understand this “disconnect from nature” shows in their lives as the constant tension and uneasiness of peace that misbalance brings. The failed relationships, the never happy syndrome, the loss of confidence, the feelings of confusion and ungroundedness. The same tension which drives us to do wild animalistic and violent things. The same tension we re-enact every day of our lives because we believe we are born to suffer and born to die to a world with no sense and reason. Everyone’s got a bone to pick and everyone has a pill to swallow. There will be intense car chase scenes with guns, people running away from everything, and explosions and destruction galore. The very end of the movie will have the credits roll with “Pepper” from the Butthole Surfers playing as the theme song – the only thing being that the song will start on the following verse. A verse which perfectly wraps up and conveys the effect technology and the lust for realization has on our beings:

… and some will fall in love with life and drink it from a fountain

that is pouring like an avalanche, coming down the mountain…

Has anyone cared to look at eatright.org – the front for the ADA (American Dieticians Association)? On the site they have a link on the top bar for Nutrion – then a link on the left for Nutrition fact sheets which will bring you here:

http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/nutrition_350_ENU_HTML.htm

Click on any of the nutrition fact sheets and you get fun healthy facts for the food you clicked on! Like mangoes? Here’s a fact sheet on all the good things about mangoes! Like alcohol? Here’s a fact sheet extorting the virtures of moderate drinking! Like chocolate? Chooocolate! Another PDF for you on all the good about chocolate.

It’s all well and good until you read the bottom right of page 2 for each of the PDF’s. Every fact sheet is sponsored by an organization with an obvious vested interest in it. Mangoes promoted by the mango industry. Alcohol promoted by www.discus.org – The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Oh the absurdity! I didn’t even know they had councils for those types of things named discus. Every fact sheet is tainted by the industry it’s backed by. The ADA loses credibility as it becomes an advertising front which just collects profits to promote products as “the next american food idol.” Everything we eat has a selfish motive behind it – every thought the media wants us to think is tainted by the orgy of selfishness of our system. Capitalism is a good system but it is not faultless and people need to get that in their head. No one is infallible. Our high reward for valued work capitalist system is capitalism at it’s best – the orgy of selfishness is our same system at it’s worst.

There was that one economist I forget his name who theorized that all people are selfish and therefore the markets must be designed as to base themselves on that fact. He must be rolling around in his grave orgasmically now at seeing what the United States has become. Too bad that our country is falling apart quickly due to the combined weight of all our past transgressions caused by our selfish and short-term thinking.

As much as I’ve ranted on lego building blocks and the industrialization of their inferior clones into malleable plastics I may have found something that has shocked me to the core. Certain Lego elements may NOT be made out of ABS plastic. Yeah I know what you’re thinking,     :-O      ,  so am I. How did this come about?

As detailed in my last post I found out the plastic I was melting (lego clone bricks) were not ABS at all so I decided to try and make authentic ABS sludge to supplement my WTF sludge made out of mixed plastics. To make authentic homemade ABS sludge only pure ABS plastic would have to be put into my acetone dip.

In this figure we see Judge Doom about to melt down Mega Bloks set #3489-B "Roger Rabbit" to make plastic sludge. After melting down this vintage set he should have enough sludge to continue the installation of his new car stereo and accompanying custom molded console.

Where would I get ABS plastic? For the most convenient source in my house I would have to melt down some Legos. As much as I’d hate to sacrifice some legos in the name of progressive science I had to do it. Because of this fact and the fact that I love legos it was decided that I would melt down the most undesirable elements for this unholy experiment. My eyes instantly turned to the plastic bin of lego roborider and bionicle parts. (I consider bionicles and many licensed sets to be a travesty on lego driving the prices of regular elements up – grrr!)

I selected a small sampling of mixed bionicle pieces – 1 torso from bionicles and about 3 or 4 arm/leg/etc… limb ball socket pieces from bionicles/roboriders. The parts went into the jar last night along with the acetone dip. This is how we handle things down in Toontown…

This morning I checked on the birthing ABS sludge. The torso and various other parts were melting down pretty fast and looked like fudge at the bottom of this liquid dip. To my horror though THE BALL SOCKET LIMBS WERE UNSCATHED!!! THERE WAS NO DAMAGE AT ALL FROM ACETONE TO THE BALL SOCKET LIMBS. This could only mean one thing. Styrene plastics readily melt under acetone – ethylene type plastics don’t. ABS is the more or most expensive and highest quality of the styrene plastics. Does this mean *gasp* that the limb pieces are NOT ABS PLASTIC? OMG LOW QUALITY LEGO PLASTICS? WTF?

At first glance the ball socket pieces look just the same as any other – quality vibrant colors and tough lego resilience topped off with a microscopic “Lego” brand marking on each limb. According to all sources I’ve read each lego piece  is made out of the highest quality non-toxic injection molded ABS plastic (except rubber tires and other such miscellany). If what I perceive with my eyes is truth though I see that the Lego brand ball socket pieces are made out of a non ABS material. Could it be better? I don’t know but all I know is that these pieces don’t melt and therefore they are not ABS plastic.

I suspect these limbs were from the 90’s early 2000’s roboriders sets and not bionicle. Did early lego action figure sets use cheap plastics secretly? Lego how dost dare thine betrayl !!! Knowing something like this breaks my heart – seriously it does Lego. What was the lego executive board thinking? Probably the same thing when it decided to make Bionicles and Indiana Jones sets. Sadly this is what kids today want and what they will pay for. Maybe its’ time we split lego into 2 companies – Adult Lego stuff which specializes in Mindstorms/Lego Technic/rapid prototyping of robotics and mechanical pieces for industry and Kids lego with their movie sets and bionicraps.

Anyway my heart’s deepest wish tonight is to look at that jar and see those ball socketed limbs in a pile of melted debris as well and not in one whole piece. If they are still whole that puts them in the same plastic category as those non melting Polyethylene Mexican lego clone building blocks which will not fit onto any other piece besides themselves (despite having the same studded brick paradigm).

Update: The ball socket pieces are still whole – boo hoo hoo. Looks like we’re only making WTF sludge from here on out.

Update 2: About a week after I wrote this the Bionicle ball sockets have started to crack. The limbs themselves though are still as whole as they can be – just the ball parts are breaking down. So it seems like they may indeed be made out of an ABS plastic but modified or conditioned for extra extra toughness. I noticed this property with Lego Technic parts as well – they have that same “toughness glaze” that bionicle parts seem to possess on their axles and gears. Given this I forgive Lego for making some of their bricks out of a modified ABS plastic because it is necessary to make them better than ABS. The youtube videos of Lego pneumatic engines prove this point well – they can handle thousands of revolutions without snapping or flying off from the hinges etc… Not many plastic toys can boast of such robust quality – go Lego!

Update Nov 09th, 2009:

This post is outdated due to the fact I found out that Mega Bloks are made out of Polystyrene and NOT ABS plastic. So much for inference. Apparently ABS is a close  cousin of sorts to polystyrene (both have styrenes) and I infer (though I may be wrong again) that any styrene based plastic will melt in acetone. Polyethelene I guess is a bastard cousin since it’s unaffected by acetone at all. Given what we know above the following post refers to making Polystyrene sludge or what I like calling it – “WTF Sludge” – as I mixed Megabloks, Enlighten, and KNEX bricks and god knows what all of those are made of. Megabloks is confirmed Polystyrene. K’nex rods and such are from googling made out of “a proprietary brand of acetyl copolymer”. Enlighten chinese bricks not even god knows what they’re made of since they’re the Chinese brand.

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As I continue to collect lego’s I must find a use for those ever annoying clones of lego bricks such as Mega Bloks, K’nex Bricks, Enlighten bricks, cheap mexican building blocks, etc… that show up every so often. One very interesting method I run across while looking for a way to melt the ABS plastic so that I can use it for other strange things. The most promising is “ABS Sludge”. Apparently this was one hack by car enthusiasts to replace broken plastic in their cars. You mix simple pure 100% acetone with ABS plastic and keep it sealed and as long as it is sealed the acetone will chemically “melt” the ABS plastic into a goo which you can apply onto surfaces. Once the ABS sludge is exposed to air the acetone starts evaporating quickly and eventually it will dry forming a plastic chemical weld if you will. The remaining acetone in the sludge will melt the plastic you are welding it to if it’s the right type slightly and chemiaclly bond with it – then when the acetone evaporates the sludge should harden again forming a chemical weld that’s as strong as if you’ve made one solid plastic piece.

As an experiment I wanted to see if my lego clone bricks would work so I took a sample of a Mega Blok, a Knex brick, an enlighten chinese military brick, and a cheap mexican dollar store brick and put them into a cup and swiped some simple nail polish (not pure acetone) onto each one. 4 hours later I checked them.

Mega Blok, Knex, Enlighten – all started to dissolve and chip – mega blok being the softest then a tie between Knex and Enlighten. We can be sure Mega is at least made of mostly ABS plastic and the other two being so also or mostly.
Cheap mexican brick – NO MELT. Damnit these are the worst. If it wasn’t enough that they did NOT fit onto ANY OTHER BRICK except their own they can’t even be melted down to form ABS sludge. I guess these bricks are made out of something other than ABS plastic (which I hear is the most expensive – most durable plastic airsoft guns use ABS plastic – that gives me an idea – actually none of my plastic guns have broke only the metal ones )

The uses of ABS sludge seem promising though. One I am planning on is using the sludge to weld a lego axle holder to a 5$ 24,000 or more rpm electronic supermotor to use in some lego electronic creations. broom broom!!! Yes I know lego has geared down motors but if you do research they have LOTS of internal friction. As for my own testing I put up one of their oldest 2400 or so RPM motors against their new Power Functions XL motor which supposedly has more torque in my 1 to 65,000 lego geartrain. The old motor spun the geartrain’s last wheel’s FASTER than the XL motor. The XL motor uses most of it’s power as internal friction during it’s gear down process so the older motor is indeed more efficient. The XL motors are still good though if you can’t fit a huge drivetrain in your creation. Sadly though I find the XL gear power ratio compared to the old motor is only about 12.5 times more torque (between 5 and 25 in my tests) since it could spin the 5 to 1 gear but not the 25 to 1 gear next to it (whole drivetrain is 8 tooths driving 40 tooth gears).

A friend of mine was quoted with saying the following. The life of a nerd is hard. D&D till 3AM, Magic the Gathering till 4AM etc…  And that’s not even the half of it! Also gotta squeeze in time for Garry’s Mod for Half Life 2, Diablo 2 Median XL Mod for Diablo 2, Trolling ebay and craigslist for all sorts of nerdy things such as magic cards, pogs, legos, d&d miniatures, spare cheap salvage computer parts, hot pot dinners and other various events, going out for food, etc ad infinitum. No wonder I never seem to get any sleep.
It was a big contrast to Memorial dayish a while back in which I wasn’t really in touch with anything so I just slept at the ungodly hour of 9 PM. Back of the dive back into 3rd dimension I guess was getting in touch with all of the silly little things again for the time being to appreciate them for what they are. Now I’ll be lucky to get to sleep before 1 cause the life of a nerd is hard.

Speaking of that I’m also a geek in many random facets of life. One of them might be legos. I cleaned a bunch of legos in my collection last night. I actually studied through forums everyone elses advice on washing the building blocks and came up with a procedure that has worked well for me so far:

1) Buy those laundry mesh bags at a linen or bedroom store (ie bed bath & beyond) to hold all your legos

2) Get some automatic dishwasing detergent with no bleach (so colors won’t fade) – Trader Joe’s 3.49 crap works fine and has no bleach no x no y etc…

3) Get some old generic bucket from somewhere and clean it out in the tub

4) Put legos to wash in mesh bag (no sticker pieces or minifigs). Stickers will come off – minifigs will FADE – the horror! Sensitive pieces also should not be put in (though I did put lego car and spaceship windshields along with “painted pieces” and from my testing had no problem with them). Don’t be dumb and keep electronic lego parts out of the bag plx. Electronics are hand scrub only I hear.

5) Put mesh bag with legos in bucket

6) Put bucket near tub or sink or someplace you can fill up with hot water.

7) Make hot water solution hot enough that you can touch it without scalding. Quoting thineself from my raw food geekiness days I found a simple mind trick to get water below 105 degrees F. The human hand is accustomed to feel pain from heat once temperature goes above 115 degrees F. Vitamins and Minerals from food also deplete to near nothing once you reach the 115 degree mark (exactly the same temperature!). Thus the human body comes equipped to know how hot food can become before it becomes depleted of all it’s life giving essences and becomes plastic. The human body feels pain at exactly the same point in which foods lose all their nutrition. This raw food geek fact helps us clean legos as well since we want water that is hot enough without scalding pain and maybe a few degrees below to hit 105 F. In short – put 105 F water in bucket

Put automatic dishwaster detergent in bucket with the legos. The water should be submerging 95% of the legos. Since legos float some will always float and you’ll need to do some mixing every so often. How much detergent? One forum post says 1 teas (or was it tablespoon) per gallon. I don’t have the eye or patience for exact measures so I’ll give you my take on it. Soap is more often dangerous than the dirt soap is trying to get rid of so less is more. On the other hand 1 teaspooon seemed like a real wussy amount so put in enough to sprinkel saturate the top layer of the water and turn it slightly not watery looking. For the engineers out there this was about 6 tablespoons for those big paint buckets that go up to your knees. If you put in too much and your legos + face melt don’t QQ (cry) to me in forums plx. As a side note though I tested like 8 pieces in an oversaturated detergent solution ( enugh that powdered flakes were all over the bottom) and nothing really bad happened after 3 hours to the brix.

9) Mix it up and let legos sit in the solution for 15 minutes (yes I do believe soap is more harmful than the constitutents it is made to clean).

10) ::15 mins later:: dump out solution and replace with 3x the amount in fresh water. Rinse the mesh bag with the legos thoroughly in the clean water! With the small saturation time and enough water + rinsing all the soap should be gone. From my experience I still have my hands to type this so this rinsing process was sufficient.

11) Leave legos in bag with the water to rinse with for about 25 minutes just to be safe.

12) ::25 mins later:: dump out water and do a final rinse under running water if you want (I didn’t).

13)  So 40 minutes have passed and the legos are now disinfected as such. Most things should’ve been dead in the first 4 seconds. If anything survived that 15 minute soap wash it is evolutionarily more potent than you and deserved to kill you. Shake the mesh bag to take out all the loose water droplets

14) After not much water drips out of mesh bag dump all legos onto a beach towel.

15) Hang your mesh bag on a towel rack to air dry – you’ll need it later!

16) Wrap up beach towel and take it ouside to the yard or garage or wherever you have space and lay it on the ground (outdoors preferred). Let dry for 2 hours. I did mine from 7pm to 9pm at night. Pref outside for that natural airy goodness. If you live in a hot place more the better – I don’t and it still worked.

17) 2 hours later most of the legos should be completely dry. The towel should be just moist. Wrap and take upstairs. Dump all legos now into dry mesh bag.

— 18 and beyond —

At this point 90% of the legos will be completely dry. Some will have slight condensation. If you have any “composite” pieces (blocks joined together) you will have to dry it in your room overnight in the mesh bag. Preferrably place near to computer or other heat generating device for general dehydration goodness.

(6 hours later)

After some sleep all the single pieces are bone dry. Composite pieces are dry but have some water in the middle when disjointed. Since this is teh lazy guide just leave them in your room while you go off to work and even these should be dry by the time you get back in 9 hours.

The legos I tried this on had very slight amounst of dirt. If you have ones crusted in hard dust and cigar smoke you may need to soak for longer. Any pieces with grime I found I could wipe off easily with a towel after the 15 minute detergent wash. There you have it

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And yeah that was only a small part of the crap I have to live with day in and day out . Let’s take another nerdy geeky example: inflation of the dollar.

Go visit http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm and fill your brain with some horrifying facts such as did you know since 20 years + the value of the dollar has dropped by half?

Let’s get even more horrifying – Did you know that in 4 years any money you got in 2005 is only worth 90% of its’ value in 2009? Made 1$ in 2005?  Nope sorry you only have 90 cents now in 2009. Doesn’t seem like much but multiply it to a more realistic estimate:

Had 10,000$ in savings in 2005? Como estan btches!!! You only have 9,000$ now in 2009. Did your money value get cockblocked? Meh – more like cockrocked! Enjoy your 10% value raping courtesy of our friends at the Fed and the US government for their secret taxation through inflation! Now you know where all their play money comes from! From your pockets!

Anyways this goes to show what they’ve said and has been proven true. The life of a nerd is hard.

Every time I have a dream about college and I wake up I play “use somebody” by kings of leon in my head as the perfect wrap up song to my dream sitcom. I don’t know why I just thought about it now since my college dreams have only come up two or three times a year a year or two ago but I found it interesting how when I think about early college I get grossed out while I go into fantasy mode when I think about “ideal party” college.

It’s probably been about 4 years since I’ve left college and when I think about early college like the first few months to first 2 years I’ve always found that point somewhat awkward. You are basically still – a child – going off to start your life with a bunch of strangers (if you lived away from home). You probably had every mono colored thing from Target like the soap holder and all kinds of “MADE FOR COLLEGE” gear by whatever generic American X company. In a way it felt like an almost inorganic unnatural cattle herded kind of existence where you just start all over again with all sorts of cheap 1 year sleepover party gear. I loved college but the only thign that grosses me out was the equipment. The generic college towel racks and pillows and toothbrush holders and desk accessories etc etc… As a male I never was really into form more function, substance over style, but any male knows that at a certain point man (and women) are manifest fragments of the source god and god is art since art is the ultimate expression of god’s creativity and spontanaiety so therefore man needs art. Thus man is not satisfied with matching light blue and light red polyester forms and entities on their desk. Man wants wood and stone and organics that remind them of the beauty of nature and are in harmony with the world. Living in a plastic reality just doesn’t suffice. I think the weird early gear alone made college weird. An example illustration below…

Everything in this picture matches in plaid and is made from polyesters (even the included hand towels) - awwkwaaaardd!!!!

I’ve been roaming around always lookin down at all I see.
Painted faces fill the places I can’t reach.
You know that I could use somebody
You know that I could use somebody
Someone like you
And all you know and how you speak
Countless lovers undercover of the street
You know that I could use somebody
You know that I could use somebody
Someone like you

The tune of the song is great for the ideal college dream. That for some reason -  as absurd as my dreams are – don’t give me that weird feeling like early college does. A wise man once came up to me and asked me, “what is college?”. OK he didn’t really come up to me but my answer is the same regardless, “a place where you find a new chick you want to screw; around every corner; every 5 minutes – on the dot!”.  In my dreams there is always a beach party, I live at the near top floor of a huge resort hotel with a big jade dark green room (not sure why one of my college dreams generated that look), where I go on the grassy hills and look over in the distance and see another random woman I never met before that I want to screw, where on my way to buying college books I see Perry Farrell from Jane’s Addiction in a niche inside a wall on an urban street – shirtless;playing a drumset – and he tells me something in a really high pitched voice which I don’t remember, where I go into the WalMart and it’s filled with college students and more people I want to screw, and where every time I wake up from this dream the tune for “use somebody” starts playing in my head to wrap up the experience perfectly.

Off in the night while you live it up I’m off to sleep
Waging wars to shake the poet and the beat
I hope it’s gonna make you notice
I hope it’s gonna make you notice
Someone like me
Someone like me
Someone like me
Somebody

Back when I was in college I settled on my major fairly late and even before then I knew I always wanted to go into computing somewhat so I was always in class and lab mostly for every year after the first. This didn’t leave much time for self development at all and I was always playing games on my computer to relieve the stress and pressure from the day. In that sense I don’t think I’ve really resolved the college experience the way I would have wanted to – the one where I “play” with about half the city’s females before I pack up and breath deeply saying to myself, “Ahhh I’ve done what I wanted to accomplish here…” and leave forevermore. I kind of came in as an awkward child and kind of left as an awkward child with not much to show for it besides a degree that says I survived a 4 year obstacle course.

So I cut my hair a few days back since I’m done finding out who I am. I had Taco Bell again for like the 9th night (non consecutive) over the last 3 weeks. First the ground beef and then moving on to juicy steak. I’ve also started playing Diablo II Median XL mod for most of the night for the past 2 months. Just like how things used to be. And I’m regressing. And I’m happy. My introspective time was not a waste at all though – I took a lot of useful things back while dumping out all the junk. Now I’m back where I was but all the better for it. Kind of like in a game where you visit one area, power up in 4000 harder areas, and then come back to where you started just to pwn everything .

COMO ESTAN B*TCHES!!! Usted sabe que usted realmente quiere Taco Bell!

I don’t feel like doing anything at the moment – just feel like enjoying what is. And speaking of what is I’ve started trying meditations upon waking up and trying to sleep again. I know that’s not how you’re supposed to do it but it feels good and it helps with the sleep so there. Besides if I pull it off right I can almost slip straight into semi lucid-dream mode which is pretty cool since I don’t have to “try” as hard. I found a really great down to earth no lotus sh*t explanation of why people meditate and how it is useful. Click the below and scroll down to chapter 1 and read it:

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe1-4.html (read the chapter 1 part)

So you’re too lazy to read chapter 1 I figured you were. Why should we meditate then? Because in my own interpretation of chapter 1 it helps us break the cycle of joy and sorrow. We always want to have fun but we find the party always ends eventually. No matter how much we try to cling onto happiness and joy they eventually always slip away from us.  Fun events are tragic for me because I know when time passes – and time passes faster for me – they will come to an end. Everything starts and ends – I am faced with the futility of trying to stop change and the passage of time – truths of our universe. Thus by meditating we can learn to appreciate life when we are not having a good time. We can learn to detatch ourselves from always needing “good” events to feel like our lives are “good”. We are always so dependent and attached to being secure and having more but no matter how much we have and how much we appreciate how much we have and how much more we get it is NEVER ENOUGH. Thus it is yet another chinese finger trap concept at play – the more we cling to what we deem good the more we suffer. By learning to release our tendency to label event a as a “good thing” and event b as a “bad thing” do we come closer to merging into the underlying TRUE love and joy that makes up the fabric of life. Happiness is always our end because in truth pure love and happiness is the underlying force that materializes our world into a form we call 3rd dimension. If you don’t believe me read about the people who have near death experiences or meditate to the point in which they have full body orgasms and incomprehensible joy.  Somehow full body orgasm is our underlying truth – probably explains our society’s fixation on sex which is like having taco bell when we could have the whole enchilada . A philosopher once rebutted that chasing after a sheer emotion alone makes for a very inconsequential life. I’d be prone to agree after reading David Hawkins’ power vs force book where he describes the only state transcending full body orgasm is – peace. Being at peace. Which I guess is the prime state you are trying to accomplish in meditation – peace – just to be. No more worryign about x, y, z, no more full body orgasms no more joy no more suffering just what I call “whiting out” and peace. Not all of us want to white out life though so thus we are here with our steak double decker supremes with lava sauce.

I think my explanation kinda sucked and is wordy though without any real clarification so go read chapter 1 from that link above. It makes sense.

So recently the Great Steak and Potato Company has recently decided to switch from their premium Peanut Oil to Soybean Oil for their fries. In the words of the immortal Frank:   “F*ckers…”.

I feel this is a VERY grave error for the company as they have just taken down the one flagship product they are known for (and it’s not the cheesesteaks those were always bad compared to authetntic Philly’s with the peppers and greasy beef). We might as well have Mrs. Field’s stop selling cookies and Round Table pizza go into gasoline! I can’t believe they joined the “soybean” oil bandwagon probably in the name of economic value – pfft. Soybean oil will kill us all!!!

Dr. Mercola was nice enough to collect all the arguments against Soy in one neat tidy package for us – thx:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/10/07/the-evidence-against-soy.aspx?source=nl

He would probably not approve of my French Fry habit – and it’s true I admit – it’s not healthy for you at all. I don’t eat them as much as I used to in college (read: every day) so when I do have them I try to make sure they are cooked in the healthiest oils possible (and if you think it’s canola, soy, etc… then you should know that if you are sheep then you will be led to the slaughter). Know your fats! Knowledge is power! G I JOoOOoOOoOOEEeeeee

http://www.trit.us/knowyourfats/skinny.html

GI Joe making sure you don't die at the age of 30

Oh yeah where was I – yes – wanton criticism of yet another company. You know this internet thing is great – I’ve criticized quite a few things and have gotten e-mails back with rebuttals. That’s the great thing about the internet these days – you can’t hide your b*llshit from the public any longer. In fact I won’t try to hide my cussing habit so I will just black out the first vowel on every cuss word for political correctness haha. We all know what I’m really saying though so cut the crap and let’s get on with it.

In a way I should be thankful for their switch. Maybe this time I will once again break my fry habit for good (I went for a number of months about 5 without eating a single fry during my “worst vegetarian” phase.) Or even better the competition has knocked itself out for me! What could be better?! Now I can open my own real fast food organic restaurants serving only traditionally cooked food and take home the monopoly on real food on this planet. Shame to you soy and corn people who take over other countries with your farm subsidies. Shame to you for making food cost more in the nation’s it’s best produced in by forcing the United States to grow the food export just to force them into economic submission so we can spread our fap all over their fertile lands – leaving us with useless soy and corn products instead of real food. F*ck you all!

Ho Ho Ho! Midgets! You think you can stand in my way?

Hello,

This is my new blog – a sort of continuation from my old blog at:

http://truthseeker1234.wordpress.com

In that older blog I’ve aimed to ask and tackle the big questions about the nature of reality. It grows tiring. Apparently it’s too big a topic for most of us as well given my read statistics. The goal of my new blog then is to bring home all the knowledge and concepts I’ve accumulated in researching all sorts of deep questions into one in which everyone can relate to – everyday life with all it’s nuances. I hope you enjoy.

I already have a blog at http://truthseeker1234.wordpress.com – why would I want another one? Why couldn’t I just continue posting on my old one? I have a new one because I aim to shift my focus from the grand to the mundane. From the big questions to the small. From abstract blogs about concepts and such to just plain old observations and events in everyday life. For bringing a new view on reality after going up on my tippy toes and looking down at it – trying to see the bigger picture. For a more elaborate reason though read below:

Somewhere out there is a better world where the sun always shines, the grass is always green, and people in multicolored clothes dance around in big circles eternally happy for just being. As much as I wanted to be part of their world I realized that it wasn’t for me. Somewhere along the line you stand at the crossroads with all that you’ve known on one side and all that you are destined to be on the other. Some of us look on at the other side and realize they’re not ready to cross over into it just yet. Not ready to take command of their full potential. Not ready to give up all they have known and loved for their whole lives.

I think all of us yearn for the greatest but some of us are not strong enough yet to carry all that may come with it. Maybe we just want to spend a little more time here with all that makes us smile and laugh. The imperfect world which despite all it’s flaws is still the one you’d call home. The one that may hurt you, despise you, anger you, and do all sorts of nasty things which make you cry out for a better way. At the end of the day it’s still the same world you want to be a part of with the people you’ve known and loved. With the things you’ve enjoyed, forgotten, and come to enjoy again with time. Maybe we have taken things for granted and not been able to appreciate all that we have now – only realizing what you may lose if you’ve moved on. Maybe we want to stay and experience the same things still again and again – always gleaning new lessons and insights despite their repetition. Maybe one doesn’t want to look for treasure out in the unknown while there are still lots of gems here waiting to be picked.

There was a world I’ve explored in which people made the shift and became the greater part of themselves. They became enlightened, gifted, skilled, enigmatic, refined, priceless, god. A world where they’ve combined the best aspects of each of themselves and reformed it into a greater entity unimaginable. There are stories of people quitting their jobs, going off into the unknown, and achieving success wildly beyond anyone’s dreams. Still more of them go on to achieve connection with what they call the source and gain powers deemed paranormal by normal beings. Some who are attuned to the higher realities constantly shift between this one and theirs – able to manipulate the everyday matter of our reality – as if they were masters of the game of life. Winners of reality – given the keys to unlocking the nature of reality itself.

These people have mastered reality so well that they’ve created a sort of rift between themselves and the rest of us. I’ve wanted to walk in their footsteps and I’ve tried on their shoes. I walked a short distance though before realizing that the boot didn’t fit. I was not ready to walk that path yet. As much as I wanted to be where they were I realized I needed to win the battle before I could win the war. There were still many things I left lying around and I just couldn’t make a blind rush towards the finish line to absolve them all. I guess sometimes you have to go through the motions – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You can’t have spiritual actualization until you master the reality you are currently in. I don’t want to master the world yet by learning how to detatch from it and master it. I still want to experience things for what they are and not tell myself  ‘life is just a journey it will all be over soon.’  Some of us still want to play the game and get absorbed by it – to treat it as if it were real – to use our power to make it so.  I still want to be abnormally rich. I still want to have the company of the most beautiful women. I still want recognition, prestige, and the ego trappings that come with it. I still want the pleasures of food, drink, and flesh. I still want the imperfect reality. The one where we all live in now. As I’ve learned you cannot run away from what you truly want. You can’t hide from the truth. You can’t deny where you are -  The 3rd dimension.