Shuttercal - andytuba's Calendar

andytuba

<em>andytuba - A wandering Delawarean</em><p style='clear: right'>Having finished a Project 365, I'm shooting for even more fun and the occasional theme week when things are less fun. Also, I swear that this year I'll program some functional apps to use with ShutterCal!</p><p>Find me on Twitter at <a href='http://twitter.com/andytuba'>@andytuba</a></p>

Name:

Andy Tuba

Location:

Madison, WI, US

Gear:

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28
Moto Droid Cameraphone

Started On:

1/1/09 (Day 617)

About Me:

andytuba - A wandering Delawarean

Having finished a Project 365, I'm shooting for even more fun and the occasional theme week when things are less fun. Also, I swear that this year I'll program some functional apps to use with ShutterCal!

Find me on Twitter at @andytuba

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Guys, look look LOOK WHAT I GOT SHIPPED TODAY! IT'S A FREAKING GLOW-IN-THE-DARK FISHY FISHY FISHY BOXCUTTER!

i am entirely too excited about this freebie and am posting this picture EVERYWHERE. I also received a shit-ton of boxes and two rolls of bubble wrap, so I now have a tower of bubble wrap next to the craft table; I'll show you tomorrow. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

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Greg is a very good poster-trimmer. Since we print our own posters, we have to laminate them, too; and then we have to trim all the excess laminate off the edges. Fun and slightly risky if you nick the edges! (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

2

HAHAHA shenanigans. We found some ... questionable items on-site a few weeks ago and it's been making the rounds. The last prank was to 'send' it to another one of the volunteers with a love note. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

3

Turns out there's a small issue with our reservoir: a granite plate 12 feet under the dirt which is causing some drainage issues. Solution: dig a trench over said plate and create some safe drainage into the reservoir. aka we have 10 foot-tall Caterpiller equipment chilling on-site for a few weeks. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

4

Some of the walkway area back by the printing presses is getting redone and today they poured the concrete out, through thirty feet of PVC pipe from the front of the building, along the walkway to the break room, and into the hole. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

5

My old boss in Delaware, Laura, is the bestest ever. She always has a basket of candy and Pop-tarts in her office to keep her ushers awake at early- and late-night events. The other day, she asked if I needed anything out here and I told her I just ran out of candy. Look what came in the mail today! (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

6

Meggie and Greg got a little stir-crazy today after the celebration; Yeshe De finished up this huge book series they've been working on, so we had drinks (fruit juice) and nibbles (cake and brownies). Afterwards, people had to burn off some sugar, so they came down to help me out in shipping. Meggie's making me a robot arm out of scrap cardboard tubes. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

7

Further proof that Mike Murphy, our maintenance guy, is awesome. I gave him a sheet of paper with a sketch of some mini-shelves with dimensions and he showed up in my shipping office today with these piece of awesome. Holds CDs three deep! (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

8

Beats me. I mean, it is an escape path from the bindery, but people don't usually park there anyway ... (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

9

Since today was our lama's birthday (lama, not llama), they gave us a very unexpected day off! We weren't sure what to do with ourselves; some people went down to Berkeley for the weekend and some up to the redwood forests. I just took it easy, which meant I was sitting around in the commons when Rachel came by and asked if anyone wanted to go on a hike. Sure, let me get my shoes! We went down to a cove along the shoreline and found many a thing, including this baby piece of kelp that Rachel adopted. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

10

There's a hotel about twenty minutes down the road called the Timber Hill Cove Inn. (P.S. Ratna Ling used to be the Timber Hill Ranch.) It's right on the water, on a gorgeous stretch of water, exemplar of the rocky Northern California coastline. The inn itself is quite rustic chic with logs and cast-iron fittings. They've been trying to cultivate a regular crowd at the bar by hosting free music on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday nights. Today, Swingfish, a local jazz trio (vocalist/guitar, upright bass, and sax) were on the bill, so I hitched a ride with Leigh and Mike Murphy down the hill to hang out, have a drink, and listen to some live music. Good times, a lot of standards, and the sax player came over to chat with us after their gig. Apparently he's known some folks from Odiyan, being around the area, and might bring up either his jazz trio or his world music ensemble to play at Ratna Ling for a hoity-toity retreat treat or something. Yay connexions! I took some video of the group, but didn't take any photos except outside on the property of the coastline you can see from the rooms. (Verizon LG-VX9200 camera phone)

11

It may be the work-week again, but I'm still stuck on this past weekend. In addition to finding kelp, car parts, half a surfboard, cool rocks and shells, and untraversable trails (which we took anyway, much to the detriment of my scraped-up hands and burr-covered pants), this little starfish came up to greet us, 'Aye, aye, cap'n!' (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

<p><small>Really, half the fun of putting up these photos is writing the captions.</small></p><p>ETA: That white on the rock isn't snow or salt deposits; I think it's quartz veins!</p>

12

<p>Work around here is so .. er .. flexible. One day I'm packaging shipments, the next day building websites, and the day after I get pulled into a product photoshoot. I feel as though I ought to try and prioritize tasks, schedule them out to make sure stuff gets done, but then these random projects pop up. Ah well, maybe I'll figure it out these days, but <s>organized</s> Type A personality I ain't.</p><p>So, this photoshoot: we're taking PR shots for our bookstore of products arranged nicely. Our creative team included Ana Paula, whose background is as a cosmetics salesperson / manager; Monel, who's helping Ana Paula out with the bookstore and produces our jewelry; Greg, who's helpful and detail-oriented; and me, behind the lens. We'll probably send the photos over to Eric, who does all the pre-press work, or Andreea, who does videos and graphic design, for touch-ups. Who needs training when we have experience and manpower? (Lumix DMC-FZ28)</p>

13

One of the perks of living at this altitude is that we're just above the cloud cover when it settles into the valleys at the end of the day. If you're coming back from town, you get to see the sunset twice: once over the ocean and again over the clouds. One of these days, I'll figure out some good white balance settings for these sunsets. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

14

How to keep people from stealing my tools: order an Eagles-themed tape measure in SF 49er's country. East Coast, represent! I should probably emblazon 'SHIPPING' on it, though, just to be safe. Yay Uline freebies! Also, the delivery guy for Uline supplies is a Peruvian guy named Miguel; he noticed that I was wearing my CLM (Centro de Lenguas Modernas) t-shirt from the Universidad de Granada in Spain, so we chatted a little bit about how he'll be visiting his family in Lima next year after living in California for 9 years. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

15

<p>I've been toying with my facial hair. This week will see me growing out a <strike>soul patch</strike> Rasputin. Yes, there really is nothing more exciting going on around here than my facial hair. I did start a Netflix account today and I've already got 70 movies in my queue and 20 in the instant watch list! I eagerly await my first DVD delivery next week. I figured my face was more interesting than a screenshot of my Netflix queue, though. Oh, and I ordered a new lip ring because I've been tired of this one for a while! That should come next week, too. (MacBook PhotoBooth)

16

We're slowly recovering from our print/file server going down earlier this week. I'm still trying to figure out a way to efficiently print out invoices, so getting all this inventory off my craft table is a little difficult. On the plus side, we recycle! Half these boxes are from incoming shipments or from storage, so I don't have to buy as many new boxes from Uline. (Yes, I totally take advantage of the big boxes Uline sends us.) P.S. The orders pictured here are going to Canada, Hong Kong, and Wisconsin. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

17

Today was quite adventurous! A bunch of us -- Tim (my Buddha Buddy little), Ken (old-timey volunteer from Berkeley), Kati (cool PT type from Washington), Arthur (the Russo-German), and I piled into Tim's van to drive down to Sebastopol for a movie. En route, we saw a painted barn, ate fruit off the tree at a botanical experimental farm, joined a drum circle with a bunch of old folks (including one lady whose son volunteered 6mon at Odiyan), got veggie burgers at some little cafe next to the WholeFood, were saluted by an old couple 'Let the wild rumpus begin!' and finally watched <i>Where the Wild Things Are</i>. It's visually very pretty -- great beasties! -- and you can see a little of each character in every person you might know. It's a great rendition of the story for adults and maybe their kids, too. Then, we drove back and I passed out in the back of Tim's van. Good day! (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

18

Although I didn't manage to get any photos of the drum circle yesterday (it was all about the experience, anyway), I did take plenty of photos in the experimental botanical gardens in Sebastopol. See: plants and crew! (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

19

Up in the hills, it's a lot of coniferous plants, evergreens, and the redwoods -- not much in the way of deciduous trees turning those beautiful red and ochre shades. We do have, nonetheless, a growth of poison oak going up the trunk of one tree -- and it's certainly showing its true colors now. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

20

I baked a cake today! Well, I finished it. To celebrate the birthday of all the Libras at Buddha Camp, we baked a pair of big cakes for lunch today. After asking around what people like (and what supplies are available), I chose a carrot-ginger cake with raisins and walnuts. The recipe was for an 8-inch circular pan, but I was baking for 2 18'x11' hotel pans. A little math later and I octupled the recipe, no mean feat. I'd like to say they came out OK, but I didn't save any for ShutterCal to eat -- sorry, guys! I also forgot to take my camera over, too, but I made a lucky find: this rubber band. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

21

Yay mail! I received my order from BodyArtForms.com today, a rainbow-anodized titanium circular barbell. For those of you who have a little less hardware installed, that means I have a semi-circle of metal with two little beads on the tips and it looks like an oil slick. And now it's in my face! It's a little bit too wide (the gauge is fine, 14ga, but I should've gotten a 11 or 10mm-wide circle instead), so it clicks against my teeth sometimes, but it's a good change from the old captive bead ring (a whole circle with one bead stuck inside it -- see any other photo of my face since April). And next time I get to visit a tattoo studio in town -- perhaps when we go down to Berkeley for grand opening of the Dharma Publishing bookstore! (Also, the Rasputin beard seems to be working out pretty well -- minimal fuss, still handsome.) (Mac PhotoBooth)

22

While Greg was restocking our upstairs bookstore from my shipping room inventory, he found me a friend! This friend spent a few minutes climbing the walls, literally; I wish I got a picture of him halfway up the CD holder and then hesitantly trying to find another foothold on the plastic. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

23

This week saw the deployment of the last coupla week's work, rebuilding the <u><a href='http://www.yeshede.org/'>Yeshe De</a></u> website from an out-of-date, scrappy-looking old junker to a fancy, accessible, informative ... mid-range 4-door. We wanted to get the new web page out so we can link to it from advertising, but there's a few more tidbits to go up (and some layout issue to iron out). Nonetheless, it's pretty sweet, and it's out there! (Screencap)

24

Yesterday was a superb chilling day. Mid-70's, partly cloudy, etc. People were outside hanging in hammocks, playing drums and didgeridoos, arts & crafting, etc. Mallory was sitting on the stoop of her yome and drawing, where I found her after finishing her a friendship bracelet. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

25

If I do nothing else today, I will still consider myself accomplished by the end of the day. After months of putting up with eye fatigue and glare from sunlight streaming through the windows directly behind my computer screens, I set out to fix it. Turns out this has been a recurring problem, since I found a folded length of black felt fabric sitting on top of a box of product, cut to fit the window just right. It's actually a little bit more opaque than this shows and OH THANK GOD. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

26

With the help of Bram, one of the retreatants at this week's Healing Awareness (Kum Nye) retreat, I'm finally getting the shipping room a little more organized. This morning, arrayed around the room were stacks of boxes, various sizes. This afternoon, all those piles are gone, each with their own home in my box storage (i.e. under the work tables). Next task: find a place for all the old boxes I relegated to the recycle pile to make room for the new ones. (They might move under the craft table, which entails cleaning out all the seconds and promotional material under there. And here I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find work for my temp assistant!) So, here's a big hole which used to house 200 boxes. Tomorrow, we'll work on clearing out the detritus and I'll show you what a newly organized set of boxes looks like! (It's probably not worth coming back for that, actually, it's just folded-up pieces of cardboard held together by plastic strips.) Anyway, to celebrate having a clean(er) workspace, I'm gonna go ... work some more. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

27

Sorry, you don't get to see more photos of cardboard boxes today because I found another friend! This is the second in a week; Greg met one <a href='http://www.shuttercal.com/calendar/andytuba/2009/10/23/'>last Friday</a>. I might entitle this piece 'Noir Cricket' if I ever print it. (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

28

Don't tell anyone, but Greg's gonna be a deer for Halloween! (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

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Almost ready for Halloween! (Lumix DMC-FZ28)

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<pre>
I am a gay robot. I like
to make gay robot friends.
And with my gay robot
friends we *chhhhr*
all.
night.</pre><br>
(Nikon Coolpix S210)

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