Papercraft

Darth Monday

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 958

Spring Is On The Horizon


Sumo by PaperTom

When I was growing up in Connecticut when you saw a robin in your yard that meant spring was on its way. Here in Aiken that doesn’t work so well, I don’t think the robins ever go away here. Today I saw three signs that Punxsutawney Phil was correct in his prediction that spring is just around the corner.

The first thing I noticed that portends spring, even though we are still nearly a month from the vernal equinox, was a box of Girl Scout cookies on someones desk. Number two was the Bradford Pear tree outside the front door of the Valve Store(tm) was starting to bloom and lastly, and most troublesome, was that there was a light coating of yellow pine pollen covering the exterior of the Emperor when I parked it in the garage this evening.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 952

We Have Lift Off

After about a week of 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, before or after breaks and lunch, the Tor.com Stubby Rocket is finished. It is 2 times scale of the downloaded PDF and is literally hung by a thread from the drop ceiling in my cube.

I wonder what the reaction will be, if any, on Monday from my supervisor and my manager, who were both are out of town on business this week. The big cheese Director of Operations, who sometimes makes a sweep of the area, wasn’t in today either. He is probably who told my manager to instruct his charges that the new offices should be more business-like and not be shrines to our individual personalities…

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 941

118,000 Stubbies

Stubby is the February 2011 Free Papertoy of the month over at Custom Paper Toys and is fairly easy build with only 4 pieces. I didn’t particularly care for the slogan that was being espoused by the original, so I changed it to something that is more office work related.

When putting it together I had the hardest time getting the pencil point inside the hexagonal shape of the pencil. I actually had to reprint the body a second time and attacked the build from a different direction before successfully getting it together with the flaps inside. Tonight when I linked the toy’s web page I noticed that the originator’s construction showed the pencil tip flaps on the outside. I had wondered why the flaps were rounded in shape…

I am also currently working on Stubby the Rocket which is a papercraft model by Robert Nava of the “mascot” of Tor.com, a Science Fiction site. I hope to be finished by this weekend.

OK, that was only 2 Stubbies, so I’m 117,998 shy, but the Emperor is not, he ticked past that mileage point on the way to work this morning.

Yesterday Donna had a dentist appointment and I gave her one of my Minimimmoes to give to the receptionist. Tonight we went out to eat and I left another Minimimmo on the table when we were done (I also left a monetary based tip too.) I guess I’ll make a few more and just leave them about haphazardly about the CSRA.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 939

Special Super Bowl Post

Right now it looks like Troy’s seven fingers up is at risk as the Steelers trail 21 to 17 near the end of the 3rd quarter.

We finally got a really nice day for geocaching, so we headed over to North Augusta and snagged 8 of 10. Seven of the eight finds were along the rails to trails Greeneway and one of those caches was quite the adventure. It was off the trail and down a steep embankment to almost the Savannah River. It was so steep that we had to walk down and up using a zig-zagging path similar to Tour de France cyclists in the Alps. We ended up walking a shade over 6 miles doing those 7 caches.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 938

Groundhog Day

Another Desktop Gremlin, this one is a Special Edition available only to “subscribers” i.e. people who sign up with their email address to receive notice when a new gremlin is available. Some folks* might classify the octopus as the groundhog of the deep and this cephalopod mollusc saw his shadow this morning thereby predicting 6 more weeks of winter, unlike the landlubbing marmota monax on Gobbler’s Hill.

*mental unacheivers and bloggers

This morning while discussing the upcoming evening’s entertainment, whimsical holidays and animal weather predictors at work, I came up with the brilliant idea to watch Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell tonight and wondered why TNT didn’t run a 24 hour marathon of this movie like they did with A Christmas Story on that day. I don’t own it, so I asked myself, “I wonder if it is available as a Watch It Now movie on Netflix.” Good news, sure enough it is, bad news, Donna hates the movie* (maybe there are a lot more like her and that is why there is no 24 hour marathon.)

*She liked it the first time, but once was plenty.

Our network is locked down pretty tight at work, no Youtube, no Vimeo, no streaming music, so I figured there was no way I could watch Netflix, but being the curious type I had to try. You know what? A person could watch the streaming Netflix. At least I’m pretty sure I could, as soon as the Starz Play intro started I disconnected. I don’t know if alarm bells went off in the basement in St Louis or not, but I’m certain I didn’t want to get caught watching a movie at my desk because my instincts told me management would probably frown on it.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 937