Random crap with Uno.

[Buster's Uncle]

[Metaliturtle]

Everyone wants the milk for free instead of buying the cow.

[Unorthodox]

So...the latex on the skull is going odd colors....thats....interesting...



Broiling hot here.  Hope it translates into being able to work on things this weekend, but I'm somehow doubting that. 

[Buster's Uncle]

This is the last skull you posted?  How's that coming otherwise?

[Unorthodox]

I'm pushing a one piece glove mold to the limit.  Might not work.  Be a week or so before I find out. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Tricky.  Super-trick to make work as one piece, I can tell form the picture.


Say - nosy personal question.  How are you fixed for the formal edumacataion on paper?  I have a vague impression you may not have graduated high school, having been going through a thing about that time in your life.  GED?  College?  Have I surmised wrongly?

[Unorthodox]

Tricky.  Super-trick to make work as one piece, I can tell form the picture.

No mandible, so it's not as tricky as it might look.  I'll have to tool out a couple areas on the copy I had to fill to make it a one piece

Say - nosy personal question.  How are you fixed for the formal edumacataion on paper?  I have a vague impression you may not have graduated high school, having been going through a thing about that time in your life.  GED?  College?  Have I surmised wrongly?

I somehow managed to gradumate from High school.  That's it.  My attendance record would have kept me from graduating (Bored to tears in AP chemistry and AP Physics, both classes had the test as 70% of your grade, so showed up only on Friday test days and pulled C's in both classes without doing a lick of work outside the tests), but I got that waived by working as a counselor for kids going through issues, most of whom were my friends anyway.  Should have signed up for either work release or early college instead of the "advanced" classes.  :zzz:

Didn't know what I wanted to do out of high school, so went to work in a manufacturing job to put my wife through school (married at 19).  The idea being I'd go when she got out.  By that time we had a kid.  6 years of production later, I was told by a supervisor I would NOT be moving up in the company as long as he was around.  Day I quit, I visited HR and he got fired. 

Stumbled into the Boeing job because I used to do yard work for the hiring manager.  She knew I was a hard worker despite not having the schoolin'.  Funny interview, that one.  In front of a board of about 5 people, I was driving semis at the time and had to come over at my lunch hour.  I'm covered in dirt and grease, head to toe, not looking remotely nice enough for an interview and one of the idiot's first canned questions was "this can be a dirty job, are you willing to get dirty?"  I just looked at him and motioned to my state. 

Technically I should have a degree, but I's don't.  It's 60s tech, a degree in todays tech is worthless, but my extremely old school philosophies fit nicely with it.  TASC had me even doing Egineering reviews I know the tech well enough.  Sure a degreed someone would have to approve my reviews cause I aint got the paper, but there it is.  Those engineers always loved running problems by me because I see things differently than the average person.  I can read a drawing if I have to, but I'm much better if you set me in front of whatever and let me go to work with my hands. 

Couple patents out there floating around with my name, but owned by the companies I worked for at the time. 

BAE needed people with experience in the tech, and you literally can't find many people with experience in 60s tech that are under 70 years old these days, so I got picked over a schoolined newb.  I'm told I interviewed rather impressively too.  They felt like I was interviewing THEM more than the other way around, and they knew they were in that much trouble, so I get to clean up another mess. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Cool.  That's about what I figured, you being so gifted and all.  And let me say explicitly that I notice you in a roomful of extremely gifted people standing out and being -in reality- both deeply and widely edumacated.

Everyone else in my immediate family has an advanced degree, and with Daddy gone, I'm in last place on paper, so I know exactly what the paper's worth, being not educated inferiorly to any of the three left outside their narrow specialties - and Mylochka finds my thought and insights into her specialty worthwhile, though, alas, my brother does not, to his error.

I'll tell you, though - a thing of real value that what formal education I can claim did is make me study some subjects of no interest.  I consider myself far more self-educated than formally, but the formal has made me a better-rounded person with less holes in his knowledge.  You never know what will end up being useful, and I'd like to point out that the community college system in most states -and I definitely expect Utah to not be an exception- is cheap, good, convenient and easy to get into.  It's never too late while you live and can think.

(I make that last point to cousins and cousins' children all the time - lotta powerful brains going to waste, there.)

[Buster's Uncle]

About the skull; in the pic it appeared to have -I don't know what you call that cheekbone structure on the sides- an arch that looked to have a hole all the way through.  How are you handling that, if so?  Cardboard separation in the arch while making mold and gonna clamp when casting and sand the seam?

[Unorthodox]

My mom the writer meant I spent lots of summers in the library when I wasn't working, so a lot of edumication comes from that, left to read whatever I fancied for hours on end, I found the reference section infinitely more interesting than the fiction. 

I don't think schoolin is for me at this point, honestly.  There is some formal CERTIFICATION, however, I would like to persue.  It's a piece of paper that says I know what I'm doing in my field.  More interesting to me than a piece of paper that says I paid to spend x hours 'learning' stuff I already know. 

About the skull; in the pic it appeared to have -I don't know what you call that cheekbone structure on the sides- an arch that looked to have a hole all the way through.  How are you handling that, if so?  Cardboard separation in the arch while making mold and gonna clamp when casting and sand the seam?

The zygomatic arch.  For the jaw muscles.  I filled that gap with clay, like I do when making human skulls.



In the human skull copies, it's all but imperceptible unless you really LOOK for it. And the number or people that know TO look for it, AND will notice it for my halloween purposes is miniscule, so I never bother hollowing it out. 



The bear, I'm thinking I'll have to tool the area out with a drill or dremel.  My first copy, however, I'm going to modify to make ANOTHER mold of. 

[Unorthodox]

I also made the arch thicker on the inside of the arch with clay, leaving the seams between the bones visible on the exterior.  Was worried it wouldn't hold up as thin as the bones are. 

[Buster's Uncle]

That all makes sense.

[Unorthodox]

The nose might cause problems, too.  It's awful thin, but I wanted to leave it as vanilla as I could if possible.  If plaster fails, I might do a resin cast to capture that, just cause I can.  Again, just casting to modify the thing to look more evil for production anyway. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I hate working in resin...

[Unorthodox]

Me too.