Month: December 2015

A Variation On The Elf On The Shelf

A Variation On The Elf On The Shelf

Back in February when I needed to replace one of the Emperor’s 02 sensors I bought it and the wrench I needed to change it online. The sensor showed up, but the wrench was back ordered, so I went down to the local Advanced Auto and bought one to do the job with. Naturally the online wrench arrived a couple days after I finished the job. I couldn’t return the used one locally and I didn’t feel like spending the $5 to return the online wrench just to get $6 back, so now I have two of the same wrenches that I might not ever have to use again.

A couple times during the year I thought that maybe I’d just give one away as a “Door Prize” to an attendee to one of my MMC led events, but never did. Well it is now towards the end of the year and the MMC Christmas Party was coming up, maybe I’ll just wrap it up and put it under the “tree” for Ol’ Swapperoo Gift Exchange.

Then a couple of weeks ago I overheard my cubical neighbor telling another co-worker about his experience with The Elf On The Shelf and his 3-year old twins. I had heard of The Elf On The Shelf before, but never knew what it was all about. So rather than let on that I was ignorant of the subject, I Googled it. WOW! There is a whole subset of America’s mommies that are The Elf On The Shelf disciples and are not afraid to swap stories and activities and tips on how to make this “fun” for the month of December. This is where I discovered that some folks, that now knew what TEOTS was about, but didn’t feel like spending the money on the book and the official elf doll and could just make their own. A light bulb figuratively illuminated over my head at this point, I’d turn the extra wrench into a automotively themed TEOTS.

What followed was a weeks worth of some fun and some frustration for me and mostly frustration for Donna as we perused local stores scanning shelves for the ingredients for my MMC Christmas present. I already had some red paint for the wrench/body, but needed a small Santa hat, a styrofoam ball for the head, red pipe cleaners for arms and legs and some colored felt for the hands, feet, etc. Then we needed just the right size plain box to put him in. Just when finding all the required pieces proved too elusive we got lucky in Hobby Lobby when we found a $6 elf ornament for half price.

The right box was still missing. Google to the rescue again, the 6th link down for DIY Gift Boxes led to a hexagonal shaped box that I could scale to fit. What better style box for a wrench could there be?

Fearing a copyright infringement lawsuit I couldn’t call it The Elf On The Shelf, so in keeping with the car theme called it The Wrench On The Bench. I photoshopped an homage to the actual TEOTS book cover and now I just needed to put something on the inside to tell the story of TWOTB. Hoping to find a passage or two from the real book to inspire a new story once again I turned to Google. No actual words from the book, but I did find a poem on lil’ luna that got me going enough to hack something just long enough to go on the inside of the hex box cover:

How does Santa know who’s naughty or Nice?
The Wrench on the Bench sits in your garage
Watching if what you do is wrong or right
And reports back to the North Pole every night.

Harbor freight junk from Ol’ Saint Nick
Is going to be under your tree if,
You crawl under a car without jack stands, or,
Use pliers when a 6-point socket is called for.

Santa will make sure it is presents you’ll get
If you always consult your Chilton or Haynes,
Use a torque wrench instead of a guess
And at every 3,000 miles your motor oil is fresh.

There are only two rules for the Wrench on the Bench;
1. Never touch the Wrench on the Bench or it will be gone forever.
2. The Wrench on the Bench needs a name that is clever, but not Murphy, not never.

The Company You Keep

Company

Years of soakings of oil and fork lift traffic have really taken their toll making the main traffic areas in the Turned Parts department very rough and the whole department dark and slippery. This past week a contractor came in and is floating some sort of epoxy / concrete hybrid mix down about a 1/4 inch thick and following up with a two-step epoxy paint job in light gray. A couple years ago they did a section at a different end of the department before we added some fancy new fangled CNC machines and it looked fantastic, still does, so they are working their way north throughout the whole shop.

We moved some of our machines around and even shipped a few down to Mexico to create about 5000′ square feet of floor that is being upgraded. Trouble is the main entrance to our cube farm is smack in the middle of the area, so since Tuesday we have had to walk out a service door in the back of the plant to get into a side door of the office area. The only down side for me has been that bathroom breaks now take a bit of forethought because what used to be a 30 second walk is now about 2 minutes long.

Where we park the Emperor (or Purple Whale) is in the far corner of the parking lot from the front door and is normally vacant except for us. This week we’ve had company out there because as it turns out our corner of the parking lot is at one end of the hypotenuse of a scalene triangle with the other end being the door to our offices. In other words the shortest distance between parking lot & office chair for my department members is Donna and my normally quiet corner of the parking lot. Hence the crowd.

The final coat of paint goes on the floor on Sunday, so by Monday morning we should be back to having our corner of the lot to ourselves.

When the Commissioner Oversteps

From: The Commish
To: Every Tom, Dick & Harry
Subj: [EZEFFL] The Butterfly Effect

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

All,

Due to unknown conditions one owner was not paying attention to his roster and back in week 9 around 12:30 on Sunday I noticed his team had 5 of the 9 starters on bye, so thinking in the spirit of competition (and if this was the actual NFL, sanctity of the League itself) I made myself a second owner and adjusted the roster by moving the bench players to starters and vice versa. Turned out it wouldn’t mattered anyway as his opponent scored a beastly 144.2 points.

In Week 10 I reassembled the team back to the way it was and this time they won. I continued to make substitutions as needed through out the rest of the season so Team Gregory went 2-2 over the last 4 weeks and is now in the playoffs.

But I’d irrevocably altered our nonlinear system. A quick look back and the two losses would have obviously occurred, and probably one of the victories as well, but this week’s win would have not.

The way I see it is I have four options:
1) Let Team Gregory in the playoffs and keep adjusting the line up as I think best, thereby setting up a possible hoisting on my own petard scenario when they knock me out of the playoffs. Or
B) Go back and reset Team Gregory’s roster to to its Week 8 lineup to see how those last 5 games would have played out differently and adjust accordingly. Or
3) Just have the top two teams from each division play in the playoffs using the last 4 weeks of the season and each game, the semis and the final, last 2 weeks each. Or
IV) Toss out the whole playoff system and declare myself the winner of the Trophy and all acclaim it entails.

Let me know what you think.
—

Brian Bogardus
Commissioner
End Zone Entourage FFL
Owner/Director of Player & Personnel
Purple Whales

I received a few replies:

  • My suggestion: Tar and feather the league president… revolt I say! Since my team is out of the playoffs it doesn’t matter to me. – Jeff
  • My suggestion is to allow Team Gregory in the play-offs and give me control of his team. This will ensure that there will be no chance of success for Team Gregory and effectively the top four teams will have a fair chance of winning. Team Gregory’s players will suffer career ending injuries, indictments, suspensions and other forms of disgrace that typically occur among the ranks of my 1-12 team’s players. This may not be a fair or ethically sound solution, but it would be fun to see what happens. – Bob R.
  • I agree with Bob!! Give Bob a shot!! – Kevin
  • I think first we need to name this travesty…my vote is: Inflate-gate since Team Gregory’s score was artificially inflated the last 5 weeks of the season. – David

So tonight I booked .0276 milliseconds of computing team on IBM’s Watson and did the math on how things would have gone had I not interfered, then composed this email:

From: The Office of the Commissioner
To: All Concerned & Ships at Sea
Subj: [EZEFFL] Countering the Butterfly Effect

Lets hope my attempt here to nullify my original meddling doesn’t have even greater dire consequences somewhere further along.

All,

I chose Option B. While I couldn’t actually go back and change players playing in past weeks, I could look at how each of Team Gregory’s starting 9 players did for the past 5 weeks and add their scores up to get just what would been the team total for those games.

Turns out that two victories,Week 10 to Team Hofmann and last week against Aiken Ball Busters, would have been losses. So Team Gregory’s record moves down to 4-9 from 6-7. Team Hofmann goes up from 6-7 to 7-6 and the Ball Busters move from 5-8 to 6-7.

My original intent for the playoffs still stands, the top 3 teams get a bye and Teams 4 & 5 play a “Wild Card” game to see who gets to play in the Semi-finals. So even though Team Hofmann moves above .500 at 7-6 his lower points scored during the season drop him to 7th in the Power Rankings. Frank Hanna’s 6-7 record ties him with Mike Lenio, but the Ball Busters scored 23 more points than the Bone Crushers so Frank is the #5 seed in the playoffs and the defending League Champion will not have a chance to repeat.

So, pay no attention to ESPN’s Final Standings and Playoff Seeding Numbers. Because of the way it worked out both Wild Card teams are from the same Division I have set up the playoffs so that the two divisions will not meet until the Championship Game as in the past.

—

Brian Bogardus
Commissioner
End Zone Entourage FFL
Owner/Director of Player & Personnel
Purple Whales

For reference I’ve attached a zip file that includes two spreadsheets League Standings (with pre and post wing flap data) and The Gregory Variations (which sounds like a Big Bang Theory episode title.)

It’s Beginning To Look…

Oh? Tanenbaum.
…a lot like Christmas.

Yesterday afternoon we got a Motoring Challenge point, but in the morning we did some Christmas shopping for the rest of the people on our list that weren’t going to happy with a wreath to decorate their front door. We had some kids to buy for, 1 nephew, 2 nieces and a 5-year old off the Angel Tree at work. We visited several stores looking for just the right items, but in reality we ended up getting almost everything for the 4 of them at one store. We then did a little halfhearted shopping for ourselves with Donna a little more successful than I.

Yesterday evening we decked the halls. The first order of business is to set up the tree. I assembled the two halves and plugged it in. The bottom part lit up and the top stayed dark. Dang. Maybe that explains the extra string of lights in the box? So I plugged it into the spot where the top lights went and tried my mightiest to get those 50 bulbs to cover the top. Nope, couldn’t do it. That’s when I remembered that only the bottom half of the top half was out last year and the 50 bulb string could compensate for that.

Instead of going to out to the nearest store and buying another 50 light string, we said, “Screw it, let’s get a whole new one.” A check of the Home Depot web site showed that there was a nice 7-1/2 pre-lit tree for sale for $120 that would fit our needs. Only one in stock though. Quick like bunnies we got dressed and headed over. Looked for the tree, approved of its looks, located the unopened box and came on home.

Took a bit longer to set up, but that was mostly due to the fact that it is 60% larger than the old 4-1/2′ tall one it is replacing. And boy has pre-lit artificial Christmas tree technology improved in the intervening 8 years. This thing is miles nicer – fuller & more realistic – plus it cost less than that old tree was back then.

Number 10

Car Show - Aiken Horsepower Association December Cruise-In

We missed this morning’s Cars & Coffee in Augusta, it was just too comfortable in our warm bed, but we found the Aiken Horsepower Association December Cruise-In a bit over a mile from home for Car Show #10 of 10 possible in this year’s Motoring Challenge. A far sight better than the 2 we claimed last year.

There are 10 points left out for us to get and we have 25 days to finish them up. Two cities A & K we’ll grab on our way to Hilton Head in two weeks where we also planning on getting 2 points for the Atlantic Ocean while we’re there. Four points are right here in Aiken and the last two are in Charleston.

Motoring Challenge Points 1, Approx Miles Driven 5
Totals So Far: 159 points & 8810 miles

Where is my NB love Mr. Blipshift?

Just might be coming to the internet soon…

A couple weeks ago I sent in a rebuttal of sorts to the then latest Blipshift T-shirt, well today, I received this in my email inbox:

Thanks for your blipshift submission. We read your idea loud and clear, and we think it has great potential (plus we agree, it’s time for an NB design)!

It’s pretty typical for us to go back and forth with the idea to either modify it or suggest further tweaks, and we will be working with our talented artists community and in-house pit crew to transform this idea into a blip-tastic design. For this one we’ll probably start by reaching out to the artist of the original NA shirt. Once a finalized design has been made, we will get some more details from you, and can get it scheduled for printing. Then when people ask you, “Whose awesome idea was that?” you can say, “Mine!”

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Cheers!
Daniel
-team blipshift

Looks like I’ll be adding a new Blipshift Miata shirt to my T collection. Maybe a hoodie too. Oh, and a poster. I hope Santa leaves me some money in my stocking.