(no subject)

Though I was really out there to photograph the Muon G-2 ring, I was tickled to find another photographic subject very much inline with my interests at canal side: this 1898-built railroad swing bridge. Though I often talk about things like Art Deco and Neo-classical when I talk about architecture, this beautiful, raw 19th century industrial metalwork really calls to me too.

I wanted the mass of the steel to show in the way the superstructure seems to press down onto the corridor of travel, shaping it into a steel-lined tunnel.


Span and Trusses - Lemont Swing Bridge

Copyright Stormdog 2013


( More pictures behind the cut.... )

(no subject)

I believe that I recently said that I "look forward to new and unknown adventures with my new car." I had my first one today!

I decided that I'd drive the Lumina to school this morning so I could sleep in a little longer, mail the registration papers, give my brother a ride to the campus, and do food shopping on the way home. I'd almost made it as far as the mail boxes outside the downtown post office when the car suddenly started handling strangely and making a scraping sound. I drove a few feet forward to get to the curb and got out to look.

The passenger ball joint had completely separated and the steering knuckle was disconnected from the lower control arm. That's one of the two points where the wheel is attached to, and controlled by, the rest of the car, so that's pretty bad. I had James turn the steering wheel for me and noted that the passenger wheel's response was delayed and muted compared to the driver's side one. Plus, the whole wheel could move forward and backward within the wheel well, scraping against the interior wall. Definitely time to call a tow truck.

James and I waited for most of an hour for the truck to arrive, chatting about his upcoming bar exam and the complexity of law. It was nice to just chill with him for a while, after he assured me that I wasn't causing him huge inconveniences. See, I don't mind when these things happen to me; they make for good stories later. I just don't like causing problems for other people. Among other things, I asked whether, with my car parked in a no-parking zone, if someone rear-ended me, whether I'd be liable. That was an interesting discussion about negligence as interpreted by the intention of the creators of specific ordinances.

Anyway, the car went on a flatbed for its trip home and is now sitting in the driveway on a jackstand in front of the Swift, which means that even if Percy was legal and safe to drive (which items are, respectively, not so, and questionable), it would be difficult to get him out of the driveway. The driver of the tow truck did say that I was lucky enough that the half-shaft (the drive-axle from the transmission) had not pulled out of the transmission when the ball joint went as they often do, so all I should really have to do is replace the ball joints and get an alignment. It's a good thing I only had to drive ten more feet or so after the joint separated or it might have been worse.

In the meantime, now I'm really without a car. I've got to get this resolved pretty soon. On the plus side, I'm 90% sure that the front-end clunk was a ball joint about to fail, so once that gets fixed (which is not too bad a thing to deal with, as front-end issues go), the Lumina should be in decent shape. In a way, it's a relief. Now I just have to find time between my trip with Posi this coming weekend, going to Toronto in August, and all the work I'm doing, to deal with this issue. And until I do, I have to hope it doesn't rain too much while I'm biking to school.

(no subject)

An interesting discussion about the narrowness of the media's viewpoint on the issue of "casual sex".

http://freethoughtblogs.com/brutereason/2013/07/16/what-we-write-about-when-we-write-about-hookups/

(no subject)

Today's been quite a day. After dealing with the car and working at the archives 'till 6, I decided not to stay and work on my own project since I have to bike home. Good choice; it was getting dusky enough on the way home later that I turned my headlight on as a precaution and found that the batteries are dead.

I left my cell phone in the library after printing out some review material for my brother, so I had to bike back from the edge of campus to grab it. I was really hungry and out of easy-to-make frozen food, so I took a quick shopping trip to Aldi with my dad to get some pizzas and pot pies and things. Tuesdays are also my turn to clean the kitchen here at the house, so I just got done eating dinner and doing that. And since I need to bike tomorrow, I should be thinking of getting to bed in half an hour or so.

So yeah, definitely a treading water kind of day. I'm going to organize some of my land history notes to get a sense of where my research stands before potentially staying late to do more work tomorrow. Then I'm getting to sleep. Hopefully tomorrow will feel more productive!