Tardis

Since I made a cardboard K-9 for the 2007 BYU Homecoming Parade, I decided that for the 2008 parade we would do a wooden TARDIS.

We were originally going to do a full size TARDIS but Britt told me that was unrealistic (since we don't own a truck) and more and more people agreed with her until I was the lone voice of reason ("Its just not the same if its not the full seven feet tall!") So I caved to all the illogical requests and we decided on a half size TARDIS.

Now, all the parts for this set the club back about $400. So if you want to make one for your self, it gets expensive. You might be able to make it for a little bit cheaper since I actually bought too much wood. (We decided the night before I bought the wood to do it at half size and so I was up till 1am trying to do the conversions. I messed a few of them up and bought too much plywood and a few other things.)

So the construction officially started on Saturday August 30th since it was the last weekend before school started.

On that Saturday I went to Lowes at 7am and was there till about 11am. I had scoped out prices the day before and Lowes seemed to be the best price for the materials. I then realized that even though I had the store employee cut down all the lumber, it was still to big to fit in my car. So I called Holly and she came to my rescue with her parents mini van.

We took the wood to the shop that Nate so kindly let us use and we got to work on it.

We were all wearing coats and hats in the beginning since is was freezing!

I had a lot of good help with the measuring and cutting.

It was great working here at Nate's shop since he had every tool we needed. Good job on the windows guys!

I think we got a lot done that day.

After working for a few hours we called it quits. The next time I came back was on Monday. Monday was September 1st. It was Labor Day and we all had the day off from work and school wouldn't start till September 2nd.

A lot of club members had stuff to do that day so we had a small turnout but we got a lot done. By the afternoon I was working by myself and ended up staying till about 9 or 10 pm. (I would have stayed longer but I had to get some sleep since the new school year started in the morning.) You can really see the progress at this point.

I started to get the walls up. We were going to have the walls bolted in place but the t-nuts kept ripping out of the soft wood. So I ended up just screwing the walls into the wood.

I was so happy when it all started to fit together.

Here are the three walls. Its still missing the front doors but it looks really cool.

I then threw on the trim to make it look like the TARDIS. The letters on the wood show where the pieces are suppose to go.

Here is a good shot of what it looks like with the trim and everything.

I ended up making the doors last. They weren't hard to make but the light boxes where the "Police Public Call Box" part goes was kinda hard. The light boxes took the longest out of everything. The roof wasn't too hard after that and i even used some good old math formulas to figure out the length of a slope by using 2 points on a graph.

I went back and forth a bunch of times to get everything all finished and all the cutting and most of the assembly was done on the Tuesday the 7th of October. On the 8th we had club meeting and everyone came over to my apartment and we had a painting party. It was important that we got as much done as we could that night since the parade was that Saturday (October 11th.)

I was glad that so many club members were able to show up. We even had some first time members come. Most of them hadn't worked on the TARDIS till now so they were excited to see it.

It was cold and dark outside so Britt opened up the kitchen area and let people paint on the floor. It was way nice of her. (Don't worry, the paint came off without any problems; in fact the floor probably looks better after we scrubbed it.)

Shelby and I are here painting in our stair well. This is the first good picture of the top. The paint we got on the cement here still needs to be cleaned up, I just haven't done it yet.

After doing all that painting, we had hot chocolate and Britt helped shuttle people home. Then I continued to do the finishing touches on Thursday and Friday. Here are some of the Friday night pictures.

Here are the painted walls with out the windows.



This is the first time it was assembled and painted. Our kitchen counters turned into work benched during this time.

Instead of doing a lot of cutting and nailing and who knows what else, I just decided to paint the lines on the windows. It saved tons of time and it looked good when it was done.

I stayed up till about 1 or 2 am that last night and got up about 7am and screwed the last pieces together. By 8:15 am my brother and I were loading the pieces into his trunk and we took it over to the Marriott Center where I spent about another hour prepping it for the parade.

After all the hard work of many many people, here is the finished half sized TARDIS! My nephew is inside to show the scale of it. He is 18 months old and it fits him perfectly. If only it really was bigger on the inside.

K-9

K-9 from the show Dr. Who

So about a year ago I started a club here at BYU. It's the Dr. Who Club and its based off of the BBC show Dr. Who I signed up our brand new club to participate in the 2007 Homecoming Parade, so I made a banner with the help of Jeff and Lois and I also made a cardboard K-9 that sat on top of a remote controlled truck. As you will see, Lois and Jeff also made a cardboard/construction paper TARDIS.

So here is my photo journal of the construction and the parade.

First I started off with the dimensions of the truck

Then I built the body out of cardboard.

On the seams I used paper bags that were cut into strips and coated with Elmer's Glue.


The pattern I was using for the head was way to small (its the white piece of paper that's attached to the body). I used a flashlight on the wall to cast a larger shadow to blow it up. I had to do it one more time to get it proportional.


Here is the paper pattern for the head.

To hold the cardboard together while I hot the strips of paper ready, I used small bits of masking tape to hold everything in place.

Here is the head and body. On the left side of the body you can kind of see the mount where the head sits.

Here is K-9 before painting.

Here he is after the paint. It took 2 cans of paint to make him look right. The lettering on the side was done free hand in the parking lot before the parade. Shelby did a good job with the letters. (The letters are the only part that I did not do since I'm not to good at free hand art)

Here is a closeup of the head.

This is at the parade.

Here is the original club just before the parade. It was tons of fun having everyone there. We even had a bunch of candy that we threw out.

The TARDIS by Lois and Jeff

And here is the banner we made for the parade.

Here is K-9 in action. He lasted all the way from the Marriott Center till just past the duck pond (then the batteries died). So we went 1.4 miles on battery power and then just pulled him the last half mile.

I still have all the cardboard cutouts for K-9 but I cut along the seams and took him apart so that I could store him flat. The only piece the is still assembled is the head since that was the most time consuming portion.

Happy 4th of July!!!!!!

Holidays are great. The only thing better than one holiday is two holidays at the same time! So I decided to combine two of my favorites, the 4th of July and Halloween.

See how fun this can be!

The World is Just Awesome!

So this is one of my favorite commercials and it has some of my favorite shows!

It's great! If you want to download this yourself or just get the song, then go to the Discovery Channel Promo Page! I think I might get it as a ring tone so that when my phone goes off this song will get stuck in everybody's head's for the rest of the day!

Its A Small World After All!

So this past Sunday we had a stake speaker and guess who it was? None other than Blake Modersitzki. The same one that I talked about in my Past Life post! Cool huh. Crazy how the people you meet keep popping up in your life.

Also I got a new home teaching partner and its none other than Jake Hsu! Who is that? Well he was Jeffs class partner for past year in his MPA program! So yes its a small, small world!!!

Good-bye week and hello couch

These past few weeks have been busy. This summer started off with a good-bye week. Lois and Jeff left for their internship on a Monday (April 28th), on Wednesday Britt left for Seattle, on Friday Sam left for New York and somewhere in there Steph and Andy left for California. So that was a big week for everyone.

That Thursday though Heidi and Mark moved in across the parking lot from our apartment into an upstairs apartment. It’s cool having so much family close by and its nice having Steph and Andy back from their vacation.

Just so that I wouldn’t loose my mind with boredom, Britt bought me Mario Cart (rated E for comic mischief) as a good-bye present. It’s been fun playing it but I would rather have Brittany here than a game.
Then this past week end I got kind of restless and I was looking for things to do around the house (I've been reorganizing everything to give our house a new look for when Britt gets back) and the couch has been bugging me to no end. It has pieces of wood that poke into you when you sit down and won’t sit up against the wall because of another wooden piece that is trying to break out the back. Having worked in an upholstery shop I decided to take a look at the busted insides of our couch.

I found a lot of problems. The wood that is used as a support for the back was flawed and it had cracked right in half on a knot in the wood. When that happened, all the pieces that were nailed to it and the top support came apart and those pieces that were now loose were the pieces that were poking into the fabric.

I also found that there was no left-to-right support that is supposed to be there. Normally there is twine that weaves through the springs to add that additional support. On this couch there was only a single metal wire that ran through the springs and was clipped to them. It was broken and wasn’t doing a whole lot (even if it wasent broken it wouldn’t be doing much).

The support closest to the camera is supposed to look like the one that is farther back. You can also see the broken wire and the lack of left-to-right spring support.

Here is another piece digging into the couch

Well after I took the couch apart I wanted to fix everything but realized that i was lacking the air compressor and staple gun that I am used to. I didn’t want to close it up without at least improving the situation so I decided to fix it up boy scout style! I went to a farm supply store and bought 9000 feet of twine.

I called Britt and told her about the purchase and she was very perplexed by my actions. Since she didn't know about my couch project, she kept asking me why we needed 9000 ft. of twine and I assured her that we would be using it all the time. After a little while she guessed that I was going to run twine through the springs but she didn't guess that I was going to fix the wood too.

So I got home and started lashing together the wood. Now this is a very temporary fix! So don’t think that I won’t cut corners and leave it like this forever. But it works well for the time being.

Here is the ugly lashing on the bottom support that cracked and broke everything else. It’s kind of slip-shod sine there was only a half an inch space to slip the twine through on the back and bottom but I was able to feed it through eventually. I was going to do more but I got a friction burn from feeding the twine between the wood and the foam. Foam is very abrasive!

Here is the final tie-up! I twinned the springs and lashed the loose pieces of wood back together and now I just need to put the fabric back on. So it took a while but at least I won’t get back aches every time I study on the couch!

Finals, Finals, Finals

So I just finished my last final for the semester. Whew! Well actually I only had two finals this semester and one of the two was a take home paper. Even the final that I took in the testing center was open book. My teacher also assured us that anything attached to the book could be used so here are some pictures of my Franken-book. I just took all my notes and stapled them to an index page. I do like how it’s multi dimensional now.

Also, on Friday we went to REI and I bought a climbing harness. So now we have all the gear to top rope (That’s when you have a rope that is attached to the top or the rock face with a carabineer and one end is on the ground with the person belaying you and then you have the other end tied to you as you climb. So like what they have at indoor rock climbing walls.)

Anyway we decided to try out our gear today and we had our friend Chris teach us how to safely top rope. It was way fun. I didn’t make it to the top cause my legs are out of shape but Britt went all the way up. Now all I need is a pair of climbing shoes and I’ll be good to go for a while.

Here I am with Chris.

I only made it up a little higher than this. The picture is zoomed in so you cant see how high up I got.

Here is Britt as she was going up.

I had to zoom all the way in to get this one.

Here is some perspective for how high up it was.

We also had a BYUSA Dr. Who Club party one week ago. I figures that since we were shelling out all the club money for the party, I would also send in a request form to buy the 3 Dr Who Box Sets. They belong to BYUSA but they need a place to stay while the club is using them so I figure my house is as good a place as any.

Also, I got to see Jon and Kassie Voigt. I grew up with Jon in Minnesota and it was fun hanging out with them. (And that is Henry Weinhard root beer we are holding, just in case you were wondering)

Happy finals and graduation everybody!!!!

Past Life

Here is what has passed in my life over the last few weeks.

March 26 -Wednesday
Ever since we've been married, Britt has wanted to go to the Luau here on campus. So I finally got tickets and we went. We even knew a few of the performers so it was a lot of fun. Afterwards we tried to go to a Polynesian restaurant but they all close at 9:00 and we didn’t get out till 9:05, so I promised Britt that we will go to one of them before she heads for Seattle.

March 27 -Thursday
I am currently in a class where they teach us how to move around in the business world. We learned all about dealing with hostile co-workers and bosses, how to get an extra 20K when you interview for a job, and most recently how to be well mannered at a business dinner. To further teach the point, the school took the whole class out to Carrabba's Italian Grill to eat (and they paid for it too. Cool huh).

Here are a few things that I learned at the dinner.

• Tipping is now a standard 20-25% across the US




• Tipping is not a reflection of the service you receive but a reflection of yourself




• Think of dinner service as Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen (your server could be in business school and be your boss one day)




• Your server will tell you their name at the beginning of the meal, use it. (Nobody wants to be called "hey you" unless their name is Heauue)




• If you need something from you server then make eye contact and just raise your hand slightly. Don't bang your glass or snap.




• If you absolutely need a refill on your drink and you server is MIA then just ask another server, they will usually be happy to fill your drink or find your server.

So it was a fun time. Between this experience and going to the other etiquette dinner with Britt, I think I'm ready for most business dinners.

March 28 - Friday
A week ago Friday we had the iOscars. I didn’t win but they did show our movie on the big screen and we had a fun time doing it. We even got a few people to clap for us. Someone asked about adding background music and I thought about it but the movie that we were copying didn’t have any music since the whole movie is filmed on a home video camera and is meant to be like real life. The one that I thought was the best was an Indiana Jones movie that they showed at the start. It was sooo funny but it didn’t even make it to the top three. But the winning film was good too. I was going to insert the movies so you could watch them but they aren’t up on the iOscar website yet.

April 3 - Thursday
Another exciting chapter of my life happened about 2 weeks ago. There was an E-business day here at school and they were raffling off an Xbox 360. Well I decided to go and try my chances at winning the raffle. Well when the time came to give away the prizes, I actually won a lunch with one of the main speakers. It was with Blake Modersitzki. Well this last Thursday was the time we set for lunch. I went up to Salt Lake and I ate lunch with Blake and 2 other employees from UV Partners. I had a great time and learned a lot about their business.

April 8 - Tonight (Tuesday)
We finaly get to watch the latest episode of Dr. Who!!! For club night we are watching Episode 1 of Season 4 for Dr. Who Club. I heard that it is a grat episode but i have refrained from watching it till tonight so it will be new for me and the club members. We also hope to have a club party on the last day of class. We'll see if we can get everything approved in time!