Testing, testing, one, two, three

Alright, it's 6.39am, it's Tuesday, February 18th, I believe. Yeah. And I'm on the Richmond Center, Phil Bridge, heading in to work early today. I have an early meeting. I'm not special about today or this weekend. This is the weekend that Toss and Samir went to New York City. I just got off the phone with him, he and Samir at the NBC Studios waiting for a tour. Last night they went to the Korean barbecue place that Hala took us to when we were in New York City back in. July. And so July August, I think. So yeah, what else? This weekend I worked on the table some more. I started preparing the breadboard ends. I had to, and I was also cleaning up the bottom surface of the table top, getting the glue off. Along with the top surface as well, I'm going to do that. So yeah, I had to dimension out the breadboard ends. And once dimensioned, I have to determine the location of the loose tenets. And once I've determined their placement, then I'll determine the location of the dowels. And what else? After I've determined the location of the dowels, then it's simply a matter of mortising out the location. The mortise, creating the mortises on both faces, the table top facing the breadboard edge. And I will probably have to make a mortising jig, if not just by the mortising jig that Bosch makes depends on the price. But if it's easy to use, it secures safely to my router. I might just do that. What else? Mortising. Yeah, so once the mortises are made, then I can insert the dowels. Well, I made these tenets, loose tenets out of oak. And I just have to make sure that they fit into the mortises. And once that's done, then it's simply a matter of gluing them in. I would glue the ones in the center, but I mean I glue all tenets into their mortises first of them, into the panel side. So that's how you start. And then the ones that you actually glue into the breadboard end are the central ones. Some say that really just the very center one, others would say, you know, the central ones, the central groups. So I think I'm more on the group side, and you leave the exterior ones to essentially sit in a gap that you create. It's a very, very small gap. And maybe one-sixteenth of an inch, the most. That's where expansion and contraction of the wood over the seasonal expansion and contraction. So yeah, and the dowels in there again. I believe the dowels should be glued to the tenet, but I don't really know how that's possible. Some people actually will glue one half of the dowel and insert it. So I just have to figure that part out too. And I got to find my dowel. I have a walnut dowel that I can't use. So yeah, that's that. So the very... So yeah, I returned my planer. I am not comfortable with that tool. And I shouldn't use a tool that I'm not comfortable with, you will make mistakes. So it's really about knowing your own personal limits as a woodworker. What else? Looks like I'm at Bayview here and there's traffic. I could choose to get off. I'll just use the time to take. Yeah. So I think that's it. Other stuff we did. Friday night, I believe it was Friday. We took Layla had a sleepover. It was a really Friday. I don't think it was Saturday night. I had a sleepover. And at Olivia's house, Emily's, her mom, Emily and Damien are her parents. And she had fun there. And since we had the night with Karim, we decided to take him to Karim Barbecue. And I... I was going to go to Soban, but I said, let's try the surface. And it was very good. But man, our clothes, you know, you sit over a steamy grill basically. And all the grease that gets into the air through the steam carried by the steam gets into your clothes. I mean, it penetrates your clothes. So, yeah, that's that you got to get out. But still, very good food. A little awkward with the atmosphere where basically... There are TVs all over the place and anyone with kids was... Some TVs were set to kid channels. Other TVs were set to sports. You know, I didn't mind the loudness of the place, but yeah, it was weird. Heidi also went on a hike with Leila in a park near the city of Sonoma. I want to say it was Bella Fonte Park or Belmont Park. But yeah, they had a nice long hike that took them up. Beautiful vistas and ending at a winery. So they had lots of fun and I had time to work on the table. So that was good. What else? Pretty sore from the work on the table. That's because, oh yeah, when I returned my planer, I decided to get... I decided this time to not go for, you know, expensive brands. I know they're expensive because they have good build quality. I just want to see how far I can get on a cheaper tool. I need to get a belt sander and I don't know how often I'm going to use a belt sander. So let me try it out on a belt sander. They had a cheap belt sander at Home Depot. It's a good brand, rigid, it's a good brand. I'm not going to say it's a bad brand, but I really want to see how long it lasts. It doesn't operate at the same amperage. So you know, it doesn't draw as much power as, say, the porter cable or the Makita. But I mean, it seems to spin fast enough. And, you know, if I had used a heavier belt sander, I don't know if I would have... I mean, the lightweight belt sander was a perfect starting belt sander. So I could totally see myself getting the expensive Makita belt sander, which is probably meant for other types of jobs. I don't really know. You know, it's for the guy who has to sand wood for a living. I don't know, and who's probably three times stronger than me. I don't know. But yeah, having to keep the sander steady is one thing given the amount of spin the RPMs on the belt. So that was very interesting. I think I'm glad I got the rigid. So anyway, I sanded down the surfaces. The surface was uneven because the boards were uneven, because I didn't want to plane any more for fear of losing material. So yeah. And I didn't lose material, but the bottom side is uneven. It's not noticeable to the naked eye unless you check the lines. And it's, or you use a level, a straight edge, but, and it's the bottom, so no one's going to see it. So I think it's fine. I just need to make sure that when I route out the rails, that it's smooth. So that's the only other thing. What else? Yeah, so after I cleared the material with like a 36 or a 50 grit, I then used the 80 to do very light material clearance with less grit marks. And then I used the 120 to essentially remove the marks altogether. I mean, 120 feels like you won't get a splinter, but it's not smooth. And so, I mean, it's relatively smooth. So after 120, I'm going to do 220, I think. And then there's a 340 or a 320. And then after that, a 400. So hopefully, and I tested it out on the top, I had a 320, I think. And it'll be fine. You just got to clear up the, you know, the dust. And then I think I'm going to say that, you know, the criticism of sanding in my opinion is just that a criticism. I think someone who's been taught one tradition, like, you know, the hand plane tradition, will, you know, that siphons out a certain type of person. But someone who's been taught, say, the sanding tradition, yeah, okay. So power tools lower the bar for people. Well, what's wrong with that? I mean, it's not like it's ruining the quality. I don't think it is. I mean, if you know what risks you're taking and if you know how to mitigate those risks and if you know that you can achieve relative same quality, then what's the problem? Just a different tradition. And I would say it's a very good tradition. It's just, it's absolutely frustrating that you have to have such, such a high amount of precision in your tools. That's not economical. I'm sorry, it's not, you know, the average DIY enthusiast is going to give up on that because he has a choice. His choice is either spend free time or don't spend free time. And no one wants their free time spent sharpening tools unless that's what they love to do in their free time. People want to enjoy their creations. So that's, I think, my take on it. I don't care what people think. So yeah. Okay, I'm going to cancel this now and that's, I think, enough about, oh, and I totally forgot, I guess, before I canceled about Valentine's Day, Heidi and I. Had a nice lunch at Pearl Friday morning. That was our Valentine's Day. And we had good solid conversation. And for the first time I talked to her about these dictations and how they helped me, they helped me stay grounded. They helped clear my head. I really hate having, you know, unresolved issues, whether they be my own personal thoughts or emotional issues running around in my head. Now, maybe I'm not, maybe I need a lot more kind of talking. I suppose that's why I have to dictate. Then the average person, maybe some people need less talking. I'm not sure. But yeah, I have to, and I do find myself, you know, saying the same thing over and over and over again. I'm trying to get over the lady I can't tell. But anyway. So yeah. Anyway, yeah, Heidi and I had a good conversation. And what happened at Pearl? I had the Shakyukha and a raspberry sage lemonade. And Heidi had a, some kind of cod bean dip where the cod and beans were mixed together. I mean, I'm sorry, brunch for me is not fish. I don't like the taste of fish. And so, I mean, I like fish, but I'm not like crazy about it. So I don't want to, I don't crave it the way Heidi craves it. But yeah, other than that. And it was in a part of Petaluma that we've never been before. And it was nice. What else? I think I'm going to sign off and talk about flight of horse now.

Okay, it's 6.59 a.m. Tuesday, February 18th and what's going on. Flight of Horace, I had a couple ideas over the weekend. I'm going to primarily just list them so that I can get them out. And then if I want to talk more in detail about them, I'll just, if I forget, I'll consult this note. Basically, I wanted to talk about one possibility that Horace is just as aware of Rosalithia as she is of him. That's one possibility. And how to write that into the story is it that we frame it, that I frame the perspective as if it is from Rosalithia's perspective, but then Horace reveals his perspective through her perspective. Something like that. Or perhaps the story full on switches to his perspective, but right now I'm not in a headspace where I can think about a story from his perspective. So that's one thing. The fact, the reveal that Horace knows as much about her as she does of him. So, in this period, two, the origin of Horace's name, and three, how to discuss Horace's naming, how to introduce his naming in the story. So the origins of Horace's name are that his name is a homonym, where if we are to... It's a homonym in the sense that when spoken in English, it assumes a certain meaning. Oh, Horace, like H-O-R-A-C-E, a name, a male name, and not just a male name, but named after the famous... Well, some people would say Horace has become its own name as a nickname for Horaceous or Horatus. But most people will assume Horace is simply named after the Roman poet Horace. So if you stop there, that's all you're going to think, oh, me personally, I studied Latin in high school, and this means a lot to me because in high school, when you study Latin, at least at the high school level, and what your teacher may or may not know, oh, okay, you know, there is a European tradition that kind of ends with the Greeks. And what's so fascinating about ending with the Greeks is that really all we're talking about is a historical language barrier. What is a historical language barrier? Well, it's when you basically lose events in history because of language, because either there is no scholarship in on the other side of that barrier, meaning the other language, or the language is dead or lost, and hence no scholarship, or the scholarship has to play ketchup. But what we see are influences. And we see commonality. So I personally think that the name Horace is actually derived from Horace. But I have no clear proof of it, and the mystery of it is interesting enough for me to focus on a character. And a story whose bicultural nature is mysterious, is interesting in its own. So I think I'm going to along that same line create that barrier, where language begins, or an idea begins simply because there is no earlier proof in that language. And so, whereas I need to figure this out. So this is a fourth idea I need to talk about. And that is, if we have a thought or an idea, and it can be demonstrated as being part of a trend, so it has a vector to it, which is almost every idea in the world. If you follow that vector, and you see a continuation of that vector in a adjacent culture or society, I believe personally that there is cultural overlap. However, there are those who aren't willing to go that far in a more formal context. But they might be willing to discuss it with you in an informal context. And I just think it's so much more interesting to talk about in an informal context. I love the idea that, so what am I getting at here? Let me back up. Well, first I love the idea that we're looking at something that's older than we believe, but we don't know why. And we can't prove it. And so it's more mysterious to me that way. But yeah, I mean, so what am I getting at? So I spoke of the name Horace, which is the Roman. So I believe the most famous Horace in postmodern society is Horace Mann, the author, German author. But if we look to the origin of the name, we find that Horace was actually a nickname of the Roman playwright Horaceius or Horaceius, as you would say in Latin. And Horaceius. Now, that was his nickname. And so that's all we have. We have a nickname. We don't know anything more than that. We simply accept the fact that Horaceius, Horaceius, whatever, I'm going to go with Horaceius. Was nicknamed Horace. And anything afterwards was attributed to him. So it's quite possible that the parents of Horace Mann were, were, were classicists and named him Horace after, and we can create a chain of naming that will end up in Horaceius, Horaceius, the Roman poet. However, bring in ancient Egypt and the Greeks. So we know of the God Horace. Okay. We know that Horace was called Horace. In fact, you know, because we have the, I mean, the name Horace was actually translated from the Hieroglyphics. We didn't just come up with it. So what's happened is that, you know, Horaceius, which became Horace, and, and even though Latin isn't spoken conversationally anymore, it is still used in liturgy. And so it's still studied in liturgy, passing a red pinto. Sorry, I have to talk about it. It's really cool. But anyway, it's studied in, you know, in liturgy. So the language is, it's somewhat kept alive. So because of that, we can, you know, we are able to read historical documents that attribute the name Horace to Horaceius, the Roman poet. But anything before that starts to get murky. So then we ask ourselves, well, who was the Roman poet named after? And again, there's a claim that Rome obviously wasn't founded in a day, but there were tribes. And there were the three brothers of Horace. And there were soldiers, like soldier brothers. So again, or the battle of Horaceus something, we don't really, there's a painting, I believe, and there might be a, you know, a simple reference to this battle in the brothers, but that's it. There's nothing more than that. So some people just say it's legend. So that's essentially, as far as I can tell, where the Latin name ends. Well, what about the Greek? Horaceus in Greek was, was actually one of the last references to Horaceus, if we go back to Horace the Ancient Egyptian, well they, you know, let's think of the, during the time of the Romans, hyroglyphics were, were pretty much unknown. I mean, so we have Cleopatra going to, Cleopatra, one of the last Greek rulers of Egypt. But what is interesting is that she travels to Rome with Mark Anthony. And what we understand, what we learned from her is that she did know ancient Egyptian. But she wasn't, I mean, she's not able to translate everything. So she knew Greek and ancient Egyptian. And what we have to remember from the Rosetta Stone is that the reason that stone exists is because there was a scarcity of people in society who knew all the languages. So they couldn't just push, you know, publish something in Greek and understand it. There were those who knew ancient Egyptian. And there were those who knew Dhammatic. And so it had to be translated. Greek had to be translated, period. And you couldn't do, publish anything in ancient Egyptian for the same reason. So where is the Greek? So then we can trace Horus into Greek. But the Greek reference to Horus is Horapolo or Horapolo. Again, there were combination names. And this is one of them. You know, if we talk about Ra Mesis, which is Ramsis, here's an example of Horus being converted to Horapolo. And I don't know enough about the background of how these Greek names were created. But it's clear to me that the Greeks used Horus. Beyond that, I don't know. And if they knew about Horapolo, then they knew about Horus. And if we take the idea that if we learn about something in the past, and celebrate it in contemporary times, that's not unusual to our time. So who's to say, like, take for example, my name is Muhammad. And I'm named after someone who lived 1500 years ago. Who's to say that there weren't the same kind of naming? You know, I mean, there were, take for example, the name August. Well, that name's older than Muhammad. You know, I mean, it's someone who can trace their name back to Augustus of Rome. And so on. There are much older names out there. So why is it unusual or why is it, you know, why can't one say that their name actually comes from Horus, the Egyptian God, and not the Roman poet? That is essentially what I want to say. Even though we are saying we are naming, we are choosing this reference to name, to kind of create that identity to, where identifying with this historical reference, but we don't understand is it we're identifying with a detour. And it's possibly not even a detour. It's a decoy. When looking back through history, it becomes a decoy. And it's how things lose their meaning in society. Take for example, in contemporary times, this concept of means, where you make take two or three things and put them together and create a new meaning out of them. And because you've created a new meaning out of them, you place them together completely out of context, out of historical context, out of language context or anything. You've, you've now associated a meaning to these things which were foreign before that. So the flight of Horus is about associating meaning, where there was no meaning. It is about taking the strange and giving it meaning. That's really what it's about. And I think if we were to apply a little morality to it, we would say that we would take the strange and make it not just meaningful, but make it, make it comfortably common. It's not a good way of putting it, but like you can turn the fear of the strange into the eager to bring things together. If we look at the fear of the unknown, and what's the opposite of fear of the unknown, there is an eagerness to share what is known. Fear is essentially an emotion that gives one the desire to flee. Whereas eagerness gives one the desire to be close. And if we're talking about that which causes fear is the unknown, well we can say the opposite of one side of that argument is the desire to discover the unknown. The eagerness to discover the unknown, to learn about the unknown. But if we're really talking about opposites in both ways, you kind of end up in the same place. There is the eagerness to celebrate the opposite of fear. The eagerness to celebrate as opposed to the emotional response to running away. And what are we running away from? We're running away from the unknown. But what do we eager? What do we have a desire to celebrate? The unknown. But it has to become known. So I would argue that they're actually looking for what they seek. I don't think that there is a true... I mean there's a difference between an explorer and a historian. If someone travels to the unknown, they have the explorer mentality. If someone studies the ancient world, they have 80 to 90% of the knowledge. And in fact someone would argue that depending on their level of scholarship, they might have 95% of the knowledge already gained and are trying to fill a 5% gap in the knowledge. That's not exploration. That's playing the odds. That's like saying, yeah there's a high likelihood that this is the case. I just want to make it certain. I am actually looking for evidence to fulfill an argument as opposed to I have no idea what I'm going to find. Now, I think the origin of Horace's name can be argued as the conflict between fear of the unknown, the conflict that results from a fear of the unknown, with a desire to celebrate the known. It's like, why do you want to tell us your name doesn't come from Rome? What's wrong with Rome as opposed to... The fear of the unknown... Well, let's put it in a different perspective. If we were to have two people talking about where Horace's name came from, there would be the classicist who would say, oh it's clear to me, your name comes from this ancient Roman tradition period. There is no other evidence. It's clear that some established process must occur for the determination of this fact. If there is no established process, then there is no fact. And if the evidence can't fulfill the process, or if the process finds no evidence, then there is no fact. There is the other way around. So, who would celebrate the known? It would be the ancient Roman enthusiast. I love Horace's plays. For his poems, his plays and his poems, they're so fascinating. They're filled with life on humanity. But then there would be the Egyptologist who, to the Egyptologist, you would have to say, tell us what's the origin of the name of Horace? The Egyptologist, depending on their level of... I don't want to say... The Egyptologist might say, well, are you referring to the Western Horace, the Roman tradition, or are you referring to the ancient Egyptian horse? If you are referring to the Roman horse, please speak with the classicist. But if the person says, I don't know what I'm referring to, then the ancient Egyptian scholar might say, well, I can only tell you one of those two things. I can either tell you to go talk to a classicist, or I can tell you about Horace. I can't believe I'm still stuck in traffic. If I got off the freeway, I would have been blocking by now. Anyway, so this is my long kind of... How do you then translate into the story? Well, we have someone who has a fear of the unknown. And yet we also have someone who wants to celebrate what they do know. So, wow, this person is really cute. So anyway, finally off the freeway here. That's been a really bad accident today. So I'm going to pause and start on the next idea.

Okay it's 7.32 a.m. Tuesday February 18th. Actually I am going to pause again before I talk.