Fri 24/10/14 - Still Busy, Armageddon 2014, The Kids Are Sick & This Week's Wristwatch.

- Fri 10:27am AEST - 

Last Weekend

                       Started off simply enough. I worked on another assignment on Saturday, surprised by how much information I found on silverfish. For those of you just tuning in, welcome, and I'm currently undertaking Library Studies and am doing the Conservation & Preservation module. There are numerous pests that just love eating books. Silverfish are particularly attracted to the starches and saccharines that are used in the adhesives of book bindings. 

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 And now, a short tutorial for one of my regular readers who wrote in to tell me that silverfish are a pesky little problem in his workshop;

Hey, Bill M, I think this may be tricky around electrical equipment, but a damp, rolled-up newspaper left overnight will attract a heap of silverfish looking for food and lodgings. Next morning, the newspaper should be filled with the little critters. You can then toss the paper in the trash or set it alight. Better safe than sorry.

For a more humane approach, take a clean glass jar, wrap the outside of it with masking tape and then place it in a dark corner with a small piece of dampened bread in it. The silverfish will climb up the masking taped jar, jump in, dine on the bread, but will be unable to climb up the smooth glassy interior of the jar. 

To keep silverfish away, sprinkle talcum powder along the wall-edges of the floor or your radio bench. Cinnamon or clove is very effective. Apparently, these pests don't like strong smelling spices. 

Alternatively, cabinets made from cedar or huon pine are also a deterrent. You can even use wood shavings from these two timbers, but I think they need replacing every few weeks. 

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Sunday

            My wife and I had kept this secret from the kids all week. We told them to get dressed and pack a book because we were driving out to a newly-opened hardware store about an hour away. They didn't seem too thrilled, hah!

As we got closer to our destination, they began to figure things out. Especially when they saw this;

Yep, it was the 2014 Armageddon Expo. A set-up of stalls selling comics graphic novels and steampunk gear, interviews and signings from artists and writers, and other superhero and console gaming related schtick. Sure, it isn't the San Diego ComiCon, but you gotta admire the work that some folks put into their costumes. And who wouldn't wanna see Jar Jar Binks' head separated from his body?

The father and son Metal Gear Solid team from last year were there running a stall, dressed up as Big Boss and Old Snake from this classic (my favourite) game series;

And my son told me that this girl was dressed up as one of the characters out of the classic Mortal Combat games. Here she is, posing for the Tom Baker version of Dr. Who;

My wife asked her (and her friend) if she could get a picture of me with them. When I'm an old, old man, I'll look at that photo and wonder where the hell I was.

Monday

             Our son had been coughing a little over the weekend, so I kept him home from school and took him to the doctor. "I'll treat it as pneumonia", was his diagnosis. 

Good God, was it as bad as that? I thought, if anything, it was a 'flu (again) mixed with hayfever and quite possibly the beginnings of athsma, which is why I thought I'd get him checked out to begin with.

Tuesday

             I was watching The Conjuring (Dir: James Wan, 2013). I'm not a huge horror film fan, but I like to watch one from time to time to see how modern filmmakers find ways to scare the bejeezus out of us in the comfort of our own homes. With horror movies, anticipation is the key, in my opinion, and I often find it creepy when I think of the implications behind certain scenes and the things that we don't see. 

Although, every now and then, along comes a film where we see some pretty creepy stuff. Check out the last few frames of the opening scene of the US version of The Ring (Dir: Gore Verbinski, 2002).

There were a few scenes in The Conjuring where somebody is screaming from another room in the house where the story is set, so I jumped out of my seat when I heard my wife call out my name from one of the kid's bedrooms. 

Turned out that my daughter had just thrown up and she had a temperature. Some frantic running to the laundry, stripping the sheets off her bed, a cold wet flannel and the house settled back into its version of normal. 

Looks like both kids would be staying home from school this week. 

Wednesday

                   Did some homework. And it drove me nuts. I had been wearing the Omega Railmaster since the weekend;

And I decided I'd remove the bracelet and put it on a leather strap. Man, what a job that turned out to be. Took me over two hours!
The space between the lugs on this watch is 19mm. Omega decided to go for an odd number instead of the usual 18 or 20mm spacing. I thought the spring bars on this bracelet were 20mm long, so it would be a snap to remove the bracelet and put a leather strap on the watch. How wrong I was. Removing one side of the spring bars was easy. Trying to remove the other end was another thing altogether.
The bars in this bracelet were of the dumbell design, like this;

                 
Basically, it's a steel tube with a spring inside it and the two barbell-styled ends with a flange. You take the tool and push down on the flanged end and out comes the spring bar. Repeat on other side.
These thin bars are basically what holds the bracelet or strap to your watch. Doesn't look like much, but they are made of quality stainless steel and are quite strong.



 picture courtesy of www.donindiano.net


This here is the Bergeon 6767 spring bar tool. It's the best one on the market, as far as I'm concerned.

                                                     picture courtesy of www.mywatchmaker.net

I wound up destroying the crescent-shaped prong on my Bergeon 6767 tool as I found myself getting increasingly exasperated by this endeavour. Eleven years of doing this on a daily basis and here I was, struggling to remove this bracelet. I was out of practice.
I managed to get one side off without too much hassle. I even wore my Dad's reading glasses for the up-close work. Dammit, I'm getting older.

In the end, I decided on a radical procedure. It was time to use a drill.
I checked to see that I had a drill-bit that was small enough and then I made sure my hands were steady enough to do this right the first time.
Worst-case scenario? I would possibly damage the watch case if the drill slipped. And nobody wanted that. I positioned everything and got started, slowly at first. I had the bit lodged against the flange. The idea was to totally destroy it so that I would be able to remove the spring bar completely with tweezers.
I stopped and started three times, checking my progress as I went along and, in the end, it was Bosch cordless drill-1, spring bar-nil.

Done! Then a quick check of the bracelet's end-link to find that I had gone slightly too close to one side;

I wasn't going to lose any sleep over that. And those scratches can be removed with a light buffing.

Why'd you do it, Teeritz, you may be asking? Well, I have a large selection of watch straps and I figured I would put one onto this Railmaster and wear it over the upcoming warmer months. I don't think I've ever worn a strap to death and I thought it was time to actually use some of them. So, on went a black leather strap with white stitch;

It's a tad long and I don't think it's as snug a fit as I'd like, but that's okay. I'll probably swap it over to something else in the next day or two.

Thursday
               The kids stayed home from school. They appear to be on the mend, but it seems a slow process. A few people I've spoken to have told me of 'flus that took them about six weeks to get over. Some nasty strains out there. Finish your medication, folks.

Took a quick portrait in the mirror. Would have been a better photo if the camera wasn't in my hands. I was aiming for a Mel Gibson in The Year of Living Dangerously kind of vibe, with me wearing light tones and the afternoon sun streaming in through the venetian blinds.

Today
          I think I'll do a little homework this morning. My daughter was feeling well enough to go to school, which was good, but my son is still coughing a little, so he gets to stay home for the fifth day in a row. Ah, well...

And one last pic of the Rialmaster, sitting next to a three dollar pair of sunglasses that I bought at a street stall near the Grand Palace in Bangkok in 2011;

     
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!