As you may have read I proposed a place that we could all come and have conversations outside of the biodiesel world.
We will start here and who knows, if this place gets enough business maybe the place will grow and relocate to a forum of it's own,
but until then...


Welcome to the Bio Brewer's Bar and Grill!!!

A great place to relax and have off topic conversation with your bio-brothers (and sisters).
Come in, belly up to the bar, and have a cold one. Every one is welcome. Park your problems at the door.
No fightin', cussin' or spittin' on the floor, or you get bounced outta here. This is a classy joint and we want to keep it that way.
This place is new so watch out for the wet paint.
There is a free juke box in the corner, a pool table, and unlimited seating.
The beverages are cold, the grill is hot, and for now I will be tending bar.
I am a drinkin' bartend so I have already popped the top on a long neck behind the bar waiting for the crowd to roll in.
You don't have to stay long if you don't have the time, but at least stop in and say Hi!!!
You never know who is going to walk through the door.

...in other "off-topic" news....
The Mac arrived on Monday.

It was a bumpy start (it didn't want to connect real well to my wireless router--it'd connect but was slow as a dog & would drop connection). Turns out Netgear & Mac's aren't exactly friends.

But, a quick jump out to a forum to see that all you do is change the broadcast channel on the router to another channel, a couple clicks on the router to do said work, and the mac sprung to life!

Man that things nice to work on! Intuitive little sucker! Mike, you're right, really easy to use too....

We'll see how it goes.
I now have:
- MacBook Pro 2.4 ghz
- Dell XPS Mother ship looking thing
- Dell Inspiron 1505 (w/ bad LCD)
- Homespun PC made by local PC shop

This'll be a good test, w/ 3 PC's & 1 Mac in the house, I'll see how it goes. So far the Mac is pretty sweet though. One nifty feature on the mac, the keyboard lights up! (you know, like on a cell phone). Kinda cool.

Anyway, that's all from the Utah peanut gallery this morning....Mike, I'll have a nice frothy root beer!

-Graydon
An Old Computer Guy too....
(That's what I did at the old day job)

quote:

Originally posted by Mysubrattles:
Mike, we need more info on the tennis ball bombs! Is there a link you can send? You don't have to be responsible for damages, as you can see, I am in the Middle O Kansas, nothing to damage here, not even Graydon's stinky lake.

After you rip the engine & tranny out of that black truck ya got out near the stinky lake in Utah, ya oughta lob one of those bombs at it & take some video! Put the poor thing out of it's misery...

-Graydon

What happened was this...

A friend of my son gets Potassium Perclorate and Aluminum Metal Powder (I THINK) on the internet. He mixes his own "flash powder". I think it is a basic type of silver gunpowder. They use gloves, laundry static spray, digital scales, and plastic containers to make the recipe. They slice a tennis ball open and fill it full of the powder. They cut a piece of dynamite fuse and put in it and the bomb is ready to go; very simple but effective.

We lit one off in the pond next to my house one time and it left a crater five foot in diameter and threw mud about 100 feet in the air. It was so cool..

Another time they took a $10 model rocket they bought at Walmart and stuffed the parachute cavity with "flash". That thing went up about 1,000 feet and went off as loud as one of those huge firework reports you hear professionals light off at 4th of July. You could feel the concussion. The neighbors 1/4 mile away called us about that one...

Here is a recent picture of the two responsible...



Sometimes I wish I was that age again.

Mike...

...more fun from the new Mac...
This was just taken on the mac.
My daughter was sooo excited...

I'm still getting used to a single-button mouse though. That's just wierd!!

Luckily you can set it so that if you tap the keypad with two fingers it's the same as the left-click on a PC (very cool!)

...and on to bombs...
My brother was a real pyro nut.
After the 4th of July, he & his friend would go around the neighborhood picking up all the "duds" and then build their own fireworks.

One way to build another bomb is to get one of the ground flowers, tape two pennies to either end, then tape the rest of it with electric tape. Tape it tight.

Light it & run. You'll have yourself one heck of a firecracker!

-Graydon

Holy mother of pearl potassium perchlorate and aluminum powder, great gosh amighty, that right there is a perfect recipe for prostetic limbs.
You yahoos want a safe niose maker (relatively safe) that produces no shrapnel, get you some big party balloons, stick your oxy/acetelene torch in the end, turn on the gas and hit the oxy handle until the bloon is full, tie it off and tape a six inch length of cannon fuse to it, light the fuse and plug yer friggin ears because it will make the most gawd awful sharp crack boom you have ever heard, just make sure the wind is not blowing the sparks from the fuse around or you may be inside that gawd awfuly large boom.
A fun addition is to fill one bloon with helium and tape the gas bloon to it and add a two foot long fuse, that way you can get up to 500 or 1000 feet before it goes off, these are as loud or louder than the loudest fireworks boomer you have ever heard.

The tennis ball bombs I remember were made of strike anywhere match heads
CAUTION! I knew a guy who burnt his hand pretty bad with one of these assuming it was a dud and picking it up to soon... delayed reaction! lol
Jon

Thanks to Shaun for setting this as a sticky!
-Graydon

quote:

Originally posted by Graydon Blair:
Thanks to Shaun for setting this as a sticky!
-Graydon

Yea, I looked for our Bar and Grill four pages back wondering what happened to it, then found it at the top of the page !!!

Graydon, I LOVE my Mac. I don't know if you checked out my BLOG entry that showed some special effect pics that were taken on our iMac. The application is called Photo Booth (maybe that is what you and your daughter are using) You can see the entry here

Well, gotta go wash a double batch of bio for a trip I am taking to Florida next week...I am taking the F350 dually with a full tank and 105 gallons in the bed of the truck for a total of 143 gallons. I should make it there and back including several hundred miles of piddling around Florida without buying a drop of diesel!!! Gotta love it !!!

Mike...

When I was in high school, my brother and I were in the same shop class. We would get a pan of water and add a few drops of dish detergent, then dunk the oxy-acetylene torch tip into it and go to town making bubbles. We would then scoop up a handfull of the bubbles and set them off with the striker! We would rattle the windows whenever the teacher stepped out. He came running back into the shop more than once only to find us inocently cutting with the torch. He had a hell of a time figuring out what was blowing up every time he left the shop!


On another note:

This is where we're at with the new bio-burner.

And speaking of bufoonery with pyrotechnics:
One summer when I was a kid, my friend Carson and I drove to the reservation (I grew up in Montana, about an hour away from Browning) and wasted our paychecks on really big fireworks. We had them all in the back of Carsons very nice pickup. We spent the afternoon modifying fireworks. One of the things we made were "sparkler-bombs". These are made by tightly bundling a handfull of sparklers together with electricians tape, and one of the sparklers poking out the top as a fuse.
One of the sparkler-bombs wasn't wrapped tight enough, and instead of going "boom!" it took off like a rocket and flew straight into the bed of poor Carson's pickup, thus touching off the best fireworks display that whole year!

Carson's truck was never the same.

quote:

Originally posted by Chris Farley:
And speaking of bufoonery with pyrotechnics:
One summer when I was a kid, my friend Carson and I drove to the reservation (I grew up in Montana, about an hour away from Browning) and wasted our paychecks on really big fireworks. We had them all in the back of Carsons very nice pickup. We spent the afternoon modifying fireworks. One of the things we made were "sparkler-bombs". These are made by tightly bundling a handfull of sparklers together with electricians tape, and one of the sparklers poking out the top as a fuse.
One of the sparkler-bombs wasn't wrapped tight enough, and instead of going "boom!" it took off like a rocket and flew straight into the bed of poor Carson's pickup, thus touching off the best fireworks display that whole year!

Carson's truck was never the same.

Oh man! Now that was sweet!!!!
I love it! I had this huge grin as I read that thinking how cool that light show must've been....

Trucks coming along nicely!
-Graydon

Graydon: You said it. When I was in the fire department, we called these big truck rollovers "yard sales" which shows how often they happened.

Next time you see that F-350 riding on the guy's bumper at 80 MPH then just think "yard sale in the making."

Did I mention that I'm the Test Engineer at an Explosive's Manufacturer? Most of the time I'm sick of my job, but then, once or twice a year, it suddenly becomes worth while
Cheers,
JohnO
making loud noises in the desert since 1987
(with all my fingers, eyes, normal hearing and normal blood lead level, all checked annually)

Oh man! How fun!

So, do you utter those famous words? "Hey Jimbo, Watch This!" KABLOOM!!!!

-Graydon

quote:

Originally posted by UT_Raptor:
Graydon: You said it. When I was in the fire department, we called these big truck rollovers "yard sales" which shows how often they happened.

Next time you see that F-350 riding on the guy's bumper at 80 MPH then just think "yard sale in the making."

You know, I was talking to a fireman a while back & he said it's not abnormal for guys that own these things who get in over their heads to light them on fire & try to claim the insurance money.

The funny thing is the insurance agent doesn't buy the whole "gasoline caused fire" either...diesels RARELY catch fire....especially under the engine compartment. Sizzle? Smoke? Yep, but not many go up in flames...especially sitting on the side of the yard w/ no indication that it'd been started.

I've never understood the reasoning behind lifting the truck to all high heaven only to never take it off-road. That just throws the center of gravity WAYYY off! Way too top heavy. Can you say "roll-over in the making".

-Graydon

Speaking of big booms. Here's a video some kids did on biodiesel.

youtube video

quote:

Here's a video some kids did on biodiesel.

That's hilarious. Did you notice at about 2-1/2 minutes the "Mexican" changed out of his shorts into pants? (Trousers Graham)

The "Mexican" sounded like a French man doing a poor impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Ken

quote:

Originally posted by Graydon Blair:
You know, I was talking to a fireman a while back & he said it's not abnormal for guys that own these things who get in over their heads to light them on fire & try to claim the insurance money...
-Graydon

Too bad for them, so good for me! Because there were so many people with no fanancial foresight, these beatiful trucks are getting cheaper and cheaper to buy in Utah! My brother is picking up a 99 powerstroke today because the old owner is in over his head. He's getting it for about half of what it books for! I love the 7.3 Powerstroke! One of the best designed diesel engines (for a pickup anyway), in my opinion.

The repo man from whom I bought my truck mentioned that most of his "work" is provided by 20 something males living at their parents' homes with cars way too expensive for their income levels. This problem is fueled by banks giving "jumbo car loans" to kids that rightfully shouldn't qualify.

Have you guys tried sparklers wrapped in electrical tape? Lots of tape and stick one sparkler out long enuff for a fuse.
A kid got fired whre I worked for doing that one.
Nice truck Cris Farley, good deal you got!

Brian