garden gnomes in space

Gonna go park this right in the middle of the street where Volvo takes his fit pics and see how he reacts...

all jokes aside, had to drive this Fiat for 2 hrs to my brother in laws house because he had shoulder surgery. Can’t say one of these would be my first choice for Bay Area traffic but if I lived In a country that embraced the peasant lifestyle a bit more  then I would consider 

Yea Bay Area generally means San Francisco/Oakland and the surrounding area's give or take some miles.  I dont want to start a rant but everything here seems to cost like 4x what it does elsewhere.  In San Francisco itself rents are outrageous to the point of being laughable and disrespectful.    You don't get much relief leaving the city either.  Unfortunately the transit systems were not built to support the amount of people using them on a daily basis so its always crowded and basically running off borrowed time so there is little incentive to live further outside of the city to commute in.  Obviously Im painting this picture with a wide brush but thats the general situation.  

The 7s26 are kind of hard to get running correctly in COSC definitions but you can get them close. It just takes a lot of work and one might say its not worth the trouble considering how inexpensive they are. That said there were some details that clearly showed that it was not a “Fine” movement rather a workhorse movement and some of these played a role in how it timed out. 

2 hours ago, aho said:

^very cool @garden gnomes in space; Maybe too personal so you don't have to answer, but why did you get out of watchmaking? Were there ever any watches/brands/movements you particularly respected? (JLC and Omega would be my guess?)

When I did my final WOSTEP exam, the testers took a Zenith El Primero movement and dropped it into saw dust and oil.  We had to service it.  That movement, while being overly complicated for a chronograph is pretty impressive.  That said, I valued robustness, simplicity and durability over fancy burnishing. I really liked  the Omega 1861 in the Speedmaster and whatever movement was in the Rolex Submariner where the balance cock was changed to a balance bridge.  I cant remember movement numbers.  Honorable mention was the ugly Seiko 7S26.  It was unpolished, pretty rough but I ran that thing in all kinds of conditions to test it out and it only failed when i introduced excessive debris (metal lathe shavings) into the gear train.  I ran it without oil, with Kendall 20/50 motor oil and olive oil and the results, while far from perfect, it still ran and kept decent time all things considered.  

i got out because it was close to impossible to live in the bay area and make a decent living servicing watches.  it takes huge investments to get tooling etc and while I had a lot of the hand tools required, I didnt have they heavier machinery for manufacturing and just couldn't justify the investment to return ratio.  Also the recession really highlighted the fact that mechanical watches were a luxury item, an accessory in today's world vs a necessity.  I couldn't survive the uncertainty.  

1 hour ago, Nei.Nor said:

I generally think the in-house movement thing is a little overblown/sold - but with this, they definitely provide extra value through providing their own movement.

I agree.  I have been out of the watch game for close to 10 years but before my current job I actually worked as a watchmaker.  i have a WOSTEP degree.  That said, in the years that I was involved, an in house movement offered no benefit aside from owners pride in terms of time keeping.  its a bit like a selvage coin pocket, 100% cotton thread or iron buttons. It generally only is important to the wearer or the handful of nerds who are really into things like that.  When I would service a Rolex movement and then an Eta movement, at the end of service both performed close enough.    There were a couple advantages to a Rolex movement but at the end of the day I realized aesthetics were more important to me than in-house vs non movements.  Thats my personal opinion.  

Funny thing, I would take my watch off when i would service movements because I didnt want anything on my wrists when i worked (either at the bench or when refinishing cases) and the habit of not wearing a watch stuck with me to this day.  

2 hours ago, Paul T said:

Greenwich itself has been very beautiful over this season. Although one of the most beautiful sights is definitely the Giuletta Sprint Speciale owned by a neighbour. The only car that's most attractive than a P1800 I reckon . The doorway is of a house in Spitalfields where I headed in search of Christmas presents.... this is a properly restored house!

 

 

 

I have to say, besides reliability, comfort and running cleaner (not to discount these features at all) but cars made these days do not compare to the cars of yesteryear.  So much more style.  

Commute life...from the bus window while going 40 mph...not bad iPhone

12 hours ago, Maynard Friedman said:

Occasionally people cross-post Instagram photos in the threads, which seem to be infinitely sized when viewing on an iPhone and make it impossible to scroll past or continue viewing that thread. Consequently I have to back out of the thread.

Does anyone else experience this or know how to prevent it from happening?

im on iPhone and it does not do this.  Everything looks totally normal.    I use Chrome browser if that helps.  

I planted lavender in our front yard in hopes it will keep the wildlife away. Honestly I just wanted to keep things from shitting in my yard. Only I have that Privilege. Anyways, one section we planted some random shrub and it has attracted monarch butterflies for the past 2 years and the caterpillars love it 

was driving from Sacramento back to the Bay Area when we saw all these birds doing the whole synchronized flying thing.  Honestly, it was amazing to see, even when viewed from a car.  Traffic was slowing to watch the spectacle.  This pic doesnt do it justice as this is when they all broke up and right before they regrouped.  Literally hundreds of thousands of birds.  

11 hours ago, volvo240thebest said:

@Uncle Karl

I feel like the don of the hood with my SD's and TCB 20's haha!

 

you certainly have that spot on reserve.  Via Fit Pic 

Standing on our back porch in my underwear for the sake of the contest

@bartlebyyphonics im noticing this as well.  I recall the 50's denim doing the same.  It started out pretty plain but over time texture and irregularities started to develop.  

feel better @volvo240thebest

Ever sine I have had kids its a fucking Christmas tradition for me to be sick as a dog and this year has not failed to deliver.  Thankfuly I seem to be on the mend but two nights ago I was coughing for literally 2 hours straight.  By the time I was done my body felt like I had refused someone who made me an offer I wasnt supposed to refuse.  

7 hours ago, mandel9000 said:

Home for Chrismas, braving the elements.
 

A bit nicer today, as seen from my mother's apartment. This is about as light as it gets these two months without sun. Well, that's not completely true, because even though the sun doesn't rise above the horizon between November and January 21st, we still see a bit of sunlight...for an hour, maybe, during the middle of the day. 
 

I checked the 7 day forecast before I left Oslo and it said it was going to rain the whole time so I didn't bother with ski equipment. Now I deeply regret it, perfect conditions. Can I sue?
 

Oh my, I cannot imagine having 1 hour of sun for 3 months.  How do you manage?

lovely puckering starting to play out

you have got to find that pic!

hey its a regular peasant party up in here

neg rep for tl;dr  

no, thanks for the explanation.  Seems like they have gone back to something similar with this last update...

Question re: Superfuture and rep and shit.  Under the user name there is a green number.  below that is how many posts you have.  How are theese related?  I see semi-active members with say 600 post but a green number thats like 18,000.  Then I see members that are really active and the numbers are really close together.  I thought it was every time you get a +1 pos rep the number goes up, but of that were the case, some people who have 200 or so posts, each post would need to get a ton of pos rep.  So, whats the deal?

I had to wear my pair of Orslow navy utility pants today.  First day since arrival that I have done this but your boy (me) has a raging hangover and my Orslows are as close to sweatpants as it gets.  

Ive fucked our floor up.  ill post some floor evo pics soon haha

19 minutes ago, nycsurfer530 said:

@garden gnomes in spaceHow do you like the Zeis lense? I have the Fuji x-t20 and I’m looking for a prime just a little wider than 35

its great but I wouldnt buy it solely for your Fuji.  The 1.5x crop factor makes it function roughly the same as a 50mm in full frame terms.    Its about $1000 new.  I use it for film work with my Leica M6.  The Fuji 23mm f2 is an awesome lens and its on my XPro2 99% of the time.  I think its a bit wider than 35, about 33mm if you wanna pick nits.  

Bit of a pic update:  Jeans are progressing as expected for someone as sedentary as myself. Im seeing a few speck of rust on teh buttons so that should start to evolve shortly.   Desk life sucks, but alas...

The knees took a bit of wear the other day because I got stuck in a slide at a park chasing my daughter around.  Of course as I was struggling to get out all the other kids thought it was hilarious and decided to slide in on top of me creating even more constipation in teh slide.  Once I finally managed to wriggle free it was a diarrhea explosion of kids and myself, exposed rivets scraping the shit out of the inner guts of the slide haha.  

Last pics are from our back yard.  This cocky little white spider went full on with his meal then realized I was watching and it decided to shoo me away also.  

Pics taken with a Fuji XPro-2 and an adapted 35mm Zeiss Biogon 2.8.  Macro's are a Canon 6D and Tamron 90mm 2,8 VC