Saveitforparts

I think the sculptor has captured their essence quite well, you can almost see them looking back at you… longing to run free in the wild with their styrofoam brethren.

What have I been up to lately?

I bought and modified a storage trailer (on the projects page).

I bought ANOTHER boat (small kayak, shown below):

And we’ve been playing Settlers of Catan every week:

Thanks to Craigslist and some guy not having enough space in his garage, I now have yet another project boat! This one is a homemade sailing design, somewhat boxy but pretty stable and roomy. It’s partly done but still needs interior waterproofing, seats, gunwales, and rigging! I actually got this about a month ago, but haven’t had time to do any work on it. I’m also trying to get rid of some other boat stuff like a project outboard, so have been busy with that as well.

Speaking of boats, I have moved all (or most) of the content on my sailboat over to its new home on this server.

Megan the pirate!

I dug a few pictures off my cell phone recently. I’m too lazy to sort these into actual pages or anything, or even to put them on Facebook (now that’s lazy!)

OhYes!

The Monarchmobile!

Rachael's cat Wobbler after we caught him as a stray kitten in her garage.

Even Catan gets boring sometimes.

Don't do drugs?

More plywood kayak construction

I miss my sailboat 😦

As a former commercial salmon crewmember living in the Midwest, I get asked frequently, “Is it like the Deadliest Catch?” (The TV show). My response is usually something along the lines of the following, which I sketched during a particularly boring class a while back:

I should start my own webcomic, I have literally several jokes about fishing! Also I can’t draw very well, which means I’d make a great web cartoonist! BTW, I’ve also heard salmon trolling referred to as “The Stonedest Catch”, Drunkiest Catch”, etc. I’d usually just read 5 trashy sci-fi books per day to cope with the boredom of “The Drag”, but some fishermen turn to, ahem, “other” solutions 🙂

Here we go, switching over to the WordPress version of Saveitforparts.com…. hopefully this all works, stay tuned!

Incidentally, I’ve “sort of” migrated my photo page to this site, and also updated the project pages on computers and potato cannons here, they’re slightly different than the old versions.  I’ll be working to get my other content moved over from the old host bit by bit.

I am currently in Mariposa, CA, a town whose police blotter is so ridiculous that it’s apparently been featured on Leno. The highlights from recent issues:

•There was a horrible odor in a house on Buckeye Road.

•There were rocks on Highway 140.

•A red-tailed hawk was in a house on Yosemite Oaks Road.

•A fence was vandalized in Coulterville.

•A tree was across Triangle Road.

•A lawn was on fire on Red Cloud Mine Road.

•There was a cow problem on Highway 49 South.

•A person was reportedly disoriented on Indian Peak Road.

•Someone found a tent on McMahon Road.

•A burning smell was reported on Coyote Court.

The link to the current issue is here: http://www.mariposagazette.com/current/For_the_Record

In case anyone is interested, these are the webcomics I read on a regular basis:

XKCD
Dresden Codak
Mitch Clem
Sluggy Freelance
Nukees
Freefall
SSDD
Penny-arcade
Questionable Content
Overcompensating
Diesel Sweeties
Goats
Ornery Boy
Comet 7
Girl Genius
Buck Godot (yes I know it’s “over”)
Dr. McNinja
The Zombie Hunters
Freak Angels
Everyday Decay
Digger

I’m working on migrating my site over to WordPress, it’s going slowly. There might not be much content here for a while, and/or it may be patchy.

Until it’s done, all the old stuff is still at www.saveitforparts.com (and yeah, some of it is totally outdated!)

The hard link, for when I shift the domain, is http://www.tc.umn.edu/~emers089/

The following material is from my previous updates on the old Saveitforparts main page. The internal links all (currently) go to the old page on the UMN server. Once I switch the domain over to this page, the links below may not work anymore, or may point to different parts of this site. Sorry! Maybe I’ll fix that after the switch, maybe not.

News and Updates

*******7-14-09
More homemade boat projects! Click here for my Plywood Kayaks.*******5-26-09
I just got back from some sailing in California. My sister and some friends were taking their boat up the coast to San Francisco, so I went along to help out and get a vacation from the Midwest. We had a lot of fun, I got really sunburned, and we took about twice as long as we though. Overall win! Photos are at My Flickr page.Also the stereo got stolen out of my rustmobile, thus lowering the overall value of the car by 60%. Next stereo is going to have a self destruct mechanism in it!

*******3-23-09
Last weekend I went up to Fargo, ND to help out with some of the flood-relief effort. This website has a bunch of pictures and video, as well as some volunteer info for those in a position to help. http://bluefoxrelief.info/
If you live in the Twin Cities, Near Fargo, or nearby areas, they are asking for volunteers to help fill and place sandbags around homes and vulnerable areas. The terrain up there is even flatter than the Twin Cities, there’s maybe a foot of difference from the uphill side of a field to the downhill, maybe less. Since all the culverts are frozen from the winter and the thunderstorm season is just starting, the fields are now turning into shallow inland seas. The water makes its way to the low end, then across the dirt road berms into the next fields over. Eventually it gets to the rivers, and then overflows due to ice jams and other obstructions. When the warm weather finally gets the rest of the ice to break loose this coming week, there will be even more flooding. The blue fox website will probably have more pictures later in the week, and I’ll post some here or on Flickr if I have time.

*******3-06-09
New small updates on the car.
Click

*******1-06-09
For those of you wondering what I’m up to, I’ve built an online GIS system to interface with UMN’s Mapserver backend. This is mostly a project demonstration to show off some of my professional work, which means we’ll be lucky if everything works right! It’s currently running from a Linux box in the basement. You can check it out by clicking here.

*******9-28-08
I finally did it… I joined the rest of the “real world” of consumerism, fulfilling the one true American dream that has defined the life of 99.99% of this great nation for almost 100 years. That’s right, I bought a car. Sadly I failed to demonstrate my true patriotism in the purchase of a gas-hogging credit-sucking blingmobile, although I may be able “Pimp” my “Ride” with such items as duct tape, cardboard spoilers, and chrome 1950s hood ornaments. While its main purpose is to tow my boat trailer and to keep the driveway coated in 4 different engine fluids, it also occasionally gets me to work. Thanks to something known as “Honda Roulette”, I also stay entertained by guessing which major component will fall off every time I turn the key!
Click here for the new Saveitforparts Rustmobile.

*******8-2-08 or so
A new small project and brief update: Model boat.

*******11-02-07
The only other picture that even sort of came out from Halloween, parties aren’t the ideal climate to photograph your own costume!
The space villains strike again! (this is also on the Projects page).*******10-28-07
Uploaded a bunch of my research papers and linked them from the projects page (scroll down). Now you can see what sort of research I’ve been doing at the U of M and UAF, and marvel at the obsolete technology that existed waaaay back in 2004.

*******10-10-07
I added some new sailboat pictures, and updated my projects page. I also added some new Funter Bay photos.
Still workin on the actual “photos” section, which is a huge mess right now.

*******10-8-07
I’m redesigning the site somewhat and bringing it up-to-date. It was kind of embarassing having stuff from 2000 still trashing up the corners of the site. A few parts of the site are gone, a few things have been added, and most of the main pages have been changed at least somewhat. Expect more changes over the next few weeks!

You can see some of my terrible college videos from the UAF Film Festival over on youtube.
I’m working on uploading more and/or linking them in to this site.

Also, according to the US Forest Service, I’m a “Local Historian” in Southeast Alaska!
http://www.fs.fed.us/r10/tongass/forest_facts/resources/heritage/gunemplacement.shtml
(My research on Alaska WWII history is available here).

While most of the content I removed is currently unavailable, you can see the old updates from the front page here.
If you’re totally lost, you can also check out my new site map.