(no subject)

This morning I was up at the crack of Ugh to drop the car off at the dealer's for warranty repairs. At least, we hope they are warranty repairs- transmissions are not cheap. They've got a pretty streamlined system now; you drive into a bay, they tick stuff off on a clipboard, and shuffle you either directly to their coffee counter (supplied by a local nonprofit) or to a desk to talk more about your car. If only they had recorded the information I told them on the phone- the guy didn't know it was under warranty.

At the shop, after I collected my coffee and cookie, I ran into one of dan's collegues, Arnie V, who I also enjoyed chatting with Saturday at dan's concert. He's retiring in a year, and we talked about the difficulty of figuring out what to do next. Like dan, he doesn't really like computers even though he's a Computer Science professor. I'm sure he'll do fine, though; he likes people and puttering with woodworking, and I can totally see him working on Habitat for Humanity or some Mennonite relief program.

For me, it's frustrating that there are so many liberal Mennonites and so few Quakers in this area. So much in common, but there's this pesky... Christianity... requirement to become Mennonite. :) I enjoyed chatting with Arnie quite a bit, and we shared the shuttle-bus drive to the University as well, so it felt much shorter than an hour.

On-Demand Coolness, III

Last winter, I thought it was cool when I could use the internet to submit my photos to be professionally printed at a local camara shop (cheaper than ofoto, and able to handle 9x12 enlargements quite reasonably).

This summer, I thought it was cool when I could use the internet to submit a 3,200-page print job to a Staples in Toronto, collated and stapled in preperation for a conference, picked up there instead of here.

This winter... the creme de la creme of on-demand jobs is: emachineshop.com. It's a machine-shop over the internet. (Injection Molding, Rubber molding, Milling, Turning, Laser Cutting, Waterjet Cutting, Silk Screening... ). The site is seriously fun just to look at the tools they have. And I just tried out their downloadable CAD program, which looks reasonably like other CAD I've looked at, except this one comes with a "what material should this part be made of" button (Aluminum? Copper? Teak? Nylon? Acrylic? ...) along with a "calculate price for this job" pulldown. Bulk jobs sound reasonable, at least to me- a laser-machined aluminum raindeer (3/16 inch thick aluminum, if I remember) in the "sample jobs" directory goes for $3.50 a piece for 100 pieces, or $70 for a single one.

This is very cool, but I don't have time to play with it now. But after the new year, I'd love to come up with a good excuse to try them out. (custom etched clear plastic beer-coasters anyone?)...

Oh. And I almost forgot the other reason I was going to post about on-demand creativity:

On staples.ca printing batch jobs over the internet: they are currently running a special for $10 off a print-job sent from your computer. The email ad was pushing custom xmas cards and calendars. I just realized that they said any custom print job ordered over the internet was valid. But it's only good until the 16th of December.

So, if you wanna get something printed and bound really cheaply or even totally free, you can. :)

If you want a copy of the email (which needs to be printed and brought when you go to pick up your order), I can shoot it your way, just leave a note in this entry (or mail me, my lj address is on my user page).