October 2020 – lee-lawmaster.com

Hey Look Ma, We Made it!

For almost two years, I have been on a journey with other Bloomingtonians to complete something others had tried, but never completed. Over the weekend, we did the thing, and completed it.

Three disconnected groups of Bloomington area residents joined forces, doing what they say couldn’t be done. I take no credit for anything major here, but I was involved as much as I could be.

For those reading this who aren’t familiar with the Star Trek universe, Kathryn Janeway was the first Captain of a Star Trek series, Voyager. Her character was born in Bloomington, Indiana. This immediately became a source of pride for trekkies in the area.

The monument and event took place on the B-Line trail, with an immense crowd of fans. So many that it made social distancing almost impossible. I played my typical role of jack of all trades, giving a hand to make sure what needed to be done, was. I’m not fond of the limelight, and prefer to stay out of it as much as possible.

The monument is a bronze bust on a limestone base with an inset stainless steel plate. Beside it is a informational table, that has my name on it twice.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to lean on live streaming harder than we originally planned for the event. We had some difficulties with the microphones causing echo on the videos we played but otherwise it went well. Later on that day I had checked the stats for the live video, and 16.1k people had viewed it!

Kate Mulgrew has such an infectious smile

We were fortunate that Kate Mulgrew agreed to join us virtually. The event was at 11am but she was in California, where it was 8am. I was so happy to be behind the scenes, where I got these excellent photos of her reactions to this monument of a character she played and is reprising in the new series Prodigy.

The press photographing the sculptor Aaron Eby

The Herald-Times was there, The Bloomingtonian was there and so was our local PBS station, WTIU. That night, I started to see the information spread across the internet on trek centric sites and a TV station in Iowa, that covers the area where Mulgrew is from.

If you look closely, you will see my name – twice!

The informational table tells the story of Janeway, and her creator Jeri Taylor who spent her childhood in Bloomington and graduated from Indiana University. The papers in which the Janeway character was created are housed at the Lilly Library. A display of these papers was in the original plan for the unveiling event.

I’m not a fan of pictures of myself, but here I am.

I began the day at 7am, and it was full go until everything ended roughly at 2pm. I was tired, I was exhausted but I was also immensely humbled and fulfilled by the days events. My youngest daughter was there with me to be witness to the event. My eldest joined the live stream, as did one of my aunts in Oklahoma. The next day was my 40th birthday, and this is the best present a guy could have.

We produced a booklet for the unveiling. I’m unsure of how many were produced exactly, but we ran out of them before the unveiling actually happened. I grabbed four of them because I knew they would go quickly. One of them I gave to Jeremy Hogan, who runs The Bloomingtonian, I gave my girlfriend another. One of them I saved for Steve Volan, who without his connection I would have never been involved in this. I made sure he would be added to the special thanks portion. Leaving one for myself.

We haven’t discussed our long term goals or plans as of yet, I am currently working on a Wikipedia page for the monument, which is currently just a section on the main Janeway page.

The Aussies Have Invaded

Yesterday, the Holden Owners of Indiana put on a cruise called the Fall Foliage Cruise. I had Amelia with me and wanted to take her on a proper ride in her papaw’s car.

The route began in Nashville, IN with a destination of Bo-Mac’s Drive-In located in Shoals, IN. We then took a separate route towards the starting point, which literally took me home, ending the cruise for us.

The route was far more twisty than Google wanted to show.

Me and the Camaro, surrounded by some amazing cars from all around Indiana

When I took this picture, the guy in the Ute said, “That’ll be $3.” I <3 these Aussie cars.

We all hung around for about an hour, talked to each other and then took off. Shockingly I has the most conversation with a guy in a Mustang. I was the only Camaro on the cruise.

The Geo Metro driver took this photo and I love it.

On the first leg, not too far out of Story, IN we ran into a group of 4 bicyclists. We were all running pretty hot, warming up the road and our tires. The car in front of me, a Geo Metro Convertible locked his brakes up and went in the other lane. That was when my own brake light came on and I lost a lot of my own braking power. For the rest of that first leg, I had to press the brake pedal about 3/4 of the way before the brakes began to work. We drove by Bedford North Lawrence High School, which is right by where my daughter now lives. It would have been nice if her mom and stepbrothers would have came out and waved in support.

Thankfully we were at a gas station for the first pit stop.

The next leg took us to Shoals, IN and the drive-in. Getting there was a bit of a battle though, as our group of 60 cars was split by a stranger and a tanker truck on US50. This road isn’t exactly “friendly” for safe passing of vehicles. One by one, the guy in the Mustang I mentioned previously, an AMG Mercedes and I passed them both however. Amelia loved it.

When we arrived at the drive-in, Amelia ranted and raved about the place. As a friend of hers had three t-shirts from there. Later in the day, she found out this friend’s grandfather owns it.

We all ate, rested and chilled for a while. Then a group of us, mostly driven by members of the BAC, decided to leave early to do some more “spirited” driving. We of course, went with the group. This became the hardest, fastest section. We took a county road the hardest I’ve done since I was a teenager. At some points my tires were telling me I was pushing the limits. I was proud of the IROC’s performance however, beating anyone was not what I was trying to do, keeping up with the pack is all I needed to smile.

Then we had another “incident.” We had moved from the county road to US450, a proper two lane highway. We turned a corner and were on a bridge when everyone just began braking, hard. It took everything I had to not hit the car in front of me. The 4th Generation WS6 Trans Am behind me almost hit me, but he later said he was under control. Then to my left, a white Fiesta went flying down the oncoming lane, hard. He later said he was going to make that oncoming truck stop, and he did! A couple of minutes later, we ended up on US50 at a gas station with a large parking lot. Upon arriving we all got out of our cars in a collective WTF just happened?

As we were there a Bedford cop showed up, I said well we’ve been made.

In all the years dad owned this car, he never really tried to see what it would do except for the few times we took it to Indianapolis Raceway Park to drag race it. Those who know IROC-Z’s know they aren’t a drag car in stock format. They are killer in the corners however, and can keep up with brand new sport cars in that regard.

I talked to Amelia about this, and how I hoped we were making him proud from wherever he is. It’s all I want to do, make him proud.

October VCCA Meeting

The October meeting of the Indiana region of the VCCA happened yesterday, and I have to say it was a great meeting to me. We had the largest turnout I’ve seen, and two new members joined.

One of those members brought his 57 Chevy Belair. He said it’s his 11th, and he has eyes on the 12th. With my father having one in his youth, this car has always been special to me.

Our October meetings are held at Jim & Holly’s house, and they have a glorious estate. I knew when I made it because I saw his Corvette and Camaro out front. We lined all of our cars up, and I saw an opportunity for a picture. I should have taken another photo however, as more people came afterwards.

Left to Right: 87 Camaro IROC-Z Convertible, 1971 Chevelle SS, 1972 Chevelle Convertible, 1988 Camaro IROC-Z, 1964 Malibu Convertible, 1957 Belair 2 door hardtop

We also had these beautiful automobiles:

We sat around a fire and roasted hot dogs and had our meeting. On the agenda was next months meeting, the upcoming anniversary meet and the Facebook group we agreed to make last month in order to bring our region into the modern world.

After our official business was done, the men kind of split from the women. We actually talked about our cars and had conversations about the automotive world. Something I haven’t seen much of in the group unfortunately.

This journey of coming back into the fold of dad’s car club is really starting to set in for me, and I embrace everything the club embodies. I have much to learn from those I share membership with, and I try to take every moment and every detail of it in.

Next month, we plan to meet in Morocco, IN. We have a couple of people who are interested in joining the club and have been invited to take a tour of a Snowmobile museum. It’s a big trip for me, but I am genuinely excited about the museum.

I’m waiting on some business cards to come in the mail so I can design some for our own club to be used to give away to others to use as materials to reach out and say nice car!

Workin’ in a Coin Mine

My girlfriends son, primarily through the influence of his friends decided to get into cryptocurrency, and more succinctly mining it.

Little did his friends know that I’m a bit of an OG when it comes to such things. So I gave Tyler my old Block Erupters and Antminer U1. Set him up with the next to latest release of cgminer, and let him go to town.

There’s another hub full of the block erupters and the non pictured Antminer U1.

Something about the excitement did something to me, because I did something pretty crazy, I decided to buy an Antminer S9. This thing is insanity when compared to the mining equipment of my younger days, which was the first equipment specifically designed for the task. ASICS, short for application specific integrated circuit. Aka, they only do 1 thing but they do it extremely well. At my highest level, I was mining bitcoin at a rate of 26 GH/s but this S9 mines at a rate of 15 TH/s. GH means gigahash, TH means terahash which is 1000 times greater.

As you can tell from the design alone, this means business.

That said, it comes at a cost. You see, with great power comes great need. I’ve been doing some calculating. This miner will probably use more electricity than I use in a month in my home.

My last two days of electricity usage are showing as 53kwh and 49kwh. By doing the math on the lesser of the two days, that brings me to 1470kwh a month. Which is often more than double what I use.

The other factors are the noise and heat. This machine makes somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 db of noise alone. I have seen youtube videos and pictures of people putting them in coolers. There are people selling pieces to put on the fans to “quiet” them. This brings me back to way back when, all of the “accessories” you could purchase for your gear.

The heat this machine emits is kind of nice seeing as we are coming to a cool part of the year. I had placed it in my utility room, with the door closed and could still hear the fans winding away at 4000 rpm. The exhaust blows at roughly 10mph. When I opened the door, the room was at least 20 degrees warmer than it had been.

I’m unsure if I am going to move it to a location where I can have it running without paying for energy, or resell it. I’m currently mining on the pools I used to use to get the small amounts I could not withdraw out.

So right now, it’s fate is unclear. But it certainly has been fun.

Well That’s Great

To quote my father, who said that after we had a car accident.

A week ago, a condition I’ve been dealing with reared it’s ugly head. It’s embarrassing to talk about, but I think those are the things that NEED to be discussed. That event brought on a concatenation of events that I’m still trying to heal from, both mentally and physically.

Well what is it? The condition, diagnosed through one of my own staff doctors at the school of medicine is called proctalgia fugax. I started having flares of this condition after going to a concert last year. I didn’t seek any treatment, as there are no real treatment options specifically for it.

While on the way home it started to increasingly become difficult to sit, as a burning pain seemed to become more and more intense in the area of my tailbone. It came to a point where I was forced to stop. I got out on an off ramp of the interstate to try to walk it off, but it was of no help. I then tried to lay down, no change. My girlfriend claims I passed out between walking it off and laying down, but I have no recollection of this.

From that point forward, this intense amount of pain would happen unexpectedly and at any location. I began to get this urge in my mind when these attacks would happen. As if it was one of those built in instructions from when we were neanderthals. It told me to use my muscles to try to have a bowel movement. That doing it would make the pain go away. This became my immediate reaction when the pain would start to happen.

Over time, the pain and effects of this condition lessened. To the point where I barely felt it the last time it happened. I thought I was over this, but I thought wrong.

I was woken up from the pain coming on last Sunday, and did what I normally do. But this time it came on stronger than it ever had. What happened to me is up for interpretation. To my memory I went from sitting on the toilet to waking up on the floor, face down. I had no visual memory of moving from point a to b. I did however have audible memory of crashing sounds.

With my history of seizures, I was very concerned that I had just had a seizure. When I got off the floor I received a couple other surprises. My back was red in an area on my shoulder, full of scratches and gouges. Then came the pain. I had some severe pain coming from my right rib area, directly under my breast.

My MD faculty at the school of medicine urged me to go to the emergency room, but the stubbornness in me refused. There isn’t much that can be done for broken ribs anyway. Why go? The next day I went, as I woke up with more intense pain than I had been feeling. They confirmed what I had though, diagnosing a “rib contusion / minor fracture.”

I’ve taken the week off of work, and the pain has slowly gotten less sharp in intensity, but it does remain.