Hello all my loyal fans! I'm so happy to have you all join me. This is the Awsome Blog for the month of September, 2008. This month, carelessness leads to bloodshed, a photo of the man with the longest first name ever, and Mark puts the Raging Boll to the test! Is he a genius director, or a complete nutcase? We'll find out, but first, this is our official Building 8 mascot!

This is The Dugg, a Southern alligator lizard. He is approximately 17 inches long and eats up to 15 crickets a week. He was found several months ago inside Building 5, and we have been keeping him in what was once a lamp post cover. We threw in some sand, some rocks and an upturned lid for a water bowl. We are currently buying crickets for him weekly at a nearby PetSmart for 10 cents each. We also occasionally throw in something that we catch around the building. Usually this would be a black widow spider, because they are far easier to catch than crickets. Buying food could eventually get pricey, though, and catching enough food is not feasible, so we are looking into preparing a dwelling place for the crickets and just buying in bulk. We could then raise the crickets ourselves and save a bunch of money that way. The primary value in keeping The Dugg is in watching him feed. I will be filming these sessions in the future in hopes of putting together a video of the highlights. Words fail to describe the hilarity of the event, so keep checking back here for that update, possibly in the next issue.

Before reading any further, stop and watch this video. The following segment will explain afterwards. Click here if it isn't loading on this page.

You all remember the square steel tubes we've been installing all over the building, right? Well, to install them, a steel plate is welded to a column where the tube steel goes, and the tube slides into place with the plate fitting into a gap in the end of the tube. This gap is cut out with a torch, leaving a surface unsuitable for welding, so it must be properly ground out before the tube is installed. This was my job. Because the tubes were lying on the ground while I worked on them, the grinder was doing it's work about 10 inches off the ground, or just over the top of my boot. Before I start explaining exactly how this happened, I must explain that this is a Makita seven inch angle grinder. The motor in this grinder spins an abrasive grinding disc at about 6000 RPM's, and the grinder itself weighs 15 and a half pounds. While I was grinding inside the gap of the tube steel, the blade suddenly caught on something. All the rotational speed in the disc was immediately turned into directional speed and the whole grinder flew backwards out of my grip. Thankfully, the blade I had on the grinder at the time was the thicker grinding wheel rather than the much thinner cutting wheel. The cutting wheel would have almost certainly dug into the bone and broken off leaving chunks of it still inside my leg. As it was, this blade merely bounced off my shin, carved out a gash two and a half inches long, half an inch wide and an eighth of an inch deep. I was fortunate that it was so small.

The impact of the grinder was so painful that it immobilized my right leg momentarily. To my credit, I did not audibly respond to the stimulus. As soon as I was able to stand I walked the length of the building twice, limping a little at first, but as I acclimated the pain I regained my normal gait. I headed out to the machine shop by the south end of the building to bandage it up, and there found my good friend Stephen D. He showed me the shop's stash of rubbing alcohol and we decided that this was too good an opportunity to miss. He got my camera and filmed the video you just watched. Good times were had by all. The cut is almost done healing. I'd say another week and it will only be a scar that, due to the severity of the injury, will surely last me the rest of my life.

Here he is ladies and gentlemen! The man with the longest first name ever! Written, his name appears to be Bill, but spoken by the man himself it is actually pronounced something like Baaaayeeeeeeeel. If this was short for William, it is theorized that it would take the better part of a morning for Bill to introduce himself with his full name. Bill is from Austin, TX as I mentioned last issue. He has been a heavy equipment operator for years doing everything from tractors to cranes. It is my understanding that most of his work has been in construction, but may have branched out into other areas at times. He is very handy with pretty much any kind of tool you might see around a construction site. He even knows welding and brazing. He's a great guy to have around, so it's too bad he had to return to Texas. He will only be able to work at Building 8 a few weeks at a time, returning home for a couple of months after each stint. He left around the middle of this month, and will probably be returning sometime in November.

I'd now like to take the opportunity now to stick up for a man who receives an unnecessarily hard rap from the public. Dr. Uwe Boll is a movie director known primarily for his adaptations of video games into movies. Most of these movies have been decried as being among the worst films ever. I can assure you that after seeing two of Boll's movies and Stephen Seagal's Attack Force, I can say with confidence that Boll has a long way to go before he even nears the bottom. In fact, after all the negative things I'd heard about his movies, I was pleasantly surprised by Blood Rayne, one of his more well known video game adaptations. Blood Rayne was admittedly B-grade, but the story was decent and the action was good. Some of the minor character acting was pretty bad, and some of the dialogue was very cliche, but you can't really blame a director for those. At least not when English is his second language and the budget was only $30 million. I actually recommend seeing this movie. Don't expect to be blown away, but you should be able to enjoy it. Postal, probably Boll's best adaptation, is easily one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. I must warn you that it is extremely irreverent of even the touchiest subjects and is extremely vulgar at times, but I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard at a movie. Boll makes fun of everything he can from the Tickle Me Elmo craze to the 9/11 attacks to even himself. I still need to see his other movies before saying that they are also good, and when I do I will surely report back with the results.

This month instead of reading comics to fill my free time, I mostly watched movies. I don't even remember what most of them were, but I think the total number was about 15. That might be more movies than I've ever watched in a single month in my entire life. I don't think I'll try that again any time soon, but maybe I'll break that record in the future. Anyway, among the movies I watched this month were The Fifth Element (this was my first time seeing the first half), Ghostbusters (this was my first time seeing the second half) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I'd never seen before at all. I know these are all movies I should have seen a long time ago, but I didn't watch much of anything when I was a kid, so I'm trying to catch up. Feel free to recommend something for me to watch.