Photo uploads live again!

After being non-functional for one week, Blogger is working properly again, and I can upload photos. Voila, here is the "serious" photo to match the previous post's "silly" photo. Don't we all look philosophical?

Yesterday was the typical pipemaker day - two bulldogs both had to be trashed due to flaws that surfaced in the latter stages of creation. One, which otherwise looked excellent, opened up a small hole right at the center of the bottom during the first stage of sandblasting. It was not large, but when I pushed a pin into it, the pin sank in halfway and pushed through the wood into the tobacco chamber! Such are the adventures in briar. Actually, it made a good example of why I prefer sandblasts to smooths, personally. I know many folks think of blasts as "flawed" pipes, but actually the flaws have been blasted away, and I can at least have confidence that the remaining wood is solid and durable. One can stop sanding a smooth pipe one millimeter above an internal fissure that reaches through the wall to one millimeter from the chamber, and never know this flaw is present until the pipe is smoked - but, such a flaw would reveal itself during blasting and the pipe would be discarded. Food for thought, when one considers the arguments for and against sandblasts.

Fortunately, I was able to calm my frustration by snacking on a few hapless humans in Urban Dead. I'm really a total newbie to the free low-tech online game scene, but I've been enjoying UD - the fact that play balance caters to those who have limited time to play helps a lot. Casual gamers like myself can have fun, without the game being hogged by the nuts who stay connected 24/7 chopping up cows all day to level up their characters. Plus, I enjoy the bare-bones look, which brings back happy Zork memories of the days when the imagery was in my head rather than in a five-hundred degree supercharged graphics chip. And this does connect to pipes - all three of my in-game characters are prominent pipe smokers and my profiles link to our pipe site, so maybe some random folk will get curious about this strange idea of luxury pipes & tobaccos. If anyone else is in the game, look me up - I'm bumming around the Yagoton suburb as TreverT, and can also be found as a shambling undead thing by name of Pipier, currently shuffling around at the Caiger Mall seige. And enjoy my character description... "The rotting zombie shuffles closer. Curiously, it seems to have a pipe clenched in its teeth, and it says, Graagh! to the no smoking signs."