Do Not Hold Doors

This site has moved over to Blog.BryantReyes now powered by Wordpress and hosted on my site.  I will fix the feed soon...

So I decided that July 18th would be my last day of work...summer will officially commence then

1. Take lots of pictures - This is also may be the last time I'll be living in Brooklyn for a while and want a way to document and keep some kind of memory of what my neighborhood and my city is/was like and it'll give me an excuse to just walk around looking at things for no reason.
2. Build a personal website - I've been wanting to start a photo gallery and do some other stuff online so I finally decided to do it. I'm gonna have to learn some things along the way but it should fun. Here's a preliminary logo:
3. Get some sort of scholarship - Knowing that there are many opportunities for one out there I've never applied for one...mostly because of the essays and letter of recommendations involved. So, I'm going to take my time and start and finish one of those annoying reflective essays and see what comes of it.
4. Look for and apply for study-abroad - My school has this really cool study abroad program that's only about a month long to the Netherlands. Being in engineering means you don't usually have any leeway in terms of your schedule but this program actually seems to fit in. It's also really interesting as its goal is to show students the different ways Americans and Europeans handle issues pertaining to traffic, the environment and green building...

We'll see how much, if any, of this stuff I actually get done before school starts up again. Tot ziens!

Well, it has been almost six months since my last post here when I chided myself for neglecting this blog..but ohhhwell. I've always been horrible when it comes to writing...I seem to always procrastinate no matter what the situation is. I'm just glad I somehow seem to be a little better when writing on technical matters, things just blurt out easier without the need for me to go on a three-hour Wikipedia tour.

I guess that's one of the things I didn't realize before going into this co-op (internship); there is a lot of writing that happens before anything actually gets done. There are proposals to clients outlining our past achievements, our expertise within the field and a price is put on the work we can do. Then most projects require some sort of feasibility study to research and report to the client what solutions there are, what we think the best option is and what that option would mean to their budget and future plans. Once the client decides to go ahead with a project there needs to be specifications drawn and written up that illustrate and explain exactly what it is we need for that particular project. These specifications go on to contractors who "bid" on the project, the client and the engineer then get together with the contractors to decide, based on many factors, which contractor gets the job. After all this is done, is when the actual construction can begin (if the city approves of everything, all permits are done and there isn't any community NIMBY-ism). So for the most part, my co-op has consisted of me writing a lot of first drafts of all these parts with a couple of site visits and some interny things for me to do too.

Anyway, sorry for this exciting post but just felt like explaining a little of what it is I actually do with CDM. I've really enjoyed my time working with them and still have another month or so left on my co-op before summer vacation and the fall semester start. The entire experience has given me a good idea of what it means to have to drive to work everyday, deal with traffic and the shame that comes with a larger carbon footprint, not to mention the gas prices. I guess I'm just a city boy who's too used to taking the train wherever he needs to go...though I like it bettter that way.

Negligence, why does it happen...well I can make up elaborate stories about why it happens but mostly it happens because your being a douche. In my case, I'm a douche who neglected his blog :..( But I'm back, mostly due to some spare time at work...

Let me start by talking a little bit about last semester and its goings ons...
It went by pretty fast even though while it's happening you never think it's going to end and then it does and you start feeling like there is so much more that you could have done to make it more worthwhile. Last semester I gave myself more responsibility than I've had and I think I came out alright and unscathed. I also landed myself a sweet co-op with a really good engineering company in New York (outside the city) and now I'm sitting in my cubicle typing this out....yes I know that I'm leaving out most of the deets but I've never been very good with them anyway.

I wanna talk about some of the books/graphic novels I've been reading recently but I'll do that at a later time...

So one of the things I wanted by the end of this summer was a usable electric guitar. I've had many many problems with my old one and therefore wanted a new one just to start over. So I looked and looked, but there weren't any guitars that I really fell in love with. Now, there were many with which I messed around and had wild nights with but none that could hold my attention. What is a lonely lover to do?...well, take the sci-fi route and create the love of your life of course. The Reyes Lovecaster model was born....

I started with my old guitar as the piece of wood to use, it's a circa 80's Fernandes what I think to be a Revolver model but I'm not sure. Here's the only picture I have of it before the work done on it. Original
Then I started to look at some designs I liked. Probably the biggest influence on the design of the guitar is the Ibanez Paul Gilbert Model here. I knew I wanted it white but I went through a lot of design choices on what I actually wanted to put on the white. The first being a design reminiscent of EVH's signature guitars but with less lines and making it red and black on white. Second was the way too cheesy Japanese Kanji symbol for love, then I decided I wanted to write "Amore Vincit Omnia" meaning Love Conquers All in Latin, but I figured that would be too much of a hassle to actually paint on to the guitar. Then I decided on what is on the guitar now which is the simple thin black line through the volume knob.
After deciding on the design it was time to figure out how to actually go about repainting a guitar. The three biggest helps were:
Project Guitar, Ibanez Project and Brad Sucks
What I learned from these sites was that it wasn't going to be easy. I borrowed a sander and went to work, it took me about five hours the first day to get about a quarter of the back of the guitar striped of paint...it was going to take a while. I spent about 2-3 weeks sanding the guitar down working every couple of days until I got it down to where I wanted it. I had ordered Krylon paint, including the primer, color and an acrylic clear coat. To get that factory finish top coat on a guitar you apparently need a shite load of paint. I went through 6 spray cans of acrylic clear coat paint and the finish on the body is still not what it could be (though nobody has to know). My favorite part of the guitar is definitely the headstock check it out.
Next came installing the new hardware and pickups I bought to really make it an all new guitar. The hardest part of this was selecting the pickups and I ended up going with the Seymour Duncan SL59-1 Little '59 for the neck, a DiMarzio Blue Velvet DP170 S (the "S" means it's reverse wound and will cancel hum in the 2 and 4 positions) for the middle, and a Seymour Duncan TB-4 JB Model pickup for the bridge. This gave me an H-S-H configuration and since I wanted more sounds out of it I put in a push/pull knob and can change it to an S-S-S configuration by pulling the volume knob. I'm pretty happy with this configuration for now, with the help of my Vox AD30VT I get a lot of different sounds out of it so it's great for someone like me who is more of a hobbyist than a serious musician.

I guess that's it, that's my tale and I guess in the big scheme of things I enjoyed the experience and I came out of it with a one of a kind guitar and more soldering, sanding and painting experience than I ever wanted. I'm gonna go play now................

I read this article today in the NY Times about the wealthy in Silicon Valley. They talk about how, to keep their status as millionaires, they have to work 60-70 hour weeks and still don't even consider themselves wealthy.
I, like any good American, have always wanted to be wealthy...or rather at least financially secure. I think it's ingrained in us from an early age that success in life amounts to having that huge house in the suburbs, 2.5 children, money in the bank for the kids education and a retirement in Florida, but what is the actual cost of all these things. Is it worth working your ass off as you watch life pass you by? Though one things that is respectable is the fact that these people really enjoy their jobs and find fulfillment in that, there's a lot to be said for that. At the end of the day though, I would rather enjoy the finer things in life along with my wife, the kids, the dog, the house....but those millions do smell soo good.