Why Bells?

Paul Graham talks about what makes a good programmer and why it is nearly impossible to be one in an organization of any size. Money quote:

...Any good programmer in a large organization is going to be at odds with it, because organizations are designed to prevent what programmers strive for.

Good programmers manage to get a lot done anyway. But often it requires practically an act of rebellion against the organizations that employ them....

Which just gets tiresome after a couple decades. So now I create actual, physical objects that I can see and show to others, stick my face very close to molten bronze, and spend my afternoons wearing nothing but shorts and sandals lounging in the sun while I twist copper wire into funny shapes.

Speaking of bells, today I was on tail again. A mold started leaking while we were pouring. It wasn't bad, but having hot bronze running towards your foot and not being able to do anything about it is a tad disconcerting. But I had good people on the shovels that quickly took care of things and I still have two feet.

The second pour was more exciting. I was one of the shovelers and a mold had a good-sized leak. It was on the opposite side, so the other shoveler tossed wet sand on it. For some reason, the bronze popped and flew everywhere. Both of us were scrambling around trying to corral hot bronze before it got under the feet of the two guys pouring. I have to give them credit; they just ignored us and kept on pouring like nothing was happening. I tell ya, when your hands are on that shank and you're staring into liquid bronze, it's a total Zen thing. The rest of the universe doesn't exist.

The third pour gave me a chance to redeem myself after last Tuesday's lesson in what 2,200 degree bronze does to concrete. I was on shovel again and we had another leak and a fire. This time, I got the fire completely out and the bronze broke up before it did any serious damage. Sweet.

And today was another new bell. I did 102's, which is a much bigger bell. Meaning that I had to modify my patterns and use different tools to make them work. It didn't go too well. A couple molds cracked which pretty much wrecks all four bells in the mold. I forgot to put feet on two boxes, then put too many on the next two. (Four instead of three; I told the boss I was trying to average things out. He took that about as you would expect....) I was breaking out chunks of the mold, messing up patterns, etc. I finally got is mostly together on the last pour, making eight bells that were merely ugly rather than being complete disasters.

Ah well. Tomorrow I'm grinding all day, so I get a bit of a break from molding. I just put on my headphones and drift off into my own little world for six hours or so.