Professions Getting In The Way Of My Avocations

Distracting Distractions


Oh...I don't know...what's going on here on the banks of the mighty Tennessee River these days?

Not much writing if you haven't noticed...

Still screwing around with a whole bunch of steel at work--fine tuning our design and the drawings of the never ending Coke quench tower and stair tower projects.

Then there's the much anticipated upcoming glorious return to our Little Island and the Georgia Coast on Friday for a four day engagement in the set building business at Brunswick's Ritz Theater--this adventure's subject being the set for the play The Little_Foxes.

It's basically a giant staircase complete with handrails and a balcony that disappears upstage and off stage left (six years ago I couldn't tell my up stage from my down stage and stage right was a mystery to me also--I did know port and starboard and abeam and astern if needed however.)

I also have some real estate business interests to take care of in as much as this week my plumber finished new water supply piping from the city's water meter to two bathrooms, a utility room, and the kitchen of the never ending renovation project.

I have to schedule the plumbing inspection on Friday or Monday and the electrician starts work today installing a new electrical service entrance, panel, and all new wiring in the 1959 vintage structure.

Here inside my office and basement I have a number of electronic restorations in progress. The simplest is a 1944 wooden cabinet GE table radio I stole on E-bay that just needs new speaker cloth before it takes up residence in the living room foyer.

Projects #2 and #3 are again both old antique radios...a 1930's vintage battery powered Philco "Tombstone" farm radio (anyone got a 90.5 volt battery you're not using?) and a 1948's vintage Philco table radio like the one I lost in my house fire. Both radios need restoration of their electronic guts but I have downloaded the circuit diagrams and I have my soldering iron ready to get to work when we get back in town.

Then there is what I call the "Old Dell Laptop Computer Restoration Project" involving two old machines I've been dragging around in various stages of disrepair as "back-ups" to my current HP wide screen portable.

Since one machine had a dead display and the other suffered from a forgotten password, I guess their serviceability as "back-ups" are sort of like all of the combined forces of NATO and the United Nations could be considered "back-ups" for a couple of F-22 fighters and a division of US Marines.

Once again it was E-Bay to the rescue as I bought one lot of two Dell 640's in various stages of disrepair to get a working display, a cheep new copy of Windows 2000 XP Professional to keep Vista from wrecking further havoc on our network, and a USB hard drive caddy to allow me to recover the Photos and other files off both machines' hard disks before reformatting and installing the aforementioned 2000 XP and dancing the dance of success--having $5000 worth of computers (in 2003 dollars) working for less than $200 in parts and effort.

Just call me "Super Genius"...

Meanwhile, little Missy The Turbo Pup is getting her beach bag and bathing suits together, and we're really looking forward to getting her some exercise on the beach as they relaxed the leash laws on Labor day weekend and she can get back to her old ways of galloping unfettered along the surf in a 50 yard circle around us. She's certainly a little girl moulded in her dad's image of professional beach bum(ette.)

Other good news is that my company has recently been awarded some work which allows me to return to my Mechanical Engineering roots in Process Design and Thermodynamics, and my old college roommate Rusty's firm is partnering with us in the first of what we hope will be an ongoing series of systems which will increase my visibility and value to the firm.

I'm a much better Mechanical Engineer than I am a Structural Designer, but it's nice to brush up on the steel world after a seven year hiatus and let the synapses reconnect before moving back into Warp Drive.

I have to admit that the one thing I've learned the hard way over the past ten years is to not let my personal self esteem be singularly connected to my professional successes (or company failures), thus the wide ranging scope and variety of endeavors I find myself involved with today.

That said...I hope y'all all have a peachy day...If you will...