Ashes To Ashes...Dust To Dust...

You Drink Good Beer Vodka...Your Pipes Won't Rust...


It's "Pool Time" this afternoon here at the Turbo Pup Compound.

It's too dang hot to do anything else except possibly sit inside in the AC, but I've been up since 3 AM working, then made a run to Staples and WalMart, dumped a bunch of cardboard and newspapers off at the recycling center, and cooked brunch.

All before 11:30 AM.

On a Saturday.

I pretty much treat every day on the calendar like it's Saturday AND a work day and then just get whatever I can done along the way.

The only difference between a real Saturday and a work day is that I can't find anyone to talk to on the telephone because all of the 9 to 5 working stiffs are at home hiding from the telephone and business concerns.

I can't and don't operate like that for some un-Godly reason.

It started out intentional but now it's so ingraned into my soul and spirit that I can't do things any other way.

I have an owner's/operations manual to finish writing and some programming tidbits to finish up and there's still a stack of pneumatic valves to finish up, but right now I want to go smoke the last cigar I have in the Humidor and read today's paper while baking on the deck.

Y'all have a LOVELY weekend...

I'm Half Way Making A Living...

Or Is it Making Half A Living?


Well Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm pleased to report that things have settled down a little this week finally here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.

We have the calendar schedule for the next couple of months pretty much worked out as of today, and between me pounding on the new PLC panel trying to teach it how to read three expensive non-contact sensors and time spent throwing pneumatic valve parts into a solvent bath I have a nice reasonable work load for most of the next week or so.

But then just when I get my Karma straightened out I have to wander into the dining room and sit at the table and screw around with tax forms for the State of Tennessee and the Imperial Federal Government of the United By-God States of 'Merica.

That's right, I have to close the books on the second quarter of 2010 and make sure I don't do anything wrong or fail to file some piece of paper which would cause the bureaucrats to come after me and my wallet.

It's a total bitch having to waste perfectly good time where I could be sleeping or goofing around doing nothing--or better yet making money--screwing around with government paperwork.

And you just wait until 2012 when one of the new hidden provisions of the "Obamacare" health care legislation kicks in and business start having to provide a 1099 Form to every single supplier that they spend over $600 in a calendar year.

I was just doing the math here and right now I'd have to write no less than a dozen forms and my company is only nine months old and we have no real employees (we have me and my partner as slaves) and we haven't billed $100K yet this year.

It's really unfortunate that we've gotten to the point where the stupid shitheads in the government treat most of the population as "subjects" and the higher earners as "income sources" these days.

People fall into two broad categories and generally vote "D" or "R" accordingly.

Either you are on the dole getting welfare and/or food stamps and/or WIC and/or Medicade and "earned income" credits--spending your life having kids you can't afford while living a lifestyle you can't support, else you're a member of the EVIL rich class of citizens who's job it is, according to the politicians and "social wellfare experts" to work their ass off and then send 30% to 39% of their largess to the government to fund their idiocy and vote buying "social programs."

For some strange reason--it's either genetic or just simple insanity--I keep aspiring to earn the sort of income which will put me in the government gun sights as a member of the "EVIL RICH."

I'd go have my head examined to see why I suffer from this affliction but I'd probably just break the Cat Scanner or MRI and then they'd send me a bill for that also.

So I just stay home and thrash around and write here on this blog...

Uncle Virgil's Protege

Driving A Firebird Rather Than A Camaro....


Here's some video of a friend/former college roomate's son doing the weekend drag racing thing over in North Carolina.



I did burnouts in front of the church at his parent's wedding in my firethorn red 1977 Camaro way back in 1981.

They say I wore off on him in some sort of demented way in the process....

Go figure?

I'm Over Run With Vegetables

"Garden Takes Over Knoxville Man's Property..."


I have to admit that, while I grew up visiting my Grandfather's farm every summer back in the 1960's and early 1970's, that doesn't make me a farmer any more that having attended a bunch of Atlanta Braves games makes me a professional Baseball Player.

I present this season's garden as evidence of my inability.

It's not that I'm not getting fruit and vegetables out of the dirt as a result of my efforts...

It's that the garden has literally taken over my back yard, and the areas where the garden isn't growing I've let the weeds get out of control so the whole thing looks like some sort of scene out of a Star Trek movie.

You know, the one where Mr. Spock dies and Kirk launches his body and this "Genesis Device" down to a barren planet and the planet grows into a lush rain forest and Mr. Spock comes back to life in the process.

I wish Mr. Spock (or Dr. Spock or Old McDonald) would show up here with a Weed Eater and a Hoe and help me get things under control.

I harvested a dozen tomatoes yesterday and a couple of cucumbers, so now I have about four dozen tomatoes laying around and a couple of dozen cucumbers waiting to be processed.

I eat tomatoes on cereal and peanut butter sandwiches these days to get rid of them and I've got funky jars of vinegar and spices I keep slicing cucumbers into to make quick pickles and I still can't keep up with the process.

My neighbors lock their doors and pull their curtains when they see me coming with a Kroger bag bulging with stuff.

All of this from about ten tomato plants and two cucumber vines.

And now my Japanese Eggplant and Squash are starting to come in and I'm actually afraid to walk out in the back yard because instead of just sitting around smoking a cigar and reading the paper I have to WORK when I get out there.

I was going to run the weed eater yesterday and try to knock some stuff down around the plants and a rain storm snuck up on me and it sprinkled on and off for most of the afternoon and by then it was too wet to work outside.

The Herb garden is also rocking and rolling and my Pumpkin and Watermelon vines are crawling all over the place and my pitiful little bell and sweet pepper plants are even starting to have near edible stuff on them and...

...you get my drift.

There's worse things to happen I guess than to have more stuff than you can freeze and eat...all from an ameteur farmer.

(Oh, by the way, the PLC panel is alive now and absorbing electricity and new software but still belching and farting a little yet, so it's time to go back to work I guess.)

My Brain Is Fried

Killing Me Softly...


So as my regular lurkers readers know, I've got this project going on in my basement laboratory which is kicking my butt right now.

It's not that it's so difficult building a single PLC panel, it's that I'm having to build the panel in a manner such that I can reproduce it again--EXACTLY-- in a couple of months.

Instead of just throwing a power supply and a surge suppression system and an uninterruptable battery back up system into a box with a touch screen PLC and a bunch or wires and DIN rail and terminal strips, I'm trying to in the process develop a whole new product line around the design making room for future options and as yet unknown variations.

I'm basically thinking six months to a year down the road on the calendar and the expandability and future uses are more work than the metal box of wire I'm spending twelve to fourteen hours a day looking at on my workbench.

A lot of people that are not an engineers think that we're all like "The Professor" on the TV show "Gilligan's Island" and that we know everything about anything by the time we finish four years (or in my case ten years full and part time) of college.

Not so.

I seem to forget that fact myself sometimes when I go out and write a proposal and then manage to get a purchase order for some monstrosity a customer wants to buy.

Thus yet again this morning I'm too mentally tired and lazy to write much of anything beyond what you see here.

Time for a nap I guess before getting up and doing it all over again I guess...

What Kind Of Conservative Are You?

I Knew It All Along...

My Conservative Identity:

You are an Anti-government Gunslinger, also known as a libertarian conservative or Tea Partier. You believe in smaller government, states’ rights, gun rights, and that, as Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’"

Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor

Go here and take the test yourself...

Heh...

The Silence Of The Lambs Is Deafening

Got To Do The Work When The Work Needs Do'in...

Sorry I didn't write anything yesterday, but I have bad news, Ladies and Gentlemen...

We've had to cancel our long planned visit to lower Alabama next week because of so-called "professional" obligations.

Pat has to go to Chicago for the "kick off meeting" with a new medical client and I'm up to my ears in PLC Panel details and pneumatic valves, thus getting the Turbo Pup and her Lockers and Sea Chests loaded up and into the car around the revised schedule just isn't going to work out.

Dang it...

I can spend weeks on the calendar with little if nothing to do, and darn it if things won't come wandering in the door and screw everything up at the last minute.

This late summer delay is a perfect example.

Almost everyone else I know has taken a week vacation already, but me and Pat and the Turbo Pup have stayed home since Memorial Day.

Now we have planned and wanted to go south in the late summer, but now having to earn a living and the professional obligations associated therewith takes precedence over pleasure and family obligations for the time being.

Oh well...

Up To My Ears In Work

And I'm Leaving Town Soon...So I Have Real "Deadlines"?


I'm sitting here this morning looking at another shipment of eight fancy pneumatic valves which are in desperate need of rebuilding.

They arrived unexpectedly Saturday morning.

It's a good news/bad news sort of thing because now, in addition to trying to finish up the current PLC project before heading down to Lower Alabama for 10 days or so now I have to get the valves torn down, cleaned up, and rebuilt and back out the door in the process before Friday.

It's sad not having anything in the way of paying work to do, but I wish that my paying work would spread itself out a little such that I don't have to go from sitting around picking my nose and smoking cigars on the deck beside the Turbo Pup Pool to working my butt off and causing what's left of the hair on the top the back and sides of my ever greying, ever balding head from falling out in the process.

I see that the Sunday newspaper's here, so in my normal devil may care manner I'm going to go fire up a cigar and take a first look at the NY Times' crossword.

Regard's Y'all...