I Wanna Go To Miami

It's Not Just A Famous Jewish Whine...


I did that...just take off for Miami...on a whim once about this time in November about fifteen years ago...

I say that you're definitely getting old when you spend all of your time comparing or explaining what you're doing today with what you were doing more than five or ten years past on the calendar.

Unfortunately I'm in that situation this week as I look at the weather forecast for south Florida and find myself wishing I could just buy a couple of tickets and jump on an airplane and a few short hours later walk out into their airport parking lot into the 80 degree late fall dry heat and put my cares behind me.

Then I'd get a Taxi and wander over to South Beach District and find a little hotel with a room to stay in a few blocks from the beach, and I'd find a nearby Cuban restaurant and eat their ethnic food and watch the crazy things going on (like the bar fight I saw once that lasted for near a half hour...), then tonight after watching Georgia Tech pound Duke in College Football I'd stagger back home to the hotel and curl up in the bed and let my ever greying, ever balding head rest for five or six hours.

Things sure have changed since those days...some good...some bad...and I guess Miami is beyond my reach now but you can't blame an old Ramblin' Wreck for wishing...

Go YELLOW JACKETS!!!

Every Game's A Critical Game

If Your Life Is Football...


OK...I hate to admit that I've planned my past TWO Saturdays around the TV schedule, and this Saturday is no exception.

I can do anything I want today except between 12 Noon and about 4 PM, when Georgia Tech is being televised trying to extend their win streak to eight in a row in this season--bringing the total to ten wins against one loss with Georgia and the ACC championship game left to play later this month and in early December.

Of course as is usual in college football and particularly as I've seen in my 32 years following Georgia Tech...ANYTHING can happen today...but regardless I seem to have an all consuming urge to watch the proceedings because it's been nearly TWENTY years since the North Avenue Trade School had anything close to the kind of team they're fielding this year.

It's not often Tech's in the top 10 in the sport, and today they put their Number 7 ranking on the line and with the other match ups out there Tech could advance a notch or two if there happens to be an upset like Alabama getting beat by Mississippi State.

Now it's time to get back to programming I guess...

Back Home

And Busy As Heck...


So we're back home and now I'm up to my armpits in paperwork and boxes of "stuff" that arrived on my carport in my absence.

It's almost like Christmas morning except I'm five decades old and the "toys" are electronic hardware and technical publications and other nerdy do-dads.

I've been up since 2:30 AM sorting mail and stumbling around in the mire and mess which has ensued since depositing Missy the Turbo Pup and her Lockers and Sea Chests back in the living room.

The lawn guy has already been by with his leaf blower raising a dust storm in an effort to piss me off, and now I'm seriously leaning toward taking a shower and declaring an early happy hour before coming home and warming up some of my thawed out "Green Butt" White Chili and making a giant pone of cornbread.

Time to make some calls and chase the yard guy around with a check I guess.

Regards Y'all...

South Bound Again

Afternoon Journey...


Man...the past two days have been a whirlwind of mental activity here in Indianapolis.

The PLC (programmable logic controller) class was free, but in my opinion it was one of the best if not the best technical classes I've ever attended.

The people at Horner go out of their way to give you a good understanding of their products and their proprietary programming environment, and every one of the twenty plus people in attendance either already had their equipment in their plants or like me were building new products based on one of their controllers.

Everyone was on time every morning and sat there for eight hours (they fed us lunch also) and absorbed information like a room full of sponges.

My head is about to explode with ideas and I can't wait to get back home and get started building this first custom control panel and writing the software to control it before I forget something.

We have another session today that's scheduled to last until 2 PM, but I think I'll be able to slide out the door around lunch and be back on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River at the Turbo Pup compound by Happy Hour.

Wish us a safe journey free of encounters with texting morons driving habits...if you will...

Have you Asked Your Doctor About "Dememetiaforyou"?

(Hexamexatexa-ibuprofin HCL)


Picture a TV ad scene with a middle aged couple walking barefoot on the beach.

Now Que the baritone announcer's voice:


"Feeling Stupid?

Feeling Sad?

Feeling Broke?

Feeling Bad?

Got Bunions?

Ingrown Toe nails?

Got an Attitude?

Or Just don't give a damn?

Then Dementiaforyou may be just for you...ask your doctor for a dose or two..

That's right folks...

Hang around until we all have the Democrat's "Universal Health care," and maybe your doctor will subscribe prescribe some for you.

Dementiaforyou--the all-in-one FDA approved chemical solution for all those little nagging problems in life...

After all...You're only half a person without it.***"

Now the disclaimer scrolls past in the final five seconds:

*** THE FINE PRINT
May cause hives; hernias; hemorrhoids; heat rash; hacking; hypertension; hepatitis; homosexuality; homophobia; sleepwalking; sleep talking; whooping cough; anal seepage; rectal bleeding; incontinence; excessive desires to gamble; being unusually happy; being unusually sad; becoming suicidal; erections lasting longer than 4 hours; no erection at all; sex change; being an angry insensitive blogger; unusual desires for sex involving weed eaters, chickens, kitchen appliances, shop tools, fruits, vegetables, and antique automobiles; death; stroke; strange food craveings; cancer; constipation; conniption fits and/or Shivering Shaking Screaming Heebie Jeebies.

Consult your physician if any or all of the above symptoms or conditions occur.




Heh...

The World According To Archie Bunker

I Agree Completely...









(that was broadcast over twenty years ago, and it's frightening how true it still is today...)

"She Slopped Her Dripper"

Hee Haw Greatest Hits


I remember watching this live back when it first ran on TV...



If you're not from the south you may not laugh, but I remember the skit and many of the words to this day

The Cone Of Death Approaches

Governor Jindal Trys To Make Lingering Katrina "Victims" Get The Heck Out...


So I'm sitting here checking out the weather this morning and notice that my Mom and the Family Farm may be in the path of Hurricane Cousin Ida when she comes calling later this week.

But wait a minute, I also heard earlier where Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had already declared a state of emergency in New Orleans for fear that Carl Rove and George Bush were sending another Hurricane after the poor and disenfranchised residents of the lower fifth ward and other areas of the city STILL FIRMLY SITUATED BELOW SEA LEVEL FOUR YEARS after Katrina swamped the place.

Any way, it looks like the storm is going to take an eastward turn and be further downgraded into a weak hurricane or a strong tropical storm as it comes inland somewhere between the Mississippi/Alabama line and Appalachacola, FL.

Me and members of my family have been there and done this drill dozens of times in the past 75 years and as I see it there's no reason to run to the grocery store and buy all of the bread and milk and peanut butter--but I'll leave the decision up to each individual.

We've never once in the middle of the aftermath of a half dozen strikes and near misses by the eyes of Hurricanes (Opal and Elloise come to mind) seen hide nor hair of FEMA at our houses and we're still alive and paying "our fair share" of taxes today.

If I were not going to be 450 miles north of ground zero I would gas up my car and probably make sure I had batteries for the radio and flashlights, but then again I did that every year in the spring when I lived within a mile of the Atlantic on the Georgia Coast and a hundred yards from the beach on the Gulf in Mexico Beach, FL.

I never ONCE had to sit around and wait for the GOVERNMENT to knock on my door and tell me to take steps to protect my life and property.

Did I mention that I still have a 1.5 KW generator packaged in the original shrink wrap box...left over from when we moved to St. Simons Island in 2003?

So I can just hear it now...after a quiet Atlantic/Gulf hurricane season, the wild eyed, sniveling, booger eating, eco-friendly tree hugging patchouli tie-died smelly former hippy tree huggers will announce, at a press conference with Owl Gore, that this mid-November Hurricane is yet additional PROOF of anthropological (i.e. man made for those of you that attended business admin classes at the University of Georgia) climate change.

Just watch...

They will...

Bet me...

OK...I'm shifting gears here now Boss...

What really got me started yelling this morning was when I started calculating the total amount of atmosphric Oxygen a valve I'm rebuilding sees in the process of handling 650 CFM of air, 24/7, 51 weeks a year at 40 bars of pressure (588 pounds per square inch.)

I had to look up a chart with the composition of air in order to run the calculations, and when I did I found this chart:

Check that crap out...BY WEIGHT...

Nitrogen 75.5%

Oxygen 23.2%

and the HATED Global warming Villain...Carbon Dioxide???

CO2 equals only...

Ready?

0.05% of our ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE

That's FIVE ONE HUNDRETHS OF ONE PERCENT...

Got that?

So IF I continue to smoke Cigars...

And IF I continue to drive my old Suburban getting 9 MPG

And IF I continue to burn my branches and leaves in my back yard in a big smoky pile

And IF I continue to use my charcoal grill

And IF I continue to just not give a crap in general about my "Carbon Footprint"...

And IF I continue to run my mouth at an accelerated rate...

Then...

after all of that stuff happens without government intervention.

AND THE LEVELS OF ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE DOUBLE OVER THE REST OF MY LIFE...

Carbon dioxide will still, on that horrible, yes even possibly cataclysmic day in the eyes of Owl Gore and the sniveling booger eating crowd et. al.

...

Only be...

0.10% of the total mass of our atmosphere.

Now in light of these statistics, DOES anybody else out there besides me wonder what all the noise is about?


Yea...I thought so...

Dammit...

The Turbo Pup's Back On The Road

And The Blog Silence Might Be Deafening...


About 9 AM this morning, after the local rush hour settles down, Missy the Turbo Pup and her entourage are blasting out of Knoxtown up I-75 toward a rendezvous with a 2-1/2 day technical training class in Indianapolis, Indiana.

This will be her...

Wait...how many states has the Turbo Pup visited since she was born in 2006?

Let's see...

Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi (she was born there), Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia ...

So now with the addition of Indiana Missy the Turbo Pup will have traveled to SIXTEEN STATES in her soon to be three year long life.

Not bad for a little 11 pound miniature long haired Dachshund, eh?

I keep talking about getting some of those state stickers like people put on the back of their motor homes and travel trailers and putting them on the outside of her travel crate.

She's been crate trained since she was 2 months old and weighed 2 pounds, but we never lock her up in the thing. She just uses it like a den or "safety deposit box" and wanders in and out on her own hiding left over pieces of rawhide chews and wads of napkin and old paper towel tubes we give her to play with.

Still, if we have the room (thus far only one exception last summer) the crate, her bed, her blankets, and a giant assortment of toys go along with her in the back of the old Chrysler 300 when she hits the road.

Half the back seat is generally enough room for her royalness and her "lockers and sea chests" as I call them.

I get one seat and space in half of two suitcases along with room for a few hanging clothes, and of course the gasoline bills.

The weather over our route both ways looks good so far, and it will be good to get to interact in person with some of my technical peers for a change since I've basically been a hermit working alone from my office since my employer closed down last December 19th.

Time now to clean up my desk and do some final packing, and maybe catch another hour or two of sleep before hitting the road.

Wish us a safe trip and protection from the driving/texting morons...if you will...

Engineer(s) Gone Wild?

One Went "Postal" In Orlando...


Anyone but me wonder what the heck was/is going on down in Orlando this week?

First I hear that some guy has run into an office building in downtown and shot the place up, killing one person and wounding five more.

Then I hear that the guy was shooting in the offices of an engineering firm and was an engineer himself.

I know that for various product related reasons that some people might want to kill engineers--like I for a while wanted to maim the guys that designed the 1984 Pontiac Fiero when it spent most of its first six months of my ownership in the Dealer's shop rather than in my Garage.

But still...

Engineers SHOOTING PEOPLE?

I thought that usually if an engineer wanted to kill you, their weapon of choice would be to BORE YOU TO DEATH.

You know--talking about interesting things like fluid flow and heat transfer coefficients, soil bearing capacity, electrical impedance, or the effect of long chain polymer chemistry on the tensil strength of ultra high density polyethylene (UHDPE for short.)

Although I can talk about all of that stuff, I generally don't break it out in casual conversation in a bar or at Thanksgiving dinner...BUT...

If I really wanted to hurt you I would generally assault you through your ears and mind (and possibly your eyes if you had to look at me while I was talking.)

On second thought, I guess that some people could think that engineers routinely kill people when airliners fall out of the sky or bridges collapse or their new white Toyota Prias squashes like a grape when it comes in contact with the front bumper of my old Chevy Suburban at 60 MPH.

Problem is, those events are hardly ever attributed to an actual engineering design flaw...they're usually owner and/or operator induced failures.

For instance, most "uncontrolled contact with terrain events" a.k.a. "air disasters" are initially caused by inexperienced pilots flying into bad weather or running a perfectly good airplane out of gas.

And military and commercial aircraft, while closely scrutinized, usually fail because of the enormous numbers of hours that they're in the air and issues relating to maintenance mistakes or the shear parts fatigue of their demanding daily operations.

And you certainly can't blame the engineers when they are technically unable to build a box with an electric motor and wheels that gets 50 MPG and can also withstand a potential assault by a 6,000 pound Suburban or a 80,000 tractor trailer rig when they try to occupy the same piece of asphalt.

All of these theoretical incidents involve owners and operators assuming what they believe to be an acceptable amount of calculated RISK based on the initial cost of the equipment and the operating and maintenance cost of the systems (plane, train, car, bridge, whatever) after purchase.

Bridges that have lasted 40 years don't fall down because of an engineering design flaw, they generally fail because the local, state, and federal governments take the gas taxes from the bridge users at the gas pump and spend the "highway" money in other areas like child welfare programs or "stimulus packages" rather than inspecting and repairing and possibly REPLACING the bridge before it drops a couple of mini-vans full of children into the Ohio River.

And modern airliners don't fly safely for 10 years and then have a wing or engine tear off while your tray table and seat back are in the upright and locked position. It's not the guy with the calculator and pocket protector's inadequacy.

Things end up breaking off these days as a result of everyone wanting to fly from Atlanta to Detroit for $199 a seat--a price less that the cost of the gasoline I'd burn in my Suburban-and the Airlines having to cut costs to provide that kind of ticket pricing and still stay solvent.

As a result of the flying public wanting cheap air fair, the airlines are forced to cut quality of service, charge fees for everything except using the restroom, and fly older and older planes by doing things like major rebuilds--called "life cycle extension programs."

Then they and their low fair paying passengers end up together in uncharted performance territory in a process of delaying or avoiding the purchase of new zillion dollar airplanes.

And what is the one additional thing that the safety of bridges and airplanes and automobile have in common?

G O V E R N M E N T.

We have the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), and the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) all spending BILLIONS if not TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars each year writing laws and rules and legislating things like that your car has to automatically lock the doors and turn on the headlights, yet about 44,000 people die each year in auto accidents.

And all of the states have passed seat belt laws, but don't a bunch of people still die while not wearing a seat belt? They drive at the risk of paying a "fine"--actually more practically a tax--for exercising their free choice and thereby assuming a level of risk they are personally accountable for.

...taking a big breath here...

Now back to my original point.

I bet $20 bucks that within the MONTH that some stupid eco friendly sniveling, booger eating, tree hugging liberal progressive politician is going to call for congressional hearings on gun control and trying to bring back the "Brady Bill" and the so called "Assault Weapons Ban."

They just can't help themselves, and with the events of the past week their "never waste an disaster" mentality will drive them over the edge again.

I repeat over and over and over that we don't need new laws limiting LAW ABIDING citizens rights of gun ownership and further, their rights to carry a gun.

IT'S ALREADY AGAINST THE LAW TO WALK UP AND SHOOT SOMEONE, and if more trained and licensed private citizens were allowed to legally carry guns into churches and theaters and on college campuses, most of the events making the news over the past ten or twenty years would have been limited else prevented outright.

Further, it was already ILLEGAL--an outright gun ban was in place-- on of all places the military base in Texas, yet that asshole simply drove on base with not one but two guns and shot a bunch of un-armed soldiers and civilians.

I somehow find it amazing that the military has taken a policy of locking almost every one of their guns and ammo up and relying on the MP's and private security forces to maintain their security functions.

I bet if the guy had walked into a US military base in 1944 or 1952, pulled out a gun and fired a shot, that twenty different people would have drawn their own weapons and blown his miserable head off.

Instead, in 2009 some guy walks into a government mandated "gun free zone" and fires OVER A HUNDRED FREAKING ROUNDS before someone manages to draw a bead on him and drop him (I wish they had killed the bastard so we won't have to spend ten million on a trial.)

I see it like this...most of these crazy spineless morons like the Texas and Florida (and Virginia Tech and Columbine) shooters would never walk into a Saloon in California in 1875 and start shooting if they knew that everyone else in the room had one if not two guns on their person, would they?

If they did they would get what they deserved and the only "due process" remaining when the smoke cleared would be to pick up the pieces and mop the floor.

Anybody agree with me here?

Yes?

No?

Well, finally, in closing (and in jest,) don't be surprised if, as a result of the Orlando shootings, some kook legislator will try to pass a new law designed to require Engineers to register in a database like "sexual predators." (I think maybe they call it the State PE Licensing Board...Roy)

As a result they'll also probably want to make us stay at least a hundred yards away from libraries and technical bookstores.

And then if someone opens a computer store in my neighborhood, being an engineer I'd likely be forced to sell my house and move at least a mile away.

These same kinds of laws and procedures and mandates are in effect today at government mandate in the name of "protecting women and children", and you see the outcome...children are still disappearing and dieing at an alarming rate.

Government can't control anyone but law abiding citizens, and all I'm saying here Ladies and Gentlemen is that you just watch what happens, and try to think logically and intelligently rather than reacting emotionally.

In my considered Redneck opinion, "There aught to be a law..." isn't always true, and I don't want to give up any more of my Constitutional and God given freedoms to our hysterical, power grabbing government.

Ultimate Home Workshop

I'm Now So Organized...I Can't Find Anything...


Sorry about the light blogging recently, but I have a good excuse...I'm happy to report that the last dust settled in my Basement yesterday afternoon.

OK...maybe the next to last dust.

That would be because like most men's home workshops...they're always a work in progress.

That said, I say that I'm finished with mine for now because:

A. I've run out of money

B. I'm tired of building the shop and I believe that it's time to actually get some WORK done in my "workshop."

In the past four weeks I've taken every single tool I own, and almost every single nut and bolt and nail--or at least the boxes containing same--and dusted them off and cleaned things out and sorted like things in with like things to the point that when everything went back on the shelves and bunkers and bins this morning I find myself wandering around in my own basement like an Alzheimer's patient in a Nuclear Plant (or maybe a shopping mall.)

For your enjoyment, here's a photo looking at the entry wall of the 20'x12' shop area. All of the doors in these pictures are recycled Luan doors I pulled out of the main house when I replaced them with painted 6 panel slabs last year.



The bi fold doors cover a computer workstation with keyboard shelf and room for a file cabinet and my technical books. Of course there's also the obligatory TV and radio...if I could get a recliner in the room Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup would never see me again except at dinner I'm afraid.



Here's a look at the old workbench that was in that spot in the basement when we bought the house. It's build out of giant salvage lumber from the original home owner's farm and weighs about 500# I guess. Like that red door there covering my paint cans and WD-40?



Here's the wall opposite the entry, again showing our old closet doors covering a whole wall of storage shelves that came with the house...



Here's the same wall with the doors open showing where all the tools and supplies I've carefully put away and then forgotten which storage tub they reside in...



And finally, here's the new electronics workbench, made out of the old master bathroom door and covered with a sheet of 3/4" plywood. If you look closely you'll notice that the legs fold up and the whole thing is hinged to the wall (the entire wall is made of old doors except about 6" in one corner) so it can fold down out of the way if I ever decide to build a 16' sail boat or an experimental airplane in my old age...



There's still new 50 Amp 220 Volt and 20 Amp 110 Volt electrical circuits to install for future equipment like a small welding machine and larger capacity air compressor, but in the mean time I'm settling for the rewired and extended 1963 electrical circuits augmented with a new #6 grounding wire/rod circuit in an effort to reduce the chances of frying either myself or the sensitive equipment that will take form on the new bench.

Any way...back to my original point, I need to build something...and to that end I've had UPS dropping off multiple boxes almost every day this week, and I did another trip today to the Home Depot electrical isle for things like wire ties and wire labels and other wiring management stuff.

There's still a wire and tool trip to Radio Shack and Granger and possibly Northern Tool, and in the mean time I'm still waiting on the touch screen PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) to arrive from Indianapolis.

Speaking of Indianapolis, coincidentally Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup and I will be up there next week for a three day training class on the PLC company's unique programming software. It's free if you'll pay your own per diem and we couldn't pass up the opportunity.

That, and we hadn't made a road trip in about a month and I didn't want to violate my personal and now company travel policies--one adventure every thirty days of at LEAST eight hours in round trip duration.

I'm so excited about this chance to advance skills I haven't used since back in the early 1980's, and things have come so far technically since then (i.e. SIMPLER TO UNDERSTAND THAN EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHICS) that I hope it's true that almost anyone with programming experience can become a PLC expert in short order.

I guess that it's time to do some paper work and a little news surfing...and why don't you join me in praying for the dead and wounded and their families out at Ft. Hood--yet additional victims of another wild eyed believer in that ever peaceful religion of Islam.



(&%$#@!ing towel heads...)

Stinky Cheese And Web Page Printing

Things I Keep Forgetting To Admit Or Complain About...


Tonight I'm feeling lazy and distracted as seems to be usual recently, but while eating some leftovers as a snack and printing some vendor data sheets on laser measurement systems (try not to swoon) I remembered a couple of things I've thought about writing about but never can remember when I get the Blogger dashboard open and my fingers on the keyboard.

First of all, anyone but me out there like "stinky cheese??"

(Wipe the foot and genitalia images out of your mind and try to stay with me here...I'm trying to make a point.)

Seriously, today in my household we hardly ever or never buy "American Cheese" slices any more or generic orange blocks of Velveeta "cheese food products" or anything else without the word "Swiss" or "Gouda" or "Sharp" on the label.

Things get stranger and more expensive every day it seems.

Just show me the words:

Cow Feta?

Horse Feta?

Sheep Feta?

Deep Veined Blue Cheese?

Imported Organic Crumbly Goat Cheese?

(and possibly make me have to take out a loan to buy a couple of pounds of the stuff?)

NOW YOU'RE TALKING...

Let's face it...I like my stinky cheese these days, and the older I get the stronger I like it.

Maybe it's because I'm trying to have an excuse for my breath and armpits and butt smelling like they do (OK TMI), or it's just that possibly I'm hoping that the cheese covers the odors I emit after a couple of days wandering around the Turbo Pup compound in the same pair of socks.

Any way, what brought this to mind was that last night we thawed out a couple of medium sized Beef tenderloins--about an inch and a half thick each--and I sliced a big pocket into the inside of each of them and then seared everything on each side in a big skillet on the stove, then finished them to about medium doneness in the oven.

Then I danced around opening their insides up and I stuffed those suckers with a portion of nice strong crumbled blue cheese.

After adding some bacon and sauteed mushrooms on top and some smashed red potatoes containing a quarter pound of butter and more blue cheese on the side, Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup and I dined, and then I collapsed back into the bed on top of the omni-present heating pad to recover from the day's basement shop construction efforts.

Then about 1 AM I awakened and decided to work on some more paperwork and do some more work on the Internet...bringing me to my final bitching moment this morning...

Ready?

Does anyone but me think that all website designers also own stock in the office paper companies?

No?

Yes?

I think that they do.

Otherwise, why is it that almost every time you print out a web page you get one or two or three pages, followed by that infuriating LAST page that has nothing but possibly a disclaimer and a header/footer?

Understand?

I've got near an entire REAM of paper in my recycle/reuse bin with only one or two lines of text on them...all MEANINGLESS AND USELESS to the task at hand when I was printing.

Am I nuts?

Am I petty?

Am I just Paranoid?

OK

In the words of PopEye..."I am what I am and that's all that I am..."

Regards Y'all...

Waking The Dead

I Should Have Thought Of These Alarm Clocks...

A New Load Of Lumber

And A Sore Back...


Yet another truck showed up in my driveway yesterday afternoon.

It was my fault, because I stopped by and ordered it from a local building supply (not Lowe's or Home Depot) after making the obligatory bi-weekly trip to Staples and Home Depot.

I don't know what I'm thinking sometimes when the 75 pound slabs of 3/4 inch thick plywood show up in my carport.

How do you get a 4 foot by 8 foot sheet of wood into your basement past a kitchen and dining room table, around a corner through a door, down the stairs, around another 90 degree turn into it's future resting place?

My only solution is to cut it up into the slabs and strips in the sizes it will ultimately reside in, then make three or four trips with Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup hanging onto the other end rather than falling down the stairway on my head with the full sized slab of laminated wood on top of me.

In addition to A/B grade plywood, there was also five sheets of 1/4 pegboard intended to line the open spaces in the new wall framework and cover part of the freshly painted concrete wall.

Bad news is my back and right shoulder is giving me fits so I've been relegated to slumping at my desk and hanging out in the bed reclining on the heating pad for part of the past 48 hours.

Add to that organic pain the neurological costs of the spasms sent through my spine when I read the newspaper and watch the TV news and I hope you understand why I'm currently feeling every single minute of my past 50 years in my forehead and butt.

Time to go clean my guns and hone my blades I guess...

They Changed My Clock

And Winter Came Sneaking Back (and Obscure facts no one but me cares about)...


Spring forward...Fall back.

Today is possibly my least favorite day in every year because I'm forced to give up an hour of late afternoon daylight in return for early morning daylight...something those that know me also know is of little value to me personally most of the time.

Thinking about it, isn't it amazing that we allow the GOVERNMENT to control something as simple as our Clocks and the time displayed thereon?

I know that it sounds like a good idea in some ways, but seriously...

Today even the counting and progression of time has slowly been politicized over the past 140 or so years since Sir Sandford Flemming, a Canadian Railway Planner and Engineer came up with the ideal of dividing the planet into 24 "Meridian" time zones running North/South around the globe.

This National Geographic article gives even more information which I previously didn't know but had seen the results of previously...that being that the individual STATE governments have more control over the time on your VCR (you know, that thing in your living or bedroom continuously flashing 12:00 all the time) than the federal government actually has.

The Feds only control the the actual time zones, not the recognition of daylight savings time.

As I understand it, through the years the boundaries of time zones and recognition of "Daylight Savings Time" have been manipulated for personal and political reasons...generally in the name of money and/or "commerce."

For instance, there are two good examples I personally know about here in the south--one involving a large textile company and the second a Paper Mill which has gone out of business and been torn down.

If you look at this map:



you'd think that the division between the central and eastern time zone runs exactly down the border between Alabama and Georgia---picking up the Chattahoochee River around West Point Georgia and continuing across the Florida Panhandle on the river basin to the Gulf of Mexico.

If that were the case, you'd be WRONG.

I can't find a detailed map but I know from driving up and down I-85 about a million times since the late 1970's that the now defunct company West Point Pepperell Mills was able to get the eastern time zone extended down US 29 (and now Interstate 85) in Eastern Alabama in order to have all of their plants between West Point, Georgia and Lanette, Alabama on the same clock each day.

Makes sense I guess that all of the employees working on both sides of the river were working on the same clock time, but it took an act of congress to pass a law saying what time was on individual citizens clocks on the nightstands and wrist watches.

Then down in Gulf County, Florida things are even more convoluted...based on the whims of the Old Saint Joe Paper Company...now called simply "St. Joe" and existing solely as a real estate development and timber company. Today they are either the first or second largest land owner in the entire state of Florida depending on whose statistics you're quoting.

Here's the map showing how the Eastern Time Zone again marches off to the west off the basin of what has become at this point the Apalachicola River (the merger of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers into lake Seminole.


(From 12 Mile Circle)

The neat thing was that when I spent a year living in nearby Mexico Beach, Florida on New Years we were able to go east a couple of miles to Beacon Hill, celebrate at midnight, then come back across the time zone line and do it all again an hour later.

Simple things for simple minds I guess, but I take my entertainment where I can find it these days.

Time to go work on a proposal now...y'all try to get your internal clocks adjusted and get some sleep.

Last Vestiges of Summer

The Leaves Are Falling And It's WARM...


So I'm sitting here in the wee hours of the morning, pounding away on the computer keys getting some paperwork done in between fits of reading the news and shuffling files in my office--the newly declared International Headquarters of Plastics Engineering Technologies...situated on the lovely banks of the Mighty Tennessee River (IHPETSOLBMTR for short.)

Then I just noticed that it's Seventy Three Degrees Fahrenheit at 3:10 AM.

My front porch is beckoning...cigar and my partially read copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" in hand.

See y'all later...

My Life's Kicking My Butt

Who's Idea Was This Anyway???


OK

I've got two new exterior doors that still need staining and finishing. One still needs the holes and slots cut for the knobs and hinges and dead bolt.

I've got two sets of closet bi fold doors that need painting.

I've got two fluorescent lights to finish wiring and hang in the basement.

I've got a load of 1x4 and 1x2 trim lumber to install in the new and improved workshop and International World Headquarters for my new company...

(drum roll please...)

Plastics Engineering Technologies, Inc.

We got our first order for a PLC control panel last Friday and I've been pulling what little hair I have left out trying to get all the components on order.

And in the mean time I have near a half acre of yard that really needs some TLC and general fall maintenance and since today is the last 70 degree day in sight and it's supposed to rain for most of the next week...

you'll have to excuse me if the blogging continues to be sporadic at best.

Regards Y'all

First New Manned Rocket In 30 Years?

Obama Has File On Desk Under Afghanistan Troop Plans...


While the media was busy writing about "The Balloon Boy" and the President's basketball skills and FOX News obvious Right Wing bias, I've been paying attention to NASA's being busy readying the first test flight of a new generation of space vehicles designed to place men in orbit after the Space Shuttles retire...eventually evolving into having the capability to put Homo Sapiens back on the moon sometime in the year 3000 or something.

Take a look at the Ares I-X rocket on the pad in the background with the Space Shuttle in the foreground...

(From http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/091026-nasa-ares-1x-shuttle-snapshots.html)

While I'm happy that NASA has finally been allowed to address the replacement of the aging shuttle fleet, it also disgusts me that it's going to take longer to get a new spacecraft developed and get back to the Moon than it did in the 1960's.

How can it take a few rooms full of men wielding calculators with more computational power than the original Apollo Command Module's computer LONGER than it did a bunch of nerds with slide rules and pocket protectors to design a new moon rocket?

Have we fallen that far intellectually?

Or is the problem more insidious and basic?

Besides the obvious POLITICAL over/undertones, could it be that we as Americans--American Engineers--aren't cut from the same cloth as our predecessors of 40 years ago?

Do we not have the design and conceptual skills, are our colleges not teaching the fundamentals and leading us to prosper mentally and advance science at the same rate seen in the second half of the 20th century?

Or is it just that EVERYTHING is so damned %$#@ up and mucked up and glued together with the slimy funk of cultural and social decay...weighted down with the dumbing down of the American people in general...and held back by artificial demands for considerations of false self esteem...bankrupt under the burden of government mandates and funding of social "entitlement" programs which divert perfectly good money to the clamoring masses with baggy assed pants singing the lyrics of the latest rap/hip-hop song from memory while at the same time being unable to quote the pythagarean theorem.

Naaaaa...it's probably just bad luck or a result of the war on Terror/Al Quaeda and possibly the effects of global warming I guess...


That will be all...for now...

Dammit...

Only The G O V E R N M E N T...

Would Make A Company Write Something Like This


So there I was, happily minding my own business when I found these words written in a "Green" bid solicitation this evening:

"While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to stand; walk; sit; and use hands to finger, handle, or feel. The employee is occasionally required to reach with hands and arms and talk or hear. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 10 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, and ability to adjust focus."


But wait a minute...here I was thinking that "finger[ing], handling, and feeling" had pretty much been outlawed as being against the law in every state but San Francisco and Holland?

Any way, after I wiped the spit off my flat screen 22" HP monitor I ended up writing about it here on the blog tonight.

I've already wasted thirty minutes on the concept pacing around the room and pulling at what little hair I have on my head...

It's really a wonder I ever get anything done because I come across stupid crap like this all the time, but then I remember that my dear Mother told me the old "not saying anything nice...say nothing at all thing" adage but if I actually followed that...

I'd never say anyting at all.

Then I probably could get a G O V E R N M E N T J-O-B because everyone would think I was deaf and dumb "physically challenged" because all I would ever do is grunt and puff my cheeks up in an attempt to add extra volume to my head in order to keep it from EXPLODING.

Now where's my giant tub of ice water and my snorkel???

My Thought For The Day

Mispelling Leads To Deep Philisophical Insight...


"The only thing between having a hose and a house is u."



(If you have to ask you probably blame the government for being homeless.)



heh...