Category Archives: miscellaneous

Engineering, miscellaneous

A Busy, but Good, Day

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This week has been a blur of activity, at home and at work. I won’t say too much about at home, except that the Great Time Crunch is coming to a head, and for a while I’ll have less time than normal, even less than I’ve had the last five months.

Concerning work, I’ve had lots to do. We had two training activities on Tuesday, both involving a guest speaker, which I was responsible for coordinating. One took place off site, an advanced class to a combined group of those I was responsible for and more that another person was responsible for. Then I went back to the main office and the speaker gave a basic class on the same topic, risk management, to a whole other group. Then I rushed back to the other meeting to make a half hour presentation on a topic.

On Wednesday I went back to the offsite meeting (continuing with the smaller group) to hear a particular topic. I’m glad I did, as it was the presentation of a problem  we are having related to one particular group. I listened, helped (I think) by my comments to clarify the problem  as it was being presented and to drill into the proposed solution with three options. No decision was made, but I was glad I went, listened, and contributed, because…

…today I was able to help someone come up with what looks like a good solution to the problem. I was able to contribute in a meaningful way. Will this proposal be the right solution to the problem? Don’t know, but it looks good. But whether it works or not, being part of the problem-solving team felt good. It felt good in part because no one asked me to be on the team. I simply decided I most likely had ideas to share if I knew what the problem was. I went out of my way to try to be part of the solution. And that felt good.

In the brown bag class I taught last week, “How to Recession-Proof Your Career”, I said you do that by increasing your value to the company year over year, even month over month. I think I did that today, this week. Yes, it was exhausting, especially when combined with the busyness at home. But it was satisfying, very satisfying.

Carlyle, miscellaneous

A Pleasant, Snowy Day

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I should have written yesterday.

The weather forecast was for a wintery mix changing over to snow. It was a constantly changing forecast. First it was to hit Tuesday evening and give us 5 inches of snow. Then it went to Tuesday/Wednesday midnight and 2-4 inches of snow. Then it went to Wednesday morning and 1-3 inches of snow. All this change in the forecast happened in a 12 hour window on Tuesday. I went home Tuesday night not knowing if I would be able to get to work on Wednesday or not. So I brought some work home: a 1-inch thick pile of guide specifications that needed editing. But I parked my pickup up the hill, in case I decided to go to work in the morning.

Tuesday night, at bedtime, I set my alarm for the usual time. The forecast said rain through the night, changing over to the wintery mix around 7 a.m., and to snow around 1 p.m.  I got up at six, showered and dressed for work (in my black “dress” jeans). I checked the weather sources: no change in the forecast overnight. Then I went out with the dog to see what conditions were. This is not our dog; we are dog-sitting for neighbors who had a quick trip out of town for a funeral. Rocky and I walked up to his house, and then beyond. A very light rain was falling, quite cold against the face, but when we passed my pickup I saw the windshield was frozen over. I left Rocky inside his house, to allow him a couple of hours in familiar territory, walked home, and made the executive decision I wasn’t going to work.

Back inside I completed Bible reading and prayer, caught up on Facebook and let the world know where I’d be for the day, then went to The Dungeon around 8 a.m. By this time the rain had changed to sleet. By 11 a.m. it was snowing—hard, big flakes. I sat in The Dungeon, computer open to stock charts, portfolio list, and social media/e-mail, and began editing the specs. Through the window I saw the winter wonderland arrive.

Also open on the computer was a Word document, a family memoir I started a week or two ago. I looked at it a little, making a tweak here and there. It’s very early in this document. I’m trying to figure out family dynamics in my dad’s family, actually in his parents’ and grandparents’ families, to determine the influences that shaped him and his siblings and, hence, me and my siblings and cousins. I would say, however, I spent less than 15 minutes on this.

All day I alternated between specs and computer. By 3:30 p.m., with only a short break for lunch, I had made a major dent in the spec pile, had made one stock trade, read all e-mails, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. At this point I went upstairs and decided to go for a walk. The temperature was plummeting, down to around 25 by this time, and light snow was still falling. So I bundled up, told Rocky he couldn’t come, and walked up to the highway, about 0.65 miles away. The snow over the sleet gave good traction on our street. Then on the next two the City had plowed, knocking the snow away but leaving a lot of the sleet. The whole way I found that I had no problems with footing. The sleet was nothing like ice. I could walk fine whether it was on the snow or on the sleet or on the nearly-cleared pavement.

I walked at a good clip, probably around 22 minutes per mile, though I didn’t use a stopwatch. The entire way I saw no cars, no other humans. At the highway I stopped and stood for a minute or so. The businesses across the street seemed to be closed. Even though the highway was in good shape, no vehicles appeared. When I got home I took Rocky out for a walk around the circle. He seemed unfazed by the snow, either that on the ground or that still falling.

Back home I fortified myself with nuked coffee, went to my chair, picked up my Nook, and soon fell asleep. I love to sleep in this chair. No, it’s not real comfortable, but it seems like the place to sleep. Ten or fifteen minutes later I was awake, ready to…do something. Read some blogs, ate supper, watched some news, and put on a Harry Potter movie. At that point I multi-tasked, picking my Nook up again and doing some genealogy research into the families I mentioned earlier. I re-registered for the LDS genealogy site (at least I think I was registered before), and found lots of good information. I took notes, having no way to print anything from my Nook.

This took me up to after 11:00 p.m., at which time I took Rocky for a walk, and hit the sack. We had less accumulation than I’d hoped for, about 2 inches of snow on top of almost 1 inch of sleet. Possibly I should have gone to work. Since we didn’t have ice, even Old Blue Leaf probably would have found good traction. But I had a good day. I’ll charge half of it to the company, half to vacation.

And I didn’t even work on any creative writing projects, all day. If you don’t count my reading in the letters of Thomas Carlyle as research for a future writing project.

miscellaneous, The Candy Store Generation

Facebook Political Posts

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candy-store-ebook-finalLast night I was involved in a political dispute on Facebook. A friend from high school, who I haven’t seen in almost 45 year but with whom I’ve reconnected on FB, posted a political cartoon. In the first frame was FDR with the caption “Social Security”. In the second frame was LBJ with the caption “Medicare/Medicaid”. In the third frame was President Obama with the caption “Health Care Reform”. In the fourth frame was a battered and bruised elephant under the name “Republicans” with the caption “Opposed Each”.

I know from prior posts that this man is on the opposite end of the political spectrum from me, so I should have let this go. But instead I posted the following.

How’s that Social Security working out for us? Soon will be bankrupt. “Soon” as in measured by generations. It won’t be long till, like Greece, we will run out of O.P.M.

To which he replied:

Working out fine for me thank you! Medicare has provided me with the ongoing care I require for my cancer treatments. Please- just refuse to take the money and benefits if you feel that way….just try and cool it with the hyperbole. Better yet: just stay off my page. I don’t watch FOX so your opinions are mostly odious to me.

I didn’t read his whole reply. I stopped after the first two sentences; more on that later. Two others then came on and said more or less the same thing about being very happy they were receiving these benefits and believing all these government programs are working just fine. To which I replied:

Maybe it’s time to take a longer view than just ourselves. Yeah, when I start collectng something when I retire I’ll thank my children for paying for my retirement and healthcare. Just as I hope my dad thanked me. But some day we will either run out of other people’s money or other people’s will, and it will all collapse. Look beyind what’s best for you.

This failure of baby boomers to take the long view is one of the things I discussed in my book The Candy Store Generation: How the Baby Boomers Are Screwing Up America. Well, this post brought this response:

As long as you paid into it, you have every right to collect

To which I replied:

Not really. The government used my money to provide a subsistence level retirement to my parents and grandparents. They put nothing away for my retirement. That’s why it’s called “Social” Security (as in socialist), not capitalist security.

By “they” I meant the government and its program, not my ancestors. A couple of people replied to that, including one who said:

…make up your mind… A capitalist believes in survival of the fittest… A very selfish way of living. (In that regard) they don’t really care about “the longer view”

To which I replied:

Not true. A retirement security program that involves a combination of support for prior generations with a personal account is the right way to go. You look at corporate America which fails to look beyond the next quarter and you have a company that will fail in 10 years. The smart capitalist takes the long view first, the short view second.

It was at that point that I went back and re-read the thread, and noticed that the person on whose timeline we were writing had asked me not to post there. Shame on me for not fully reading his post. So at this point I posted:

———, I missed your earlier comment. I will henceforth stay off your timeline. Say the word and I’ll delete my posts.

That’s the last post in the thread at this point. The host hasn’t come back and responded to my offer, or to any of the posts other than the first one.

Personally I don’t think my original post was hyperbole. We will most certainly run out of other people’s money at some point, as Greece is learning, and as other European countries are learning. I don’t see any hyperbole in that. Obviously my friend posted the cartoon, not for critical discussion, but for providing evidence of his own views. That’s fine. His timeline, his purposes. Now that I know, I won’t be posting to his timeline again.

I think instead I will go herd some cats, which should be a far easier task than what I originally set out to do.

 

miscellaneous

Crisp, Cold, Windy, and Snowing

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I drove to church this morning alone, my wife being down in the back after driving home yesterday.  Snow flurries were forecast, and sure enough they started to fall as I was walking across the parking lot and into the church. When the worship surface was over an hour and 30 minutes later, the flurries were coming down pretty good. An hour later when I left Life Group, same thing.

This is the first snow I’ve seen this season. I was gone last Sunday-Monday when it snowed 2 to 3 inches. It was still on the ground when I returned Thursday, but nicely off the road. It was good to see it on the ground, but would have been better had I been able to be out in it.

As I type this, I’m looking out the windows of The Dungeon, our walk-out basement. I see the flakes falling, the snow on the ground down in the hollow behind the house, and on the un-raked leaves in the back yard. It’s a pretty picture.

Well, I didn’t have much to say. I enjoyed the cold have the hot church and classroom. I enjoyed the snow. Now have to head over to the other monitor and do some work.

miscellaneous

Have Photographs, but No Camera

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Our house is piled high with photographs. Okay, that’s hyperbole, but sometimes it seems that way. In the basement, in an antique dresser in the downstairs bedroom, are boxes and envelopes stuffed with photos, along with many loose photos. Photos Lynda and I took. Photos my parents took. Photos their parents took. Photos with negatives. Photos without negatives. Negatives without photos.

Then in the basement storeroom are boxes of photos. Photos from our China trip, and other trips. Photo albums of ours from 1976 to 1986. Boxes of developed Photos Lynda’s parents took. Photos her grandparents took. Photos from even earlier generation.

And I’m not even close to the end. In the secretary in our bedroom, one drawer is all but stuffed with photos we look in later years. The number of these have waned over the years, especially when we had a digital camera. This drawer contains hundreds of photos. Together by the roll of film they came out of. But otherwise un-annotated.

And, one more batch. On our dining room table, and in boxes around it, are hundreds of photos that belong to Lynda’s mom, Esther. Over a year ago, before Esther moved to her current, small apartment, Lynda’s brother began the process of putting these in photo albums. He didn’t get very far. Lynda picked it up, and made good progress. However, not one album is put together; the photos are spread out on the table; others are in boxes next to the table; and the end is not yet.

Since the rise of digital photography, the era of printed photos has mostly come to an end. Today a shutterbug fills a card with bytes, rather than a box with prints. How those cards eventually get to easily viewable media is a question. And, how many of those become prints is another question. But for sure, future generations won’t be filling up antique dressers, storeroom shelves, and dining room tables with thousands of prints.

We have a monumental job to go through these photos. The oldest one I know of is from August 1877. We have lots that are from England that are unmarked. I know these are of either Hepburns or Todds, but beyond that I have no clue who they are. And no way of knowing.

I wanted to illustrate this blog with pictures of the piles of photos. Alas, I have no camera right now, except for the kind that require film. Our digital camera bit the dust almost a year ago. Lynda’s iPad-mini takes photos, but we haven’t figured out how to do it very well. And neither of us have a cell phone with a serviceable camera. So, irony upon irony, I can’t take a picture of the photo problem.

I suppose we’ll get through this. Since we are in good health and neither of us expects to assume room temperature any time soon, we have years to get the job done. If we can complete Esther’s photo albums in a month or two, clear away the boxes, and return excess photos to those who sent them, I’ll feel good about it. After that, I’ll check back in here and let you know where we stand. Or maybe I’ll wait a year or two, till I have something new to say about it.

miscellaneous, Writing

Despite the Time Crunch, Writing Tasks Continue

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What time I have for writing I have to steal from something else. That might be sleep, home chores, home business, day job, etc. Since around the first of October last year, the Time Crunch has been in effect. I first projected it would last until March this year, but right now I think it’s going to last longer.

However, having said that, I can actually see some light at the end of the tunnel. A few reasons for that are:

  • Family finances are up to date, as of the Saturday just past. This is usually a major headache for me, keeping up with the checkbook, filing receipts, and budgeting. But all of those are up to date, and have been almost since the first of the year. I still have a task or two to do in these responsibilities, but that compares to normally having dozens of tasks. It feels good.
  • Tax season is fast approaching, and for the first time in decades I’m actually ready for it. All receipts bearing on taxes are in a folder marked “2014 Taxes”. I have calculated profit and loss from our home business, which is stock trading. That’s subject to confirmation when the brokerage statement arrives, but normally I don’t get to that calculation till March. It feels good.
  • Household chores are mostly up to date: upstairs, downstairs, and outside. I have a few things to do in each area, but the amount on the to do list is way, way down from normal. Four hours on a Saturday and I will be able to declare everything caught up in this area. It feels good.
  • Miscellaneous writing chores not related to specific works, while not as caught up as other areas, are not in bad shape. The main thing I need to do is choose a new layout/theme for this blog and update it. I hesitate to do so for fear of doing something wrong and accidentally dumping the whole thing. Since I’ve never backed it up—because I don’t know how to back it up—that’s a concern. So my order of tasks are: learn how to back up my blog; back up my blog; search for a new layout/theme; install the new layout/theme; then consolidate my two blogs into one and say goodbye to An Arrow Through the Air. That will be hard, but it’s necessary. After that, I have some writing filing to do, and more culling/discarding. I did a bunch of that back in October, but I’m really not done yet.

So, what’s going on with writing? I have active three writing tasks in progress. I also have other writing tasks started, but I’m not working on them at present, so won’t list them here. What I’m working on are:

  • Editing A Harmony of the Gospels. I have 60 pages of discontinuous text to go, about 10-12 days of reading at my current place. Edits will follow, followed by printing two copies, one each to keep at home and at work. That might take another month.
  • Father Daughter Day for print publication. Actually, I’m on hold on this at present as I wait for the cover designer to do her thing. Once I get an acceptable cover, I’ll have a week of intense formatting/submitting to do.
  • Expanding a genealogy book I wrote, Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West. I self-published this using company facilities back in 2006 and 2008. In preparation for a summer family reunion, it’s time to make this into a proper book, and expand it to include things left out of the original and revision. Today I merged most of the files I have, and it comes to 113 letter-size pages. That would probably be almost double that for publication size pages. That’s a little longer than I thought, but not bad.

So that’s where I’m at. Despite having had to put most writing away for at least half a year, I can’t say I’m really unhappy about things.

 

miscellaneous

I’ll Be Back Soon

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The busyness of life constrains me. Holiday activities at the house, then travel to Oklahoma City, and coming home with a deep cold, then going back to work to a pile of stuff to do, and I’ve not been able to carve out time for either blog. No time for writing, either.

Hopefully by next week I’ll be back on a regular blogging schedule. That’s the plan, at least.

miscellaneous

Computer Woes by the Trifecta

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I’m back, here at my author blog, and able to post again. Computer problems have prevented me from doing that for a while. It’s a combination of three things actually, or maybe four. I’ll chronicle them for you.

First, back sometime in the second half of 2013, our old laptop died. We’d had it since October 2004. It was a faithful friend, needing little attention. Whatever happened to it, it was gone. That left us with the other laptop and the desktop in The Dungeon. Lynda has her “office” on a card table in the living room, so I let her have the laptop. I have always done the bulk of my writing on the desktop, so I continued to do that. I just didn’t have a computer (excepting my Nook) to use upstairs.

I’ve been looking around towards replacing it. We’ve had Dells for years, so I’ll probably stick with them. We’ve been happy with their products, except for a certain shipping mistake that it took a couple of years to get right. That was in part my fault for abandoning the process rather than pressing the issue. Once I found the right person to talk with they made it right by the next FedEx shipment. But the need to research what’s available, the possibility of leasing rather than buying, and of using cloud-based software has caused me to hesitate. Those reasons, plus wanting to make sure finances are ok to make the purchase. So far I haven’t, but I think I’m getting closer to that time.

Then, shortly before we left for our May trip to Boston, I was suddenly unable to log in to this website and make changes. On the login page I got 17 error messages, all related to specific lines of code or needing to enable cookies. But cookies were enabled. Talking with a couple of people in an on-line writers group, I learned that it appeared that the theme I had selected, Erudite, had been abandoned by the creator. Some change in WordPress, perhaps, hadn’t been upgraded on the theme. I went to the theme message board and left a message. So far as I can tell there’s been no answer.

Finally, a Facebook acquaintance, John Doppler Schiff (that’s what he goes by), said he could go into the code and bypass the Erudite theme and get me up and running with a default theme, after which I could do business as normal and pick a new theme. That was delayed for the thing I’ll mention in a later paragraph, but now it’s done. He said it took him all of five minutes, perhaps less. Next week I’ll go about looking for and installing a new theme. I think that’s fairly easy to do.

Then, the day we left for Boston, I couldn’t get on a browser on the laptop. We were rushing to get things together and get on the road, so I didn’t worry about it, thinking it might be a temporary glitch. Alas, when we got home I found out it wasn’t. Still no browser. I could connect to the Internet, because I was able to save files to Dropbox.  I took it to the shop, and learned that the problem was related to the XP operating system, now no longer supported by Microsoft. But the computer was licensed for Vista, so they were able to upgrade with no software charge. That was great. The week they had it, not so much. Or the fact that the second monitor no longer works.

Then came the big one. On Tuesday, while I was speaking at a lunch meeting of a professional group, a text came in. When I was done speaking I saw it was from a nephew, who wrote, “You aren’t in Turkey, are you? Think your e-mail was hacked.” I got back to the office to find it was true. It’s happened twice before, and changing the password was sufficient to recover. But this time the hackers were malicious. They changed my password, deleted my stored e-mails, and changed the primary e-mail address so that security notifications would go to them. Then they set up a mimic e-mail account but with aol.com as the ending, and began firing off e-mails that looked like they came from me.

I’ll make this short. Over a period of five hours I was able to get it all changed back. That included an hour and a half on hold waiting to talk with Yahoo. An hour of that would have been unnecessary if a certain webpage of theirs worked. It didn’t, so I had to call them. But I’m not upset with Yahoo. They were able to restore the deleted e-mails (I may have lost two hour’s worth, at most). I alerted aol about the bad guys, though I don’t expect them to do anything. No harm done except to the nerves. If any security e-mails went out to the aol address, I suppose the bad guys might have more information than I’d like. I’ll have to see if anything happens.

So, except for replacing the second laptop, I’m up and running again. For the last month or two I’d been pretty regular in my posts to this blog, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Hopefully I’ll return to that with no problem.

Health, miscellaneous, Writing

In a State of Rebellion

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Over the last week or two I figured out what my problem is. The symptoms are that for the last month I haven’t felt like doing much. I come home in the evenings and just play computer games or read Facebook sites or…similar things.

I didn’t think it was burnout. I completed Operation Lotus Sunday in late May, and did all the publishing things by mid-June and had it up for sale. The before the end of June I had “Kicking Stones” polished and published and “Charley Delta Delta” written and ready for the critique group. I have multiple projects I could move on to next. One of them, a professional essay on learning, is written and half-edited.

Writer’s block wasn’t the problem either, as the ideas are flowing, and any time I did sit down to write the words flowed well. And my lethargy, if that’s the right word, spilled over into other areas. I quit checking the mail for bills, or checking my bill pile for what was due. I quit updating my financial spreadsheet, which was months behind. And at work I quit doing a number of the routine things I’m responsible for, focusing instead on the non-routine things. And I came close to quitting blogging, and updating my Facebook author page.

My problem wasn’t that I couldn’t do what I needed to do, it’s that I didn’t want to do what I needed to do.

Then it finally hit me: I was in a state of rebellion. Not against authority, but against responsibility. I was thinking of the carefree days of youth. I had been diligent for so long in all my work areas (home, office, writing), church, health, etc. that I was tired of being responsible. So I let all my responsibilities go, except I did keep working on getting to a point of better health.

I came on this realization over the last three weeks. To pull out of my rebellion I’ve been slowly ramping up my activities. I wrote a series of blog posts here last week (or maybe it was the week before), and did some posts on my other blog. That felt good to be writing again. Next I tackled my household financial spreadsheet. I managed to get caught up on expense and income entries last weekend, though I still have distribution and balancing to do. And tonight I verified that all checkbook entries are in the register and added the balance. So I think I have a better grasp on finances now.

At work I began to get back to doing those routine things. The last two days have been good as I got caught up on a bunch of training records, getting completion certificates out and managing our on-line training subscription. All that is pretty much up to date, and tomorrow I can tackle some other things.

With those off my mind, I can turn to the responsibility of ordering books to send to my launch team, and for selling by hand. I have a few people who want to buy them. And then I can turn to completing the essay and making an informed decision on what writing project to jump into next.

I’d love to write more, but I’m out of time if I’m going to be responsible about doing all that I must do, so I will end this. While at the doc’s office today I wrote out a schedule of blog posts for both blogs. I have the next two weeks covered, so you should see me here more often.