Randomness

It appears as though the neighbor kid is old enough to be in Junior High now.  I know this because he apparently also wants to be on the football team.  He was in his front yard doing push-ups sans shirt today when I came home from work.  And, he had a bunch of orange cones set up in the yard.

The new bicycle is on back order and won't be here for a couple more weeks, which is a bummer.  My current bike is on its last legs - the bearings in the pedal assembly thing do a lot of crunching and cracking.

The annual half ironman triathlon is tomorrow.  I'm looking forward to handing out some gel packs, water, and Gatorade.  Plus, I get a free T-shirt for volunteering.  The weather is threatening rain, just like last year at this time.  I'm sensing a pattern.  If only I didn't have to be there so early.

I had a couple other really good contemplations, but they escape me now.  That's what happens when so many thoughts pass through your mind.  Latron gatron.

Mein Vater

Tribute to dad......late just like mom's was.

My dad gets some of the same kudos as Mom.  Teaching me what's important, teaching me discipline, caring about people, how to do your civic duty, and how to stand back and let your kids make their own decisions sometimes.

I think you can certainly blame (or credit) my dad for my sense of humor.  Like my mom, he's not particularly loud and obnoxious, but out of the two of them he is the one more likely to take over the microphone and be the MC at the family reunion.  He can be a smart alec sometimes (sound familiar?).  If you want to see a tender heart, he certainly has one.  He's also very passionate about helping people become better people.  He tries to help them feel welcome, come out of their shell, or learn a new skill (swimming lessons, piano lessons, ice skating lessons).  If I gained my math skills from Mom, Dad gave me the desire to learn about how things work; making the perfect combination for an engineer.  In fact, one of his nicknames is "Mr. Technical."  Through Dad I learned about the importance of talk radio and Rush Limbaugh, and Dad has the spirit of an entrepreneur.  When Dad took us to the grocery store, we always got to buy a couple extra candy bars.

And now, a few words of wisdom from Dad will follow.  I'm sure there are many more I've forgotten, but here is a small sampling:

• Don't run the garbage disposal without running the water in the sink.
• Don't step on the brakes when you're going over the railroad tracks (I still don't fully understand this, but I do know you're not supposed to do it).
• It's a crime to overcook corn on the cob, and you must plant the correct version of corn on the cob so that it's nice and sweet and not too starchy.
• If the snowmobile won't start, open up the hood and put your glove over the carburetor while someone else pulls the rope.
• Don't ride the snowmobile any farther from the house than you're willing to walk.
• Splitting wood warms you twice, sometimes three times.
• Oak has way more BTUs per unit of volume than Cottonwood.
• Driving an hour one way for extra bible study on a weeknight is worth it if it has the chance of saving someone's soul.
• The only one you can completely trust is God.
• Dads will milk the goat for you when you get home at midnight and don't feel like doing it yourself.
• The Statler Brothers, Bill Cosby, and Garrison Keillor.  What else do you need?

Love you, Dad!

Summertime

Aaaahahhh.....summer.  This evening I rode my bike to the beach, played sand volleyball, and ate some watermelon.  What could be more summer-like than that?  I'm getting a little bit impatient for my new bike to come in.  The old one is on its last legs, and the new one was supposed to be in by now, but then it got put on back order.  It's supposed to be the new model that's just coming out, which I'm  not very excited about.  Supposedly they're only changing a couple decals on the new model.  Hopefully that's it because it's never very smart to get the first bike (or anything else) that comes off the assembly line after they've made model line changes.

We had some strong thunderstorms come through here over the weekend, which usually means some big waves and strong rip currents.  This resulted in someone drowning at the main beach yesterday.  I attempted to kayak on the lake on Saturday, and I do mean attempt.  The waves were too big and resulted in capsization.  Twice.  Again, I'm anxious to get the new bike because what else am I supposed to do when I can't kayak?  What?  I should finish painting what?  OK, right arm people.  Latah.

More Changes

Some DJ on the radio a week or so ago said that supposedly every seven years you have a major life event or something like that.  For me, that means I'm about six months overdue.  Is there a tolerance on that seven years?  Plus or minus one  year?  Of course, that's assuming that theory is to be believed.  Maybe it's just the power of suggestion and the fact that there are many significant life events, and there are enough that you can make yourself believe they coincide with seven year marks.

Now that I mention change and life events.....work-wise, my project leader is moving on.  Her husband took a position in China for two years, so she's moving with him.  It's also kind of ironic because both she and her husband are originally from China but are now U.S. citizens.  I taught her a lot of what she knows about refrigerators (but not much about project management and writing software - she learned that somewhere else).  She started with the company about six years ago, and we worked together on projects (me doing hardware, her doing software) for about five years, and for the last year or so she's been my project leader.  During two of those five years we shared a cubicle, and I would consider her a friend.  Speaking of people moving up in the world, one of the hardware engineers I've worked closely with for the last two years will be taking the project leader role.  Sometimes it's a bit weird when people who were your peers become your dotted line boss, but you learn to adjust.  If I had wanted to, I could have interviewed for the project leader job myself, but I decided to let that opportunity pass by me for the moment.  I'm not sure if that was wise or not.  Time may tell, but I may never know.  My challenge now is trying to learn to delegate tasks to other hardware engineers as I am now the assigned lead hardware engineer for some projects.

Question:  In your opinion, do I deal well with change AND/OR do I desire change in my life?  Support your answer with one example.....

On Deck

My project for the last couple of weekends has been power washing and then putting a new coat of sealer on my deck.  I'm guessing it had about 10 years (maybe more) of mildew and dirt build-up on it.  Getting everything done took way longer than expected, but it turned out really nice.  The wood lightened up a lot when I power washed it, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  My hamstrings hurt like crazy after spending many hours bent over with a paint brush in hand applying the sealer.

This is the deck a couple years before I started power washing.  Its look did not improve with age as the mildew kept creeping forward.  Ignore the hot tub and focus on the deck - as previously mentioned, the hot tub is history.  I still haven't decided what to do with that vacant space.  I'm waiting for the complete vision to appear of what should go there.

The deck now cleaned and sealed.

Thought Collection

I forgot to mention a couple other things from my trip last week.  The rental car was a Dodge Avenger, and I must say it was pretty nice.  I'm still glad I went with the Herman model, but an Avenger wouldn't have been a bad choice either.  Then I could have named the car Avis.  You would think that living near a body of water would make the air here very humid and it is, but I think southern IN was even more humid than here surprisingly.  Maybe it's just the lethal combination of the blazing heat and the humidity.

I was thinking the other day about people, and engineers in particular.  I would say that probably the coolest, hippest engineer around is still not as hip as the nerdiest human resources or marketing person who walks the earth.  There is the rare engineer that crosses over into the marketing group, but like I said, it's not real common.  And, they're likely not the most popular person in marketing.  Then I was thinking about the building I work in and how there are several hundred engineers grouped in one area.  This kind of creates an illusion that there are "cool" engineers and "nerdy" engineers because there is likely a normal distribution of nerdiness among the engineers.  Having that many engineers grouped together for so many hours every day creates a subculture and starts to make you feel like it's normal to make jokes about units of measure (the Melometer) and other stuff like that.  Then, you add in the fact that most people also work with engineers from other countries.  You assume people from other countries are "normal", but they're probably normal for engineers, not normal for the general population of that country.  So, how do I know if my impression of their country and culture is accurate if I'm getting enginerd skewed data points?

On to another personality contemplation.  I booked a ten day overseas trip with a friend.  On a familiarity scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being someone I met 10 seconds ago and 10 being an immediate family member, I would say this friend would be about a 6.5 +/-1.  I haven't known her real long, but we have some common interests and have taken a couple shorter trips together and gotten along fine.  We bought our airline tickets a couple months ago, and until about a week ago I hadn't thought too much about it.  But, since it's only the two of us, what if we start getting on each other's nerves?  It's not like you can start hanging out with somebody else on the trip.  I'm sure we'll manage and it'll be fine - I'm not actually very worried about it, but it was a thought that crossed my mind.  Maybe going with someone you don't know as well would be better than going with a family member?  I dunno.

Next post, we will discuss my deck project.  Latron.

hEvansville

Miss me?  I was kind of busy traveling for work this week, which is why it was quiet around here.  There weren't any emergencies at work, just some routine data collection to avoid issues in the future.  I was way down in souf' Indiana.  It's kind of a nice town.  Far enough south and a bigger town than here, so they have some different restaurants.  Yet, it's still a small enough town that it's not too frustrating to drive in.  Have you ever noticed how it's the less populated areas that have some of the best radio stations?  We're talking legendary country - Dolly Parton, Highway 101, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, etc.  And.....they had some roadside veggie stands, so I have some fresh sweet corn, watermelon, and cucumbers to eat.  It was a bit depressing to see a fresh refrigerator plant graveyard - the jobs just recently moved to Mexico.  Part of it is the cheap labor available in Mexico, but part of it I also blame on the union - they tend to get greedy and lazy and shoot themselves in the foot.  The design engineers I work with down there are still employed.  So that's a plus.  That's all I've got for now.  I think I hear my mattress calling.

Uffda - Das A Lot Uf Vork

When you've never done something before, it always seems to take longer than expected to accomplish it, doesn't it?  Case in point - washing my deck in preparation for giving it a new coat.  First I had to kill a whole bunch of rabbits, skin them, tan the hides, and then......wait.  Wrong kind of coat.  That was a different project.  Actually, it felt like I spent all day power washing.  First though I had to put stuff on the deck to get the seven-year coat of mildew off there.  I ran out of stuff in the middle of that, so had to go to the store.  Then the power washer ran out of gas, so I made a trip to the gas station.  The prep work is done - now I have to get the new coat on.  That will be an adventure in and of itself too.

The grocery store now has fresh corn on the cob from the state to the south of us, and fresh blueberries are in the store now.  Deeee--lish---us.

How is it that I can spend more than an hour in Lowe's wandering around looking at/for stuff?  FYI, my most recent design at work can now be seen at Lowe's under two different brands (with blue LEDs).  They also had some older products on display too, so that was pretty cool to see two generations of my designs there simultaneously.  Why are movies one of the few things where they list everybody who contributed to the making of it?  It's probably a good thing that every refrigerator doesn't state in the user manual that MelBMarvis did the user interface control, but why do movies get to be special that way?

Potluck

You can't even stop dumpster diving inside corporate America.  We are having to clean up some of the halls and cabinets in our area at work because they have been deemed a fire hazard.  This means lots of boxes thrown in the trash, and my cube mate has been "rescuing" a few of them to take home.  He has an online business at home that involves shipping stuff, so he's always on the lookout for nice boxes.

It has been H. O. T. here the last couple of days.  At least outside - inside at work it's the normal ice box.  This weather has really been making me a wimp.  Can you believe that I used my air conditioning already in June?  How pathetic is that?  Usually I can make it to the middle of July or early August before I cry uncle.  But, I guess that's why I pay to have it serviced once a year.  The temperature was still about 85 degrees here at 9:00 PM tonight.

Yesterday was kind of a bummer of a day.  First it was virtual Monday, but I really can't complain about that too much - work went fairly smooth.  I found out through Facebook that I missed watching the fireworks with some of my friends from town here, partly because I was stupid and didn't leave a phone message.  We got beaten soundly in our softball game, and to add insult to injury we got rained on and thoroughly soaked during the bottom half of the last inning.  There was some consolation at the end of the day.....winning at euchre, and indulging at Chili's with some strawberry lemonade and a Southern Smokehouse burger.

Does anybody have a favorite salmon marinade/recipe they want to share?  That's hopefully on the supper agenda for tomorrow.

I cashed in my pocket change today, and the total was $120 - from two medium sized glass jars.  Can you believe that?  So, don't be turning up your nose if someone says it's just pocket change.

Another 7:30 AM meeting at work tomorrow.....I best get moving and finish the rest of my web surfing before bed.

Independence Post

4th of July Weekend List
Roller coasters at Six Flags:  Check.
Taste of Chicago:  Check.
Navy Pier:  Check.
Chinese acrobatics:  Check.
Power boat extreme thrill ride (which really wasn't all that extreme):  Check.
Hanging out with Shar Squared:  Check.
Awesome fireworks show:  Check.
Kayaking:  Check.
Sunbathing on the beach:  Check.
Beautiful weather all weekend thanks to a high pressure system:  Check.
Racquetball:  Check.
Not getting the closet painted:  Check.
Reading a book or two:  Check.
Not getting enough sleep:  Check.
Sunburn kept to a minimum:  Check (and that's an accomplishment considering how much sun I got).

That pretty much sums it up I think.  Along with large crowds come some interesting (and often inappropriate) clothing.  A few slogans and one bumper sticker I saw this past weekend: 

• "Drunk Chicks Dig Me"  --Really, this one is kind of sad if you think about it.  What is it saying about his self esteem?
• "Blink If You Want Me"  --Tricky.
• "I do what the voices in my wife's head tell me to"  --Can only he hear them, or can she hear them too?
• "Paddle faster - I hear banjo music"  --Now that's funny, no sexual overtones required.
• "Make love not babies"  --Hmmm.....sometimes I hear that's tough to do.
• "I'm the hot friend"  --That girl should find some shade and a fan - or maybe some AC.

She cheated a tiny bit - had a safety wire just in case she fell.  Really, how bad could it hurt if she fell?  It was only like 40 feet in the air.

Now that's goofy!

Modeling for Ocean Spray in Chicago and in front of a fountain there.  Can you believe I didn't put any odd faces on that day?  At least not for the camera....