Things I found amazing this week:
1. Spaciousness - it's so much easier to get into my car and to take out the trash without a kayak sticking out into the walkway!
A week or two ago at BS one of the older men in meeting talked about growing up in the 30's when things were very tough and a lot of people lived hand-to-mouth, particularly his family since there were 10 kids or something like that. His dad got sick for a couple weeks, and they wondered what they were going to do. Other people pitched in and brought food, some contributed some of their paychecks, etc. That was before the days of Medicaid and Social Security.
This got me thinking about how easy we have it physically these days. Most people can afford to buy groceries, and we have an unbelievable selection of food at the grocery store. We can buy fresh fruit and vegetables any time we want. Maybe some don't have the money to buy all the newest fancy toys and clothes, but most have enough money to eat. For those who don't have many funds, there is welfare and the Salvation Army and United Way and all kinds of organizations that are willing to feed starving people. In the U.S. anyway. Some people still have physically demanding jobs, but there is a growing number of people who work at a computer all day. It sounds like an easy life, right?
Most of the time I'm of the opinion that the times now aren't any harder or easier than they were 100 years ago or 1000 years ago. The times are hard in different ways. So what is the hardship of our time? I think it's probably mental and emotional stress. We sit all day at our computers and lose the health benefits of doing something physical all day and sleeping well because we're physically tired. The government's assistance programs contribute to the loss of community because everybody expects the government to help the poor instead of relationships forming when we directly help those who are less fortunate. We spend more of our time staring at computer screens forming shallow relationships rather than going out into the real world and talking to real people. In fact, we probably are losing the skills we have to form meaningful relationships as we do that.
Our brains are working a mile a minute all day every day with no physical outlet for all that mental activity. We also have too much time to worry about low priority things instead of worrying about big things like where our next meal is going to come from. Because everything is so convenient and easy to get to immediately, I think we're also losing our capability to plan for the long term future. Everybody is living longer, so we spend more time in our later years dealing with poor health.
This kind of goes along with a book I recently read. More on that in a different post. I'm not sure that I have a big point to this, it was just something I was thinking about and that we probably need to be more aware of. Now quit surfing blogs and the internet and go live your real life! :-)
Things I found amazing this week:
1. Snow - That's right, about 17" of snow on the twelfth of November.
The last six or eight weeks have been very intense. My project at work has been screaming along at a breakneck pace with some angst and strife with some of the people I work with. We finally released the "build" files today, so I have a couple weeks now to get organized and catch up on stuff before the circuit boards arrive. At the end of the work day today it felt a little bit like when you finish your last final for the semester in May and know you don't have to do any more school stuff until August. FREEDOM!!!!!! At work that feeling is much more rare, but it's still nice to experience it every once in a while.
This may also allow for some more consistent blogging.
Hopefully none of you were in the path of any tornadoes yesterday. The daughter of a guy at work came within a couple blocks of having her house leveled. It was interesting to see his pictures today. No big trees came down in my yard yesterday, so that was good.
All for now. The amazing post regarding last week will have to be tomorrow I guess.
Whew! It has been a busy two months. September and October always seem to fly by. What with 'vention and then trying to fit in all the stuff I didn't get done during the summer. And, work has been super busy as well. It's nice to spend a weekend at home every once in a while. One of the last weekend trips I chronicled was the yaking trip in the corny state in September.
After that I think I may have spent a weekend at home working on the patio stone stuff. And then.....the first weekend of October came. That Saturday was lots of fun. I met Brudder Jeddles, Chumley, and Amanda R. at Six Flags Great America for a fun day of riding roller coasters. The highlights from that:
Things I found amazing this week:
1. Sky - both at night and in the daytime. I saw an awesome moon and tried to take a picture, but the daytime picture turned out better.
Things I found amazing this week:
1. Teamwork - we all pitched in a little bit, and we won the prize for best decorated cubicle. Of course, that didn't take much because engineers being who they are, not many cubicles accepted the decorating challenge.
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| The cool team - looking normal and in full costume regalia. |
The other day when I was watching something on YouTube, I saw an ad by Heineken, and it involved people committing to dropping everything and going wherever the wheel of fortune said they should go. Here are the two videos about the "project":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqXOiQ1c42c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PenROORvLyw
If we put aside the fact that it's sponsored by Heineken and assume this was being offered by some other company.....would you do it? Are these people being spontaneous and adventurous, or are they being irresponsible and inconsiderate? I suppose it depends on what kind of job you have and that kind of stuff. And whether you were traveling with others or planning to meet someone on the other end. It's also not very clear how long you have to go to this destination. For the same length of time you were planning to go somewhere else? For a month? A weekend? I think some of these answers would affect my decision. Just sayin'. I'm guessing I would be all responsible and stuff and turn down the offer to drop everything. But if you caught me at the right time in the right situation, I might go for it.
Things I found amazing this week:
1. Mileage - More than 100,000 miles in 5.5 years. Not bad.
A couple weekends ago I made the usual trek to go see Dr. Bambi Blaster for my annual eye exam. I've had my old pair of glasses for a couple years now. I really like them and was tempted to just stay with them, but I had been told that I needed to get out of my box 2 or 3 times in the space of 2 days, so I decided that I would. Check out the new specs that came in the mail on Monday. I think I picked them out in less than half an hour, so that could explain a few things - impulse buy!
They told me geek chic was in, so I went with it. At least half way. Although to me, it seems like in order to get out of my box, I actually went further into my box. These glasses seem more engineer-y to me. Or maybe getting a little too close to my rec specs? My new ones are metal - they're brown on the front, and then the bows are a green color with a small hole pattern in the bows as well. Only two people commented on them at work over the space of 4 days, so either most people aren't observant or they think they're ugly. One lady at work did notice right away and said she liked them. And, 3 or 4 people at meeting this morning told me they liked them, so I think they pass muster.
For those who want to know, the new ones have transition lenses and the anti-glare coating, same as the previous pair. And digital lenses, whatever that means. All I know is that it means there are some etchings on the edges of the lenses. Not sure why.
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| Old Glasses |
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| Geek chic - going deep into the box to get out of the box. |
Things I found amazing this week:
1. Hail
I finally did it today - I broke down and turned on the furnace. For the last couple of days it's been kind of chilly in the morning, but then it's been nice enough during the day that the temperature in the house has been remaining above 60 degrees. However, this evening the temperature was already at 60, and the weather forecast for the next three days is for highs in the 50's and rain. That means bone-chilling coldness, so I turned on the furnace. This way it should be a little bit easier to get out of bed tomorrow morning.
I also went back and gathered and graphed some data related to when I turn my furnace on. I was missing a data point from last year - apparently it wasn't memorable when I turned it on or something because I didn't find a blog record of it, although I do know for sure that I at least made it to September 19th without turning it on in 2012. It seems as though if I can survive the cold snap that usually comes near the end of September, then it's usually warm enough again that I can go until the third week in October before turning on the furnace. See the graph below. It's a bit strange to use the Julian date, but it seemed like the best way I could find at the moment to illustrate my data. Excel's date-graphing functions aren't the best. The latest date on record so far is October 21, so this year was fairly respectable at October 17.
How many of you have been to an audiologist for testing? I used to think that all they did was test your hearing, but I found out differently yesterday. I had occasion to go to an audiologist for some testing. I must say that I found it very interesting. If you've never been to one, here is how the testing goes (at least how it went for me):
The technician's name was Alissa. We went into the tiny anechoic room with two chairs, a table, and some test equipment. The room wasn't much bigger than my cubicle, and the ceiling felt sort of low. She started out by asking some questions about why I was
there, etc. The first test she did was to put this wand in
my ear that gave little puffs of air and played some loud noises to
check my inner ear response. Next came the traditional hearing test
where they play tones and you press the button when you hear tones (no matter how faint).
Then, she did an extra thing where she put this apparatus on my head
that sort of clamped down and vibrated near the base of my skull, and I was supposed to click the button again if I heard tones.
Apparently they were checking some of the bones in the ear somehow by
vibrating my skull? I'm not completely sure. I do know that when they were
doing low tones it felt kind of good - almost like a massage. But it also felt kind of weird.
The last part of the test in the anechoic chamber involved listening to a guy saying, "You will say ______." He went through a whole series of words where I had to repeat the word that he said. You will say carve. "Carve". You will say east. "East." You will say ace. "Ace." You will say jam. "Jam." Like that. With different words for each ear. At the end of that, Alissa said my hearing was fine. And that's good.....
Then we went to a different room and they hooked up the
sensors. One on the outside corner of each of my eyes, one on my
forehead, and one underneath my right eye. Then they had me look at
this light bar that was probably 6" x 5'. The light bar displayed a red dot, and I was supposed to follow the dot with my eyes. They did both vertical
and horizontal movement and had me follow a "train" of dots with my eyes. I'm
not sure, but I'm guessing that might have been their calibration to
"learn" my normal eye movements. Next were some measurements that they
took while I closed my eyes and did some mental exercises like counting
down from 100 out loud, counting down from 50, counting by 2's, counting by 3's,
and counting by 4's.
Next came the most interesting part. Alissa had me lay down with my eyes
closed, and she blew warm air (using a machine, not her breath) in one of my ears for 50
seconds, then she quit and had me do a focus activity again with my
eyes still closed. For example, name a girl's name starting with A, B,
C, etc. Alissa, Becky, Candace, Debbie, Ellen, Faith, Grace, Helen, Irene, Jennifer, Kelly, Melissa, Nancy. The really interesting thing is that near the end of the 50 seconds of warm air I would start to feel slightly dizzy. Then, once she removed the hot air, it felt like the table I was laying on started to spin. It started slowly at first, but then it got to be a stronger sensation once we got to the letter E or somewhere around there. Weird, huh? I wonder how people who usually have issues with motion sickness would do with that test.
Then we moved on to the right ear after a minute or two of recovery time. 50 seconds of warm air, and then I had to name boy names while feeling dizzy for a bit. Aaron, Bob, Charlie, David, Erik, Frank, etc. Next up: cold air in the left ear for 50 seconds followed by another focus activity. Name a city or state that starts with the letter A.....Alabama, Bismarck, Chicago, Denver, E.......ummmm.....East Fargo, Fargo, Grand Rapids, H...........ummmmm......here's a hint - it's an island in the Pacific.....oh yeah, Hawaii...... I may have been feeling a little bit dizzy when I got to E. :-) Last but not least......cold air in the right ear. In this case I felt less like the room was spinning and more like the table was moving up and down like I was on a boat, but there was still some spinning sensation too. This time I named animals. Aardvark, Billy goat, Crocodile, Dog, Elephant, Fox, Goat, etc.
For the final test, Alissa had me put on these goggles that had bright lights
inside, and the viewing window was such that I couldn't really see out
of them, but from the outside it makes your eyes really big. Then she
turned my head quickly and had me lay down quickly. Apparently some
people have positional vertigo, and it makes their eyes go crazy when
they do that kind of movement. I did not have that issue thankfully.
So......that was it. Quite interesting, huh?
Things I found amazing this week:
1. Talent - There are so many talented people in the world, but only a few of them become famous. Sorry the picture is bad - this blog program sometimes is too smart for its own good with its autocorrect. And thanks to Uncle Bex for the picture.
We've had a couple posts of serious stuff, so today I thought I'd give you a couple links to some amusing stuff:
First up is an advertisement for a product called Poo-pourri. In my browsing of YouTube, I saw this ad and it made me laugh because it was very clever, yet also informational. Play the video that's right on the main page there. I also like the very descriptive words used. Chem-lab carnations with a touch of feces indeed. I have never used it, so I can't vouch one way or the other for this product. I just like amusing stuff.
http://www.poopourri.com/
The other amusing thing is the Obamacare skit that Saturday Night Live did a couple weeks ago right before the official Affordable Care Act "exchanges" kind-of-sort-of opened. My cubie Kadmium showed me this one. Very amusing, but also PG-13, so don't watch it with your really little ones hanging around.
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/obamacare-cold-open/n41321/
Have a good evening folks.
The other day on facebook one of my friends from high school posted a link to this video - a "Must watch" for women. So, I watched it. If you want to form your own opinion, please go and watch the video before you read any further. If you want to be influenced before you watch it/if you watch it, then read on.
I will say that the presentation was powerful with some good background music. For about the first third of it though, I was wondering what the point of this really was, and how does he know what I am or what I'm not? By about the middle, I thought it was starting to get pretty good, and he does make a very good point that we are worth more than we realize because someone did die for us. But.....the second to last sentence at the end bothers me, the "I Am Awesome" part. Is that really what we should say? Or should we say, "I am a daughter of God, and my Father and God is awesome?" It's a tough balance, isn't it? To know that we are worthy of love and respect because God loves us and sent his son for us, yet to still be meek and understand how unworthy we are at the same time. And to be humble enough to repent. And to have this, I think we need the power and help of God.
The other thought I had was, what about the men? Why is it only addressed to women? And if you go to that same link, you will see that there is also a separate video for men. I didn't think that one was quite as powerful, but maybe that's because I'm not a man. Or, maybe it was because I had watched the other one first, so I already kind of knew his format and his spiel.
Anyway, just some philosophy for the day. What's your thought on it?
Things I found amazing this week:
1. Adrenaline Rush - Few things compare to the feeling of your stomach coming up into your throat as you free fall, feeling weightless for a brief second, or the feeling of a bunch of G's pushing you back into your seat as you round a tight corner on a roller coaster. And in case you were wondering....this is not a photo of anyone that I know.
As Ananias mentioned in one of her comments, finishing the patio stone project did free up some space in the garage. This enabled me to start thinking seriously about what to do with that free space. And, it also nicely coincided with an idea that had been percolating and a nice sale I found. So guess what I purchased? That's right, a guest kayak. It's the same model as my current kayak but a couple years newer. And, its official color is mango instead of red. I'm trying to decide what its name is. My first thought is Miss Piggy to go along with my kayak's name of Kermit. Maybe it's not a girl though? Maybe it should be Grover. A couple suggestions from the baby name website were Aksel, Rolf, and Waldo. Waldo might have potential. Weirdly enough, one of the girl name suggestions was Melissa. Maybe Percy would work? Let me know what you think. Lindee named my kayak Kermit and Devin named my car Herman, so I sometimes do take suggestions.
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| The new kayak |
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| Freshly swept and partially organized garage. With two kayaks and only a few stones left. |
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| It's a two-car garage with just enough room for one car and a little bit of space to walk to my car. Also note some of the new shelving and hooks that I put up and am now using. |
This post has been a long time coming! At the beginning of the summer, I said that I would tell you about my Memorial Day weekend. It's a few weeks after Labor Day, and now I can tell you. My parents came to visit for a couple days over Memorial Day. They were exhausted from the end of a busy school year, but I put them to work anyway. First we did some shower door repair. Dad brought all the cool tools like his laser level, so we did some planning on Saturday and Sunday for our Monday work.
On Sunday we mostly relaxed except for going to SMM and GM.
Monday we started bright and early in the drizzling rain on my patio stone project. About 5 or 7 years ago I bought the stones at Lowe's because they had free delivery at one point and I had this great idea. Then I let them "season" in the garage for several years while I tried to get motivated. I had made one unsuccessful start one time by trying to buy bags of sand from Lowe's to use as the sand layer underneath the stones. I quickly found out that wasn't going to quite cut it. Mom and Dad came to the rescue to give me the push I needed to get started again. And they brought some tools I needed like the stomping tool.
I didn't work them all day Monday - we did stop to go to a potluck in the evening, and then they were heading back home on Tuesday morning. Every Saturday this summer that I actually spent at home was spent doing further work on the project. On Saturday I cut the final stone, set it in, and did the finishing touches around that stone by filling the cracks with that special crack-filling polymeric sand (locking sand). Woo-hoo! It feels good! Thanks Brudda Jeddles for the tip on buying a masonry blade for my skill saw to get that last stone cut.
Check it out. The only thing I need to do now is to get rid of a small dirt pile and a small sand pile that are left. And I might get anal and fill in some opened cracks with locking sand and stuff. And I might find a good way to use up the broken stones too. There is an idea for that percolating.
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| Some pre-work done to pull the ivy back before Mom and Dad arrived. |
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| The graveyard of my previous attempt to get started. |
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| Nearly finished except for that one block around the gas meter. |
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| Finished! With the locking sand done and everything. |
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| A finished view from the other direction. |
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| The stones around the AC unit. This was the only disappointment that I had to go around instead of going under. But, it would have cost a fair amount to do that and I was running out of stones because quite a few stones had broken while sitting on the pallets. This was the compromise. |
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| One of my cuts to go around the telephone line. |
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| My other cut to go around the natural gas line. The stones are wet - locking sand curing in progress. That's the reason for the weird coloring. |
Things I found amazing this week:
1. Faithful Example - I think she's starting to feel her age and like she doesn't have much to share, but I love the example we can see of God keeping people for 60 or 70 years across multiple continents and countries. Plus, I like the practical questions she addresses and the stories she tells about when she was young when you can see how she was probably very spunky back in her prime. She's still kind of spunky. :-)
