November 6, 2026 – The Fountainhead; Part 1, Chapters 13-15

November 6, 2026 / / 0 Comments

OK, OK… seems like this is going to happen. We are on a roll now and I am doing my best to stay ahead. So far, all of that I have written about I read before I committed to getting started. So, really that is no feat. Next week will have some new reading involved to make the deadline (which I have already done at this point).

This week we see that Roark has some success, maybe. He designs and builds a gas station that leads another housing commission. Both of them are critically exiled. While the owner of the home approves of the design, his wife does not and refuses to live in it. Instead she moves to Florida.

Meanwhile there is a competition for a movie studio called the Cosmo-Slotnik building. Winning the commission is huge exposure. Roark refuses to enter and ultimately Keating wins but not without the help of Roark. Roark has one last sure thing that only required a few tweaks which he refuses to do and is no longer able to pay his bills.

Due to Keating’s success, he makes partner partially because the former partner Heyer dies due to Keating’s threats of blackmail and ruined reputation. To add insult to injury, the former partner leaves his estate to Keating because at some point he was a ‘nice boy’. Meanwhile, Dominique rebuffs Keating’s offer to marry. Keating makes partner on his ‘merits’ rather than nepotism but the hypocrisy is driving him crazy as well as emboldening his ego.

I was thinking about a time where I stuck my principles to my obvious disadvantage. There was one major life event where I can point to. Although, I cannot say that I handled it as well as Roark did. That was when I quit my job in 2019. I know that I have talked about this quite a bit, but I don’t really think in this context before.

Occasionally, I have the ability to see the outcome of decisions that seem obvious to me but not to others. It all goes back to 2014 when our company merged with a larger Canadian company. Soon after the event, I was offboarded off the project that I was working on due to the extreme amount of time and effort I had put in. It was supposed to be a reward but it turned out that it was worse in so many ways.

The larger company had a major global customer but they also had a huge problem. The mismanagement of project delivery and ineptitude of company leadership to properly address the problem. Since we were new blood, I was moved to this nearly incompetent project team. I was a resource on the project and the tech lead was going to guide us to the finish. It just so happens that this was an ESOP company that paid dividends on the fiscal year which was November. Most of the employees of the old company were large shareholders and would get huge payouts around that time to the tune of $100K or more.

To date, many of the key employees in the account got chewed up and spit out due to the higher level lack of accountability and ineptitude. My tech lead gave the middle finger to the company and I was left holding the bag. I was miserable with four different bosses telling me what to do and what I did wrong every day. I went to every level of the company and finally I realized that no matter what I did, nothing was going to change.

Fortunately my struggles and efforts did not go unnoticed and I was moved to role that had zero to do with Canadian group albeit the same ownership. I was given the opportunity to run the application support group. At first nobody cared what we did. But then, we started running circles around the rest of the company. We believed in listening, owning up to mistakes, working together and continuous improvements. These were all beliefs that I held and it payed huge dividends.

Within my group was named a ‘center of excellence’ and people started to care. They were going to transform my group from application support into managed services and this was going to be the company golden goose. The new president had done this before and went from zero to $100M in revenue in one year. Unfortunately, they hired a consultant to facilitate the transition and no longer was it my methodology.

The consultant was not my adversary nor was he my peer. I began to resent what made us successful they were trying to remove because it wasn’t conventional. Apologizing for errors made made them roll in there graves over liability. The company preferred stone faced and contentious relationships compared to doing the right thing. Because I am not Roark and I was immature in these situations, I started to crack. Ultimately, the only way out was to leave completely. I wasn’t going to be successful knowing that what I did worked and I could no longer operate in that way.

The truth is, I started throwing my success in their faces and I did some things I wouldn’t do again. I looked for opportunities to fight, I felt I was wronged and marginalized for years. In contrast, I offered to anyone including my adversaries to help with what worked. That was met with stone cold antipathy. Like Roark, even a better way is not going to help a non-receptive group.

I guess I should be happy that I got the ultimate revenge. When I quit, half of my group quit as well. The company simply could not sustain business with the staffing level that they had and the company was sold within a year. None of what was planned ever came to fruition because there was not the remaining employee buy in to put profit over people. They had lost the moral and morale war.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not saying that I took down the company or that I am happy it ultimately failed. I had a lot of friends in the local office, I simply saw that what I thought would work worked and the failure to adopt it played a major role in the downfall. Many would say selling is different than failing, but while I worked there, the stated goal was to be the largest integration company in its space, not selling to a competitor. It is a very difficult time for me. Some very high highs and some very low lows.

November 5, 2026 – The First Cook

November 5, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Actually, this is not our first new range. Way back in our first house we purchased a new electric range from Sears to replace our aging, decrepit and cheap range that was in the house when we bought it. The burners did not work well, there was no light or window in the oven and it was not self-cleaning. It was a huge upgrade to have a brand new range in our kitchen. Unfortunately, we only got to use it for a couple of months before we moved to South Carolina.

We didn’t have a new range when we moved to SC but it was only six months old. We were not the first owners but the second. They only lived there six months. So, we kind of thought that it was a fair trade pretty new for pretty new. The difference was our Oregon range was a coil burner while our SC range was a glass top. Out went my cast iron.

When we were looking at house to purchase, I thought that this was the time to upgrade from our worn out Jenn-Air to gas. What I mean by that is of course we were moving, but we had loved our old range to death. Even though it was around thirty years old, they stopped making parts for it. We had had the burner cassettes rebuilt several times. The light in the oven started burning out almost immediately after replacement so I stopped replacing it. The controls display had broken plastic that does not have a replacement. Occasionally, a fault would display and you would have to reset the breaker to get the oven to work. Even the auto-lock for self cleaning would get stuck.

I investigated replacing it multiple times but there was some problems. The first of which was that the range was of a non-standard size. Since the cabinets were built around it, that would mean some serious modification like cabinets, counters and tile. Also, the position of the range in the room required another downdraft or building a whole ventilation system. Downdrafts in general run about double what a non-downdraft runs. I really didn’t want a flat top due to the cookware that I own and like. Gas was available but we didn’t have it. So, replacing the range required a serious kitchen model.

A lot of the older houses we looked at had gas in the kitchen. I think because gas was a common heating fuel, it made sense to also have it in the kitchen. As the heating landscape has shifted away from gas to heat pumps, it saved a lot of money to not have two utilities at the time of building. Hence, gas is now a luxury rather than a necessity. And since our house was built in 2018, we fall into the luxury category.

Unfortunately for us (or fortunately), we selected a house that had a completely inadequate heating plan. We didn’t have a heat pump, instead we had inefficient and somewhat ineffective, resistant wall heaters. Had we had proper and efficient heating, we most likely would have elected to stick with an electric range. I would have never spent $10,000 just to have a gas range installed. And yes, the unit cost of installing a heat pump was approximately the same as a gas unit. We did pay more to run a gas line, might as well go all the way to install the gas in the kitchen.

This whole process was quite an ordeal. If I am being honest, I missed the heating situation before we made an offer because I was wearing rose colored glasses. Had I known that we were going to invest $35K right off the bat, I probably would have at least offered less initially. We got the quotes for heating in January. We could take no action until we actually purchased the home, that was August. Then the work had to be scheduled.

In some ways it was ideal in other ways it was not. We had to act like the general contractor in this project. We had to manage the electrician as well as the HVAC. The HVAC had to work with the gas company as well as the city. There was a lot of we are waiting for this or that in the process. What it did do was allow us to develop a separate scope of work with the electrician but it certainly slowed things down with us being the middle man. Because of all of the starts and stops things got missed, like plumbing our range gas line.

Once all of the gas work was done, then we had to switch the electrical for the range. Keep in mind, there is a gap in operation unless you have the new appliance on hand. Electrical ranges use 50A at 240V. But, a gas range (at least this one) only uses a 20A circuit. What surprised me is that 20A at 120V circuit can run two ovens simultaneously. Those counter top, air fryers really are just mini versions of the real thing. I always thought of them as a novelty.

End Your Programming Routine: I didn’t get the maiden voyage of the new range. My wife wanted to make some Mexican comfort food. It has been a very emotional week, we have the highs of the World Series and the very lows of our dog passing on. We also have the stress of all the contractor work that is wrapping up. I am fine with not getting the first crack. I have years of time to enjoy.

November 4, 2026 – The Real OC

November 4, 2026 / / 0 Comments

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Unknown. I know, you are going to say that was Mark Twain. He certainly said things like that but his own institute denies ownership. It seems to be an evolving quote that different people have said similar things until it got to a quaint, concise and readable quote. Nevertheless the sentiment is true and that is what I want to talk about today.

I am going to admit something. Sometimes I get caught up in stereotyping. It is one of the mechanisms that we humans use to process large amounts of data. It happens when you are ignorant of a subject, you don’t really care about it and you have other over-generalizations overlapping. I am going to give a couple of examples here.

I have primarily been a knowledge worker my whole life. Because I have never really held a job that works outside day in and day out it was my belief that by the time the calendar hits November, it is always raining and wet. Now, I am not stupid, I know that it does not always rain. Since my kids have been little, most Halloween nights have been dry. But, there have been some where it was really raining. Based on that one piece of data, I cannot say with certainty that Halloween will be dry.

When I started delivering Amazon, it was my belief that I was going to be wet everyday. I packed my raingear and mentally prepared. When I look back, there was only two days that I actually got wet and I didnt pull out my raingear. Not because I am foolish but because it really didn’t rain all the time. Was it sunny and pleasant? No. It was often gray and damp. But it also wasn’t full on raining. In fact, I was surprised that it was actually sunnier than rainier.

Knowing that lesson from several years ago, I completely ignored it and thought I knew what living on the Oregon Coast was all about. Because it sometimes rained on my camping trips over the years, because we do get double to triple the amount of annual rainfall than where I moved 40 miles in land I figured that it was always going to be wet.

Before we get too carried away, it is almost always damp here outside of the summer. This October has had pretty good weather, half of the days have been sunny with high temps near 60 degrees. The problem I have seen is that it takes a long time to get to that daily high and the humidity is high as well. As an example, the thermal energy to dry out the grass to mow is never high enough. I end up with wet feet and a plugged mower. But, the grass keeps growing and it is not raining, but sunny.

If it is sunny, then it is going to be windy. That is mostly true. What happens is that as the inland temperatures heat up, it starts sucking the cooler and moister ocean air east. But, what I have observed is that this phenomenon typically starts around 2-3pm. So, if you want to get out on the lake before noon will be calm, albeit cool because it is almost never ‘warm’. Because I live about a mile from the ocean, it is not quite as cool or cloudy or windy then the beach.

I thought that in the wet season (Oct-June) was just that. That is actually not true. In fact because of the summer wind, some of the best and most pleasant days are actually in the wet season. You don’t get the thermal drive in the wet season and because the temperature is nearly the same all year around it can be unexpectedly nice. The real problem is that is difficult to predict any longer than a couple of days in the future.

I have lived in tourists towns before but never during the peak season. I expected traffic to be a headache. What I found was that traffic can be a pain Friday through Monday but being that I live here, I know the tricks to get where I want to go and avoid the highway except when necessary. The town also starts to roll up after 8 PM so the peak traffic hours are 12-7 PM. I can work around that schedule and route so that traffic is not much of a factor.

End Your Programming Routine: The real Oregon Coast has been better than I expected. Things are still damp and mild steel rusts pretty quickly. I haven’t sweat much and I relish those days where I go inland and warm up as well as dry out a little bit but that is only a season. I am looking forward to establishing my beach head here and really starting to take advantage of what is around me in a more meaningful way.

November 3, 2026 – Spoken Like a True Idiot

November 3, 2026 / / 0 Comments

From an article on MSN “The rifle found hidden inside a wall during a house renovation“

Old houses have a way of keeping score. Sometimes that means faded newspapers, handwritten notes, or, in far rarer cases, a rifle sealed inside a wall.

Why A Hidden Rifle Stops A Renovation Cold

A firearm discovery changes the mood of a renovation instantly. What starts as a dusty demolition job becomes a scene that demands caution, patience, and a clear head.

That reaction is not overblown. According to reporting from The Independent, one Dallas-area renovation uncovered a weapon hidden inside a wall, the kind of find that reminds homeowners how unpredictable older properties can be. News stories about hidden rooms, false walls, and concealed caches appear often enough to feel familiar, but an actual gun is different because it carries obvious safety risks.

Even an old rifle that looks forgotten can still be dangerous. Ammunition may be nearby, metal parts can remain functional, and no one opening a wall can know at a glance whether the gun is loaded, altered, or unstable after decades in a dark cavity.

Feel free to read the rest of this by clicking on the link at the top if you like.

This is truly what is wrong with America today. I can’t blame the guy who has probably never seen let alone handled a firearm for not knowing what to do. The mere fact is that the firearm was in the wall the whole time and simply exposing it has nothing to do with danger. And drywall is no threat to stopping metal shards.

I will admit this would be unusual and there are plenty of things that somehow made it behind walls. Watch This Old House and you will see this from time to time. My cousins found a 22LR revolver in their basement. Heck, I have put stuff in the walls to be found later. Where do you think the time capsule went?

If you read the article, just imagine substituting a few words. Instead of “a rifle in the walls” you wrote “a black person in the neighborhood”. I mean we don’t know the history or the intentions. How ridiculous. Just because you are ignorant does not mean you have to sound the alarm on your own far fetched intentions.

First of all, I subscribe to the Art of Manliness 100 skills. A man should be able to shoot a gun as well as sew a button. If you can’t, what kind of man are you? Well, you are the kind of man that calls the police because they found a gun. That very well might be the right thing to do in the circumstances. I would subscribe that it is more likely the gun was used in a crime or hidden by a prohibited person rather than blow up because it is behind a wall.

Just the other day we had electricians finishing up some work. I was telling them that we have been having breaker trips since they started doing the work. This was a circuit that they did work on. Finally they pulled off the cover and said that it was wired incorrectly causing the arc fault to trip the breaker. These are professionals that do this work everyday and they made a careless mistake. What of an amateur, or what if they are high on meth or somebody put the gun there and then the stack of drywall was laid up against the wall and it was forgotten, then hidden?

In the days before ‘metrosexual’ was a made up term, people did stuff. Yeah sure, sometimes they stuck their hand in a dark space and shocked themselves. However, the project was not stopped to call an electrician and get a quote to rewire the entire house. The mindset was to see what was going on and carefully work around potentially dangerous situations. Chances are high that if a firearm was rusted to the point of not being reliably safe (even if it was loaded) that would also not reliably function.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess what draws my ire the most is the inference that a firearm should be treated like a pressure sensitive trigger on a bomb. If you look at it the wrong way your chances of injury are high. If there was so much corrosion as to not be able to clear the weapon, I would also assume that the fasteners holding the wall together are in the same state. If you want to become a man, learn to approach your fears. You will be a better person for it.

November 2, 2026 – Are the Old Days Really Better?

November 2, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I recently made it through my wife’s record collection that she purchased used. I am familiar with most of the bands, but not necessarily the song names. My first order was to determine the playability of the collection. While I didn’t expect problems, I found some significantly warped records on picking out some randomly. Since records also have a propensity to be warn out, I wanted to see. I some thoughts about buying a used album collection.

October 30, 2026 – The Fountainhead; Part 1, Chapters 6-12

October 30, 2026 /

Two weeks in a row? I have almost pried the train back on the tracks. It doesn’t change the fact that I am worried about staying ahead. At this point I have read a chapter a night and yet I can feel the point that I am at reading is going to surpassed by the weekly deadline breathing down my neck. I guess if that happens I will have to pause until I catch up.

What to say about this week’s section of reading? It is really about character development. The book starts a little abruptly with the conflict between Roark and the school. This week, we see over and over the pattern of asking Roark to bend, his refusal and the consequences for not doing so. In contrast, Keating continues act within the ‘populist’ definition and successes keep coming.

Aside from the character development as well as the personal benefits of populism, we start to see the downside of it as well. For instance, Keating is introduced to Dominque Francon, (his boss’s daughter) and is struck. She recognizes his success but is romantically uninterested. He sees her upside, particularly looks and despite that attraction, he cannot stand up to his long time girlfriend.

Like many people that follow the populist trail, they end up being wishy washy and swarmy. By that I mean they end up not making a decision and playing both sides. Keating is dating Dominique as well as Catherine. Each one he pretending that the relationship is exclusive. Because he is not being genuine himself, it has mental consequences.

I was pretty certain that I was going to go here, but I wasn’t quite sure when. When I think about things, this is the perfect time to mention the political season with the mid-term elections next week. Since I did spend quite a bit of time looking at my ballot, I went over the ballot with my wife last weekend. I am going to give the benefit of the doubt here but I watch political ads and read the candidate bios with my mouth ajaw.

First of all, this is not political but an observation. I cannot trust either side. But there are some contested races and those are getting heavy ad play. One of them is in Washington (not even my state) and it is Marie Perez v John Braun. The incumbent is Perez. In the positive ads she is saying Washington (DC) is broken and she wants to go to fix it. Now wait a minute, aren’t you already in Washington already?

I want to meet the person that says “I know the solution, what we need to fix the problem is the same person that is part of the problem”. On second thought, no I really do not want to meet them. We really need to look at another paradigm of life to see how wrong and gullable the voters really are.

I am a long time Oregon Ducks hater. When I was growing up in Corvallis, home of the Oregon State Beavers there was a bitter rivalry. Both football teams were terrible and had been so all of my life at that time. But then something changed and the Ducks started having success in the mid-1990s. Now it is hard to look back and even remember that they used to be terrible. In fact, part of the reason I don’t like them is that the fans seem smug and patronizing. They say things like “I root for the Beavers too” but what is implied is “because they are no threat to the Ducks”.

This year, before the football season started all of the local talk was that this was the Duck’s year. They had a $40MM of NIL spent on the team. The quarterback was coming back for redemption after losing to Indiana in the playoffs. The schedule seemed favorable and all of that. I hate to admit it, but I almost feel bad for them. Their offense is terrible and consequently their current record is 4-3. Their playoff hopes are all but gone and they simply do not know how to lose and be happy.

The offense has been bad all year. It happens that last year’s Offensive Coordinator left to become the head coach at Kentucky. They seem to be overperforming at 6-1. The Oregon head coach Dan Lanning has been aware of the problems but this week he fired the current Offensive Coordinator. What is the lesson here? The coach didn’t say, this is your problem you need to fix it. Nope, you had your chance and now we need to go a different direction.

In what world do we say you Representative, you Governor, you Senator need to go in and clean up this mess that evolved while you involved? I will tell you what world. It is the world that people say things that they can’t do because it sounds good. I could say that I am going to get a gold medal in 2028. I could even want that but I don’t have a chance in hell of doing it. It is best that I don’t pretend that I am so tone deaf as to advertise that is something I will pursue, let alone achieve.

End Your Programming Routine: I am really not anti-populism. I am anti-populism for the sake of getting elected or getting a career advantage. Principles matter even if those principles are not as popular, especially in politics. If you truly do not have a position, taking the one that seems to be in favor is fine as long as that decision is rooted in solid principles.

October 29, 2026 – Brew Crew Rules

October 29, 2026 /

This could be the year that the Milwaukee Brewers finally win it all. I am writing this a couple days ahead of the outcome. I may come out and edit this before it posts if something drastically changes but this is not really a story about the the Brewers being champions. It is about the journey to get here.

The pillow in the picture was made for me by my wife and at that time, we were both teenagers. I have kept it around all these years not because I am a huge Brewer’s fan but because she made it. The funny thing is I would be shocked if she did this today. There is hardly a domestic bone in her body. In fact, we joke that the sewing machine I claimed out of her parent’s estate is my sewing machine.

Being a Brewer’s fan has had it’s ups and downs. Mostly downs if I am to be honest. There are a couple of reasons that I don’t follow them too closely. One of them being that it is nearly a miracle that they are ever on TV. Unlike the Seattle Mariners, you can find those games on the radio in most markets here even if they are not on TV. Mostly, I just check in every couple of months to see if they are trending up or down. It is kind of like your 401K.

Last year, I was really hoping for a Seattle vs. Milwaukee World Series. Two teams that have never one one. Unfortunately, both teams had the same results, a series loss to the eventual series contenders. After having the best record in MLB and getting swept by the Dodgers I didn’t hold much hope that the Brewers were going to be contenders. In fact, the year before they got beat in the Wild Card series by the Mets after winning the NL Central. They have had kind of a recent history of choking when it counts.

There are some things about me that apparently my kids don’t even know. We were sitting around grieving after Raya died and talking about how we watched the game when my son said “where did this obsession for the Brewers even come from? It seems kind of random.” To be fair, I had never really ever talked with him about it.

When my dad was midway into his career, the company used to staff projects with people from different offices. At that time, they offered to provide weekly travel or long term lodging. My mom wanted to see places and so we went to Milwaukee for a few months. We lived in a town house and I started Kindergarten. One of the things I got to do was go to a Milwaukee Brewers game with my dad. That became my team.

If I do my math correctly, the year was 1979. I spent the fall in the Milwaukee school district. A couple of years later, the Brewers faced the St Loius Cardinals in the 1982 World Series. I was a kid, what did I know? I didn’t know that this was a small market team that didn’t have the staying power to not get back until 44 years later. It was my first real sport’s loss too.

One of the things I got when I went to the game was a Milwaukee Brewers hat. I still have it, but it looks 47 years old. I consider it retired now but I broke it out for the games. In this age of new uniforms every game a.k.a. purple and black Oregon Duck uniforms it is common to have alternate logos and colors. But when they announced a new, all blue hat instead of the yellow on blue, I decided to get one. I was in high school.

Moving on from high school to college, I took my Brewers hat as a badge of pride. You saw Dodgers, Angels, Giants, Yankees, Red Sox, White Sox and even some Athletics hats but never a Milwaukee hat. It didn’t matter if they were not contenders, the fact that it wasn’t popular was good enough for me.

When I moved into my dorm of 75 kids all of the sudden, there were two other guys wearing Milwaukee Brewers hats there. What are the odds? They were Brewers fans because brewers made beer and that was an extremely important profession particularly on Friday and Saturday night. But still, I found my people. Not only were they Brewers fans but also Raiders fans.

One particular drinking game that I liked to play is called “Asshole“. Our version included the Asshole having to use the term “Brew Crew Rules” before playing a card. With three out of seven being Brewers fans, we had a distinct advantage. That was thirty years ago, maybe it will finally be true.

End Your Programming Routine: I now have a slightly newer Brewers hat that is the original blue and gold. My brother bought it for me about twenty years ago when Nike was offloading baseball hats. Of course nobody was buying Milwaukee so there was ten of those to any other team. There would be a pile of Milwaukee hats, some Cleveland or Detroit hats and then some Montreal Expos or something. Winning a world series won’t change my world but it sure is nice to see two teams that are not there every couple of years.

October 28, 2026 – Pacific Northwest Beer Culture

October 28, 2026 /

There is a little town just south of us that has posted some signs about all of the movies that have been filmed there. That kind of spurred an interest in watching them ourselves. A couple of weeks ago, we rented the movie “Sometimes a Great Notion” filmed right here staring Paul Newman in 1972.

Watching the movie, most of the in town scenes looked to be filmed in Newport, OR. The featured home is still identifiable and is on the Siletz river, still only accessible by boat. I wont go too much into the plot of the movie but it is about an Oregon logging family and their struggle to fulfill obligations in the face of a logging strike. One consumer placement (intentional or not) was copious amounts of Olympia beer.

We are all aware of the Pacific Northwest beer revolution. Brands such as Rogue and Redhook kicked craft beer into national prominence in the 1990s. So much so that they made a major impact onto the national brewers causing industry consolidation and to a large degree decline.

When I was a kid in the 1980s, Budweiser was the self proclaimed “King of Beers”. The big three brands were Miller, Coors and Budweiser. To some degree, the first two were regional with Miller being the most prevalent in the midwest, Coors being largely contained in the mountain west and Budweiser for everyone. They were all here, but what reigned above all were the regional brands of Blitz-Weinhards, Olympia and Rainier.

After watching “Sometimes a Great Notion”, I began to think about those brands again. It used to be that every tavern would have one of those regional signs in the window. Rarely would you see a Coors Light or Bud Light sign in the window. I started doing some quick research to see what became of them. Now, you have to sort of follow the industry in general to get the full picture but I will try to consolidate it into a few words.

The year 2008 was a big year. Remember “too big to fail”? In 2008, Interbrew and Ambev merged and purchased Anheuser-Busch. That same year, Miller and Coors merged to form SABMiller. Later in 2016, InBev merged with SABMiller. There are some other players in the conversation namely Constellation brands (think Mexican beers), Heineken (think European brands) and Pabst brewing. For domestic labels, it is either inBev or Pabst as the current owner.

My dad used to drink Blitz-Weinhard beer, an Oregon beer. This was the cheaper cousin of Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve considered a higher end choice because it mostly came in long neck bottles and locally sourced ingredients. In 1999, Henry Weinhard’s was purchased by Miller and shutdown the Portland OR brewery. That was the beginning of the end with production ceasing in 2021. However, the name was revived by Hop Valley, an inBev company and has limited PNW distribution.

Rainier definitely had the least penetration into Oregon. So while it was known, it wasn’t as popular. Rainier was already owned by Stroh’s (also owned Miller) but was sold to Pabst in 1999. Ironically from 1999-2003, Rainier was brewed at the Olympia brewery after the sale from Miller to Pabst.

That brings us to our subject, Olympia Beer. Pabst purchased the brand from Miller in 1999. At that time, Pabst bought the label and Miller kept the brewery. Miller eventually closed the brewery and both Rainier and Olympia became homeless. Both were moved to California and Olympia continued until the pandemic. 2021 saw the Olympia brand disappear for the foreseeable future.

After watching the movie, I thought I want to see what this Olympia beer was what I remembered it to be. I was reading that at one time it was the sixth largest brewery in the United States. To my surprise, I couldn’t find it anywhere on the shelves. That is actually what lead me down this trail today.

I cannot always say that the old ways are the better ways. The gold rush of post World War II into Oregon forests eventually cut down all of the old growth forest and all those mill towns that existed as proximity to the resources dried up just like Olympia and Blitz-Weinhard. At the top of this post I mentioned Newport OR. That used to be a shipping hub for logs going to Asia on major container ships. Aside from logging, the fishing fleet also had a strong presence. That too has largely gone boutique just like beer and logging.

End Your Programming Routine: Probably someday you will be able to buy Olympia beer on e-Bay like you can buy Billy beer. I myself won’t really miss Olympia having had it in the last ten years. From my memory, it was metallic and somewhat unpleasant when compared to other options. That being said, I cannot deny that my nostalgia for what I remember as ‘good times’ is strong. That beer fueled a generation that is rapidly disappearing and made us what we are today.

October 26, 2026 – Farewell Sweet Girl

October 26, 2026 /

I don’t care what anyone says, being present while something passes on is not beautiful. When hunting, there is reverence and gratefulness for the life that was given in sustenance. But I can also speak personally that there is elation but also heaviness. In some cases, killing a varmint is a closure of rage. It is me, besting my enemy that has sought to cause me harm by stealing and damaging my property.

People that are experienced such as a butcher justify the event as ‘better than the alternative’ and use the phrase they ‘had a good life’. Now, I am not going to stop eating meat and I believe that God put resources on this planet for our survival. It still doesn’t make the situation any easier.

When it is a person, sometimes there is regret or fear or doubt. We have a whole metaphysical justification with the soul and higher calling and no longer in pain. I am going to largely leave people out of this conversation because unlike pets or livestock our relations are significantly more complicated as well as typically significantly longer. There are so many dynamics such as old versus young, accident versus sickness etc.

My dog was six years old. Forget dog years and all of that, this was something that was cared and nurtured for a short period of time. It would be as if of a six year old got terminal cancer. We are as parents still our children’s everything until at least twelve or thirteen when they are able to start acting somewhat independent such as thinking beyond the moment, self care and transporting themselves in some way. By the way, I am not saying children and pets are equivalent, they simply share many of the same needs on a similar time line.

Our girl stopped eating Wednesday night. We had gone through this rodeo a couple of months earlier. At that point, we were able to get some steroids and she seemed mostly normal for a couple of months. But now, the medicine was not working. To make matters worse, she would drink water and then vomit. Even if we tried to get some medicine down, her mouth would become foamy and she would start heaving. Time to circle the wagons.

In our area, there is a service that can schedule a vet out to euthanize a pet or livestock. For that, we set an appointment when we could see death was imminent. In the meantime Raya wanted to be close but not be seen. She was upstairs while we worked but hidden behind the bed. She didn’t make it to the appointment. About 10PM Friday, we heard a death groan. I stroked her head and my wife prayed for a quick passing. In about ten minutes, her struggle was over and she was gone.

Part of me was very relieved that we were no longer subject to the countdown clock. Part of me felt angry that we were selfish in wanting to schedule her passing for when it was convenient for us. And yet, after she died I felt a sense of relief. My wife and I embraced and cried. I have heard it said that abundant life also requires abundant death. One does not exist at the exclusion of the other. I get that, I just hurts is all.

To My Sweet Girl, Raya Hope.

You came into our lives at a period of global instability. We were still grieving the sudden loss of our beloved Snowflake. I was sure that you were not going to be a suitable replacement. But you earned your place with my respect and you did it in a different way.

You did not instantly love every person that walked by. Instead, you protected your people first until you knew that there was no threat. Then you loved them just the same. I can respect that because I felt like I could trust that you had our best interest in mind. I could also feel relatively comforted that you were all bark and no bite. You were intimidating without being dangerous. Yet, I have no doubt that you would put yourself between the bear and us without hesitation.

I am grateful for the time that we were out of town for cancer treatment and yet you were barking out the window at the stranger loitering on the corner. Your teenage brother was scared but assured that you had his back. On more than one occasion your presence gave confidence to the kids that they were going to be OK as long as you were on the job.

Don’t get me wrong, you were sometimes annoying. Like when we would lock you up to keep you away from someone working at the house and you would bark incessantly because we didn’t give you the opportunity to do your job. Or when you thought that the cinnamon rolls were made specifically for you. Those are the things that we will look back in time and chuckle about but it is also what endears us.

I am crushed to lose a good companion so prematurely. You can rest assured that there will not be another one like you, the right combination of Burmese and Golden. I want you to know that we will be OK and that your time of watching over us is complete. I thank you for the job you did, you were loved and you will be missed.

Love, Dad