Author: bhayes952

March 6, 2026 – The Talent Code: Part 3

March 6, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I am sorry about this one. I should have just bit the bullet and written Part Three in a timely manner. I finished this book in early February and it was just my life getting in the way. Now, I have to go back to the time machine and try to remember what was going on in the book because now it is packed up in a box somewhere. Fortunately I took some notes weeks ago to kind of jog my memory.

Since it has been so long, I could spend a few words trying to summarize where we have been. Part One was all about how greatness is built. Part Two is about where to find talent and now Part Three is about harnessing it. Or said another way, it is coaching greatness.

I think the timing on this is pretty good. It would have been even better if I was actually writing this to come out during the Olympics like I should have. Nevertheless, I was watching one of the twenty something, American, gold medal athletes talking about how it is a dream come true and that this is what they have been working their whole life for this when it hit me. This is where this Part of the book comes to life.

Actually, what really hit me is that these athletes were enabled by choice or by circumstance. Circumstance is what the book talks about but I have to think choice is just as helpful. What I mean by choice is that a gold medal may be an athlete’s dream but it started well before this moment. The winners didn’t just show up to the Olympics and win. There was years of practice going into this moment. And to be frank, an eight year old is not getting to the mountain alone. Somebody opened the door and kept it open at least until emancipation.

OK, I was talking about the parents and not exactly the theme of today. But, coaching is what Coyle asserts as the third component of greatness. Chapter nine deals with a study of John Wooden and his habits. For those of you that weren’t around in the 1960s and 70s you don’t know how UCLA won ten of twelve championships. That is dominance.

What did Wooden do? He had two traits that were effective. The first one was that he did not treat players equally. The ones that needed riding got that treatment and the others were left alone, even if it seemed crazy. The second trait was constant but short feedback. Those two things were his keys to success.

Chapter ten was different but the same man. A good coach is able to navigate the matrix of relationships and performance. They are some how able to figure out what is important in the big organic blob called a human being. They are able to get to the root of motivation and correction. And they do it with theatrical honesty meaning that it is load and very readable.

Chapter eleven is one of those that probably would be re-written today. It was all about the (Las Vegas) Raiders evaluation of Jamarcus Russell prior to drafting him as the number one pick in 2008. I hope that they are reading this book this year as well. Russell had tremendous physical ability, it was said that he could throw a seventy yard pass on his knees with precision.

I think today we would look back and say that while there was no doubt Russell’s athleticism was unparalleled, however he was a terrible quarterback only lasting two seasons. The second of which he was benched early in the season. He had no ability to lead the team resulting in poor performance. After being dropped by the Raiders, he never played professional football again.

This book was written as that was all unfolding and I suspect that Coyle (as we all did) thought that he was going to be one of the greats. However, something so poignant was said in the book by the pro scout. Even greats need coaching. And, this is why Russell failed, coaching with the Raiders has been abysmal (mostly).

You know, you don’t have to look very far to find coaches and success. Think about who is considered one of the greatest current quarterbacks, that would be Patrick Mahommes of the Kansas City Chiefs. And yet, who is the coach, Andy Reid someone that has been perennially successful wherever he has been employed. Coincidence? I don’t really think so.

End Your Programming Routine: So, this is the book. It makes a lot of sense to me. Next week I am going to wrap up “The Talent Code”. Looking forward to what is next I am planning “Surprised By Joy” by C.S. Lewis. It seems to be a memoir from what I can surmise. I will plan to cover three chapters per week. I am relatively certain that next week is going to happen but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a gap after that.

March 5, 2026 – Eating India: An Odyssey Into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices

March 5, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Five years ago, I worked for a North American company. We were a specialized outfit that did specific work with primarily North American clientele. That all changed when I signed on with a multinational, conglomerate service company. It seems like these days nearly all of my interactions are from people in India or from Indian descent.

Eating India was the February Left Coast Culinary Book Club selection. We chose it because in our eight years of existence we have never looked at Indian food. But secretly, I wanted to learn more about this culture that I interact with every day. This book is not a cookbook but a book about food (and culture). The author makes deliberate trips to different regions of India and then writes about it. It is kind of a targeted and less sensational Parts Unknown.

After reading about half of the book, I began to realize that India is way more diverse than I originally thought. When we go to a ‘Indian’ restaurant, we are getting an amalgamation and interpretation of the entire country. The largest factions of India are the Hindus and Muslims. I thought that the Muslims of historical India were in the north (and became Pakistan) and to the west which became Bengal leaving India largely Hindu which is not the case at all. India is very much still a mixture of the two.

Hindus are by default vegetarian. For that reason, much of Indian food is actually vegetarian. The Muslims are not, so any meat dish has at it’s roots in that side of the culture. While not prevented, generally Muslims in India do not eat beef as a cultural nod and why most meat dishes are seafood, goat, lamb or chicken.

The Portuguese colonized India in the 1600s. They brought with them new world foods such as potato and tomato. More so than that, they brought the mechanisms to transform sugar into desserts and confections. I never really realized it but I have noticed many a prolific, sweet tooth among them.

The latest colonizers, the British added very little to the cuisine. But, what they did do was take and promote Indian cuisine throughout the world. It was said that one queen had a propensity for tea. Because of that, it popularized tea in Briton and the western world. I would say Indian cuisine to a lesser point than tea. However, I was stricken by how popular Indian restaurants were in London. It kind of reminded me of how prolific Mexican food is in the southwest.

Those were the well known factions and influences. What about the Jains and the Sikhs? Or how about the Indian Jews? I suppose that in today’s world, anybody can be anywhere. I remember that when I was working in China one of my co-workers is Latter Day Saints and he found an active church. I found it interesting that the Indian Jews are amongst the most orthodox observers of religion. The Sabbath and Kosher are two examples. It actually struck me about how similar Jews and Muslims are when it comes to religious practice.

To me, the book was pretty interesting. I am not sure everyone would feel this way as it strays away from our traditional titles in the book club. It wasn’t a cookbook or even a fictional story with an plot. It was someone’s travel observations. I have one criticism and that is the author Banerji writes as if the layman knows all of the vocabulary. There were a lot of food names that quite honestly, I have no clue about.

I think that it would also be helpful to read this book with a map in hand. In terms of spatial relationship, I have no idea about the places that were mentioned. Yes, I have heard of Bombay and Calcutta but I couldn’t point to where they were in India. A book all about regional differences should have some context about where those regions are in proximity to each other.

This book is for people that want to know more about India, particularly the nuance of culturally influence food. It would be a good one to read the e-version so that you can constantly look up definitions of unfamiliar words. I was entertained and educated but I could really only read one chapter a night. There was a lot of information that I was digesting.

End Your Programming Routine: I heard while I was watching the Olympics a few weeks ago that India is now the most populous country in the world with 1.7 billion people. I had no clue that China had been overtaken. I think this makes it all that more important to start learning about the world’s largest country. That is not to say that Indian food is extremely delicious too.

March 4, 2026 – Troubleshooting 201

March 4, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I won’t assume that everyone reading this went to college. We hear the term 101 thrown around all the time, but what does that mean and what is the difference between 101 and 201? Well, 101 is a survey level course. In the case of Chemistry the year long sequence of 101, 102 and 103 attempts to cover three different disciplines of chemistry in a year long, high level series of courses. If you ask me, in many ways the 100 series is the hardest because the student is not given any basis for understanding the disciplines as they are intended for non and unrelated majors.

In contrast to the 100 series, the 200 level courses are intended for students that are going to go forward in the area of study. This means that the topics are harder and deeper with more emphasis on the why and not just the what. Today I am going to cover, why is the bathroom so cold?

From the first picture on the left, I see a bathroom fan with an integrated heater. It is not heating. This means that it could be broken or it is not wired correctly. Those are really the only two options. When I look at the picture to the right, I see two switches. One controls the lights in the bathroom and the other controls the fan. Based on what fan switch does, it should turn on the fan, a heater and a light. Only the fan worked.

That cannot rule out either of my hypotheses yet. It is either miswired or broken. I took the cover off of the fan. Low and behold there was a connector that was not connected. This is missing heater connection. I plug the connector in and turn on the switch, the heater belches and smokes to life. The problem now is that there are three things and only one switch.

This is a permissible mode of operation. What I mean by that is that power to the unit turns on the light and the fan and the heater. But, does that make any sense? I say no. Imagine that this is summer and now the heater is on every time the fan is on. Further to that, you are now blowing heat into the room and then sucking it out with the fan. This seems wrong in my book.

When we installed a similar unit in the ADU a few years ago, I separated the heater and the fan operation. That way you can have heat or the fan or both if it makes sense. In order to do that, you have to look at the wiring. I pulled the switches out to determine if it just wasn’t wired correctly. You probably can’t tell from the picture below but unfortunately it was not wired for separate operation.

Certain devices benefit from a more complicated wiring scheme. Take for example a ceiling fan. Before remote controls and external switches, it was very common to wire two hot wires to the fan. That way you could operate the fan and the light independently. Today you can control most ceiling fans at the device so that makes two hot wires irrelevant.

In electrical vernacular, the cable operating the device is labelled 12/2, 12/3 or 14/x. The first number is the wire diameter and the second number are the number of conductors in the cable. Without getting too deep into theory, 14 gauge wire is for 15A circuits and 12 gauge wire is for 20A circuits. This particular heater is a 1300W heater. If you do the circuit math, the total load is 15A * 120V = 1800W. The means that the heater could be on either a 15A or 20A circuit. I know it is 12 gauge wire because the cable insulation is yellow. But, what I do not see is 12/3 cable. Based on how the switch is wired, it is not possible for independent control.

To fix this situation, a cable would have to be pulled from the fan to the switch containing three conductors instead of the two conductor cable that is currently in use. OK, I don’t like that but it is doable. When I look at the other bathrooms, it gets more complicated. The pictures I am showing is the bathroom with a fan/heater combination already installed. To upgrade the other bathrooms, the overall circuit load has to be considered.

What has been standard was 15A circuits for lights and 20A circuits for outlets. Doing the math again, 1800W/ 60W = 30 permissible bulbs on one circuit. In old houses, you might even have all the lights on one circuit. In these days of LEDs, light bulbs are drawing 10-15W. That is now 120 or more permissible bulbs on one circuit. Not only is this power efficient, but it means that the lights can be on while you work on the outlets or other electrical concerns.

That is one way of wiring, the other is to have all terminations on one circuit. This means the lights and the outlets are all part of the same circuit. According to AI, a hairdryer uses about 2000W of electricity. That means one device is taking the entire circuit load on a 20A circuit. There is simply no way to add a 1300W heater and operate a hairdryer at the same time. This means running a new, dedicated circuit. Not only is the wiring from the fan to the the switch inadequate (but perfectly acceptable for just a fan only) but the power requirements are simply not there.

End Your Programming Routine: As I have stated previously, this new house is in a heating climate and the heat that is available is completely substandard. The good news is that one bathroom has the capacity to be fixed and operate properly, the other two are going to take more effort. It is my opinion that the house was miswired and even poorly designed. While not code to have heat in the bathroom, it is required in certain loans (not ours). More so than any of that, the house is simply uncomfortable. We aim to rectify that.

March 3, 2026 – There Are No Serviceable Parts

March 3, 2026 / / 0 Comments

While training for my half marathon ten years ago, my wife bought me this Garmin Forerunner 10 as a birthday present. As I have stated many times, it really wasn’t my goal to run a half marathon but I committed because it was something that she wanted to do. We could do it together. It couldn’t hurt my health any.

Garmin promised seven days of GPS on runtime and two or three weeks of regular operation. The way it worked is when you pushed the ‘go’ button, it would record a bunch of GPS coordinates as cookies. When you synced the watch, it would put those events into maps and then you would have your runs plotted. Those could be accessed when you log into the Garmin website.

I have to admit, I had no desire to be some sort of athlete. But, I did use the watch each time I ran. I would periodically check the maps to see if my pace was getting better. Honestly, the best part about the watch is that it would track your distance from the time the start button was pushed. That made training much easier because I could run halfway and then turn around to get my intended mileage.

The watch never lived up to it’s advertised runtime. When it was new, I could track one or two 5K length runs and it would be depleted after two days. It started getting to the point where it would die before the end of a half marathon with the GPS on and a full charge. By the time I did my actual race, the watch was unusable for tracking. I had to go back to the old fashioned way of timing my pace. It did work as a basic watch for about a week in between charges. So, that is how I used it.

You know how I hate to throw things away. I inquired about the ability to repair the watch. There are no serviceable parts. Where have I heard that before? My son’s e-Bike. The watch gathered dust form quite a few years until I looked up online and there are plenty of how-tos on how to do this. I never realized that there were rechargeable and non-rechargeable CR2032 batteries. The trick was that I did not want to order 10 of them, just one good one. That is what I did, I ordered one battery.

Why Garmin would say that there are no serviceable parts is beyond me. It actually looks pretty straight forward. You open the case, carefully disassemble the electronics and then swap the battery. It is assembled in the reverse order. This was a lake house project that I did. I took all of the stuff with me and I did it in the afternoon.

I plugged the watch in and it appeared to be charging. That is where I left things until the next day. When I took it off of the charger, all I got was a triangle, the sign that it is off and charging. Pressing the power button yielded not change. I did further research to say that it needed to be synched but I didn’t have my computer with me to do that. I tried to sync it when I got home and the watch was dead.

The battery indicator shows that it has a full charge but the watch does not function. The whole point of this was to see if I could sell it for $10 to some aspiring runner. I have to say that is certainly not going to be the case. I should probably spend some more time troubleshooting this watch. Now that I am home, I could certainly try some multimeter tests and another attempt to disassemble and re-assemble. But is it really worth it?

I have already moved on to a new model watch. I have also invested $6 for a new battery and time to do this battery swap, not to mention a $10 watch band replacement all in the name of keeping this watch out of the landfill. I also hate to be defeated and I cant simply admit that something so seemingly simple does not work.

End Your Programming Routine: It could be that I did not put this together correctly. It could also be that this thing has ran it’s course. I don’t really know the reason. My problem is that I have bigger fish to fry now. The time to wheel and deal cheap electronics has past. I have to get onto the business of moving to the new house. I haven’t fully conceded yet but maybe sometimes no serviceable parts actually means what the phrase implies.

March 2, 2026 – It’s a First

March 2, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Brace yourselves, this is my first podcast in my new office. Yes, the audio quality is not good at all. The room is super echo-y and I am on my Bluetooth headset for a microphone. That makes the resolution low to begin with, nevermind the acoustics. This is all about what I have been up to and I didn’t just seemingly disappear. That means that the podcast stays. I will work to make this better just not today.

February 6, 2026 – The Talent Code: Part 2

February 6, 2026 /

OK, so we know that deep practice is the key to building myelin. Myelin is the key to performance. But, what is the trigger for this phenomenon. Yes, I am certain that there are cases where it is just dumb luck. I think about my own situation and areas that I perform and I didn’t get there by reading a book and then putting it into practice or going to elite academies. It was just luck. But then there are simply hotbeds that cannot be ignored.

Coyle uses the example of why there are so many Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic. The DR is a hotbed of baseball. I am sure that you can find that some players went to the same school or played in the same leagues. There is a phenomenon called ignition. Certain teachers, coaches possess the ability to get the best out of people. More on ignition next week.

Going back the the nature versus nurture argument, it can be said that there is some of both in high performers. Following the theory, anyone can build myelin, but some build it more intuitively. For instance, there is a high correlation to birth position and performance. The more kids in the family, the more likely the younger ones are going to naturally accelerate.

I think that we can all see why. It is the younger children that are trying to keep up with the older ones. They want to prove that they can do it too. This is the motivation for deep practice. Also a little oddly, children that lost a parent at an impressionable age also accelerate faster. I guess that they are trying finish what was started or prove that they are worthy of head of household status or something.

Hotbeds seem to be more pervasive in underprivileged areas. I suppose maybe we tend to remember them more because they are remarkable. That is really not the reason, the real reason is that people in those socioeconomic demographics tend to be more singly focused. They do not have the distractions of outside influences to take away from the ability to do deep practice.

Something that I believe is that the best primary school students, straight A’s through high school are not generally high performers. They are good citizens, probably good at their careers and probably make good incomes. But, they are not disrupters more so they are good rule followers. If you follow the rules, you will get good grades. Good grades translate into college completion and ultimately professional and monetary success.

To follow that strategy does not take deep practice. Do what you are told, play the game and you will be rewarded. It is that combination of struggle, failure and striving to master that makes up deep practice. Growing up upper middle class like I did has very little struggle. I followed the rules, got good grades and stayed out of trouble. There is nothing wrong with that but I doubt that I am going to be labeled remarkable for those things.

I wouldn’t exactly call my town a hotbed. That being said, there have been several NFL players that came out of our high school. It is a low socioeconomic level, there is relatively nothing to do and football season is anticipated and important in the community. You have all the conditions to meet the definition of hotbed.

Hotbeds of success are born of assimilation. What does the US military do? Assimilate. When you are the coach, you want a team that is selfless and mission oriented. Yes, The Dream Team clobbered the Olympic competition when they first appeared on the scene since there was such a disparity of skill. But a couple of cycles later, they found out that they could be beaten by an average team that didn’t let ego get in the way.

Assimilation breeds an attitude of us versus them. It seems to make the participants care more about the team mates which in turn causes them to put out more effort and sacrifice. Everyone would want a team of LeBron James (at his prime) but only if that means that they all are willing to contribute equally. LeBron 1 could take a contested three point shot or he could pass it to LeBron 2 who is open under the basket and will slam dunk the ball.

Michael Jordan is arguably the best basketball player of all time. He had phenomenal fifty plus point games where it seemed like he was unstoppable. However, without Scotty Pippen feeding him the ball, Jordan’s career wouldn’t be quite as stellar. He still would have been a super star, but at what level? Imagine if there were three other Scotty Pippens on the floor how much better would Jordan have looked? Pippen was no slouch himself but he was the ignition source.

End Your Programming Routine: Hotbeds themselves are born out of chance and the right environmental conditions. There is nothing saying that the source of the best baseball players couldn’t be Indonesia instead of the Dominican Republic except that it isn’t. I think what is more important is to be able to recognize the factors that play into talent. It makes it much easier to make up for those deficiencies with deep practice.

February 5, 2026 – I Am Warming Up To This

February 5, 2026 /

It should be no surprise that I am not an early adopter. I am not opposed to change if there is a valid reason for it. I guess what I find acceptable is different then a lot of people. In most cases, I don’t need to change anything. I am happy with me, I am happy with what I have and I am happy to live within my means. That being said, not everyone feels the same. My wife for instance wanted to move to the water.

Here I have a shop, a garage, a large lot and even a second house. Why would I want to leave somewhere that I am comfortable and setup? Even more so, why would I want to sell my woodworking pile of wood, spend every weekend going through all of our things and totally disrupt my life when I am already happy? I was looking forward to having a lot of shop time now that my kids have moved out.

Despite the fact that there is only one (personal) reason I would want to move, I have been going into this with the best possible attitude. I want to make sure my kids don’t have to deal with my woodpile and all of that outgrown ski wear. But, if I am going to move, I want to make sure that it works financially and it works for my life. One of those things is deeply re-connecting with fishing.

I have been patiently waiting to try my luck at fishing on the lake. I have fished the lake before, but it has been nearly twenty years ago. My brother’s bachelor party was here, on the north end of the lake. Our house is a couple of miles south of that rental house so long ago. I have always assumed like so many bodies of water that not everywhere is equal habitat. It was no barnburner when I fished it last time.

I did find my pole and tackle amongst all the packed boxes. The forecast was great, it was going to be dry and warm and we were planning to stay over until Saturday. Since I get up so much earlier than everyone else in the house, I pinned Saturday morning as my inaugural attempt to see how lucky I was.

When I got up, I kind of drug my feet. What if the neighbors see me and question whether I belong or not. We are renting the house and I have only met one neighbor so far. What if it is all weedy and I am wasting my time? I finally got over my nerves and rigged up my pole. I also put on the hot water so that I could make some instant coffee. Once everything was done up, I opened the door and headed to the dock.

It was a beautiful morning. The eventual forecast was a high in the lower sixties but it was a bit brisk at 8AM. We are about a mile from the ocean, I could hear it in the background. A blue heron was annoyed by my coming down to the dock and flew off in disgust. The perpetual Canadian geese started swimming away honking. I assume that was their warning noises that something is not right here. I carefully stepped around all of the goose poop in the grass and the dock and started to cast.

It was my plan to only spend about thirty minutes fishing. I wasn’t going to re-rig to try different lures or spend the whole day doing this to get a limit. This is how I intend on fishing when I live here, a few minutes during lunch time or a few minutes before dusk. I am not opposed to taking fish and eating them but I am more interested in the fact that I can catch them or not. Especially now, I am not setup to clean, save or preserve fish. I would have to eat it now.

I did my 270 degree pass around the dock and nothing was doing. My stomach was growling and I started dreaming of heading back to the house and starting breakfast. This wouldn’t be the first trip that I didn’t catch anything. In fact, I didn’t actually expect to catch anything. I didn’t have any sort of vessel to put fish in if I did catch something. I told myself a few more casts and then I would head back to the house when I felt a tug.

It was a lazy tug. I thought that maybe I snagged something. But as I was reeling up I saw that there was a fish on the other end. It was a nice fish too. I would estimate that it was probably twelve inches long and around a pound. It was a rainbow trout, which means that it was put there as a hatchery fish. Now that I had it, what to do?

I really wanted to put it back for another day. The treble hook on my Panther-Martin spinner bait is not easy to remove with a flopping fish. I eventually got it on the dock and was able to get the hook out. I crossed my fingers that the fish would swim away because I had no net if it started floating after I tossed the fish back in the lake. It swam away and my heart was floating. It worked, this is exactly how I wanted this morning to start.

End Your Programming Routine: This is what I talk about when I say do things that matter. Maybe fishing isn’t your cup of tea but I wasn’t thinking about the ridiculousness of the world or what I might write about next or even the things that I wanted to do later in the day, including packing up and travelling home. It was no traffic and no boats on the lake just me and the geese and the heron and the fish. Even though I have most everything I want, maybe this is what I need and moving just gets me closer to that.

February 4, 2026 – Just Breathe

February 4, 2026 /

Not two stroke fumes but it has been said that a engine is an air pump. The carburetor is equivalent to the lungs in that pump. I thought that getting the leaf blower started was going to be the easiest of my three gasoline powered machines to start. It is only about four years old, I have always ran good gas and I didn’t leave gas in the tank. I figured a shot of ether in the carburetor would get things going in short order. That would not be the case.

As I stated above, I confidently took the air cover off and opened the choke all the way. I sprayed a heavy shot of engine starting fluid and pulled the cord. The machined choked and sputtered and ran for about 20 seconds like it couldn’t quite get going. That would be with the choke on. Then, it immediately died when I opened up the choke on the carburetor.

I tried this again thinking things just hadn’t gotten up to operating temperature. This time I let the machine run two or three minutes under half choke. As soon as I opened the choke again, it died. This should have been my first clue as to what the problem was. However, I didn’t have any parts. It is not like I keep a bunch of small engine parts around anyway but I certainly was not not expecting to have to work on this machine. It has barely ever been used.

From what I could see, the fuel supply line had air gaps in it. I wondered if there was a break or crack in the fuel supply line. The priming bulb was full so in theory, even if the fuel was struggling to load the line, the delivery to the carburetor for running was adequate. I could obtain fuel line locally so I went about changing the feed and discharge lines.

The fuel line itself was hard and brittle. It did not seem to be broken. Nevertheless, while pulling the lines out of the tank, layers of the line sheathed off. In my mind, changing the line doesn’t hurt anything, it optimally shouldn’t be in the condition it was anyway. I crossed my fingers that it was just a line problem even though in my head, I really didn’t think this was going to work.

Guess what? My head was right. I pulled and pulled and I could only get the engine to run as long as there was starter fluid in the carburetor. I tried until I was getting to the point that my arm (neck) was bothering me, which doesn’t take that long. I resigned to having to do a more extensive rebuild. I wasn’t going to get that done while I was at the lake for a day or so I ordered an aftermarket maintenance kit.

It is tricky to plan delivery sometimes. I want to be home when it comes. I also know that we are not within the prime network at the lake. I have yet to try how delivery works, but it seems like I need to add another day to most deliveries. That is to say that I would not be here at the lake for delivery receipt and I may not be home either.

You can see what is included in the picture above. Since my lines were just changed, the carburetor comes with a new primer bulb attached, the air filter seems fine and I am not going to tear the whole thing apart to replace the spark plug, I am just going to swap carburetors. This cost $15 delivered.

Notice in the picture above, the O-ring fell out. I mention that so that you will be careful while doing this. I saw this too, I looked around and I didn’t see it anywhere so I thought my mind was just playing tricks on me and I put everything back together. Then I took the blower off of the bench and there was the O-ring. That cost me five minutes to take everything back apart and put the O-ring back on.

I gassed the blower up and gave it a shot of ether. It started after three pulls. The problem with the blower was something in the carburetor. If were up to me, I would take the old carburetor and rebuild it and then put it on the shelf for the next time I have these problems. What I am finding is that rebuilding small engine carburetors is a dead art. If you can buy an entire machine rebuild for $15, there is no sense in paying $30 for all of the gaskets.

One thing about living at the coast, small engine shops are not dead. We are far, far away from the logging heyday of the 1970s but there is still active logging in second and third generation forest in the Oregon coastal mountains. There is a saw shop only two miles from our lake house. Eventually when we get settled, I will visit and see if I can get a rebuild kit for the original carburetor. I am not going to pay more than $20 but I would be willing to spend more than an aftermarket carburetor just so that I don’t end up throwing the thing away. That being said, every man has a limit.

End Your Programming Routine: It was pouring down rain when I finally got the machine started. That is difficult conditions when trying to blow loose debris off the ground. Wet ground tends to cause sticks and needles to get stuck on the surface but I did what I could. With a giant fir tree in the front yard, I have a feeling that this blower is going to go from rarely used to most used gas tool in the shed.

February 3, 2026 – The Cure That Ails You

February 3, 2026 /

I went to the neurosurgeon last week to talk about addressing my pain. Granted, it is almost gone, even the numbness in my index finger is barely there. But, there is something like anything aging, it probably isn’t going to get any better. I figured that given this is not debilitating, the fix was going to be routine and somewhat easy. What I heard from the doctor left my mouth agape.

First of all, the recovery time for this surgery is three to six months. There is at least an overnight stay in the hospital and expect to be out of commission for at least two weeks. In that three to six month period, it is light duty only with lifting and moving restrictions. Uh… I am in the middle of moving.

The picture below illustrates some of what is to be done. They bolt a plate between the two vertebrate. Then they scoop out all of the padding between the vertebrate and slip a disc in between the two. It essentially immobilizes the problem disk from moving and pressing on the nerves. Hence, pain is gone.

I will be honest, I am not sure that my pain currently warrants that. There was a time around Thanksgiving where I would have said, ‘lets do it’. But, as it slowly and steadily gets better so does my urgency to do anything. You might even say that I am a little scared. Not to mention, the would finally end my run of never being in the hospital for any procedural reason, no surgeries and I would have to answer yes to having metal in the body. Not to say that this is the best reason, but I have dealt enough with my wife’s situation to know that it is a pain to fill out these questionnaires at the doctor.

Even if I say yes, the lead time on the surgery is about a month and a half. Honestly, this puts me smack dab in the moving period. I cannot afford to be an invalid, bed ridden and high on pills while this is going on. Even if we pay movers and the intent is to not lift a finger, it inevitably will not work out that way. Unless this is desperately needed, I don’t think the timing is good at all.

If I think about it deeper, this also puts the crush on any future summer plans this year. I know that I have talked a good game about hiking again but I have been so consumed with moving and packing, not to mention pain that my training has yet to get started. That doesn’t mean that I couldn’t do some overnighters or something this year. Definitely not if I elect to get the surgery.

They say that the cause is a herniated disk. This means that one of my spinal disks is moving out of place and pushing on the nerve. The cause might be the injury that I had in early June, incorrectly moving the table for my son’s graduation party. Or, that might have just been the trigger for genetic weakness to finally show. I know that my aunt had many back problems and surgeries early in her life. And my father has always had back problems. That is probably not keeping the odds on my side.

I accept that this is probably inevitable. So, I wrestle with timing. Sure, if now is not good timing, then when? I kind of think late fall would be the best. I will have the most accumulated time off and we should be settled by then. I won’t have to give up another summer for medical reasons as well. But, I guess that we will have to see how it goes. As long as I am feeling good now, I can afford to take a little time and schedule in my favor.

End Your Programming Routine: This is pretty silly, but sometimes I like to think about where I would be without modern medicine. Who knows, maybe I would have caught small pox or something. But, the fact that I have had no severe medical issues in my life pretty much suggest that I could be exactly where I am in the 1700s. Of course that is all circumstantial. I could have been shipped off to war or gotten my arm caught in the thresher or kicked by livestock. So that is probably just fantasy. It is a sign that age catches us all. I am realizing that now.

February 2, 2026 – Not Tools, But Fishing

February 2, 2026 /

I have fishing on the mind. We are headed out to the lake house again for a couple of days and so I thought that I would throw in on how to get started with fishing. This is not the skills but where to start with the gear. Join me today when I talk about where to start when you don’t know a thing.