Category: Opinion

October 19, 2022 – Electric Yard Tools

October 19, 2022 /

I will be honest, I have had a long held prejudice against yard tools that are powered with a cord. Things I have used would be things like chainsaws, hedge trimmers, string trimmers and leaf blowers. I can now add rototiller to the list.

It’s not that these items don’t work, they do. And quite frankly they are often times significantly, more inexpensive then the cordless relatives. I guess my opinion stems originally from a Black & Decker hedge trimmer that my dad has owned my entire life. This was something we usually had to deal with once a year as kids. And multiple times the cord was cut because you are thrashing around in the brush and the cord gets tangled in the brush and around other plants.

With the advent of battery powered yard tools and my older age, I am starting to change my opinion. For one, I don’t own enough property or do enough work to justify gas powered tools. The truth is, I don’t do enough yard work to replace my gas tools with battery tools (or even own either type of them). My Stihl chainsaw has been really good but other things like lawnmowers and trimmers gum up, crack up or fail due to lack of use.

The nice thing about electric is that there is very little maintenance required, so it is ready to go when you want it. Whereas, I am often wondering if my gas powered equipment will start or run every time I go to use it.

Last year, when I was cleaning out my father-in-laws stuff, I took his electric cultivator. I forgot that I even had it until I was trying to figure out how to get some ground worked up quickly to do some overseeding. I have to say that I was pretty impressed at how it did. My mom has had Mantis tiller for years and I really thought it was worthless from what I have used.

Yes, the cord was in the way but based on my usage pattern, the small inconvenience is worth not trying to do it by hand. This is definitely not something I would have ever purchased, however maybe this is the kick in the ass to get a proper garden in next year. It is getting my juices going.

End Your Programming Routine: For homeowners or occasional users that are close to a power source, having a corded tool is highly preferential to not having anything at all. For this category of user, I think the battery powered tool is probably the best compromise on most yard tools. Only serious, frequent users would benefit from gas tools. If that is you, then you probably already know all of this. But, reconsider the stigma corded tools, I know that I am.

September 21, 2022 – Is ‘Cutting the Cord’ Really Better?

September 21, 2022 /

We were early adopters of the concept, cutting the cord. That means that we don’t pay for cable. We did it for purely financial reasons, we couldn’t afford the service. At the time (2005), we owned a house in South Carolina, we were renting a house in Oregon, we had no furniture, I had just took a permanent 17% pay cut and my wife was unemployed. I am not saying that we were starving but we did make sacrifices.

It actually took a career change (four years) to get back to making the same amount of money that I was making. We did sell the house in six months and it took a few more years to recover from our move financially. By that time, we really didn’t feel the need to pay $50-70 a month for cable.

I liked to watch HGTV before it was all ridiculous makeover shows and property buying and I liked to watch TNN (Spike) for the auto programs on Saturdays. But, what I really liked was sports. That is the thing that I have always missed since we went cable-less. I watched Monday Night Football on ESPN, NASCAR on Fox Sports, baseball play-offs on TBS when I had the chance.

Free of the ability to watch sports, I started really not paying attention to that much. I still followed Beavers football, the NFL and watched the World Series. Since I was local to OSU, I could listen to the games on the radio, my first love. Racing was over along with bowl games and a lot of other time killers but life moved on.

In the last 10 years, my wife has been adding streaming services. It started with Netflix. Then, because we had Amazon Prime we got another service for free. In the last three years she has added Hulu. And the last two years, we have turned on Sling during football season.

Now, I have to say that I barely ever turn on the TV. I am not totally sure I even know the passwords to the services. My wife wanted to watch Yellowstone with me, I made it a couple of episodes into season 2. I wanted to like it but it took too much commitment and the ridiculous story line drove me crazy, so I quit. I really cannot get into any kind of ‘soap opera’ because no matter what, I don’t think that there is a compelling story line year over year that appeases my sense of logic and reason.

We turned on Sling again the other day. I was just checking out to see what was on and I left it on MotorTrend. The show All Girls Garage came on. I was cooking and I looked up and saw a knife on one of the host’s hip. I was asking myself was that a tool? Does she use the knife for repair work? I am just going to watch and see.

I didn’t see any use of the knife after an episode or so. So, I decided to look up the host Faye Hadley. It seems as though she is a certified mechanic that graduated from Harvard with a psychology degree. Despite the dreadlocks, tattoos and piercings, I think the knife is schtick. And here is where the rubber meets the road.

There is too much entertainment in the world. Sports is no longer TV and/or cable but now NFL network and Amazon Prime. In order to compete in personalities a capable mechanic needs to dress like a badass assassin. When it comes to cost, I don’t think I am saving any money by picking and choosing different services. In fact, to see what we want this method may very well cost more. At the very least, it is a lot more hassle.

The only reason we added Sling TV in the first place is that it is the only streaming service that has Pac12 Network. I guess I would describe the service as streaming cable. I really will never take the time to really watch what is available, but I do like to tune in every now and then to see what is there.

In the end, I will answer the question, is it worth it? For me, I will say no. I have enough income that that cost of cable would be insignificant. What isn’t worth it is the time. And that is the most valuable commodity to me. I am also getting to the place where I just want stuff to work. I don’t want to fiddle with a bunch of different ways of getting to the same end. I really don’t want to turn on and off services and deal with managing all these different subsriptions.

End Your Programming Routine: Ultimately, if it was up to me I would probably leave Sling TV on. I am much more likely to browse on any given day than binge watch a series or even watch a movie. That being said, I likely wouldn’t watch enough to justify the cost of $65/mo. In fact, I don’t even think that my current interest is worth the cost. It is nice to turn on and turn off when you are done. It is almost like a more mature pay per view.

June 29, 2022 – Travel Anecdotes

June 29, 2022 /

A lot of my travel information I wrote and talked about was before the trip. Now having gotten back, some things have changed from what I knew (or thought) was true before hand. I thought I would throw some grab bag items out there.

  • Covid tests are no longer required to re-enter the US. This changed June 12, right before we left. After getting advice from other recent travelers, we were making plans on how to accomplish this on our trip.
  • Customs Forms are not used for entry – At least this is true for the US and the EU. This eliminates the ‘need a pen scramble’ on the airplane as you get ready to land. We did have some e-forms filled out for health screening which helped speed the process.
  • Air travel within the EU has pretty much the same restrictions – The only real difference I observed with security was I could leave my shoes on. There were still restrictions on liquids that needed to be in a 1L (1qt) bag. Electronics had to come out of the bag.
  • Security is not Safety- My son went through three different security checks with scissors in his bag before they were identified. Portland to Barcelona, Barcelona to Palma and finally Palma to Barcelona he was stopped in the bag scan. I don’t even know how that is possible to feel like this procedure is adequate.
  • Having friends at the airline has perks – We got priority parking and our own personal check-in when we flew to Mallorca. We also took advantage of sending a bunch of liquids back in order to not loose them.
  • Five fifty a gallon is a bargain- Our rental car was a diesel and the prices were in Euros per liter but the cost was roughly $7.75 a gallon. Fortunately, the cars are small and relatively efficient so it only cost about $30 to return the rental car.
  • Cash is still king- We got a 10% discount on fuel just by paying in cash. I really didn’t know what was going on when the price was different than registered but figured it out as I drove off.
  • Living/Travelling in Europe is expensive – Even thought the Dollar and Euro are near parity I would say items on average are probably 25-33% more. In one example, I paid 25 euros for a tube of sun block. For me, that was worth the price but I can’t imagine paying $25 for that, even if it was from France.
  • Spain is not Italy – I expected the people and experience to be very similar (if not the same). I found Spain to be orderly and law abiding compared to Italy. Traffic was not crazy and nobody got pickpocketed or had someone try to rip the watch off your wrist.
  • The world has become smaller- When I was in Italy in the 1990s, they siesta’d hard. Almost nothing was open between 1 and 6 pm. Siesta is still a practice in Spain, but I hardly noticed a change. Maybe it was where I was at but I think the world has changed to the point where this practice is not nearly as prevalent.
  • English is definitely universal- If my broken Spanish didn’t work there were no problems switching to English anywhere.
  • Spanish is not Catalan – The native language of the northeastern coast of Spain is not Spanish. While I can understand most simple Spanish, I had no idea what was happening when spoken to in Catalan. Many of the spellings are the similar but with the accent it is a different word. The tempo of Catalan sounds more like Italian but the words I could not understand.

I didn’t spend much time in the water. I am very susceptible to the sun and since it was literally 58 degrees as a mid-June high when we left, I didn’t have much time to toughen up. So, I limited my water time until after 6pm just to avoid massive sunburns. The kids went into the water here and it was a summertime high 80s. I wish I could, but the view was amazing.

Does this look like paradise or what?

End Your Programming Routine: I am wrapping up my week on vacation. There will be one more on Friday but I promise I am moving on. You cant exert that much money, time and effort and not have it play a factor in my work and opinions. I know that it is hard to enjoy someone else’s vacation, but hopefully there was at least some good information presented.

June 28, 2022 – Do You Have a Favorite Architect?

June 28, 2022 /

I sometimes tease my wife that she is the only person I know that has a favorite architect. There may be some competition with the previous title holder after our trip to Spain. The truth is, I am pretty much enamored as well.

Where we were both exposed to architecture as an art was in college. We both took Art History 101 and 102. From there, we learned about Frank Lloyd Wright. For Americans, his work is much more approachable since we can more easily travel and visit some of his buildings. Wright was prolific and there is even one of his houses here in Oregon. In 2002, we made a specific destination as “House of Falling Water” on an east coast road trip.

The genius of specific architects is that they are visionaries. For instance, Wright invented the Ranch style house. Arguably, that is the most popular American home style ever. It is simple to build, easy to maintain and infinitely adaptable.

Another architect that we learned about in Art History was Antoni Gaudi because Spain was out of sight, out of mind in 1995 so it got filed on the backburner. However, modern Barcelona is the city that Gaudi built (and is still building despite his death in 1926).

I am not going to go into all of the specifics of each work, but you can check the link for additional information. Above is Casa Batllo, a personal residence Gaudi remodeled in 1904. It is remarkable for the use of color as light direction, ventilation as a function of design and flexible spaces with movable room dividers.

Park Guell was originally envisioned as a housing development outside of the city. Only two houses were built but much of the infrastructure was and that is what has become the park. The dragon fountain is the symbol of Barcelona and it is in this park.

Gaudi’s real masterpiece in my mind, and I think much of the world’s is Sagrada Familia. This is a categorized as a Basilica not a Cathedral and it is still in progress. When it will be done, who really knows. Gaudi kicked it off knowing that he would not see it completed but laid out the master plan and then also left it open for future generations to make their particular personal stamps.

End Your Programming Routine: Barcelona is a top twenty-five world destination and Gaudi is part of that. As you know me, I am not all about collectivism or subjective interpretation but I can admire a future thinker and a reverent one at that. Gaudi is one of the founding voices in modernism. It has taken me a while to appreciate that type of expression but in many ways modernism is a more complex presentation. It may appear simpler or cruder even but there can be more behind the image.

June 24, 2022 – Podcast Episode 3, Dungeons and Dragons

June 24, 2022 /

I suppose game playing has become more acceptable, particularly role-playing games. Now that they can be played on the computer or game console and not had to be read out of a book, more people do it. Yes, I was one of those Dungeons and Dragons nerds in middle school and high school. Today, I make an argument for why I benefited from playing those games.

Anecdotally, we started watching Stranger Things recently. You know that the opening scene has the four characters playing Dungeons and Dragons. We are mostly through the first season, if you have seen it then you will see the undertones of Dungeons and Dragons keep popping up.

I actually wrote the outline of this podcast May 17, 2019. I was trying build up a library of show topics before actually starting to podcast. I remember what happened was that my wife was not totally into the name, then I kind of got put off and stopped working on the project all together (until December). I did keep them and I was looking for something non-temporal to talk about.

End Your Programming Routine: We should be on our way home by the time this is published. I am currently unable to predict the future, so we will see how things go for next week. For now, I am going to leave my point in the podcast and hope that I am able to get back in the groove Monday. Until then, enjoy your weekend.

June 17, 2022 – Looking for a Quick Win

June 17, 2022 /

I want to start building some rigor into podcasting and unfortunately, the timing is poor with me being in Spain. I thought maybe I would talk about some travel tips today since I have flown quite a bit. In addition, I have flown internationally many more times that I would like and this all fits into what I have up to lately.

At one time, I was a Delta Platinum frequent flyer (back when that was the highest tier) and I even got a Christmas card from a hotel one year. I know a bit about travelling. What I am trying to convey is not the nuts and bolts of travelling or packing tips or how to get the best deals or the most out of travel but best practices.

The Merriam Webster definition of best practices are as follows: a procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results and that is established or proposed as a standard suitable for widespread adoption. To be clear, these are most typically opinions from subject matter experts (like myself in this case). There is nothing saying that there are not conflicting opinions labelled as best practices from different sources.

Travelling for business and travelling for vacation are not exactly the same thing but they share a lot in common. Primarily, they are both travel. I think most people in the business world pack and orient toward speed. Meaning ‘How can I get off the plane and get home as fast as possible’? This means no checking bags and keeping things as compact as possible. I am going to let the the podcast speak for itself for the rest of this.

End Your Programming Routine: Bear with me, this is the beginning. I have listened several times and heard the smacks and uh’s too. I mean, I don’t think it is too bad considering these are off the cuff and I don’t have much practice. I anticipate adding some bumper music and working on a more standard intro and exit. But overall, I am pretty happy with what I have here.

June 14, 2022 – In the Storm

June 14, 2022 /

I talked about the appearance remodel that began Monday of last week. We survived nearly a week without a kitchen. As I predicted, there will be a host of changes as a result. The floor is going to get painted as well as the cabinets. Not all of the the cabinets are going back up. And, I will have to build some shelves to replace the corner unit. The ceiling is going to be torn out with new lights and so on and so forth.

I am not upset, there is no point. But I am not totally happy. I think that it is wasteful to get rid of the cabinets and I think that we are adding less functional shelving to replace it. I am not a fan of painting wood for the most part either. The only thing that I can kind of understand is painting the floor. I will be interested to see how that works out.

There are some things that I just cannot care too much about. And this is going to be one of them. I think that it will be nice when it is done, I just don’t think that it is necessary. This is one of my not going to die on hills.

I think the other issue that I had is that this is going to keep the kitchen in disarray for some unknown time. Enough of that though. I have my own projects to worry about. plus we have deck work starting this week and the fence and now driveway soon.

End Your Programming Routine: After the kitchen is done, there will be one room remaining that hasn’t been touched since we moved in. That is what is the master bathroom. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is next on the list as it is 90’s ugly. Just like I like my furniture buy once cry once, I hope that removing the paneling and adding tile is one of those changes.

June 13, 2022 – Baseball, Graduation and Better Weather?

June 13, 2022 /

I was looking back on the years and I wax poetically about graduation at some point every year. This of course is the time that it happens. High school graduation was last Friday and the local university graduation was last Saturday. I love the hope that graduation represents. I love the party atmosphere, people seem to genuinely be in a good mood around town.

High school is really a stage gate. We went to some of the recent end of year awards ceremonies where seniors were recognized. Some of them put in a huge amount of time over the years, 1100 hours dedicated to one discipline. There was real emotion about the tenure ending. However, the exuberance about graduating is really like a caged animals getting released.

College graduation has a quite different feel. I would say it is more of a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. Because everyone has taken a different walk to get there, there is a different level for each person. Some have their parents, some have their kids, some are with friends because the family is far away and some are alone because that is the the way they wanted it. Each person knows that they have put in the work to meet the requirements to graduate. And so a new life begins.

Graduation is the transition between the school year and summer. When I was a kid, summer was the time to play baseball. I would say that it is was my favorite sport at that point, even though I really wasn’t good enough to make the ‘A’ team or the high school team. So, my participation in baseball waned as I got into high school. But, it doesn’t mean that I lost my appreciation for the game.

When I was younger and seemingly had all the time in the world. I would follow baseball. Later, I made attempts at some points but I guess I just couldn’t dedicate all the time. For a year or two we went to five or so minor league games before kids. The local team was a San Francisco Giants Single A team that was chocked full of future major leaguers like Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval. They tore up the Northwest Summer League. Unfortunately, that league was shut down in 2020 and never to return.

College baseball is somewhat big here as well. The Oregon State Beavers have won three national titles since 2006. I was listening to the Beavers play Vanderbilt last week and between the two schools they had five national titles this century. That is nearly a quarter of all the titles in that time frame.

Amazingly, they got in two games over the weekend (best two of three). Other events were not so lucky. There was an absolute deluge of rain Friday night which forced high school graduation inside. I have sat in the seats when it was raining before. It rained off and on all Saturday making college graduation hit an miss. And, baseball managed to miss it all. Last weekend, they played in rain that I thought for sure would postpone things.

This seems to be one of those years that maybe things will turn around July 4th. In the ten day forecast, I don’t see any highs above 73 degrees with more rain predicted. Yesterday, the high temperature was only 58 degrees. It feels more like Alaska than what we have been used to in the last five years. That being said, I remember a year in the 1990s that we didn’t get a temperature in the 80s until mid August.

End Your Programming Routine: In Oregon, you can’t stop for the rain. You just have to work around it. I guess what I can say is 20-30 years down the road you will remember bits and pieces about the graduation ceremony but not necessarily the weather. So, congratulations grads enjoy your moment and go Beavers.

June 10, 2022 – Just Do It

June 10, 2022 /

It was 1988 when this slogan came out. Athletes like Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan were in their prime and leading the charge. I was in middle school and of course, it was the coolest thing to emulate or wear certain marketing slogans (like this one). We had no idea what it really implied and we were not the target audience, but it did leave an impression didn’t it?

Truthfully, I haven’t given it much thought in years. I did some quick research on current marketing slogans and I don’t see much that I actually recognize. ‘Just Do It’ is credited with turning Nike into a global apparel juggernaut. I am a little biased I suppose because I grew up in Oregon and it always seemed that way to me, but that is what the experts says. I think that there is something to that motivation. Stop thinking about everything and just try.

Well, I did it. I stopped putting excuses like researching the right host for scalability and just created a free account on castbox.fm. There may be some consequences in the future, but I think I will treat it like I did my earlier WordPress transition. I will build a beta library of podcasts that I will probably divert later. But, if I never get started, I will never get it done.

This podcast was inspired by some real stuff going on. I wanted to speak up, but I didn’t feel like it was going to make a change in the outcome. Plus, my thoughts were not truly organized. I had more to say so I did this podcast.

I am not promising that this is the end all or that I will switch formats but I think that I want to start adding at least a podcast a week. Maybe Fridays are the days to do that? Maybe this will change, but it actually took more work to make this podcast. Just writing the outline probably took as much time as actually writing a post. For now, I am going to just try to get familiar with the technical aspects and see how it goes.

There are still things to do to make this fly and I don’t even know what they all are. There is adding the RSS feed to the popular podcast vendors like Apple, iHeartRadio and Spotify. I should find some bumper music, learn more about editing, etc. But, I am not going to worry about problems that I don’t really have either. I would like to have a small catalog of podcasts before I really look into the distribution.

As an avid listener to podcasts, I am aware of some of the gotchas, especially free services. Maximum posts per month, maximum post size and total catalog limits. Then there is bandwidth throttling and random ad placement. So far, I have seen none of this but we will see what kind of problems come up with this arrangement. I am not opposed to paying, but I want to make sure that it is a business expense, not a personal expense.

End Your Programming Routine: It feels real. It is what I started this endeavor to do in the first place. Honestly, I think writing every day has helped me eliminate some of my fears but it also gave me a crutch not to move forward. I am happy that I finally broke that barrier. Looking forward to podcasting again.

June 6, 2022 – Symphony for the Masses

June 6, 2022 /

My kids are into music. I understand, I was once a high schooler in band. I suppose that it did build some appreciation for classical music as well. I definitely enjoyed playing music rather than listening to it anyway. We had a family outing over Memorial Weekend and it was a night at the Oregon Symphony.

I’m sure when you think of symphony, you think of fancy, expensive, a little bougie. I do, so I wouldn’t blame you. This was something different as a more approachable and quite smart way to draw in a new audience. This was the Oregon Symphony playing the score of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

This event drew in the Harry Potter fans, symphony goers, kids and the like. The audience was encouraged to interact with the movie by cheering or jeering however we saw fit. There were definitely people that had their Harry Potter garb on as well as people that appeared to be on dates. It was quite the mix.

The movie plays on the screen while the symphony plays the soundtrack to go along with it. At $50/ticket, it was the most expensive movie I have ever watched. I do have to say, since I have never seen the movie (I did read 75% of the book), I found myself focusing primarily on the screen and not the sound. I guess I would say, if you prefer the music then this experience may not be for you.

It seems like they have been doing this for some time, I just recently became aware of it. There will be another one in two months that is the music from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. We are already talking about whether we want to buy tickets or not.

Looking at other upcoming performances, it does seem like this is not the symphony of 30 years ago. In addition to what you might expect, the next performance is Beethoven’s 9th Symphony there is also a Beatle’s tribute as well as a Star Wars vs Star Trek concert. So, it does seem like they are trying to reach a broader audience.

End Your Programming Routine: We did get dressed up. We had to go to Portland and pay for parking. With that came a midnight stop at a 24 hour diner as well as a friend a piece for each of my boys. So, this was not an inexpensive outing. I couldn’t think of a more unique scenario to enjoy a holiday weekend.