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March 10, 2021 – 1984 1:5

March 10, 2021 /

Back to the grind here, today we are taking another look at George Orwell’s ‘1984’. Chapter 5 is an interaction between Winston and some co-workers at lunchtime in the cafeteria. The significance of this chapter reveals Winston’s opinions about some of his closer relationships and the constitution of his character.

The best description that I would give is that Winston tolerates his co-workers by circumstance. Meaning, he begrudgingly accepts the company of others even though it seems like he cant stand being around them. Not only does Winston have difficulty empathizing with their opinions but also it seems that the general scarcity has caused some self-protectionist behaviors. There are several questions about the availability of razor blades for instance where Winston denies having a few.

As we dive a little deeper into the subtext of this chapter, we see the betrayal of human emotion on the goals of Big Brother eradicating descent and non-conformity. I will talk a little more about those things when I analyze the chapter concepts below.

Chesnut Tree Cafe- It seems like there is a place in the allowable world that decenters are permitted to gather. Of course, there is risk in associating with such a place. I find it a little strange that such a place is allowed even though in all totalitarian societies venues are underground. My speculation is that it is easier to monitor the activity by permitting it.

Face Crime- Just as it says, the face implicates a person for a crime. The truth is, you don’t even have to be guilty but facial expression is probable cause for a crime. It would seem that guilt or innocent is irrelevant to the act, but rather suspicion. Even worse than that, anyone can report a person for suspicion based on appearance.

Newspeak Dictionary 11th ed- Another reference to changing the language. A sort of silly, sort of make sense discussion takes place about the elimination of idioms and the peculiarities of the English. The stated goal is to simplify the syntax but the reality reinforces language as a tool of freedom and self expression.

Our New Happy Life- This is the current propaganda campaign. With this slogan, it signifies everyone’s struggle together to achieve a higher plane and stated goals. Once again, propaganda is used to simplify and summarize Big Brother’s goals.

As we get to the end of the chapter we see some foreshadowing. This woman with the dark hair seems to be appearing frequently. Not only does it seem like she will play a bigger role in the future, but I cant help but think these are references to loneliness, sexuality and repression. I guess that we will have to keep reading to see.

March 9, 2020- Personal Security in the Digital Age

March 9, 2021 /

I was first exposed to an open source password manager called KeePass a number of years ago. When I worked in support, I had to have many different accounts at the ready, often on a moments notice. One of the biggest disadvantages was that it was limited to a computer, at least I was smart enough to only put work relevant information on it.

A couple of years ago, I thought that I would want to start using an application like this again. I found one for the phone called MiniKeePass. Early in 2020, the app makers announced that it would no longer be supported by the end of the year. So, I have been ‘riding dirty’ every since.

The problems are, one that there is a lot of information currently saved in MiniKeePass. I also had an old system using Evernote. How to get it out before it is lost forever by an OS update or some other problem. You would be surprised the number of job board logins, etc I have accumulated over the years. According to Apple, it can be backed up, but how do you access the database?

As a result, I am in the search for a good password vault. I need to get these things moved before something happens. I don’t have a lot of requirements, just a few. I don’t want to pay for a service but I am willing to buy an app. I don’t want cloud back-up and potential security vulnerability of someone else storing. Lastly, I would like to be able to access it from multiple devices.

Searching around, I found this app Myki. It is free and it shares across devices. The biggest downside I have found so far is that you have to purchase additional categories. So, for instance I don’t really want to have 400 accounts in one view because I only use four of five routinely.

I am taking a sort of hybrid approach. You can create custom ‘Notes’. I create a note on the category that I want to keep track of. Then I add all the seldomly used accounts under the custom notes. The drawback of such an approach is that you will not get the auto-fill functionality on a webpage. Or said differently, Myki will not fill in account information automatically. I am OK with that, these are accounts that I may never use again.

On a slightly related note, I have been trying out the Brave browser and the Duck-Duck-Go search engine. Post the Capitol riots, I found out that Mozilla is not the patron saint of freedom like I previously thought. One interesting thing about the Brave browser is that you are awarded cryptocurrency for using it. This is one of those things that may never amount to much but there is no harm.

I have known about Duck-Duck-Go for years. This is a search engine that values privacy. So far, I have been happy but I have heard that it is not quite as diligent as Google. I guess we will see.

So, those are some new options for privacy and security. My preference would be to have the same ID and password everywhere, but that is far from secure and a best practice. I am trying to change habits now before something happens.

March 8, 2020- It’ll do for now

March 8, 2021 /

I suppose that you could say that this is my second official weekend since I began my new job. While working for Amazon, I don’t think that I had an entire weekend but I did have blocks of two consecutive days off, I just never really knew when they would be. We would get our schedule for the next week (starting on Sunday) on Friday. I pretty much kept every kind of planning in limbo.

So, now that there is some normalcy, I am feeling the pressure to get stuff done when I have the time. It is also the appropriate kind of stuff that needs to be done like I finished pruning the apple tree on Saturday. I needed light, I wanted reasonable weather and I needed it to be done before it starts budding out, which is coming fast. One more thing about that, I haven’t done that job in probably over ten years, it took a lot more effort than I remember or expected.

I have stated that building an office is a priority. I can’t build an office if I am spending all of Saturday pruning and all of Sunday with the family. I talked about pruning already but my boys have a campout this weekend with the Boy Scouts and despite all of our previous efforts, they still don’t have adequate gear. We had to get that sorted out before next Saturday because they need pack weights and meal plans to be made, etc.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been working off the dining table. That works to a point, but we need that space to eat. That means that I am daily setting up and tearing down. I have also added an extra monitor to my routine because the workspace on a single laptop display is not good for comparing two documents or having a meeting and viewing other documents at the same time. For productivity reasons, I needed an office sooner rather than later.

I decided last week that part of what was holding me back on starting was that it was such a mess in the basement. Stuff is piled everywhere. One thing that I have to do during the rainy season is make sure that anything that could get damaged is off of the floor. That leads piling stuff on stuff to protect our precious junk. It is not just that, it is also I am the only one who manages anything in the basement. It becomes the refuge everything that has been rotated out of service, but still has value including nick-knacks, clothes, seasonal items, etc. I cant even start until I have room to start and I have no room to start.

Sunday night, I started clearing the way and just organizing. I thought that if I could just clear enough space to work, it would also help get me motivated to continue. The other bugaboo is that the basement is essentially unheated. It is tempered by being mostly underground and there is some leaking heat, but too cold to want to sit for hours. I figured that would also push me to work faster. Here is what I came up with.

After sitting through my first one hour meeting, I knew that I was going to have to make some changes to the heat situation. I have a sweatshirt and a jacket on as well as wearing a hat. My upper body is OK, but not my legs and feet. I have a baseboard heater that I salvaged out of the apartment remodel that I was planning on using in the office, but I need heat now. I also have an empty 240V circuit that had a baseboard heater in the bathroom which I removed years ago because the bathroom has central heat now.

I quickly wired the baseboard heater under my computer table to see if that will make a difference, I think it will but I need to be more in front of the heater and not to the side like I am currently setup. So, more junk organizing to come. I may also need to add some deflectors to keep the heat originating under the table and not defusing in all directions.

I will want to shut-off the heat at the circuit breaker each day because a baseboard will continue to heat if the temperature drops below a minimum level, nominally 50 degrees F. I also want to get a thermometer down here to monitor the daily temperature swings with and without heat. My ultimate office plan includes insulation, so this heater will be completely adequate for that use but there is no way for it to warm a leaky basement. Right now this is only a comfort measure.

March 5, 2021 – We Must Be Dumb: How Entertainment and Opinion Has Become News

March 5, 2021 /

I almost wrote about this yesterday but I didn’t want to break tradition with ‘Tacticool’ Thursday. Usually, one of the first things I do is scan the headlines on the Bing homepage when I log on. I still like to be informed and well rounded. There were at least four articles concerning whatever hullabaloo is happening with the TV show ‘The Bachelor’.

Admittedly, I clicked on one of the articles to try and determine how serious whatever issue is happening could be with so many stories in the headlines. From what I could tell, it seems to be a whole lot of nothing. Not only did I not learn anything, I looked at a couple more articles to see if it was just poorly written – which I see a lot of these days and got about the same level of information.

I did some more research for the purposes of this article where it seems like one contestant did something in her past that is now considered racially insensitive and apparently the host put out a defense of the contestant and both of them, including the TV show is now on the ‘Woke Blacklist’. Wow, I invested my time for that?

For the record, I find these shows and their ilk to be trashy and vapid. I root for their demise. On the side of freedom, entertainment and choice I have no problem with their existence. That being said, the lines between news, entertainment and opinion almost don’t exist. If you actually look at my screenshot there are four articles on ‘The Bachelor’, four other entertainment articles, three ads and two on politics. That is my ‘front page’.

Granted, there is no specific guarantee what Bing is presenting, there is some sort of Artificial Intelligence (AI) running to present customized view based on previous clicks. I suppose that the application of the definition of news is subjective as well. I looked up the definition of news for clarity.

Giving the smell test about ‘The Bachelor’ information

1a. The event is recent

1b. The information is previously unknown to me

1c. It does not have influence to me, but unfortunately it has the appearance to effect a lot of people.

2a. It was reported on a ‘news’ aggregator Bing.

2b. Honestly, I cannot defend this definition.

Here is where the rubber is going to meet the road, so to speak. In my opinion, applying the five sub-definitions of news ‘The Bachelor’ story fails to meet two of the five definitions. Additionally, I give a conditional pass to being displayed on Bing, however given the preponderance of all of the articles I would wager don’t fit the definition either and actually discredit Bing as a valid provider of news. Just because I don’t know something that just happened is a flimsy excuse to call anything news.

Another opinion, but the two most important definitions are worthiness (2b) and specified influence (1c). Admittedly, those two have some subjective aspect to them. One person’s worthiness is not necessarily another. But, let us take a look at that definition.

Now, applying ‘Worthy’ to the situation

1a. No

1b. No

2. No

When we play word games, if there is one definition that fits then we say it meets the definition ignoring the others. I think that is where we are getting to with news. It is actually a word game that meets one definition, it is a recent, unknown event.

I am going to credit Glenn Beck for bringing to my attention that we all have bias. I am surely not objective, I have already stated my opinion on the show and this article that I am writing is categorized as ‘opinion’ to begin with. That is fine, I can accept that. The problem is when bias is used to manipulate the facts to propagate an agenda, without transparency of doing so.

Let me circle back to the premise. I guess what disturbs me is not that there is a mixture of articles both what I think is important and not. For instance, I often look at sports articles which I would argue are not important as well. But, the weighted number of articles are skewing the entire page as irrelevant.

Within my circle of concern, I feel as though people are bombarded with information that is not worthy without the transparency of how their individual view is made. If they chose to have their ‘news’ be 90% entertainment but could resolve a different proportion if desired, then I would be more fine with it. Just like 1984, information either makes people believe anything they are told or nothing. I fear that it is more the former than the latter.

Without getting too conspiratorial, I feel we are being programmed. It is the very premise of this site “End Your Programming”. I won’t speculate why even though I have my own opinions. My hope is that we occasionally get critical about the world around us and how we interact so that we make choices rather than be led.

March 4, 2020 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

March 4, 2021 /

I finally made it to the range last weekend. It was the first time since August and I had some goals that I wanted to accomplish. For one, I have had a rifle that I have owned since 2016 and have only test fired, not sighted in. I also made changes to some of the parts and I didn’t really know if those changes effected the function or not. This trip was planned for April of last year before the pandemic closed the range so I have been looking forward to this for quite a while.

One of the problems for a reloader with a semi-automatic rifle is that spent brass is flung out of the rifle as it is fired. In the past, I have been able to find most of the brass, but sometimes it is muddy or you step on them as they are fired which is less than ideal. Fortunately in the AR platform, Caldwell has a solution for this. This range trip was also a first for this gadget as well.

I have to say that it worked pretty well. I didn’t get close to the 100 rounds before it was full. I would say that by about twenty or so, the weight was heavy enough to pull it out of place but it is pretty easy to unzip the bottom and empty it. I could have made some effort to make sure that the device was mounted more securely but I was mostly shooting off of a bench and working on sighting in so I rolled with it.

One downside I would say is that the brass catcher interfered with visibility of the action. I cant say for sure that it actually interfered with the function but I did have a few issues.

On two out of three magazines, I had issues with initial charging. That very easily could have been the magazine. I have heard that people typically load 28 instead of 30. Again, this is the second time I have shot this and I haven’t even tried all the different magazines I own. I did experience one failure to eject. At this point, I am going to attribute that to the brass catcher. I suspect that it can interfere with the flight path of the empty casing.

In the following years to come, I will pay more attention to all of these variables. The goal of this trip was to function fire all of the changes and get the sight reasonable at 100 yards. A firearm that is not sighted in is really not useful beyond point blank range. Plus, with the ammo shortage, the cost is astronomical at this point so I am going to put off more heavy shooting until things calm down a bit on the market.

My plans for the next range trip is to spend some time on shotgun slugs and sights. I have some new sights that I want to get sighted in and I figured that zeroing on a slug would be the best way even though I would primarily plan to use buckshot with it. After all, a shotgun is most advantageous with shot because I have better rifles.

Even though I have the shotgun interlude planned for next month, my goal this year is to get my Rossi 92 tuned up. It needs sighting in as well as it shot 10 inches to the right at fifty yards. I didn’t have a punch to make the necessary adjustments as this was the first time I have shot it beyond 25 yards. I need to spend some time deburring sharp edges and probably will spend some time smoothing the action as well. Those will be iterative efforts. Both this one and the AR were supposed to be more plinking toys with inexpensive ammo. So much for that.

March 3, 2021 – 1984 1:4

March 3, 2021 /

Chapter four was an interesting chapter. It was really kind of a day in the life of Winston at work. We have seen a little bit about the people that he works with but not necessarily what he does or how he does it.

We learn that work is Winston’s greatest pleasure, how newspeak is decoded and how you would go about putting it into function. We also hear speculation that people may work on the same items and after submission, the best version might be chosen for use. There is no way to tell exactly.

I suppose that the greatest refining that is done in this chapter is the description of what the propaganda is that Big Brother generates and how it is put into play. Below are the concepts that I drew as the highlights in the chapter.

Double standards – As with many totalitarian societies, the propaganda arm engages in the very activities that it prohibits the members from owning or viewing. The Ministry of Truth is involved in making material for the proles that has severe punishment for party members.

I do not know exactly why that is done. But I could speculate that it possibly brings in cash to the government. Likely, also the higher ups probably have access to the prohibited material and probably enjoy it at their whim. The principle being that control is much more important than actual morality.

The unperson– Individuals that cross the party risk becoming an ‘unperson’. Speculation from Winston is that person is dead rather than becoming reprogrammed. But it also means that all references to that individual are expunged. They sort of disappear through the Newspeak process.

Hero building – Comrade Ogivly– In some cases, it is necessary to to build people up in Newspeak. Interestingly enough, Winston is given some discretion to to create a character with (potentially) false commendations and a romanticized background. He knows enough about the system to carefully craft the hero’s bio because getting too extravagant can cause a lot of extra work and potentially causing Winston problems in turn.

We are getting a good handle on the dreary landscape of Winston’s world. Hero’s are not real, what we see is a made up as an uber caricature of the values of society. Villain’s do not exist other than the fictionalized and amorphous, race representatives. The effects of propaganda are working as all the misinformation leaves people to believe nothing.

For all of you Newspeak fans out there, I leave this today.

March 1, 2021 – Goalsetting Versus Priorities

March 1, 2021 /

I just realized that for the entire month of February, I had titled the date as ‘2020’ and not ‘2021’. I guess that I have been in la la land. Now that error is corrected, we can go on in peace.

I feel like goalsetting is a skill that I have a pretty good handle on and a source of pride. Like most people, I have been guilty of saying goals and not actually doing anything about them. In that scenario, the goal is actually not on a path to completion. For instance, I have said right here in this forum the following things

  1. Q1 I am going to develop a business and marketing plan for this sight
  2. I announced last fall that I was going to build front yard garden beds
  3. My current first priority is to build an office to work from

All three of these things I have made almost no progress. My first regret is that planting season is about six to eight weeks away. If I do not get garden beds made, even one, then I will not be able to keep practicing my food producing skills. Furthermore, this is the time to start seeds so that they can get into the ground. I am weighing whether I should even start seeds because I have a competing priority of building an office.

At least I have some excuses for the office project. I am waiting for a proper paycheck to start buying materials. However, there are tasks that require no money at this point such as clearing the space to build, producing the design and plan are essentially free. What it boils down to is priorities.

Most of yesterday, nearly half of my weekend I was pre-occupied with another task. I won’t get down into the nitty-gritty details but it had to do with my kids returning from an overnight camping trip. The stated issue was that there were some gear failures during the trip. We went through the gamut of not participating again to why this current gear wasn’t good enough. In one example we have gone through four different sleeping bags, none of which are adequate.

Again, this was a long conversation (and day). The problem with the gear failure is not the gear but the mindset of the use. Or said another way, it is my son’s toolbox fallacy. If I only had a better sleeping bag, then I would be comfortable instead of improving shelter skills or making a better bedding foundation or picking shelter location.

Bringing back to priorities, my priorities override my optional goals. Being a father is much higher on the list than building an office of a garden bed or setting up a business. Being a husband overrides being a father sometimes because that relationship will span longer than raising children. And without stability in those cases, it is difficult to be successful with goals.

I also consider my career as part of priorities of both husband and father. I wish that I was in a financial position to keep working on building a business rather than working a job, but that is not a reality at this time. In order to consider additional want’s and desires into the priority matrix, they must fit into my existing priority scales. Of course time is a limiting factor that we all have.

Here are some tips that I have for this scenario

  • Set your priorities first, that way you have the ability to triage how you handle your life.
  • Periodically review your priorities and compare them to recent events to determine if you are living according to your values
  • Set reasonable goals realizing that there is only so many things that you are going to be able to accomplish after priorities are handled.
  • Periodically review your goals to determine your desire to achieve them and the validity as actual goals.
  • You have the ability to refocus milestones within goals and deadlines (for the most part). To me, the most psychologically import aspect of achievement is making progress.
  • If you are not making progress be honest with yourself about how much effort has been made or maybe your milestones are too broad and need to be redefined to show progress better.

I also believe in accountability as a technique for success. If you state your intentions and someone is watching or waiting for results then you are less likely to to skip or do things half-hearted. It is true that some cases are successful with personal accountability, but that means that it has to be something that you really want. I know that has been part of my issue. I was hoping that when I say that I want to do something, it would push me to get it done even if I am dragging my feet.

Ultimately, desires wax and wane. I am periodically evaluating my goals against my priorities. But, goals also have to have priority. So, I haven’t fully decided what exactly will change but I can’t possibly do everything as fast as I would like to have it done. But, I am not going to feel bad about it because they are my goals, not anyone else’s.

I am going to go prune the apple tree that I was going to cut down during the winter now.

February 26, 2021 – 1984 1:3

February 26, 2021 /

Going through my analysis is kind of like watching paint dry, right? Of course, I am doing the best that I can but I do recognize that I am moving kind of slowly. I thought maybe we would savor one chapter a week or so.

Chapter three is another short chapter. It starts out with a dream that Winston has and finishes with another session with the telescreen. Instead of introducing new terms, this chapter starts to develop the idea of the effects of Big Brother.

Erasing Emotion- Strong themes are building that tie emotion to being human and how over time emotion is being stripped. Love and sexuality continue to dominate the list of emotions. There is the love of his mother and then the sudden appearance of a naked woman without context to the rest of his dream.

It is not the first time that we have heard that Winston pre-dates the transition to Big Brother. But he was young and therefore lives in a partial world of pre-governmental transition with some remnants of what we would consider family values. We are led to believe that his mother died as a result of loving her son, Winston. It is a thought crime after all.

Distinguishing emotion and function I would say differentiates humans from machines and possibly humans from other animals. So, by removing emotion it sort of homogenizes people as really an entity rather than an individual. Supervised activities such as periodic calisthenics further attempts to keep people’s minds from wandering but also unifies common experience; another standardization tactic.

Dreams and sexual repression continue to build in the next couple of chapters. Those will be covered when we get there. I just had a wild hare and searched the connection between Freud and Orwell right now as I was writing this. It would seem like I am not the only one to have seen a commonality. Here is an example.

That is just one example of the multiple opinions and connections that people have made. It does appear that people have put much more effort into this than I have, for instance I saw a Master’s Degree thesis in my search. I have personally never studied psychology so I am not really qualified to speak on the validity of the argument. However, I do recognize the components of Freudian psychology and the connections to the story line.

Wow, that just twisted my mind. Here I was thinking that this story was a brilliant forecasting of the future and it could be much more dimensional then that. Maybe the story accidently predicted the future or maybe the Freudian theory really is driving the behavior of humanity? I am going to leave it there for today as something to think about.

February 25, 2021- ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

February 25, 2021 /

Another Thursday has rolled around, seems like we were just here. I have little to report as of the last week, I have spent most of my time adjusting to my new schedule. I am trying to target better bedtimes for appropriate rest. This is one of the things that I have identified as a success criteria this time.

I know that I was in a state of chronic fatigue. It definitely took some time, I would say probably a month to six weeks to begin to feel rested again. That is not typically a luxury that a working person has, taking a month off to recover. It definitely plays a role in what I am going to accomplish moving forward as well. Night time has overflow capacity to spill what you are working on into time that you should be getting ready for bed.

Maybe sleep patterns are ‘Tacticool’ to some, but they don’t fit my definition. This week, I have been advising my dad on some reloading tips. He is a reloader from way back. Reloading goes along with frugality, hunting and the rural lifestyle so it seems to fit the bill as something I was exposed to as a youngster. I should say too, we weren’t big shooters growing up, needless to say that we didn’t do it often.

That is why when I shot some of the loads he made up thirty years ago, I had some issues. I had bullets that weren’t well seated and cartridges that didn’t chamber to name a few issues. I mentioned it a few years ago and now that he wants to load some rifle cartridges, he was asking my opinion about what was wrong. Reloading is not difficult but does benefit from a meticulous approach. I would also say that it does require a minimum level of equipment to get started. Even the various starter kits don’t provide everything necessary to get started.

Take calipers for example. While not strictly necessary, case length and overall cartridge length are critical measurements to properly chamber a round. No kit that I know of contains calipers. And what if the case length is too long, how do you correct that? Brass has to be trimmed. My dad does not have a trimmer (good luck finding anything these days) so I loaned him mine.

Reloading is an entire hobby unto itself. Some obsolete cartridge brass can be manufactured out of others. You can get into bullet casting from lead. Then there is what load/bullet perform best for your firearm. Wildcatting is making your own cartridges.

Even if you have zero interest in reloading, having a manual can be useful. I have several and I also use online manufacturers sources as well. There is always cartridge information, specifications and loads showing what is popular and potentially available. These days, the internet can do many of these things but I think that it is helpful when developing a load to cross check multiple sources because errors can have serious consequences. It should also be noted that there is a warning to only use current, professionally published data is recommended. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should.

I also keep a log book of my loads because each firearm potentially performs best with a different load combination. I am not at the point where I can say that I have mastered all of those variables for each firearm so I keep track and make notes after shooting. The thought is that at some point I will aggregate all of the data points and refine my loads to the best performing suggestions.

Everyone in the firearms community by this point knows that everything is in scarcity and reloading components and tools are no exception. So, unless you have been collecting all of the materials pre-pandemic this is not a time that you will likely get started. I would say that I had all of the tools for four years before I made my first cartridge.

My long term strategy was to 1) set a minimum factory ammunition goal 2) shoot enough factory ammunition to build a brass cache for reloading 3) build enough reloaded ammunition to maintain a sufficient inventory (for times like these) and then 4) build enough components stock to weather a long term outage. You will probably never have everything that you want, but I would say that I have some. I think that I talked about the last shortage being only primers which I do have plenty for now but not bullets or powder for experimenting.

If you think that you might want to get into it at some point, save your brass, buy a manual and build a workspace. Secondhand reloading equipment is good value as well if you can find it. Maybe you know someone that does it and can teach you or help you or share equipment.

February 23, 2021 – Just as I suspected…seems like things haven’t changed much

February 23, 2021 /

This is going to be a quick one. I am going to do my best to keep these two worlds at bay with each other. But, it is probably worth some commentary after my first couple of days.

It was a two days over twenty-two months since I clocked into a desk job. There are definitely some pros and cons. I have to say that in some ways there have been some struggles. I am a contractor to a contractor and it can be a real sink or swim experience in this remote/Covid/big company atmosphere.

Sitting in on a couple meetings, I have seen where I can probably hit the ground running. It feels like old hat listening to project representatives sort of muddle through their assignments and not sure of how to proceed. I wanted to jump in an participate, but I don’t think that is exactly my role and it definitely wasn’t my assignment. I was just invited as a courtesy, something to do.

The culture seems positive. So far, it seems like there are reasonable amounts of work and the deadlines don’t feel killer. Often, that is a double edged sword leaving lots of time places for mediocracy to hide. It is one of my pet peeves, we will see.

I think that I mentioned this earlier, but my schedule is Central Time. So, I start work at 6AM but the nice thing is that I am finished by mid-afternoon. Being out of practice, the time in between end of work and bedtime sure does fly. I will have to get in the habit of more rigorous scheduling of my off time activities if I ever want to get anything done.

So far, we have managed to suspend the home office location in favor of not being sure where the best location would be. I haven’t started anything yet other than I bought a door over the weekend and it is not like I have had any time to do anything anyway. The weekend was packed and yesterday I committed to helping my son with his car.

Like I said at the top, I intend to go back to writing about skills and literature and all the things I have been doing over the year. But, I thought a couple of first impressions would make a quick check on this task.