I only have a couple hours a day permitted in my schedule to explore, learn, post and market and then life starts to move in. It is part of the reason why things move slower than I would like. It also means that I need to use my time as effectively as possible.
Today, I have started with researching and adding some new plug-ins. The choices are wide to a point where this is an ala carte endeavor. Each thing can add a couple dollars a month, but what is the return on investment? For instance, I am researching adding a mail client to get more in line with the ‘true fan’ structure. The suggested option from my hosting service is free for the first 500 email addresses and is tiered from there in cost/month.
I can surely get down with free. But will five hundred interested people translate into meaningful revenue to be worth the cost? I don’t know and I don’t want to get locked into something only to switch and lose what is already started. So, I guess I will take it slow.
Another feature I need to explore is the ability to post to other platforms. I am almost a zero adopter of social media, for a good reason I will talk about some other time. But, that being said it definitely has inhibited the ability to leverage some of the most popular and low cost marketing out there. I am lightly active on LinkedIn and Nextdoor but that is really it.
From a principle standpoint, I want to start and grow into spaces that are more concerned about privacy and security. So, using the the platforms that are in line with those concepts are much more appealing to me and I would be much more likely to participate. I have held back a bit as well because I don’t want every post going to LinkedIn for example. They are not appropriate to the landscape of the platform.
Again, today’s post is another snorer. I am testing some features that I added this morning. I promise that I will get back into a better rhythm as the dust starts to settle here. I probably need to set some smaller and more structured goals like adding one feature a week so I can stop writing about dry and technical details and making excuses.
This is going to be short. I have been lost in all the technical junk getting this site going. I have to admit that this isn’t my strong suit as I have never done anything quite like this before. I have spent some time in the Microsoft world of websites and this seems much easier.
I had some trouble getting my domain going. Apparently, there was some issue with the registration information. I had to get tech support to resolve this for me. I am not really sure what the problem was however I suspect that it had to do with the .co domain name because I registered a .net and it was working within the hour that I paid for it.
To get the importing of the old site working, I had to go in the way back machine and modify my host file so that I didn’t need DNS resolution to keep working. It did keep me from generating content however. I think most everything got over to the site reasonably. I did notice that some of the fancier stuff didn’t port across directly like my photo slides from August. I don’t think that it is worth trying to fix at this point.
Another thing I have realized is that I am on my own now. I had to upgrade WordPress and python to get some of the content to render properly. Some of those things are handled automatically when you are on a platform.
My most recent problems have been with getting security working. The SSL certificate was not installed and so people navigating to my site (from work computers) got blocked. I have just enabled that finally after a couple of days reading help files and banging my head. I had to get technical support on that as well as it seems like a cached version of the SSL was installed.
So, that is all to say, I think that I am ready to start moving ahead and putting this public. I can start changing links in my various profiles and maybe I will get some real content this week.
How about that? I am excited to be writing here. Having this site run on it’s own will open a lot of opportunity for me. I believe that I will be able to post audio and video directly without having go to YouTube. I should be able to add plugins so I can begin to create mailing lists and add e-commerce options if I choose.
I am working on a few things right now. Not everything I had on the WordPress site I have working here. There is some difference in the GUI for managing the site. I will keep layering stuff back in as well as changes and improvements. Baby steps…
Alright, I have been dragging my feet and making excuses for almost a year now. I will be working on moving this site to a proper domain and hosting service in the near future. To that end, this site will become dormant soon.
I have gotten out of it what I needed which was to understand the discipline it took to post daily and the creativity to come up with topics that I think are engaging.
For business purposes, I have reasons to have more that one website and I need more than what the free WordPress plan can do for me. Any more practice and not building my businesses are counterproductive. I intend to post until I have fully gotten it up and running, but likely erratically.
It’s interesting, I find this topic difficult to write about consistently. Maybe it is stage fright? It is the one day of the week that I should be able to plan around and I have six or seven things always lined up. Well, I have got one today.
The definition of tactical is “relating to or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end”. I think in the civilian world, we probably think of tactical as an adjective that describes firearms, magazines, ammunition, camouflage, flashlights, knives and other gear like that. Well today I’ve got some tactics and gear that I want you to consider.
That would be strategically placed fire extinguishers, an escape plan, rally points and communication plan to deal with a more likely scenario than a zombie world. You will see from the picture above that I have a fire extinguisher placed next to some flammables like gun powder and primers. That is in case I have a fire while I am smoking and reloading – just kidding, better safe than sorry.
How many fire extinguishers do you need? Good question, I have at least one on every level of my home, one in every vehicle, one in the shop, one in the garage and one soon to be one in the garden shed. They do no good if they are not convenient to reach so for example there is one in the kitchen in case of grease or electrical fire. They are generally placed where they are close to a fuel source or for life protection like in the bedrooms.
For the uneducated, not all fire extinguishers are the same they have an ABC rating system for the type of fuel or fire that they are effective at stopping. Most homeowner versions are an ABC general type. Here is a chart below for reference.
Know Your Fire Extinguisher Sign on white background,Vector illustration
I don’t think this is an adequate forum to address how to use fire extinguishers correctly. However quickly, spray the extinguisher at the base of the fire or what is burning. Think of it as a tool and not an end all. So, the use of the extinguisher should be to allow you to escape the situation, not to put out a fire.
To the end of escape, you should have a plan to exit the building in every room, particularly bedrooms. If your bedrooms are on the second floor, you need a safe way to get to the ground. In my house, the second floors are at least twenty feet above ground so in an extreme situation, jumping is possible with likely injury. For that reason, I have put safety ladders in each of the bedrooms that can be deployed to climb down to the ground.
Once out, we have two meeting spots. One is primary and the other is secondary. Unlike a business where we have countless employees and customers, once out you are pretty much safe and we don’t have to do an extensive headcount or other more complicated procedures.
To that end, it would be a good idea to have a cache of items outside of the home like tools to shut-off gas and water, flashlights, first aid, clothes, spare keys etc. You want to be able to do what you can safely to mitigate further damage to people or property if possible. You also don’t need to be freezing or wet in the middle of the night if that is possible. I have been in hotels where the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night, talk about a learning lesson for a future post.
Meet and know your neighbors so that if you have to leave without your phone you need to get help. Remember that safety is the optimum outcome, not stopping the fire. Fire department results will depend on a quick triage of the situation, likely preventing the fire from burning anything else. I live within one mile of the fire station and have had the unfortunate luck of dialing 911 several times. I have seen response time of 5-20 minutes depending on the time of day. I have even seen out of town units respond when the local department is busy. So remember that if the fire causes evacuation, that extra time isn’t going to help the situation.
First when going to bed, close the doors for an extra barrier of protection. In rooms with closed doors, touch the doorknob for heat, if it is safe to touch then it should be safe to cautiously open. In the case of smoke, get as low to the floor as possible because that will have the cleanest air. Nothing is ever a perfect situation so assessment of go, which direction, etc is unique to each situation. The training for each household member should be to get out individually and meet at the rally point for headcount.
Some other things worth mentioning are make sure you have adequate numbers and functioning smoke detectors as well as CO2 detectors. Make sure your address is visible from the street. Perform a site assessment for flammables around the property. Use temporary solutions temporarily like extension cords outside and unplug when not in use.
Have a fireproof and waterproof container for your most important documents. Make copies and store them on a cloud location or at least off premises for additional backups. Perform an inventory of your belongings for insurance purposes. You can make a video tour of your house periodically to provide a basic layout and store it offsite. Any collections or particularly expensive items may need to be insured separately to be adequately covered (like firearms).
Wow, I had more to say than I originally thought when I sat down. I think there is more here too. I will boil it down to disaster commonality in that this kind of thinking works for more than fires, but also floods or hurricanes and other disaster scenarios. So, start somewhere and put on your thinking cap to develop a plan that will work for you.
This recipe has been a family tradition of mine probably nearly forty years. Original credit goes back to a printing in the Albany Democrat Herald long since lost in the annals of time. It makes a great snack for parties or after the pumpkins are carved.
4 cups – pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup – soy sauce
1/4 cup – butter
2 tablespoons – Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons – lemon pepper
1/2 teaspoon – garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon – celery salt
salt
Optional – dash of cayenne or chili powder
Clean your pumpkin seeds that you removed from your pumpkin. They don’t have to be perfect, in fact a little pumpkin give some sweetness to the seeds that are delicious.
Begin heating the oven at 450 degrees F. Melt the butter with Worcestershire and soy sauce, then whisk into the melted butter. Add the remainder of the dry ingredients.
Put the seeds in a bowl and mix them to coat. Once thoroughly coated, pour out onto a sheet pan to put in the heated oven.
Bake ten minutes and then stir up the seeds to expose mostly un-caramelized seeds. Bake for another five minutes. Take the pan out of the oven and sprinkle salt on the seeds. Wait another 10 minutes for the pan to cool and enjoy.
Now that the important stuff is done, I can tell a story. Don’t you hate those recipes that you have scroll through a bunch of stuff to get to what you want? According to my very limited research on SEO, you want to get right to the content. So there you go, I think I just invented a better way to present blog recipes.
My mom was always a recipe clipper. This one as I have said, came up in the newspaper and was clipped out for the ‘try’ pile of recipes. I seem to recall that it had a few more spices in it that I used, but I think this is the flavor profile I have been using for the last ten years or so.
When my mom made these, my brother and my flavor profile was completely blown. To us, this was exotic. So many spices that were not routinely used in our house. It actually started us trying spices on everything, particularly lemon pepper. We found that we really liked lemon pepper on popcorn. I haven’t done it in a while since it is usually microwaved these days, but it is really good.
Over the years, I have halfheartedly tried to look for the recipe but never finding it. The original was likely thrown out which lead me to making my own out of memory. Here are a few other tips.
Seeds store well in the refrigerator. If you can’t get to them right after carving your pumpkin, you can store them for later. They can also be stored in the freezer for longer term if necessary.
I seem to remember the original recipe having cumin in it. I think curry powder, ginger or five spice powder would also work well for a deeper exotic modification
They are best eaten shortly after preparation. They tend to get soggy overnight like popcorn does.
Not all ‘pumpkins’ are created equal. It seems like most of them these days are specifically for carving and not eating (I am not sure they are actually pumpkins). Seeds can vary from very thin and melon like to very tough. The seed is actually inside the white shell. If it looks tough, it probably is. I am not saying not to try it but the best seeds are from medium sized pumpkins.
I hope that I am not too late for you to try this year. I think that it would be great to hear other suggestions as well. So let me know what you did. Enjoy!
I guess that you could say maybe I hit the mid-life crisis stage a few years early. I got the car (and sold it), I quit my job without a plan and I am still trying to answer that question succinctly. Last night, I realized bigger truth is that we are asking ourselves the wrong wrong question in life.
I believe the proper question is not ‘What’ but ‘Who do you want to be when you grow up’. As I grow older the wisdom of age starts to come into play. The reason things and a high paying career don’t bring happiness is because they really don’t matter. In fact, they do the opposite by cementing you into your unhappiness by propelling you to do things you don’t really want to do to have things that don’t change the happiness paradigm.
It is not easy to go from associating a title and worth to an unknown. Let me give an example. Am I unemployed, retired, a struggling entrepreneur (or an idiot)? Last April when I left my job I told people that I was retired. I was mentally burned out from the years of brutal travel and being on the clock 24/7. While I was employed, my mental numbness was soothed by buying things like tools that there was no way I would ever use because I didn’t ever have the time to do so. I was sure that I wanted something different and controlling my own destiny would go a long way toward self fulfillment.
As time went on, I knew that I was too young to ‘retire’ from a financial perspective but I didn’t have any prospects. Of the interviews I did last year, some of opportunities would have paid a lot more to do similar activities. I briefly considered that if I made more money, the struggle and stress would be worth it. Fortunately or not, none of those opportunities worked out and I shifted to unemployed.
As of the turn of this year, I dedicated more effort into finding a replacement job. Little did I know that the Pandemic economy would change the business landscape. For instance, my wife hasn’t been in her office since March. Many of the large tech companies are decentralizing (locations), potentially forever. Social gathering and networking has been pushed into the virtual domain. More so than ever, job searching has become who you know, increasingly online.
My lack of success being unemployed had forced me to become entrepreneurial for better or worse. I think that it is still very much in line with my happiness. I don’t mind working longer from a timeclock standpoint as long I am controlling my destiny. The real problem is that this is emersion learning and commiserate earning. It will be take some years to become proficient and viable in the business aspects.
One of the reasons that I wrote about being grateful last week is that is a who statement rather than a what statement. Despite the title of the job or the salary attached to the title, knowing who you want to be can help shape your circumstance. Trying a litmus test, here are some characteristics that I think will make me happy.
I want a faith centered life to provide a framework of principles, decision making, accountability and redemption
I want to be a supportive husband, father, son, citizen. I want to be available without guilt to volunteer, attend functions and appointments to do my first duties first
I want to have meaningful relationships that help other people people grow into what they want to be or be safe to be themselves
I want to be a positive force where applied, wanted or needed
I want the freedom of creativity and choice, the scientist in me wants to hypothesize, test and analyze results.
I want the ability to learn from and influence my future based on lessons learned or perceived mistakes
I want merit based reward, not based on tenure or title. This keeps the incentive to innovate and strive for continuous improvement in front
From those things, what career would you say I should be looking for? There are a few things that are applicable to a job but many are not and none are specific. In my talks with associates in the HR field, their advice is that I am not specific enough in my approach, where I am looking or even my interviewing. The way I see it is that I cant be, that is the crisis and dichotomy that lead me here in the first place. I have subconsciously changed my focus to Who and not What and it seems to show in my job searching.
I am going to start wrapping it up. What I will do is keep pushing forward keeping my values in front, evaluating data consistently and things will fall into place. Just as promised in my stated goals, I want to be a positive force for others so I hope that you spend more time focusing on ‘Who you want to be’ rather than ‘What do you want to be’. If you ever get the Who licked then by all means go for it!
Sometimes when I write, I don’t have a solid end goal in mind. I am writing against the clock to get my content generated so that I can move on to the next thing. I really wanted to get an example plan made up so that I could show it in action, but I didn’t want to spend the time I needed to make the plan, craft a well written article and also get some other work done.
Maybe it would be better to hold off and write something more comprehensive. But, the way I am working now, I am looking for not letting perfect be the enemy of the good. So, today I have created the plan for my mantel project and I can talk about how I use it.
On Friday, I introduced the concept of work segments (or units as I have written above). Remember that those are the blocks of time that you have to complete a particular task, or tasks that have a natural ending. So, I have broken my tasks down to what I think I can accomplish on a given date (assuming no interruptions) with no more than four hours a day. If I treat each unit as a work day and my work days are Monday through Friday, then I would in theory be completed with this project on November 4.
I want to say a little more about planning. In my past, my experience and expectations as a project manager was to over plan (in my opinion). If you look at my plan carefully, you will see that there are still decisions to be made. That means that my end date could very well slip because I didn’t build any extra time for ordering bits, testing colors or making mistakes cutting parts. I am very close to margins on my whole lumber bill of material which means I may have to mill up more lumber to finish this project. The truth is, I should have done some of this planning before I started cutting and now I am hoping to make it work.
Wouldn’t then over planning play into my benefit? Well, maybe; the devil is in the details. In my opinion, the best plan is detailed enough to guide your work yet broad enough to have room for unanticipated elements or decisions that have yet to be made. I also feel like too much detail leads to rigidity causing too much time fiddling with the plan instead of working. I actually made this plan more detailed that I would normally to illustrate how the pieces should work together and the consequences of how one thing might effect the other.
If this project was a job, once my project roadmap is set, then I would just get started. I wouldn’t spend any more time adjusting mid-stream unless there is a change in scope for some reason like this changes from a mantel to a whole fireplace surround. Once the bid is confirmed, then there is nothing really to do except document the hours and cost against the plan. There is probably another article about dealing with change some time in the future. I don’t see it on this project, but if the opportunity arises, I will write about it then.
This plan is really for my me and my wife, this is her project and she is the customer. I do use this process but the main reason that I put it together is so that I have a way to communicate where I am at on the project, what is left to do, any expenses that may occur and when she can expect that I will be done. She does not get into the technical details of how things get done or what tool/technique should be used, but she does understand time. Each decision of the day potentially has a compromise on the schedule. It means that to get this finished, time has to be allocated in the shop in addition to my other business dealings and family life. I also have a much larger project, the farm table waiting for this to get done.
When it comes down to it, there is no real deadline for this project. But as I said on Friday, without deadlines things tend to slip and this might get put aside for months. If this were a job, I would want to add travel time to get materials, planning time, billing time and build more time into the schedule to account for unknown. That would then go into my estimate for my bid.
I am going to keep track of my hours for my own business purposes because I have largely done woodworking as a hobby, but I would like to have in my pocket the effort of a custom mantel. I would also mention that I have the material already so there is no cost there. All in all, this is probably a $2000 project for a paying customer.
If you are like me, then you then you tend to prioritize the things that you want to do over the things that you don’t want to do. Or maybe said a better way, I deprioritize the things that I don’t really want to do and find lots of reasons to not do them. This has lead to projects literally sitting around in the shop for years.
Sometimes, when these projects are personal you want to get away from rigidity, accountability and structure. It is OK not to proceed with a plan because that is part of the escapism or hobby aspect. Other times, even when the project is personal the shop space is used for business purposes and having partial built projects is going to be in the way.
Today, I am going to talk about building a project plan to get things accomplished in your life. These are the techniques that are working for me.
Visualize the End State
This probably seems self explanatory, however you need to know what the end state looks like. What is this job going to create, look like, function or how is this going to benefit me? It helps to have an end in mind when starting a project. Without a definable benefit, I would question that there is value to this project.
For wood working projects, I like to sketch out what I think the end state is going to look like. This helps me select the right lumber I am going to need and keep track of the sequencing as I work through the sub steps.
Be Realistic About Your Tools, Space, Skills and Available Time
For me, the biggest gotcha here was not looking at the overall time commitment and just starting on something without regard to how long a project was going to take or even whether this was a priority. I would suggest, look at your schedule and determine what available blocks of time do you have consistently. A 1000 hour project is a lot of nights and weekends.
The reason this step is important and in this order is that later, when you are determining your work segments, you are planning to make success within the time that is available. Let me try to be a little more clear. If you only have one hour a day available, your tasks need to broken down to the point that you can succeed within an hour every day.
Create Work Segments That Fit Your Available Time
If you only have one hour a day to work on a project, then your planning needs to be to that level. Since I am probably largely going to work on this project as part of working time, I won’t have that short of constraint. I will use it as an example.
4hrs – Rough Mill lumber 4x 6″x72″
or
1hr – Find the rough boards in the lumber pile that will yield 6″x72″
1hr – Rough cut four boards 6″x72″
1hr – Joint the four rough cut boards
1hr – Plane the four rough cut boards
Create Your Own Deadlines Using Your Work Segments
You can add up all the job parts and put them on a calendar. That will essentially give you a project time line for completion. Just remember that life is here, I don’t live on an island. I don’t have the luxury of every weeknight and all weekend all the time. I suspect that most people don’t either, so don’t build that in to your plan.
Do also build some extra time into each task if possible to correct mistakes. Unless you are an expert (in which case you probably don’t need this help) you are going to have some things to correct. This is time that can be used to jump ahead in the plan if everything goes well.
I know that once I get things planned, I now want to meet or exceed my own deadlines. That is OK. The point of this whole exercise is to get things done and feel good about it.
Socialize Your Plan for Personal Accountability
It is pretty easy to do all the previous steps and still not get things done. You have to be on edge a little bit about whether you are going to succeed to keep you engaged. A spouse pushing is a pretty big motivator, but a social media post or a friend could also work.
Keep Track of Your Progress for Future Use
Maybe you just guessed at how long something would take and you were badly wrong. You would want to account for that next time. There is also a piece where experience and familiarity can speed things up so it is helpful to keep track of progress for better future estimating.
There you go, you have just project managed your first project. That is all there is to it. I have used this technique to get un-stuck on projects very successfully. It is also a similar mindset to building estimates for my business.
Can you believe another week is almost over? I sure cannot. It seems like I was just writing about a range trip that I thought was going to happen but hasn’t yet. It’s that time of week again to talk about tacticool! I thought that I would write about an old friend, my Gerber 400 lock blade pocket knife.
Before I get started with that, I wanted to talk about the company Gerber and what it has to do with todays knife landscape. According to Wikipedia, the company was started in 1939 in Portland, Oregon. Unrelated to Gerber, Leatherman also began in Portland, Oregon in 1983. Between the two of them they have created a knife mecca spawning CRKT, Benchmade and the US headquarters of KAI/Kershaw knives as well.
This one was the one that stuck with me. Believe it or not, by the time I was fourteen this was my fourth pocketknife (and the first one I didn’t lose). My first knife was a really cheap knife that one of the scales (sides) fell off. The blade was poor metal and the blades didn’t lock causing several cuts. That one I think was ultimately thrown away. My second was a Boy Scout branded Schrade knife that was much more durable but it was lost within a few months after a beach trip. My third knife was a swiss army knife. model ‘Camper’. That one also got lost at the beach which is when I bought the Gerber.
This knife has been my constant companion ever since. It has been to Mexico, Canada, Europe and Asia. It skinned my first deer. It has helped me eat lunch when I needed to eat around bad spots in fruit or forgot the steak knife or butter knife. There have been times when it was the only knife for dinner, or the picnic cheese plate. It has opened countless packages, cut hose, twine and rope, scraped rust off, cleaned fish, popped balloons for clean-up, splinter scalpel and used as a second rate screwdriver to name a few functions.
I have other knives, but I like this one. It is light and slim with no clip to get in the way. I am not in love with knife clips. I am not convinced that they even make you knife more accessible. They certainly scrape things up when you rub the clip against furniture, the wall or your upholstery. Even though clips are ubiquitous, they are the first give away that you are armed.
Another reason I like this knife is that it was inexpensive. I paid less than $20 in the late 1980s for this knife. Because of that, it hasn’t gotten babied. I have other much more expensive knives that largely stay home to keep them protected – it sounds silly when you write about it. I have cut steel wire and opened paint cans with this blade. Don’t get me wrong, I am not intentionally abusing it, it just happens to be the only tool I have at the time.
The mirror finish, or chrome plating or whatever makes the blade shiny was gouged on the first sharpening. Largely because I didn’t hold the knife properly and didn’t know what I was doing when I attempted to sharpen the knife. Those marks are still there, I don’t think about them often but when I do it takes me right back to being at summer camp. Part and parcel with that is how much life has changed since then and how much more skilled I am than when I was a young teenager.
One of the things that really impressed me when I first got this knife was how well the blade and lock mechanism fit together. I thought that was precision craftsmanship. It still may be because when I look at the fit of most knives today, those parts are almost always rounded to prevent extra fitting needed.
I will also point out that over the years, the parts have worn. Everything still locks up tight, but just from this picture you can see some of the gap that has developed from over thirty years of daily carry in the scales. So, it is not quite as impressive as it used to be but it is always something I thought was special about it.
I am always on the lookout for the replacement of this knife. In my head I am thinking that I should carry and upgrade. I am thinking about the Buck 722 right now even though I think that one is about the same category. But I always come back to – why? I have at times carried two knives under the ‘two is one and one is none’ idea, but I get tired of my pants falling down with all the weight.
“Beware the man with one gun, he probably knows how to use it”. I think you could substitute knife in that spot. If you run into me, I will likely have this knife on my person. It was my first piece of EDC gear and it is my most consistently carried piece of gear. I have had it longer than any key on my key chain or wallet or item in my wallet.
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