Page 54 of 135

September 7, 2023 – Underestimated Project Costs

September 7, 2023 /

I have heard it said that one of the most underestimated costs of a building project is the cost of fasteners. And, I do believe it. I think about a pound of specific Simpson Strong Tie nails cost $5. According to the packaging, it contains 120 nails. Each bracket is supposed to have all the nail holes filled. That means that one pound nails about 10 brackets. You can see how this all adds up.

I recently (and finally) completed my keg manifold. The whole goal was to make the process of flushing the line easier to do. I came up with this idea after finding a little mold growing on the spout at the end of my first keg.

At first, I was ignorant. I thought that if I kept the line full then everything would be alright. That was before I realized that the spout was not full. Since I started flushing the line, I haven’t really had a problem. I will say that having to flush the line does give me second thought about actually using the keg. I have to balance the ‘Is it worth it?’ equation.

Then, along came our anniversary party and I realized that there is another kind of keg that real breweries use. While I did have most of what I needed to dispense for an event, I was ill equipped to handle the leftover volume. So, now my manifold needed to accommodate both my homebrew kegs as well as the occasion where I would have a leftover keg. This meant more connections and fittings.

I don’t really know if I made my life any easier. I can say that I spent of $150 on fittings. With that, I can say that I should be able to move my CO2 cylinder from the keezer to an event without disassembly of the setup. And I can move the flush keg over without completely disassembling my current dispensing setup. I can swap keg styles without replumbing everything. Maybe not easier, but at least better.

There is a dizzying array of fitting types. Some are for air, some are for liquids, some contain lead and others not. I have talked about my pantry mentality in other aspects. Even here, I feel like I should order one more than I need. But, when I tallied the cost for my order, I took a step back. I don’t really need a spare of each type. It added another 30% to my order cost.

If you do your design right, order spare plugs or the male part of the fitting. That way the female and more expensive part can stay in place and you can swap different configurations in and out of the setup much more economically. This is what I did.

End Your Programming Routine: I have loved these projects since I was a chemist. In fact, my favorite part of the job was building the apparatus to do the work, not the science part. It is kind of like a Lego kit for adults. So, I have been acquiring parts for months and now it is finally done. I actually have room to put more kegs in, maybe expansion is in the future?

September 6, 2023 – 3, 2, 1… ???

September 6, 2023 /

There is a subplot that happens in the movie National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Clark spends a ton of time unwinding, testing and hanging Christmas lights. He calls everyone together and makes the final connection and nothing happens. Then he checks and rechecks everything with the same result. Finally, he gets so mad that he runs around and kicks the reindeer setup on the ground.

That pretty much describes my AM antenna experience (without the audience). This has been going on a long time with a lot of effort put out by me over time. I have tried to research this topic, I have built prototypes that didn’t work. I tried to extend the existing loop antenna outside, all to no avail.

It was about a year ago that I got up on the roof to install the antenna I purchased online. I after fishing the cable through the wall, I tested it. While not what I would like, it got the stations that I was looking for and it was much better than the loop antenna that came with the radio or the other solutions I tried.

The last piece of my stereo installation in my office was to get the AM antenna wire to the receiver. Of course to do that, I needed to move all of the Christmas decorations out of the corner to get proper access. Second to that, my basement is such a mess since my son moved out for our exchange student this summer. Stuff is piled anywhere there is space, I really had no where to move stuff. Somehow, I managed precariously pile up all the bins and boxes and retain a small isle for travel.

Reorganizing is something I do every fall. With this being a wet basement, I almost always spend time tidying up before it is too late. I am just as guilty at not putting things away properly in the summertime knowing that I will eventually pay the price in the fall. But, it does feel like the basement is where things go to die and I deal with the bodies.

I tied, fished and stapled the cable to my office without tripping or breaking something. The antenna is marketed for radio, (like ham) so it has a rather unique connector that looks like a miniature coax connector. If I was hooking it up to a radio, than easy peasy. But no, I had to devise a way to convert from coax to bare wire which I eventually found a device that I could modify to do that job.

I plugged it into my receiver and nothing. This was the moment that I almost started breaking stuff. I turned off the lights knowing that the fluorescent ballasts interfere with AM signal, no improvement. I sat back in my chair and thought, well I can stream anything that I want anyway. I guess that was a lot of work for no good reason other than I wanted it to work.

As I sat back in my chair, I thought how could this have gone wrong? This was the whole point of testing this setup before I moved it. I did add an extension to the original cable, was this a bridge too far? I started thinking about the connection. I put red into the signal and black into the ground. At least in electrical wiring, black is the neutral. But maybe it was the other way around, this is low voltage. Low and behold, I got signal.

End Your Programming Routine: This is finally complete, it feels good. I do regret that I have a hole in the wall with wire sticking through but I don’t know about these small radio connections. I don’t have the tools to terminate nor if any wall plates exist. It is hidden behind the couch anyway. The point remains that it is installed and complete with the results that I was looking for. Now on to the hundreds of other things I want to get done, like tidying up the basement.

September 1, 2023 – We, Records 6-10

September 1, 2023 /

The next five chapters represent about 15 pages in my book and is very close to a third of the way though it. I am very surprised that despite the fact that this was written in the 1920s in Russian and translated into English that it is not more difficult to read. Truth be told as well, it really doesn’t feel that dated either. Sure, there is lack of reference to technology that we would see as ubiquitous but still there are flying cars and telephones.

To some degree, not integrating a lot of technology makes the book more timeless. Can you imagine if they popped in the eight track and then the pager went off? It would immediately date the work and damage the science fiction aspect of futurism. I think about my first house that was built in 1923. It had two electrical circuits, no bathroom or modern kitchen. Things will look very different in 500 years from now.

There is nothing that really blocks these five chapters together necessarily other than they are a convenient grouping for me. There are certainly some universal concepts that are mentioned. Eyes are the windows to the soul, religion (faith) is a fool’s errand compared to the reliability of the state, smoking and drinking are poisonous to the body and guilt will tear you up.

What is clearly brewing is that D-503 knows and believes that the rules of the United State are correct, moral and just. That being said for some reason I-313 has targeted him and is corrupting him by her presence. The juxtaposition of what D-503 knows to be right and what is actually happening is driving extreme guilt. And that guilt is beginning to drive him crazy.

Let us look at the argument of climate change. My new employer has a goal of being carbon neutral by 2030. To do that, they are making policy changes and developing strategies to modify their own business. Then by proxy, the will start using these solutions as business offerings. Part of that strategy is employee awareness. I took some classes i.e. watch some videos on the subject.

I think that the people on the extreme edge of things would call me a climate denier. I like to think of myself as a scientist. A scientist does not ever say that the science is settled. A life’s work is always challenging your hypothesis with new data. A proper scientist says I believe this to be true and the data supports that. But, if there is new data, I will objectively look at it and evaluate it on its merits.

Some of the videos I watched were making wild claims. For instance, climate change was the reason and the cause that there is civil war in Syria. Now, lest we forget people that the Syrian civil was was a result of the Arab Spring revolution. This was a geopolitical proxy war incited by the United States to promote ‘freedom’ in mostly autocratic countries. The drought sure didn’t help but to say that is the cause is beyond stretching.

I use climate change as a reference here because there is a lot of push to make socioeconomic changes on the basis of little data. Many followers of the religion of the state think that we simply need to move from fossil fuel powered lifestyles to battery powered ones. If we simply transfer our individual CO2 generation to some corporate entities, then we can absolve ourselves of our contribution to greenhouse emissions and climate change.

Another suggestion that was made was to eat less meat. The claim is that giant factory farms raising animals adds a significant contribution to greenhouse gases. I am not for factory farming but I am sure not for plant based diets either. Do you know what runs agriculture? Fossil fuels. Fertilizer is made from cracking natural gas. Tractors and trucks run and will continue to run on them no matter how many plug in cars are on the road.

Do you see the connection yet? The religion of the state is pushing problems that benefit the stakeholders in the game. We have to eat less meat, we have to grow crops that are bioengineered to keep up with the demand. Eliminating the end consumer and only piping natural gas to the power producers and chemical companies streamlines logistics. Climate change is causing droughts endangering our ability to grow those crops in the first place. You better get on board.

I want the data. I want to know the guarantees that this is iron clad science (and not the global cooling and ice age that we were headed for in the 1980s). Most of all, where is the money where the mouths are talking? How much extra fuel does a motorcade of armored Escalades take to get to the private helicopter to get to the private airplane to go to Hawaii on a work vacation?

I heard a story from a relative that actually takes their own spoons to Dairy Queen so that they do not use disposable ones. That is how much they care and are sacrificing to do their part. And yet, are the leaders of this movement eating a plant based diet? Dare I say, no.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not against my company setting a target to be carbon neutral. I actually support it and I think it is smart to pick a direction, constrain ourselves and push solutions that work to make money. This is smart and conscious business. I am not for destroying the planet nor am I for being selfish. But let’s get real here. Before you swallow the bait, consider the motivations. Like it or not, humans are part of this world and every activity has an impact. For now, you have to pick what it is, not the religion of the state.

August 31, 2023 – Rich Men North of Richmond

August 31, 2023 /

In case you have been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, this song has gone viral. In two weeks, it went to #1 on the Billboard top 100 and Oliver Anthony has ten more songs on the top 100 at the time of writing. YouTube has 46 million views in the last two weeks. Read the comments, people from all over the world are resonating with the lyrics.

Politicians are trying to co-opt it into their own camps. The left is saying that this is the alt-right, hate speech while the right is trying to hitch their wagon to the popularity. What both groups are missing is that they are both the rich men, north of Richmond. They are the cause and the subject of the lyrics.

(lyrics)

I’ve been selling my soul, working all day. Overtime hours, bullshit pay so I can sit out here and waste my life away.

Drag back home and drown my troubles away, its a damn shame. What the worlds gotten to for people like me and people like you. Wish I could just wake up and it not be true, but it is, oh it is.

Living in a new world with an old soul. Rich men north or Richmond Lord knows they want to have total control. Want to know what you think, want to know what you do and they don’t think that you know and I know that you do. But your dollar ain’t shit and its taxed to no end cause the rich men north of Richmond.

Wish politicians look our for miners, not just minors on an island somewhere. Lord, we got folks in the street ain’t got nothing to eat and the obese bilking welfare. God if your 5’3″ and your 300lbs taxes ought not pay for your bags of fudge rounds. Young men are putting themselves six feet underground cause all this damn country does is keep kicking them down.

Lord its a damn shame what the world’s gotten to. People like me and people like you. Wish I could just wake up and it not be true but it is, oh it is.

Living in the new world, with an old soul. Rich men north or Richmond. Lord knows they want to have total control. Want to know what you think, want to know what you do and they don’t think that you know and I know that you do. But your dollar ain’t shit and its taxed to no end cause the rich men north of Richmond.

I’ve been selling my soul, working all day. Overtime hours, bullshit pay.

There are a lot of subtle gems in the lyrics but I think the two are not as straight forward. The first is working class wages and the inflation of the dollar. I don’t see a lot of pride in working hard because you made poorer life decisions and limited your options, but at least you are doing what needs to be done.

That being said, wealth is stolen not just with taxes but also devaluing the dollar with inflation. That tactic is the pyramid scheme to pay off old debt with less valuable new money. While that works for national debt, the real losers are the people earning $30K/year. This is being done by people who make money lending it and collecting it at the same time or the rich men north of Richmond.

The second subtle reference is caring about minors on an island somewhere. This is a nod to Epstein and a class generally above the law. I don’t think the song is saying that they are condoning the behavior but acknowledging that the class exists in the first place.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not going to say much more today. Watch the video and read the lyrics. Think about what is going on in life. Think about what is going on and you decide if this is hate speech or just the life-size mirror being held up on both sides of the dichotomy. The people are speaking, they just need the vehicle to get their voice heard. You go Oliver Anthony.

August 30, 2023 – Gradually, Then Suddenly

August 30, 2023 /

I love this quote from Ernst Hemmingway. It describes major events so succinctly. I promise that this will be the last time that I wax emotionally about my summer of exchange. But first I have to use this quote the way it has impacted my life.

Sunday morning, my wife and I were eating breakfast. We were at the darkest hour of this whole program. My youngest son had just landed in Taiwan in the middle of the night. My older son was on the airplane on his way back home. We had to leave back to the airport in three hours to pick him up.

I think that I dealt with my emotions last week. That is what translated into the last couple of posts. I am now starting to see the bright side of things, not what has changed. Something I rarely do, I was talking about the things that were in the near future to my wife. “I am planning on going to the range on Friday. I want to go on a weeknight ahead of hunting season. The range is bound to be crawling with people on the weekend.”

Usually I wait to see if there is something on the calendar and strike at the last minute. “There is nothing going on tomorrow (or this afternoon), I think I will go to the range.” On top of that, I said that I was planning on going to central Oregon for a weekend of hunting. I might even make it a three day weekend. I am not going to have more than a day or two of PTO now that I have started this new job.

My wife said, “It’s funny. You never talk like this. You never express something that you want to do ahead of time.” She theorized that we haven’t had the luxury of only looking at our own schedule in a long, long time. It’s true. My older son is not nearly as involved in activities and he has his own vehicle if he does choose to do something. I am not saying that we wouldn’t support or watch, but we don’t have to transport and hang around until it is over nor is it in overwhelming quantities.

I turned the oven on to keep the bacon warm. It also tends to really crisp up things as well. I pulled my vegetarian’s skillet out as I do multiple times a week and I realized I do not have to handle this hundreds of times in the next year. I told my wife, I am going to put this skillet away for the next year. All of the sudden our life just became simpler and better.

I support my son’s decisions, including being a vegetarian. But, I didn’t realize the commitment and impact that one decision has on others. It effects how I prep, how I handle ingredients, how I cook and how I store leftovers. It effects what I choose to make for dinner as well as quantities.

For the last five years, every meal has had multiple dimensions. What is my son going to eat? How am I going to make this appeal to both camps? How do I portion this so that it doesn’t contact meat and dirty utensils and serve everything at the same time? To add insult to the situation, many times I take all that care and he schedules something over the top of that. Consequently, all that care I took doesn’t get eaten later in the evening and some vegetarian product is made instead causing more dishes that I wake up to in the morning.

As a parent, I want nothing more than enabling my son to grow up into a empowered adult. I want them to be confident about the decisions that they make; I want them to be able to justify their decisions as thoughtful and considering the upside and downsides of the situation. I think that I am missing something however. I am missing the conscientious part of the equation. How does my decision effect others.

Everyone in the house is acutely aware that he has made a decision to be vegetarian. We all make some sort of accommodations in order to support that decision, some more than others. But, does the vegetarian appreciate the compromises that we have all made to support the decision? Does he know how many times I have to move the skillet out of the oven in a year? Does he know that we check with the event host to let them know that there needs to be a cheese pizza not just one that has the meat picked off?

I started this off with gradually, then suddenly. Supporting a household vegetarian is the same way. All of the sudden it has become an entire way of how I cook and to a larger extent how I live. I want him to play chess and music and participate in sports and Boy Scouts if that is what makes him happy. I didn’t really get that effort was in exchange for my own life force.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not saying that things won’t go back to the way they were before the exchange when he comes back. Again, I support my children. But, it will be under the guise that I understand that I am making a conscious decision to do so. I do hope that this is a growth experience for him and maybe I will share this at some point in the future. For now, we are on a bit of vacation for some of this. At least this is how it feels right now.

August 29, 2023 – Back To Normal… Psyche

August 29, 2023 /

If you are not from the eighties, you may have never heard that phrase before. Middle school is such a great time to make lifelong, meaningless memories. The last week was the second whirlwind of the summer. We spent the last week burning the midnight oil getting my son ready for his trip to Taiwan.

July was all about hosting an exchange student, getting my older son prepared to go, planning a proposal for my anniversary, executing and cleaning up from our party. Fortunately, my younger son is a mixture of ultra responsible and wildly ignorant. It lulls me into a false sense that everything is alright and under control. You just have to look under the surface a little more.

The phrase ‘are you ready?’ was uttered many, many times this year. Me: “Is all the paperwork together for your visa?” My son: “Yes, it is.” Consulate: “This form is missing a signature.” The net result is visa arrived 13 days before departure and that means a $3100 plane ticket. The Rotary keeps insisting that this is their exchange so I did my best to absorb all the punches as they come.

My son had a number of to-dos to get done. What wasn’t planned was a stomach flu. That compressed everything into four remaining days. Also included in those days were Boy Scouts Court of Honor, Oregon State Fair and the final sendoff with his friends. My wife accused me of not using my previous time wisely. I didn’t know that he needed new shoes, shorts, shirts etc. Remember, ‘are you ready?’

My son wanted to get a computer, I think that is pretty appropriate. All summer long Me: “I need some quotes on what you think you want.” My son: “OK, I am busy with (insert activity). I will do it this week.” We found one at Costco but I gave my Costco credit card to my son in Germany, we will have to wait until mom gets back from France. Mom: “The one you want is no longer in stock. What about this one?” Me: “OK, if my son wants that one”.

Literally, the day before he is leaving the computer shows up. I came upstairs from a work break and the opened box was on the table with the still wrapped computer setting on table. I knew that he was at the fair all day, so I plugged it in to make sure there was a full battery charge. But, you don’t just pick up a new laptop and go. There are updates, profile transfers, software installations that need to be done before it is ready to go. Talk about taking it to the wire.

The flight was at 6AM. Rotary said repeatedly be at the airport 3 hours early. For most people that is good advice. But, I travel a lot, including internationally. The only thing that they do differently is check passport and visa at the counter. Otherwise, it is just like any other plane ticket. Part of the reason for planning to get to the airport early is to accommodate for traffic, running late and those types of variables. Nevertheless, we went with the advice.

In order to get to the airport at 3AM, we had to leave the house at 1:30AM. This is the absolute best time to drive through a metropolitan area since traffic is little to none. It was a very short night getting back from the fair and 10:30PM. We powered through as we do but I will say that I crashed at 7PM. That was the longest I could go.

There is my son about to board the plane. You may wonder why there are no faces shown? I have pictures, but in this case, I don’t have permission to show others. He is travelling with another student to Taiwan as well. So, at least there is safety in numbers.

End Your Programming Routine: I did find out that he arrived safely. Also as I am writing, my older son is on the plane back home and we will be picking him up in a few hours. If you listened to the podcast, you would know that there was some emotion in this overall event. I have largely come to terms with that. So, back to normal? Back to the new, normal.

August 25, 2023 – We, Records 1-5

August 25, 2023 /

Like a lot of science fiction, this one as well starts off with a bang. There is little character development or explanation. Some of that comes as you read (I hope). It seems to be written as diary or log. Each chapter or entry is called a record. And they are pretty short with the longest ones being a couple pages long. But, you know all that because you are reading along.

You can see right away the similarities to Brave New World and 1984. You have the kind of laboratory like association to humanity and the overarching authoritarianism of the the United State. The main character’s number is D-503. Notice I said number and not name. All characters are referred to by their number.

D-503 talks about the monitors of society called the Guardians and how they all live in glass apartments so that they can be observed. The only time that they are given privacy is when they have scheduled intimacy. There is some sort of imbedded technology that can change the opacity of the glass on those special occasions.

More background follows as we get into Record 5. Apparently, there was a war several hundred years ago that led to the creation of the United State. Only 0.2% of the world’s population survived and now they live in this new utopia. Happiness is described as every person has been analyzed and are treated according to their biological composition.

This means that person 1 has more X factor so they are given more X. Person 2 has more Y so they are given more Y and less X. By keeping all of these factors in balance then in theory nobody is getting out of line. This is a theme in dystopian fiction. I think of the movie Demolition Man where there is no crime because everyone’s needs are met. We saw it in Brave New World and 1984 as well.

You ever hear the saying ‘life has a way’? Having spent a fair amount of time in the volcanic central Oregon, you see the one pine tree growing in the lava field where even lichen struggle to survive. The laws of nature says that tree shouldn’t be there, but it is. You could say the same thing about polio or even the flu. Without evolution, life would cease to exist.

I think of the late 1880s-1940s as the heyday of eugenics. Clearly, this book was written in the the middle of that on the way to the Nazi crescendo. It is no surprise that the thought process was if we could just breed the right people and satiate the human desires chemically then we could surely end up with a utopia.

Do we think that this is going to work, knowing ‘life will find a way’? I swear that society and entities like the school district are working to that end. One of my children was vegan for about two years a few years ago. For his birthday he had a party and all of his friends bought him cookware. Ostensibly, this was because he was complaining to all of his friends that we did not respect his choice to be vegan and would cook his food on tainted cookware (regardless if it was clean or not). My point with that was that they were sympathetic that we were torturing him because of his vegan choice.

I did not know a single vegetarian, let alone vegan peer when I was in high school. The vegetarians that I did meet were holdouts from the hippy days and always looked thin and sickly to me. This idea had to come from somewhere and that somewhere is programming. If someone eats kosher or halal or even vegetarian/vegan I can respect that is a value choice, even the undernourished vegetarians. I cannot respect a choice because it is in vogue.

But, these are the tactics that have to be used to move the needle of public opinion. We are already at the point that meat is bad because it is a contributor to climate change. Plus, not everyone can have meat, you must have money to do so. Therefore it is not socially equitable for me to have something that others cannot. We are on the path to vilify the natural human diet.

Plus, did I mention that if we buy veggie burgers from a package that we now have to rely on mega food companies to make them instead of hamburger direct from the farmer? So, that is forcing separation of humans from their food source and adding margin within the supply chain. The farther we get from the source, the easier we are to lead with false information because we loose the ability to see cause and effect.

End Your Programming Routine: Alright, so all of that was not about the book or concepts in the book but a reaction to the setting that was portrayed. In order to have utopia, you have to believe that it is possible. And to make that leap, you have to suspend reality sometimes. It’s OK to be a dreamer, but in America, I don’t have to share the same dream as you (yet).