The truth is, I am not really sure. I have the fairly expensive toaster that has been around 15 years or so and it stopped working for some reason. I am going to take it apart to try and figure it out.
Our first reaction was to replace the toaster. I didn’t do any of the looking but my wife said that reviews were all over the place and generally bad. That got me wondering if I could figure out the problem. To first understand what is wrong, we have to understand how it works.
I can’t speak for all toasters, but it appears this one has got some electrical and electronic components. This one appears to lock the mechanism down with an electromagnet (white circles). When the mechanism gets to a certain depth, it triggers a switch that turns on the coils for toasting (yellow circle). Additionally, it seems that there is a temperature sensor on the side. Just guessing but either the electronics run a timer to release the magnet or the temperature sensor acts as a cutoff switch and once power is removed to the magnet, the mechanism pops up.
Our particular problem was that the mechanism did not lock down and therefore there was no toasting. After taking the cover off, I found tons of crumbs on the inside. I am speculating that a cleaning would remove obstructions from the magnet holding and the switch making a connection. So, first I set to clean it out.
From what I learned with chainsaws and other things, it is best to test it without fully re-assembling, if possible. In my case, after blowing all the crumbs out with compressed air, I plugged the toaster in and everything worked like it should. So, I diagnose the problem as crumbs interfering with the magnet. It is possible that I could have soldered a broken connection but something like a faulty switch or electronic component would probably have been too much.
After I verified it was working the way I wanted it to, I reassembled and tested again. The toaster was still working as I expected. Success, I saved $10-hundreds of dollars. We weren’t going to buy a cheap replacement.
End Your Programming Routine: Before this date, I had never seen inside of a toaster before. I have my doubts that they all operate as electronically as this one. I figured, worst case scenario we going to throw it away anyway so it was worth a try. When it comes to junk, don’t be scared to try and figure it out. You might just save yourself some money and who knows, maybe disappointment too.
I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately. I won’t bore with all the details but my current project is not going well. Despite all of the technical problems, the issue is not a lack of capable doers, but a failure of leadership. Before I go too far, I will expose my bias. I am a firm believer that accountability for success/failure always goes uphill.
If there are capable doer’s then why does leadership matter? I would say that it certainly makes the job easier, but leaders are responsible for delivering bad news as well as good. Leaders are the voice of skepticism as well as support. They are encouraging and coaching, admonishing and pushing, representing and cooperating. All of those opposing forces are difficult to juxtapose well.
Just so you don’t think I am just a finger pointer, leaders are at all levels. In my own case, I can visibly see areas where my own work is suffering from my personal leadership failures. My particular group has a manager and a good leader in her own right. However, the trend of matrix organizations has led to an ambiguous level of decision making and accountability which has given rise (and a pass) to poor leadership on a project level.
Sticking with the theme of matrix organizations and my own role, I recognize that my peers operate largely in a vacuum. We all tend to do what we think is best and it doesn’t seem to have any level of coordination or follow through, once again responsibilities of leadership. Knowing this, it is a perfect opportunity for someone to take the responsibilities (without a title). This is exactly what natural leaders do: recognize a problem and take action without requiring more pay or recognition.
There is one additional component to successful leadership and that is trust or willingness to follow. In order to actually build that, it takes one of two things. It is either time for natural trust to build or an organizational appointment of a person to a role. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and the best case is when you have both; an appointment of someone that the group trusts.
We can all think of our view of good and poor leaders. I would say that our list of desirable qualities might be all over the place. Unfortunately, our bias often blinds us to the actual facts of situation and once we take a position it is very difficult to un-entrench ourselves from our position. Despite the fact that this is a business conversation, politics are an easy comparison.
By now, you can probably guess that I lean right. You also probably should know that I am a strict constitutionalist. That means that I have accepted the current definition of the Bill of Rights and apply that to all aspects of my opinion. So, lets take a look at some recent Presidents and apply my filter to get a judgement.
Bill Clinton – I found him to be a deplorable person. That being said, in a rank of recent presidents relatively little damage was done. Only minor conflicts like the Balkan intervention, no major fiscal expansion, the 1992 Assault Weapons Ban (that actually sunset) were notable occurrences in his tenure. Grade B
George W. Bush – I want to like the guy, conservative Christian with high marks as a governor. On the surface, a good choice. Let me count the ways that he screwed this country: Medicare Part D, creating a new department of the government, a multi-front boondoggle of a war, Patriot Act, and Too Big to Fail bank bailouts from their own reckless fiscal policy. Grade F
Barack Obama – He seemed likable enough, certainly a change from the previous president. The damage that was done was not on the traditional aspects and size of government but to the culture of country. That being said from the Healthcare tax to race baiting and sexual ambiguity I find the fabric of the country irreparably changed. Grade D
Donald Trump – This is a guy that is a dichotomy. On one hand, he spoke the truth and on the other he couldn’t stop talking and it was often intertwined with as many lies. All in all, policy was largely acceptable including initiating the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and tax reform (heavily in favor of business). I think he could be good if he wanted to, but more often chose to behave childish and solidified the damage done during the Obama administration. Grade C
I wrote all of that to say my bias clearly reflects my opinion. You might want to live in a socialist utopia and would definitely flip my grades. However, when I look objectively the person that should have been my highest choice actually got my lowest grade by a mile. And, the president that I wanted to hate actually got my highest grade. There are a couple key characteristics that I want to talk about below.
Leadership requires vision. That being said, what we interpret as clear may not be the same to everyone else. Only time will tell if leaders make the right decision, especially if it is extremely contrary to the popular or accepted direction.
The second property requires leaders to take a position on any and every relevant issue. This can be a tricky situation when you are uneducated on the subject or even unaware of the topic. But, it can be done tactfully and most of the time you can change that stance if provided clear reasons for doing so. The reason this is important is that it sets the tone for the group to follow.
I think the third and most important property is transparency. This supports trust, builds vision and explains positioning. I think it is worth noting that transparency is not truthfulness. There is a time to protect the group and there is time to provide the facts. But, transparency explains the situation when the time is right. Generally speaking, I am also being truthful, but there are are good reasons not to be at times.
Applying our properties to the presidents and adding my layer of speculation I put together this analysis.
President
Vision
Nominal Position
Transparency
Clinton
What can I get
Populist
No
Bush
Finish What Daddy Started
Egalitarian
No
Obama
Social Justice
Socialist
Somewhat
Trump
Tell Me I’m the Best
Populist
No
Generally speaking, most of the poor leaders I have observed lack number one and number three. Truthfully, the worst leaders are strong in opinions yet don’t have vision or transparency and they fail to build trust. That being said, transparency without vision or position leaves the group listless.
I suppose to round out my work here, I think that there are some characteristics that are not required to be a good leader, for instance a good communicator. I rank this as helpful and certainly can accelerate trust. It also can more easily turn from a leader to a despot and you don’t even know it until it is too late.
How about having a winning record? I suppose that depends on the context. A platoon leader better have a winning record or their leadership is over. But even in that case, winning doesn’t necessarily translate into a good leader. Leadership is not about the objective and the result, it is about motivating others to work toward the same goal and to be content that it is an acceptable way of doing it.
In many ways, the parallels between leadership and sales go hand in hand. In one way, the salesperson is convincing you that this is the best item for the circumstances. Once you are convinced for whatever reason, you are likely to be brand loyal or even salesperson loyal. Leadership is the same way, you are convincing the others in the group of the best approach, best way to organize data, the best technical path forward, etc.
End Your Programming Routine: Coming full circle here, my experience within the matrix organization, the ‘leaders’ lack all three of these properties. Without leaders to front the effort, it turns into a mess like I referenced in the first paragraph. In their defense, they are way out of their league. For the most part the organization is trying to do something that is really not within the realm of experience or competency and I am not in a position to change this despite my counsel to the contrary. All that being said, good leaders will overcome these circumstances because they have the properties that make a successful leader.
The league trap season is over. There is the state tournament remaining, but unfortunately, we will be on our way home from Spain, so we will miss it. We have another sporting clays event for fun coming up in the next two weeks. I am pretty sure that I will talk about sporting clays after we do it but today I thought I would talk about my son’s first season.
I think it is starting to sink in. Getting the stock to fit was the foundation, coaching, experience and consistency were the building blocks. On the first day of practice, he shot a 2 and a 7 (out of 25). Yesterday, he shot two 17s. I think another season and he will be shooting in the 20s. That is a pretty good bench mark and will put him in the upper echelon of shooters at the state tournament.
The previous years, I was a parent and didn’t hear all of the coaching. This year, I paid attention to what they were saying to the kids and I learned quite a bit. I learned that body position at your station is important. For instance, you want your body positioned for hard lefts on station 1. That means your core is angled away even though your shotgun is positioned pointed at the left corner of the trap house.
I heard a podcast recently from a (Olympic level) shotgun shooter. It was her contention that trap shooting was relatively easy because there are only so many variables unlike skeet or sporting clays. She said, it is easier to make a good all around shooter a great trap shooter then to go the other way around. What was being encouraged is to shoot the other disciplines to get more experience.
To a large degree, I think all of that is true. Muscle memory is the number one factor for success. Further to that point, I can hear all of the coaching tips and tricks but if I don’t apply them, I don’t see the feedback. With that, they are already better shooters than me and probably always will be. Only having an interest and never any coaching, how could I possibly get better?
Two years ago, spring trap was cancelled (because of Covid). Last year, we had a total team size of seven shooters. Most of them are back this year. But, the daily average score started off around 10 and by the time the season ended it was more like 18. This year, I would say that we started off at 15 and now averaging 19. This is a total team composite, so some are averaging much higher, while others are much lower.
End Your Programming Routine: With everything else going on and the weather being poor all season I am glad that we are coming to the end. I really do enjoy the game and I find being a coach rewarding as well. That being said, the 10 weeks of commitment certainly cuts into the other things that I want to do. It’s difficult to sit around and watch week after week as well. We did usually get a chance to shoot each week, but we always had something more pressing to do. I am looking forward to go back to the rifle range as well.
Despite the fact that I have aspirations to do some serious Alt-F4 pertinent reviewing, I am taking the opportunity to read fiction as it comes up. My wife has been a reader of James Patterson and he is a prolific writer. His books are also very quick to read. When I was traveling heavy, I would take a book and finish it before I got back fro my trip. I kind of lost track of where I was in order of the various series that he has.
That tradition still follows me though. Most of my reading happens when I am away from the home. Mostly because when my head hits the pillow at home, I am out. Last weekend, we were at the library looking at the local garden club’s plant sale. But, the friends of the library were also having a book sale. There are some books that I am looking to read like Fahrenheit 454, Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, etc. I didn’t find any of those but some fiction that I was interested in. And, they were in the free box.
In not too many weeks, we are on our way to Spain. That is going to be a long plane ride. So, ideally I can bring a long book. I found the perfect one ”The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown. It is almost 700 pages and light enough that I don’t have to concentrate on every paragraph. Plus it is entertaining and thought provoking.
When I first left my job, I started checking out books at the library and Dan Brown was one of the authors I read. ”Angels and Demons” and ”The Davinci Code” were two that I enjoyed. I also read some of the books that I want to review as well. So, in a roundabout way the two are related.
I also got another John Grisham book. I am not as excited about it but my son was. I made him a deal that if he would read it as well, I would take it. It was free after all and it will be worth the time, meaning I will get more enjoyment then other things I could do with the time, particularly on an airplane.
The third book, ”The Song of Solomon” I am finishing up. My son bought it for my birthday and it is a little meatier than I was anticipating. I suspect that this was someone’s college literature assignment with a bunch of notes in the margins. By their assessment, this has some religious correlations. I am not sure that I buy that assessment. Maybe I will review it some day, I finished it on my flight home.
Speaking of which, I took an informal poll when I was on the plane and I observed that almost every person was watching the on board entertainment system if not sleeping or playing games on personal electronics. I saw many people with a book in hand or nearby, but not a single one of them actually reading. I guess what I take of that is given the choice, people would rather watch a screen then read their own selected book. I myself usually flip through the selections and decide that there is nothing that catches my eye and then open my book.
End Your Programming Routine: I realize that I have always been a little more of an odd duck. My preference to books over movies go all the way back to childhood when our TV time was restricted but reading time really wasn’t. I did enjoy spending time with my boys browsing over all of the used books and they picked out some so I feel like there is a little bit of my oddness in them too. I guess in some small way, I feel like it bonds me to them even if we don’t share the same degree of passion.
I had an experience over the weekend. Quite out of the blue, my mom called on Saturday and said that the TV wanted to interview me about my experiences with the North Palestine Church. Not all of those details turned out to be completely accurate, but that doesn’t really matter. I swung into action to gather memorabilia to share and rushed out of the house to participate.
We called it Palestine Church growing up. It was about half a mile from my parents house. This was about as close as anything was. The only other public space was Fir Grove Elementary (about the same distance). The reason the church was in my life is that we used it as a meeting place for Boy Scouts during the summer time. It was also the fallback camping location for our monthly campouts (mostly wintertime).
The church was moved in 2012 from it’s cemetery location where it was built to about three miles down the road to Adair Village. The county now owns the building but it has essentially been closed since the move. They are slowly making improvements to get it ready for eventual use. However, there is no current vision on what it will be used for or even what needs to be done to make it usable.
As it turns out, the county was taking a video record of some of the people that were involved with using the church throughout the years. This is where the story I have been writing and my story intersect. Since Boy Scouts was such a fundamental building block of my youth, having a place to meet was an extremely vital component to having the entity exist. It also helps that it was extremely close and didn’t require a ride to get there every week.
Being speculative, would I have continued if I couldn’t easily get there? Would the troop exist without a permanent meeting place? If restored, will it ever hold the significance in the new location that it did in the old? These are all questions to be asked and not everyone in the troop many hold the same regard that I do.
These are photos inside the church at my Eagle Scout Court of Honor June 28, 1992. Each individual was asked what we would like to see the use of the church be. My response was that it maintains to be a venue that impacts people’s lives the way that this one did to mine.
End Your Programming Routine: If I am intellectually honest, the significance of Palestine church had a context of time, place and my personal interaction with the building. Just maintaining it as an available venue may never reach people in the same way. A fact that it was moved from it’s very rural location to a much more populated location removes the intimacy that us near it had. It could be anyplace anywhere really. So, while I have a strong emotional connection to the building, my real wish is that people make those connections wherever they are.
I had about 80% of Friday’s post written but couldn’t quite get it over the hump before I ran out of time. I will do my best to use it this week. But, I have another long week ahead. I am not making any promises.
I would be remiss not to mention that summer is approaching quickly. For myself, I have one month before we are off for a family vacation to Spain. I will be away for ten days on that trip. That will put us into July and I will need to spend between July and August working on my summer project.
Summer is always a super busy time. I addition to what I am planning to focus, there are other activities like Boy Scout camp, gardening, family gatherings. Don’t forget, there could be be a funeral thrown in there at any time. What I am trying to say is that as busy as I am with work, there are certainly opportunities to accelerate everything outside of that as well.
End Your Programming Routine: I will do my best to keep up. Ideas keep popping up all the time. I keep taking pictures and building a war chest of ideas. I am sure that the volume of things that will happen over the summer will generate plenty of material for the coming months. I hope that I can keep my head above water.
I hate to start out this way, but I didn’t make much progress with my chronograph work. I did give it a shot, but I couldn’t get a viable reading. Mind you, I only shot some pellets in the basement.
My current operating theory is that the light is too dim and the projectile is too small to register. I understand this device to work with two optical sensors. I think that it sees the projectile pass over each sensor and then calculates the time difference. So, if it is not being seen then it doesn’t calculate.
There were some warnings about using it in low light, and this situation definitely fits. My particular model actually has LED lights on the background reflector (the white plastic strips). I think that the lights are an attempt to extend the useful light and projectile size. Yet they didn’t seem to work on my initial attempt.
I have plans to test my son’s nerf gun just to see if something will register before I get too carried away. If I can get some measurements, then I can experiment with the light conditions. There is also technical support because it is supposed to work with pellets.
End Your Programming Routine: Due to the fact that I am out of town this week, I am not going to make any progress while I am gone. I haven’t totally decided but this would be a good weekend to also go to the range. Likely, since I am just getting back I will need the time to do stuff around the house. But, I could probably squeeze in some trigger time outside, if the weather permits.
If you think you are just going stash a survival seed bank and survive the apocalypse by starting a garden, I think that you another thing coming. I come at gardening from the aspect of food quality and the potential of what you can do the with the bounty. This means that I have less interest in the care and maintenance of the plants and garden itself.
I don’t know if my poor results in seed starting this year are the results of my skill or my interest. Particularly last year, I kept telling myself that I will water tomorrow or I will plant tomorrow. The results of that were no garden at all. I do have interested in studying the variables in making the plants grow.
All that being said, I have one tomato plant that survived and one cabbage plant that has survived. Both of them happened to be on the outside of the light bank. I have a strong suspicion that had a lot to do with it. I already observed that the light was to intense before I repotted the survivors.
Whether I am right or I am wrong, I wanted to talk about the survivors for a moment. Let’s say that I needed to start tomatoes from seed (because the world has ended). If I get tomatoes and I pick the best one, in theory those seeds would have the genetics to survive in my particular conditions the next year and provide the results that I want from a fruiting standpoint. I am really considering doing an experiment next year by saving seeds from this plant. I also want to plant seeds from the original packet and check those against my new one.
I have heard that for most vigorous results, taking the seeds from plants that you grow will do better because they are adapted to your soil, climate and personal habits. The theory of survival of the fittest is in play when adapting plants that you grow. How did we get all of these varieties anyway? It was by people performing dedicated breeding.
Cabbage is a different story. You have to wait for the plant to go to seed, not just fruit. But in theory, the genetics are the same principal. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower are all related. First they flower and then seed pods are formed. It is difficult to let it go that long because in theory, the plant is past it’s prime. I suppose that if you harvested but let the plant grow, you might get the best of both worlds. I don’t know, I haven’t tried it.
End Your Programing Routine: I know that my theory is solid, I am not sure about my practical application. I suppose this is where the rubber meets the road and time will tell. I am not ready to give up on the garden but I don’t think it will be a majority from my own started seeds. In the interest of science, I am going to protect my one surviving tomato to see if I can save some seeds and maybe get my own customized genetics.
My Cinco de Mayo debut turned more into a Mother’s Day dinner. I had to travel for work on Sunday. And because of Mother’s Day, we did our trap shooting on Saturday. That didn’t leave a lot of time to honor mom and have a fancy dinner party. Even though I don’t consider tacos fancy, the prep work can be extensive.
The meat I chose for tacos was beef. This was not just any cut, this was a challenge. It is cheek meat. I had a 10 pound block of beef cheeks. These are filleted of the head. You can imaging how many head it takes to make 10 pounds. A lot of those pieces are pretty tough and gristly. To make matters worse, the trimming was mostly done, but there were bits of bone, the inside of cows mouth, globs of blood and membrane still remaining. Sound good yet?
I personally don’t care for the meat. Mostly, I have had it when we prepare the whole beef head. I am not real interested in tough and greasy tacos. I can’t say the same for my wife. The fact of the matter is, this was meat that my father-in-law purchased and he liked it too. When we cleaned out his freezer last year, this was one of the items we packed away in the freezer.
I had plans to put some smoke on it, but I plum ran out of time. I made salsa and guacamole and the ensalada (the fixings) for the tacos. The plan was to pair it with the beer. What did I learn about the keg?
I did quite a bit of farting around with the carbonation. I had visions of simply applying CO2 and it would be ready to go. My first go was flat. Then I switched the inlet and outlet fittings to for the gas down the draw tube at higher pressure. I pressurized the keg four or five different days as it was not holding 20 psi. It is holding something less than that but not the full amount.
So, my fittings are leaking slightly somewhere and I didn’t feel like I got the carbonation that I wanted. Everyone else said that it was good, so maybe it was alright. It just wasn’t quite what I had in mind. That being said, I think it is probably worth pursuing some more experimenting and probably some new o-rings
End Your Programming Routine: Believe it or not, I am somewhat of a risk taker. Throwing a dinner with things that you have never done before is risky, especially if you won’t know the final results until you are serving. The tacos tasted great and the beer was a good compliment. I didn’t have the time to make the sides that I wanted, but we had plenty of taco fodder. I think it came out fine, even though I wanted things to be different. And, I will never quit pushing my limits. I find that motivating, inspiring and exciting.
I am going to be proactive and anticipate that I am going to have a difficult time keeping up this week. Last week I worked six out of seven days and put in twelve hours a day, plus family, plus everything else going on. What helped me was that I got a head start on the weekend and I had all of my posts written before mid-week.
This last weekend, I did not have the same time to get a head start on writing. Between Mother’s Day and travel all day Sunday, I just didn’t have enough free time. I am going to have five long days of work as well.
End Your Programming Routine: This isn’t about excuses, it is about covering my bases if I don’t get anything else published. I have planned talking about my keg experience, how my chronograph work has been going, lessons about maskless travel, observation in my plant starts and my new reading list. So, it is not lack of ideas that are going to cause me problems this week.
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