Category: life

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life

Tired

It’s about a quarter past nine as I sit and write this. Trying to write something every day. Kinda like Chemistry in graduate school. Equally important that I ran one experiment a day. Whether it was the necessary synthesis for starting materials, kinetics of chemical reactions, spectroscopic evaluations, or even modeling on the computer, I felt it necessary to do one reaction a day. So it is true with this new adventure. Just took son back to his mothers place; talked to daughter earlier as she is at Goose Downs working and riding in preparation for this weekends event.

I have been awake now for about 18 hours. A typical day. Never get much sleep on the weekdays. Three to five hours is the norm. Eight is sleeping in on the weekend. I usually start the day between 3 and 4 am. Hot tea or coffee, read, shower, take the dog for a walk. This morning we walked a little longer than normal and managed to come across 4 deer feeding in the yards around the place where we live. Got to work by 5:45 am. Usual day in terms of status and schedule meeting. Addressed questions about some equipment, worked with the quality assurance engineers on a new certificate of analysis for product specifications. Meeting on implementation of some new process monitoring to make us more efficient.

Left work after 4 pm to pick up son from summer camp. He didn’t want to go but I think he is actually have fun. It is tiring him out, a good thing. Cooked dinner, had to get dog food at the grocery store. Dropped him off at his mothers. Strangely, I too find myself very tired, having eye trouble. Looking at the dog who picks her head up from the sofa at the sound of the hospital lifeflight helicopter flying overhead.

That about does it it for me. It is hot this evening, not much of a breeze. Will make sleeping difficult. Until tomorrow.

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life

My story, or is it?

As I think about subjects to write about, I have been thinking about a pathway to guide me through the summer months. I started this blog based on a conversation at work with a coworker, during one of our morning “coffee cabels”. They often deal with work issues, but this one morning, the discussion focused on retirement, what to do after retirement, whether to retire and return part time, or under contract to another company. The work stuff focuses on what is working, what is not working, our management, solving this or that technical problem. Sometimes the conversation triggers thoughts about almost anything. I try to make a mental note about those things; ideas for a future blog post.

The pathway was my thought about the fact that my topics ramble on in terms of subject. While some themes have emerged, I think it will take some time to improve my skills, improve my subjects, and how the fit together. As an example, lots of my posts speak about my kids. I love them, but I don’t think they read my blog. I’ll keep trying.

Now in my third week, I have been exposed to many fellow bloggers in the past few weeks. I find their stories and subjects equally interesting. Some deal with writing, animals, art, a variety of topics. Some readings that I have exposed myself to suggest writing about one or more of my hobbies. I have some future plans in this area and will lay those out over the next few months. I have lots of interests, but they all clearly are not hobbies. Book reviews, movie reviews are all fair game, but I fail to see how writing about those subjects will separate this blog from others. A book review about my reading might appear. I bet you all are interested in how far I have gotten in Atlas Shrugged (7 pages). Fishing, hunting, hiking and camping are also fair game. I won’t write about sports or skiing, although an occasional shout out to my teams is permitted. Similarly, food and alcohol are things that I enjoy, but I am neither a cook, critic or a connoisseur. Lots of blogs on history and politics but I don’t want to alienate half of the audience who would disagree with my political views. But then again, I would not be true to myself if I didn’t write about these things.

Some of these topics go to the heart of why I started this blog. It’s obvious that writing and communication are important in my job, with my friends and coworkers. It’s all around us. It’s also under assault (in my opinion). Just spend some time on Facebook. Read the comments to any article. Whether you agree or disagree, there is someone who has an opinion, or will tell you why your opinion is wrong, bad, stupid, or just embark on a characterization of you in detail in comparison to a part of the human anatomy. It doesn’t matter if your male or female. That is what is wrong with Facebook. But it gets worse as they try to have “community standards” that they impose. The imposition stifles free speech and communication of diverse subjects. We cannot have a debate, which is what is destroying our country, or democracy. That is a strength of social media, and for that Twitter might be better ( I am not on Twitter, but really, the limited character size constrains us). It is why we cannot compromise, we cannot move forward together. It’s sad that this has been the turn of our country since the 70’s by my recollections. But here we are. This blog isn’t going to fix those issues, but I will at least be able to express. Myself. And I hope that you will respond in kind and join me in these conversations. I’ll keep trying. I won’t be right all of the time, or most of the time, but I need to express myself.

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life

Rip off

Last night, as I was reading posts on Facebook, I came across an advertisement for the LEGO Millenium Falcon. It was the 7451 piece set that I commented on in a post the other day (Explore Space Create History). The problem is that the company only wanted $49.95 for it. Odd since the LEGO catalogue had it for $799.

The website link had several pictures of the item. It was the same LEGO item. It even had the same catalogue number. The box even had the Disney logo on the lower corner. But LEGO wasn’t on the box in the photo. I commented that it was probably a knockoff. A short time later a man from Hong Kong commented that it was not a LEGO product. Obviously a blatant rip-off for profit.

I reported the matter to Facebook. If I understood their site, they have a policy that basically doesn’t hold them liable for many copyright and trademark issues in the buying and selling of things. I guess it is ok to sell fraudulent items but it’s not ok to comment on certain things that impact their community rules. Not surprising since they don’t make money if you call somebody a bad name, suggest that a government official should be hung, or note that the B52’s should be locked and loaded to address issues. They just ban you for a period of time. (A story for another time, but I think I’m up to 30 days now). Not that my complaint mattered, or did it? By morning, my conversation with the man from Hong Kong was erased, my links to the web site were gone, and the company was advertising fashion items. Not sure who did all of that!

Since my kids and I love LEGO products, I also reported it to LEGO by e-mail. They responded about 10 hours later and thanked me for the information, commenting that they are constantly searching the internet for knock off products. Their legal department is looking into my information.

Now this post will probably strike a cord with some, as it ventures into politics, vis-a-via the current trade issues between the United States and China. In my opinion in this matter, it was obvious that a Chinese company tried to rip off a foreign company. Copyright, trademark infringement and patent protection are important in economics. The ideas that people generate should be protected. Other people should not be allowed to take someone else’s ideas and profit from it. If I had to guess, I bet that since they didn’t put LEGO on the box that they were not ripping off LEGO.

This isn’t the first time that I have seen this. Hasbro had the Avengers Thanos glove with the Infinity stones that light up. I think that it was possible to buy knock offs of that glove on another shopping website before Hasbro actually shipped it. I know because my son got one of the cheap knock-offs that was rendered useless in the first week. Shipped directly from China. I guess that the bottom line is buyer beware.

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life

Pizza night

Typically, Thursday night is pizza night for the kids and I. Tonight we had Papa Murphy’s. Cheese and black olives for daughter; cheese, pineapple and ham for son. I have some of each. With Papa Murphy’s they make it fresh and you bring it home to cook. Simple, fresh and whatever you want.

We alternate between Dominos, Time Out ( a local place) and Papa Murphy’s. The local grocery store also makes pizza and of course there is frozen. We like Jacks Frozen Pizza the best.

Pizza is simple, easy to have, and somewhat healthy with the right ingredients. Lots of cheese, the kind that forms long strings. Rich tomato sauce with spices, and your favorite toppings. My toppings are usually pepperoni or sausage with green chile. It’s a New Mexico thing.

Of course, growing up back home in Lewistown, Pennsylvania meant that you could get square pizza from Gus’s. It’s still there and it still makes great pizza. For me growing up, I remember that it was the rare occasion that we got pizza, and while it has been a few years since I have had a slice, I remember that it’s still good.

The great thing about pizza is that there is usually leftovers. And I was reading that it’s not just for lunch or dinner anymore. Wonder how it goes with coffee.

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life

Driving, texting, road rage, eating…to merge, to yield

Today’s subject matter is courtesy of the drive to and from work. I don’t know about you but I have seen car drivers do many strange things over the years. Eating a plate of scrambled eggs while driving, reading a newspaper, watching TV, woman sitting on a man’s lap while he is driving and she is facing him. Lots of time I have seen dogs sitting in the drivers lap with its head out the window. Yes. All of this while zooming down the road in excess of 55 miles per hour.

I also think that I have, at times, been an equally bad driver. Reading e-mail, reading a map, talking on the phone, texting and eating a Big Mac pulling away from the McDonalds drive through. My kids tell me not to text, and so I try my best. But in this rushed and hurried world where multitasking has become the norm. What can one do?

I’ve witnessed road rage and I probably have practiced road rage. I get angry when people don’t signal and they expect you just to let them in. They signal one way but go the other way. They don’t go the speed limit. They swerve around you at a high speed. They pass in a no passing zone because you are not going fast enough to suit them on and on.

The two most frustrating signs that anger me towards other drivers are merge and yield. The National Motorists association says that

The concepts of YIELD and MERGE mean nothing to many drivers. MERGE is used where a lane is available to allow cars to blend in, typically when entering an interstate highway. It is very dangerous to stop in the merge lane; accelerate instead, to match your speed to the traffic you’re blending in with. Just like when you were learning how to bike, you have to KEEP PEDALING!

YIELD also commands you to blend in, except there is no merge lane available. If a conflict would occur, you must allow the other vehicle to go ahead of you since you don’t have adequate room to accelerate. (You may actually have to put your phone call on hold for a second to do that.) But if there is no conflicting traffic, keep going: Yield does not mean “a rolling stop.”

https://www.motorists.org/mergeyieldstop-rules/

Sadly, drivers in either the merge lane or the yield lane just assume that you MUST stop for them and let them in. No signal, no consideration. Their destination is more important than your destination. Sometime it feels like their business and life is more important than yours. I try my best to be a courteous driver, but some days, it is tough. I think that if we all just slowed down a bit, watch out for the other drivers, we all will get to our destinations safely. After all, we want to get home to our families safely.

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life

Sitting down at the table for dinner

For the past month or so I have been able to resume an age old tradition. That is to sit down together as a family for dinner. It’s tough as a single parent to cook for an almost teenage son and a very much a teenage daughter. Both tend to be picky eaters. For several years, I stopped because it was too much to accomplish between school, after school stuff and work. Also, there was lots of clutter such that I could not see the table. In preparation for hosting the last poker game several weeks ago, I have been working on the clutter issues around the house. There is something positive about the whole minimalist thing, but we can save that for another conversation.

Also, I am trying to eat healthier, trying to get them to eat healthier and a greater variety of foods. Yes we still have pizza night. Taco Tuesday has been curtailed somewhat cause the kids are sick of my ground beef taco’s. I’m working on chicken and pulled pork for a future meal. In addition, making things from raw ingredients can be better for you, and for the wallet. So tonight I prepared chicken on the grill, melon, rice, and

corn-on-the-cob. The kids like rice and chicken and corn and green melon. Simple, and except for the two starches, reasonably good on the healthy scale I hope. Sorry, they originally wanted spaghetti but I quite frankly am tired of spaghetti. I ate too much of that during my high school years.

The kids ate everything on their plates and aside from the soda, I was happy. The whole idea of sitting at the table is that there is no television, iPhone or iPad. We resort to the age old ideas of conversation and laughter. Now sometimes the kids get silly and that gets to me. However, they say more at the table in that short period of time eating then now. I’m here sitting at the table writing tonights entry and they are upstarts playing computer games. There is distance. There is silence.

Of course, when we went to feed the horse, we had to get desert. Ice cream sundaes. Bon Appetit.

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life

Explore Space Create History

That phrase is on the front cover of the latest LEGO catalogue that arrived today. The summer 2019 catalogue has creations associated with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. When I was growing up, I followed the space program before the landing. I was 8 at the time. I remember watching Walter Cronkite cover the liftoff, the landing, the first walk on the moon and the landing back here on earth. I had everything. A space suit, telescope, we would fly model rockets. I would write NASA every month for free photos and books, anythink about space. It would have been cool to be an astronaut.

So in the summer catalogue from LEGO they have listed as a “hard to find” item, the Saturn V rocket. It’s over 39 inches tall. I remember growing up my plastic model rockets of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. They had to be assembled by hand, and help from mom and dad. They were taller than 39 inches, but they also required glue and paint. Less pieces than these LEGO kits. At 1,969 pieces, it would take my son and I an afternoon to build this LEGO kit. New in the catalogue is the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander. I can remember that when you filled up your car with gas at the Gulf stations at that time, you could get a cardboard cut out kit of the Lunar Lander. It was cool. It was fun. You learned and you had pride in your country.

After that, the catalogue then gets into 20th anniversary Star Wars sets. We have many Star Wars sets here at the house, but not all of them. Over the years, I think I have spent thousands on LEGO sets for the kids. Horses for daughter and Minecraft for son, Ningago sets and LEGO movie sets, LEGO City sets, the space shuttle, trucks, Bionicles, and on and on and on. By page 8 of the catalogue, you have the “hard to find” Death Star and equally impressive Millennium Falcon. It took us about 3 days to build the Death Star over the Christmas break; the Ewok Village was about a week. It was fun. At 7,541 pieces, the Millenium Falcon will take several days to build. It’s labeled as the largest LEGO set ever. We have yet to build it but will get to it some day. But then I noticed, I have a different Millenium Falcon kit and it only has 1329 pieces. Just as fun to build I’m sure, but there are obvious differences.

Of course, my son talked about learning chess at one time, so I was able to find him a LEGO Pirates chess set. As you can see, it is still in an unopened box. Got it on eBay. I don’t think they even make them anymore. And as I flip through the new catalogue, I see that we have new adventures courtesy of Toy Story 4. Cannot wait till we can build Forky!

Oh to be young again. In this case, I get to explore it with my kids all over again. And yes, the dog is so excited!

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life

Exercise

Over the years I have tried many different activities in order to construct an exercise program. There has been biking, hiking, running, weights, swimming, and of course walking. Of late, walking has been the one that has been the most consistent of these endeavors in getting exercise.

Walking allows me to get outdoors, to take the dog with, to go as fast and as far as I can. Of late, I find myself going to the stables, as there are many trails along the Mesa that allows me many different opportunities to cover as many miles as I like. Typically I am walking for about 35 minutes on average and cover about 2 miles based on the app that I have on my iPhone.

Still, it doesn’t appear to be enough to get my weight down. That stays fairly constant. Even as I watch my intake of food, limited soda consumption, and less junk food. But I figure that every day, if I go a little farther, go a little faster, then the pounds will begin to fall off. At least that is what I hope to accomplish this summer. Exercise for the body, reading for the mind. Now to figure out how to address the spirit.

I have several more things to return to and report upon during the course of my journey here. I hope you come back and follow my progress, or my lack thereof.

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life

What to write about today

Since I have started this journey a little over a week ago, when I sit down to write, I have typically had the entire piece written in my mind. Today I find myself in the opposite state of mind. Some subject ideas but nothing about the details of the piece. Not sure if it is because I haven’t thought enough about what specific subject to write about, or was it the frustrating day at work, or is it running for three days on seven hours of sleep, or the fact that there is to much going on.

As I said, I have many subjects to ponder. All of them will hopefully get put into words as we continue on this journey. All of them will provide you, the reader about what kind of person I am. Such topics include financial stuff. Lots of blogs about that. Some offer great advice and I have found the articles to be very helpful. I am not a financial expert so I will not write about that much. At least I can write at some point about my axioms for handling money. History and politics are two areas that I have interest in, but they can easily turn people off, especially when they don’t agree with your position on the issues that confront our nation. Suffice it to say, I characterize myself as being “so far to the right that I end up on the left”. Other topics can be hobbies, travel, people, book reviews. Many ideas of things to ponder and keep me occupied and hopefully, all of you as readers, coming back for more. Of course, there will be more offerings in the future about my kids and our pets. Cannot wait to tell you about the goldfish.

Work can be a dull subject. I have a PhD in Chemistry from a Big 10 school, but I really don’t do much chemistry anymore. Most of what I do is in the area of solving technical problems. These technical problems are often caused by others and thus it becomes my job to “make it work”. You do with what you have and don’t request the Lamborghini when a Ford works.

As for the sleep, that becomes an annual conversation in my medical checkup, along with weight, diet, and exercise. Ever since college some 40 years ago, I have been able to function on 2 to 4 hours of sleep every day. Yes it is odd that when I am on vacation, 8 to 10 hours is the norm. Charging the batteries I guess, but I’m thinking that weight, diet and exercise, would be better controlled if sleep was more normal than what I get at present.

And as always, there is lots going on. While I no longer work the 50 to 60 hour work weeks, there are the kids to consider, life and activities outside work, and the general realization that it’s time to do something different as I reach middle age. Yes I plan on living forever, so I better start working on weight, diet and exercise in order to even remotely live to 150.

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life

Reading is Fundamental

Today starts the final week of the school year for my son and daughter. Every year the schools send out information about summer reading programs, books to read, things to try to get the kids to read during the summer months. It’s a great idea and I try to do my best to get my children to read over the summer. There are two approaches that I take to accomplish this.

The first approach is pure capitalism. They get to choose the book and if it meets with my approval, then they read it. For every book that they read, I will pay them twenty dollars. The book has to meet with my approval, otherwise, the legal minds that are my children will argue over what constitutes a book. There is no prescribed number of pages, it cannot be a short story or a comic book. A collection of short stories is fine, but they have to read all of it. There is no quiz, or essay. I just need to see them reading. They are not speed readers, so devouring 100 pages in a day will cause me to question the actual reading. But it is the honor system, which I try to impress upon them is as important as being able to communicate well. The art of communication is dying in our society, between texts and tweets and emoji’s. It is certainly something that I struggle with and try my best to get it right. But I will let you be the judge based upon my blog posts.

The second approach is to lead by example. By that I mean if they see me reading, perhaps they will also read. I cannot ask them to do something that I then will not also do. I’m not going to pay myself twenty dollars, but I am going to read. One reason will be to generate ideas for future blog postings.

For the start of my summer reading, I have chosen a book that has constantly gotten the better of me. On a Facebook post once, I commented in the category of things people may not know about me is that I have managed to read the Bible twice, cover to cover. Odd as I am not a religious person, but we can explore that in some future blog. No my challenge for the summer will be my fourth attempt to read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Why? First is that being a Rush fan, their songs were influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand. Yes, I have seen the movies but the story is as important today as when it was written. Every time I start reading a book, I put the date and where I am at the time I am reading it. For this start, I wrote “here is hoping that the 4th time I will finish”. My copy is worn, having been purchased in the summer of 2011. I think I bought it as part of a trip to go see Rush in concert.

I’ll keep you informed of the summer reading challenge for both me and my kids. I’ll have more words tomorrow as I explore this new world of blogging and work to improve my own communication skills.