and isn't it a beautiful day?

2009-02-26T18:41:00.002-06:00

Buddhism explained as I see it
(with help from Thich Nhat Hanh)

1. Dukkha: Life is suffering.
2. Samudaya: Desire creates suffering
3. Nirodha: Eliminating desire strikes at the root cause of suffering
4. Marga: The eightfold path that leads us to refrain from doing the things that cause us to suffer

Right View: Shariputra (one of the two original disciples of the Buddha) described right view as the ability to distinguish wholesome roots from unwholesome roots. First in the eightfold path, right view is imperative to be able to follow the rest. Without right view, we are unable to identify the right and true path from that which is false. We all carry both of these roots within us. When we act in an unwholesome way, we water the roots of anger, craving and violence. Right view is to recognize which roots are wholesome and to encourage those roots to be watered.

Right Thinking: The next step along the eightfold path is right thinking. With right view as the foundation, our thinking becomes the speech of our minds, and makes our verbal speech clear and beneficial. Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that we write the words "are you sure?" on a large piece of paper and hang it where you will see it often. Ask yourself this question again and again. Wrong perceptions cause incorrect thinking and unnecessary suffering.

Right Speech: In considering what to say about right speech, I remembered an essay by Thich Nhat Hanh. He explained it much better than I could:

"Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am determined to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self confidence, joy and hope. I will not spread news that I do not know to be certain and will not criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or the community to break. I am determined to make all efforts to reconcile or resolve all conflicts, however small."
--Thich Nhat Hanh, the Heart of Buddha's Teaching pg 84

Right Action: When we act in accordance with our moral principals we act rightly. Do our actions prevent harm to others? Do our actions promote well being in ourselves, our families and communities? Do we take responsibility for our actions, learn from them and continue to act for the benefit of all? Our actions should reflect our commitment to our beliefs. We need to constantly monitor our behavior, and by our right actions contribute to the well being of society.

Right Livelihood: We all must earn our living. We need to be aware of the consequences of what we do to earn our daily bread. Does your occupation contribute to the greater good? We must be mindful of the effect we have on the world around us. In our thoughts as of late are the police, fire fighters and rescue workers injured and killed in the world trade center tragedy. A more positive example of right livelihood would be difficult to find. Of course, we can't all pursue those occupations, but we can focus our energy in making a living in a positive fashion.

Right Diligence: This is the effort we take to maintain ourselves. We concentrate on the positive aspects of our lives and nurture that effort. We identify the negatives, and discard them. By right diligence, even small tasks become a joy to us.
Right Mindfulness: “There are many beautiful aspects of our consciousness, like faith, humility, self respect, non-craving, non-anger, non-ignorance, diligence ease, care, equanimity and non-violence.

Unwholesome mental formations on the other hand, are like a tangled ball of string. when we try to untangle it, we only wind it around ourselves until we can not move. The basic unwholesome mental formations are greed, hatred, ignorance, pride, doubt and views. The secondary unwholesome mental formations, arising from the basic ones are anger, malice, hypocrisy, malevolence, jealousy, selfishness, deception, guile, unwholesome excitement, the wish to harm, immodesty, arrogance, dullness, agitation, lack of faith, indolence, carelessness, forgetfulness, distraction and lack of attention.”
--Thich Nhat Hanh (once again) from the Heart of Buddha's Teaching pg74

By practicing right mindfulness, we are able to identify and act upon our thoughts, nurturing the positive and discarding the negative.

Right Concentration: There are two types of concentration: active and selective. When we actively concentrate we are aware of all that is around us. When we selectively concentrate, we focus in on one thing.

Enjoying a walk in the park allows active concentration. We smell the flowers, enjoy the beauty of the trees, and the laughter of the happy children on the playground.

When we do our taxes, we selectively concentrate, focusing in on the math and the confusing forms. We close ourselves off from the distractions of life to surmount the problem before us.

Through active and selective concentration, we live fully in each moment, and live in the joy of that which is around us. Sometimes joy can be the selective concentration of the beauty of one flower.

2008-06-12T17:41:00.000-06:00

Last night there was a tornado touchdown at a Boy Scout camp 40 miles north of here. Four of my brothers lost their lives in this incident. I had never met these four boys, but they are my brothers none the less.

My father passed away when I was a year and a half old. I was the youngest child of a widowed mother, and grew up in a house with her and three older sisters. When I was eight years old, a man from the neighborhood named Ray came to our house one night. He told my Mom that his son had told him that there was a boy without a father in the house. He told my Mom that I needed to come to his Cub Scout meeting and that he would be happy to stop and pick me up the next evening. I went to the meeting.

Over the next ten years, a group of men, committed to the Scouting program, taught me many things. Often, what was being taught on the surface was much deeper than I realized at the time. I learned many skills that have served me well over the years. Along with the skills, I learned how to cooperate with a group, how to be a leader, a follower and what it meant to part of a greater whole. I learned how to plan and carry out my plan. I learned to be prepared. For a fatherless boy from a very poor neighborhood, the Scouting Program was essentially my Father.

As an adult, I spent the next twenty five years working as a volunteer leader. Often, I worked with Ray, the man who came and picked me up for my first meeting. I spent time at the Troop level as an assistant Scoutmaster, then Scoutmaster and a Troop committee member. I moved onto the District staff, and worked at the organizational level. I finally ended up at the Council level as a member of the training staff. I stepped aside about ten years ago to allow a new generation of men to take their turn.

It is very hard to explain what this experience is like, and the effect it has had on my life, to some one on the outside.

Last night, a young man of eighteen was the first to see the tornado approach. He made sure the camp siren was sounded, got a group of younger kids to shelter. Too late to get to the shelter himself, he took a couple of young men into a ravine just in time to avoid the storm as it passed through. When the tornado has passed, a pick up truck had been picked up and blown into a building, knocking over the stone fireplace. This young man, along with others, immediately started to dig the younger boys out of the rubble. When He was interviewed later he was bare chested because he had taken off his shirt and laid it over one of the boys who had died. Thomas White is his name.

Other boys set up a first aid station and were taking care of the injured. A couple boys took an ATV out of a utility shed and went to get the Ranger and his family out of the wreckage of the Ranger’s cabin. When the rescue forces arrived, the young men were taking care of one another, and doing the best they could to get the injured to safety.

I am very proud to say that these are my Brothers…..

2008-05-25T16:14:00.003-06:00

So, It is a lovely day here. The sun is shining, there is a nice breeze and I am sitting on the patio with an nice cold beer and my trusty MacBook, just enjoying the day.

I hope that, wherever you are, it is also a pleasant day.

2008-05-20T18:31:00.002-06:00

This is the ring I purchased at the estate sale. The center stone is slightly less than half a carat, and the 12 rubies that surround it are about an eighth of a carat each. The setting is 18k gold. The guy who ran the estate sale insisted that it was a zircon with lab created rubies. As it turns out, I was right and he was wrong.

2007-12-13T15:51:00.000-06:00

The operation was a success, and now my right eye works much better than it did despite the fact that it is a white hot ball of pain when the Tylonol wears off. The prescription antibiotic eye drops sting, and I hope the International Olympic Committee never finds out about the steroid eye drops, which also sting. The inner portion of my eyelid is a delightful shade of red that complements the bloodshot motif of the rest of the eye.

I really shouldn't complain. thirty years ago, I would be blind. Ray Charles went blind at a young age as a result of lack of treatment for glaucoma. I am not sure when the current method of cataract removal and lens insertion was started, but I am sure it was more recent than that. So, either the glaucoma or the cataracts would have left me blind.

I am grateful, but still pretty uncomfortable

2007-12-10T21:51:00.000-06:00

Wednesday I will go very early to the outpatient clinic and have the cataract removed from my right eye, A year and a half ago, I had the same thing done to my left eye. I expect it will be a routine procedure, but if it is not, I will be the hit on Pirate Day.

2007-11-30T22:54:00.000-06:00

In about half an hour, it will be nine years since I quit smoking.

2007-11-23T17:26:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. We were invited to my niece's for dinner. It went very well, and we were home in good time to wind down and relax. This holiday weekend was one of the best: I have four days off, it is not my turn to take emergency calls, we got paid two days early, I have a few hours overtime, this is the payday for commissions (I got $186.00 in commissions) and best of all: I got a seven percent raise!

This morning we took the cat to the vet then went out to a lovely breakfast. Once the shopping frenzy was done, I went to the Aple store and bought my new desktop computer. I spent the afternoon cleaning the den and rearranging the cable and router wiring. I set up the Mac and now I am sipping a beer, and installing Leopard (Mac's newest operating system) I have Office for Mac and the printer driver to go, then everything will be done.

2007-11-12T07:18:00.000-06:00

So, it has been another boring stretch since my last blog update. I have ordered a laptop from Dell. For my personal computing pleasure, I have made the switch to Macintosh. I have had quite enough of Microsoft, thank you, but the applications I use at work are very specific in their operating system needs. I have an old IBM Thinkpad running Windows 98 for use in the systems requiring a DOS base, and The newer applications will only run in Windows XP. The manufacturers will not be updating this software. When we asked about running them under Vista, they replied: "If you can get them to run in Vista, let us know how you did it." I do not plan to do their R&D for them. So, for the future, i will need a solid machine running Windows XP. Dell has them available for now, but in the future will more than likely phase them out.

I have moved my old Windows XP desktop into the small basement study, where it will mainly be used to back up work applications and sync my PDA. I am using my MacBook now, and once I get the reimbursement from the company for the Dell, I will be heading out to the Apple store to decide which Mac I will use for my new desktop.

See: you thought watching golf on TV and watching paint dry was boring. This little glimpse into the mundane and boring life I lead tops them......

2007-10-29T15:59:00.000-06:00

The Incomparable Sunflower and I in the tree house on one of the trails at Arbor Lodge last weekend

2007-10-25T23:02:00.000-06:00

Good evening friends,

On HBO FE tonight, I am watching "The Music Man"

I remember a night When My Mom and I took a bus downtown and ate at King Fong's Chinese Restaurant then went to the Orpheum and saw "The Music Man." We took the bus home and got an ice cream cone to eat on the walk home from the bus stop. This was my first Chinese food and my first pistachio ice cream cone.

Mom passed away seven years ago, and I miss her every day. I remember this movie outing like it happened last week. It was forty five years ago. I was nine years old. Tonight, I am up later than I should be, and I have had maybe more wine to drink than I should have, but I am remembering that night so long ago, and watching the movie through eyes oddly blurred........

2007-10-25T06:41:00.000-06:00

Well, a couple of strictly routine weeks have gone by since my last attempt at writing the most boring blog in cyberspace. The fall weather here has been creeping in. Last weekend, we caved in to the inevitable and put the hard top back on the jeep for the winter. This weekend we will be making our annual tripp to Arbor Lodge. J. Sterling Morton (of the salt Morton's) lived in Nebraska City. He was the founder of Arbor Day. His property now has a large Hotel/Conference center in the middle of a working apple orchard. We go every fall as the leaves are turning for a calm, quiet weekend of walks through the surrounding forest, great food in the hotel restaurant, and just a general time of relaxation, quality time and renewal.

2007-10-14T06:58:00.000-06:00

A month can go by so fast you hardly realize it has been that long since I bored you with my mundane life. Nothing amazing going on here, just normal activity. A couple of weeks ago Sunflower heard a loud crash in the night and woke me. Just as we got to the door, a neighbor from up the street came to get us. He had been walking his dog and saw a guy in a pick up truck hit our daughter's car then drive away. He had ran behind the truck for awhile and was able to get a partial license plate number, and had called the police on his way down. Sure enough, Anne's car was pretty badly damaged. The truck had been driving on the wrong side of the street and hit it pretty much head on, and the whole front end was mangled. Anne wa pretty upset. She had only had this car for a month, and had just pt the first license plates on it. It had less than three undred miles on it.

The next morning, Anne got a call from a detective. They had found the guy who hit her car. He had called the police to try to turn his damage in as a hit and run and when faced with the evidence, admitted that he had hit Anne;s car and left the scene. Anne was contacted by his insurance company and all worked out well.

2007-09-12T19:41:00.000-06:00

So, it has been a couple of months since I have updated this blog. You haven't missed anything at all. Mainly, work has been real busy, and the weather has been hot. Sunflower and I spend our weekends going to estate sales. Lately we have been going to the City Botanical Gardens often just to spend an hour or two walking hand in hand along the trails.

The girls are doing well. Our younger daughter is talking about moving out at the first of the year leaving us with an empty nest. She had moved out for a brief period before, but maybe this time she will find a place she is happy. Our older daughter has a thriving practice and is making a nice living.

The weather is starting to cool off some, and the weekend is coming up.

2007-07-10T19:20:00.001-06:00

Good evening friends,

It has been a real busy week, but what else is new? The Fourth of July hit in the middle of a crashing heat wave here. the day before, we noticed it was rather warm in teh house, and by Wednesday morning we had to admit that the air conditioner was blowing hot air into the house. My nephew is a technician for a local heating and air conditioning company. He was able to come Thursday evening and look the unit over. It is old, tired and worn out. We found that it was installed in 1974, so we really don't have a complaint. We have lived in this house since 1986, and it has done fine. My nephew charged it with some freon to get us by while he comes up with a new heat pump for us. he should be able to put it in next weekend.

In the meantime, the heat wave broke, and it is a very pleasant night. I am sitting on the patio with my trusty MacBook and a chilled glass of Eye of the Toad, a dry pinot noir rose from the Toad Hollow winery. I hope you are having a lovely evening too.

2007-06-28T19:21:00.000-06:00

Henry, the maltese shi-tzu

2007-06-18T12:09:00.000-06:00

SO, despite appearances I have not abandoned this blog. I have just been very busy. Work is as usual, lots to do and not near enouhg time to get it done.

Last week we were notified that my cousin's youngest son (23 years old) was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. The funeral is Wednesday. My cousin and his wife were able to arrange to pick the casket up late last evening. They were told the remains were "unviewable."

Decorum prohibits typing my response to this horrendus mess Mr. Bush has created for us.

2007-05-29T13:35:00.000-06:00

Good afternoon friends,

So, another week has come and gone. It was amazingly ordinary. Work remains busy as usual. The girls survived yet another barbecue festival and returned safe, if a little hung over. The holiday weekend was one of unhurried relaxation. we went to a morning matinee of the new Pirates of the Carribean Saturday, then an early dinner at Ruby Tuesday. Sunday, the ladies took me out to lunch to celebrate my birthday. Monday we did some yard work. We planted a good sized holly bush and some lilies. After cleaning up, I cooked some steaks on the grill and we enjoyed them with a nice bottle of Bourdeaux.

Today it is back to work.

2007-05-20T20:30:00.000-06:00

Just another beautiful evening, Sunflower and I have had the last few days off to celebrate our anniversary. The girls are in Memphis for a long weekend of drunken debauchery. We will pick them up at the airport tomorrow evening, We haven't really done much with our time off except relax. We have slept in, ate at our favorite restaurants, gone to the gym to swim, and caught up on some yard work. Tonight, Sunflower is in the recliner watching a movie, and I am sitting on the patio again with my trusty MacBook and a glass of really nice Zinfandel. Tomorrow we will have the last day of this vacation and then back to work Tuesday, Tonight, we drink wine and relax.

2007-05-17T07:23:00.000-06:00

Good morning friends,

Thirty two years ago today, Sunflower and I were married. It has been a great thirty two years. I am sure the next thirty two years will be better

2007-05-12T17:23:00.000-06:00

Good afternood friends,

I hope you are having a lovely day.

Sunflower and I slept in a bit, then got out for the day. It is an absolutely stunning day here in flyover country. We started by putting the top down on the jeep. We went to the City Botanical Gardens and walked the trails looking at the last of the early spring flowers and the beginning of the summer stuff.

We Drove to a small town a few miles away to visit Sunflower's favorite quilting store to congratulate the owner for her selection by Quilt Sampler Magazine for the fall 2007 issue's top ten quilt shops.

Back in town, we stopped at the mall and made a payment on our account at the jewelry store, then to Granite City for a delicious lunch.

We shopped around at the various garden stores and picked up a couple of flats of petunias. Sunflower is now distributing them among the various planters. I am doing the heavy lifting, but otherwise sitting at the patio table with my MacBook just enjoying the wonderful Spring evening.

How was your day?

2007-05-02T19:52:00.000-06:00

Good evening friends,

Friend Roger, I am doing fine. Things have been pretty busy around here. For the last seven years, my largest client has been the local University. for the last few months, I have been working on a complete remodel of the Administration building fire alarm. During this time, they have gutted the old Engineering Building and done a complete asbestos abatement. I have a couple of spots in this building still reporting, and will start on the new fire alarm soon. Last week, I got a call from the facilities manager to meet him in the library. He wanted a quote to remove all 150 smoke detectors on the ground floor of the Library so they can jack hammer up all of the concrete and rebuild that level from the dirt up. The Radio and Television department need to be redone, and this afternoon they told me that the food court in the Student Center is to be redone starting June first. If no other new projects are started, I may catch all of this stuff up in a year or so. In the meantime, the non-University service calls keep coming in. Manny came back, and it looks like we are going to promote Bobby up from the mechanical dept to the Alarm dept. This means that instead of two weeks of twenty four hour on call and four weeks off, there will be eight weeks in between.

I took this as a temporary job twenty eight years ago.

2007-04-04T14:22:00.000-06:00

Godd afternoon friends,

Not much has been going on here. The last couple of days I have been working in a plant that manufactures wheel bearings for cars. They have removed one of the eighty foot long tempering furnaces, and I had to pull out the fire suppression from the quenching oil pit. This was a couple of days standing ankle deep in evil smelling waste oil working with pipe and tools that were too slippery to hang on to. This furnace was the center of three, so I had to move one system to the other side of the plant to provide suppression for the far furnace while thw center one is being replaced. In a couple of months, the new furnace will be in and i will go back there, stand in ankle deep, evil smelling waste oil for a week or so to integrate all three furnaces into the same suppression system.

And who said this job didn't have perks?

2007-03-30T21:58:00.000-06:00

Good evening friends,

It is a beautiful evening here in flyover country. I am sitting out on the patio sipping a glass of a lovely Spanish Crianza and watching the college kids start gathering at the house a couple of doors down for their regular Friday night party. in a couple of hours, one of my neighbors will call the police, and the party will be over. In the meantime, I am heading in to get ready for a great night's sleep. I hope the start of your weekend is lovely too.

2007-03-25T22:26:00.000-06:00

Just posting a hello for friend spidey! ;o)

It was a lovely weekekend here. We didn't really get much done. We went to a few estate sales saturday and had a lovely dinner at our favorite Italian place. Sunday we went to church and then had breakfast in the park with Sunflower's brother and his family. This evening I cooked burgers on the grill. After supper I had to go to work for a little bit. That could have gone better, but I am home now and off to bed. I hope you all had alovely weekend too.

2007-03-23T09:02:00.000-06:00

This morning, the service manager called me aside and told me that he has offered a job to Manuel. Manuel worked for us for about five years and left about the same time Ronnie did. He left due to difficulty with this same service manager. I trained Mannie in his first job, then again for the job to which he was promoted. The service manager kept assigning him stuff from his first job, so Mannie left to go with a competitor as an alarm tech rather than a mechanical systems installer.

The competitor has been bought out by a huge construction conglomerate, and the bean counters are now in charge. They are driving everyone over there crazy with multiple levels of petty managers who do not really understand the work we do.

It will be great to get Mannie back. He is good at his job, very dependable and easy to work with. It will also cut my time on 24 hour call from two weeks out of six to two weeks out of eight.

Everyone wins!

2007-03-22T06:05:00.000-06:00

An amazing thing happened yesterday. Three years ago, I sold a car to a co-worker. Ronnie was goint to pay me $150.00 a payday until it was paid off, at which point I would sign the title over to him. Before he was finished paying me, he was fired. (very long and involved story) Ronnie went to work for one of our competitors. In the three years I have only seen him once at a funeral.

I have the pleasure to be probably the only technician in this area who knows how to do the root level programming for one type of system. Our competitors contract with my company whenever this skillset is needed. Yesterday, I was rented to the company Ronnie works for. When I arrived onsite, it was Ronnie there with the information I needed to enter into the system and he was to test this for his customer after I was done. Once the customer was satisfied, we were on our own. Ronnie handed me a check for the remaining balance of the car loan. I was astounded! I assumed that he would try to argue that he had paid me in full and that I had ignored his request for the title. (typical Ronnie style logic)

The check was good, and Ronnie stopped by the house after dinner for the title. Once in a while, people will really surprise you......

2007-03-17T08:03:00.000-06:00

I have not been ignoring this blog. There just has not been anything going on worth writing down. I have spent the last week at the University working on the remodel of the Admin building. I got a call early last week from Security. there had been a small fire in the basement of the Engineering building and the people in that area wanted to know why the smoke detectors didn't work. I carefully explained that there are no smoke detectors in that area, they are all heat detectors. (Heat detectors do not react to quick smoky fires) I had a meeting with the guy in charge who cut me a purchase order to change the heats to smokes. The problem is that the space in question was originally unoccupied storage space. as such. the heat detectors are what is required by the codes in force when the building was built in 1964. Now, there are offices and studios for the campus broadcasting department down there. My contact is putting together some funding to pay for a complete remodel of the fire alarm in this section. This will extend the work I have yet do do at the University another month or six weeks. a coulple of years from now, if no more projects are proposed, i will catch up.....

2007-03-08T12:26:00.000-06:00

It has been a busy week. Tuesday I drove to a ball bearing plant a hundred miles away and repaired the fire suppression system on the heat treat furnace. Yesterday I finally managed to get the Lincoln guys on the right track to finish the job they have been trying hard to lay off onto me. They have been looking for a programming solution for a wiring problem for a couple of months. I went down there yesterday and found the wire fault in about an hour. If they would have just listened, they could have had this system working back in January. The manager of the Lincon Shop will complain about the bill as usual, but his guys should have been able to find this without me.

Last night we went to a jewelry restyling event and I had the old diamond from Sunflower's wedding ring put into a nice pendant. My older daughter bought a new ring and had the stone from an older ring reset into it.

Today I have been finishing up odds and ends at work to enable me to get back to the university.

More boring junk later......

2007-03-01T07:43:00.000-06:00

SNOW DAY!

The snow started about 5:30 this morning. It is now 7:45, and we have had more than three inches of heavy, wet snow on top of a quarter inch or so of ice I left the house ten minutes early to go to to work. I drive a four wheel drive pickup with a utility box. It weighs seven thousand pounds. I rarely have trouble getting around, but today I got hemmed in by traffic. I sat at the same traffic light for about fifteen minutes, then turned back into the neighborhood. I was getting lined up on an alternate route when my phone rang. It was the boss.

He slipped on some ice a couple of weeks ago and broke his ankle. He can't drive and he really shouldn't be even walking with crutches. He asked me where I was, and when I told him I was working my way into the shop, he said he couldn't get out. I told him I would come and get him, but he said to just head back home. The weather is awful, and it just isn't worth the risk. The places I need to go to today probably aren't open anyway, so I have been instructed to take the day off!

Cool!

2007-02-28T13:26:00.000-06:00

One of my customers is a state agency that provides for the mentally handicapped. I was called to one of the group homes today to make a repair to the fire alarm system. I have a master key to get into all of these homes, and mostly there is no one there during the day. I stop at each of them and test the fire alarm twice a year.

In the basement, there is an area with a couch, coffee table tv and dvd player. Piled all around this are toy fire trucks, fire fighter's helmets and a surprisingly good copy of a fire fighter's bunker coat with the name Ricky on the back of it. Stacked on the coffee table are all of the movies with fire fighters: Backdraft, Ladder 49 and Towering Inferno. At various times the staff at this home have told me that Ricky spends all of his free time in this little corner of the basement wrapped in his fantasy world where he is a fire fighter, bravely rescuing people and putting out fires.

Today, after ten years or so, I finally met Ricky. He is a slightly built, balding man in his mid to late forties.......

Sometimes we do not appreciate the gifts we have.

2007-02-25T12:54:00.000-06:00

The snowstorm seems to be over for the moment. I went out a couple of hours ago and cleared the drive. The news last night had a crawl across the bottom of all of the churches that were cancelling services. We decided to just stay in today. I am making beef noodle soup for my older daughter's birthday dinner, and there is nowhere we really need to go.

2007-02-24T16:46:00.000-06:00

Another busy week behind and a quiet, lazy Saturday in progress. The weather has been pretty strange. It was raining softly when we went to bed last night. About three am, there was thunder and lightening. It rained real hard for awhile, then stopped. It has been raining on and off all day, and it will soon turn to snow. We may get up to eight inches by tomorrow afternoon. The winds will whip it into drifts, and travel will be horrible.

We paid attention to the forcast and did our grocery shopping Friday night, and we have no real need to go anywhere. We can just sit here, sipping hot chocolate and watching the snow fall.....

2007-02-18T20:45:00.000-06:00

Weekends are way to short.

Our sundays are pretty routine. We attend Church with Sunflower's brother, his wife and their kids and we go out to breakfast at the same restaurant. Tony and his family are in Mexico this weekend on vacation. We went to the restaurant and sat in a small booth rather than a table for seven. This put us in the clutches of the oddest waitress in the place. The last time we had her, she brought us a loaf of warm cinnamon raisin bread and a ramikin of whipped butter. "You will really like this!" she said. It was pretty tasty, but strange to get food we didn't order. Today, I orderd an omlet with chorizo, cheese, tomatos, green onions, sour cream and salsa. Sunflower ordered corned beef hash and eggs. Sunflower was just deciding how she would like her eggs, and the waitress said, "I'll just tell them to give you basted eggs." (Sunflower usually likes them over medium) A few minutes later, she dropped off a pitcher of warm syrup. "For your pancakes," she said. (we hadn't ordered any pancakes) A short time later, our food arrived. It was delicious, as always. Sunflower liked the basted eggs with her corned beef hash, and my omlet was wonderful. The waitress brought us each a side order of pancakes a small orange juice.

Next time, we get this waitress, we will just tell her to surprise us.

2007-02-17T07:47:00.000-06:00

Good morning friends,

Here it is, Saturday morning and all is as it should be. I am not responsible for emergency calls, I had some extra on my paycheck from overtime and commissions and Tom is going to do the service call that just had to be done this morning. Sunflower is sleeping peacefully in the next room. For now, I can sit here, sip my coffee and surf the net.

Later, we will dress warm and head out to run some errands. This evening we will go out to dinner to celebrate the nice raise Sunflower received yesterday.

I hope all of you have a lovely day.

2007-02-11T19:04:00.000-06:00

This evening I made Beef Stroganof for dinner using my mother's old, battered club aluminum dutch oven for the pasta. This is the pot mom used for everything. I learned to cook using it. My sisters used to argue over who would get this pot when mom died, and mom used to joke that she wanted it to be buried with her. I really tried to do this, but my sister Mary would not let me have it when mom died. A few days ago, I met my nephew over at Mary's house. He will be moving in there after he and his sisters figure out what to do with my sister's things. He was more than happy to let me have mom's pot.

2007-02-10T07:40:00.000-06:00

Good morning friends,

It has been a busy week. There was a fire in an apartment in one of our largest client's buildings Wednesday. My fire alarm worked properly and everyone got out safe. As the fire progressed it burned through the wiring to the fire alarm and killed it. I spent Thursday installing temporary wiring through the burned area and replacing the alarm control panel so that it was safe to move back into the building. This was a ten hour day in the cold with wet feet from walking through the water left by the fire hoses. My feet feel cold again as I type this.

Yesterday I was called by the service manager of one of our competitors to work with one of his techs on a particular problem they were having renovating an older system. The service manager and, as it turned out, the tech they sent are former employees of ours. I taught both of these guys through their first few years. I was able to solve the problem for them, and I gracefully turned aside the broad hints that I should really be working for their company.

Sunflower and I are looking forward to a lovely Saturday. I hope your weekend is nice too!

2007-02-02T22:16:00.000-06:00

Just one more boring post about my test and the results: I received my license in this afternoon's mail along with my test score: 100%. I guess I didn't overthink the questions.

2007-02-02T07:11:00.000-06:00

For those of you who are freezing vicariously through the Omaha temperatures, it is three degrees as I type this. The high is projected to be sixteen. Since it is Friday, I have a fairly easy day planned at the University. I have an ongoing remodel project there that I work on whenever the boss lets me, and today is a good day to get at it. The boss is somewhere warm playing golf. The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy, and this is the first weekend in a month that I don't have to work. I hope wherever you are, you are getting ready for a great weekend too!

2007-01-31T21:43:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago, I took my license renewal test. I suffer from test anxiety syndrome. The longer the results take to get here, the more I question all of my answers, and worry that I was reading too much into the questions....

One of our other guys took the test at the same session, and he got his results last Friday. He had failed for the second time, which means he will have to wait six months before he can retest. This morning, I called to find out what was holding my results up. The test proctor told me that I had passed, and that the delay was caused by the wait for the Fire Marshal's signature. I feel much better now.

2007-01-28T13:21:00.000-06:00

Sometimes it's good not to be the Sprinkler guy....

It is seven degrees in Omaha. I am not sure how cold it got last night, but this morning my pager sounded. It was the maintenance guy from an apartment complex not far from here. He had a fire sprinkler line in the attic of one of his buildings freeze and split in the night and really needed a referal. I gave him the number of the company we usually use.

we are in out of the cold, and I have a pot of chili simmering on the stove.

2007-01-26T07:11:00.000-06:00

It has been a busy week here. Monday morning my truck was dead. I got a ride to work and shifted into another truck while mine was being repaired. I moved some tools into it and I was off to a client site about 90 miles away to do a repair that required a second round trip back to the shop. The guy that usually drives that truck is a smoker and likes those tree shaped air fresheners. the combination of the two smells mae me a little nauseous all week. After an eleven hour day, I had the client's system working again. The next day started real early to let me do a few system checks in the protected rooms of a hospital. Once again, eleven hours. Wednesday, I started at regular time, but had a night appointment for that same hospital for the system in the computer center. Twelve hours for Wednesday. Yesterday I did a few odds and ends. The guy had my truck running, so I moved back into it, then helped another tech on a job he should have done Friday . He is at least two days away from done. Maybe by Monday. I am heading back there today to help him out again.

2007-01-21T14:01:00.000-06:00

We had six inches of snow overnight. We also had nothing planned for today, so I put some nice lean beef in the slow cooker for a stew this evening, cleaned off all the cars and shoveled the driveway. It's a good day to just relax, sip some wine and watch some old movies. I hope your day is lovely too!

2007-01-16T16:57:00.000-06:00

I just got back from my license renewal test. This takes place every four years. Since my last test, the material from which they draw the questions has been updated. Back in August, I gave the service manager a list of the seven books I needed. I told him I would be more than happy to pay the three hundred bucks, but I wanted them soon so I could start the conversion process. He told me to keep my money, and that he would get right on it. In November, He finally purchased the books as pdf files rather than the hard copies. The pdfd files were the same price. He assumed that he would just run us off copies whenever we needed them. What he did not think about was the size of these works. One of them is 765 pages. He used about a dozen printer cartridges, and a few reams of paper. I got the last of the material yesterday. (lots of study time there....) I have since ordered real books rather than the single sided huge binders I have been using.

Today was the test. I am pretty confident in my answers. The results will be here in about two weeks.

2007-01-13T07:09:00.000-06:00

Good morning friends,

It is seven am, and bone chilling cold out there. I should be snuggled up in bed, but I am sitting with a cup of coffee while my truck warms up. One of our larger clients requires that we test their alarms during off hours. All three of us will be there, and we will be billing them for overtime rates, but even at time and a half, I really hate to work weekends. I hope your weekend is going better.

2007-01-06T21:23:00.000-06:00

Good evening friends,

On New Years day, I resolved to:

Laugh more
drink more good wine
Take Sunflower out to dinner more often

as a start on accomplishing these tasks, I took Sunflower out to our favorite Italian place tonight, where we laughed, ate delicious Sirloin Marsala and shared a bottle of claret from the Copolla winery.....

2006-12-31T08:34:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year, my friends

This fall, Sunflower and I spent a weekend at Arbor Lodge. This is the home of Sterling Morton, the founder of Arbor Day. We get down there every every spring as the apple blossoms are at their peak, and every fall as the trees are turning. We arrived a little early this year, and our room wasn't quite ready, so we sat on a bench beneath a tree and took this picture from the camera built into my MacBook. Right now it is snowing lightly outside, and we have had some freezing rain, but the spring will come, and the apple trees will bloom......

2006-12-30T09:47:00.000-06:00

Good morning friends,

It is raining here. The last weekend of the year looks pretty dreary. We have no great plans for New Year's Eve. We will probably go out early in the evening for a quiet dinner, then home to get out of the craziness. I am sure the college boys in the rental house a couple of doors away will have a house full of noisy, underage kids drinking vast quantities of beer, but this will be no different than any other given weekend. I see a few police cars in their near future.....

I hope you all have a lovely and safe holiday.

2006-12-24T21:30:00.000-06:00

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. (Luke 2:1-20 kjv)

Merry Christmas, friends

2006-12-21T20:49:00.000-06:00

Well, a couple of weeks have gone by without a funeral to attend. We will see how it goes.

At one point, the company I work for was one of three locations. Fifteen years ago, my boss bought our location, cutting us off from the old owner. We have a pretty good working relationship. We do not encroach on each other's customers or territory, and once in a while, we order together to get the bulk discounts.

A couple of months ago, the guy who did my job at the Lincoln office quit, leaving them without a programmer. I have been rented to them off and on for the last month. I finished the bulk of the work today. Every day up there has just put me farther behind on my projects. Hopefully they will send someone to get some training, but it doesn't look likely. Today, I drove up there to load some programming. The panel was not done, and the CPU card was broken. The apparantly pulled the new card from this job and used it somewhere and didn't order a new one. I transfered the profgram to their laptop, gave detailed loading instructions and drove off.

More than likely, they will call when they get a new part and want me back up there. I don't think my boss will go for it. I hope not.....

2006-12-12T14:52:00.000-06:00

The wake and the funeral are over. My nieces and nephew will now need to go through my sister's possessions and get the house ready for the market. Real estate is in a down turn here, so it may be a while before the house is sold. I have been speaking often to my sister in Texas. It is hard to imagine that we are the only ones left. She had planned to come this week for her daughter's Christmas party, and was unable to change her flight to get here for the funeral. I will pick her up at the airport Thursday for a long weekend visit. Possibly, I will have something other than depressing struff to post here soon.....

2006-12-04T19:37:00.000-06:00

My sister had her carotid artery surgey a week ago today. A couple of days later she had a quadruple heart bypass. She did pretty good Thursday and Friday, but Saturday was when it started to get bad. Sunday evening she was in intensive care. She passed away this evening about 5:30......

2006-11-23T20:07:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving all.

It was jsut the four of us today. One of our favorite retaurants had a dinner package available for just about what I would have spent at the grocery store. We picked it up last night, and just heated it according to instructions today.

Tonight, I have had too much good food and too much good wine. It has been a great day. I hope your day was great too.

2006-11-21T18:16:00.000-06:00

It just continues. My sister, who is 63, went in for some tests. It was determined that her carotid arteries are plugged up. One is 90 percent blocked, the other 60 percent. Further testing found the need for a quadruple heart bypass. She will check in monday for the coarotid arteries, and stay in the hospital. Wednesay they will do the heart bypass.

Someday soon, I will post something upbeat........

2006-11-12T09:18:00.000-06:00

Good morning friends,

I guess I am just getting to the age when we realize that we are not immortal. My friend Duane died yesterday of heart failure. Duane and his wife Pam have been friends of ours since our oldest children entered Kindergarden. We coached Little League with and against each other for years. Pam was a teacher's aid at the elementary school. One afternoon she held and comforted our oldest daughter, who had been injured on the playground until we were able to get there. Our familys have been joined by good times and bad.

Duane was a young auto shop teacher at the high school. On a field trip, he was discovered in a compromising position with one of the senior class girls (Pam) and fired. They were married a month or so later, and went on to thirty five more years together and five children.

He had heart bypass surgery a couple of years ago, but has been in failing health for a long time. I am glad he is at peace.

2006-11-04T07:01:00.000-06:00

Good morning friends.

It would be great to have interesting and amusing stuff to post in my blog, but it just ain't happening. My trip to Fike last week to learn the Cheetah and Vesda systems put me a little more behind on my projects at the University. When I got back, I found that we have a new apprentice in our department. He seems like a nice enough kid, and he is willing to work. He knows nothing at all about what we do, do we can teach him from scratch.

It also proves that we do not profile our employees. He is in his early twenties, Arabic and his name is Jihad. Well, he will at least sty put. I am sure the Department of Homeland Security would not let him get on a plane,,,,,,

2006-10-24T18:46:00.000-06:00

My brother Eddie died tonight.

Sunflower called me a few minutes ago. Eddie died of Lukemia. He was not actually my brother, but I have known him most of my life. He was the same age age my older sister. When he was sixteen, his mother got a job as a live in housekeeper. There was no provision for a teenaged son in her job, so Eddie was on his own. My sister brought him home, and Eddie slept on our couch for the next three years. This was forty five years ago. All these years, he has just been one of the family. I am stuck here for the next couple of days, so I am hoping the funeral won't happen until I get back. i'll sure miss him....

2006-10-22T14:17:00.000-06:00

Good afternoon friends,

I am on the road again. I will be spending the next few days in Blue Springs Missouri at another programming school. This is for a type of system I have been working on for a few years with no training at all. So far, I haven't broken one, but I will be much better off with factory certification.

I have been pretty busy at the University. My esteemed competitor installed a system in a section of a building that was remodeled. It is incompatible with the rest of the campus, and I have been brought in to rectify this at my competitor's expense. Since this has begun, we have been given two of the other buildings to completely renovate. My competitior has been removed from the approved bidder's list.

A short trip to Blue Springs will be a nice break....

2006-10-12T19:37:00.000-06:00

Good evening friends.

This weekend wil be one of the good ones. It is payday, i have a few extra dollars coming in overtime and commissions, and the best part: It is not my turn to take calls. we have tickets to Man of La Mancha at the local university, and plan to have a lovely dinner at our favorite restaurant.

The first Broadway show I ever saw was Man of La Mancha. It was on tour with Richard Kiley as Cervantes/Quixote and started my love of theater. Sunflower has never seen this play. it has been great to take her to various plays that she is seeing for the first time. Sometimes i envy her. wouldn't it be great to be seeing Damn Yankees, or West Side Story for the first time?

I hope you all have a lovely weekend too.

2006-10-07T17:58:00.000-06:00

Good evening friends

The mac thing didn't work out. This afternoon I plunked down $2k of my hard earned cash and took my mac home to get started just like the commercials promise. right out of the box, step number 4 is to connect to the internet. Mac was able to see my home wireless network and prompted me for a password. Ten digits and click. fifteen seconds later, connection failure. I opened up my IBM thinkpad on the table next to mac and connected without a prolem. Five more failures, and I boxed mac up and took it back.

The store manager was sincerely trying to help and hooked me up with someone from the "genius" bar. He fiddled around about forty five minutes, and told me that I was good to go. Back home, mac would not even see my network until I forced it to. I entered the password, and recieved connection failure for my efforts.

My daughter's friend was around, and he tried with his mac to connect. Yet another connection failure. His mac dual boots in mac and windowsxp pro. He booted up in windows and was able to connect with no problem.

I boxed mac up one more time and returned it for my hard earned cash.

I guess my network just speaks windows. So much for mac advertising......

2006-10-06T13:27:00.000-06:00

good afternoon friends, just a quick test post to make sure i remember how to do this....

it has been a long time between posts. when i came back from florida, we were a little behind on the work. shortly thereafter, we found that a competitor, who had underbid us for a project at the university, had ignored the portion of the contract requiring them to use the same technology as the rest of the campus. they have no one there who knows how to program this stuff. after a couple of rounds of meetings, the competitor refused to fix the problem. the contractor cut me a purchase order, which led to three weeks of pretty intense work to convert the new system to the older technology. now i am waiting for the program data from their system to be able to finish.

see, this blog can be just as boring as it always was.....

2006-05-26T19:49:00.000-06:00

road trip!

sorry for the delay between blog posts. we have been working shorthanded, with much to do in a short time. we found a replacement for matthew yesterday. so far so good.

we have picked up a rather large account from a competitor. the drawback is that it is a product for which i have taken only the the hardware class, which is available as a "self study" course. this course is a prerequisite for certification, but will not allow us to properly serve this new large customer. i will be heading to the sarasota/bradenton florida area for a two week programming and network class june 5 to june 16.

eight hours a day in class plus homework hardly makes this a working vacation, but i plan to make the best of it.

2006-05-06T16:57:00.000-06:00

good afternoon friends

lately, sunflower and i have been spending our saturday mornings going to estate sales. we really enjoy looking at the houses more than the stuff for sale, but once in a while we fid great stuff.

the first book i ever bought with my own money was a ballantine paperback edition of the beasts of tarzan by edgar rice burroughs. it was printed in 1963, and cost fifty cents. i still have it. over the next few years, i bought all of the burroughs stuff i could find, and i still have most of them. they are all rather battered and worn.

at one of todays sales, i found a complete set of the tarzan novels and about half of the martian novels (including two that i no longer had) from the 1972 printing and in pristine condition for fifty cents each.

i am looking forward to re-reading these. it will be like visiting an old friend.

2006-05-04T16:53:00.000-06:00

good evening friends,

i have been pretty busy lately. we have yet to hire a replacement for matthew. this means that i am doing all of my job and at least half of matthew's. tommie (my remianing coworker) has been pretty tied up with his projects, leaving the incoming service to me. we have had a few applicants with no viable candidates so far.

the last guy we interviewed had been fired from one of our competitors because he was arrested right off of a job site for outstanding traffic warrants. this had resulted in a suspension of his driver's license. it is difficult to test and inspect fire alarm systems unless you can drive to the buildings they are protecting.

the polls for the governor's race that prompted my change of parties have had the candidates trading the front position by narrow margins. it will be close. maybe my one vote will tip the scale....

second attempt at publishing this. does anyone else use firefox? i had to go back to internet expolrer to publish this

2006-04-21T16:06:00.000-06:00

good evening friends

After thirty four years as a registered independent, i stopped at the county election office today and registered as a republican. Over the years I have voted for the best person for the job regardless of party affiliation. I have never voted against my better judgment just because of the political ideology of the candidate. as an independent voter, i have never been allowed a vote in the partisan primaries.

The democratic candidate for governor has no chance of winning. Our next governor will be one of the three republicans currently running in a close primary election to be decided in a couple of weeks.

Our current governor was the lieutenant governor when mr. bush made mike johanns secretary of agriculture. Since then he has done a fine job.

Second on the list is a local business man. He is running third in the polls and is having some difficulty getting his message out.

The man with the best chance of winning right now is our third district congressman. He won his two house terms in landslide elections due to coaching our college football team to three national championships.

Our primary election is may ninth. While my one vote will not stop the coach from winning the election, I can not stand idle and let it happen with out trying to prevent this travesty from coming to pass.

My second issue is the senate race. Our senate seat up for election this year is currently held by a conservative democrat. While our senator will probably get my vote in the general election, it is possible he will lose his seat to the republican challenger.

One challenger is a business man running a very clean and positive campaign focused on the issues. The other is the former state attorney general who ran against our senator last election by one of the dirtier campaigns in recent memory. If our senator is to lose his seat, I would prefer the honest business man running the positive campaign to represent me in the senate rather than the mudslinging former attorney general.

As for our house seat, I will vote for whoever is running against our current republican sock puppet currently occupying the seat.

2006-04-13T19:27:00.000-06:00

good evening friends,

it has been a couple of busy weeks. since matthew 's departure, i have been doing all of my job and at least half of matthew's.

spring seems to have really arrived here. we set a record high temperature today, and the trees are greening up nicely. it is a lovely evening to sit out on the porch and surf the net. tomorrow will be back to the grind, but tonight is wonderful weather, a lovely glass of spanish crianza and wireless internet....

2006-03-31T20:50:00.000-06:00

good evening friends

well, we are back to two people in my department. matthew has some issues that have led to his dismissal. with as busy as we are, absenteeism really puts a kink in our customer service. mattew missed eight out of the first fifteen work days of the year. the boss was all set to fire him, and the service manager stepped in and gave him another chance..

we have been having some difficulty in seeing just what he has been getting done lately. monday, he skipped a service call to start on an installation, then bailed on the installation. tuesday morning he called me to ask a tech support question. that was the last we heard from him. he did not do the repair he had asked me about, and stopped answering his phone. i finished tuesday by catching the appointments he had made.

wednesday, he did not show at all, and did not answer his phone. we sent a couple of guys over to his apartment to see if he was there, and o.k. they could hear his phone ring, and someone moving around, but no one answered the door. the company truck was in his parking stall and unlocked. the guys brought the truck back.

thursday night, the service manager called the authorities. they found matthew at home, and seemingly o.k. the manager called after the police had been there and told matthew to come in this morning.

i missed the meeting, but heard later that matthew did not seem concerned that he had lost his job. he was very amused that the guys had been knocking at his door and that they did not know he was on the other side just laughing at them.

i hope he can get some help.......

2006-03-27T22:03:00.000-06:00

all those years of sobriety, down the drain!

many years ago, when i realized how stupid i got when i was drinking too much, i gave it up. a couple of years ago i started drinking a glass of wine once in a while. i am partial to the spanish reds. a couple of glasses is about my limit.

last night, in an experiment, i exceeded the two glass limit. considering i was not behind the wheel or out in public, and that everyone else in the house had gone on to bed, it didn't go to badly. about halfway through the fourth glass, i dozed off in my chair.

i guess my capacity diminished over the years......

2006-03-22T19:36:00.000-06:00

good evening friends

the refurbished "mint" condition thinkpad arrived today. it is even nicer than advertised. it is pristine. i was able to install my hard drive, battery and ultra bay floppy drive and start right up. not bad for sixty one bucks.

my next project is to take the other two laptops and tear them down and reassemble a nice working laptop from the parts. this will give me a back up machine for my critical applications. i should be able to do this with spare parts left over.

2006-03-18T08:18:00.000-06:00

good morning friends

and happy saturday! this is one of the great weekends: it is payday, i have a nice chunk of overime pay and commissions on the check, i handed the on call responsibility off to matthew, and the used thinkpad i bought on ebay seems to be working fine. it is a little rougher in appearance than i am happy with, but performance is the important part here.

to solve this appearance situation, i have been watching ebay carefully. yesterday, i won an auction for another thinkpad. this one has been refurbished rather than listed as used. it carries a warranty and a return gaurantee. if delivered as advertised, this will give me a nice looking, functional laptop for work.

i can then take the rough but working laptop and the nice looking but non functional laptop and build a second machine to use as a backup.

some kind soul also auctioned off a set of technical repair manuals for these thinkpads.

happy computing!

2006-03-13T19:15:00.000-06:00

good evening friends,

today, the ibm thinkpad i bought on ebay arrived. it started up fine, and seems to be working pretty well. this should allow me to just shift the hard drive from my broken thinkpad and get all of the programming i need at work to return to full operation.

not bad for 127.50

2006-03-12T18:06:00.000-06:00

good evening friends,

today has been tax day at our house. i spent the afternoon with three sets of federal returns and three state returns. thank god for turbotax!

yesterday, it was a beautiful day. it hit sixty degrees and sunny. sadly i wasted six hours in a class i needed for the continuing education requirements for my electrical license. the guy who used to teach these classes retired and we had a new guy. he had copied a great deal of n.f.p.a.70 code into a power point presentation then spent most of the class time reading it to us as we followed along in the handouts he printed up from the slides.

great phrases like "the power sources of non power limited fire alarm circuits shall comply with chapters 1 through 4 and the output voltage shall not be more than 600 volts, nominal. these circuits shall not be supplied throug ground fault circuit interrupters (gfci) or arc fault circuit intrerrupters (afci)"

the challenge is not to understand the nature of non power limited circuits. the difference between power limited and non power limited circuits is a common discussion among fire alarm technicians. the real challenge is to stay awake while that guy reads this to us.

2006-03-06T10:16:00.000-06:00

good morning friends,

after last night and the final minute of the ebay auction for an old, but working, ibm laptop it is easy to see why there are people who get hooked into ebay. i really needed this laptop. i have a particular set of aplications that will not run on anything newer than windows98, and will not even load on some of those. the laptop on its way is identical to the one i have been using that is now dead. i am sure that i can just transfer the hard drive from the old to the new and be back in action. well worth the $127.50 i had to bid

2006-03-05T08:21:00.000-06:00

good morning friends,

tonight are the oscars, and having seen so few of the movies nominated, i will probably give them a pass. this last week has been constant computer repair. my younger daughter has been using a compaq desktop that i put downsatirs for her when i bought my newer computer. she asked me one morning if i had turned it off. i hadn't. "well,' she said "it is off and will not come back up" i have an old gateway that i have been using for network storage due to a failed video card, so i opened up both cases and started poking around. my older daughter called while i was doing this and told me that her computer "made a popping sound from the back and shut off and smells hot."

this gave me three computers on my desk in various degrees of disassembly. i bought one power supply and a cmos battery. a couple of days later, i have rebuilt two working desktops out of the parts from three that were not working.

now, if i can just win that bid on ebay for the parts i need to fix one of the laptops..........

2006-02-22T19:17:00.000-06:00

customers suck!

friday, i am going to one of our customers for a meeting with the manager and their electrical contractor. they remodeled last summer, and the fire alarm suffered regular damage while the construction was going on. typically, i would get a call from the manager that they were having trouble. when i got there no one would ever cop to even peripheral involvement in the problem. i would spend a couple of hours tracing a circuit only to find out that "someone" had removed a few detectors. no one knew who took them out, or where they were. i would replace them with new detectors and get the alarm back to normal.

when i wrote the work ticket, the electrical contractor (who was supposed to be taking care of this system) would refuse it sending me to the facility manager, who would kick it back to the electrician. evidently, they have been arguing over who is to pay these bills ever since. i was unaware that we hadn't been paid.

someone is paying them friday! i don't really care who, but my boss has a mechanical lein all set to file. the facility is due for semi annual testing this month. if they owe us money, it will not be done.

2006-02-19T20:02:00.000-06:00

someone around here won 365 million in the powerball drawing last night. it wasn't me.

aside from that, sunflower and i had a lovely weekend. it is pretty cold here, but we bundled up and braved the cold. with the increase in the cost of stamps, it has now become cheaper to drop our local bills in person, so we paid our utilities and a couple local stores. we stopped at an estate sale in the upscale neighborhood a few blocks away, but the stuff they had that was worth looking at was way overpriced. we had a late lunch at mimi's cafe in a room full of ladies in red hats.

sunday has been pretty quiet. comp usa had a pretty good sale and i picked up some parts for some much needed repairs on a couple of the desktop computers around here. i made a pot of chili, and now i am sipping a glass of geofranco wineries nero d'avola and relaxing in preparation of the coming work week.

mayby the next big powerball...........

2006-02-12T19:38:00.000-06:00

good evening friends,

sunflower and i spent the afternoon at the home and garden show today. there are two of these, and there will be another in about three weeks. there was once a single show, with a single organizational committee. there was some sort of argument, and now there are two.

the most enjoyable part of these shows are the entries avaiable at each booth to win a new grill, or a new tv. by filling out these entries, you are guaranteeing that your name will be on the sales list for the booth sponsor for at least another year. i happily filled melvin's name , address and phone number on each slip.

you may remember melvin as the guy who tried very hard to interfere in my relationship with sunflower back when we were first getting aquainted. over the years i have made it a point to keep my practical joke skills sharp at his expense, sometimes pushing the envelope.

well, he will get plenty of phone calls from window, siding, roofing and various other home improvement firms, and i am sure he will enjoy the vacation plans offerred to him.

too bad it is illegal to sign the petitions to allow gay marriages, or to allow casino gambling in his name. when doing this sort of thing, it is important to remember what is legal. i learned this from my melvin campaign.

2006-02-11T21:34:00.000-06:00

we have had a long run of unseasonable warm weather. there were a few days in january that reached 70 degrees.

winter came back today. we woke to a layer of snow with a slick icy base. the wind was out of the north and cut right through to the bone.

it is nice to be inside sipping a glass of gnarly head old vine red zinfandel.

so, what are you drinking?

2006-02-07T18:00:00.000-06:00

too cheap to meter?

good evening friends,

i spent the day today testing some fire suppression systems at a nuclear power plant. back in t he beginnings of the atomic age, it was forcast that nuclear power could produce energy so cheaply that there would be no need to meter it. this did not come to pass.

our bill for the service we provide is pretty high. if these systems were anywhere else, it would take me half an hour to forty five minutes each to test and generate a one page report on the system status.

once the nuclear industry gets into the act, i have a procedure to follow that runs fifty or so pages. each and every step has to be verified over and over. i spent half an hour first thing this morning waiting for the shift supervisor to give his permission for an operator to give the tech i was working with the key to open the control panel. this is a standard key. i have a coffee can full of them. once, i used the key on my key ring to open one of these panels. this resulted in three seperate reports file to explain why we deviated from the written procedure.

the tech supervisor offered me a job today. i do not have enough patience to work in an environment like this. i am used to actually working and getting stuff done. these guys are way more concerned with the proper forms being filled out than they are with the proper operation of their fire suppression equipment.

2006-02-05T15:17:00.000-06:00

yet another attempt to bore everyone to death. i sure appreciate all of friend tree's hard work at helping us all communicate, but it is time for me to try to manage this blog stuff on my own. the life i lead is quiet and peaceful as i can make it so there is not much exciting news coming from here.

today is the super bowl. not being a sports fan in general or a football fan in particular i plan to avoid it. i have a lovely bottle of spanish wine breathing, and i will sip it as i surf the net.

whomever you root for, i hope your team wins.