One Small Step

Happy (Belated) Birthday Neil Armstrong.
Aug 5, 1930 - Aug 25, 2012 (age 82)



Don't Know Much About ...

I sat at the bar with an English chap and had a beer. He is living in the U.S. now; and he has two children in elementary school. He complained how poorly we teach history in this country - especially local history. He said, "It's almost like they don't want to teach history yet because they're not sure how it's going to turn out." I don't know if I agree with that, but it does seem like the kids today don't know much about history. I'm sure my parents' generation said the same thing about us.

They're doing exterior building maintenance at my office. They're caulking, power washing, and replacing window gaskets. There are machines running, people talking, and lots of hammering too. Once, all of the noise stopped. Then - after a brief silence - I heard someone with a flat file trying to make something smaller so it would fit into its place. A file only cuts in one direction, but nobody ever showed this person the proper way to use a file. It was chattering across the workpiece and making an awful racket.

After about ten minutes, my boss walked over and said, "That noise is driving me crazy, doesn't that bother you?"

I said, "Just tell yourself it's a seal barking on a sunny day at the zoo, and then it doesn't sound so bad."

That comment brought a snicker from the other side of the wall and reminded me once again that there is no privacy for cube dwellers; but it also allowed my boss to go back to work without a lengthy discussion of how the fellow on the balcony was abusing his tool. After another five minutes, the barking stopped ... but then the pounding resumed.

My boss turned to me and said, "Yeah? Well what do you call that?"

"Oh that? That's the clubbing."

"What?"

"The clubbing ... of the seals ... the baby seals."

He had no clue! I finally realized he was too young; he had no idea what I was talking about. I suggested he run a web search for "clubbing baby seals" to see what I meant. It's nice to think there is a generation growing up that doesn't know what clubbing seals is all about. Maybe some things in history are better off being forgotten. Maybe some day, a generation will grow up without knowing what a daisy cutter is. Wouldn't that be nice?

Letting Go - Part 2

For the last two weeks, I've used all of my spare time to clean out my old office. The space has sat unused for the last seven years. It's taken that long to come to terms with closing my business. I sat at the same desk, in the same place, for more than ten years. It was a big old wooden desk that belonged to my father when I was a kid. It's not pretty; and I still remember when he accidentally burned a four inch patch on the top with a lit plumber's torch.

I'm a pack rat by nature. Every drawer, cabinet, and shelf was filled to capacity. Cleaning out that space was an emotionally draining process akin to sorting the personal effects of a recently departed family member. Even the white board was covered from top to bottom. Nestled amongst some notch filter diagrams and cartoon characters I found a quote left by my son long ago:

"It's what you learn after you know it all, that's important." John Wooden

Blind Faith?

Since the 1980's, Consumer Reports has been telling us how great Japanese cars are. Everyone believes it, but are they really any better? Japanese car owners are constantly saying how great their cars are as they drive them to the repair shop. We have a Taurus, and our son has a Sable. I've known other Taurus and Sable owners; and we all agree they have crappy transmissions. After a while they just don't downshift properly. The previous owner of our Taurus had the transmission replaced; and now it needs to be replaced again. It's an expensive job - maybe $1800.00, and the car isn't worth putting another transmission in; so I guess we will just live with the crappy downshifting until something major breaks.

On my ride into work this morning, the conversation went something like this:

"What's that shudder when you step on the gas?"

"Oh, that's the transmission. I think it needs to be replaced again."

"Really? Again? How many miles does this thing have on it?"

"About 220,000. It's such a great car. We drive it everywhere. I love this car. We bought it new. I'd like to keep driving it; but I've already had the transmission replaced twice, and it's so expensive."

"Twice? Really? So this will be your fourth transmission? How much does that cost?"

- sigh - "... about $4,000.00 ..."

- Gasp! -

"... but it's an Acura ... everything is expensive; and it's such a great car. We drive it everywhere, and ..."

Dumber and Dumberer

I can't believe people will pay more for bottled water than for gasoline, but they do. You've got to drill an oil well, ship the crude half way around the world, crack it into gasoline, truck it to a gas station, store it under ground, and then pump the gas into your gas tank. All of that for $3.49 a gallon. That's incredible! In New Jersey the gas stations still do the pumping at no extra cost; but people are always complaining that gasoline costs too much. Water, on the other hand, literally falls from the sky. But I've seen people happily fork over $2.00 for a 1-liter bottle of the stuff. I don't think we have the ability to judge value anymore. Could Idiocracy actually be coming true?

Quote from the label on bottled water: "Ingredients: Water"

Who would have guessed ... and shouldn't that say "Ingredient: Water"?

It's the Heat - Part 3

OK, I've made peace with the calories verses Calories thing. I understand why the scientific community needs a very tiny and very precise measure of heat; and I can understand why using such a tiny measure for food energy would be impractical. No one wants to say "I've been eating over two million calories a day, and I've got to cut a half million calories from my diet if I'm ever going to lose weight." I don't know why the neologists couldn't come up with a different word, but it's too late now.

I've got one more thought along these lines and then I'll look for something else to think about ... I promise. A pound of fat contains about 3500 Calories. An average person burns about 100 Calories per mile walked, so a pound of fat will carry you along for 35 miles. Wow! If you are 30 pounds overweight, you have enough stored energy to walk about 1,050 miles. That's right, one thousand and fifty miles! It sounds kind of discouraging at first, but it also showcases the incredible efficiency of the human body. Think of the things you can do while you burn that much stored energy! And remember, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

It's the Heat - Part 2

I've had a little time to assimilate that whole calories verses Calories thing. I made the following post to our "go green" newsletter at work:

May 17th, 2013 is "Bike to Work Day".

Gasoline contains about 30,000 Kilogram Calories (the kind we use to measure food) per gallon. A car that gets 30mpg burns about 1000 Kilogram Calories per mile. The average person burns about 100 Kilogram Calories per mile walked – ten times more efficient than a car. When you ride a bike, you burn about 30 Kilogram Calories per mile. That’s about 33 times more efficient than a car. Biking really is the green way to travel ... and it's good for your heart!

Yup ....... Yup ........

Redneck Radio Antennae.

... and yes it really works! Note the free plugs for Craftsman, Memorex, and DC 101. I wonder if they pay for this kind of product placement?

But will it Float

"Honey ... the scale says I'm putting on weight again. Do I look like I'm getting fat?"

"Uh ... No ... You know, muscle weighs more than fat."

"Yeah, that's right. Maybe it's some sort of density thing."

"Yes dear. That's it. I think you're getting denser!"

It's the Heat

I'm amazed how often my understanding of a known fact turns out to contain an error. I've been reading "How a steam locomotive really works". It's filled with technical discussions about things like how to stay a firebox, and how to equalize driver axlebox springs. In the chapter on making steam, there is a discourse on the quantity of heat required when ice changes to water and when water changes to steam. In between those two state changes, it says that one calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the tempurature of 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade. I kind of remember that from 8th grade science. So far so good.

Then comes the twist. It says that a calorie of food energy is actually one thousand times larger; enough energy to raise 1 kilogram of water 1 degree centigrade. I'd never heared that before. I'd always assumed that all calories were alike. This is a British book, do they use a different unit of heat to measure their food than we do?

According to "The Readers' Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary" a calorie is one of two recognized units of heat. In food: "The large, great, greater, or kilogram calorie (Abbr.Cal.) is the amount of heat required to raise the tempurature of one kilogram of water 1 degree C. The small, lesser, or gram calorie (Abbr. cal.) is the amount of heat required to raise one gram of water 1 degree C. Who knew? I guess that changes everything.

The Problem with Family Trees

My wife and I went out to a seafood restaurant last night to celebrate my birthday. The sign above the entrance read "Crabs Shrimp Lobster". We decided to order the Steamer Bake for Two - a mix of shrimp, mussels, lobster, vegetables and perhaps some other things I can't remember. When I asked the waitress what the "market price" was, she said "Sixty dollars ... but we're out of shrimp and lobster." Really? How can you run a seafood restaurant without shrimp and lobster? The restaurant wasn't particularly busy, and there was a Safeway grocery store right around the corner. I'm not sure if they have lobster at Safeway, but I know they have shrimp. I guess this restaurant wasn't overly concerned with pleasing it's customers.

We ordered some other dishes that were still "in stock", and the waitress headed off to the kitchen. My wife picked up the menu and said, "Do you remember what my dad would do when that happened? He would tear the item out of the menu and hand it to the waitress. Then he would say something like, 'There seems to be a mistake in your menu'." I saw him do that more than once, but I had completely forgotten. My wife would have done the same thing, but the menu was laminated in such heavy plastic that she would have needed a scalpel for the procedure.

I didn't know my father-in-law very well. I'm not sure of the psychology involved here, but I guess it's not easy to make friends with the guy who takes your daughter away. And that is the problem with family trees: It's nice to know when someone was born, and who they married, the names of their children, and when they died; but that thing about the menu spoke to the quality of his character, and it's something I'd like to remember.

Pennies from China

In 1982, the U. S. Mint changed the composition of pennies to remove most of the copper. They had to do something because it took more than a penny's worth of copper to make a penny. Now pennies are made mostly of zinc, but they have a nice copper coating so they still look like pennies. Canada made the change a few years later. Fast forward thirty years and now it takes more than a penny's worth of zinc to make a penny. Canada has announced it is cancelling production of the Canadian Penny because of the cost. Can the U. S. be far behind? With a targeted rate of inflation, our Government has a stated policy which will lead to cancellation of the penny ... and then the nickel. It all started when we gave up the gold standard. Call me old fashioned, but I like pennies. So I'd like to make a suggestion: Instead of cancelling the penny, let's just make them cheaper. Let's move production of pennies to China. I bet the Chinese could find a way to make pennies for one cent each. Hell, let's just move the minting and printing of all our coins and currency to China. I bet no one could make our money cheaper faster than they can.

Go Time

Do you ever get tired of hearing that touchy feely "everyone's a winner" crap? Yeah, self-esteem is important - especially when you're young - but it only goes so far. Eventually you have to use the talent, training and experience to make something happen. Never confuse desire with ability, nor efforts with results.

Words of Wisdom

Never sneeze with your mouth full of grits.