Mother Nature is a trickster ... gives you weeks of early spring weather and then lowers her hammer. According to weather channel we're due for colder days and nights coming up this week... at least we got through January without any snow storms, cold temps, rain or high winds. Only two months to go and by then we should have spring time in our red cliffs country. My daughter lives in New Jersey and they've been hard hit this winter with snow, ice, freezing rain and all that nasty stuff. Good thing she works out of her home .. as she said, " ... as long as I have power, my computer works and I can get my transcrip assignments done". Sometimes it's nice to work at home and not have to worry about road conditions and timetables.
Not much doing around here, Ron keeps busy with his garden and garage and I keep busy with my regular routine. Gives me time to read and take a nap now and then.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
The most Christian of all....
.. Phillip Anshutz
He funds the "Foundation for a Better Life" and this is my favorite
All of the FBL commercials are really demonstrating what is to be Christ-like. I look forward to more from Anshulz
He funds the "Foundation for a Better Life" and this is my favorite
All of the FBL commercials are really demonstrating what is to be Christ-like. I look forward to more from Anshulz
Friday, January 28, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Spring in January
For the last three weeks (guessing) the daily high has been in the 50s. Sun out every day. The sun that warms. I just got back in from doing some gardening. Only t-shirt on but avoiding the shade.
I have spread black plastic over all the planting areas. I want to get the soil up to temperature earlier this year. Get my peppers to grow taller and flower sooner if the soil is warm at transplant.
Knee is coming along but has given me much more problem than the first one. No pain or anything... some ache if I bend it more than 90 degrees which has to change soon! Cant ride my bike without at least another 20 degree bend.
Nothing much going on except for gardening and fiddling with fixing some and cleaning some machine shop stuff.
Ron
I have spread black plastic over all the planting areas. I want to get the soil up to temperature earlier this year. Get my peppers to grow taller and flower sooner if the soil is warm at transplant.
Knee is coming along but has given me much more problem than the first one. No pain or anything... some ache if I bend it more than 90 degrees which has to change soon! Cant ride my bike without at least another 20 degree bend.
Nothing much going on except for gardening and fiddling with fixing some and cleaning some machine shop stuff.
Ron
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Herman Wouk
Liz knows me
If she has any spare time at the library she shops for me.
Finds me books.
Now this is worth considering in that she is a carnivorous reader and she hunts the library isles silently and alone, and most assuredly for her own meat, but still throws me a bone now and then.
She threw Herman Wolk's new(est) book at me, "A Hole in Texas".
Now to be sure Herman is not new to me because back when I was in my WWII groove I read his awesomely fantastic series, " The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance".. absolutely the best historical fiction on the subject I have ever enjoyed.
So I mention to her how much I enjoyed the two books and she retained that info and then when he writes his only book in the last decade she checks it out and tosses it on my stack.
I am so blessed to have a wife like she. How can anyone ever not love someone that loves you so much that she reads your mind without effort and even remembers your rambles literally.
Best thing about his novel is the connection with nuclear research... something I have been infatuated with since LLNL.. and again she knew it. So now I have science plus Herman Wouk and ONLY because we listen to each other
Love is Awesome
Communication is Heaven
Ron
If she has any spare time at the library she shops for me.
Finds me books.
Now this is worth considering in that she is a carnivorous reader and she hunts the library isles silently and alone, and most assuredly for her own meat, but still throws me a bone now and then.
She threw Herman Wolk's new(est) book at me, "A Hole in Texas".
Now to be sure Herman is not new to me because back when I was in my WWII groove I read his awesomely fantastic series, " The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance".. absolutely the best historical fiction on the subject I have ever enjoyed.
So I mention to her how much I enjoyed the two books and she retained that info and then when he writes his only book in the last decade she checks it out and tosses it on my stack.
I am so blessed to have a wife like she. How can anyone ever not love someone that loves you so much that she reads your mind without effort and even remembers your rambles literally.
Best thing about his novel is the connection with nuclear research... something I have been infatuated with since LLNL.. and again she knew it. So now I have science plus Herman Wouk and ONLY because we listen to each other
Love is Awesome
Communication is Heaven
Ron
Monday, January 17, 2011
At last someone understands.
For the past twenty-five years high schools all over the nation have been closing their machine shop programs. Small class size, expensive shop equipment leasing, restricted funding, and an emphasis on four-year-college transfer has led to the demise of most manual arts programs in our high schools. High school counselors now direct 100% of their students towards going on to college and getting a BA. In fact, the number of students going on to a four-year college is their measure of success. Because of this the well of potential machinists has gone dry and large companies have simply abandoned their traditional high-school-to-work apprenticeship programs. The long-standing partnership of student, high school, and manufacturing has evaporated.
The machinists who became part of the program twenty-five years ago are now getting ready to retire. Some have called this the "graying of the machine shop work force" because the average age of a top quality machinist is 50+. As these machinists retire they will not only leave a void in the work force they will also leave a void in the mentoring pool which is the real mainstay of on-the-job training.
Today the preponderance of machine tool instruction is at the community college level but they too are under economic pressure to abandon expensive programs. In fact many community colleges have already given up their welding and machine shop curriculums.
Another problem is that there seems to be a prevalent feeling among the masses that machining is an unnecessary and dying trade and there will be no need for machinists in the future. Although it is hard to project a grand outlook like the 60/70s aerospace boom it should be noted that this trade is an important field in every industrialized nation in the world no matter their history or current economy. For example today there are machinists in Hungary, England, Argentina, and South Africa and they all play a vital role in the maintenance of the infrastructure of their country as well as assisting in industrial processes (no matter how small their share of the international manufacturing pie). Machinists are respected and paid extremely well in these nations. It is a skilled and prideful trade worldwide and each country has a need to train and replace them.
As an aside please note that at one time England was the manufacturing center of the world. They built the most machinery and employed the greatest number of machinists (called “mechanics” in that time). America took that honor from them and became the world’s most productive manufacturing nation and biggest employer of machinists. Then along came Japan followed by Taiwan followed by Korea and China. With all of these changes there was never, at any time, a total destruction of the manufacturing capabilities of any nation. They simply lost their leadership. Today Great Britain has a very highly skilled and productive force of machinists even though they no longer lead the world in manufacturing.
So what about the United States today? Have we moved to a “service economy” void of even the most minimal need for industrial production? Or is that all a futurists’ pipe dream? The answer is that it really doesn’t matter. We have a shortage of machinists in this country not because we are going to explode again as a manufacturing powerhouse and not because our aerospace and defense industry will keep us alive for another century. We need more machinists today because there are nearly NONE coming up to replace this country's core needs. For every 100 machinist we had in the 60s and 70s we may need only 20 today. But we don’t even have TWO in training now. All of the good machinists have gray hair and are getting ready to retire and we don’t have anyone to replace them.
It is my hope that the machinist does not become another lost American heritage.
Ron Smith
The Virtual Machine Shop
The above was written ten years ago. It has been well received. So much so that training institutions and trade associations and politicians have reproduced it and distributed it many times (with my permission). It is such an old idea.. the idea that ALL high school kids should be focused on a four year degree or "forget it"!
I have trained machinists who six years later have opened machine shops and have become millionaires.... and many never graduated from High School.. I would not doubt that some of them were illegal aliens at one time. I remember a Mex kid who had a taco store in a strip mall in Bell Gardens who wanted to do better. He is now working on shipyard repair in long beach and is making $40+ an hour, 60 days a week (time and a half over 40), and is leaving thousands of college graduates in the dust at a six figure income. He is the only one the company has been able to find (in the last two decades) who can run a 20 foot Kerny Trucker vertical lathe. THE ONLY ONE! The company has been in business for almost 100 years and cant find people to do the job.
This youngster, "Courtney" gives good counsel.
http://collegecandy.com/2011/01/03/is-community-college-the-better-option/
Google "community college advantages for trades"
Today I can find thousands of hits.. ten years ago nearly none.
It is about time the public/govt/industry woke up!
Ron
The machinists who became part of the program twenty-five years ago are now getting ready to retire. Some have called this the "graying of the machine shop work force" because the average age of a top quality machinist is 50+. As these machinists retire they will not only leave a void in the work force they will also leave a void in the mentoring pool which is the real mainstay of on-the-job training.
Today the preponderance of machine tool instruction is at the community college level but they too are under economic pressure to abandon expensive programs. In fact many community colleges have already given up their welding and machine shop curriculums.
Another problem is that there seems to be a prevalent feeling among the masses that machining is an unnecessary and dying trade and there will be no need for machinists in the future. Although it is hard to project a grand outlook like the 60/70s aerospace boom it should be noted that this trade is an important field in every industrialized nation in the world no matter their history or current economy. For example today there are machinists in Hungary, England, Argentina, and South Africa and they all play a vital role in the maintenance of the infrastructure of their country as well as assisting in industrial processes (no matter how small their share of the international manufacturing pie). Machinists are respected and paid extremely well in these nations. It is a skilled and prideful trade worldwide and each country has a need to train and replace them.
As an aside please note that at one time England was the manufacturing center of the world. They built the most machinery and employed the greatest number of machinists (called “mechanics” in that time). America took that honor from them and became the world’s most productive manufacturing nation and biggest employer of machinists. Then along came Japan followed by Taiwan followed by Korea and China. With all of these changes there was never, at any time, a total destruction of the manufacturing capabilities of any nation. They simply lost their leadership. Today Great Britain has a very highly skilled and productive force of machinists even though they no longer lead the world in manufacturing.
So what about the United States today? Have we moved to a “service economy” void of even the most minimal need for industrial production? Or is that all a futurists’ pipe dream? The answer is that it really doesn’t matter. We have a shortage of machinists in this country not because we are going to explode again as a manufacturing powerhouse and not because our aerospace and defense industry will keep us alive for another century. We need more machinists today because there are nearly NONE coming up to replace this country's core needs. For every 100 machinist we had in the 60s and 70s we may need only 20 today. But we don’t even have TWO in training now. All of the good machinists have gray hair and are getting ready to retire and we don’t have anyone to replace them.
It is my hope that the machinist does not become another lost American heritage.
Ron Smith
The Virtual Machine Shop
The above was written ten years ago. It has been well received. So much so that training institutions and trade associations and politicians have reproduced it and distributed it many times (with my permission). It is such an old idea.. the idea that ALL high school kids should be focused on a four year degree or "forget it"!
I have trained machinists who six years later have opened machine shops and have become millionaires.... and many never graduated from High School.. I would not doubt that some of them were illegal aliens at one time. I remember a Mex kid who had a taco store in a strip mall in Bell Gardens who wanted to do better. He is now working on shipyard repair in long beach and is making $40+ an hour, 60 days a week (time and a half over 40), and is leaving thousands of college graduates in the dust at a six figure income. He is the only one the company has been able to find (in the last two decades) who can run a 20 foot Kerny Trucker vertical lathe. THE ONLY ONE! The company has been in business for almost 100 years and cant find people to do the job.
This youngster, "Courtney" gives good counsel.
http://collegecandy.com/2011/01/03/is-community-college-the-better-option/
Google "community college advantages for trades"
Today I can find thousands of hits.. ten years ago nearly none.
It is about time the public/govt/industry woke up!
Ron
This “social networking” thing they call Facebook is not new. It is a reprogrammed version of user groups and chat applications that have been around for thirty years that I know of. Back when I got my Commodore 64 there was a Commodore users group with multiple forums for posting your interests. They also had online chat running from the BBS software that supported the forum. Problem was the speed. My first modem was an acoustic coupled 300 baud modem. You picked up your phone, put it in the cradle and beeped and squawked a signal to another modem somewhere in the world and you hooked up.
Modems got faster and software got more sophisticated (like AOL) but eventually the modem world switched over to the WWW and things got really moving (like Yahoo forums and Yahoo Chat). All of it pretty much the same. Even a “friends” list is on most of them… or at least an exclusion list and stealth capability.
So anyway I finally joined Facebook a few months ago and discovered the same old stuff with a better interface and a way to allow them to search through all of your email for others who you could invite to be friends. That was the genius of facebook and ultimately its cancer too. They take your ID and the ID of your friends and associates too.
I dropped out...
I dropped out...
There is a good documentary on TV that is worth watching called “The Facebook Obsession”.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
warm weather
Been in the 50s for a few days... knee is working well enough for me to check the gardens.
I need to till it all and cover it in black plastic so the ground warms up. My peppers will do better if I pot them up to a gallon then transplant in warm earth... 70 degrees or more. I'm learning
Ron
I need to till it all and cover it in black plastic so the ground warms up. My peppers will do better if I pot them up to a gallon then transplant in warm earth... 70 degrees or more. I'm learning
Ron
Thursday, January 13, 2011
I'm a souper person
I have turned into a soup eater. Soups and stews
Soups and stews have a long history and were probably the first dishes ever cooked.
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodsoups.html
Last night I made a normal chicken soup with carrots celery onions and some penne pasta.
But this time I didn't cook the onions with the soup. Instead I sliced the onions thin and caramelized them in a frying pan (just a tiny bit of oil). When the soup is hot and done you toss in the caramelized onions and serve.... never had a better chicken soup... ever.
Anyway we have homemade soup or stew at least once per week.
Here is a list of Liz's best soups... maybe she can post her recipes here :)
Italian sausage and white beans
Mother Margret's vegetable beef
CPKs split pea
Soups and stews have a long history and were probably the first dishes ever cooked.
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodsoups.html
Last night I made a normal chicken soup with carrots celery onions and some penne pasta.
But this time I didn't cook the onions with the soup. Instead I sliced the onions thin and caramelized them in a frying pan (just a tiny bit of oil). When the soup is hot and done you toss in the caramelized onions and serve.... never had a better chicken soup... ever.
Anyway we have homemade soup or stew at least once per week.
Here is a list of Liz's best soups... maybe she can post her recipes here :)
Italian sausage and white beans
Mother Margret's vegetable beef
CPKs split pea
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
This year's garden
Green house closed in with a small heater so I can begin
growing lettuce and broccoli next month
Seeding with grow light
Enclosed garden for peppers, onions, and peaches.
Pruned them way back this year and
oiled them against fungus
New cinder block planter
Two more cinder block planters
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Finally .. it's warming up , was 38 today! Due to the bright sunshine, last Wednesday's snow is slowly melting, still hasn't gotten down to mud/dirt level yet. Sure hope this is not a portent of what the rest of the winter will be like.
Saw pictues on the Weather Channel of the wind and snow in Victorville (Mom ... hope you weren't out in it), snow in Las Vegas and closure of the Grapevine. Can't tell me we're not going through "climate change". Now if the summers cool off I'll be real happy. Wishful thinking!
We're both doing fine .. got a little case of cabin fever but we're able to go to town with no problem. Good thing we've both have good winter snow autos. I miss being able to take Dudley out for a walk, he really used to enjoy all the smells in the neighborhood and I got exercise and fresh air. Now all our furry kids stay inside and sleep the day away, as close as they can to the pellet stove where it's really warm.
That's about all for now .. a quiet time of the year.
Liz
Saw pictues on the Weather Channel of the wind and snow in Victorville (Mom ... hope you weren't out in it), snow in Las Vegas and closure of the Grapevine. Can't tell me we're not going through "climate change". Now if the summers cool off I'll be real happy. Wishful thinking!
We're both doing fine .. got a little case of cabin fever but we're able to go to town with no problem. Good thing we've both have good winter snow autos. I miss being able to take Dudley out for a walk, he really used to enjoy all the smells in the neighborhood and I got exercise and fresh air. Now all our furry kids stay inside and sleep the day away, as close as they can to the pellet stove where it's really warm.
That's about all for now .. a quiet time of the year.
Liz
Monday, January 3, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Happy New Year
Its been real real cold here... three nights in a row in single digits.
Knee is getting better thanks to walking, Tylenol, and Advil.
I am pretty sure this fixes my knees for life as I will not do anything except normal walking on them. No tread mill, no weight bearing exercise of any kind. Bicycle as often as I can and maybe go to the gym but I'm not going to do anything to wear these out.
Football and Pizza today so back to the second half (of football and pizza ha ha).
Cheers
Ron
Knee is getting better thanks to walking, Tylenol, and Advil.
I am pretty sure this fixes my knees for life as I will not do anything except normal walking on them. No tread mill, no weight bearing exercise of any kind. Bicycle as often as I can and maybe go to the gym but I'm not going to do anything to wear these out.
Football and Pizza today so back to the second half (of football and pizza ha ha).
Cheers
Ron
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