Day Sixty On The Road

Still Moving Forward...
Each day provides an opportunity.  My focus has been to move forward.  What's behind me is known and tired.  Moving forward is moving into the dark (for about fourteen hours a day this time of the year) but that is just fine.

Shoes...
My daughter is a shoe junkie.  Yesterday she looked at my Columbia pseudo-hiking shoes and commented "those are the kind of shoes that South Minneapolis liberals wear...when they want to look cool.  You know."  After my blank look she added "well...you do chainsaw things and stuff like that so it's OK.  They're nice."

When I was a kid we really did not have much.  "We" was my mother and me.  There was a good pair of shoes for school and perhaps church and shoes for play and buckle boots for winter.  Whenever I buy shoes now I want to hold back.  Two pair should be enough.  About a decade ago when I started to post things on the web, probably before "blog" was common place I did a shoe inventory.  My intent was to keep it up to date indefinitely.  I failed.  I did, when interviewing people, start to ask people how many pair of shoes they owned.  Women easily were in the 50-100 pair range.  Men topped out at a dozen.  I'm not sure how many pair I own now, but I know that I have at least four new pair in boxes in my closet that may never be worn unless I go back to a formal job.  My daughter made me think about my shoes.  Today I'm wearing a really comfortable pair of Red Wing oxfords.  They are pretty dorky.  There is another new pair in the closet.  I'm going to make sure that I can wear either Columbia shoes or Red Wing shoes at my next job.  It would be interesting as the interviewee to ask what kinds of shoes were acceptable.

A few years ago our "operations management team" would meet monthly to discuss important issues about running the company. One memorable meeting of executives included a ninety minute discussion of how much cleavage was acceptable for women and whether flip flops were acceptable on "casual Fridays."  At ninety minutes I interrupted and said that it had been the silliest meeting I had ever attended and stood up and walked out.  Shortly thereafter a memo came out detailing the acceptable amount of cleavage and guidelines for acceptable and unacceptable flip flops.  I concluded that not only were men obsessed about controlling women's lives they were more concerned about controlling the lives of those with cleavage than those without.  Along with asking about shoes I'm going to ask if there are more detailed dress code details for women than there are for men.

neunundfünfzig

while raking leaves...
man walking dog:  "Do you know who's cat this is?"
me:  "No.  It's weird.  I don't like it"
man walking dog:  "Yes.  It acts odd.  I don't like odd cats."
me:  Pointing to a house.  "There's a nice cat that lives there."
man walking dog:  "That cat is a lot of fun."

We all like the cat that is fun.  All of the neighbors like him.  We disregard the "on a leash" regulation because he's just a nice cat, even when he climbs in the car or walks into your house uninvited.  The weird cat is owned by some weird neighbors.  How appropriate.

at Menard's buying doors...
me:  "I could use some help with doors."
geezer employee with cane:  "OK.  What doors do you need?" Grabs cane an starts hobbling toward doors.
me:  "The cheap ones.  The ones on sale for $29.  The six panel with the fake wood grain.  I'm confused about rough openings."
geezer with cane:  "Show me what you have."
me:  We go over the size and swing side.  He immediately memorizes the 8-digit part numbers and calls for assistance an rattles off the part numbers to two Asian guys on a fork lift.  "Are you sure those are right?"
geezer with cane:  "Yes.  That's what I do.  Let's go back to the desk and I'll give you an invoice.  You can pick up the doors at Door #2."
me:  After receiving invoice..."How do you like working here?
geezer with cane:  "It's great.  John Menard sends every employee a give on every holiday.  He knows that he asks people to work on days they would prefer to have off.
me:  "That's pretty thoughtful."
geezer with cane:  "It is thoughtful.  It's not normally an expensive gift but he has at least 10,000 employees.  He has nine employees working full time just to manage the gift program."
me:  "That's great.  How long have you worked here?"
geezer with cane:  "Sixteen years.  Home Depot wanted me to manage the Woodbury store when they opened it.  They had a phone interview system with their headquarters in Atlanta.  After doing that interview I decided they could never pay me enough to work there."
me:  "Menard's must be happy with you.
geezer with cane:  "They put up with me now.  I have all sorts of leg problems and work part time.  They are good to me."
me:  "That's a good relationship to have.  You have a good weekend and thanks for your help."
me:  At Door #2 picking up my doors.  I'm staring at them.
forklift Asian guys:  "Would you like help with those doors?"
me:  I could handle it myself but ... "Yes, that would be nice."
forklift Asian guys:  They make two quick trips each.  I thank them.
me:  I drive to the renovation location.  I break a ceiling fixture in the lobby when carrying in the second door.  When taking the third door up the elevator I accidentally pop the suspended ceiling out of the elevator and am clueless how to put it all back together.  I pondered just throwing it away in the onsite dumpster.  Finally I get it to stay in the ceiling but it's definitely not right.

at Marianne's Kitchen...
patron:  "So, John, how are you and have you decided what you are doing next?"
me:  "I had planned on taking off the month of October.  I did that and I took off November, too.  I'm feeling now like the transition is in process.  Early on I don't thing I had let go."
patron:  "It takes a while."
me:  "I'm going to re-focus on this after the first of the year but I am going to make a trip to Denmark in late February or early March."
patron:  "That sounds like a great plan.  You should use the time when you have it."
me:  "That's what I'm thinking.  Some of the things I was focused on initially are morphing a bit and I thing giving that more time will help bring things into focus.  I want to market myself with clarity not because of loss or recent departures or changes."

at the computer...
Thoughts & plans continue, but right now I am going for a taco.  After the taco I'll work on my marketing plan again.  I would also like to make progress on Ruby on Rails.

58

This evening I attended a get-together with people I've know for 40+ years.  Most if not each of them has had more or less successful careers in private industry and government and a couple worked in professional services or started consulting firms.

All of them looked older if  not old.  Other than the few that really have not worked I was the only person technically unemployed and considering another gig.  Lengthy conversations with three was interesting since those three were all within twelve months of just being done working.  Only one seemed to have a good reason and that was a longstanding plan to spend two years overseas.

It's a talented group.  I'm very happy to have known them for so long and for them to have been inclusive.  They've been friends so long I'd forgotten that I had worked with about half of them in the 1970s.

On Being Sixty-Two + Day Fifty-Seven + Thanksgiving

The Cows Have Left The Barn

 Cows have not been in the Groningen Barn for at least twenty-five years.  It still smells a bit like cows and miscellaneous  equipment lays where left.  Perhaps next year we'll have a couple of steers that can eat from the pasture.  It's time for livestock to return.

I use the main floor for storage and I'm starting to store too much.  Now when I walk it it appears that something is actually happening, that all this 'stuff' is of some value.  The corn hanging upside down is broom corn.  It's ornamental.  These stalks are drying and I'll retrieve the kernels for seed...or the various inhabitants of the barn will eat it.

The hay loft reminds me of some many things.  I go up there and listen to the wind and once in a while take a swing on the ropes.  It's not clear why a farmer would not have a stairway to the hay loft.  This requires climbing up a ladder and entering the loft through a trap door.  Often we do things the way they have always been done, not the easier way.  

Obviously the hay loft serves no purpose now that hay is put into 1500 pound round bales rather than 90 pound rectangular bales.  I've thought about producing small bales which are half the size of the rectangular bales.  Hobbyists and gardeners like the small size of seedless straw for, well, hobby things and garden cover.  This seems like an obvious small business opportunity.  I'm moving that to the list for 2014.

Space and Time
I'm work structuring my space and my time.  It's a wonderful blank palette to have after all these years.

Day 55 too late in the day

Preface
Day 55 & 56 were a mess and I think I missed my day 55 post.  Day 56 is almost over and I'm dragging so I'm going to post this and embellish and polish them both up in the AM, Thanksgiving morning.

I did upgrade my internet service and spent the last 90 minutes dealing with that.  Strangely enough I had some excellent support from CenturyLink.  The fact that I'm even saying that is a good indication that I need sleep.

Update Following Sleep and Caffeine

Day #55
Not going to a standard job does cause one to lose the rhythm of the week.  The original plan was to head 'up north' on Monday, Day #54, but in cleaning up my 27 year backlog the entire day was spent dealing with issues and mail from 2012 and early 2013.  At a minimum the census bureau will quit calling me daily regarding my agricultural filing.  Voice mail is full of messages from them.  It's possible I've actually memorized the 888 number and my case number without ever writing them down.

Not only did Day #54 evaporate but so did the first half (daylight) of Day #55.  Leaving after lunch put me in sunshine but a rock solid 18 degree (Fahrenheit) road trip.  Following a stop at 'the barn' for insulating covers I headed out to wrap up a couple of bee yards for the winter.  In the fall you steal all the honey that you can and then you feed your colonies sugar water to ensure their survival in the MN winter.  Smart beekeepers take all the honey, put the hives on a road trip to OK or TX and let the bees be street people for the winter.  I wrap mine up and hope for the best.

At 30 degrees they will fly about.  Normally at 18 they are going to be quite slow to move and unlikely to go airborne.  Working in the fall one does not need to 'suit up' in protective gear which is required certainly at 95 plus degrees.  During the cold months the bees go into a winter cluster, an eliptical mass of bees where they snuggle to keep warm.  When I popped the cover on the last hive they apparently had not received the memo regarding "winter cluster time" nor had they paid attention to the temperature.  What they paid attention to was the guy wearing a black coat (bad), sunglasses (bad), a black hat (bad) and no protective gear (bad).

That was the highpoint of Day #55.  In 1964 we did 'vocational notebooks' in middle school.  This must have been for the purpose of helping us plan our lives.  My three occupations of choice were fire protection engineer, nuclear engineer and beekeeper.  At the time the teacher ridiculed my inclusion of a beekeeper career.  It's fifty years later and I'm still muscling heavy colonies about and having bees in my face most of the year.  Despite my ongoing internal debate regarding my future in beekeeping it must have been a better choice than the other two.

Day #56
 Day #56 was Wednesday.  During this 'up north' trip I was supposed to pick up supplies that were needed 100 miles south Wednesday AM.  In the schedule in my head I was going to head south in the PM.  This resulted in two trips and an extra 150 miles.  The planned Day #56 actually started about noon after I took care of the ... actually this is all confusing.  I lost track of the days.

Early winter is upon us and I've been burning a lot of wood.  There's not much snow so I did haul another load of logs and spent some time cutting a previous load up.  For those not familiar with the process you are always working a year or two in the future and typically you have to move whatever renewable resource (logs) at least two or three times before getting any heat out of them with the exception of getting hot moving things about.  I guess I could just move wood all winter in lieu of burning wood.

You also need to have sort of an animal sense about when it's going to snow and prevent all this moving about.  When that happens you need to have t where it needs to be.  This supplements propane and oil which also are problematic.  Despite the simple meters which tell how much is remaining it's easy to forget or write a note an lose it.  This becomes part of a social movement with hundreds if not thousands of other winter dwellers also failing to read their meters or forgetting to order until it's an issue.  There are a lot of hours spent waiting for the "the propane man" and the "fuel oil man" to arrive.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  Last year I was thankful for having a job.  This year I am thankful for not having a job and hopeful for another in the future.  It's all good.

54 54 54 54 54 54 54

Battery Maintenance
March is only a few months away but yet I'm pulling 12v batteries out of everything.  It seems that disconnecting things that tend to drain them and hooking up trickle chargers is the way to go. Of course I've bought a lot of trickle chargers and it appears as I dig through this 27 year backlog I have more than I thought I had and certainly more than I need.  There was even a box of wire and connectors that I purchased at least four years ago that I was going to jump several batteries and connect them to a single trickle charger.  That seemed like a good idea.  Of course there are at least two or three bigger chargers, too.  It's probably a trade-off.  I have enough extra chargers to have purchased a few batteries.


Mice...Computer Pointing Devices
My best work is done at my desk which has at least three desktop computers functioning.  There's a standard Microsoft three-button mouse that's been there as long as there have been three button mice.  There's also a Microsoft mouse with a rolling part the size of a golf ball.  This seems to be a logical device for graphics work.  It's been there (connected and functioning) for five years.  I've used it three times.

The most frequently used PC is a Samsung Chromebook which is a forebearer of the future of computing and is used only with web apps, cloud solutions and was $249.  The more powerful Thinkpad accompanies me when I need some "off the grid" horsepower.  Each of these notebooks and my "up north" notebooks have pointing devices that are good for basic operations but not for graphics.

I began a search for a mouse that I could throw in my traveling briefcase.  The home office yielded a new in the box Logitech wireless mouse which I purchased to replace my wired mouse shown in the image.  Of course the wired mouse works fine so the Logitech sat on the floor gathering dust.  In a box of cables and connectors I found three two-button mice and in the trunk of my car I found three wired three-button mice.  There's no logic to why they were in the trunk but there are also four umbrellas and two boxes of latex gloves there, too.

Progress
This was a progressive day.  The agricultural census from FEB was returned so hopefully the federal government will quit calling every day.  I also increased my DSL speed seven-fold for a 20% reduction in cost and found that I can actually go to70mb for about what I was paying for 3mb.  This is a deep, deep 27 year hole.  

This evening I'm re-visiting a few job boards and working on some personal vision statements.  It's good. 

11/24/2013 53

Channeling...moving from -27 to +27
There has been significant progress on physical, electronic and psychological transition from the past 27 to the next 27.  Thinking of past work people, tasks, responsibilities...well everything was taking too much time.  There was no positive, progressive outcome to those backward looking thoughts but when you think about an organizational network every waking hour for 27 years it's a tough cycle to break.  

Rarely do I have trouble going to sleep and if I turn on the radio sleep comes within moments.  After a few nights where backward thoughts delayed that transition I had an idea.  I think about a lot of things but trying to transition at those more frustrating moments to thinking about any of a lot of things did not work so I made a mental list of three topics that I enjoy.  Now I just switch on the "three things" list.  This working well and is part of +27.

My personal network of other employees, owners, vendors and contractors has also been sort of a -27 disappointment.  I'm focused now on new people, new connections.  It's entirely possible that the key to +27 lies not in the past network (sorry LHH) but more in the future.  It's entirely possible that that is what LHH has been saying but it's taken a while to hear it.

Prior to 1982 I did not own any computers.  Most of us just went to work to do computer sorts of things (like programming).  Over the years a lot of PCs ended up here.  During the month of SEP I recycled all the dead, ailing and old computers and monitors and a cubic yard or two of power adapters and miscellaneous cables and drives.  That was good but I keep finding more.

In 1982 I spent no time at home doing computer things.  Now I spend hours per week, actually probably per day, doing real tasks, looking things up, writing (like this), managing money, etc.  I'm not sure I like this.  It detracts from things like outside activities, good books, stacking firewood, etc.  I'm seriously considering some sort of off-grid time.  It's really more an off-PC and/or off-smartphone time than off-grid but I did not want to load up Gimp ( a free sort of Photoshop tool) and create a new graphic.  I'll do that tomorrow after checking the job boards, making a few more connections on LinkedIn, tracking world events on Twitter and sharing pointless information and links on Facebook.  How much off-grid time do I need.  My former neighbor, a retired architect, was obsessive about his yard work but took Sundays off.  I might try a day a week.  Perhaps off-grid time would include time doing thing like this, writing.  Longhand is too tedious and I disposed of my typewriter probably in 1984, about two or three years into my PC life.  

I'm increasingly committed to +27.  The opportunities and rewards look much greater than -27.