Today Blows (Oil)

 

Oil changes are pretty straightforward. Drain the oil. Remove and replace the oil filter. Put the drain plug back in. Remove the oil fill cap and add the appropriate five quarts of oil. If you are having your neighborhood service guy doing the oil change this is the point where he backs the truck out of the garage.

Then you see the service guy put the truck back in the garage and get the assistant manager out in the shop. They open the hood and walk around the shop looking for something while you peer through the window of the "No Customers Beyond This Point" door.

The service guy disappears and the assistant manager asks you to come look at the engine which is now covered with oil. His explanation is that the seal on the filler cap blew and he's never seen anything like that before.

It's clear that when the service guy started to back the truck out the engine attempted pressurize and the oil light came on after blowing oil all over the engine. The important last step of the oil change is to replace the filler cap.

So I drove home in a 'loner car.' Tomorrow they will clean up the engine. I'm placing a bets between "Sorry, the mechanic left the oil cap off" or "The seal on the filler cap blew and we had to replace it at $nn.nn." My guess is that the manager will force the assistant manager to speak very creatively with much emphasis on "We've never seen this before." Perhaps the oil filler cap should be tethered to the appropriate location, like the gas tank cap.

Of course I dropped the truck off at 8:15 AM for a 10:00 AM appointment. The "I've never seen this before" explanation was at 6 PM....and now we move into Day #2. Good grief.

Woodlot Management & Pearl Harbor

 

Woodlot Management & Pearl Harbor

 

Along with planting trees, proper woodlot management includes selective cutting

and pruning. My neighbor, Dave, knows that I'm adverse to cutting live trees, hence the canopy that blocks sunlight and keeps our driveway wet. This past summer the cabin had a lot of use. Each time I'd walk the driveway my concern increased. There's a small stand of giant poplar on the west side of the driveway; the tend to snap off about 25-30' in the air. Two large dead oaks were dropping limbs all summer. Most of our large white birch fell to the birch borer infestation in the early 1990s; the survivors are near there life maximum and likewise are dropping limbs. It's just time to do some work.

 

We do burn firewood and joke when we see the bundles of six or seven pieces at the convenience stores for $7.95. A quick check of

WalMart indicates that you can buy a 12"x12"x18" box of oak for $49.95 plus shipping; a cord of wood is 148 cubic feet. Typically we go through two or three cords. At Walmart prices that would be approximately $15,000. You want the moisture low so we split, stack and cover and let the firewood dry for two years. You do wear out your chainsaws and your vehicles and your clothes but it is time in the woods. It's an opportunity, a gift, to hear the flock of late migrating swans and the lone bald eagle.

 

A split trunk oak along the driveway was on the 'cut' list. Good woodlot managers would have culled this years ago but I like the way it looked. Like many trees, they die from the top down and the western trunk was ready to take. 

 

Along with the standard thoughts of safety, where is this going to fall, where should I stack it and how small should I cut and split, taking time to look at the growth rings is part of the process. Eighty years ago this oak emerged from an acorn. This area was part of the Great Hinckley Fire where all the trees were white pine. A few generations of squirrels contributed to this oak in this place.

 

Eighty years ago today Japan attacked Pearl Harbor with the loss of several

thousand lives. It was a failure of international diplomacy. America, fatigued from WWI, was reluctant to enter the war against Germany in Europe. FDR committed us to war with Japan and Germany shortly declared war on the U.S. The politics of the Allies took us first to Europe and more slowly to the Pacific. The industrial might of the the nation, unimaginable in depth, produced the goods for most nations fighting Germany and Japan. 

 

The five years of America's involvement in WWII is a moment in the life of an oak tree. As I counted rings the other benchmarks stood out...Viet Nam, Presidents strong and weak, our children being born, our purchase of the land shared with this oak. That might have been about the time the swans flew overhead which gave another pause to a pause. So many did not survive. Between the two wars Europe and the U.S. languished with their populations focused on their own indulgences; it was a weakness of character and democracy. We are there again.

Tire & Tired

If this was an ad for a political candidate (oddly a tire) stating "Candidate Tire Has Never Been Flat And Never Will Be Flat And When I Am President No American Will Ever Have A Flat" we would have a controversy.

Twitter would not run the ad because they have decided to not run political ads, and that may extend to political commentary.

Facebook would run the ad because they believe viewers need to discern the accuracy of ads...even though the tire is obviously flat. 

• Some people would see the tire as flat and go 'ah.' 
• Others would say the tire is not flat, no one ever has a flat and government should never be responsible for flats (it's not in the constitution). 
• Some would not know a flat tire even if it was going 'whop whop whop' down the road and they would vote based on some other groundless opinion.

The real story...

There was a time when changing a tire was a simple deal. Take the jack and spare out of the trunk, lift the car, take off the lug nuts and swap tires. You could do it standing up and did not even get dirty.

With today's cars there are a lot of issues; try to find the jack, the spare is like a kids toy, the spare is hidden under the car which requires you to lay on the ground, there is at least one lug nut that is 'secure' and requires another gizmo, the 'jack points' are unclear and you have to lay on the ground to find them, the lug wrench is about 10" long which is a challenge for loosening the lug nuts...honestly I think the emergency vehicle services companies pay the manufacturers to make this difficult. I can seen a business meeting where the execs say "Some people can actually change a tire with this cocked up system. We need to make it more cocked up."

It's unlikely that anyone has read this far so lets talk about candidates changing tires...

Trump: Always changes his own tires.
 
Warren: If there is a flat the billionaires will pay for it.
 
Klobucher: I'm a midwestern woman. I've changed my tires and the flat tires of some wimpy men.
 
Sanders: We need mass transit. I'd recycle any car with a flat tire.
 
Buttigieg: You think I can't change a tire?
 
Biden: This is America. Your neighbor will change it.
 
Booker: In my neighborhood someone will just steal a tire that is not flat.
 
Beto: I don't know...have a roadie do it.
 
Yang: With my gift everyone can hire someone to change it.
 
Harris: Government should take care of it and my campaign would do it up until last week in New Hampshire.

OK...enough about tires. I'm going to warm up in anticipation of laying on the ground again later today when replacing the tire when repaired. At least it's not January.

Giving bad advice...

Earlier this year my son called and asked for 'parental advice.'  That was concerning.  He's a bright talented man in his early 30s.  The opportunity presented was for a career shift at a very large software company.  His current position was at a pretigious organization.  My first comments were lukewarm on taking the new gig.  I was wrong.

A review of my long history of Facebook posts gave the advice I should have given.

"It's rare that I re-post other people's contributions. Honestly, every 'healthy living' guideline has been totally ignored. Of course he says he's only had one job and it's been the best job in the world. How cool would that be if we could look back on our own working career like that. So the advice for our children should be "1. Don't do anything Keith Richards did. 2. Do everything Keith Richards did. 3. Create some music and joy that will last forever.""

Uphill might be the better view

We did farmer's markets for twenty years. It all started with a bumper crop of local honey (50+ year beekeeper here). Adding a focus on heirloom vegetables we learned that you need 8' fences to keep the deer out and three feet of wire mesh at the bottom of the fence to keep small animals out.

You collect a lot of stuff...more fencing, weed mat, containers, tools, hoses, all sorts of watering contraptions and a lot of things you might need. We kept all of that in half of a garage and the first floor of a barn (the cows left 30 years ago but there are still remnants of that effort). Never in the last ten years had we locked either of those storage spaces. It was primarily due to convenience, just like leaving the key in the tractor.

Earlier this summer I noticed something. Items sitting in the same place for a decade seem to have moved. Once in a while a light was left on. After I found evidence of smoking in the barn I installed locks on all the doors. There are two rules in rural when it comes to locks. The rules are extremes. Make it like Fort Knox or make the locks a nominal inconvenience. The good rural thieves have bolt cutters. The meth heads have a screwdriver, maybe.

A week ago someone had taken a lock bracket off.

These are things I eyeball daily. It was reinstalled and a game camera was hidden inside the buiding. Two days later there was a call from the sheriff in

response to a burglary. If you don't have a bolt cutter or a screwdriver you just kick the door in.

To make a long story short the perp stole a pressure washer and the game camera. The next day the perp's friend turned him in and now the guy is in jail.

So one day you shake hands with the youth of America and a few months later they steal from you. You get your stuff back but you drive all over the planet, repair a door that was previously undamaged since 1946 and lose a couple of days of billable time. Law enforcement and neighbors wonder along with you what will come of the youth of America and especially the youth of rural America.

Growing up on the southern MN prairie I am comfortable with more or less flat vistas and the distant horizon. It's getting to the point where I want to move to a place where everyone else is downhill.

WTF Happened to This Commitment?

Child #2, an adult, commented "You will fail" when I committed to writing every day after leaving my last 'career' job.  I did.  Worse, it's been five months since a contribution to this "I don't even.." effort.

Late last week I met with one of the two people who motivated me to re-think my purpose in a corporate job that had gone on far too long.  A talented, creative, very bright and lacking convention guy he said "So why did you stop."  Certainly I did not want my son to be right.  I'm the parent.  I know better.

A part time job did interfere with not having a job.  Working that 15 or 20 hours per week has become someone consuming of some of my creative inclinations and a bit of a stone wall.  It has reminded me of the problems of organizations, conflicting goals, and worse than everything else, people.  My goal in the PT job is very clear...find my replacement.  It's a consulting job.  Never will I be an employee again.  Perhaps a consultant.  The only person I'm 'reporting to' or 'working for' is yours truly.

With that, this is a blog re-start.

Fifty-two years Cloud to Cloud

I says, Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Hey! You! Get off of my cloud
Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd
On my cloud, baby

In southern MN the local radio station was all local stuff, including things like "Party Line" a radio-hosted classified ad program.  "Size 10 gym shoes are $6.00.  Call FRE-1234."  You get the idea.  During the day WDGY a big AM station 100 miles north on the southern edge of Minneapolis would blast out the popular pop music of the day, but it was full of ads.  Late at night you could pull Beaker Street from WLS in Chicago, well worth the illogic of staying up that late.  WLS worked just fine during the years working nights at Universal Milking Machine, giving good reason to drive around aimlessly in my '66 VW for several hours after getting off work at midnight.

Well, the Rolling Stones were blasting out memorable tunes about the cloud then and here we are.

Between my full-time gig which was 60+ hours a week and then the small business which kept me up at night...and day...and weekends my personal focus on computer/digital backups was neglected.  The small business has been sold.  Great.

For the past few days I've been reviewing my data repositories, backup plans and where should I be putting files going forward.  With critical documents and photos you just don't want to lose those with a drive/PC failure/upgrade.  So running through my PCs in most frequent use:  1) Chromebook.  This is not a problem.  It's the PC of choice about 80% of the time and I use Google Docs & Sheets and a few other products storing all files on the Google Drive.  Nothing downloaded lost would be a problem.

In the desktop space we have a legacy PC running XP.  My backup strategy there is to periodically plug in a USB drive, copy the user files and then upload that to Dropbox.  Desktop #2 is a Windows 7 running Backblaze as the backup.  Backblaze is a wonderful backup product less focused on file sharing.  Windows backup is not enabled on this PC due to a faulty registry entry which crashes the task scheduler; this is a frequent reminder that Windows PCs are often more expensive and complex than warranted.  Desktop #3 was running out of space.  Oddly two years ago this was going to be my primary workstation.  Being obsessively concerned about loss I was running a Backblaze backup and a Mozy backup.  Getting ready to do my 2017 business and personal taxes I felt this PC to be a big short of free space...and almost bought another box but caution and a frugal nature intervene.  After a certain level of analysis it became clear that I'd saved at least two images between the resident drive and an attached USB drive and I'd been running Windows backup to the USB drive.  Some of that was saved to Dropbox folders and thus saved repeatedly, you know, like holding up a mirror to a mirror.  Three backup solutions was probably two too many.

There are a number of notebooks lying about none of which are backed up, simply re-imaged when becoming problematic.  My professional notebook, the one I use when being...well, professional is backed up to Sugarsync.  So now I'm up to four backup strategies, three too many.   Oh, I also have been a longtime Dropbox user.  Initially this allowed me to stop carrying a PC everywhere but simply leaving a PC where ever I was headed.  The challenge in file syncning solutions is to ensure that you are seting your syncning preferences with some logic.  It's also really easy to delete needed files and directories and screw yourself everywhere.  With most of the synchnng oriented solutions deleted files are kept for 30 days.  Personally I've found that I discover the need for deleted files after about six months.

I did not mention a drawer full of usb drives, numerous USB sticks, SD cards, micro SD cards and Seagate SAN with really old stuff.

The only reason for retaining the XP PC is because it has a diskette drive and I still find a box here and there of mystery files.

There are as many sites comparing options for backup and syncing as there are options for backup and syncing.  If I wasn't trying to work with the five currently in my 'personal cloud' I'd review some of those sites and make a good decision.