New gas price signs are electronic - Why??

So there I was putting $8,976 worth of gas into the Girl Jalopy the other day, it was when I noticed that the street sign the station had out front had been changed.  Not the pricing mind you but the mechanism itself.  In days of old the signs were a pretty manual operation, with plastic or metal numbers that were arranged in the correct order to let us know the price per gallon.  Some employee would wander out there every once in a blue moon and rearrange the numbers with a pole that had a suction cup on the end of it when the price of gas went up, all of them but that 9/10ths of a cent (I will talk about that later).

I was talking to the manager of the Gate station where I stop for gas most times, and she told me that she has changed the price on her street sign up to 5 times in one day.  I was completely shocked by this – 5 times in one day, REALLY???  That had more to do with competition with a neighboring Hess station than the anything to do with the cost of a barrel of oil.  So out she went, five times with her pole suction cup and pulled all the numbers off the regular, mid-grade and high test prices, on both sides of the sign and changed them.  She explained that she was not tremendously happy with Corporate that on that day.  Those types of signs are all I really remember, I am 46 but I bet there was some other method before that, or maybe you just drove in and the attendant told you what the cost was before filling the tank and cleaning your windows.  I do remember that and I do remember liking it when someone did clean the windows, I hate cleaning the windows.

I will swing out on a tangential course for a second and talk about the barrel of oil.  Back in the early days of oil production up in Pennsylvania they had nothing to store the oil in so they started using old whiskey barrels, which at that time were either 40 gallons or 45 gallons.  Cheap free barrels that were a left over from some other industry, those early Americans were an ingenious lot that gives a whole new meaning to the going green.   The origins of the 42-gallon oil barrel that is used today for measuring oil are somewhat obscure.  Best I can tell it happened around 1866 when the oil producers were trying to eliminate confusion by standardizing the size of the barrels.  The agreed that a standard 40 gallon allotment would be what a barrel of oil held.  To be fair they added 2 gallons to ensure that any measurement errors would always be in the buyer's favor as an additional way of assuring buyer confidence, apparently on the same principle as is behind the bakers dozen.  By 1872 the standard oil barrel was firmly established as 42 US gallons.  I suppose when talking about the oil spill in the gulf it was easier to say we spilled 430,000 barrels instead of using a unit of measure we can all understand, like 18,060,000 gallons, over 18 million gallons.

So back to the electronic gas pump signs.  When the street sign was a manual apparatus they also had to change the electronics for the pump itself, a two-step operation.  Change the sign, and then change the pumps “brains” to start actually charging the new price.  Back in the day to change the price on the pump it was a manual operation that required someone with some tools to open the pump up and change a set of gears, they were strictly mechanical.   So they would change out the gears and that change in gear ratio would cause the cost numbers on the pump to match up with the gallons pumped using the new price.  Can you imagine a clerk from your gas station actually going out to the pump and changing the gear ratio on the dials – makes me laugh to even consider it. 

So back to that 9/10ths, I could not find out a lot about when this started, it seems that the practice originated at least as far back as the 1920s or 1930s.  That was about the time Henry Ford started pumping out tin lizzies, the venerable model T and the price was an impossible to believe 290 bucks, even using todays numbers that is only 3,800 bucks, he pumped out over 15 million of those cars.  Anyway, some say that the fractional pricing was introduced in response to federal gasoline taxes, others say that tiny price changes of a tenth of a cent were more significant back when a gallon of gasoline didn't cost much more than a dime. For whatever the reason we are still stuck with it and for no real reason I could find.  I would like to think that that extra 9/10ths of a cent is put into a fund to combat oil spills, such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico recently. 

So now we have the electronic gas station sign out by the street, allowing them to change the price at the pump with nothing more than a few keyboard pecks and a click of the mouse.  The pumps are now tied to the sign at the street, when the sign is changed, the price at the pump is changed.  I am still not sure how but they must not be able to do that while someone is pumping gas, that would send me into a tirade.  Start pumping at 3.49 a gallon and by the time I am done be paying $3.55 a gallon.  I suspect that the pump only changes after the current user has completed his transaction.   Not sure what the world has come to, I mean we live in a world where it is important to be able to change the price of gas as many times as we wish in any specific day.  When you think about that for a while it will make you just sit in dumbfounded amazement, or at least it did me. 

So before filling up the tank, look at the price and verify it has not changed by the time you complete pumping operations.

Scanning back over my life I realize something – is it not funny as hell where we end up!!

As I sit this morning at the computer poking around on face book I just got tickled after electronically chatting with an old friend from high school.  I have not seen him since high school, we were actual friends then but now we are more electronic friends.  That in itself seems weird to say but the social media has allowed us to reconnect.  I wonder if it has really allowed us to rekindle friendship from days gone by.  In this case, it was probably graduation in 1983 since I saw him and best I can remember I was stoned and drunk so most likely I would not remember even if I did see him. 

Anyway, he is now a preacher of a small church in a small town in Ohio and I would have NEVER guessed back then that he would be a preacher when we got to our mid-forties.  I have been somewhat retrospective lately anyway and after chatting with my friend maybe even more so.  I got to looking at the course my life has taken – what a ride I have gotten to be on!!!  I have been very blessed on my ride so far, great experiences, great friends along the way and a wonderful Bride who can tolerate the truckload of idiosyncratic behaviors I bring along with me, and she acts like I don’t have them.  I love that woman more than anything else in the world, and she loves me even more than that and I find a lot of solace and balance in that knowledge. 

Has the ride always been peaches and cream, hell no!!  But I did not and still don’t dwell on the bumps longer than I had to in order to extract the good or the lesson from them.  I have many friends that I have reconnected with using the social media, which span from grade school at Graham South Elementary school (torn down since I attended), to this very day.  It is interesting to look at them and read their walls, look at their pictures, posts and even look at who their friends are now.  Seems weird, sometimes I poke around on their profile page trying to piece their lives together from the last time I saw them until now.  It is not always easy though.

I wrote a blog sometime back about my life, I reader digest condensed version of my life so new FB friends could see what I have been up to.  It makes me wonder, is that what Facebook has done to us, removed the real relationships and created superficial, condensed versions of our previous relationships?  A friend of mine had a high school reunion recently and realized this as well, she wrote a blog about http://arathersimplerecipesaltlovelight.blogspot.com/2011/06/big-reunion.html

I am very careful about who stays on my friends list, if I were to create a bucket list at the top of that list would be to reconnect, in person and in a real way, with each of the folks I keep on my list in the ether world that is the internet.  I understand what FB is and have made friends that I feel connected with, I feel that way anyway - but who knows, I may just be one of 3,568 friends that they have, I might be lost in the noise of a busy wall.  Nothing can replace a real physical relationship, it can be augmented by social media but nothing beats a hug from a good friend and sitting around laughing together.    

Anyway, back to how it is interesting to see how we have all gotten to where we are today.  I like to think of it as the river of life, we get in, we ride along seeing the sights and enjoying (or enduring) the ride.  Back to the moments in time I talked about in the last blog.  We get in and as we float along life is happening, we better hold and realize that we cannot get back upstream.  We also need to understand the end of the river is the end and we better make the best of the ride and enjoy the scenery on the trip. 

I am going to stick with the river analogy here for a bit.  As I look at folks I see some who are riding along in different modes of transportation.  Some seem to have gotten in knowing the exact spot they were heading, fired up the powerful speed boat and set course for the destination.  They appeared to have a life plan from an early age, whether they did or not that was the perception I had of it.  That is not to say that once out of my sight the engine on that boat did not give them no end of trouble, but I did not see that.  Others hopped into a sailboat, still knowing where they were heading but maybe it was not as clearly defined but the life plan was in place.  Seems silly talking about it because it was my own narrow perspective that created that perception, funny how we do that huh? 

Others jumped on the raft, having never been on a river before – or those without an exact plan but were forced to jump in all the same.  Some of those on the rafts were also dealt the hand of no damn paddles and still others may have just gotten an old inner tube with a slow leak.  And then of course there are those who were traveling a proverbially polluted estuary without any manual means of transportation (up shit creek without a paddle for those who did not get that).  

Some of us get in and along the way we switch rides, maybe from the powerful motor boat to raft, or vice versa.  Some on the inner tubes may just bounce along the shoreline stopping when something looks interesting, something that would not have been noticed if one were racing by on a speed boat.  I guess my point is that the method is not important, both the speed boat and the tuber have great experiences and horrific challenges.  The boat may hit a sandbar that a tube could easily slip over top of and a rafter will be less concerned with the depth of the river bed than say a sailboat with a long daggerboard.

I find it crazy to imagine my friend from high school being a preacher, but I have no real idea what his trip down the river of life has been like, and he cannot understand my ride either.  When I got in the river I had no destination in mind, no place that I was trying to get to.  When I was younger I think that might just have been dim-wittedness but as I have gotten older I am rather happy that I started like that.  Bouncing along the shore line, into the good and bad and still continuing my ride.  I look at it like this, all those experiences have brought me to where I am, the good the bad and the ugly.  Each stop building on the last to create the man I am today.  Who knows if I was speeding down stream in speed boat I may have missed Bride there on her inner tube and left nothing behind but a woman screaming obscenities at a passing boat for going too fast and overturning her inner tube.

Along the way we accumulate partners who ride along with us, some stay longer than others and some are there for only a moment while we are stuck on the snarled roots of a mangrove tree.  Each having some contribution to who we are, even the ones who did not even realize they had an impact on us.   There have been so many on my ride I could not even begin to count them, some I never even liked but I still got some bit of wisdom from them that I put on my raft for use, maybe a figurative length of rope I used of when my tube came to the head of a waterfall to save myself.   I have enjoyed the ride so far, I am looking forward to going to church and listening to friend preach up a storm the next time I make it to Ohio.  I will probably smile remembering the two of us getting drunk at the girl-scout camp that used to be out at Kiser Lake.  The one thing I know - I am looking forward to taking a look at what his transportation and course have been since I saw him all those years ago. 

I have found the secret to life – on the cool side of a pillow

So the other day I was tossing and turning in bed, that is something that I do not normally have issues with.  After 10 years in the Navy I can pretty much sleep anywhere at any time thorough just about anything.  Anyway as I turned the pillow over to enjoy the cool side and I realized that there it was, right under my head for all these years – the secret to life.  I am sure everyone has experienced that fleeting feeling of the cool side of the pillow, I say fleeting because it starts to change almost instantaneously.  It moves from a feeling of crawling inside a warm hug from someone who loves you to just a warm pillow so quickly.  Since then then I have tried to determine how long that feeling lasts, if you get 20 seconds of joy out of the experience you can hold it longer than me, the feeling starts to fade the moment my head hits it but takes about 10 seconds before the sensation of wonderfulness is gone.  Another thing I noticed was the more I watched and harder I tried to hold on to the moment the less I enjoyed it and the shorter the joyous time was. 

I will come back to that so hold that thought.  A big event going on in my life right now is my best friend of over 20 years is going through radiation treatment.  He had a cancerous tonsil removed some time back and the prognosis for this treatment is great so I have not dwelled on the things we don’t talk about, not even to our best friends.  He started radiation treatments 3 weeks ago and has a 11 more treatments left to go.  The first weeks of treatment were once a day but he just started  two treatments a day.  Anyway, he has lost about 10-15 pounds and since the radiation is directed to neck he has been unable to swallow since the end of week one and is forced to drink 6 of those ensure drinks a day as food.  No solid food for over two weeks, he has never complained but that has to be a bitch.   

I have been spending more time hanging out with him lately, not that I can do anything but be there for him.  He has joined me on numerous occasions on my early morning excursions to the beach to watch the sunrise, this morning he even went for a swim.  It is kinda funny, I send a text when I leave my house, usually about 10 minutes to 5, and if he wants to go he will open his garage door and when I drive by I stop, or not depending on the position of that door.  I secretly hope that door is up each morning I drive by, I so enjoy just being there for him, to talk to, to be someone he can complain to and whatever else he needs to do or say.   As I am typing this I think I will go by tomorrow morning and I can only hope the door is up when I go by.  Seems like a silly thing, to build so much symbolism into the position of a garage door – thinking about that is making me smile though so silly or not I don’t care.   

I have stopped over to see him after work a number of times since his treatments have started.  Not that he would ever complain but it has been hard for me to listen to him describe each new malady as the treatments persist.  That sounds stupid saying as I read it – “hard for me to listen”, what kind of stupid shit is that to say?  It has been hard for him to endure and I am embarrassed that I might even think that listening to my best friend describe his issues would be hard for me – sorry brother.  I listened and try to understand as he described a sour taste and phlegmyness, then the sore throat and inability to swallow food. From there it went to that radiation sunburn on his neck and face to now his teeth are very sore and hurt and his saliva glands are slowing down production, which creates a whole new other set of maladies. 

I try hard not make our time together awkward for him, or for me.  Sometimes I get scared that I might say something or do something that will offend my friend or make him mad.  I keep it loose and never presume he needs assistance with anything, I have to believe he will ask if he needs something.  I can only imagine the reaction if I were to assume (and ask about helping with something specific) he needed help with something.  I suspect he might think he is losing more control of his situation – I know I would.  I am pretty sure my friend will read this so if you need something you need to tell me, I will do whatever you need without question – because you would do the same for me.      

I find that we laugh a lot though, the other day he was telling me that the plastic mask they use to strap him down to a board to hold everything in place while the treatment is underway was getting looser and more comfortable because he was losing weight.  We laughed about that, I told him he was an eternal optimist, able to find and appreciate the fact that the mask did not hurt as bad because the radiation treatments were making him lose weight.  We laughed and laughed, he is so strong in his approach to these treatments, what is going to happen is going to happen he says.  I quit drinking a long time ago but almost every time I stop by lately, mostly after work I share a beer with my great friend. On my last visit, due to the treatments, he could not swallow so he ended up pouring it out in the bushes.  I think that frustrated him to no end but I did not say anything although I did consider calling him a lightweight.  We also laughed about his nurses at the treatment center.  He told them before he was done with treatments that he wanted a picture taken.  One that shows him strapped into the treatment apparatus with each of the two nurses each holding whips.  I told him that has to be a day that I take you for the treatment because I want to take that picture!!   He wants to use that as his profile picture on Facebook – we laughed some more, I love that guy!    

So why did I run through that when I started about the cool side of a pillow and the meaning of life?  Well what I was reminded of is that ALL things in life are fleeting and will change soon enough.  You cannot hold on to moments in time, that cool side of the pillow quickly changes to the warm side.  I can’t predict the outcome of my friend’s treatments, but I can just spend time with my buddy, being present for him – whatever that means.

That cool side of the pillow is it, I got the meaning of life from it.  We have to work HARD to live in the moment, life is nothing but a series of moments – each of which we need to treasure.  Kind of like a series of snapshots in time, watching as the march of time pushes our snapshots across our life – there is no stopping it no matter what.  One moment we are looking at one snapshot and the next moment that one is gone and the next one presents itself.  That cool side of the pillow, it is fabulous and then it gets warm.  Instead of missing the coolness we need to stop and enjoy that snapshot of when it is cool and know that it, like all things in life are fleeting and ever changing.  The moments come and go and if we spend all of our time anticipating the next one or trying to hold onto the ones that have past we miss the ones that are present, right there in front of us.

I guess it could be equated to the phrase, stop and smell the roses but to me it so much more.  I want to be present for my buddy, to listen to whatever he wants to talk about.  The past is gone and the future is unknown, enjoy the conversation and laugh at the mental picture of him strapped in a radiation mask to a board while the nurses are holding whips.  Sorry buddy but if I get that picture it will be on facebook!

The one constant in life is that it will change and it will change no matter our efforts to hold onto it or to predict it.  No matter the circumstance, life is a hell of ride and if we spend our time bitching about standing in line of life while we wait to get on the ride we are missing the point.  Waiting in line is ride.  Stop and just be present, watch others or watch yourself, strike up a conversation with a friend, with a stranger, give some change to those less fortunate but whatever you do, don’t let the wait ruin your day because life is in that snapshot of time you spend waiting.     

Lawn equipment maintenance - not sure where it will end up.....

So unless you are a condo or are an apartment dweller or can afford to have someone take care of your lawn you most likely have a couple of lawn related devices that need maintenance every year.  I have a number of items, the oldest, and most reliable, is a little 20” push mower that I bought brand new in 1991 for 79 bucks.   I also have a Snapper, with hydrostatic drive, a 38” deck and powering all that is 16 horse Briggs and Stratton industrial/commercial single cylinder engine, it is a 1997 model.  I also have a Troy Built Stick edger, that is a piece of shit but I can’t get it to stop working completely so I can’t discard it – yet.  I have a gas powered hedge trimmer as well, an old lawn-boy model that needs some work right now, it is about 12 years old.  I also have a backpack blower that, once properly tuned, will blow wind out of a modified nozzle at over 500 miles an hour – that thing is bad ass!!  The newest addition to the fleet is an Echo string trimmer that I bought about 4 years ago, it is a fine machine and has not given me one problem, yet. 

First and foremost it seems ridiculous that I need (or want) all those gadgets just to maintain my surroundings in an approved (by society) way that will not get me in trouble with the homeowners association.  I have written about that before, here is a link "lawn implements"  I have also written about my lawn mower by itself, here is link to that one "mower with hood scoop"  Ya know, after reading those two again I realized that I laughed all the way through - at the things I will write about, and I do know that something is wrong - I just do not care.  As a kid I occasionally worked on farms and I think I have more implements than some of the farmers I worked for. 

So when one’s stable of equipment is as large as mine it takes quite a bit of maintenance to keep them all running and happy.   Some folks may be able to take their machines to the shop every year to get “tuned up”, me I spent all the money I have buying them so can’t do that.  I have to maintain them myself so every year I spend a few bucks and a few hours and perform preventative and corrective maintenance on all of them.  As if late it seems to be getting ridiculously expensive to purchase the materials, I suppose the shops are charging more as well these days.   I spent, between two different stores, 80 bucks to buy some air and fuel filters, some spark plugs, edger blades and trimmer line and a quart of oil – 80 freakin dollars!!  I am still pissed off about it and that was yesterday I spent that money. 

I am upset at several things, the cost yes but also at the way these big box stores operate.  When I speak of big box stores in this case I am talking about Lowes and Home Depot.   I am also upset with the green revolution and what it has done to the cost of spark plugs and air filters.  Maybe I am just upset that I don’t make enough money to take my equipment someplace or to just have someone else maintain my yard.  Not sure but I think there is something more to that then I might want to admit. 

Anyway, I am not able to get all the pieces parts at one store, each of the BB stores carries certain brands and sometimes they match what I have, sometimes they don’t.  They change the brands they carry so often that it makes it impossible to plan on them having the thing you just bought from them yesterday.  They look for the products they can make the most margin with and that is what they are selling that week.  So I spend about 40 bucks at Lowes and that gets me the air filter for my lawn mower, the edger blades, tow of fuel filters and spark plugs for the 3 of my machines.  Not a normal old ordinary 99 cent spark plug, oh no you can’t buy those anymore as they do not burn 100% of the fuel and when they are used it creates unwanted emissions, more than my old Jalopy I am told but do not believe.  You have to buy the eco-friendly models that cost 6 bucks a pop – yeah for a lawn mower spark plug.  I remember when I was a kid we used to take the ones from a car we just tuned up and used them – for free!        

Next stop the Home Depot where I find no one to assist but do find the rest of the items I need.  The other spark plug, the trimmer line (titanium the box tells me although I doubt there is any titanium in the string) and one more air filter.  I have it all except the filter for the blower, evidently neither place carry that brand anymore so therefore they do not carry the replacement parts, silly bullshit in my opinion.  So on my way home I also stop at the auto parts store for a can of carb cleaner, it is half the price that the BB stores charge for it.  As I am riding along in silence I started to wonder how it can be that the air filter for my lawn mower costs more than the air filter AND oil filter combined that I use for the Jalopy – and those are Fram models not the knock off brands.  Mowers used to have a foam element for the air filter, once a year it would be pulled out, rinsed in leaded gas using our bare hands and then the gas and dirt were wrung out, right there in the grass and then that little wad of foam was reinstalled and voila’ another year of clean air was supplied to the mower.  And the thought of a fuel filter was unheard on a lawn mower or yard implement. 

So this morning I am sitting in the garage, surrounded by my 80 dollars’ worth of goodies getting ready to perform some maintenance.  So all the carburetors come off and get thoroughly cleaned and inspected for loose or broken parts, thank God today none were found.  After a couple of hours all the new parts were installed and all the machinery was looking cleaned up and ready for prime time.  I immediately set about mowing, edging, weed eating and blowing my yard.  Everything came out looking fabulous so I suppose the money was well spent, I am not sure I am 100% over it but I am getting there.  And what choice do I have really, to neglect routine maintenance will only shorten the life of the equipment and since I complaining about the 80 bucks you can guess that I do not have the cash to replace any of those items, so 80 bucks it is.

What do you spend to maintain your lawn equipment, or what do you pay to have it done?       

There is nothing worse than a dead battery - really??

There is nothing worse than a dead battery, that is what a commercial told me.  Nothing worse than a dead battery, I am not sure I agree with that assumption.  The commercial starts out with folks trying to start their car and then realizing that the battery is dead.  The first ones we see is mother with her daughter who says - no, not now.   I am not sure they could make either the mother or the daughter look more pathetic, it was stupid in its imagery.  The next victim of this horrific sequence of events is a middle aged man with a beard, he has no talking lines but he just looks dumbfounded, as if someone told him that his toes were going to be cut off one at a time.  From him we run into a woman who is uttering, come on please, it appeared that her world was literally coming to an end and the Reaper was waiting right outside her door.

My favorite one was the man who starts out saying, ohhh and then laughs, almost satanically, and then mutters, great.  I like him the best because I have reacted exactly like that before when my car would not start.  The next targets of the dead battery are a couple who look like they are going to miss dinner with her folks at which they would be told they will be getting the inheritance, which since they won’t be there - they will not receive and they know it.  The next poor bastard is sweating like a politician under oath and looking as if he is getting ready to have a stroke and appearing moments away from crying, my heart goes out to that guy.  Him and the lady who is sitting in her SUV in a work parking lot with a monsoon beating down from the skies, her life is over, it is obvious.
  

We move from there to folks who have purchased the Duralast battery, the one that is engineered to start, day in and day out we are told and this technological marvel operates flawlessly, even under the most extreme conditions.  Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these batteries  from the swift completion of their appointed starting tasks, I am not sure it was worded exactly like that but that is what I heard.  That damn battery has been proven tough, I am not sure exactly how but we are lead to believe that a testing program the likes of which might be used on the international space station is in place to ensure your car batteries operation, every time all the time.  No specific testing methodologies were noted but I am sure there were some scientific and repeatable testing methods are used.

That commercial was just wrong on so many levels that I wonder what dunder-head would buy that battery based on that commercial.  The one fact they neglected to mention was this, that wonder battery they are hocking will one day be dead and leave those smiling idiots in the same position as the folks they showed in the commercial, yeah the ones who did not have the Duralast battery.  The primary killer of batteries is age, although charging causes the sulfate deposited on the plates to return to the acid, the process is not perfect. A small amount of sulfate insulating residue (sulfation) remains on the plates of the battery. With each charge/discharge cycle of the battery this residue accumulates. This process eventually results in diminished electrical conductivity of the plates as well as permanently diluted sulfuric acid and eventually the battery will no longer maintain a charge.  That happens slowly until you are that person muttering aloud or under your breath - oh, great!

So I got to wondering about the comment of “nothing worse” than having a dead battery.  How ridiculous is that statement?  Bride and I drive old cars and there are times that they won’t start.  Is it an inconvenience, sure.  Is there nothing worse – of course there are worse things.  My old Jalopy is a three speed so I never worry about a dead battery.  I have, on more than one occasion, just pushed it a little bit and dumped the clutch and voila, she be started right up.  In Brides car we keep some jumper cables for such inevitabilities.

When I think about all the craziness in the world I am not sure how having a dead battery on our car can be called “nothing worse”.  I would think that our Military dying in far-away lands is far worse than a bit of inconvenience in our ability to get from point a to point b.  I would think the murder rate in your home town being ridiculously high is much worse than being able to run down to the corner store for your damn Twinkies.  I would think that children being abused does not even fall on the same scale of “nothing worse”.  I could go on and on but my point is the stupidity of the advertising we are bombarded with.  Nothing worse, maybe there could be nothing worse than never seeing that foolish damn commercial.  I am making a pledge right now, it will be cold day in hell before I ever buy a Duralast battery – just because your commercials are idiotic.

Nothing worse my ass, what idiots!!

What has techology done for us lately (or done to use lately)

I really should not have one bad word to utter about technology as fixing the busted electronic gadgetry has been how I have made my livelihood - for over 25 years.   When you sit and wonder though, yes that is something that does not require an “app”, blue tooth or a WIFI enabled hot spot, to do.  To just sit and stare and wonder about inane things is relaxing, to our overworked and over-connected brains.  Computers were to solve the world’s problems, create a paperless world and allow us to do more of nothing.  Well they have morphed over the years but not into any of those things.  They created words like multi-tasking, which is a bullshit word, and others have joined the lexicon as well.  I am not sure I like it because it separates us even more, in my opinion. 

Technology is advancing so rapidly that the curve has left even the remotest correlation to anything linear – it is a curve that is almost an exponential version of an ever increasing exponentially insane curve.  For us in the field of selecting and maintaining technological gadgets, for business or personal, we are increasingly behind the 8 ball to select the correct technological solution to compensate for some issue that was created by nothing more than non-cooperative departments with clueless leadership.  If I was to think about it in an old school sort of way it could be compared to nailing Jell-O to the wall, for those who didn’t get that because there is no “G” number in it or no “app” involved - I am so sorry for you.       

I understand that some technologies are GREAT, better than good and simply stupefying – MRI machines, laser knives for the removal of cancerous cells and the fact that they can replace an entire knee joint in a few short minutes, that is the kind of technology I am all for.  Technology that solves big and real problems in the world, those are good and I am onboard.  The ones that saves lives and prevents accidents, love em!  The ones that make our kids safer in school and at the mall – can’t beat that kind of stuff at all.

Ya know, as I am pecking away on the keyboard I am beginning to realize that maybe my issues have more to do with the application of technology and the fact that we have not spent enough time considering its long term impact.  Not on the problem solving side, those benefits are pretty clear in most cases but on the social side of things.  Sure calculators have made some not as smart in math, I am in that group, but if we forget to learn the theories then when the calculator breaks where are we left?  In the dark I suspect.   Each new advance of technology makes us more susceptible to it, by that I mean we are beholden to it because we forget the theory we needed before the gadget started doing those functions for us.  A perfect example of one that is inane as hell, what is your best friend’s phone number?  Or your parents of coworkers or other family members?  Think about how critical your little hand held electronic gadget has become to you. 

It has become so important that other technologies have sprung up to solve these new problems created by old technology.  We can now back our stuff up, in what they call the cloud.  What the hell is that??  We are all going to working and playing in the cloud soon they say, whoever this nebulous group called “they” is.  Well if I scroll back through the spiral bound ram that is my brain I seem to remember that sometimes clouds will rain down on us a pure hell, water, hurricanes, tornados and hail storms.  That is where we are all putting our stuff, has anyone taken a few minutes to think the ramifications of that all the way through?  The cloud, like all technologies, provides many pluses but we have not determined what the down sides are.  I don’t suppose it matters, whatever they are we will invent some new technology to fix that problem as well.  Technological solutions that were created to solve issues that were created when we solved other technological problems.  Are ya beginning to see what I am trying to say?

Sometimes I like to just sit and stare and wonder and ponder.   Recently Bride and I were rearranging a room, after my Niece moved out, and we hung a big picture frame, with nothing in it.  At first I was not sure about her idea but now I have sat and stared at it, I love it.  It allows me to just stare and I use my imagination to fill that frame with pictures and memories.   It did not happen at a fast pace, there was no app to speed up the process, just sitting and staring at the wall through an empty frame.  It has provided a starting point to some very personal journeys, I have thought of my Dad while staring into that frame, I have also thought of my Mom, all while staring away in silence.  I miss them both but that frame has allowed moments that brought them back to me as if they were sitting beside me.  I have also pondered what my life would have been had I not left small town Ohio, what it would have been with 10 years in the Navy, what it would be like without the 20+ years with Bride.   I love that empty frame.

There is no technology, just a frame on the wall.  I also like to work with wood, recently I spent a few hours on a couple of different afternoons sharpening chisels and hand planes.  Sure they made a technological wonder that plugs into an outlet and will get them razor sharp in no time.  I rather enjoy sharpening them the way my Dad taught me.  Is it slower, yes by several magnitudes of order, but that time of monotonous stroking can be spent wondering about other things, and that is a good thing.  Also when you finally get that 14 inch long smooth bottom Bailey plane sharp enough to shave with (yes that is how sharp mine is) it provides a lot of satisfaction simply because it was not easy to achieve.  When things are easy to accomplish there is rarely ever pride in the work because it only took moments to complete before you were on to something else that is made easy by some other technological gadget. 

I love those old tools and I get even more satisfaction when I stroke that plane across a piece of birds eye maple and it shaves off a sliver of wood that is about a third of the thickness of a sheet of paper and it has not torn up the wood in the process.  For those who have ever planed birds eye maple you know how sharp the tools must be.  So not only do I get the enjoyment of keeping the tools in proper working order and sharp I get the enjoyment of using them to make something.  And that something will have been created with pride in workmanship, something that is lacking in our world, in my opinion.  I suppose that was inevitable when things can be sped up and done at a rate that staggers the imagination because we have applied a technological solution to a problem that did not really exist in the first place. 

I implore you, if you have never spent hours refurbishing a wood plane and even more hours sharpening it to literally razor sharpness, then go to a flea market and by an old rusty one and call me.  I will teach you how to refurb it and how to sharpen it and hopefully it will slow you down long enough to teach you a thing or two about our fast paced world and how to better cope with it.  I might even teach you how to fashion some little wooden trinket using your new block plane.  I ask that you spend some time every day, away from your gadgets, staring a frame, staring at the clouds or just plain staring into space and let your imagination take you on a journey, to where ever it wants to go.    

Why are we so quick to judge others and so slow to judge ourselves?

We seem to do it almost subconscious and we do it all the time – why? We judge folks who are driving in a way that does not satisfy us, we call them idiots or dumbasses or worse. We let that anger at them affect our own driving. We grip the wheel a little tighter, we stomp a bit more on the pedals, gas and brake. We stop paying as much attention to others around us, and then someone is saying similar things about us and doing the same thing. The next thing ya know, everyone on the road is pissed off and driving like an idiot and for what? So we can get to our destination a few seconds earlier? So we can get to the red light one car length (15-20 feet) ahead? In comparison to the trip, 15-20 feet will turn out to be a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total distance traveled. Do you think your anger at the dumbass driver is affecting him or her or their health in the same way it is affecting yours? Of course not.

We judge the folks who are slow in the line at the bank, at the grocery or at the pool store, we call them pokey, slow or worse. We think that we must be serviced in an unrealistic time frame, this goes back to a blog I wrote about patience and why I think the world is a mess, here is the link old oratory link We have all seen the person go ballistic in line because the cashier or the customer is slow. If you have not seen that then you have seen someone just sigh a big sigh over and over again and then move to another line that appears to be moving faster – or you have been living in a cave for the last 20 years0. And the funny thing is that Mr. Murphy and his blasted laws will get them every time. Once they are ensconced in a different line the line they were originally in miraculously speeds up. Now the slow poke or idiot has become peppy and speedy and they watch in growing frustration the person who was behind them walk out the door, while they are waiting for three more people to be serviced.

We judge folks who dress in a way that does not meet our standards – we call them bums or slobs or worse. We think wow, their clothes sure are shabby and dirty and might even think – they should clean themselves up. Even though we have ZERO idea about what hand life has dealt this person we think they should just get their shit together. We have passed judgment, instead of asking if they need something or just giving them the change in your pocket we just judge, I try to keep change in my pocket for just such occasions.

We judge folks on simpleton things as well, why are you not pushing the elevator button fast enough, why did that person stop there to tie their shoe, why is that person typing so slow and this list goes on and on and on and on some more. So what is wrong with us, we just seem to be so wrapped up in ourselves that nothing but our needs and desires are important. We judge folks for walking right in front of us, we judge them for the way they eat at restaurants and we judge them for the things they do for entertainment. We judge a lot and I think we are almost taught to judge. Look at media, news and regular programs, look at our work places and places we frequent, this person is a better singer, that person is more glamorous. Instead we should just enjoying them making their music or spend the time to find the beauty in them.

So this morning I was sitting on the beach at a few minutes after 5am to watch the show, it was magnificent as always. When I go I like to just sit and admire the beauty of it. I try hard not to think about any problems I might be having, I try not to think about work I just sit and stare. So this morning I was sitting there and about 5 minutes before the sun came up my friend Roy wandered out on the beach. We talked for a while as we admired the stunning magnificence of a sunrise. We talked about how it NEVER gets old and how excited we get when we get to watch it on the beach. This morning he told me some stories about his parents, we laughed and contemplated life and all the intricacies of it, a hell of ride I said. Since I get there so early I get great parking, usually one of the closest three spots, today was no exception.

When I was leaving I was walking out with my plastic chair and as I get to my car to get the camera and tripod and all put in a fellow pulls up behind where I am and asks I am leaving. I say yes, here in a minute. I have dropped the chair behind the car and am putting the cameras and phone in the front seat and then I go start knocking the sand off my chair, it has been less than 30 seconds at this point, and I can tell by his body movements that the guy who is waiting for my spot is getting frustrated with me and the apparent slowness of my actions. That did not really motivate me to go any faster and to tell ya truth is actually made me want to go slower. I have nearly gotten my chair strapped in the back of jalopy and am ready to dust off my feet and this guy loses his patience with me and drives away in a huff. I would suspect that if I had looked over he would have been telling me I was number one by showing me just the one finger that made him feel better. Me, laughing out loud as he squealed away probably did not help his mood either.

For me the beach is a place to relax, rejuvenate and enjoy myself, I wondered why this man who squealed away would be coming to the beach before 7am. Was it to relax, was it to enjoy himself, was it to meet someone? Who knows but I suspect that his day was not starting out as well as he planned. Well I went through the same routine I go through each and every time I come off the beach and then fired up jalopy and backed out. Although I have never timed it, that routine takes maybe a minute and half, tops. I will never time it either because it does not really matter to me how long it takes. Well somehow I think I inadvertently poured a bit of salt in the wound for this guy because as I pulled away and someone else pulled into my spot, this guy was making his way towards the beach on the sidewalk a few spots down from where my car was parked. I watched him carefully and he never once looked over at me and he looked mad as a hornet whose nest was just sprayed with poison.

I try really hard not to judge folks, the ones on the top of our society or the ones on the bottom. I try not to judge their actions, we most times will only have a very limited amount of information anyway. Not enough certainly to pass judgment. One of the things that has taught me patience is driving cars that are 53 and 48 years old – patience in many areas actually. Because I work on them I have to patient, when working to get a right lower control removed if one rushes it could be disastrous with very costly side effects. When driving you do not want to be aggressive, the old cars do not have the responsiveness of the newer more costly modes of transport. No following too close or going to fast – there could be disastrous with very costly side effects. We have all had adversities in our life that we can use, use to practice patience or use to make things worse. Every bad situation is only bad if we do not spend the time to look for the positive, look for that life lesson that we can take away from that situation.

So I am asking that the next time you find yourself getting frustrated at someone or something for some stupid reason I want you to think of me and remember some idiotic thing that I did in your presence. I have been doing idiotic things my whole life so I know you will each remember a situation that will make you forget the perceived problem that is facing you and hopefully it will make you just smile  Even as I write this I suppose I am judging that man from this morning. Please remember that everyone you will ever meet has some personal hell they are dealing with that we will never know anything about and probably could not begin to understand even if we did know. Try judging yourself with the same reckless abandon you might judge others with – it is a hard bar if not impossible bar to get over.