It just takes time

It's quiet here tonight except for the music I have playing. Raining outside. I've been wanting to organize myself, re-build a computer, edit a year old wedding video, tying to keep the hot tea flowing to sooth my throat. It just all takes time.

Time, Talents and Treasures. That's what the children's sermon skit was about today.

Time waisting was a depiction of TV watching. Truly a mind numbing time sink. I can too easily get hung up in watching movies.

Talents was shown as a young man playing a saxophone, afraid to play in front of the audience. Maybe I'm on the other end of the spectrum of this one, a bit over committed.

Treasure was shown as a cute girl in a Ben Franklin outfit screaming "It's all mine!" In my case I may have a good salary, it's not a certainty in these days and time. I can't presume that I am immune to the lay-off. Too many of my associates are there to say beware.

The pendulum of my priorities is shifting as I think of being an empty nester once more, to more of a focus on making sure my kids are not burdened with my care when I retire. I'm going to first get out of debt, then saving for an emergency fund (3-6 months of expenses), and finally pushing the retirement fund hard till I can't anymore. Live like no one else so that later we can live like no one else!

Then when I do retire, celebrate life some more. At least more than I already do. Spend time with my wife, kids and grandkids, not missing an opportunity to celebrate them. I also want to try to learn some more things, keep current with technology by designing some fun electronic gadgets and keep playing racquetball and golf, make some sawdust occasionally, and keep playing and singing.

Sounds like a good plan. Remind me that I wrote this, later, when I can't remember.

pbd

It comes to us all

Mortality is a fact of life - we are born, we live and we die. My father in law just passed away.

When family dies it makes me think about my own mortality.

I woke up very early from a dream earlier this week. In the dream, my sister said her son had just won the lottery but it was quickly stolen. For some reason I couldn’t go back to sleep. I laid in bed for about an hour making mental list of all the things I wanted/needed to do. I got up on the edge of the bed in the dark and proceeded to enter them all into my to-do list on my phone. At then end of it all, I set priorities and due dates for everything, putting off things that can wait. The process was freeing.

Who would do these things if I was to pass away? Would they still be important to anyone else? How much of what I do is because I'm able and willing, or is it I'm too cheap or too much a pack rat or.....

One of the questions I asked myself was "How much money would I be willing to spend to keep my kids alive? That was after I heard Dave Ramsey ask the question of a caller on his radio show. Without health insurance I would be probably go way in debt if there was some catastrophic event requiring hospitalization or surgery for any of them. I have three kids without health insurance. My highest priority is to provide them all health insurance, until such time as they have the means to get it on their own. This also will encourage me to help them get to that self insurability as soon as possible, right?

I'm knocking things off the list steadily. The AC is working a bit better, the sprinklers zones that were out are coming on again. I've ordered some parts for the car I'm selling. Work seemed to be on track until this morning when I found out the news of my father-in-law. The priorities change, new things get added, others fall off the list.

It reminds me of the movie "The Bucket List." If you haven't seen it go see it. A great movie.

What do I want to leave as a legacy?

What do I want to do before I die?

Vacation Strategy day ?

Seven Steps to a great day
Step 1. Sleep until you wake up. Stop counting the days.
Step 2. Enjoy a nice long walk or run. Take a nap if you can.
Step 3. Enjoy feeding Donovan and eating what's left over.
Step 4. Take a nap if you can.
Step 5. Eat lunch on the deck. Subway sandwiches today. Yum.
Step 6. Go to the beach and build a sand castle and dig a big hole in the sand that is so deep Donovan can use it as his own personal play lake.
Step 7. Put kids to bed and enjoy a night out with the wife.

Vacation Strategy Day 1

Day 1
Take off for as long as possible and as far away as possible.

From what? - Normal day-to-day living, work, house, dog, cats, yard work....

To where? This time to California to visit Marcy, Zach and Donovan.
California is forever great weather, the people are friendly, and the grandkids are awesome.

Brought the teen and the grandkid to boot. First time on a plane for Ryan. She was stoked, and a little afraid. She Kept asking where are we. I had the US map in the airline magazine open and kept putting dots on the map as we flew along. She got bored with that and fell asleep on my lap. Woke up and we started to land.

I heard they are going to discontinue the direct flight on American. What a shame. Such a convenience.

I'm sitting for some friends of Zach, watching their not very sleep little girl. she finally went to sleep as I enjoy some fresh home brew and a movie.

Just remembered some last minute things I forgot at work, I forgot my weekly report. I can just knock it out before tonights over.

To wine and not to wine

I was given a gift by Greg during Christmas of 2008 that I finally got around to tasting.  It was a bottle of 2007 Zinfandel wine from the Sehhesio Family Vineyards. 

I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Thanks Greg.  I opened and got inspired.  I started cooking some pasta sauce.  It ended up being very good also.  

I remembered that Greg said that his father had enjoyed this particular wine.  He had good taste I think.  

I looked up the vineyard and started to go shopping. I think I'd like to get some more.  Greg ??

Meanwhile my batch of wine, a Chilean Merlot is progressing nicely. I'm at the clarification stage with about 6 weeks till  is ready.  

 

 

Parallels

There some funny parallels between electrical engineering and life.  Like the title of a book I've begun at work - "Grounding and Shielding".  A book that most of you would not find so interesting, but the parallels are. 

If you were grounding yourself you would be doing something that would be bringing you back to earth. But if you are grounding out, you would be turning off your brain.  You are not going to be able to think.   

If you were shielding yourself wouldn’t you be protecting yourself from something bad or threatening?  Or hiding from something like what’s real or truth. 

I just got back from a Lutheran Synod Gathering last weekend where I witness a lot of shielding and grounding going on. In this case some people had grounded out their brains.  Checking their brains at the door like you would check a coat at the cloak-room.  To ground out is to kill potential, to eliminate all energy from, to short out consciousness.  It was very sad to see in action.   Thank God it was a small minority of people.

I wonder how someone becomes so engrained in a viewpoint that they cannot see beyond their myopic views.  Is it their shielding, or their blinders?  Maybe it's fear.  Maybe it's lack of curiosity or ambition.  They surround themselves with like-minded people breeding contempt for others who might think differently. 

Please let me know if you detect any of that in me, because the picture of this does not look so pretty.  

What's green anyway

I started doing some research into using renewable energy, solar, wind, water reclamation and the like. After our sustained drought we had, it occurred to me that if the predictions about our climate are even half right, we will be faced with a growing energy crisis.

I first thought about water. How much do I need? Do I collect just water runoff from the roof, or think about how to use the grey water I produce? I imagined putting in a 50 to 10 thousand gallon underground tank and initially use it for irrigation and pond supply. Underground since our neighborhood association is anal about things that stick up above fence line.

One of my colleges here are work quoted a very alarming statistic, "50% of the electricty generated is lost in distribution." Wow!

Faced with ever growing prospects of not having a job, gets me thinking what I could do to reduce my dependence on the grid to help reduced my costs. Maybe start an installation business on my own. PV modules at $1000 a pop for 200W are sorta over the top expensive. Inverters and storage are yet another major expense. I could just design my own inverter system. I have that knowledge.

More when I have more time. Anyone use Power4Home and can tell me whether it's a waist of time?

What is about life?

I was watching some archive footage of a gentleman giving His "Last Lecture" on Ophra show and want to comment.

I recommend it. Here's the link.
http://www.clarin.com/shared/v8.1/swf/fullscreen_video.html?archiv o=http://videosfla.uigc.net/2008/07/29/rp.flv

My step mother is dying of pancreatic cancer, but has taken the Eeyore approach and given up. It was hard for me to accept but she did not want visitors. She didn't have a phone so I sent her one of mine, but I never got through to her on it. She didn't want to talk with anyone either. According to by step brother, she barely tolerated him being there. Soo sad!

Something I've heard twice in the last week that made me stop and think. Once from Dave Ramsey and then again from the man giving this lecture. The character traits that I think are so important. Have integrity, show gratitude, and play hard. The lecturer has this to say and I agree with him. He summarizes it's not just "how to achive your dreams" but "how to live your life".

A. If you want to achieve you dreams you need work and play well with others and that means you have live with integrity. Simple advice that you'll find very difficult to follow. Just, TELL the TRUTH.
B. When you screw up, Apologize. Apologize the right way. It has three components.
1) Tell them "I'm sorry!"
2) Tell them "It was my fault."
3) Ask them "How do I make it right?"
The third element of the apology is very important, it show sincerity.
C. Show Gratitude.
D) Don't think complaining or wining solves any problems. You can choose to take your finite time, energy and effort complaining or playing the game hard. This is probably going to be more helpful to you in the long run.