Hot Rod Mary

One of the favorite activities at my parents farm is hot rodding on the mule. The M.U.L.E. Aka a small all purpose cart has a top speed of 10 or 15 miles per hour.  My kids grew up driving this cart years before they could legally drive.  It was always the highlight of their visits.  In one memorable incident, one of them (name unsaid), knocked over a tree and got banned from driving for at least that trip.  And of course the shame has never left, her sisters or dad will never let her forget.  Anyway, Mary has been up visiting with me.  And egged on by her grand-daughters (remotely), she tried the Mule. Did well at that after learning to just drive over branches and through mud holes.  Did pretty good for a first-timer.

  
Almost as good at driving it as my dad.  Although with all those years of practice, he’s a bit smoother and cooler behind the wheel.

  

Getting Lost for sailing lesson one

Yesterday was the day of weird including getting lost. It started in the morning ..warning this is a long post.

Yesterday was a lost cause, everything came with an extra twist or unexpected outcome. And yes, I did have my first sailing lesson last night; but there were many things that happened before. First weird event was buying gas. Normally it is n easy process, you hand the attendant money and then put gas into the car. Only this time she handed back a card and insisted I swipe it through a machine. “What is this card?” I asked. “It’s money, we are giving you money.” “What?” “It’s money, take it” said the girl. “Read this”. Well it turns out the local gas station has a new incentive program. And I could game the system by adding tons of cash, pumping gas, and then return for the change. Spend enough and this card becomes a prepaid gas card.

Work also was surreal. IT strikes again. Theoretically IT for information technology, I like the concept of “IT” from the book A Wrinkle in Time. IT, the all knowing, all controlling evil entity.

Came in to find that our IT had indeed disabled much functionality on the XP workstations. Now our customer wants us to develop software that works on an XP machine. They have not yet made the switch to a window’s 7 machine. But we have too. And so last fall, we started ordering second computers for everyone — two computers per very small desk.

My second windows 7 machine was ordered last september. It arrived at the beginning of January. But it was not satisfactory, it cannot handle two monitors. Evidently my XP computer and its monitors are so old (8 years) that IT cannot figure out how to hook my two monitors to the new machine. Can’t order a new video card. Can’t use an adaptor to make two monitors work well. INstead, I have one monitor and feel crippled in my work skills. But at least I have a computer that has email, web access, timecards, and various software packages not yet working correctly. Half of my team doesn’t even have that. Nice going IT–half of the team can’t do their job.

It gets even better. One boss changed the values on my peer review (he didn’t like them) after I left work for the weekend last week. And when this person came in late to work, he asked why I hadn’t finished the job. Well DUHH, my computers were not working. Talk about being set up to fail.

Yet we are not through with work yet. At the end of last year, my division sent out a video message box to everyone’s home as a year end present. Whoopeeee….it was kind of neat. Think of a super fancy musical birthday card, but instead of happy birthday we have a Vice President talking to us about how great the company is. 10 seconds of the message was great. And then what?

Well being a good engineer, I immediately started hacking this box. And it turns out there was a community of people at work who also wondered what else we could do with the video boxes. Mine are going into art projects if I can get another power source and movie put onto the card. And I have extras from employees who didn’t throw it out. One guy offered to let me have his and sent over some new interns (high school students) to deliver this box. They asked why I wanted it and I explained my goal was dismantle the thing and reuse the components. Interested, I tasked the two kids with doing the same job on the box they had brought. At first they looked at me as if I were insane, but when I started pulling apart the cardboard and explained what they would find, one kid was happy to hold onto the box.

Their mentor has also instructed them to ask for a tour. “Of what?” I thought. “No one had a working computer.” But being game, I took them for a walk through the building. We looked at the display case with models of planes and I talked about the different programs. We looked at the lockers where people can lock up phones before going into labs. They tried putting their phones into these small cubicles and noticed that the new iphones won’t fit. We went upstairs and talked with some new hires including one woman who had been a college intern. She told them the money was really good, especially if she worked on Sundays where she got double pay. Both young men now know to start looking for a paid college engineering internship starting next December.

Continued on with the tour. Had another engineer show off a GUI (graphical user interface) with lots of yellow, green and no red buttons. Explained that pilots looked at these gui’s while flying the plane. Walked them into another room and showed them pictures on the wall of planes being built. We talked about drones for a while. And I concluded the tour by showing them all the vending machines. Thought I did well for an impromptu tour. Those kids learned all the important things about money and food.

Finally the work day ended and I left early for our first sailing class. Now I had arranged to leave early so I could pick up Bob from the downtown train station. But at the last minute he decided to drive and I decided to NOT tell anyone I had extra time. Good thing, because getting to the class was an exercise in getting lost.

Went downtown just fine. Took the 15 to the 63 to the 8 and then forgot to get off at the correct street. First chance to get lost, driving around mission bay. Eventually ended up on Harbor Island downtown in time to watch the sunset and moon for a few minutes. Called Bob who wasn’t to be seen and he was shocked. “Why aren’t you in La Jolla?” he asked. “La Jolla, I thought we were meeting at Harbor Island across from the airport” I replied. “No, it’s in La Jolla next to the AMC Movie theater. I am looking at the mormon chapel across the freeway.

Good thing he told me to look for the mormon church since that is a very easy to see landmark. Because I took that drive as an opportunity to get lost several times and see more of our city. Missed the freeway onramp from Rosecrans and had to do some interesting turns. Got off at the wrong place and had to get back onto the freeway. Eventually I made it to the shopping center and we had a long conversation before realizing Bob was talking about landmarks from inside the shopping center while I was in a car outside the center.

Fate wasn’t done with me. The trip home offered yet more opportunities to see unusual streets as I struggled to find the north bound freeway on-ramp. But the class was good. Bob admitted to some sailing experience and I admitted I had been on the boat while he sailed. Did well at the knots, really rocked with my square knot. Next week we have class number two. I am looking forward to it.

5 Students and other notes

Five students in my class (so far). Yeah! But terrifying at the same time. Now I really have to know my stuff. The class focuses on teaching artists how to use LED lights in their sculptures. In the class; we will get to build a small light show using an arduino board. Basically these students get to build their own computer and learn enough about programming to make their own light show. You can see the class notices in two places–the official school website and my new meetup group.

http://www.californiasculptureacademy.com/classes/

http://www.meetup.com/California-Sculpture-Academy-Meetup/

In a sense, we are going back to an older paradigm; a subject expert learning programming to support a need as opposed to the modern paradigm of learning programming so you can support other peoples needs. At work, I pretend to not know how to program; it’s a lot more fun being a subject expert. And programming all day; 10 hours a day hurts my wrists. At least the older style programming environments with endless amounts of mouse clicks used to hurt my wrists. Haven’t really had any problems in the last few years with writing text and haven’t tried the new programming environments; so to be fair; I might do OK now as a full time coder.

But because I’m rusty and because I’m obsessive about knowing the subject and because I feel like a fraud teaching a class as an expert; I’ve been spending hours learing about arduino chips and their IDE (interactive development environment). Also have been learning a lot about hardware. Just yesterday; I snapped at Bob when he asked about the reset button and I didn’t even know one existed; much less how to do a reset. He showed me; I confirmed it with endless reading of webpages, and now I know.

The new laptop works very well. Was able to install the code and cables with no problems. Even tested out the camera by video chatting with Liz. I am so much happier with Window’s 7 instead of Window’s 8. There is still a learning curve since I use the XP operating system at work. But I’m not getting frustrated having to button push, look for things with stupid names like charms, and relearn all sorts of basic things that keep me from what I really want to do. Its pretty arrogant of Microsoft to assume we love upgrading operating systems and learning what they choose for us. I don’t really care and I’ve worked on many different systems–dos, unix, vax, tso, mac, windows, dec–from a wide range of vendors. Everyone has their own variants; but Unix / Linux was the best. There I could explicitly control what was done and how. No hidden bullshit monitoring devices; no cryptic error codes; and the system admin defining all the basics.

Other than programming; life has been going on as usual in the Lewis household. Kat had a friend staying for a couple of days — it’s holiday time for them since the schools combined Martin Luther King day with furlough day to make a 4 day weekend. Yesterday we sent them on a public transportation adventure. Kate and her friend took the sprinter and a bus to a nearby mall. I think they had fun and found the whole process exciting. I’m sure it was more interesting than having me drive them to the mall. Plus I was happy to skip the journey; 15 miles each way. It could have easily turned into a 60 mile trip–there and back, there and back. So for the investment of 10 bucks (cheaper than the gas) for day passes; the girls learned something new and I gained several hours of free time. Certainly a win for me.

Charlie and Elly have been driving everyone crazy. They play constantly and it looks really rough. Charlie has a perpetual rough patch around his neck from Elly’s constant tongue work. And we worry always about Elly’s eyes getting hurt from his claws. Their newest game involves Charlie hiding in the couch cushions with Elly coming and rooting him out. Once that happens, they scramble over the back of the couch with Elly chasing Charlie. I like my couches — they were a gift from my parents and look really good in our living room. Their game is rough and will damage them. This game goes on for hours and the result is Charlie gets locked into a bedroom and Elly gets locked into a kitchen.

Unfortunately both of them are becoming escape artists and manage to bust out more often than not. This morning was classic. Charlie bust out of the bedroom and came back into the kitchen. There he wiggled into a drawer, rolled onto his back, and then waved an arm up at Elly. She came and started harassing him. As it got rough, Charlie would slide in an out of the drawer; constantly trying to bat at Elly’s face. So far no one has gotten hurt and they both are having fun. Let’s hope it stays that way. Just to prove how obnoxious it is; here is Charlie working on Elly’s tail.

This morning, I”m going on another labyrinth walk with friends. I like them and enjoy the small rituals of say thank-you to the world. It helps remind me of what’s important and gets me to look again outside. This weekend; too much time has been spent on the computer. It’s like school; I’m learning so much. But an hour outside will be a welcome break.

Final note of the day — candy crush continues to be an annoyance. Right now I”m in the middles of “quests” which means every 24 hours, one short puzzle. Unless your willing to pay; then you wait a day to do another puzzle. I can see how it can cause people to breakdown and pay the fees. Ugly marketing model; I need to find some new games. Games have always been a temptation. When Sim City was first introduced many years ago, I tried it at a convention. WOW–what fun; so much fun, I spent hours at the booth playing the game. Came home and told Bob to never buy me that game. Since then; it evolved into an on-line game and now is evolving back into a stand-alone pc game. I’m still tempted.

Starting a trip — interesting adventures

The adventure started Friday night with a phone call from my mother in law. “Can you drive us up to the cruise terminal in Los Angeles?” It’s only a hundred miles, one way, but they did provide the gas and the car. It’s hard to say no to those kinds of requests; it was not made lightly. So Bob and I drove them up on Saturday, dropped them off at the terminal, and went to play.

Here they are getting ready for their trip.

We started at Port’s O’Call — a tourist / local trap. Bob and I both went there as kids. But we went to different sections — he went to the fish market to have food and my folks went to the other side to look at the shops. Got the chance to take lots of great pictures which I’ll write about later. Saw lots of the kids riding machines, a lobster claw game (terribly sad), and birds on the fishmarket side — lots of life and excitement although a bit grimy. On the fancy side, almost no people, very pretty surroundings, and a spot that provides both funeral and wedding opportunities. In the morning, we saw two funeral parties (burial at sea type stuff) and it looked like they were also setting up for a wedding later in the day. Ironic, but that same spot was spanning the full range of human emotion within a short time period. Depression, sadness, joy, happiness; all strong powerful emotions.

We also visited an art gallery in that section, the best friend of the deceased shop owner talked non-stop for almost 30 minutes about her life. She had dogs all her life, starting at age four because her dad said she could even though her mother hated animals. And she had traveled across the ocean on the Queen Mary with a 4 year old son. Forgot to ask what happened to the kids dad. But she must have been pretty because the Captain took the day off and showed her the engine rooms, the kitchen, and all the working portions of the ship. She painted, was friends with Will Rogers, had a dog that was the great grandson of Trigger, Wills dad, paid 2,000 dollars for the dog more than 15 years ago (probably closer to 20 or more) because she got Will’s signature on a picture. I think the lady must have been very lonely to talk so much.

After Port’s O’Call, we headed south and stopped at IKEA, home of the horsemeat meatballs. Of course, they have cleaned up their act, but I enjoyed them anyway. Bob got a new WOK and I got lots of dishtowels. Successful hunting at the store. I love new dishtowels, they are clean and full of promise. Within a couple of months, they will be stained, ugly, and ready to clean up messes involving car oil, art supplies, or animal fluids. Perhaps some of the really nice smooth ones will still be good for making bread. But the primary reason for stopping — checking out the couch beds wasn’t as successful. I saw some different options, but probably the best one would be making our own trundle bed. A bed where the second mattress is stored underneath the single bed, but comes out to either create a new single bed or can be raised up and bolted to the daybed to create a bed big enough for two people. Will have to think about these plans and perhaps work with Bob to build something like that.