Car Troubles

Apparently the car industry is stuck  somewhere in the 1990’s or earlier, when it comes to knowing and understanding the events happening inside your car and to your car’s electrical system, at any particular time or place.

So, if your new 2016 Honda Pilot is sitting in your driveway for the night and someone knocks on your door to tell you that all the windows in your car are down (first rain storm of the season), the back hatch is up and the sunroof is open; today’s technology won’t help to tell you why.

According to the service manager I talked with at Griffith Motors here in The Dalles, Oregon, there is no service code, for the computer to blink out, that will tells us why this event happened.

I mean, maybe she didn’t use the term “blink out”, but that was the image I got, of the system they still use. The system I am thinking of is a system where the technician plugs in a meter with a light and the car’s computer blinks out a code. The technician then counts the number of blinks and looks the count up in a book as to its meaning.

The “best” she said she could do for me was to give me her card and tell me that: “if this happens again (it had happened 3 times before and I had called once), don’t touch anything and give me a call.” I told her, “if it happens at 4:00 AM in the morning I will wait until 6:00 AM to call her.” She said, “Wait until 8:00 AM.”

So basically, in the car industry’s environment, it’s the dark ages when it comes to an owner or a car technician knowing what the car is doing, but when the car senses that the driver is letting the car drift off the road it shakes the steering wheel, tries to correct the action and displays a warning message.

Strategically, Honda Motors uses something similar to semaphore  and Morse code technology in its understanding of the workings of vehicle, but advertises and delivers a high tech system on the driver side of the equation. It’s a strategy that is built on Google (as in Googling), insurance companies, lawyers and a network system that works and is secured enough to make everyone money.

It seems to be a strategy of low expectation, except when it comes to the observation of the car’s sensors, the orientation of its code writers, and the environment of the internet. It’s a strategy that puts decision and action first, observation and orientation last.

Somehow I don’t think this “Blackswan” is going to end well. So far it’s day 3 and nothing eventful has happened. But then, how is one to know?

“They Better Have Fire insurance.”

I am trying to design another home on my lots; the second of the possible 3 on two lots. But I have a vacant house next to the area of my design.

So my neighbor’s quote is correct. Once a house is abandoned or laid vacant for a few years, the best thing to happen to a vacant home is that it burns down. Otherwise you run the risk of spreading the mold throughout the neighborhood, and, once the mold reaches inside the outer wooden sheath, there is no longer anything to salvage.

So I better have good fire insurance, if I am going to build next to it.

#thedalles, #design, #communityorganizer, #solidworks

A Community Project

As we stood looking at my Apricot tree, the person in front of me remarked, “Most Apricot trees are not that big.”. The person was a tree doctor of some kind, but she could have added beautiful, because my big, huge, unmanageable tree is also beautiful in not only full bloom, but, to me, in its unstructured-self that doesn’t lend itself well in producing edible fruit. The tree is too tall and I think she was telling me that, without great harm to man or the tree, there was no easy way to bring the fruit growing branches closer to the ground.

Most apricot trees have small fruit, mine doesn’t. The fruit, while good tasting, are the size of peaches. They are also attacked by some kind of a beetle that attacks the top fruit, then works its way down to the lower branches of the tree. What works for me is to hand-pick the fruit before they are ready to fall and then finish ripening and then cull-out all the insect damaged fruit.

Because of my method (madness?), time and access to fruit is critical. This year everything seemed to ripen and become infected by insects all at once and out of reach. I salvaged some fruit, which I was able to dry, but the rest went fast and rotted into the ground. This is not something I enjoy happening. The smell and sight of the rotting fruit is not pleasant.

The process of harvesting the fruit was not helped by my pruning last year. I tried to lower the amount of fruit that was not suitable for processing by cutting the higher limbs and making all the fruit accessible from the lower limbs, which are still nearly 10 feet of the ground. This pruning opened up light throughout the tree’s umbra. I wanted to be able to reach all the fruit from a ladder on the ground.

But my efforts in getting all the fruit closer to an accessible point closer to the ground didn’t work as planned. All the fruit ripened at the same time and the insects took-over the entire trees, instead of only their half.

I think I could keep the process of making use of the tree’s fruit by letting it grow more and working from a greater height, but I think it is time to let the seedlings take over. I need to find the best position to plant them and then let them reorient my way of collecting the fruit. Besides, the people who really admired the tree’s beauty are gone, and I am not sure if the new neighbors will miss beauty that they haven’t really seen.

I mean all the fruit is edible, but, any more, it has been hard for me to claim my human share. Much of the fruit goes to insects, which I try and do put much of it back into the soil.

But it is harder every year for me to make use of the tree. I am getting too old to be climbing trees and It used to be that we had one good harvest year in about every three years of the tree’s life, but that is changing and this year I couldn’t act quickly enough or at the correct tempo to take care of the fruit.

But there is hope. I have manage to raise two Apricot trees that I got from seedlings from under the tree. They grew great fruit this year which I feel I will be able to manage, once they get transplanted into a permanent position next to the new house springing up from where the big Apricot tree was once.

Tempo of Last Remodel

The Slow Tempo

I managed to carry two 40lb bags of pellets into the basement and refill the pellet stove. It only took 1 hour, which was a lot better than the 13lb 3 load trips I started with a few days ago. However, as tempo goes, this means my work is still at a very slow tempo, as me and the puppy were asleep most of the rest of the day.

Work is the ability to carry a weight a distance, and tempo is about all those things.

Strategy, on the other hand, is about the end, ways and means in the ability to work, and all work has strategy. The resources and the ability to use those resources are the means and ways of strategy, and compose the elements of tempo.

Tempo is the pace that the resources are carried throughout a narrative, and in this case, that narrative is an OODA loop.

OODA (Observe, Orient, Decision, and Act) is a time-step movement of energy, which represents the power of any amount of work, completed between steps. So any amount of work I completed in the “loop”, which said that I needed to fill the pellet stove, can be scaled to the project I need to complete the “Last Remodel” of our house.

Needless to say, my tempo is very slow, but the end of my strategy has great potential. If my strategy is successful Stephen, or anyone blessed with our remodel, should end up with property that is very marketable as a source of income for rent. If Stephen doesn’t die before we do, and ends up with this property, it could be an advantage to him and anyone else, in his old age.

It seem like working for Sam, isn’t going to cut it, at least for Stephen as a solder in Sam’s Army.

The Project: Final Remodel

I have begun the final remodel. I am in the Data phase, and the data almost killed me, as I added knowledge. I ended up with a fractured spine and one rib.

It was nothing that needed any medical attention except for some ibuprofen (drop that oxcondone as quick as you can), then go on muscle relaxers until you can feel that the bleeding has stopped.

I don’t know if this “cheep trick” works or not, but my pain is more real now and I don’t think that it is caused by spasmodic bleeding. I have stopped taking spasm medicine, and trying my back out.

But that is what knowledge is all about, pain, unless you handle the taking of all that data carefully.

I knew better than to use the top step of anything, much less of a 20+ years old step stool. but then I did use it as a platform to do my data-taking from.

Despite the knowledge that I had on how dangerous it is to work from a position of no leverage (top step), I kept using the top step of the stool because I didn’t want to stop and think what I really need in resources, to gather this data safety. I was neither craftsman nor a good manager.

Most people don’t understand that the real job of a millwright (my former job) is safety, and that means not only working with your hands, but ones mind.

In project class in college I was categorized as a mastermind. In one project I was the only one in class (including my team, ouch!) that wrote up the correct answer, and I think my experience as a millwright helped in that effort to categorize me.

I often wondered if anyone was interested in the answer, but nobody asked me about it, so it was hard to tell.

So, go ahead and start that narrative with data gathering, but understand that the odds of getting hurt can catch up with you as you gain knowledge, as I did when I found myself on the floor, on my back, above the edge of the stairs, and with my legs on the steps below me. Talk about a position with no leverage!

Beginning with the right “tempo” is very important in reducing those odds of getting hurt. With tempo you can find the time to become both an organizer and a millwright, a very safe position to be in.

I am just now getting in position to find were my advantage, at least in not getting hurt, will come from.

The Remodel

I have begun the final remodel. I am in the Data phase, and the data almost killed me, as I added knowledge. I ended up with a fractured spine and one rib.

It was nothing that needed any medical attention except for some ibuprofen (drop that oxcondone as quick as you can), then go on muscle relaxers until you can feel that the bleeding has stopped.

I don’t know if this “cheep trick” works or not, but my pain is more real now and I don’t think that it is caused by spasmodic bleeding. I have stopped taking spasm medicine, and trying my back out.

But that is what knowledge is all about, pain, unless you handle the taking of all that data carefully.

I knew better than to use the top step of anything, but then I did use it as a platform to do my data-taking from.

Despite the knowledge that I had on how dangerous it is to work from a position of no leverage (top step), I kept using the top step of the stool because I didn’t want to stop and think what I really need in resources, to gather this data safety. I was neither craftsman nor a good manager.

Most people don’t understand that the real job of a millwright (my former job) is safety, and that means not only working with your hands, but ones mind.

In project class in college I was categorized as a mastermind. In one project I was the only one in class (including my team, ouch!) and I think my experience as a millwright helped in that effort to categorize me.

I often wondered if anyone was interested in the answer, but nobody asked me about it, so it was hard to tell.

So, go ahead and start that narrative with data gathering, but understand that the odds of getting hurt can catch up with you as you gain knowledge, as I did when I found myself on the floor, on my back, above the edge of the stairs, and with my legs on the steps below me. Talk about a position with no leverage!

Beginning with the right “tempo” is very important in reducing those odds. I am just beginning to find mine.

The Flag

A General on a mission is called a flag-general. In today’s world, of video games and simulations, it is important for a flag-general, especially with a Red team under his/her flag, to understand not just when he loses, but that when he wins is also an important event to note.

Because it is harder to prove a negative than a positive, the flag-general may not remember whose side he is on, and, because all flag-generals are winners, it is doubly hard to prove, by their Red team, that they are losers.

As an example, if you are a flag-general and just bought a house and,  if you are on your hands and knees, crawling around under that house looking for only God  knows what, then, perhaps, you haven’t really won.

If this is true that you didn’t actually win, it is because you didn’t know your enemy. The reason you didn’t know your enemy is because the Red team hid the enemy from you. That is what Red teams do, they hide things from you.

But what we do know is that a flag-general would do only what his God knows, to complete his mission. This is because his God is under his flag, and, of course, because the reverse of that is true, they are both positives.

Moving Day

OK guys, I realize the man-in-charge didn’t tell you to drag fresh mud and sand onto the polished wood floor, but come on! You’ve never done this before, right?

And when it happened that mud and sand you dragged in and ground into the floor, did you really want your name mentioned with the mess?

You guys have been around in The Dalles for a long time, and I have been known to work dumb, but the next time I need some moving and think of you, I think I will pass on the opportunity to hire you.

Unless of course you’re the last working person in town, which could happen 🙂

Master sgt. says no to Chinese-made boots

“I’m troubled that the military continues to downsize because of the budget deficits — budget deficits which are in part a result of millions of unemployed American workers,” Adachi wrote in a letter to Air Force Times. “How many American workers are unemployed because military clothing is being produced in foreign countries?”

via Master sgt. says no to Chinese-made boots – Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq – Air Force Times.

Good question.

I wonder how many Americans even know how to build shoes anymore. Didn’t that industry leave this country long ago?

Winning

I think the verdict

is out that winning

is more important than any calculation that can be made.

Unfortunately, winning requires a calculation of any kind. So I guess this is one bridge too far.

Just for you interested, my posting for my busiest day was called The Human Condition.

 Not sure what the Human Condition was about, , probably something about Jesus of Nazareth, because I am speaking from a Christian nation, but just giving some context.