Tuesday, July 23, 2002
10:42 a.m.
Steve and Marj (my coworkers from Milwaukee) are stopping in this afternoon for lunch. They are finishing up their vacation with a drive through Misery... I mean Missouri. Hopefully I can send them off with a good lunch and make their trip much more pleasant.
I am making steaks on the grill, sweet corn, some fruits, a salad and I made it easy on myself by buying some ice cream bars. I'm not very good at making desserts.
Wednesday I'm hoping to make bluegrass night at Doc & Bruties, and then I'll either hit the road for Michigan on either Thursday or Friday.
Right now I have to head over to the neighbor's house to borrow his grill. I'll have to get my own one of these days. But since I would use it once every couple of months, it would hardly warrant using it six times and then having to either give it away or move it to my next home.
Friday, July 19, 2002
11:21 p.m.
I just finished a couple of weeks on the road. And last week, while I was in Minnesota I did a little bit of work on my bosses' computers. After two days of installing and uninstalling programs, I made it home and started again on a LINUX box. I got the OS installed, and it appears to be running fine. But I have been bogged down as I'm trying to put Wine onto the box. I was hoping to get some programs like Calandar Creator working, but it's proving to be a much slower process than I thought.
I really need to go back and learn dos commands and the corresponding linux commands. And learning and relearning that is going to take a while. Of course, it will make installations and fixing computer problems a lot easier.
After almost half a day on the Linux problem, I need to move on to something else. So I caught up on some of our web pages that needed updates.
It looks like I'll be covering a big race next week. There's always something to look forward to covering!
Sunday, June 30, 2002
02:57 p.m.
It's a nice day to watch the cubs game. They're winning, 8-0. I was originally thinking about driving to "Misery" to watch the Royals play today, but I just had way too many things to do today. Maybe if I can get my housecleaning done, I could treat myself to an ice cream cone in Lawrence.
I did manage to get a few things done on my motorcycle. What it needed most was more brake cleaner, and a partial bleeding of the brake system. I say partial, because it wasn't in very bad shape, and mostly just needed to be cleaned out a little. And it wasn't just the front brake. The clutch also runs off of DOT4 brake fluid, and needed to be cleaned out. I was noticing some rough shifting and worse yet, a loose grab when I was shifting between gears. After working on it for a little while, it seems to be running much better. I did an oil change less than a hundred miles ago. It will need new blinkers, new mirrors and a gear oil change, and then it should be up to snuff to do a lot more riding. I've replaced the front tire. The rear tire will also need to be changed this season.
It looks like I might be going to South Dakota this week. I will get my marching orders tomorrow. Then by this weekend, I am scheduled for a job here in Kansas. And it sure feels good to be busy.
It looks like my mom won't need the full schedule of chemo therapy. The doctors say she is progressing well, and they hate to take the chemo very far. The radiation treatment will be another line of defense for anything coming back. And she should be able to get back to school in the fall.
My sister Kerris and my brother-in-law Mike both got teaching jobs near Decorah, IA. And my brother Drew just got a teaching job in Jordan, MN. This is his first teaching job, and he will teach second grade.
Hopefully, if the schedule works out, I will be able to make it up north to see everyone at least once this summer.
Monday, June 17, 2002
09:21 a.m.
I went to see the "Scooby Doo" movie last night. What a great movie! I'm not so sure about the villain for several reasons, but it sure was a great plot twist.
This week it appears that I will be keeping pretty busy. And of course, on top of my usual duties, I have a lot of housework to do. After I get the place clean, I should probably go through some old stuff to see how much I can throw away. If I don't do that at least every six months, I end up with too much junk to possibly move. And even though I'm not sure when I will move next, I want to stay ahead of the ever-towering pile of junk that tends to collect whether I am here or not.
Saturday, June 15, 2002
02:05 p.m.
Last night, after finishing a bunch of work on the truck, my neighbor came over to announce that we would be holding a jam session at my house.
"Cool," I said.
Since I needed a little break, it turned out to be a good mind numb for somebody who had too much on his mind.
I got back from a vacation in California and dove head first into a week full of work. California was incredible. I went on winery tours, visited Lake Tahoe and Coloma where my aunt and uncle were married. I visited with my friend Mariah and her husband and my great aunts Marion, May and great uncle Jack. I went through some areas around San Francisco, and met up with my friend Carson while she was pitching at softball practice.
I wish I would have had more warning before taking the vacation. I might have been able to visit for a while longer and see a little more of California.
Of course, I wish I was rich instead of good looking.
Now I need to finish a lot more work on the truck, since I just received a couple of spools of video and audio wires. I was able to finish a lot of the wiring already, using existing cables on the truck or from my own supply. Now I just have some finishing touches, and I should be done for the short term. At some point there will be more equipment, and I'll have to change everything again.
Saturday, June 1, 2002
01:19 a.m.
Wow, this totally came out of the blue! I am heading to San Francisco tomorrow morning, bright and early. I should arrive sometime in the afternoon and I will be thoroughly enjoying myself the whole time. Why? Because it's vacation, that's why...
My only plans are to not have any plans. Well, except that I will have to leave very early Wednesday morning to get to Tampa by that afternoon.
I know this trip was completely last minute, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. And I was going crazy thinking about my alternative, which would involve working on my bike, not getting the parts I need and having the bike sit in the garage in a million pieces.
Instead, this weekend, I plan to be on a wine tour through one of the valleys in Northern California.
I also have some friends and relatives in the area that I would like to pop in on, but we'll just have to see where they are in proportion to where I am, and if I am having too much fun, doing something like... let's say... surfing.
This should be a pretty exciting trip, in part because I've never been to California. I guess I'll have to tell you about the rest later.
Thursday, May 30, 2002
07:59 p.m.
Last night bluegrass night at Doc & Brutie's was something else!
With about a dozen musicians and a couple dozen people there to listen, it was a pretty good crowd. Unfortunately, with all that I have to do in the next week or two, there will be very little time to make it back for more jam sessions.
It's a good thing that instruments are portable, because I usually end up bringing some kind of instrument with me when I'm on the road.
Last weekend I made it to my second showing of Star Wars. I don't know why, but after reading the book, I still had some unanswered questions. Between that and seeing that piece of crap "Spiderman" I had to go see something decent.
This should be a pretty big summer on the big screen. I don't know if I'm more excited about Austin Powers 3 or Scooby Doo. And it really doesn't matter what I think. Or what anybody else in my generation has to think about movies anymore. We're not the target audience. That unfortunate blow goes to the 10-15 year-olds. Poor kids. What an incredible weight they have on their shoulders.
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
04:54 p.m.
It appears tonight will be another bluegrass night at Doc and Brutie's Pizza in Basehor, Kansas. Every Wednesday night they have a jam session where everyone's invited. They tend to stray a little from bluegrass, but when I go I leave everything but the bluegrass behind.
I started playing bluegrass music a few years after I started playing guitar, which would have put me at about fifteen years old.
Roger Svebakken heard that I was playing guitar and invited me to a Sunday afternoon jam session at the Community Center in our hometown of Spring Valley, Minnesota.
During the winter, they have jam sessions once a month on the first Sunday of the month. In the past year, they've moved the jam sessions to the Lutheran Church, and they still have the pot-luck dinner at about noon, with the jam session following into the afternoon. Sometimes it takes a while for people to eat and chat, so the music starts between one or two in the afternoon. The music sometimes lasts until five or six at night.
Here at Doc & Bruties, they have a dinner buffet that costs about five bucks. Then the jam session starts. Often musicians will come to start playing first, and then eat later so they have a little break in between playing.
And since they have these get-togethers once per week, they don't tend to go too much beyond nine at night.
One other thing I did today was set up another pitas page through our company's site. I wanted people to be able to visit and leave comments, but I'm not ready to deal with all of the side effects of having people 'ping' the site or hack into it.
It's not as user friendly as I wanted to make it, but give me some time and maybe I'll make some improvements.
This could either work very well, or it could backfire. We'll just have to see what happens.
Monday, May 27, 2002
09:22 p.m.
This evening I made it over to Lawrence for a while. I did some shopping, or rather, reading over at one of the bookstores. After a few hours, I did make a small purchase of an old classic and made my way over to a local coffeeshop. I figure since I've been here a year, it's about time that I make my way around to the various places so I can actually know my way around.
As I pulled up to the coffeeshop, I parked next to a guy who was pulling in on a '66 BSA. The old bike was running great, and had very few new "tricks" or additions. The new air cleaners were clearly not stock, and the throttle and clutch cables were all new. Of course, you would never find a bike with the original cables, unless they were placed in some kind of hyperbolic chamber.
The operator was clearly a real bikehead. No one buys an old BSA unless they love nostalgia or got an old hand-me-down with tons of sentimental value.
This guy was clearly as old as I am, so he clearly was not alive when this bike was built or even popular. So it makes me wonder why he chose this bike rather than an old Triumph Bonneville or Honda.
I guess there's no better time to be working on an old bike than right now. There are a million reasons to be out riding and it feels even better when you are riding because you just got your bike fixed, or just changed the oil, or just put on some new accessory. For most bikeheads it doesn't take much. You could simply make some motorcycle noises and get a bikehead's attention. And at that, you don't even have to be very good at making motor noises.
(For instance, you might slip and make a 2-cycle engine noise rather than a 4-stroke noise.)
I read the first chapter at the coffeshop and got back on the bike. I took a slow ride on some back roads to the outskirts of Lawrence, and stopped the bike out near a pond to listen to the frogs. I don't know why I stopped. I just heard the noise, which was something that I hadn't heard in quite a while. And I decided to stop and listen for a while. With the way farmland and untouched wilderness is disappearing, I thought it would be nice to listen for a while before it's gone.
I talked to my brother this morning. He got a new cell phone, mostly because he is interviewing for teaching positions and he wants prospective employers to get a hold of him, rather than leaving messages.
He also told me that he got a job at Applebee's, so he will be working there and at the golf course this summer.
Hopefully he will have good news soon on the job front. I know; everyone knows he will make a great teacher.
Monday, May 27, 2002
12:12 p.m.
Memorial Day. It's a great day to get some laundry done, and then maybe I'll get to go outside and play for a while.
I've been meaning to get my motorcycle out, so maybe this will be a good excuse to go riding.
Saturday, May 25, 2002
11:48 p.m.
I'm showing my neighbor how to blog right now.
Friday, May 24, 2002
01:01 p.m.
Yesterday I spent the day working on marketing. It's amazing sometimes how fast ten hours can disappear. I was hoping that by now I would be on my way to pick up my truck from being painted, but it has been pushed back a day or two because of the Memorial Day weekend. It must be nice to have a scheduled weekend off. If I would have had a little more foresight, I would have better scheduled a vacation or something where I could relax. Right now there is too much to do, and it always seems to be raining whenever I want to get work done outside.
Next week marks one year of living in the great state of Kansas. And while this state and this area gives me everything I want, I have been feeling this constant yearning as if something is missing.
First I thought it had something to do with the people. Many are set in their ways. Some are stuck 10, 20, 30 or more years in the past. Others are bigots and cheauvanist. But I've dealt with a lot of that in the past, and that's not what's bothering me.
During each of my moves, there has always been a challenge. And maybe it is that I haven't figured out what my real challange is here. There are a ton of little challenges and big duties, with a rather large responsibility.
I used to feel challenged by others, until I realized that everybody is good at different things. There is no competition within our company. We can each do the job as a satellite truck operator. And everything we do in addition to that job only leads to the advancement of the company.
I feel bad that not everyone can be a part of such a company. But giving up the rotten parts of a large company also means giving up the 9-5. One must adapt to the loss of a structured life by giving up all of your freetime. By giving it away, you end up getting it back.
So let's imagine a month where you've worked ten days in a row, for 16 hours a day. This is equal to four weeks of eight hours shifts. Now you deserve eight days off, but may end up getting twenty. What do you do with this time? You spend this time getting ready for the next batch of days, sowing seeds in hopes that the grass will grow. Your spend this time cavorting with local yahoos, so when you are home you can really be at home. You spend this time mending fences so the horses can't get out. You spend this time emptying your mind of worries and old information so that it's ready to be filled when you go back to work.
If you're smart, unlike me, you'll figure out how to do all of this while going fishing.
Monday, May 20, 2002
06:49 p.m.
It has been far too long since I have written. My excuse this time is that I was through Minnesota where I was helping my boss and his wife put up fences for their horses.
They are doing this because they have a foale on the way. The foale will have to be seperated from the other horses when it is born, mostly because the other horses do not behave. The last thing they need is a new foale with hoof prints on its head.
I will be making my way down to Florida again some time this week, and I will have more equipment to install in my truck after the Florida trip.
While I was in Minnesota, I also tried to help my sister install a new hard drive and more RAM in her computer. I was finally successful, but not before I crashed the new and old hard drives while trying to transfer Windows 95. Little did I know of all of the horrors of transferring or even partitioning a hard drive using the old system, so I crashed everything by one bad move. Then after a few more days of installs, I got a hold of an old Win 98 program that worked on her computer. After that install, nothing worked, so I had to reformat the hard drive and reinstall 98 again. Now almost everything worked, except for the sound card and AOL. I had to go to the store to get a disk to reinstall AOL again, and then I bought a new sound card for her, which I did not have time to install.
It will probably be another month or so before she will have a working sound card, unless she takes it upon herself to read the instructions and install the sound card herself. Of course, the way everything else was going she would probably have to reinstall a second time before it decided to work right.
Now I have a Linux box I need to rebuild so that my brother will have a computer when he moves out and needs a computer for school.
Friday, May 10, 2002
12:41 p.m.
Our trucks are getting some good roadtime due to the "mailbox" guy. He was putting bombs in mailboxes, and they finally caught up with him in Reno, Nevada. He is from Pine Island, Minnesota and goes to school at Stout in Menomenie, Wisconsin. Add to that he will probably first be sent to Iowa first.
This should be a great week to get a lot of work done. And since I'll be in Minnesota this week, I'm hoping to get a chance to see some old friends.
Tuesday, May 7, 2002
10:58 a.m.
It's far past the time where I needed to start my may entries. The biggest news was a trip I made down to Florida. Since it was so hot and muggy, and since I will have to go down there later this month, I figured I would come back to Kansas and the much milder weather we will have this week. I will quite possibly stay down an extra day when I go back.
This week I will go up to Minnesota for Mother's Day, and to get a bunch of work done.
Until then I still have a lot to update with our company web page.
