Happy New Year to all!

So the spouse and I checked into bed early last night and did not stay up for any New Year's revelery. She's been sick all weekend with a flu or cold bug and our celebration invitation fizzled out when Carol came down sick too. I never even had a drink last night to celebrate the ringing in of the New Year, just watched some tv and baout the time the weather forecaster was done on the local news, we went to bed.

Hope I didn't miss anything...

So, I suppose I should be reflecting back on 2007 and making some prognostications and plans for 2008. Here goes-

2007- it was a pretty good year overall. We got to travel on our first cruise and see some family that we hadn't seen in a long time. That was especially nice. I need to be making plans to get north to see more family in the coming year. I survived one ugly episode at work that sent me job hunting but it seems as though all is forgiven and I'll get to keep my job one more year but contract re-signing is in January, so I guess I'll see later this month. Overall, the job is terrific and I like my work and workplace and I hope to keep doing program management work for a long time.

My family is all well and growing in their individual paths. Noah has figured out that college life and tasks are not his strong point so is working full time in a Toyota garage and expecting to move out of the lube bay into a tech position sometime soon. He still has some figuring out to do, like paying for his car insurance, which I've been doing for him while he was a student. Now that that moniker no longer applies, my continued financial support is running out too. Kye is back to work and even got a haircut not too long ago which was a pleasant surprise. He seems in good spirits and seems to be pretty happy with his girlfriend.

Its remarkable to think we have been in our house for 8 years already. After moving about every few years while in the military, it feels really good to be unpacked with no expectations of packing up and heading someplace else. We've a home here, we are comfortable, the pets are happy here and my AF retirement pay continues to pay the mortgage. So life is good.

Now about 2008- my only self improvement plan is to spend more time playing guitar and to find an instructor to help push me along and motivate me. I admit, I've been slacking lately. I need to loose several pounds and I'll work on that too but I'm making no promises. I'm going to continue to seek a government job instead of working as a contractor but it appears that the Veterans Administration doesn't think I am worthy of any disability from my service years and that makes getting into a civil service position more difficult. That disability rating process is still working through the administrative hoops, so it may change.

I'm going to continue blogging, loving on my BSU and showering her with affection and fresh flowers and the occasional jewelry and tinkering with my scooters and guns in 2008. That much I promise!

Back to the salt mines!

That's right, our warm weather, surf and cruise vacation ended Wednesday with our return to Utah. And Thursday I was right back in the thick of things on the job. Today promises yard cleanup tasks as I try to get all the tree leaves picked up and a hockey game later tonight.

Tomorrow is preparation day for the the window installations on Monday, so I have to relocate the cable tv connection and take down the old plastic storm window tracks. Somwwhere in here I'll try to get some real blogging accomplished with lots more pictures from our very wonderful trip.

So what am I doing?

My Dad sent me an email taking me to task for not posting anything recently and he wanted to know if everything was ok.

Everything is ok, I've just managed to stay busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger for a few days now. I futzed with the scooter over the weekend, did some yard work getting ready for winter season and watched some movies at home with the spouse.

Work is keeping me hopping as you might have guessed from my last post. This eek I discovered that the 450 brackets that I need for my Taxi Light Relocation modification somehow got turned into 3300+ brackets after the order passed through multiple computer systems and ended up with the organization that actually places the contracts for the item purchase. We got that little 2 million dollar overrun fixed after multiple meetings this week- finally.

This weekend I'm helping my buddy Loc replace the clutch in the Toyota truck he bought recently. The clutch has failed so completely that you can put the transmission in gear, any gear, let the clutch out and the engine won't stall, so it needs to come out. Loc wants to get his hands dirty doing something manly and he's already out about 3000 bucks on other vehicle repairs at his house this month so he wants to do it himself- with my help.

No new jobs pending. I did have an interview last week or the week before that seemed to go well and I think I would like the work if I get called back. We'll see.

I still need to get out to buy some new, clean sneakers for walking around the cruise ship with, sometime this weekend too. After that, its just about time to get packed for the cruise!

If you had been in the meeting I just left-

You would know why I drink more at home during the week than on the weekends.

Ugh!

The good news is that in spite of everything, my big program might have cleared a hurdle today that last week we didn't even know needed to be jumped.

Another exciting week in Utah

NOTE: This post is bound to ramble around a bit, so hold on tight or jump off now before it gets speeded up.

So, its Sunday morning and I'm making my end of the week roundup post. I don't know what that means except that I'm delaying heading out to the shop. I could take the laptop out there to post and I might take it out there later, but right now I'm inside, at the dinner table where I can watch the Mormons headed to Sunday School and witness meetings and watch the 2 remaining hummingbirds that missed the memo that it was time to head south.

Go see 3:10 to Yuma. That is, go see it if you want to watch a gritty, western story of a busted down cattle rancher trying to save his ranch and earn the respect of his sons, a stagecoach robbing, Pinkerton killing bad guy and his gang of cuthroats and the adventure that brings them all together in a violent shootout waiting for the train that will take Ben Wade to the Yuma prison. Russell Crowe plays Ben Wade, the evilist bad guy in Arizona and Christian Bale is Dan Evans, the down on his luck rancher that signs on to escort Wade to the prison train to earn enough cash to save his ranch. It is an old west shoot-em-up of the finest tradition and I really liked it.

The scooter's still broke and I'm going out to work on that next. I think I found a bit of dirt plugging a tiny passageway yesterday and maybe that will fix the carburetor problem. We'll see. I made an appointment to take it into a shop for carb tweaking but its 3 weeks of good riding season in the future, so I'll keep trying to get it right myself.

The scoot's going to have to go, once I do get it right, if the job searching takes me into Salt Lake for employment. Its no good for that type of distances and highway speeds, so next year, it will need to be upgraded- dang!

Writing about appointments reminds me, I have 2 coming up. One is for some lumps/scabs on my head that aren't attributable to me running into things. I see a dermatologist tomorrow. The following week I see the same orthopedic doc that removed my tailbone a number of years ago, about my aching left shoulder. I don't know what I did to it, but its been hurting at least 3 weeks now and its not getting better. It hurts to reach back to get my seatbelt, it hurts to pull a t-shirt on over my head and reaching out to push a store door open really hurts. The BSU says its my rotator cuff come undone. Whatever it is, I'm most unhappy with the circumstance because no matter what- it is bound to screw up our upcoming cruise and ski season immediately behind that.

Baseball season in Ogden is over for the summer- dang again. Our Raptors play just 90 days for their season and it starts late and ends early. The spouse and I attended the last 2 homegames, Thursday and Friday night.

Thursday night's game was a treat because I had a coupon for free tickets and I upgraded to reserved seats for just 5 bucks each. Then, at the souvenir stand, all hats were half off and I bought this one to replace add to my collection. And not only was the price half off, but the non-too-bright young girl behind the counter, who first couldn't figure out 50% of $15, also couldn't make change and I discovered an extra 5 spot in my change after I got to my seat!

For Friday night's game there were no reserved seats available and so, for the first time, we had to sit on the bleachers with the rest of the unwashed masses. I was reminded of the dance scene in the movie Titanic, down in the steerage section of the boat with all the poor folks that couldn't afford the tickets to the ballrooms upstairs. In spite of the crowding and constant moving about of folks in front of and on the bleachers, everyone seemed to be having a great time. And it was a great night of baseball, even if out guys couldn't beat the Owlz one last time before the season ended.

Job hunting is progressing nicely. I've had a couple responses already and more to submit resumes to- Carol this means to you, and I don't want to say much more than that right now. I'm less stressed now that I'm doing something instead of just thinking about it, so that's a good thing.

And now, I'm going to my shop. I've got 6 pounds of coffee to grind and bag, a scooter to mess with and guitar practise to get started with again!

Weekend Update-

What is this anyway, Saturday Night Live? It seems the only time I have for posting these days is on Sunday evenings. Some of my lack of posting is simple laziness but mostly I've benn busier than ever and when I'm not being busy, I've taken some time to just sit and relax and read a book or two.

First of all, I've not said anything about the crisis and tragedy of the mining accident down in Huntington. There's nothing I can add to everything that has already been said and if you've seen any new broadcasts over the past 2 weeks, you know the story; 6 miners trapped during a cave-in and 3 men killed while working on the rescue crew with 6 more suffering various levels of injuries. Now, after drilling 4 holes from the top of the mountain, down 1800 feet into the mine trying to locate the trapped mines, the officials are saying that the 6 trapped men may never be recovered. The mine is unstable and further digging to rescue or recover the men may just cause further collapse and injury or death of anyone trying to go into the mine shafts.

This is a terrible tragedy and the stories of the grieving families have been on our nightly news each night. My heart hurts for all of them and I wish there was some way for them to be relieved of their pain. As it is, they may not even get to bury the bodies of their loved ones.

Myself, I can't imagine working underground every day, digging coal oout of the rock. It scares the crap out of me to think of doing the work that these brave men do every day. I think its a shame that we still depend on coal for power production and I'd like to see every coal burning power plant replaced with a new, shiny nuclear powerplant so that miners like these wouldn't have to go underground.

My heart goes out to those families whose loved ones are trapped in that Huntington mine.

So what else have I been doing? I've taken the Para-Ordanance Warthog out for its first outing at the range and so far, I'm not ready to make this gun my carry gun. Like many chopped 45s, this gun has feeding problems... Grr! Its accurate and shoots where I point it and even pretty controllable for its shortened grip but it doesn't feed ammo reliably.

I shot 110 rounds through the gun. On nearly every magazine full, the last round out of the magazine fails to feed. The round comes out of the mag, gets the rim under the extractor but hangs up with the nose of the bullet against the top of the barrel hood. This hangup must have happened 8 or 9 of the 11 magazines I ran through it. Additionally, I had repeated failures to feed in the middle of the magazines where the round of ammo didn't even make it up to the bolt face but instead got hung up under the bolt as it returned to the closed position after recoiling.

There's a possibility that I was limpwristing my grip and that could be the cause of the misfeeds, but I'm not sure. I was making an effort to keep a firm grip on the gun to prevent this problem and I don't think that my grip explains why the last round in the magazine hung up so routinely. When I got home and cleaned the gun, I also discovered that the magazines had some kind of getting sticky coating on them. So I cleaned the magazines, inside and out with some solvent and applied some spray dri-film lube on the insides.

Now I've got to go back to the range and see if the sticky coating was holding up the magazine performance. I'm hopeful that the problem is solved but I'm not carrying this gun for protection until it shoots reliably.

The scooter's not working- again! Same problems as before, cutting out at high speed, not idling, dieing when the throttle is opened. I've left it sit most of the weekend because I'm mad at it. I'm either going to have to buy another carburetor for it or just keep struggling with it.

I did get the camper's awning repaired and reinstalled. The front crossbar got seriously bent when the water filled up the awning during our camping trip to Oregon. The aluminum extrusion was bent about 2 inches out of straight and by some careful bending using a couple sawhorses and the bottom of my workbench, I was able to get it nearly straight. I put new velcro on the front of the extrusion to hold the screenroom in place and I got everything put back into the storage bag and rehung on the camper.

I finished another pretty good thriller novel this morning after working on it most of this week. The book was Black Order and except for a few cheesy concepts, The SIGMA secret arm of DARPA is one of them, its a pretty good thriller. It has James Bond style thrills and secret agents and a evil bad guy with a plan to take over the world using secret technology. Its a worthy summer read and I enjoyed just sitting and reading in the shade of the carport.

I also got the overgrown weedbed in front of the house cleaned out and turned back into a flowerbed this morning. That flowerbed gets overgrown so fast its just remarkable.

What else? No movies this weekend. I did go visit Darren's 3rd scooter and ATV store, down in Bountiful on Saturday, tried to find a new face shield for my helmet as mine got damaged the other day and I'm still looking to purchase a fishing pole before this next weekend so I can go fishing with Kenny.

The job has been very hectic lately and shows no sign of relaxing in the near future. Last week I gave 4 briefings on 2 different programs and prepared charts to brief a 3rd program next week. So blogging from the job has become almost impossible as I try to keep all my programs moving forward and getting accomplished.

And now, its 10PM and time for me to get my shower- except I still have clothes to fold nd put away so I can find them when I need to get dressed for work, starting tomorrow morning.

Its only Tuesday? Good Grief!

I'm just about 2 days behind already this week! By noon yesterday, my work computer had gone Tango Uniform, (NS for you naval types) and when I tried to log in after lunch there was a bunch of overlapping warning windows all vieing for my attention and then it shut down and restarted. Restarted right up to a scary blue-screen-of-death that said to contact the network folks.

So the computer geek came over with a recovery disc and that didn't work. So he carried away my hard disc, spent most of a day overhauling it and when he returned it after lunch today, it still didn't work! So, he carried away the entire machine and brought me a temp machine. I was back in business about 2:30 this afternoon!

And I have so much to do. Charts, lots of chart sets to build and prepare to brief before next week. And now I'm 2 days behind... Hooverdamm!

About that Version 9.5 spreadsheet...

I grumbled about it earlier today but after using it for a couple hours now, I'm impressed. I don't know how they do it and I don't know who "they" are and who designed this spreadsheet but it does something I have never seen before. I think I'm relatively a smart guy for using Microsoft Office products but the trick that this spreadsheet does really made me say WOW!

There's a button on the side of the spreadsheet that says, "Create PowerPoint Slide." And after filling in the values for each of the required spaces on the sheet, I pushed the button. PowerPoint popped open, a blank chart appeared and then the results of my values populated the designated style chart automatically. There was nothing for me to do but fill in my name as the Program Manager and the program name.

That was sweet! The last time I did this set of charts, the automated chart did not work and so after producing the spreadsheet, the chart had to be manually produced, keeping all the values equal to the numbers on the spreadsheet. There was much formatting to be figured out. Now- none of that. Fill in the blanks on the spreadsheet, mash the button and wham! the chart is ready for review.

I wonder how they do that...

Version how many?

Suppose your job requires you to periodically complete a complex set of automated spreadsheets that (supposedly) will populate a series of PowerPoint charts. These charts are used to brief the bigshots on the status of your programs and so, they have to be accurate, up to date and consistent. Last November, when you last accomplished this work, the version of the spreadsheet was version 6.0. Now that you have to do these charts again, you notice that the latest version of the same spreadsheet is version 9.5!

Does that feel like maybe you aren't really dealing with a mature system? Maybe you're dealing with a system so immature that somebody in a position of power needs to call "knock-it-off" until it is developed fully?

That scenario is just one of the joys of my life this week...

Its going to be a long, lonely week-

Kenny's out of town, visiting his mom in California. Loc is TDY to stormy Georgia. Terry's Possumblog is on civic duty hiatus while he performs jury callup service. Melissa's cramming for finals this week and so is Karen.

All my friends are busier than me! Maybe I'll get some work done this week...

And why the heck haven't I ever been called for jury duty? I've had the same address for 7+ years, I'm in the phone book and I register and vote. I can't tell if I'm bragging or complaining, I'm just sayin is all.

My butt is dragging today...

As is often the case about this time of the week, I'm just about wore out. I stay up too late and get up too early all week long and by this time of the week and day, I'm ready for a nap.

Which is really frowned upon here on the job... Not to mention the bad case of qwertyitis that I get when if I do happen to nod off. So, I'm struggling a bit this afternoon.

Work is back to full spead ahead after the holiday break, everybody wants something and they want it now, because they didn't ask for it last week. Typical. The saga of the lost kit continues but I might be getting closer to finding the needed parts. I just need one guy to answer his phone and go look in a box for me. If I solve this dilemma without spending any money, it will be a minor miracle. I have actually solved a number of nagging problems for several programs this week so I have been pretty productive.

In another minor miracle, the BSU and I were successful in copying embroidery files from the computer onto the magic, Husqvarna disc and into the sewing machine last night! It took a couple trips to talk to an expert but we were successful. I've discovered that Husqvarna's new USB Reader/Writer will not read the identical cards that could be loaded and unloaded using the old, parallel Reader/Writer. It would just be silly to make proprietary equipment backwards compatible now, wouldn't it? [/snark]

The coat that I've been wearing for the past 2 winters was really the nylon shelled liner for a cheap ski coat that I bought because I wanted the inner jacket. Last Saturday, while working at the ski resort, the zipper on the liner exploded leaving me with no everyday jacket and no ski coat liner... Rats! I know it was ugly but it worked. Yesterday I bought a fleece zippered jacket to be my new liner for the ski coat, from Ross. I also ordered a Duluth Traders Fire Hose fabric work Jacket for my winter wear.

So, you see, I'm not really being lazy, I'm just not stopping to post much.

Night flying behind the Zion Curtain

KSL took the time to warn local area residents that the 388th Fighter Wing flies at night here in Utah, and particularly during the winter, since it gets night time so early.

The reason this might be of interest is the mention in the story of the night vision goggle capability. The task I was hired here 7 years ago this week to do was make the internal and external lighting of the aircraft compatible with the night vision goggles. The AF was busy screwing the new lights, (internal and external) onto the aircraft at the rate of 30 jets per month. But the replacement, spare parts weren't available on the shelves for the maintainers to use to keep the jets flying.

My job was do the provisioning to make all those new parts available through the normal supply channels. Its been a challenge ever since!