Tungsten Fluff

More Loysburg Wildlife

Remember the other day when I said the gators and snakes have been here all along?  Julie ran into this picking beans in the garden:

 

Of course, we couldn't take out the Loysburg bear with a shovel.

Hurricane Prep

My sarcastic comments about Tropical Storm Fay are threatening to come home to roost.  In light of Gustav, we filled up both cars and bought some hurricane supplies for next week.  I have not gone all-out and bought the plywood for the windows, though.  They are rated for 140 mph winds – but that does not include 140 mph projectiles.

Speaking of filling up the cars, gas was $3.45 this morning near the house and it rose steadily as I drove to work until it reached $3.59.  It took $60 to top off the van.  That is sticker shock to me.  It takes about $30 to fill up the Scion’s 10 gallon tank and that will last about 10 days.  We put about 100 miles a week on the van so I haven’t put more that $20 in it since we went to Orlando last summer.  At least I wasn’t filling up that GMC Envoy that was next to me at the pump.  The lady was pumping gas when I pulled up and was still pumping when I left. Ouch.

Good thing Julie and I filled up when we did.  By this afternoon, Sam's Club was out of gas and several stations around here, including the one I filled the van up at, were out of 87 and 89 octane unleaded.  They supposedly have more trucks coming in but evidently I wasn't the only one getting ready to move out.

Break.

I’ve only lately heard about the Lakeland revival and some of the sadness going on with Mr. Bentley’s personal life.  Buried deep in the comment thread of one of Barb’s posts on the fallout was this list of accountability questions from Don:

1. How are you growing in your relationship with Christ?
2. Do you feel emotionally drawn or vulnerable to someone other than your spouse?
3. Have you given adequate priority and time to your spouse and kids?
4. Have you been diligent in areas of agreed-upon personal discipline, such as diet, exercise, prayer, anger control, gossiping?
5. What progress are you making toward your life goals?
6. Have you observed anything in my life that I need to hear about?
7. Have you lied to me in any of your answers?

I have to say I only have about 2 people in my life that are close enough to ask those kinds of things.  Not that they do very often but that’s a valuable thing to have if you can find it.

Sunday Spoiler Alert:  We’re doing a 12-bar blues in E for the countdown.  Should be really tasty.  Johnny can lay down a groove.

Vote the Bible?

Julie went out to dinner with the neighborhood girls so I'm babysitting and channel surfing.  Out of morbid curiosity I tuned into the Jim Bakker show and ended up with John Hagee preaching a message called "Vote the Bible."

Besides putting his 501(C)(3) status in jeopardy, I can't remember hearing this many non sequiturs and strawmen strung together in my life.

Speaking on the bullet called "Is War Ever Justified?" to answer critics of our current military and foreign policy with respect to Afghanistan and Iraq.

First, he relates the story of Abraham's action against the 10 kings with his 300+ trained men in Genesis 14 as the first recorded just war in history.  Apparently since Abraham paid tribute to the king of Salem (Jerusalem) after this, it has special meaning for us taking on Israel's enemies.

God's war policy is, "Always offer peace.  Do everything in your power to get peace; as if your child would be the first to fight and die.  If they reject peace, beseige the city, put every male to the sword, take all their goods and they are to be your servants from then on.  God is not a peacenik; he does not have a cut-and-run policy."  Of course, our decisions are based on imperfect information and subject to review, God's are not.  I also think OT Israeli policy should be different from modern US policy.  Would Hagee disavow Geneva conventions?

The objective of the armies of radical Islam is, "To destroy Israel and conquer America.  They are not going to rest until they blow up the White House, release nuclear suitcase bombs in America's major cities, pull down the stars and stripes and replace it with their own flag."  Seriously, what odds do of a bunch of Afghan cave-dwellers have to "conquer America?"  Even if all 10 million of them (1% of 1 billion Muslims worldwide are considered "radical") were to attempt to conquer the US, we have an estimated 192 million privately-owned firearms in this country.  And if those don't work, we have AC-130 gunships

Sorry, John.  You just lost all credibility by quoting Bill O'Reilly in church.

All this is strikingly similar to my argument with Hannity last week.  OK - he didn't hear me but I let him have it nonetheless.  He was trying to get an Obama supporter (and I am not one of those) to admit that the US had an obligation to confront evil wherever it occurs, regardless of the cost.

Where does the US Constitution give the federal government the responsibility or the power to confront evil?  Protection of people, territory and our freedom from foreign and domestic invaders, absolutely.  If you want to fight an abstraction like evil, amend the document to say so.

Talk like this gets my blood up for two reasons:

1) It trades sound biblical reasoning and logic for demagaugery.

2) Such irrationality probably does more harm to unchurched peoples' view of the church than if they had never seen it at all.

OK...three reasons:

3) I used to agree with everything Hagee and Hannity said.  I don't any more and I'm not sure why.  Not knowing exactly how I got from there to here is unnerving.

Russia and The End of Poverty

I mentioned the other day that I was struggling through Jeffrey Sach’s The End of Poverty again.  Actually, the book is cruising along at the same clip as last year’s attempt.  The first chapter of the book describes the state of several countries on increasingly prosperous rungs of the economic ladder: Malawi, Bangladesh, India, China.  After just a few pages, you realize how blessed we are to have 3 meals a day (plus snacks), shelter, cars, air conditioning, vaccinations, roads, phones, TV.

The rest of the first half of the book describes Sach’s experience in troubleshooting economies which are in trouble.  He details his involvement in ending hyperinflation in Boliva and implementing market reforms in Poland, Russia and China in the late 80s and early 90’s.  This part of the book is fascinating and engaging.  As he describes his plan for pulling a billion people out of extreme poverty, though, he loses me.  We’ll see if I make it through this time.

What jumped off the pages this time was his discussion on Russia – considering it’s current war with Georgia.  With Poland, the international bankers and western governments acted decisively with to establish a currency stabilization fund, loan guarantees, cancellation of 50% of it’s Soviet-era debts and words of support to encourage free market reforms.  The results were miraculous and Poland quickly became integrated into the European community.

However, the west failed to act similarly with Boris Yeltsin’s Russia following the breakup of the USSR in early 1992. No fund to stabilize the ruble, no debt cancellation, no foreign aid.  By the time the G7 countries decided to start making these contributions in 1997, the hopeful outlook of the Russian people for democracy had been squelched, the reformers in the Russian government were booted out and much of Russia’s natural resources had been privatized by the oligarchs – too little, too late.  Putin’s consolidation of power followed and the country has gotten back on it’s feet on it’s own.

What do western leaders think Russia’s obligation to the international community is, exactly?  They needed help in 1992, but it was an election year.  It’s in their interests to defend the separatists in South Ossetia and there’s not much the west can do to stop them.  When Russia leveled Grozny a few years ago, there was a lot of outcry but no real action.

What’s my point?  Looking at the world right now, are there places in Africa, South America or eastern and southern Asia that could benefit from some economic assistance now that could stave off violence later?  If we forgive the foreign debt of a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe  or develop a Marshall Plan for Kenya what would be the long-term benefit for people all over the world?  We lose more money to Medicare fraud every year in the US that some African countries have in their health care budgets.  How much debt has been written down in the mortgage crisis because house flippers have mailed the keys back to the bank?  In light of this western waste, is it really that bad to write off a debtor-nation’s obligations or back a developing currency with dollars?  Surely, the benefits of such policies outweigh the risks.

I agree with Sachs that we have an opportunity unique in the history of the world to eradicate extreme poverty around the world.  Will we take it?

Tropical Update

Tropical Storm Fay tore a path of destruction through our neighborhood.  Here's a view of the damage to our patio:

The question now is whether or not I'll meet the $5000 hurricane deductible on my homeowners' insurance with this.  Maybe I'll just pull the recycling out of the garden myself and save the trouble of all the paperwork.

Fay Update

Oh yeah...we're gonna get it.

Of course, I was going to post a picture of how beautiful it has been here over the past couple of days with the headline Florida Suffers Fay's Wrath.  I'll try to get some video this weekend as the storm goes by.

Funniest Fay-related topic heard on TWC last night, "Snakes and Alligators Seen in Flooded Neighborhoods."  Guess what?  Those snakes and gators have been there the whole time.  It's FLORIDA!

Disassembly

The one-line description I give to people who ask about my job is simply, “I build simulators.”  Actually, I lead people who build and integrate simulator components but let’s not split hairs.

Today I had a unique experience: I got to help take a simulator apart.  For good.  We’re decommissioning a 20-year-old flight simulator because the airframe it simulates is also being decommissioned.  There was some interest in reusing parts of it elsewhere but ultimately there were no takers so she has to come apart.

So I went into the darkened hut with a flashlight, screwdriver and cable cutters and helped myself to as many MS connectors and simulated instruments as I could get to.  Some of these things cost tens of thousands of dollars and take up to a year to manufacture so having them on a shelf for future use is a cost and schedule advantage for us and the taxpayers.  Anyway, she was a good sim.  I spent a lot of weekends working on her back in Albuquerque back in ’99 before it was upgraded and shipped here.  I followed not long after.  Hopefully, I’ll be putting a new trainer in the same high bay a couple of years from now.

We received a weekly newsletter from our corporate office earlier this week with a feature on project engineering.  My compadres down south came up with a few gems:

• you can see the big picture, but focus on the details when you need to.
• when you're assigned to lead a project, you pick the most important thing to get done first, not the most fun.
• you are good at understanding complex situations and communicating them with others.
• you can come up to speed on a new program quickly.
• you have a "sixth sense" when something is about to go wrong on your project.
• you can tell when someone is giving you a line.
• you have to coordinate with every engineering and ops discipline in the plant.
• you can focus on ten things a minute.
• you are beat up by contracts and finance at least once a week and survive to lead again.
• you have the courage to stand up to the Program Manager/management when they are about to do something wrong.
• you can cope with the stress when the program isn’t going well.
• you like one foot in engineering and another in program management.
• you enjoy talking to people and learning about their problems and concerns.
• you think the best way to handle politics it to just get the job done.

That last one pretty much says it all.

Car Talk

By the end of the year, we’ll probably be in the market for an additional car.  I can’t deny it much longer: my oldest is going to need something to get to work in.  The Scion was supposed to be her car when I bought it three years ago.  The plan was that I would have it paid off and could hand her the keys – then go get the car for the next daughter…rinse and repeat.

Well oldest doesn’t like to drive a stick.  I keep telling her to give it a couple of weeks and she’ll love it but it’s not working.  Plus, it would be much easier to pass the parking portion of the test in this than in a minivan – which is the only other option.

Last night Julie said this would be a good time to buy an SUV or truck if we think gas prices are going drop.  Sorry.  Ben Bernanke and 2.5 billion people in China and India are going ensure gas never sees $2/gallon.  I’m thinking of getting a 1 or 2-year-old car that I can get for cash for myself and make daughter dearest learn to work a clutch.

On the fuel front, I’ve seen several SMART For-Twos around town over the last couple of months.  I think Jacksonville has the closest dealership.  I guess the new owners get to break them in and compute actual highway MPG right out of the box on I-10.  On the flip side, I was on an errand the other week and saw a nice new Toyota Tundra 4-door pickup and comparably new F-250 Super Duty Crew Cab sitting in the driveway of a golf-course house with For Sale signs in the windshields.  Seems to be the sign of the times.

Brain Dump

Gas prices seem to be going down significantly…despite congressional and presidential inaction.  The guy on NPR this morning said it best, “High prices are the cure for high prices.”  Unusually capitalistic and for them but kudos for saying it.

I paid $3.51 for regular unleaded this weekend.  Tip: get a WalMart gift card and put your gas money on it when you buy groceries (or other Chinese-made, household plastic necessity) then use it at the pump.  You’ll save 3 cents/gallon.

I have not been able to get into any books at all this summer.  Truman didn’t make it past the first chapter and I’m struggling with Jeffrey Sach’s The End of Poverty - again.  A friend at work gave me Rutherford’s Dublin and Russka but, given my track record of late, I have not even tried them.

Well, that’s not totally true, I did make it through Boundaries again and Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover has been in my backpack for several weeks.  Those are both full of life-application skills I have yet to master.

During the grocery run last week, I discovered Sam Adams’ Octoberfest on sale at Sam’s Club.  All of Sam Adams’ seasonal ales and lagers are great – even with the increased price due to the worldwide hops shortage.

School starts for me in a couple of weeks.  I’m taking an online class through my alma mater called Philosophy, Principles and Practices in Management of Quality.  Given the special place the modern quality-by-process mindset has in my heart, this has to be some sort of penance.  Fortunately, the firm is paying.

Teen Daughter

When she was little,
The hurts were small.
A bump,
A bruise,
A scrape
Soothed with the balm of a popsicle
Or a bandage,
Clean water
And a hug.

Time passes and
I can no longer be there
Every minute
Watching
Guarding
Protecting.
This pain comes from others
Not objects;
The hurt from misconceptions,
Miscommunication
And mistakes
Bumps harder than a table top,
Bruises darker than the tile,
Scrapes harder than a carpet tack.

Daughter,
It is hard to watch you hurt,
To see your tears
And hear your cries.
I am here,
With God and Time,
To soothe,
Comfort,
Encourage
And Love,
With caramel,
A smile
And a hug.