Tell your children...

 

... that as they prepare to enter adult life, they really, really need to adjust their thinking on what they're going to do for a career, let alone a short-term job.  From a post at X.com:

Mike Rowe: “We’ve been telling kids for 15 years to learn to code.”

“Well, AI is coming for the coders.”

“It’s not coming for the welders, the plumbers, the steamfitters, the pipefitters, the HVAC, or the electricians.”

“In Aspen, I sat and listened to Larry Fink say we need 500,000 electricians in the next couple of years—not hyperbole.”

“The BlueForge Alliance, who oversees our maritime industrial base—that’s 15,000 individual companies who are collectively charged with building and delivering nuclear-powered subs to the Navy … calls and says, we’re having a hell of a time finding tradespeople. Can you help?”

“I said, I don’t know, man … how many do you need? He says, 140,000.”

“These are our submarines. Things go hypersonic, a little sideways with China, Taiwan, our aircraft carriers are no longer the point of the spear. They’re vulnerable.”

“Our submarines matter, and these guys have a pinch point because they can’t find welders and electricians to get them built.”

“The automotive industry needs 80,000 collision repair and technicians.”

“Energy, I don’t even know what the number is, I hear 300,000, I hear 500,000.”

“There is a clear and present freakout going on right now. I’ve heard from six governors in the last six months. I’ve heard from the heads of major companies.”

There's more at the link, specifically an extended video clip addressing these issues.

The business and technical world has changed so much since I entered it more than half a century ago.  First off, I had to go to work right away, because my parents couldn't afford to pay for full-time studies.  No problem:  I did four years in the military, then trained on-the-job as a computer operator (IBM System/370, for those of you who go back that far).  I transitioned into programming and systems analysis (again using on-the-job training).  All that time, I was tackling a B.A. degree by correspondence.  Due to work, military call-ups, etc. I could only average one course a year (ten were required for graduation - much longer, more intensive courses than US universities).  However, in the end I made it.  I moved into more senior jobs while tackling a post-graduate diploma in Management, then went on to a Masters degree in the field.  All were white-collar jobs.

Nowadays, if I tried to follow a similar career path, I wouldn't get past "Go", much less collect $200!  A university degree is a basic prerequisite for white-collar work at most big companies, even though it's essentially unrelated to the work employees actually do every day.  Masters degrees are pretty common, particularly at middle-to-senior-management level.  The competition for white-collar jobs is intense, with vacancies attracting hundreds (sometimes thousands) of applications, but very few succeeding.  The game is no longer worth the candle.

Tech jobs, on the other hand . . . almost every tech-oriented business I know or have used in the past few years complains non-stop that they can't hire enough people to cater for the customers they have, or want to have.  The vehicle dealer whose service department I use for our cars is operating at about half capacity, not because they want to, but they can't hire enough qualified people who are willing to work hard and earn their pay (which is pretty high these days).

I advise every young person with whom I speak (about life, the universe and everything) to look into such jobs.  They'll be earning a lot more money, much faster than most of their white-collar peers.  I know one man who left high school with a 3.9 GPA.  He turned down scholarship offers to university, and instead took a two-year associates degree in welding, which included certification to weld dissimilar metals.  He did the degree part-time while working full-time as an apprentice welder, gaining valuable experience.  The day he finished the degree, he was offered a six-figure salary on the oil fields here in Texas, plus free accommodation, with his own work truck equipped for the job, and generous time off.  He's a happy man these days, while his high school friends mutter under their breath about "I want his luck!"  They fail to realize that he made his own luck out of very hard work and application.  I can only hope others follow his example.

Tell your children, and your friends' children, that they need to reconsider their career options.  The demand out there is huge, if you have the right qualifications and experience.

Peter

Boxing Day

 

The day after Christmas is known as Boxing Day in Britain and most Commonwealth nations.  I've had a few questions from American friends about why it's named that.  Wikipedia supplies a simple answer:

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the earliest attestation from Britain in 1743, defining it as "the day after Christmas day", and saying "traditionally on this day tradespeople, employees, etc., would receive presents or gratuities (a 'Christmas box') from their customers or employers."

The term "Christmas box" dates back to the 17th century, and among other things meant:

A present or gratuity given at Christmas: In Great Britain, usually confined to gratuities given to those who are supposed to have a vague claim upon the donor for services rendered to him as one of the general public by whom they are employed and paid, or as a customer of their legal employer; the undefined theory being that as they have done offices for this person, for which he has not directly paid them, some direct acknowledgement is becoming at Christmas.

In Britain, it was a custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year. This is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 19 December 1663. This custom is linked to an older British tradition in which the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families since they would have had to serve their masters on Christmas Day. The employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts, bonuses, and sometimes leftover food. Until the late 20th century, there continued to be a tradition among many in the UK to give a Christmas gift, usually cash, to vendors, although not on Boxing Day, as many would not work on that day.

There's more at the link.

As a child in South Africa, I remember my parents putting together "Christmas boxes" (usually envelopes) for the workers who delivered mail, bottles of milk, and other services to our home.  They'd give them to the workers a couple of days before Christmas, rather than the day after, because so many of them would be hung over after Christmas and might not make it to work that day!

With the passing of the "servant era" in Western society, the concept of Boxing Day has died away, too.  I think that's a pity.  It's worth remembering those on whose service we rely every day of the year, and acknowledging that in some practical way.

Peter

The day they blew up a river to save Yellowstone

 

I came across a very interesting article about the 1988 wildfires in and around Yellowstone National Park (the biggest and most dangerous in the Park's history), and how local farmers, ranchers and residents partnered with the National Park Service to save West Yellowstone from the encroaching flames.  Here are some excerpts.

The plan was to surround West Yellowstone with irrigation pipes and sprinklers to dampen the ground, stopping any flames before they reached homes and businesses. As the park’s busiest gateway community, ensuring West Yellowstone’s survival was critical.

Howell and several other farmers hauled all the industrial-sized irrigation pipe they had available to West Yellowstone, but that wouldn’t be enough to stop the fire.

The critical factor was finding an adequate water source to feed the pipes.

To pump water through the pipes, they needed a hole — and fast.

There wasn’t time to excavate the bank of the river, so they blasted it with explosives.

. . .

Bryers ... cut any trees that had fallen or were leaning into the trail to ensure large vehicles and their irrigation pipes could reach the river.

There was a surprise waiting for Bryers when he emerged from the forest at the riverbank: Yellowstone District Ranger Joseph Evans.

“Joe was scratching his head as I came out of the opening in an orange Ford truck,” Bryers said. “He said, ‘You can't be driving in here and using chainsaws.’ So I go, ‘I can't believe you haven't heard. I'm clearing the way for a big line of diesel trucks hauling pipe.’”

Despite having the full permission of the NPS and Clyde Seely, the fire commander, nobody had informed Evans that Bryer would be cutting through Yellowstone’s trees to get to the Madison River.

“He went off to see what in the world was happening,” Bryers said. “There was a lot of miscommunication back then.”

. . .

Soon, an unassuming Ryder rental truck arrived at the western bank of the river. Inside was a large amount of detonating cord, supplied by the federal government, that would be used to create the crater.

“They did one blast, and it turned out it wasn't quite enough to make the crater they needed,” Bryers said. “So, they put a bunch more of it in there for a second blast.”

. . .

After the second detonation, [Bryers] noticed that a 7,500-pound boulder had crashed through the top of the Ryder truck, landing on a massive coil of detonating cord.

“I wish that I would have got a picture of it, but I didn’t have my camera,” he said. “That rock was just sitting there on top of all the explosives.”

. . .

The fire got concerningly close. Bryers was laying out a line of pipe from Duck Creek to the Fir Ridge Cemetery north of town when the fire caught up to him.

“Me and another fella stripped naked and jumped into the deep part of Duck Creek,” he said. “We wanted to come out and dry off, but there were a bunch of surprised Idaho farm boys watching from the bank.”

. . .

The crater blasted into the Madison River is long gone, slowly filling with sediment until it disappeared completely a few years after the fires.

However, Bryers said the crater was a fishing hotspot until it was filled in.

“Trout liked to find a nice, deep, slow spot in the river, so I told my fly fishing friends about the crater,” he said. “They caught some big fish out there.”

There's more at the link.

It's a great story of ordinary folks working together to save a vital part of America's natural history.  It must have been utterly exhausting for all concerned, but they got the job done.  Highly recommended reading.

Peter

Echoes of "Skippy's List"

 

I'm sure many readers (particularly military veterans) are familiar with Skippy's List, better known as "The 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army".  Examples include:

7. Not allowed to add “In accordance with the prophesy” to the end of answers I give to a question an officer asks me.

18. May no longer perform my now (in)famous “Barbie Girl Dance” while on duty.

33. Not allowed to chew gum at formation, unless I brought enough for everybody.

34. (Next day) Not allowed to chew gum at formation even if I *did* bring enough for everybody.

57. The proper response to a lawful order is not “Why?”

Those pearls of wisdom (?) have delighted generations of service personnel.

Now, courtesy of Marc A. on MeWe, we learn that there are similar rules for budding archaeologists on a dig.  Click the image for a larger view.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall on that dig, just to see what he tries next!

Peter

Lessons for writers

 

Having read some absolute howlers by aspirant authors, I couldn't help laughing out loud when I came across this advice from Stephan Pastis.  Click the image for a larger view at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

Recent events demonstrate that some politicians might need to learn the same lessons . . .

Peter

Running late today

 

We have lots of bits and pieces to accomplish today, in preparation for a gathering over the weekend, work commitments, and some upgrades to bits and bobs like cellphones.  Blogging will be delayed for a few hours while we sort that out.  Thanks for your patience!

Peter

Kinda busy...

 

I'm updating the publication text of various books published by my wife and myself;  fixing errors spotted by readers, re-formatting sections, and so on.  (Don't worry:  the content and storylines won't change at all!)  This is occupying a lot of my time at the moment, so I won't be posting more blog content for the rest of today.  Please amuse yourself with the bloggers in the sidebar.  They write good, too!

Peter

Doofuses (doofi?) galore!

 

While searching for something else, I came across a half-hour video collection of bloopers, mistakes and foul-ups, mostly involving construction, repair or demolition of buildings.  It's almost mesmerizing, seeing just how much can go wrong!  I can't embed it here, because the owner doesn't allow that:  but click over to it on YouTube and watch it there.

Doofi indeed . . .

Peter

Boys and their toys, wheels edition

 

I couldn't help laughing at this headline.

Mechanic builds record-breaking 50mph wheelbarrow

Dylan Phillips ... has just set a Guinness World Record for the fastest wheelbarrow after clocking speeds of 52mph (84km/h) during Straightliners Speed Week 2024 at Elvington Airfield in Yorkshire. 

He built the motorised contraption in his shed in Crymych, Pembrokeshire, and, when push came to shovel, smashed the previous record of 46mph (74km/h).

The 38-year-old said it felt "fun and surreal".

There's more at the link.

Having observed several building sites where records might have been set for the world's slowest wheelbarrow (or wheelbarrow operator), this one definitely made me chortle.  I wonder what builders' trades unions might have to say about that?  And I wonder how tightly it can corner?

Peter

Employment: the doofus factor

 

I was struck by a blog post over at Come And Make It.  He's an American expat living and working in the Philippines.

Office girl took a class and was not paying attention.  Basically she failed it.  Now today I sent her to get a letter I need for my environment permit.

However since the girl did not pay attention, she has no clue what the gov regulation we are operating under, is called, much less what paperwork she is supposed to pick up.  So then she starts a whole NEW line of useless paperwork instead of just calling me, because the person with my endorsement letter is out of the office.

Meanwhile the 2 new slightly smarter jokers, are unable to comprehend that they should put one scoop of shredded plastic from one barrel, then when that is fed in the machine, a handful of shredded plastic from a second barrel.  so they just sticking it all in at once.

They fail to comprehend is that plastic from barrel number 2 sweeps the sticky stuff from barrel number one and makes the material extrude better.

Some days it is like chasing cats.

I'm very familiar with his problem, having worked for many years in the Third World.  I used to call it the "doofus factor":  employees who were absolutely incapable of doing a simple job by rote, even after it had been explained to them half a dozen times and they'd been stopped and corrected on multiple occasions.  It's as if their minds switched off as soon as the machine was switched on.

The trouble is, that seems to be more and more a common experience in America now as well.  I've spoken to several small businesses in recent weeks, and they all complain about the same thing.  Not only are entry-level American workers slow, lazy and have a sense of entitlement ("I deserve this job!  You can't fire me!" or "It's my right to use my phone/surf the Internet/carry on long private conversations on work time!  That's freedom of speech!")  They won't work hard, and they seem incapable of working accurately.  Young workers who demonstrate that they will work hard, and can work accurately, are in very high demand, which creates another problem:  employers try hard to poach them from each other, offering more money than they're currently earning.  Pretty soon they get an inflated idea of their worth, and price themselves out of the market . . . and then they have to start again at the bottom, often disillusioned and resentful.

That, in turn, seems to be giving rise to a new determination among hard-working young people to enter fields that offer them the chance to work for themselves, no matter how hard that may be.  Several have entered the armed forces, despite all the current disadvantages of doing so, because they want a good basic technical education.  For example, if one becomes an electrical specialist in the military, many of those courses and qualifications carry over to civilian life, and one can become civilian-certified in a very short time.  The same applies to many other fields.  They reckon they can survive the not-always-pleasant military life for long enough to earn their qualifications, then quit and work for themselves.  As one put it:  "I'll never have to work for an a**hole boss again!"  It's hard not to sympathize.

How about you, readers?  Has anyone else noticed this trend?  If so, please share it with us in Comments.  This is worrying in terms of the future of our country and our economy.

Peter

How many kids start out this way today? Not enough, I fear.

 

Matt Bracken, former SEAL and author of several books, has written about his sense of connection to the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster.  He helped to build several bridges in that area during the 1970's as a teenager.  I found his description of the hard work involved very impressive.

I worked on the 95 and 395 "flyover" bridges over the same river ... I was at the bottom working down in a cofferdam. My working area looked like the artist's rendition on top. Square, with a barge and crane by it. The bottom working area looked like in the photo, but we were not near anything and did not have a foot bridge. We were out in the middle of the river. We were brought to the barge on work boats, and lowered down into the bottom of the river bed in a "man basket." We jack hammered the bed rock to make about 100 holes in a pattern, put dynamite into them, covered it all with a giant steel mesh blanket, (lowered by the crane), then we got far away. The steel blanket would fly up into the air above the cofferdam but it contained all the rocks and rubble.

Then we'd go back down and put all the rocks into an empty cement bucket lowered down to us by the crane. Anything too big to lift by hand had a steel wire choker put around it for the crane to lift out and put on other barges for removal. When all the rocks and boulders were out, we did the jack hammering again. We'd have to change the jackhammer drill bits for longer ones as we went down. 2', 4', 6'. That was heavy work. It took several men to lift the jackhammers out of the holes with the long bits on them.

The dust and noise was unbelievable. Just yellow foam earplugs. Pumps on the barge running 24/7 to keep the river out because the cofferdam's interlocking steel planks were not watertight. When we had a new pattern of 100 or or so holes, all drilled to the same level depth, we did another demolition charge with dynamite the size of paper towel tubes down each hole. I eagerly worked with the demo-man as his assistant, nobody else wanted to be near cases and cases of dynamite! Before I was ever a SEAL, I had personally put blasting caps into probably a thousand dynamite charges, about 100 per "shot."

The wires were wrapped around the charges and that's how we lowered them down each hole, by their blasting cap wires. Pea gravel was poured down each hole to "tamp" the explosions for maximum power. Then they were all wired together for one big blast. I was alone at the bottom of the cofferdam with the demo man for all of that charge preparation and placement and wiring. All the other older construction workers wanted nothing to do with demo, but I loved it! Then the crane would lift us up and we'd be taken far away. I would be standing next to the demo guy, and I got to push the button a few times. BOOM! Then repeat the process deep down into bedrock under the Patapsco River with jackhammers. Those supporting piers are STRONG. I think of the 395 as "my bridge."

Always very high decibels. Giant pumps running, and a half-dozen jackhammers going all the time down in a steel box! Injuries like cuts were wrapped in pieces of t-shirt and duct tape until the end of your work day. The workers were very tough men. West Virginia hillbillies, Vietnam vets and ex-convicts. Working with them down in the cofferdam and on other Baltimore mega-construction jobs in the 1970s gave me the confidence to become a SEAL. Other summers I also worked on big highway and land construction projects down in Dundalk, but working at the bottom of the Patapsco River stands out in my mind above them all.

I think I was 16 or 17 at the time. I was a card-carrying member of International Union of Laborers. If you said you were 18, and looked like you could work, you were good to go. In those days, driver licenses and union cards were not laminated, and did not have photos on them. I showed up for my first construction job with a beat-up hard hat, a dirty tool belt and dirty work boots and was hired at a construction trailer in the pre-dawn dark. My dad and J had told me what to do and say and it worked. I was hired and never looked back. I was making $ 5.50 an hour when the minimum wage was about $ 1.50. I was making triple what my high school friends made at pizza joints.

J also worked the big concrete pours high up on the 40-story Transamerica Tower in downtown Baltimore. I did nothing even close to that. We never worked the same jobs, but for all of them, we took several buses in the dark in our hardhats and work boots with our tool belts to get to the jobs, and we came home filthy. But everybody on the buses had great respect and deference for construction workers back then. We were "the hard hats" who were visibly building up Baltimore and the whole port area month by month and year by year!

There's more at the link.

Thing is, Mr. Bracken and I are very close in age, and we both left school earlier than usual and immediately started hard work in different fields.  (I enlisted in the military very shortly after I turned 17, and was in the field before I turned 18.)  We learned early and often that we could count on nobody but ourselves to make our way in life, and that hard work - sometimes brutally hard work - was part of that.  There was precious little cosseting or cuddling by touchy-feely workmates and colleagues.  You did your job, and carried your share of the weight, or you were "dealt with".  (You needn't ask me how I know this!)

Nowadays, if you had someone of that age start such a difficult, dangerous occupation as Mr. Bracken's, or enlist in the military at a younger-than-usual age, the Karens of this world would scream their heads off about child labor abuse, or undue pressure on unformed minds, or something else ridiculous.  They ignore the reality that not so long ago, people in their mid-teens were already embarked on their careers, often married, sometimes about to give birth to their first child.  Life was like that back then.  Your life expectancy wasn't great to begin with, so you got on with living as early and as hard as you could.  (US life expectancy at birth in 1900 was only about 48 years.)

I don't think Mr. Bracken or myself suffered any harm through being "kicked out of the nest" younger than usual, or having to work hard to make our way.  I daresay it did us good.  How many youngsters of today get the same opportunity, or learn the same life lessons, as we did?  And is the younger generation today any better for that?

Peter

Work smarter, not harder

 

From XKCD.  Click the image for a larger view, and click here to go to the cartoon's Web page.

If you aren't reading XKCD regularly, you're missing out on a great comic strip.  It's updated two to three times every week.  Highly recommended.

Peter

Progress report

 

The final repairs from our little flooding incident were completed last week.  We've now turned our hands into unpacking everything we packed away so that the cleanup and repair operations could proceed, and putting them back where we want them.  It's a very big job, almost as big as moving house.

We decided to go for a less cluttered look in our living area, so we got rid of an old, much-cat-clawed sofa and a few other things.  We'll have fewer seats for visitors, but we don't entertain much at home, so that isn't necessarily a problem.  Folding chairs to the rescue when needed!  I'll also be replacing older blinds and window coverings with better units, and I need to find a comfortable armchair to fill one hole by the fireplace.  I guess I'll haunt the used furniture stores to see if I can find something with character.

I bought 2'x6' white bookcases to replace the older 3'x6' wood-veneer chipboard units I'd had since the late 1990's.  Some of the latter were getting pretty worn out, and one collapsed during the packing-up process, so it was long gone time to retire them.  We scrapped three that were too rickety and worn to salvage, kept one in the spare bedroom, and donated two others to a local friend who's got even more books than we do.  The 2'x6' bookcases have the big advantage of being more rigid, thanks to the shorter span of the shelves, and they're also more lightly loaded, meaning one can slide them over the floor more easily if need be.  The white color looks very nice against the deep brown paint on the end wall of the living-room.  It lightens up the whole room.

In the process, I accumulated seven boxes of books that were surplus to requirements as I re-filed and re-sorted our library.  One's already gone to the friend who took our bookcases, one's put away to await a visit from a friend who has children who'll enjoy its contents as they grow up, and I'll be distributing the contents of the other five to resident members of the North Texas Troublemakers this weekend.  Any left after that will be donated to the local library's next book sale.

Also, to our great thankfulness, the winter crud that's affected Miss D. and myself seems to have finally run its course.  I was under the weather for about seven weeks, and Miss D. even longer with repeated attacks of sinusitis.  This year's crud has been a particularly nasty variety, as I'm sure those of you who've had it can testify.  Hurry up, spring!

Anyway, so far, so good.

Peter

Finished at last . . . but the work is far from over

 

Regular readers will recall that in November last year, we suffered a not-so-minor flood event at our home.  It's taken a long time to dry out the house, then repair the damage, but yesterday the final repairs were completed, and the job is done at last.

Now comes the not-so-minor job of restoring all our furniture and fittings to their rightful places, installing new shelves in our pantry (the old jerry-built ones had to be removed to install new flooring), and generally put the place to rights.  I've been hard at work re-sorting and re-shelving all our books over the past week - the old chipboard-and-veneer shelves, bought more than two decades ago and having been through several interstate moves, began to buckle when moved after the flood, so we've replaced most of them.  Between us we own several thousand books, so re-shelving them is a big, slow job, but we're getting there.  Today will see us erecting new pantry shelves, moving the contents of the kitchen back to where they should be, and rearranging the dining area.  There'll be plenty of that over the weekend, and more to follow.

Looking back, it's taken us about two and a half months from discovering the problem to getting the final repairs done.  That seems unconscionably long if you're accustomed to suppliers, vendors and workers who have all they need to get the job done, but a big part of that time was taken up in ordering and waiting for supplies.  The supply chain crunch is far from over, and a surprising amount of stuff is still not freely available locally.

On the other hand, we're enjoying our new dishwasher, bought to replace the old unit that began leaking uncontrollably and caused the mess.  We bought a Bosch unit, largely on the recommendation of readers who commented, and are very satisfied with it.  It takes longer to wash up than the old unit, but does so using less water, and cleans better, too.  Our cats are still wary of the red spot it shines on the floor while running (because it's so quiet that without the light, you might not realize it was operating).  They're used to red lights being something they chase around the house.  One that sits there for two hours and does nothing is very frustrating to them!

Oh, well.  Back to work!

Peter

A professor who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty

 

In this country, we're accustomed to academics moaning and groaning about their "inadequate" salaries, or their teaching workload, or the number of classes they have to present, or whatever.  Since most of them aren't worth the cost of their courses, I tend to disregard their kvetching.

However, a professor in Nigeria doesn't moan - he finds a way to set an example, even when his academic income is lacking or not paid at all.  The BBC reports:

Kabir Abu Bilal is not your regular Nigerian university professor - he has a second job working as a welder in the northern city of Zaria.

Welding is widely seen as a menial job across Nigeria and he has shocked many - especially his colleagues - by opening up his own welding workshop.

"I am not ashamed that I work as a welder despite being a professor," he tells the BBC. "I make more money from welding."

The 50-year-old teaches and supervises research students at the faculty of engineering at Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria's largest and one of its most prestigious universities.

He has worked there for 18 years and published several books on physics and electrical engineering.

. . .

Not only has the workshop satisfied his need to get his hands dirty, but it has really helped him on the financial front.

Academics in Nigeria have long struggled on modest salaries, most earning between 350,000 naira ($390; £305) and 500,000 ($555; £435) a month - and there are often long battles with the government to get a pay increase.

Prof Abu Bilal says his welding job has allowed him to be more self-sufficient and he has even been able to buy a more reliable car - a Mercedes.

In leaner times, he has even helped those who frowned on his joint career.

"When university lecturers went on strike for eight months in 2022 and we weren't paid, I always had money because of this job and a few colleagues came to me for help."

Prof Abu Bilal hopes to inspire other people to take on jobs like the one he does.

He has 10 apprentices - aged between 12 and 20 - at the workshop where he is teaching them the skills of the trade.

Those who are not at school during the day take care of the workshop when he is away at university.

The apprenticeship tends to take about a year - and then when they have the skills they can go off and set up their own businesses.

There's more at the link.

Well done, Professor!  I wish there were more like him at American universities.  I'd be much more likely, as a student, to have respect for a "let's-get-it-done" go-ahead teacher like him than I would most of the liberal, left-wing, progressive, knee-jerk-reactor types who pass for professors here.  I bet he turns out above-average graduates, and above-average welding apprentices, too.

He sets an example American educators would do well to follow.

Peter

Hurried road trip

 

I have to head down to the metromess (DFW) to collect some bookcases.  I'd made alternate arrangements, but thanks to utterly ridiculous store policies, it turns out that nobody except me can collect the goods ordered over the Internet.  (Why IKEA is so absolutely anal and unhelpful about dealing with online orders, I have no idea.  I can only suspect they prefer you to drive to the store and do things in person.  I won't be ordering online from them again, I can tell you!)

Anyway, that means I won't have time to put up more blog posts this morning.  Please amuse yourselves with the blogs listed in the sidebar.  Thanks!

Peter

Back to the renovation grindstone

 

Today the flooring people begin work, ripping out the old, undermined ceramic tile, preparing the surface, and installing vinyl plank in its place.  It should go reasonably quickly, I'm promised, but we'll see what that means in reality.  I'm going to have a couple of days up to my eyeballs in dust and tile fragments.  I'm not looking forward to it.  To make matters more interesting, I have a doctor's appointment at 07h30 - with temperatures in the single digits!  This African boy is not amused to find himself in the middle of Alaskan winter temperatures . . .

I'll put up another post later this morning, but expect light posting tomorrow and possibly Wednesday, until the mess and fuss is over.  Say a prayer that I don't end up arguing with the installers.  We've had a terrible time choosing vinyl flooring that's actually available and in stock, with two or three tries needed before we found an honest wholesaler.  There seems to be an awful lot of dishonesty in the business right now, with installers promising the earth but failing to deliver on time, on budget or on promise.  Here's hoping we've got our ducks in a row this week.

More later.

Peter

Perhaps I'm not alone after all . . .

 

As part of repairing and renovating our home after our little flood incident, I'm also trying to cut back on clutter and make the place more welcoming.  I have the problem that I'm prepper-minded and also something of a packrat.  My wife isn't.  Inevitably, we run into conflict over that now and again.

I'm somewhat comforted to realize that I'm not alone in my affliction.  Eaton Rapids Joe writes, in a section labeled "Cleaning out the "Sargasso Sea" room" at his blog:

One of the rooms in our house was designated the "If you can't figure out where it should go, throw it into that room".

. . .

It was like excavating a midden-pile from some long-lost civilization.

. . .

So far this project has been a great success. We are now able to open the door and are able to assess what is actually inside the room.

There's more at the link.

Perhaps he and I should each rent a U-Haul (the largest available, of course), and ship our respective junk valuables to each other for sorting?  I'm sure we'd appreciate the chance to add to our respective collections - and our wives could compare notes on what they found.

Ducking . . . running . . . 

Peter

So far, so good...

 

The ServiceMaster team completed repair work on our walls yesterday, so now it's on to the floor.  The contractor reported that the new flooring arrived yesterday, so they're getting ready to remove all the old tile and other detritus and prepare the concrete sub-floor.  That job will hopefully be completed by the middle of next week or thereabouts, after which we have all the fun and games of bringing back everything we took out to make space for the repairs, and getting things back into some semblance of order.  It's almost as bad as moving house, and neither of us are enjoying the disruption (to put it mildly).

As part of the fun (?), we'll have to remove the shelving in our "pantry", which is a large built-in double-door cupboard affair.  The tile floor extends into the pantry, so to replace it, everything inside has to come out, including the built-in wood shelves.  We'll replace them with some steel wire shelves (already bought).  A friend will visit tomorrow to help box up the pantry, move the boxes out of the way, and break down the shelves.  I expect much good-natured abuse in the process (the existing shelves look to have been knocked together out of scrap wood by the previous owners, who definitely did not do a good job of all the little and not-so-little "projects" they left behind for us.  Slowly but surely we're tearing them out and replacing them with something more fit for purpose, but it'll take a while to get it all done.

The good news is, I expect to have a little more time for blogging over the next couple of days, until the work ramps up again.  Look for more posts today and tomorrow at least.

Peter

Repairs proceed

 

The repairs to our home's drywall, closing panels removed by ServiceMaster to dry out the insulation after our little flood encounter last November, are proceeding apace.  The new drywall is in place and "mudded", and the team will be back today to re-mud (is that even a thing?), sand the edges smooth, and prepare the walls for painting.  That'll happen either this afternoon or (more likely) tomorrow, whereupon the ServiceMaster repair team will step back for a week or so to allow our new floor to be laid.  When that's done, the final step will be to install baseboard over the flooring and tidy up any last bits and pieces.

It's taken a lot longer than I anticipated to get everything organized.  Just finding a contractor was hard enough;  most wanted three to four times more than ServiceMaster is charging, and would only undertake to fit us in around other, larger jobs.  Very frustrating, that.  At any rate, we finally got things scheduled, only for both my wife and myself to come down with this year's crud (which, as I've observed earlier, is the worst annual crud I've encountered since coming to this country for the first time in 1996).  Even now, after almost six weeks fighting it, neither of us is yet fully recovered, and don't expect to be for some weeks yet.  Needless to say, we didn't want to be yet another plague vector for our poor contractors, so we had to delay proceedings until we were no longer infectious.

Now to find out whether the flooring wholesalers kept their promise and delivered our flooring as promised.  The previous lot didn't - it seems making promises and keeping them are distinctly variable propositions, explained away by the catch-all "supply chain issues".  They've gotten so bad that a couple of local contractors have actually shelved plans to build new housing developments, because they can't be sure of getting the parts, appliances and bits and pieces they need, when and where they need them.  It's bad enough for us, with a few thousand dollars in repairs, so when developments in the seven-figure range are impacted, I have a great deal of sympathy for the businessmen involved.

Oh, well . . . onward!

Peter