Weekend

Actually used to my truck to do some real work this weekend. Went to home depot and picked up two loads of timbers and blocks for the retaining wall we are planning on building in the back yard. I figure each load weighed about one ton and cost $200. There are basically two sizes of blocks made for retaining walls: Manor stone, which weighs 60 pounds each, and cottage stone, which weighs 30 pounds each. In the spriit of family cooperation, we elected to use cottage stone, because they are small enough that Johnny can carry them, and if he can carry them, everyone else in the family can carry them to.

The timbers are another matter. The are 6 by 6's, eight feet long. The must weigh at least 100 pounds. I carried six of them by myself around to the back of the house. I got help with the others. Johnny helped with a couple and daughter helped with the rest. I probably shouldn't have had daughter helping me. They were very heavy, and it was wet and if we had slipped, somebody could have gotten seriously hurt. But we survived.

Ross and daughter got back from their trip to New York late Friday night. Johnny and Ross immediately started in on each other, just what you would expect. Sounds like everyone had a good time in NYC.

Software Consulting

Friend on mine runs a software contracting shop. They charge by the hour. Rates run from $50 to $90 per hour to the customer. Guys who do the work get %70 of that.

He told me a story about two people he had working. One was very methodical, organized and efficent. Went in, figured out what to do and then did it with a minimum of fuss. The other one was sloppy, inefficent, and disorganized. Constantly consulting with the customer over all kinds of problems. Project finished up, contractors went home. Time goes by. Customer has another
project. They call the contracting house again. Who do they ask for? The methodical, organized, efficent one? You want to put money on that? They asked for the sloppy, inefficent, and disorganized one. They remembered him. They had spent so much time talking to him. Stupid customers.

So I'm thinking that I need to form a tag team with a publicist. I need someone to sing my praises and advertise my accomplishments. Someone who depends on me getting the work done.

Auto Options

I want to build a better city. A city where you walk where you need to go without having to look out for cars. A city where you can drive without having to look out for pedestrians. A multi-level city is what we need. Put heavy transportation on the ground level, things like trains and heavy trucks. Put auto transportation on the next level and put pedestrian walkways on top. Use automated parking garages. Provide entrances to the parking garages at the pedestrian level. Drive up to the pedestrian level to park. Elevator takes your car away and you are on people level. Automated parking garages are being built in many cities. Google it.

We aren't going to get rid of cars anytime soon. But we could build better cities. It will not happen overnight, but large redevelopment project could start a trend.

People are continuing to move to cities because that's where the jobs are. Agriculture has become so efficient that there just aren't that many job opportunities in rural areas anymore.

The technology that supports our society has become so complex that it requires thousands of different specialists to keep it running.

Public transportation, the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) law, and low gas prices are all designed to keep transportation costs down for workers so business owners don't have to pay them very much.

Of course if the workers lived where they worked their transportation costs would be nil, and business owners could pay them even less. But then the employees rent would go up, so employers would have to pay them more.

I am still puzzled why so many businesses locate downtown. Intel didn't, which has caused a huge population explosion/building boom in Washington County (Beaverton and Hillsboro, just to west of Portland and Multnomah county).

Our little company draws it's employees from the four corners of the Portland Metro area.

Dance

Yesterday daughter's dance team performed in a large competition at Tigard High School. There were two rounds. One started about noon, the second started in the late afternoon.

There were three classes. Daughter's group competed in the "Large Show" class. All teams in this class brought their own "floor" and props. The floor is a large piece of vinyl that covers the entire gym floor. Unfolding this and spreading it out before the performance and then folding it up and loading it back on the cart is a big project. Most teams employed their dancers for this task. At least one team employed their props crew, which were the dancer's dads.

The dancing was a blur. Hundreds of girls leaping, twirling and gyrating. Daughter took a bus early in the morning. Anne was there for both shows. I was there for the second show. Afterwards, daughter and some of the girls went to Red Robin (a restaurant) to celebrate their first place finish. Anne and I went to a pub to eat and drink with the coaches and some of the other muckety-mucks of this dance team. A very different little world they have. Finally got home a little before midnight.

They have another competition next weekend and then the state competition in mid-March.

Ross's basketball team had their final game of the season yestrerday. Only four guys from their team showed up. They were able to draft a guy from Glencoe Junior Varsity who just happened to be hanging around. They played hard but lost by six points. They have one guy on their team who can be an exceptionally good player, when he wants to. Most of the time he doesn't want to. Yesterday, for the first time, he actually played hard for most of the game. Curious.

Christmas

Dan got me a copy of "Alone in the Wilderness". Haven't watched it yet. Hoping to get my family to watch it with me, but that may be futile. The kids got me the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western trilogy (Fistful of Dollars, etc.) so we watched that last week.

Last weekend Anne & I took the kids out to dinner and then to Lemony Snicket ("A Series Of Unfortunate Events"). Not great, but entertaining. The house perched on the edge of the cliff was fine. That was the family event for the week/month/year. We seldom do anything all together anymore. John has his video games and his friends, daughter has dance and her friends, and Ross has basketball and student council and his friends

Watched a Jean-Claude Van Damme with Anne last weekend. "Death Wake". Jean-Claude is getting old. It was better than most of his films, I think. Haven't seen much of him lately, but from what I remember, they were pretty poor. Lots of action, but not too smart. This one was a little better.

Also watched a weird Japanese sword and sorcery movie "Onmyoji". Setting was several hundred years ago when swords and sorcery held sway. Very different.

Heard a pleasant song on KBOO radio on the way back from lunch today. The band is Shantala and the album is "The Love Window" and the song was "Nataraja".

Kids also got me the latest Lenny Kravitz CD. The song I wanted "Where are we runnin'?" was the shortest song on the disc, and the only real rocker. This was one of the songs daughter danced to at her Christmas recital (?!?). But I listened to the rest of CD and it has started to grow on me. Then I heard one of the songs on an ad for "Alias", and I think heard another one somewhere else.

Firewall Router

I think I finally have the computer problems sorted out. One needs four levels of protection:
1) Firewall
2) Virus scanner
3) Adware scanner
4) Spyware scanner

The last round of problems started about a month ago when I couldn't connect to the Internet. Finally called my ISP/DSL supplier. They suggested I remove the router from the circuit. I did, and low and behold, the Internet started working! Wonderbar!

Not so fast Bucky. When I pulled the router, I also pulled the firewall, and all our computers that got connected to the Internet immediately got infested with a load of stuff.

So I bought a new router. And then a friend of mine gave me a router. And it was the same model as the one I just bought, so I took the new one back. Finally get around to setting things up and the borrowed router doesn't work either. Go back to the store for a third time and buy the router again. Take it home, plug it in and everything works fine.

Except the printers, but we'll leave that for another time.

So I am impressed with electronics. I am collecting quite a pile dead electro-gizmos. I would like to build a monument to some sort out of dead electronic gizmos. A pyramid, or maybe a building.

Walmart

I don't like shopping at Walmart. They don't have anything I want. But then I generally don't like shopping, and I don't need much of anything.

My objection to Wal-Mart is that they put the screws to their employees as much as they do their suppliers. Witness the classes Wal-Mart offers their employees on how to get public assistance. For the suppliers, they don't have to do business with Wal-Mart, but the employees work there because they can't get jobs anywhere else because Wal-Mart has run all the other businesses out of business.

Free market economy has it's advantages, but without a social concience it can be reek havoc with people. Look at the workers riots in the earlier part of the century. Unions can get to be big and too powerful and become a burden. They did and that's why there was a big backlash against them for the last 20 or 30 years. But I think now is the time to start bringing them back. Or we really will have a 2 class society.