John's place

Well it depends on your definition. I've been doing much better working on my latest revision. I like the way the story is taking on more depth while being a better read. The only problem is that the changes are significant and I will have to go back through again to smooth out rough spots and mistakes.

I have a week off from work! Which means I have more time to work :) I will be traveling to see relatives though so that will take care of four of the five days I am taking off --- oh well, but it will be good to see them. The car is loaded up with books on CD so at the risk of driving my son crazy, even the travel time will be productive.

Obviously I haven't been good at posting. Work has been busy and i'm not working on the book revision when I am typing something here. Hmm could that have something to do with lack of readers? :) Well I'm off to do tons of misc. tasks. It's snowing and starting to stick on the leaves (brr).

I got done early today. I really could go home in the morning, but even after paying about $100 to change the ticket, I would only get in about two hours earlier. It isn't worth it. There is plenty I can work on here. I spent a productive 3 hours on my latest revision. I think this one is a good version. I have been setting my standards much higher. It has to keep me excited even though I wrote it and have been over it a dozen times already. The plot hasn't changed, but it has more of an edge to it. More twists and conflicts. I've change how I read books now. I'm constantly asking questions like: "what is the author trying to do here?", "why can't I put this down?", "why did I have to put it down?", "why did I just skim over that?". I think I actually enjoy the books more, but I'm reading them two different ways at once.

Well I was traveling most of last week. The week ended with my plans being altered so that I will spend the end of next week near Tampa again. Doesn't leave much time for revising, but does give me time to get some reading done. Next week's connections stink so I had better pick out some good ones. It is a perfect day for outside work, and that's where I'm headed now.

Let's see should I list the excuses for not updating for awhile - no point, but it will continue for awhile longer. Given the choice the time goes to musts and writing and not to blogging. I am way behind on reading blogs. Not so far behind on reading books. They get read on planes and in waiting rooms. In the middle of all of this my cell phone died with all the data and programs. I did get a Treo-700p out of it and now that everything is loaded I love it. My son was here for his birthday and should be passing back through here on his way back to Rochester. He appears to have his school problems sorted out and his co-op job is just about perfect for him. He will work at least one more quarter before going back to school. Well I am just rambling and really need to get to some of those musts while I am home.

Well things went well so I can breath a little. Not much though....

We are going to Yellowstone to see our oldest daughter at the beginning of August. We have plane tickets by we still have to figure out where we are going to stay. That is the top priority for the day.

Just got back from Tampa. I worked Sunday afternoon getting ready. After I got to Tampa I stayed up until 2am preparing the presentation. Everyone liked it and said it went well. I got everything done I wanted to except 1 and didn't stick my foot in my mouth too much.

The fligt home got off the ground just before the thunder storm. So I got home on time.
Now it is time to rest.

Enough blogging. I have to go in to work today. I have a trip to Tampa on Monday and I am NOT ready. I was out most of last week. The results were perfect, but we wound up putting in 9 to 10 hour days. I had hoped that I would just be observing others and would have time to prepare for next week. I do have a rich fantasy life. Well I had better get moving.

This time in MI. We are here doing tests. Things are set up and we will so how everything works in the morning. Headed back to Tampa next week. Has it been 10 days since my last post? Time flies when you are overloaded.

Didn't have any time all week. Lots of discussions getting the new project off the ground. We are working with the customer to define what they really want. Of course the questions we ask bring out things that they never thought to ask. As soon as we do though (if I do my job right) it becomes obvious to them why the information is important. It is going well though.

The customer was in on one of the other projects I have going. I have a person working under me who is taking care of most of the details on that though. It is going well. Things are right on time and the initial test is doing what we hoped. The optimum running speed appears to be within a 20% of what I had guessed based on past experience with different materials. Some times I surprise myself. Next week I will be in town all week but the following week three of us are off to Mi to conduct laser welding trials on the project.

The following week I am off to the Tampa area again on the first project. Somewhere in the middle of that I have to get work done. There will be a few late nights.

My son is enjoying his new job but will not be home for the 4th. I still don't know if we are going out west to visit my oldest daughter in August.

Just got the router working on adelphia. It was simple and I am amazed I didn't get it working right away. It was a low priority though and I had no time to play.

Well time to catch up on educating my self on writing.

I got back from Florida late Thursday night. Business wise the trip went verrry well and I now have tons more work to do in a very short time. The trip was horrible though. Thunderstorms all along the east coast caused delays. We got to the hotel at 2am Wednesday morning. The entire week was like that. I was a zombie when I got home.

Friday we had cable installed. We never had anything before. My daughter and her boyfriend paid for half and we are switching from DSL to cable. Our DSL connection has not been fast or reliable because of our location. 500 channels and still nothing on TV :-) That's ok since with them paying half, it is not costing me much more than my DSL did.

I now have 5 weeks to come up with a production line concept for a product that has never been made before except on some laboratory equipment we supplied. This is not a simple product that involves simply putting things together or using existing machine designs. The grass will be getting long and all writing will be late at night.

I posted this in Laura Gilman's blog, but it really belongs in mine, so here it is.

My frustration with politicians shows a little. The point is that Ohio actually has a very broad spectrum of viewpoints in it. That is good. It also means that no matter what your opinion, there are some people here that will have a very different view. So there will be some that will try your patience. My unscientific observation is that the majority here didn’t think either candidate in the last election had their heads screwed on straight. Forced to choose … Being a Democrat myself, I was more upset that the party couldn’t come up with someone and some approach that would win a very important election. My humble opinion is that they gave it away. For all of Clinton’s faults, he understood where the majority of Americans stood on issues. The party continues to drift further and further from this understanding. You may hate Bush folks, but he did better in the second election than he did the first time. You had better ask yourselves why if you don’t want the next person to be worse. Don’t take any comfort in his low poll numbers. They are unimportant since he isn’t running next time. The person who will win is the one who can put together a platform that makes sense to the majority of people in the middle. That is much harder than coming up with a platform that appeals to those at one extreme or the other. The Democrats lost because unfortunately, the Republicans did a better job of this. Ohio wound up being a swing state because it reflects the broad spectrum of opinions in America, not because it only has crazy people in it.

Don’t take any comfort in the news reports either; the last election demonstrated just how poorly the news media understood what is going on.

As long as I am making a fool of myself, let’s talk about the actual issue. Mentioning “pro-choice” to someone who thinks you are killing babies won’t get you anywhere. You need to debate the issue on their ground. When does life begin? It doesn’t - it is a continuum and every egg or sperm that doesn’t result in a baby is a life that has died. Does that imply that as soon as a woman is capable of having babies, she should be kept constantly pregnant even if she isn’t married? I don’t think any on the right would say that is the proper approach. What about all that male sperm? There aren’t enough women to go around to solve that problem are there? And what did Christ say about abortion? Not a thing really. It was considered a male roman husband’s right to decide if a baby was to be killed AFTER birth (talk about crude abortion). No where does he talk about this, because in his time it was accepted. Christ was not a conservative and would be shocked at what people say in his name. Well perhaps he would expect it since he upset people by hanging around prostitutes and the poor. Ask people on the right about the correlation between more access to abortion and birth control and the significant drop in the crime rate. Don’t argue with them about free-choice no matter how much you believe in it. You have to discuss it in their terms if you want any chance of affecting their opinion.

<Climbs off his soap box. My apologies to you Laura for putting this on your blog.

I just got back from southern Ohio. Things went reasonably well down there considering that the customer wasn't really prepared. However, I think that is why they wanted help. Monday will be crazy as I try to do a weeks worth of work in a day. Tuesday I will have visitors on another project. Things are going well on the project, but it will consume the day. We have had e-mails back and forth with the customer visited two weeks ago in Florida. That is a good sign. The middle of next week I am off to Tampa for fun and games with another client.

Saturday some friends of ours got married. It was a good wedding and we all ate way too much. The dryer is fixed and the cables are run for switching from DSL to cable for our internet connection. Hopefully it will be more reliable. We are too far the phone company here and DSL doesn't work all the time. So I have accomplished everything I was supposed to. Now I get to spend the evening reading and writing.

I am in southern Ohio the rest of this week. I am consulting on a problem a customer is having with a new product they are introducing this month. They obviously pulled this together in a hurry though. They can't answer most of the questions I have. The next phase will really need to be a detailed study to try to identify what the problem really is. Otherwise we are just throwing money at things. It's interesting though to work through the issues.

Next week its off to Tampa for the first phase of a major project. This is a customer that we have done multiple projects for. Everyone is together on what is supposed to happen. Hopefully things will go smoothly. The first big problem is lack of time.

Well time to get some exercise to counteract the biggest danger when traveling - over eating.

I got back from Florida after midnight. They loved my presentation. They loved the proposal. They thought I couldn't have done better. BUT over lunch we found that we may not get the job for a reason that is out of our control. There is still a chance though. It was nice of them to tell us what the issue was.

Ok so I went and took the test also. See Deanna's page for the link.
My results were -

Your brain: 60% interpersonal, 120% visual, 80% verbal, and 140% mathematical

Hmm they say this has nothing to do with skill in any area. It is supposed to reflect my interests. I guess I don't spend most of my time doing what interests me.

Have a happy memorial day.

My friend who was in the accident will live, but he still isn't seeing anyone except his wife and son. I don't know anymore.

My son is home from school. He is looking for a co-op job in programming. He has an interview next week. Tonight my daughter's boy friend and my son are trying to teach my daughter to play magic.

I spent the afternoon trying to find out why our dryer keeps turning off. I found and fixed a variety of things, but it appears the main problem is that the motor is bad. I doubt I will get it in time to install it before I head to Jacksonville next week.

The proposal we have been working on is almost done. It is up to about 100 pages. One person did graphics and then two of us did the concept development and writing. We have cost estimates and the introduction to go and two days to finish it. Next week will be busy.

The weather was perfect today.

Today I found out that an old friend was in a motorcycle accident over the weekend. One of the nicest people I know. I've been told he wasn't even going 20 MPH at the time and had a helmet on. He just hit wrong. He was in surgery for most of Monday. He appears to have had a heart attack in the middle of it. He's in intensive care with very strong pain killers. I've known him for over 20 years. Pray for him.

Saturday morning I went to a workshop led by Carolyn Wheat. She wrote "How to Write Killer Fiction". She also wrote 6 novels. It was the first workshop I have attended. It was good.

I will be traveling part of almost every week next month. I have one trip to Jacksonville, Fla. and two trips to Tampa. There is also a possible trip to Cincinnati for a week. At least with the Florida trips I will get some reading in.

My oldest daughter is going to be working the summer at Yellow Stone. Her boyfriend will be near there.

Everyone I talked with was of the opinion that Clancy's writing went down hill rapidly after his first few books. He is a good example of what not to do when you become a success I guess.