It looks like I'm getting a second article published...

I met with the editor of the magazine today. She's a really nice woman and we had a nice chat about all sorts of things.

She confirmed that she's planning on my article "Reflections" for her September issue, and, that she liked the newest article even better! (It was about experiences at/with the local hospital).

In addition, she'd like me to consider some additional articles, even one about motorcycle riding in North Carolina, and a personal interest piece about our Motorcycle trip to the Rockies!

To say I'm excited would be an understatement!

I just wanted to take a moment here, and thank all of you. The fact you read here, and take the time to leave me comments has helped me move forward and begin to explore writing for more than just a way to pass the time!

I noticed today, that since May 14th, I've had over 1,200 visits here! In that time there's also been close to 3,000 page views, and the average reader spends just under 5 minutes reading here. (Aren’t stats wonderful?)

So, once again, "Thanks" to each and every one of you!

The Yager Road Body Shop…

From my post the other day, you know how we got here....

Mitch’s garage was an oversized 1 car garage; it was about 26’ long and maybe 14’ wide. Your average bay in a standard shop is more like 30’ long and 16’ (or so) wide. So we had some limited space, but between the two of us we fashioned some 6 to 8 inch deep wall cabinets to hold some tools, a small and fairly narrow ‘paint bench’ we used mainly for mixing paint, and ran air lines up on the wall to keep as much open floor space as possible.

There was no heat and no A/C in the old garage and we’d rigged up an old washing machine motor and fan blade in one window to act as our exhaust fan.

Mitch’s boss (yep, the first car we did belonged to Mitch’s boss) brought his wife’s old station wagon over that first weekend. We made a pretty good list of the things that needed attention, talked with Abe for a bit and then he left everything in our hands.

When I asked Mitch what he’d quoted Abe on the job, it was pretty obvious we’d have to be careful, and creative, if we were going to make any money. Fortunately, there wasn’t much rust on the old girl just a lot of dings, dents, scratches and chipping and flaking paint.

So we got started. In the process we’d talk about what type of paint we should use for the final finish. Now most of my (admittedly limited) background had been with Activated Acrylic Enamels, Polyurethanes and Lacquers. Mitch on the other hand had never sprayed anything but straight enamel.

(As an aside, most everything today is polyurethane based and uses an ‘activator’ which causes the paint to cure chemically, rather than by simple evaporation. While these are great for the finish, improve flow out, reduce drying times etc. They are also very dangerous to use as they contain isocyanates, and can adversely affect your health.)

So, we decided we’d squirt Abe’s car with enamel. It would minimize any of the problems associated with Lacquer, not to mention the sanding and buffing it also requires, and would cost significantly less than the newer paints.

As we worked our way around the car, it was getting very, what I call, ‘square’. What this meant was that the body panels were smooth, all the lines were straight as an arrow and there were no pin holes or other blemishes in the work. I was very pleased with what we’d done in about three evenings, and very much looking forward to getting the car in paint and getting paid!

So on Friday, I stopped at the paint store, picked up the paint, some reducer and ‘fish-eye’ eliminator (just in case), as well as a few fresh rolls of masking tape.

When I got home and back over to Mitch’s place he’d just finished putting on the guide coat and we quickly did one last block sanding on the car. With that finished we each did a last walk around and proclaimed her ready to go.

But, instead of starting right in on the paint, we decided to have a couple of beers, move the car outside, sweep down the garage, blow off any loose residual dust, etc. so we could hit it fresh in the morning. That’s just what we did. We also sat on the steps of his house for an hour or so, tipping beers and looking forward to the morning.

The morning… now that’s when our troubles started.

I’d never shot an entire car in enamel, and it takes a slightly different touch than the quicker drying paints I was used to, and, it’s extremely susceptible to rapid temperature changes… all things experience would have taught, and were about to teach, me!

The first coat went on just fine. The color his boss had chosen had good coverage ability (meaning it was opaque, rather than translucent, in nature) and even this first tack coat was looking really nice.

We went outside, got a cup of coffee and smoked a cigarette or two waiting for that first coat to ‘tack up’. To ‘tack up’ means waiting for the paint to begin to dry, so that when you place the second coat on, the additional weight of the paint won’t cause it to run, sag or otherwise ruin the finish. You may hear other folks call it ‘flash time’, it all means the same thing

Well, instead of 15 minutes, it took nearly 30 to tack up; Mitch suggested we add a slightly faster reducer this time, in hopes of cutting down our wait time. I agreed, and that’s what we did. Unfortunately, what we didn’t take into account was the rapidly rising temperature that day.

The second coat started out going on beautifully, smooth as glass, and very shiny. But, by the time we’d gotten fully around the car, the paint was looking much less smooth and not very shiny at all. In fact it was looking more like primer than a finish coat!

Once again we discussed the situation, decided we’d go back to the slower reducer, and even add a touch of ‘retarder’ this time (a retarder slows down the dry time, and usually aids in the flow out or smoothness of the paint).

We got started mixing that 3rd coat immediately as the last one was more than ready. This time, the temperature had now climbed well into the mid 90’s, and the 3rd coat was a disaster. It just flat looked bad, almost no shine and simply not acceptable.

As it was now about 11:15am, we climbed into the truck and headed over to the paint store (which was open ‘til noon), we made it with maybe 5 minutes to spare. The guy behind the counter knew us both and listened to our tale of woe and made two suggestions. One, put off delivering the car until the next day, and second to hand sand the car tonight, and top coat it in the morning using no reducers or additives. So we bought more paint, and some materials to assist in block sanding the car by hand (there goes a little more profit) and headed home.

It was well after 9:00pm that evening before we could actually sand on the car (remember I told you enamel takes a long time to dry!) and nearly 1:00am by the time we finished. We blew the car off, ran tack rags over it to pick up dust, and re-masked it before leaving though, which had us both leaving at well after 2:00am, with promises to be back and ready to go at 7:30am on Sunday.

Sunday morning came far too early, but, as usual Mitch’s wife had coffee made and was ever confident in our abilities.

(Debbie’s a wonderful woman, every bit as great as Mitch in every way. She rarely if ever was ‘down’, and would often come out and help us mask up cars in preparation for paint. She’d always make a beer run for us, and more often than not, had coffee on in the mornings, offered us a sandwich around lunch time, and always had something tasty around dinnertime! She was, in my opinion, a perfect match for Mitch, and he for her!)

So about 7:45 we started getting ready, by 8:00 I was full on spraying on that final top coat. It went as well as we could have hoped. It wasn’t as nice as any of our subsequent jobs would be, but it was shiny and smooth!

By 9:30 the paint had tacked up enough that we rolled the car out into the sunlight. You know what? It actually looked pretty good! A hundred times better than when we’ve got it, and with each piece of chrome trim we placed back on, it looked even better.

Abe showed up around noon and we’d pulled the car back into the shop before he got there. He asked how things had turned out, we of course neglected to mention any of the problems we’d had, but instead inferred it had been a bit more work than we’d anticipated, but a deal is a deal.

I wish I had a picture, of his and his wife’s faces, when we backed that old station wagon out the door. The sun was out and brilliant that day, the car was just gleaming and so were they.

Abe slid Mitch a small wad of cash, we all shook hands and off they went.

After they’d gone, we opened a beer to celebrate, as only 24hrs before things had been looking pretty bleak. Mitch and I then took what we called “Deb’s cut” for the household expenses off the top, took the money to pay for the supplies out, and divvied up the remainder. As I recall, he and I spent the rest of that afternoon, sitting in Adirondack chairs in the shade, drinking beers and talking about what we should paint next.

That always seemed the best part of the job to me, sitting with my best friend, having a couple of cold ones, laughing at our mistakes, and planning the next ‘money maker’. I’ve mentioned before, we were all pretty broke in those days, but living seemed easier somehow. Maybe it’s time, maybe it’s a trick my memory plays on me, but I’d love to be living that way now. With as good a friend as Mitch, doing something we really enjoyed to do, and making some ‘mad money’ in the process. This was the first, of many of these jobs we did in that shop, if you folks are interested, I’ll attempt to relate a few more as I can.

For Father’s Day…

As those of you who’ve been reading here for a while know, my Dad died over 20 years ago. I wrote some about him a while back, but with this being Father’s Day, I find I’m thinking more about him than usual.

You see, despite the years, I still miss him. I miss that little mischievous smile that used to cross his face at times, the light in his eyes when his family would all be gathered together in one place. Most amazingly (to me) though, I miss his advice.

It’s amazing to me, because for most of my life I hated it when he’d give me advice. It was rarely if ever what I wanted to hear. It was however, in retrospect, always what I needed to hear. It was advice, his ‘take’ if you will on the situation, and was normally not what you’d hear from your friends, associates or other family members.

I can remember once, when complaining to him about problems I was having early in my first marriage, that he told me:

“Sometimes, you just have to listen, even when you’ve heard it all before, or have no interest whatsoever in what she might be saying, just shut up and listen.”

I tried for quite a while to explain to him how I just couldn’t do it, that my brain refused to ‘listen’ in those situations. He simply kept telling me I had to learn how, that it was part and parcel to a good relationship to simply be there for your partner. I can still remember my frustration as that conversation ended. No sage advice just a solid ‘Cowboy Up’ and deal with it.

In the end, I did discover he was right, and while the marriage ended eventually, it wasn’t over that!

All of his advice came from the same place I suppose, his years of daily experience. Some learned from being married, and faithful, to the same woman for over 25 years and raising seven children. As he was growing up, in a world still darkened by the shadow of the “Great Depression”. From working for the same company for nearly his entire life, holding jobs from stock-boy to Vice-President with that company, and working through both good, and bad, financial times there.

He was a blunt; pull no punches type, both at work and at home. I had the chance (good fortune actually) to work with, or for, him, in various jobs over the years. In one of those jobs I was an assistant buyer. At one of the monthly meetings, the President (and owner) had charged us all with finding ways to increase the profitability of the enterprise, to look at everything and be prepared to discuss ideas at this meeting.

As we got started, there were a few small ideas floating around and when it was Dad’s turn to speak he started with something along the lines of “I’ve been looking at the gross profit dollars, as well as margins, on the product lines… I’d like to share some of that now.”

With that he began outlining the operating profit dollars from sales, and the ‘cost of goods’ associated with those dollars and concluded that ‘Tires’ (this was an automotive parts stores chain) were our least profitable item, had the lowest inventory turn rate and took up an inordinate amount of space in both the stores, and the warehouse (space costs money as well). The President slammed his fist on the table (can you guess who was responsible for buying tires?) and said something to the effect of: “I promised myself if tires got on the agenda here I was walking out of this meeting” and proceeded to get up and head for the door. At that point my Dad said:

“You should have told me tires were sacrosanct”

The president stopped dead, looked at my Dad, then around the table and responded with something like “You can all decide whatever you think is right, just leave tires out of it.”

Now Dad, had worked for this guy for decades, he knew tires were not up for discussion, but, he also knew they were a drain on the profit picture and was not going to just sit there quietly with that knowledge. Interestingly enough, nothing more was ever said about that, by anyone.

He gave me advice that day, in that meeting, without ever talking directly to me. It was:

“Speak your mind when asked; just have the facts to back you up. Don’t attack the person, attack the issue.”

He taught me a lot of things about life too, mostly by example. I remember being in a store with him one day, I don’t remember what we were buying, but he’d given the cashier a five, and she’d given him change for a ten. Now we were pretty broke in those days, poor (in terms of money anyway) in fact. Despite that, he looked up at the cashier and said quietly: “I think you’ve made a mistake…” She interrupted him saying “No, you gave me a ten, and I gave you change for a ten”… He smiled, that little smile l I miss so much and continued with “Yes, you did give me change for a ten, but, I only gave you a five” and preceded to hand her back the additional five dollars. No more words, just handed her the five and we headed out the door.

In the car I asked him why he gave her back the money. Again, that little smile appeared, and he said something to the effect of “If I kept it, 'I would have known I shouldn’t have, this way, 'I' know I did the right thing”.

Another lesson learned for me…

“Do the right thing, all the time. If you do that, even if you wind up ‘wrong’, it was for the right reasons, and, you’ll always be glad you did.”

He didn’t teach me things, by sitting down and explaining the world to me. I learned from him though, everyday, through the way he lived, interacted, with life, and the people in his life. I wish I could have had him around long enough to learn how not to worry about things though.

You see he didn’t worry; about debt, or if his house was better than the neighbors, if he had the nicest car, lawn, or a new TV. He had some sort of inner peace I’ve struggled all my life to find. I have little ‘gusts’ of it, where I’m extremely confident that all will turn out ok. But a lot of the time, I worry. About where the next contract gig is, will it pay enough, will I ever get to pay off the bills, can I afford this or that, where am I going to get the money for the new roof, or any of a thousand little things.

I remember one of my last conversations with him, shortly after he and my Mom had moved to Chicago with the company, where he told me their refrigerator had died, and how for the first time in his life, he’d simply gone to Sears and paid cash for a new one. That there had never been a time before that, when they’d needed a major appliance (or anything else substantial for that matter) that he’d been able to just write a check for it.

I’m glad he got to experience that, as he was gone less than a year later. He’d spent his life working, providing for all of us, going from one bill to another to keep the household running, never complaining, just simply doing it. But finally, he’d reached a point where, when life threw him a curve, it wasn’t really a curve after all, just a minor inconvenience.

When I look at my life, and the good things in it, I see his ‘touch’ (and my Mom’s) all over it. At least once a week, I wish I could call him up and say “Thank You”, to let him know, in the end, I did learn all those things, and put them to good use, but I can’t. I know, if he can see me now, there’s that sparkle in his eye, and that little smile… and he’s thinking “I knew it all along”.

For those of you who are still fortunate enough to still have your Dad around, and despite whatever differences you may have, give him a hug today, tell him you appreciate what he’s done for you, that you’re trying to learn the lessons he’s given you and that you love him. Life is too short to hold those things inside, and ‘think’ he knows, or that you can tell him tomorrow.

Thanks again for taking the time to stop by and read this. As always, I encourage you to leave me your thoughts on this before you go.

The college days…

I returned to college in 1979. I hadn’t really spent much time there prior to that. Oh, I did the requisite segue from High School to college. Initially I attended Mohawk Valley Community College with a major in electrical technology. With my astute reasoning powers of the day I deduced that since I’d been building all sorts of things electrical in high school, like band lighting systems and recovering TV’s and radios from the dump, I be a natural for that career.

As you all know, it didn’t turn out that way. I was terminally bored, and found the seemingly endless party opportunities far more interesting. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do the work, it was more a case of I was ahead of the class in enough areas that I convinced myself I didn’t need to study. Needless to say I was wrong. So after two rather mediocre semesters I dropped out.

Naturally in my perfect reasoning I’d deduced that the troubles in Vietnam would long be over before I’d have anything to worry about… wrong again…

So after a summer spent in blissful enjoyment and losing two jobs in the process I enlisted.

When I got back home from my military service in 1973 I initially filed for unemployment, and signed up at Herkimer County Community College in their business curriculum. Now I figured I had it made, no real job, and with unemployment and GI Bill money coming in I’d be living the good life. That lasted all of about 1 semester.

Near the end of that fall semester I got a job offer to be an assistant parts buyer for a chain of auto parts stores. Pretty cool gig for a 21 year old, whose main interest, other than women, was cars. On top of that they offered me the incredible (to me, in 1973) annual salary of $9,600/year!! Once again I went for the cash; school was something “I” didn’t need!

Several job changes and a small business later I found myself working at that Dodge dealership after I closed up the garage. The job was fine, but let me tell you something, once you’ve worked for yourself, it’s very, very, hard to work as an employee again. I just wasn’t happy.

By the holidays that year I knew I needed to make a change, to do something different. College seemed like the right plan at this particular time. So I investigated, found I still had quite a bit of GI Bill left, was eligible for student loans, and could complete my associates degree in about a year if I took an ‘overload’ and a summer class or two.

So I went back to school. I was 27 then, nearly a decade older than my fellow students, but I seemed to fit in, and got busy.

That first year, I just went to school, concentrated on classes and did the odd weekend job to make gas and book money. Most of the rest of my income was replaced by the GI Bill checks and the loans (I wasn’t making all that much back then).

As that year came to a close, I made the decision to continue and see if I could get through the next two years and get my Bachelors degree.

I can remember being very nervous as I headed into that first year at SUNY College of Technology, not knowing if I could ‘cut it’, if the money, or my resolve, would hold out.

It turned out to be an incredible time for me. I was doing well in school. Learning, it turned out was not that hard once I found something I was interested in! I was majoring in Business Administration and working on ‘concentrations’ (their term for a minor) in Accounting and Finance, I was soaking up this information like a sponge. The classes were fun and the fact that I was getting very good grades was even more fun!

But, like with most things in life, money seemed to be in ever shorter supply. Gas prices were rising, and ‘Bertha’ was not exactly a gas miser type of vehicle. That 80 mile round trip commute was quickly cutting into the allocated funds.

So I started picking up jobs, where ever I could, to put some dollars back in the household ‘pot’.

I worked that Winter break on a firewood crew, for Don Templar. We’d hit the wood lot at day break and work until dark, every day. Back breaking work, as another fellow and I drove the wood wagon into the woods, loaded the cut ‘rounds’ by hand, drove it back to the staging area, unloaded it, again by hand and repeated the trip. The two of us attempting to keep pace with the guys on the chainsaws, all day, every day, from dawn ‘til dusk, one break in the morning, a half hour for lunch, one break in the afternoon.

I remember it would be so cold in the mornings, often 15, 20 or more degrees below zero, without the wind chill, and I’d have on thermal underwear, two layers of clothes, a down vest, and a jacket. By morning break I’d be down to the vest, by lunch to just my two layers of clothes, by afternoon break to one layer, and often just that thermal shirt on top.

But it was good, honest hard work, and Don paid me a fair wage, at a time I really needed it.

After the break, I landed a job as the advertising manager for an automotive chain store. I knew the guy was paying me about half what the job was worth, but, he was letting me work around my school schedule, and I could do some work from home evenings and weekends (my first ‘telecommute gig). For a while at least, then he began to think I was ‘cheating’ him on my hours, we had a rather heated discussion at the end of which I told him I would never take any work home again. That later backfired on him, but that’s another story.

As spring was ending and summer approached, my neighbor Mitch and I were talking one day and it turned out one of the guys he worked with wanted to get his car painted.

Well, in less than 10 minutes we’d worked out a deal, and decided we’d paint a few cars in his garage that summer. We painted more than a few, between one and two a week, for the whole summer, until it got too cold in the fall to do any more. I actually made more money doing that, with Mitch, than I did at the ‘regular’ job. I sometimes think we should have just opened up a legitimate shop, but, then I realize it would have taken the fun out of it!

I look back on these times, with great fondness. I know I was struggling financially, and the mental strain of it all was sometimes more than I thought I could bear. These ‘car painting’ days with Mitch however were always fun.

This post, was primarily a lead up to one about our adventures in his garage that, and the subsequent summer. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you’ve enjoyed the other ‘memories’ posts, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy the next one on Monday as well!

Thanks again for reading, and please feel free to share your thoughts and comments before you go!

Tacit knowledge…

Today we take a slight detour from my memories back to IT/IS… it is all about the code, isn’t it?

I read an article today entitled “The Tacit Dimension of tech support” the premise of the article was that some IT ‘wizards’ often don’t have the detailed ‘knowledge’ tid-bits stored away mentally for immediate recall, but rather are very good at ‘finding’ the answer.

Like a lot of things I read, that article got me thinking.

It finally dawned on me why anyone that I know, assumes that I know, the answer to their particular PC question. This fellow is right; it is about knowing how to find the answer, not necessarily about ‘knowing’ the answer.

I’ve been programming for over 20 years now. In the early days, there was no internet, no built-in 200Mb ‘help’ file, no online anything. In those days I was very good at hitting the index section of the manual and zeroing in on what I needed to know.

I realized today, that I’ve been doing this my entire career, and that while the amount of things I need to know to do my job has increased ten or a hundred fold, so has my ability to search for and access information.

Last fall an associate and I were installing a small office network for a client and I needed to retrieve some configuration guidelines I’d seen before. I was totally lost, the office internet connection wasn’t in place yet and there was no WiFi in the building. If any of you have looked at the manuals that come with software these days, you know there’s not much there. We were in real trouble.

Fortunately, the place is fairly close to the local airport, so I grabbed my laptop and headed over there for my internet ‘fix’. In less than 10 minutes I had what I’d needed and was on my way back. We finished up the install without further incident.

We could have had the network working, and come back later to tweak the installation, but travel time is down time (as in I’m not earning). It was much more cost effective to do what I did.

In the early days, I would have had a ‘dial-up’ account and used CompuServe or some similar service all of us Techno-folk used back then, today, we all pretty much take broadband internet access for granted. I for one am in big trouble without it.

With it I don’t have to remember a lot of fairly useless details. I don’t carry around 50 or more ‘floppies’ with all sorts of tools and configuration files on them I can simply Google for whatever it is I need and have pages of answers in a couple of seconds. The internet has become my own personal ‘toolkit’.

Google,and similar search engines, another I use a lot is http://www.dogpile.com/, have become my ‘index’ to things technical. If I’m trying to decide, for example, how to alter to the intellisense pop ups in Visual FoxPro, I simply Google this and get back almost 3,500 pages that reference this stuff. I know from experience that the first page or two is likely to have the best information, yet, if I need to look further, I can.

The entire FoxPro (and almost any popular) language reference library is on line, for the most current, and several older, versions. Why worry about searching the ‘help’ files when the search abilities of most websites (especially Microsoft’s developer site) exceed the Help files abilities?

So, when my wife asks me how I do what I do, would I write down the steps, I find I can’t do that. It’s frustrated previous clients, employers, friends, associates and colleagues… but I simply do not know how to put into words what causes me to use the search phrases I use, to be able to spot a good link from a bad one 9 out of ten times, and how to get my answer without winding up in some bizarre chat room!

I don’t know how I did it with manuals either. Maybe it was years of looking up technical specifications for cars/trucks and bikes, determining what parts would, and would not fit, knowing who to ask, where to look, that prepared me for all of this. Honestly, I don’t know.

I do know I rely heavily on the internet, its vast repository of information, technical articles, user forums, code samples, tips, tricks and general coding wizardry. While I’m absolutely convinced I get far more work done because of it, I also know it can be the largest time waster ever invented if you’re not careful.

I don’t know what sort of tacit intuition is in place that helps me find the exact menu item to accomplish the task at hand on a piece of software I’ve never used before. The truth is, I really don’t care about the ‘how’, what I do care about is that I “can”. A great Cajun Chef, Justin Wilson, used to say “I don know how I do it, I’m jess glad I did it” when asked where his incredible recipes came from… I feel very much the same way!

Thanks again for stopping by… if you can, drop me a comment; tell me what you’re thinking.