Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man

I remember my grandfather Joe as a handyman who was always tinkering with things. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of sitting in his workshop full of mostly disassembled gadgets. Somewhere in that time he gave me two gifts that left an impression - a magnifying glass and a magnet. I see now that the magnet was probably the stator from a small electric motor that he had been tinkering with. The magnifying glass opened up a whole new world and I think may have been an early nudge toward my later college studies in optics as part of my Eng. Phys degree.

I don't really see my kids exhibit the irrepressible urge that I feel to pull broken things apart to try to fix them. Does it skip a generation in some sort of recessive gene kind of pattern? Or is it just that their grandfathers left a different imprint on them? I suspect that really they're likely averse to the negative press that comes from failed attempts to tinker.

I'm not really sure how successful Grampa Joe was at his attempts to fix things, but I think I can guess that his reputation was probably similar to mine. Ultimately the risk that some things get broken worse and end up costing a fortune to get fixed for real can unfairly skew one's record. Pulling apart anything electronic these days provokes the gentle reminder from my dear wife Lisa of the Epson FX-80 printer that I fried the PROM in when I didn't get the insulating paper back in place properly between two circuit boards. ($300 for a new printer didn't go over well when we had so little spare cash that we had to hand make our own Christmas ornaments). Or how about the extra $500 for the solvents and new resin for our fiberglass deck coating that we had to redo because I neglected to add the hardener that first time. More recently the ruining of a pair of expensive ski goggles by failed attempts to clean the lenses is only surpassed by the unsuccessful result of trying to refine the process while experimenting on the replacement pair. I liked my son Sean's spirit when he quipped that "oh well at least we know what we can get him for his birthday AGAIN this year".

Failures can leave an indelible mark. My mom claims to this day that the reason why there are no pictures of my younger sibs is that my dad disassembled their camera (presumably to fix it) but was unsuccessful at putting it back together. I think it really is because I was the cutest kid in the family, but that's a different story. I do remember finding pieces of that old camera in a box one time when we were unpacking from a move. My impressions at that time were likely telling - I recall wondering what he found was wrong when he got it apart and what stopped him from getting it put all back together in working order.

Why is it that the failed results get top billing? The ledger never seems to get updated with the several small washer, dryer, vacuum, computer, or car repairs that actually work and save us a few hundred each. No sense kidding myself, it really is about the feeling of satisfaction like the one I got today from figuring out how to pull mom's washing machine apart to find that broken little $10 piece and avoid the $150 service call. Or finding that video on Youtube that showed step by step how to diagnose and repair our failed clothes dryer ($5 part instead of $150 service call).

I still have the magnet. Thinking about it now, I plan to pass it to the first grandson who shows any promise of being a tinkerer.

Twitter - signboards on steroids is all

"A way to think about Twitter", .my friend Richard Ford explained, "is that it is like a bunch of tiny radio stations all broadcasting at the same time. You can tune in to whatever you want to listen to. This helps, but I'm,also thinking it is becoming like those ubiquotous sign boards that are used for advertising businesses, community organizations, and churches. Yes, there is a church in my neighbourhood that I pass regularly and they always have one of those smarmy cute little sayings about life or god or something or other. Some of them are pretty good and get you thinking, but for the most part they're just advertising. These boards only have a few lines to grab your attention and deliver the message. Hmmm - I wonder if this is where 140 comes from?

Monetize at all cost?

I know this is a "free" service and they need to figure out a business model that works. Seriously though, ad insertion can be dangerous if the keywords mean something completely different in the context of the post.

Backyard Frolic

These two bandits showed up in out back yard around twilight and wrestled around for a good 45 minutes. They even came right up to the deck and kind of ignored us.

Disk Golf

http://www.kdgc.com/rosehill.htm This was a first for me. Much harder to throw than a frisbee, but good fun. Thanks to my friend Tom who at 60 has as much energy than Josh and Turner at 14.

The Sound of Freedom

Memories come flooding back of what the world felt like back in 1981 when I first heard the scream of the GE J79 jet engines from CF104 Starfighters roaring down the runway. In the bravado of the Cold War era we called it "The Sound of Freedom". It was a time when the Soviet Union was portrayed to us by our leaders as this unholy force that was hell-bent on ruining us. Standing by this pedestal outside Soellingen Germany in the fall of 2008 this sentiment seems more and more ridiculous as it gets buried by the passage of time and as we hear from other normal people who grew up on that side that they were told the same stories about us. The Rhine River valley is much quieter now than I remember when we were there playing our war games. Tractors plowing the asparagus fields paint a much more sedate landscape today. I can still imagine the distant echo of the sonic boom from the Mach 2 run I did with the test pilot a quarter of a century ago. Freedom sounds different today.

Hindi Punjabi Gospel Chapel - A Mennonite Bretheren Church??

This one caught my eye a few weeks ago when I was walking around in Surrey (near Vancouver). It seems that at least in some small neighbourhoods it is possible for us to all just get along. This example illustrates the general attitude that you feel in the Lower Mainland. Cultures from all over the world have converged here and although it is not always a comfortable coexistance for some, practical folk just seem to figure it out and get on with it. If you follow the news media though you'd get the impression that it is currently all about gangs from other cultures going around and shooting each other. I really don't think this is a fair representation, but I guess good news doesn't sell.