Dojo Kume and personal meaning

A while back at the end of class Sensei Tom was talking about the statements we make at the end of each class and if we had thought about them.  I left that day and tried to put them into a context for my everyday life.  I decided at the time to write them down and date them as I realized that over time (even just a few years) that the meaning would change.  Here is what I wrote at that time

Seek perfection of character

7/15/2013

Seeking perfection of character to me means to continue to strive to improve myself and my understanding of my own actions and what controls those actions.  While perfection by definition is unattainable, the ability to constantly improve is an attainable goal.  As you gain more understanding of yourself and your abilities in life, you gain more self confidence and there for more self control. This leads to maintaining calm during stressful situations and being able to rationally thing rather then just react to external stimuli. A major issue I currently have is getting bogged down in the detail to the point that I lose focus on the whole. A prime example in training is when I get concerned that I did a move wrong and I focus on that to the exclusion of completing the next steps or following with the class.  This can also be seen in when I get upset with something my son or Taylor have done and I focus to much on it and miss the improvements made in other areas 

Be faithful

7/15/2013

Being faithful is such a loaded term and in many ways can be contradictory.  There are many things in life to be faithful to and sometimes they will be in direct conflict with each other.  Being faithful to yourself involves being truthful to yourself and recognizing your flaws as well as strong points. I think one of the hardest lessons in life is to try and face your self in the mirror and understand your own misconceptions about yourself. Being faithful in the regard is accepting what you are and working to change the things you identify as needing to be changed. Then there is being faithful to others such as spouses, family and friends.  In life here are always temptations to take an easier way or to do things that could be hurtful to those that you have decided to give a portion of yourself too.  To me if I call you friend that means I am making a commitment to you and that you can rely on me to be there if you need me. The show of faith to others like this are the easy to identify but the harder ones are the commitments that are easy to neglect or ignore.  The willingness to listen and not solve or to show up and be supportive and not judge mental. To be 100% in when performing an activity with others.  In class being faithful is attending in good spirits, paying attention to the class and focusing on the techniques but it is also taking the time to practice and study outside of class so that you are not an interference in class to others that are also learning 

 Respect others

7/15/2013

Probably the one I have the hardest time with. To me respect is something that is earned and not given.i think sometimes it is easy to confuse respect of a person and being respectful to people and something I have struggled with this in my life.  In the end though I have come to realize that everyone should be treated with dignity and a measure of worth. It is easy to discount someone based on a quick impression, this is in many ways probably the most disrespectful action possible as it discounts the persons worth and abilities based on a split second look that in many cases does not involve anything else. It is easy to discount those you feel are less knowledgable or experienced in anything and feel you can not learn from them. To me respect comes in a few forms but the biggest being that there is no one in existence that does not have the ability to teach me something if I am just willing to open myself to the possibilities.  Some are glib at this thought and say yes they can teach you what not to do, but it goes so much further then that. Over the years I have come to understand that no one sets out in life with low self expectations and the desire to fail but rather they have situations that they are unable to overcome for whatever reason. It is easy to feel pity for those but that is also a form of disrespect as no one wants to be pitied.  They want to be understood and be shown empathy and share their story and life experiences.  In the end the rule my mother always told me growing up is still the best approach. Treat others as you would want to be treated

 Endeavor

7/15/2013

To endeavor is to strive but to strive to what?  Endeavor is the process of continuing to move in a direction towards a goal with out losing sight of the goal when you become side tracked due to outside influences. It means being truthful with yourself in regards to the goal and your abilities to obtain those goals, but also in not setting the goals so low that you do not have to push yourself to reach those goals.  Endeavor means to continue to refine where you have been, improve where you are and prepare for where you are going, to be open to new paths but to be honest and faithful to yourself on the journey. To endeavor means to push oneself rather then coasting on past accomplishments or achievements

 Refrain from violent behavior

7/15/2013

Sounds so simple….don't fight right. But violence can be more then just the physical act of attacking someone.  It can be provoking a situation to warrant a response that will escalate into a physical confrontation. It can be having thoughts of violence and allowing the surge of emotion invoked by the thoughts to direct your actions. Violent behavior starts with the mind and its ability or inability to handle emotions as they arise with in yourself.  I read or heard some where there is only one person that can make you mad or angry and that is yourself.  Another's actions may invoke anger but you are the one that has to allow yourself to become angry. If you can maintain a level of peace and serenity with in your mind, you are then able to be in control of your emotions and make informed decisions.  This may still result in anger and could lead to a confrontation or it could lead to anger but allow for a path that avoids confrontation.  Violent behavior can also be in the snide remarks or demeaning treatment of others, including the dismissal of their worth in any given situation.

Letter to Drugs

Drugs,

If it was possible I would gladly cut your throat and watch you bleed.  You have taken some of what should have been the happiest times in my life and turned them into a nightmare.  Failing being able to do that, I would happily substitute the men and women who profit from you while destroying the lives of others.  I am not talking the small dealer here, but rather the ones who are smart enough not to use you in their lives but do not have enough humanity in them to care about others as long as it profits them.  While it is easy to blame the dealers, the manufacturers and yes even the government, in the end I still blame you, the drugs.  I wish it was as easy as killing you to get you out of my life, if so you would be dead and if I had to pay for that then so be it.  If I could switch places with Chris and Taylor, I would gladly go to my grave knowing you are no longer part of theirs or the children’s life.  But I would never trust you to keep your promise, for you are a liar and deceiver.  You lure people in with promises of paradise and bliss, while actually only offering hell.  Many believe that hell is fire and brimstone, but that is not my belief, I belief on the surface it looks like paradise.  A place that is too good to be true.  It is only when you have taken too many steps into this wonderland that you realize that the path back has faded and the all of the beauty is only a glamour to hide the pain and suffering that was just below the surface.

You took the time that was set aside for Chris to learn how to be a man and wasted it.  This was the time when he could learn to control his actions and emotions.  What he thought of as euphoria was in actuality only a slide into the upper levels of hell.  You have taken the trust that was his to have and destroyed it, with him not even aware of it going away.  You stole moments that should have been precious moments from his life and from our life.  We will never see him graduate, or go to the prom or the joy of the first good job out of school.  You have taken moments that should have been awakenings into adulthood and buried them so deeply that he could not even get a sense of accomplishment from them if he had been able to complete them.  Were you happy to stop there, no as you introduced Chris to another of your subjects and together they went further into your dreamland looking for the glimpse of paradise that you had showed them, never realizing that they were just going to the next level of hell.  By this point you had already taught them to lie and deceive, to cheat others and to have no empathy for those that loved them.  You had tricked them into the belief that those that love them were helpless to stop their actions and that there was no help for them.  You even managed to replace the love God has built into parents for their children.  As long as you stay in their lives, you will always make yourself first and everything else, including their own children a far and distant second.

Beyond that you have intruded into the lives of their parents and grandparents.  As we struggle to help them recognize the hell they are voluntarily committing themselves to, we have been forced to also shoulder their responsibility.  This will end, as I will no longer support the hold you have on them.  If that hold is stronger than the love they have for their children and their families, then I will admit defeat and do what I can to protect the children from you.  Because of you we have had to put our lives on hold to try and help them find a path out of your glamour, a path that you try to continue to hide.  You also use others to bring them back by tricking them into thinking you are their friends and it will be different this time.  You continue to hang that carrot in front of them and like a mule they just keep plodding along hoping for the glimpse again. 

I look around and see the devastating effect you are having on the world and I wonder how we ever allowed this to be.  I know you have always been there, a tool for the devil if you will, used to destroy love and family and self-respect.  I see a generation that has fallen even more under your influence then past generations.  I wonder if this one will have the strength to throw off the yoke of slavery that they are so willing to put on for you.  I also wish I could say that it was isolated to this generation or that, but I see people of all ages falling for your tricks.  Yes I know you are sitting there laughing and say but I help people, imagine the pain without me.  You have even convinced the people who should know better, doctors and such, that you are good and a necessary evil.  You have managed with the pushers you have at your disposal to slip the shackles of controls and place them on your creators.  There is a place for some of your benefits in the short term, but in the long term, you are much worse than the pain you are supposed to help relieve.  Now you have idiots in power who go well let’s just make this legal it will stop there.  How you must laugh when you hear that.  Imagine how much more power you will have to enslave us when you can legally give that first glimpse at what you call paradise.  Natural or not you find the weakest points in our lives and manipulate them to make us weaker and enslave not only those who fall prey to your trap but those around them also.  I consider the first drink, the first puff and the first injection to all be times when you are tempting us to fall for your lies.  Each one after the first is just another small step closer to the edge.  An edge where you are waiting with the shackles so that you can claim another victim as you pull them over the edge and throw them into the hell you have waiting.  The amount of power you wield is greater than just about any other power in the universe.  You hear that love is the strongest emotion in the human mind, but it is also our greatest weakness as you will gladly replace the love of a child with the love of a drug.  It is truly sad that every day there are examples of children being neglected, abused and killed while those that are there to love and protect them are too busy trying to get your attention, never realizing the more they try to get that attention for that glimpse, they more you demand of them and the more they are slaves.  Then you use the love of those around them trying to save them from themselves, to entrap them in a cycle that is hard to break, always just waiting there for that chance to grab them too.  “How does it generally go?”, oh you are stressed because of the drug addicts in your life, well here I have a pill that can help you…..BANG! another one in the trap with a glimpse and a world where the stress is not gone but just not as noticeable.

You scare the hell out of me and that angers me, which is in and of itself another of your traps.  Just have a drink to help take the edge off, just ask the doctors for something to help you relax or sleep.  You have become so pervasive in our lives that most do not even see you anymore.  As a species we have become wimps and you have been there every step of the way.  Always ready to lend a hand to help make it just a little bit easier, less painful, and more beautiful.  We have become a species that thinks the only way to deal with pain, grief, stress, discomfort or even having to deal with others is to take a pill or a drink or a puff of this or that.  Our government supports you in so many ways it is not funny.  They waste our money in attempts to stop you that are doomed form the beginning to fail.  They want to stop the supply while not dealing with the demand.  Part of that is because in many instances the supply is also lining their pockets.

One of your greatest weapons in your control over the addicts and their families is the sense of shame and embarrassment you include in your view of paradise.  No one wants to talk about it as they are embarrassed or think others will question how they raised the child.  To many times I have heard that as the excuse for not addressing drug addiction or addiction of any kind.  “What will my friends think?”, “They must think I am a horrible parent.” and on and on with the reasons not to address you while you just sink your claws in deeper and deeper.  I know I fell for that trap also, there were times I should have gone to other parents when I saw their children involved in the same thing, but I did not and shame on me for that and for allowing you to dictate my actions.  It is amazing how quickly and easy it is to look the other way for fear of getting involved or embarrassing the other family.  I am over having something have that type of control over my life and my morals.  I get asked some days what is wrong, and I will talk to others and tell them the trials that you are costing in my life.  I am no longer embarrassed by what you have done to my child.  I have come to the realization that I did the best I could for him and that he is making his own choices.  The greatest shame is that we have become a country of “do not get involved in others business because you may offend them or embarrass them”.  We are so ready to sue others to hide what is going on that it is counterproductive and damaging to this society.  This is just another way for you to slide into the void created by people being afraid to address bad behavior.

So again let me say, if it was possible I would kill you, but unlike you I would give a quick and clean death rather than the slow death you hide behind your lies.  The part of your lies that so many miss, is that even when someone finds the path out, the road back is so short and the damage you have done is just hidden below the surface waiting for the next chance to drag them back into hell along with everyone who loves them and cares for them.

We want education but ......

So how many of you have sat like me over the last few weeks, months and years listening to the rhetoric of the politicians talking about education? All of them point to studies showing how the US is falling behind further and further every year in Math, Science and basic Reading. Yet every time there is a budget short fall the first place they take aim at is the education system. We can build a Nascar Hall of Fame and a National Whitewater Center, both of which are losing money, with tax payers’ help, but we cannot fund the basic education of the generations that are following us. Don't get me wrong, the schools have also gone off the deep end with the expectations of what is needed to educate a student. It was not that long ago that I was talking to a contractor that was bidding on remodeling the entrance for a high school. Now the high school was built along the same plans as 3 other high schools in the area. It was a decent enough building of block with plenty of rooms. By using the same design when they built the schools back in the 70's the county save a ton of money. But back to the contractor, when I asked him what work he was bidding on, his answer was just the entrance with a bid of around 200K as they wanted curved ceilings and walls that mimicked plaster. He won this bid and they did the work, which came in around 300K from what I understand. A few years later I visited that school to watch a basketball game. I was amazed at the holes and damage done to the 300K worth of work in the entrance way. I though back to the way the original entrance of brick and block had held up so well when I had graduated form a school of the same model. Those walls were still sound after almost 20 years. What a crock. In talking to some of the county education board, the updates were made to make the school look nicer and promote a better learning environment for the students. Just imagine what the environment for the students would have been if that money had been spent on hiring decent teachers. It floors me why people refuse to realize that the 3 biggest factors, in my opinion, in a student’s ability to learn are the family being active, an engaged teacher and a community that expects something out of its members. From my own experiences with trying to raise my son to be a responsible member of a community, I have found that these 3 things no longer know how to communicate. The community is afraid to stop a child from doing things they should not be doing for fear of law suits from the family. The teachers are over whelmed or uncaring and are also afraid of law suits. Parents are over stretched and strapped for time and cannot be held responsible for their child’s behavior. BULLSHIT. First off, the courts need to stop allowing some of these law suits to make it to trial. If I was up to no good and a neighbor saw it, they would at the very least have told my parents, if not have come out and told me to knock it off. If my parents received a call, they would not yell at the neighbor and threaten them for telling them what I was up to, they would say thank you and then explain to me in no uncertain terms what I was not supposed to be doing. This did not include beatings, but there was no doubt in my mind when I got in trouble that I had better stop whatever it was. I was lucky in many ways as my parents had reached the point in life where they realized that punishment could be taken too far and be counterproductive. The is a comedian that makes some comments in his act about what would have happened if his teacher had had to call his parents. He talks in his act about how no matter what, he was at fault if his teacher called, no excuses and how dare he embarrass the family. Now a day there seems to be no shame or remorse for your actions. This has bled into the schools and we have allowed it. In the news a few years back as a case where the police had to be called to arrest a 6 year old (or close to that age) for acting violently and cussing in class. The teacher could not restrain the child for fear of being sued. The parents did sue the school system for having the girl arrested. If that had been me or anyone in the age of about 40 on, the teacher and/or principal would have jerked our asses out of class and sat us down in a room, if in the South only after warming that ass up. The cops would not have been called or if they had you would be glad for their protection by the time your parents got there.


But again I wonder from the main topic. Education! We are allowing children to leave the elementary level schools without the ability to do basic math and/or reading and writing. Why? Do we think this is doing the country or the child a favor? Maybe it is time to go back to making sure that the basics are fully understood, which may result in a child left behind. We have allowed the schools to become so caught up in the race to get the money that we have allowed them to stop teaching. Teaching to me, involves making sure the student has the ability to understand and solve a problem that does not exactly match what they are seeing on paper. It is not just preparing for a set test, but a full understanding of the material. In the case of mathematics this includes memorizing the multiplication tables up to 12. From there you can solve basic math problem. This was actually a punishment inflected on us in 6th grade by Mr. Price...gasp....Yes if we misbehaved, we were left in the classroom by ourselves during recess to write the tables out 0 to 12 10, 20 or 30 times. No teacher had to stay in the class and when recess was over you had better of finished, or the parents were called....see above for the outcome of that.

Parents it is time to take your child in hand...hard than it sounds as I have a 22 year old that is driving me to the edge and over. It is okay to spank them within reason; it is not okay to beat them. It is okay to push them to learn new things and try new things. It is okay to expect more from them. It is also okay for them to not be involved in every activity under the sun and to have some down time. Do not try to live your life again by having them do everything you wished you could have. Remember childhood is the only time in your life that you will have to lay in a field and not have the weight of your world bearing down on your shoulders. It is okay to talk to the teacher and the community and help to change the expectations of all.

Teachers it is time to expect more from the boards of education and to get back to truly teaching. Teachers should not have to worry about passing a certain number of students to qualify for funding. They should have to show that their students understand the material that is right for their age level. If a student fails that then they should be held back, but if a teacher fails to be able to teach the majority of student, that teacher should be replaced. While it is a hard lesson for children to learn, the quicker they learn that they are not all created equal the better it will be for them. When they leave the comforts of school they will have to learn the lesson, and it is so much harder on them.

Communities it is time to realize that the kids that you are allowing to do as they please, grow up to be the adults that cannot hold a job and terrorize the neighborhood. Become involved in the community around you. Watch out for each other and let someone know if you see things going on that should not be happening. Maybe if we can all reconnect to each other and work together and get back to basic teaching, we can put this country back on the path it belongs. A student with a good basic understanding will excel at the advance stuff, as that student will have confidence in themselves and be confident in the support of their family, teachers and community.

Okay so I have vented a bit about some of the stuff irritating me today. I ought to do this daily might help me with my stress.

Thanksgiving means what to me?

As you can see by the number of post, I am a truely prolific blogger. I am hoping to start doing this more but time has not really allowed me to so far. Enough of the bellyaching about time.

So the title, Thanksgiving, what does it mean. For most if conjures up the image of the traditional trukey feast. This is true for me also, but has more meaning than that for me. As I come from a fairly large family, being the 8th out of 10 children....yes my parents may have been a bit crazy for having 10 of us but in the end we all turned out okay. But back to what Thanksgiving means to me. Thanksgiving has always seemed to have been the main holiday that I remember in the family. Don't get me wrong, when I was small it was all about Christmas and nothing else but as I grew and understood it better the importance of Christmas as the main family holiday faded. We always had the gifts and such under the tree at Christmas time, but as you aged you came to understand that you were a part of a large family. I can truely say that while I remember special gifts and such I really do not remember Christmas as vividly as I remember some of the Thanksgivings. Some of this may stem from the age difference in the family with about 11 yrs between me and my oldest brother, so by the time I was old enough to know what Christmas was, they just wanted to stay in bed. I can remember playing a trumpet one morning to wake everyone up as me and my little brother and sister had decided it was late enough to only be told by my mom to go back to bed it was like 3 in the morning. Later when I was the teen and did not wnat to get up, I can remember being dragged from the bed by my little brother and sister as they wanted me to open my presents. That year I got my first stereo. Being 16 at the time, not sure that I should how greatful I was for it to my parents....that would not have been cool. Looking back on it and having now raised a son who is 21, I realize how much I truely owe my parents.....

Back to Thanksgiving though. This was the one holiday that I can remember it seemed like the family almost always all made it home for. The earliest memories where of that, the entire family including the older ones all being around and talking to each other. The eating contest they had now are family stores that have made their way into family lore. My 3 oldest brothers would take serving platters for plates and keep going back until they could not move. My mother would get up before the sun to make the turkey and all of the fixings and have them on the table for lunch.

As the family grew with the addition of spouses and grandchildren, the meal transformed into a potluck feastival. Everyone would bring a dish and my mother would prepare the turkey and the gravy, the 2 most important peices of the meal in my opinion. The meals also included family freinds and whomever others in the family invited. It was not unusual to walk into a room full of people and have a few sitting there that you had no clue who they were. Girlfreinds and boyfreinds were put through the ringer, as most of my family has a tendency to pick on anyone sitting near them. Some of them have turned it into a true art form. For the last 6 to 8 years the counts have ranged from the high forties to mid sixties for attendees.

A few years ago, my mother finally decided it was a bit much cooking for that many people (she was 73 at the time). There was talk of stopping the tradition and allowing each sub-family to start their own tradition. Needless to say, this did not go over big with the family. We moved the celebration between houses to keep it going over the next 2 years. I built a new house about 5 years ago, and one of the main building requirements was for the house to have an open floor plan with a large kitchen island. The plan was for Lisa and I to start throwing parties. The first one we did was the Thanksgiving lunch that year, with over 60 people at the party. While we have not had much oportunity to throw some of the parties we would like to throw, we have hosted the Thanksgiving party for 5 years now. It has been great. It is a lot of work, last year I cooked 4 or 5 12~14lb turkeys and made over 2 gallons of gravy for the event. I actually take the entire week of Thanksgiving off to cook for it. It is still a potluck event with great food being brought in by all. There are always new dishes to try and family favorites.

At my parents 57th Anniversay party on the 14th of November, I was reminded again as to how lucky we are to be able to have a tradition like our Thanksgiving party. We have evolved to about 4 gatherings a year and everyone always seems to have a good time catching up. It is funny as we all live with in 20 or 30 miles of my parents, but with life being as busy as it is, we do not always take the time to keep up with each other. I will say that we have always been there for each other and would do anything to help each other though. I really appreaciate the sacrafices my parents made for our family. I am sure there are times we made them want to jump in the car and drive off with out looking back.

So what does Thanksgiving mean to me? It means family and appreaciaion of family to me. It means looking around a room full of my parents, brothers, sisters, grandchildren and freinds and seeing smiles whereever you look. It means saying thanks to my parents for building such a great support system for their children and instilling the drive and morals to be who we are, not perfect but just who we are.

Sterling Engines and Green Energy Movement

Lately I have been extremely interested in building a Sterling Engine to drive a small generator. The thought is not original by any stretch of the imagination as I found a number of references when I started my research into how to build a Sterling Engine. There is a lot of info on the topic and some very nice looking models for sale. Part of the interest stems from my desire to start using the lathe I bought some years back. I am currently looking for a small mill or a high end drill/mill. Anyways back to the whole solar powered Sterling Engine. I have been looking at parabolic mirrors to focus the incoming sunlight onto the heat chamber side of the engine. The issue is getting a mirror of this type with the size needed to drive and engine capable of producing somewhere in the range of 500 watts to 1kw. I have been researching some alternatives to this type of mirror including the method of allowing the reflective surface to form the focus point by itself. The a specific name for this is a Catenary Reflector. In the article in Make: it mentions that about a 1/4 hang versus width is pretty close to being a parabolic mirror and use to be considered a parabolic.

So the other day as I was driving home, I was listening to NPR...yes I do that a lot as most radio stations talk about nothing way too much, and they were discussing the plans for the new Nuclear Plants in the US. The Green Movement fanatic kept going on and on about how nuclear is a failed technology and how the Green Energy forms were the only way to go. He also discussed the environmental impact of the radioactive waste. Agreed there is waste, but the Green Movement always seems to forget that there are major environmental issues even with the green movements. Some of the things that most forget about most Green Methods of generating electricity are as follows n my mind:

You are reliant on something that is completely unpredictable. You cannot count on the sun, wind or any of the others to be steady and always be there, so you would need to combine at least 2 but probably 3 or 4 methods to be a viable alternative to a controlled source like a coal plant

You cannot easily increase or decrease production. This can also be said about typical power plants. The point I am trying to make is that the peak usage generally occurs at night, so your solar plant would be offline at this point or having to transmit the power very long distances. The same is true with the efforts to create power from tidal flow and geothermic. So the biggest issue with the green power movement is the ability to store the power created during non-peak usage but peak time for producing power. The only real method of storing power is batteries. The batteries and their production can and have been very damaging to the environment as they contain heavy metals and other toxins.

Above I referred to the speaker as a fanatic, which is not exactly fair, as he is probably just very passionate about the concepts of environmentally friendly energy. The point that most miss though is that there are issues with this energy and practical uses of it. A fully electric car sounds great and I would love a Tesla Motors car. But it has to be charged and that power has to come from somewhere, at night when the sun is gone. So the people screaming for the electric cars as being the only way to go that are also screaming about the new power plants being build (be them coal, nuclear or green) you cannot have one without the other.

I feel that we are going to have to address the production of power and figure out better ways to harness the avaliable power the environment provides. At the same time though the traditional power plants will ahve to exist to help fill the voids left in the system when using other methods. I was extremely happy to hear about California's law for putting solar panels on building, which makes perfect sense as the area is generally wasted space otherwise. Also what about the possiblitiy of harnessing the lsot power in parking lots? Parking lots produce a ton of heat that is just released back into the air. When I was a child, my dad fashioned a heater for the pool that consisted of a length of coiled black tubing ontop of a black board. He tapped off of the skimming unit. The coild was about 6' in length and the water that come out of the tube was hot enough to allow use to start swimming earlier and later than others in the area. How about continuing to improve solar panels so that they can be laid easily, preferably as shingles on houses to make the self sufficent during the day? There are a number of areas that we need to look at the waste energy that is being retransmitted as heat. Which brings us full circle backt to the Sterling Engine. An engine that can be run off of waste heat to drive generators. So would it be possible to bury piping in a parkign lot, fill the pipes with water, use the heated water to drive a helium filled Sterling Engine (multiple cylinder) and drive a generator that could offset the power use of the building with the parking lot?

The golden grail of all of the efforts for Green Energy and transportation is the development of safe high capacity batteries that do not cost a fortune. The Telsa Motor mentioned above at last check required a Lithium battery pack that ran about $30,000 and had to be replaced every so many years. hard to beat that old internal cumbustion engine that runs for decades with little repair. Yes you probably pay the $30,000 every few years in gas, but you do not feel it the same as a one time hit.

So what is an F-stop in photography and pasta in garlic oil with zuchini

This seems to be a simple question but always seems to stump people. The F stop is only part of a combination that invocles shutter speed, film speed and the F stop or appeture opening in the lenses to acheive that perfect exposure. I found a answer to the question that seems to be pretty simple that I thought I would share as I have been asked this a few times.

This is part of the explaination from http://prophotoman.tripod.com/fstop.html

"F," I learned, could actually mean "fraction". The "4" in "f4" actually stood for 1/4. The diameter of the aperature at f4 would be 1/4th the focal length of the lens. A 50mm lens set to f4 would have an aperature diameter of 12.5mm (50mm X 1/4). A 1000 lens set at F22 would have an aperature diameter of 45mm (1000mm X 1/22). So with this information, you could derive the formula: F-Stop = A/FL; where A is the diameter of the aperature, FL is the focal length of the lens, and F-stop is expressed in it's fraction form.


For dinner today I had a new recipe that some freinds sent from Reader Digest by Micheal Ch. for pasta wiht zuchini and garlic sauce. The recipe was good though I think I will change it some the next time I make it.
saute 1 tbs of minced garlic in 1/4 cup of oil while cooking around 3/4lb pasta. When garlic is slightly browned add 1/2 tsp red pepper, 3 tbls fresh basil and 2 of parsley freshly chopped and then remove from heat. thinly juilliane the zuchini. Place cooked pasta in serving dish (reserving about 1/2c of the cooking water), Toss with zuchini and oil. Add 1/2 c parmissian cheese, 1/4 c olive oil (I omited the additional oil) and enough cooking water to form sauce. Salt and pepper to taste

My wife found it a bit spicy, but I did about 1 tsp of the red pepper.

I think I would reduce the red pepper a bit, and maybe add some pancetta that had been crisped when servings. Also sprinkle with some parsley. Served with garlic bread it is excellent.

This was a nice light and refreshing meal. Some brocolli florettes would also be really good in this.

First Day

Okay so after having followed a number of blogs and such I have decide to see if I like putting thoughts out in the wide word. My thoughts tend to quickly change directions so we will see if we keep at it. This blog may contain my views on politics to recipes to photography to whatever else crosses my mind as I sit in front of the computer.

I have also sent this to my dad as something he may want to do with the news articles that have been published locally on his conversion of an old Mazda truck to fully electric. Article was published in the Mooresville Tribune and Statesville Record and Landmark. I copied and pasted it on the family website that I maintain in my spare time. (http://www.weberclan.com).

So couple of things bouncing around today. Have someone trying to talk me into doing a small business cooking a few meals for them that they can then serve to their family during the week. It could be fun, just a question of time. My wife and I continue to work on improving our photography and picking up small jobs on the side. That combined with my normal job, bike riding, hiking and other activities makes for little spare time.

The other thing I have been bouncing around for a few years now is policitcs. I like the majority of the people I talk to are not happy with most of the people in office at any level. You have to wonder sometimes exactly where these people come from when you hear the ideas the are pushing. The thing is though that I feel if I am going to complain about how others are doing it, then I need to be willing to try and do it better myself. As with many things I have found over the years, there are 2 sides to it. Alot of the compormises that seem to go through may be the only way to get anything to move in the policial world where it is now more important to further your parties agenda then to represent the people who elected you. Anyways a few years back I started to look into running for the town board where I lived. About that time is also the time my wife and I decide to move, so the idea fell to the wayside.

Some of the other things running around in there is the desire I have had since high school (god over 20 years ago now) to write a book. I love reading books and will generally read 2~5 a month.

Like I said rambling thoughts. May have to rethink this whole idea. maybe just blog about cooking or photography as it may be to disjointed otherwise