An advertisement-free blog about motorcycling, Northern life, home improvement, power plants, submarines, nuclear stuff, and a few other off-beat subjects. Comments are welcome. (Image is the Selway Crags in Northern Idaho)
"Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases. Neither is it merely the opportunity to chose between a set of alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices - and then the opportunity to choose." - C. Wright Mills
"Don't seek that all that comes about should come about as you wish, but that everything that comes about should come about just as it does, and then you'll have a calm and happy life." - Epictetus
So I had an entire day off, and made the best of it. The tomato plants got chopped off and the half-ripe tomatoes got pitched into the forest for the deer. The grass got a final mowing, and the mower got winterized. The sprinklers got blown dry with the air hose, as did the garden hoses, which were then stored. The water trough got cleaned and the immersion heater installed in it.
I did not yet bring in the wasp traps, re-tarp the RV, plant the snow markers, install the winter tires on the Subaru, replace the batteries in the smoke detectors, or do a fall burn, there just isn't enough time for everything in one day. But one day was all that I had.
"Meditate upon what you ought to be in body and soul when death overtakes you; meditate on the brevity of life, and the measureless gulf of eternity behind it and before, and upon the frailty of everything material." - Marcus Aurelius
"Be a free-thinker and don't accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in." - Aristotle.
"Everybody wants to be big, but don't nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weight." - Ronnie Coleman (Champion Bodybuilder)
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare." - Samuel Longhorn Clemens, AKA Mark Twain
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed." - Jonathan Swift
"If all emotions are common coin, then what is unique to the good man? To welcome with affection that which is sent by fate.
Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs.
Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God - saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust.
And if the others don't acknowledge it - this life, lived in simplicity, humility, cheerfulness - he doesn't resent them for it, and isn't deferred from following the road where it leads; to the end of life.
An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be." - Marcus Aurelius
"We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice." - Hierocles
"What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the small man seeks is in others." - Confucius
"We are so busy doing the urgent that we don't have time to do the important." - Confucius
"'Misinformation' and 'disinformation are just different words for wrong-think" - Unknown
Yesterday was the 18th B-Day of the Blog. If it were a person, it would now be old enough to vote or (if male) go die on behalf of some other country.
Coincidentally stoner millenials celebrate 4-20 day because "Dude Weed LMAO". Also coincidentally it was the birthday of a famous German who was a dictator in the 1930's and early 40's. Who knew?
The blog had a hiatus period for a few years, but I got back to it eventually. Things have slowed down a bit since I picked up this day shift gig last October - there are no longer large stretches of back-shift to ponder and process thoughts for a long blog post. It's possible that I'll be able to return to that more productive and informative level of posting, but not right now.
There were a couple of earlier posts about this year's Steam Turbine Major Outage that showed some damage to the turbine buckets and diaphragms (rotating and stationary blades). I decided that it would be a good idea to revert those posts to "draft", because there will probably be some insurance claims and attorneys will be getting involved in the money side of things. It seems wise at this time to wait until the legal fallout is settled before putting that sort of thing out on the internet. No need to 'retire' before I'm really ready to retire :)
Thanks for staying tuned, and hopefully I'll have some interesting tidbits to share before long!
"Strategy without tactics is the slow route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." - Sun Tzu
"We are reduced to asking others what we are. We never dare ask ourselves." - Jean-Jaques Rousseau
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." - Voltaire
"The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to see yourself is through another's eyes." - Voltaire
"If you make a mistake and do not correct it, that is called a mistake." - Confucius
"All external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control, but we can accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately.
Individuals, however, are responsible for their own actions which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline.
Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or neglecting what is within our power." - Epictetus
"No man is so foolish as to desire war and not peace. For in peace, children bring their parents to the graveyard. In war, parents bring their children to the graveyard." - Herodotus
"But this I know: If all mankind were to take their troubles to the marketplace with the idea of exchanging them, anyone seeing what his neighbor's troubles were like would be glad to go home with his own." - Herodotus
"A society prospers when men plant trees whose shadows they will never rest in." - Ancient Proverb
"The US policy toward the third world should be depopulation." - Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of State
"The poor tell us who we are, and the prophets tell us who we could be. So we hide the poor and kill the prophets." - Philip Berrigan
Pretty cool NASA interactive web page, showing all (known) asteroids orbiting the sun.
Highly recommended if only for a brief visit! https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/asteroids/#/home
Below: Asteroid Ida, Imaged by the Galileo space probe in 1993, while on its way to Jupiter.
"It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron." - H. L. Mencken
"The things you need are few and easy to come by; but the things you imagine you need are infinite, and you will never be satisfied." - Epicurus