Happy 18th Birthday!

 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!

"I'm not dead yet"

 "The mirror is a worthless invention.  The only way to see yourself is through another's eyes." - Voltaire

Water under the bridge...

March 13, 2007. Oh. My. God.
The last entry in this blog. It seems like a lifetime ago. So much has happened in the interrim.

I have changed jobs twice, moved three times, and my daughter has grown from age 4 to age 9. My father-in-law passed away, and our dog Gertie had to be put down.

Happy Easter, By the way!!!



We moved from Bakersfield in the spring of 2010 to Hermiston, Oregon. The goal was to get away from the smog and crime. Hermiston seemed nice at first, but we gradually began to realize that it wasn't for us, due to the poor public education system. We moved to Northern Idaho two weeks ago.

So far it seems a great deal better than what we have experienced in Hermiston. For one thing we were able to buy our dream house (an REO) for a reasonable price. We are now the proud owners of a 3700 sqft house on 5 wooded acres. I finally have the shop I always wanted, and Corie has her craft room. We had deer grazing in the back yard yesterday evening.




Even though it's only a couple hundred miles North of Hermiston, the weather is drastically cooler and wetter. We had snow flurries here yesterday, although by afternoon it was motorbike weather.

We have a new puppy named Bridget. She is another dachshund, all full of life and energy.

The new job is going quite well. I enjoy most of the people that I work with, and this is one of the better-running facilities I have worked at.

I am preparing to start home-brewing as a hobby, after a fellow at the previous job got me interested. This is really quite counter-productive to my other hobby, weightlifting. It will be interesting to see which prevails. Probably the less painful one!

Grace has grown into a highly intelligent, intellectual young lady, and a voracious reader, which is part of the reason we re-located. The schools in Hermiston were failing "No Child Left Behind", which I consider to be a very low hurdle. Grace had tested and passed the Oregon "Talented and Gifted" (TAG) program, but the schools had no money available for that resource. Grace was stagnating, since the school was focusing all their efforts on getting the mediocre students to pass the test.

Below is a photo of Grace playing miniature golf while we were at Oktoberfest in Leavenworth, Washington.

I will go on a rant about the socio-economic situation in Hermiston (and probably most agricultural areas) in a later post. Suffice to say we are in a happier place now.