A Few good points

Toronto seems nice....

I was just kidding about this with a blogger friend of mine in Alberta.

A Weekend in Provincetown









Eric and i headed up to Provincetown this weekend for a overdue vacation. The campsite projects this summer sorta turned our camping into work weekends and really did not provide any quiet time for us. The past 3 weeks at work I pulled 65 hours trying to get two projects out the door for testing and I was getting pretty cranky. Provincetown is quite the busy place in the summer - but after season, it is really very quiet. [ and half price! ]
























We stayed at the Brass Key Inn. A really nice place that i am not sure we could afford the full rate for.. [ though we may try next summer] Our guest house was very nice and we actually used the pool and outdoor jacuzzi alot. The outdoor jacuzzi was bigger than our room! We definitely caught up on our naps!
































I caught a few bits of the town on the camera. We lucked out for the most part with the weather.

































Of course, now it is back to work for both of us. However the break was much needed.

More Time than I have


Light-Paint Piano Player from Ryan Cashman on Vimeo

I am a Liberal

Friends and Family Camping 2

We trekked down to Jones Pond again this past weekend. Kristin and Carolyn joined us for a fun [ somewhat rainy] weekend. The patchy weather did not manage to stop the fun. Cathy and i remarked that we are very good at entertaining each other. I know not everyone can appreciate such a Vintage of Humor - but you can see that we really can make each other laugh.

Illumination weekend 2008























This year our illumination weekend was a bit smaller than in years past. I was pretty focused on getting our driveway done and so the whole 17 people camping thing was not going to work. as it turns out - most our friends were in P-Town this weekend anyway for carnival, so it was really just Eric, our friend Jeff and myself. My friend Derick from Elmira stopped in for the day as well.

The project -

The new driveway is raised 24" off the ground and i was concerned somebody [ err...me] would take a plunge off the edge some dark night, so the idea of lighting the perimeter started there. I thought something flush with the driveway would have a modernist look to it, but all the solutions i found were beyond the price range. so that's were the glass block kicked in.




The original plan has the lights all LED on three channels. But I had a tech failure mid-week

[ those darned external resistors! ]

SO - it was back to the old standby - and I dragged the C7 christmas lights out of the closet. Jeff and eric helped out getting the driveway ready for saturday night. It really came out good - and I hope to expand on the idea next year.

Burning Man Dreamin'

It is coming up to Illumination weekend at the campground and hopefully we can pull off a good show. Several of my mail lists have been all the buzz this week about getting ready for Burning Man. I will have to admit - I was more of an observer last year when i went - but I have never stopped talking about it to anyone who would listen. I am planning to go next year. [ If I can afford the gas...] but in the meantime i have been watching some online programs about last year's festival.


The famous Cubetron




This film does a great job covering the festival and sites. the Skydiving scene is awesome





Cant wait till next year!

Summer Projects





I have put aside many more important things this summer to try and finish up a mess / project i started last summer but did not complete. So - over the course the past 8 weekends [?] i have been trekking down to our campsite to finish the driveway. At various heavy lifting points, i have ensnared Eric and our friend Jeff to help out. We are getting close now. Our *first* 22 ton load of stone arrived and Eric and i spend a part of saturday dig-shovel-toss-spreading in order to get ready for the second [ fingers crossed we only need one more load...] This is all in effort to finish for the campground's illumination weekend coming up mid-august. rush rush. Of course - while we worked, i laughed to myself as we spread stone. Golly - where could have i gotten this event-driven-project gene from? who? My mind is just a blank. ARTHUR. MY FATHER. We have many stories from the distant past of painting-bathrooms-on-Christmas-eve and 22 tons of stone arrving in the backyard shortly before sibling's weddings... I just hope Eric decides to put up with it....

New Gig [lonnnng blab......]

A couple of people have been asking about my current employment gig. As some may recall, I started working as a Kitchen Designer at Lowes back in February. I had been talking about working for Lowes or home Depot since I was laid off from Xerox. I know that aspiring to a retail job is a bit offbeat - but during my house remodel - I was at one or the other [ or both] at least once a day. I figured - if I stayed a couple of hours, i could get a paycheck, a discount and save some gas money along the way. Lowes had been very helpful during my remodeling. I pestered their flooring guys ALOT. Not every employee at those stores knows alot, but if you find the right ones - they can be very helpful. SO - the idea was work at [Lowes] and find something to rehab and work the discount to the max. I have worked retail before, I know the demeaning beat. Crappy hours, Management by idiots and daily anarchy. I thought that with the idea that i was there by choice and actually being creative -[ i love kitchens..btw...] I could rise above or be insulated from it.

[ insert laugh track here..]

NO SUCH LUCK. After my first 6 weeks of some very stressful fly-by-the-seat training in kitchen design sales and some very positive feedback from my sales manager, associates and customers, I was walked into the office by another manager and told flatly that there was no budget for me to remain in kitchen [ 7 minutes after the sales manager said i had a great first month!] and i was to be moved to plumbing.

Plumbing.

The black hole of Lowes. I knew squat of plumbing and was now about to be one of those idiot employees who knew nothing about what they were selling. GREAT. I was quite taken aback, but did manage to say that "the crash training was stressful" and i expected better if I was moved.
"Sure" "OF course" "two weeks at another store before you start...." yada yada yada.

So - predictably, I was dropped in plumbing 2 weeks later like a wet sandbag. Meanwhile, I had a operations manager who considered me an F#&$%K up and never has anything positive to say to me. Talk about ruining your mood. And day. And week.

And here I thought I was sorta smart and stuff....Masters degree, shiny thesis, a couple of US patents.... And I was right back to 1983, 16 years old and my [former felon] Burger King manager berating me.

Talk about a tailspin. Eric told me just to quit. Which i could have. But leaving without a backup just would have made things worse in my mind.

So - sorta fast forward to May. One month since the store grand opening, store moral dropped through the floor and fellow employees who had options - were leaving... quickly.

Go figure - treat employees like they are a commodity..and .... [ you can the insert logic here... ]
[ and then mail it to Lowes please.] It will be news to them....

I, in the interim, am getting written up for 11 minutes of overtime and as well as spending my "training time" out in lawn and garden sweeping up leaky mulch bags.

Gotta be a team player.

Meanwhile - i get a note on my LinkedIn profile. [ i never expected it to do anything for me...]
a recruiter I spoke with in December says a client I interviewed with in December wants to talk to me RIGHT NOW. errr... OK - so after a little scrambling to actually finish my website - I head in for a 3.5 hour interview and TA DAH I started at WelshAllyn the following monday.

WelshAllyn is a medical device company in upstate NY about 25 minutes from here. I am the UI designer at the company now working on 3 projects, a computer workstation software and 2 touchscreen projects. When I left Xerox - I really thought i was doen with the UI stuff. But I am finding it all interesting. ....And get this.... people are glad I am there! Go figure! I walked into a meeting the other day and a coworker says "Thank god you're here" AND They think my previous experience is valuable. Quite a contrast to Lowes - i think my managers thought i just got out high school... or something..or whatever..... they never really cared or asked.

:O)

I have had several other positive comments like this since I started - which has gone a long way to help the mood. I am hoping by next year - i will have forgotten the Lowes trauma. Meanwhile - Eric and I have our weekends back and I managed to book the entire summer's worth already. Stay tuned for pics!

Coal - its whats for dinner




Such a smug ad. Too bad half the country won't get it.

The Pink Doughnut














I spent the last three days in a workshop at my new gig. An interesting place. I really do not know any of these guys that well yet, so it is interesting to me to play the role of observer of human nature. After i made a casual remark [ with an agenda behind it of course] regarding snacks being a great source of attention span.... our workshop facilitator started bringing in doughnuts for our morning sessions. My secondary job title at Xerox was Snack monger BTW... :O) So in the third day in a room of manly-men programmers, i enjoyed watching the doughnut box. It was amusing to watch as the meeting progressed..

[ or should i say drag ON and ON..] as the group slowly consumed the doughnuts.

But not all of them.

In the center of the box was a big yummy glazed doughnut. there was actually lots of them. But this one was different.

Like me in that meeting.

This one was covered in a huge slathering of bright pink girlie frosting. I am sure it was Cherry. and I WANTED it. But i really found it more amusing to watch as everyone else in the room very carefully pick around it. Nobody wanted to touch the Pink Doughnut. It entertained me greatly to observe. I could HEAR people's stomach's growling. But there it sat.. the Pink Doughnut.

Last in the box. Last picked for the team... :O(

Finally the facilitator grabbed it after everyone else left.

I could add that out of everyone in the room - i thought he had the least amount of testosterone [ but i liked him just the same..]

I am definitely thinking the next workshop i am going to bring in a whole box of Pink muffins.

And promptly watch everyone starve.

Ahhh..the easy credit days...













People are saying that the mortgage process has gotten ALOT more difficult these days. I will admit for the past ten years , i have taken my share of advantage on the all the Zero percent transfer balance offers in my mailbox to move debt around like dirt under the rug. Since I sold the house - I have been debt free, and would like to keep it that way. So all the credit lines are open and the cards just keep getting filed away. I would close the lines - but i have read that the "available" credit affects how you are evaluated for MORE credit. And we will be needing a mortgage soon...... so in the files they stay...

Happy Holidays! [again..]












Eric and I managed to get Chilipepper pried out of my mechanics hands at 9:30 pm Friday night. [ It will still need some additional bearing work..] After a stop at Lowes - it was off to Jones Pond for the weekend with an arrival around 11:30pm. We spent Saturday with our friend Jeff digging at our site. I started a big project at the site last July and er... kinda left it all winter. Basically a giant trench and a pile of R.R. ties. I was supposed to go down a couple of times before Memorial day to restart the project - but Chilipepper ended up being in the shop 4 weeks! The van needed some odd parts and the garage was really busy..... so except for mowing the grass last weekend - this was the first chance we had to work on it. We are building up a retaining wall with a french drain behind it. Once it is complete, we will have it filled with gravel. It was give us a wide [ and dry!] level driveway for camping. I was hoping to have it done by next week for family weekend - i have my sister and brother's families coming down for some camping and cooking! But ... the second load of R.R. ties never arrived... [ next week they tell me...] so it will probably be finished sometime in the end of June. We made good progress on Saturday.. so now i am trying to think of anything i should do before we fill it in. So I am looking at low voltage lighting and some additional drainage ideas in the meantime.......

Merry Christmas!















-Just got the photos together from our holiday party back in december. Our friend Gerry took them for us while we played party hosts. A very fun time. It was great that so many of our friends made the trip!

WTF?



Well, it is April 30th here in sunny syracuse and the weather man says it will be 50 today [ ha!] right now it is 39 and it is SNOWING. meanwhile you can hear my neighbor MOWING HIS LAWN.

Dreams in Syracuse

Sorry for no posts lately. Here's a few pics of day dreams of mine in Syracuse. Eric and I are starting to do real estate home work this month and I am looking around. I found alot of good information regarding FHA 203 K rehabing loans. I hope it will be an interesting summer.

North American International Auto Show








We returned to Detroit this year for our 11th yearly trek to NAIAS. It is always interesting to compare the yearly show with the past shows. The car maker's budgets for the show are obviously not what they used to be 5 years ago, but overall, i think this year's show was pretty good. Maybe the difference is that the domestic makers are focusing less on showmanship and more on better cars. This year's show had many manufacturer's bringing their ideas for greener vehicles to the public. Both in actual production intent vehicles, along with the usual flashy show cars that represent nothing more than the plastic and foam they are made of. It is always fun to look at them and try to pick ones that may actually find their way to production. The past focus on trucks seems to have finally died down thankfully. But it is hard not to be skeptical of the new green focus. One Dodge concept display introduction that I managed to catch had the spokeswomen spend several minutes touting performance and technology figures for a concept model that was nothing more than vaporware, only to end the introduction stating the manufacturer has no plans to produce the car. Nice. Yet other concepts clearly appeared to have production intent behind the styling.





Cadillac has definitely been on a roll the past couple of years. It is good to see them keeping the momentum up. I think the CTS coupe was the best car at the show this year. Finally focusing on design and detail as opposed to bloat and size. This car is set for production this summer [?] and i think will be very popular. It will probably be up against the lower offerings from BMW, Audi and Lexus. It makes them all look frumpy in comparison.


Another concept Cadillac brought to the show was the Provoq. While the drive train sounded a little far off, I think the car itself is slated for production in one form or another. Its a great design and I think it is based on the recent GM small CUV platform [ Saturn VUE] that has gotten alot of really good reviews. Hopefully they will get it to market soon. It makes the new BMW X6 [ which i really like] look old.



Saturn brought this concept to the show. It was definitely vaporware, but the rear gull wings hatch was fun to look at.





Audi brought a diesel version of their R8 sports car to the show. A very striking vehicle.




The Mini booth is always abuzz with hipters and DJ's spinning music. This year was no exception. Since the premier of the mini itself, BMW has been trying to figure out how to grow the offerings. SO hence the Mini Clubman. It is a three door stretch of the mini. I am not sure what mini people think of it - but I hate it. I think it is fugly and pretty uninspired.



Gm brought the Buick Riveria concept from their Chinese design studios. A beautiful concept. More importantly, a very interesting symbol of globalization. Buick's US sales have withered quite a bit in the US, yet sales in China keep growing. So watching the focus of the Buick brand slowy shift to it's new found home is interesting. This concept was produced for Chinese consumption. The US was the afterthought. I would dare to say the GM China wants this car built. It could probably find a home on the Corvette / Cadillac XLR chassis or perhaps the upcoming camaro platform. It could be a natural progression for Buick in China but i am not sure it would find a home on Buick's american market. It will be an interesting watch.






This was the Chrysler EcoVoyager concept. Sorta an evolution of the Minvan? I guess if you just tack the word ECO on a car concept - it turns environmentaly friendly. The concept was strictly a plastic idea and has no linkage to anything the company is currently producing. I have several more pics of it in the photo collection of the show. Very beautiful.







This concept was at the Ford Booth. It was an interesting reversal of the above examples. While it was very much a plastic concept. The styling is part of Ford's efforts to unify their global design language. So i think you are looking an accurate glimpse at Fords future.



These Gm concepts returned from last year. Originally pitched as a customer contest to chose one idea, i think they were part of GM's look back at the base offerings [ Chevy Aevo ] from Korea with the idea of getting an Scion buzz put on them. I think the Beat in the foreground was the top pick with customers. GM recently said they are looking to possibly start offering small premium cars [ ie Mini Coopers..] so this may also be now indicative of that effort now. The current chevo Aveo could easily be reskinned in any of these .





NO vaporware here! This is Honda's Hydrogen fueled Clarity. they are planning to lease them in Southern California this summer[?] The low production test vehicles are rumored to cost $$$$$$$$$$ but Honda will lease them for about $600 to qualified customers. A great car, it was getting alot of attention. What was NOT getting attention was something I think is much more important.



This is a home hydrogen fuel cell / generator Honda [may?] be selling with the Clarity. This small machine runs on natural gas and creates hydrogen for your car. But it also produces electricity for your home more efficiently than running power 5 miles from the power plant. Oh yeah - it also produces hot water to heat you home. If they can get these babies into widespread use, it could change alot with how we heat and light our houses. GO Honda! i want one!

More pictures of the show on Flickr!

Detroit Road trip 2008
































This year marked our 11th year trekking out to Ann Arbor for the annual Detroit Auto show. Our yearly hosts David and Victor pulled out the red carpet for us once again on Brookside drive for a very fun [ if not a bit rushed..] weekend. This year we had a smaller group with the veterans Brian G and myself accompanied by my friends Joe B and Greg W for their first auto show trip.
Aside from the auto show, we made stops at a few Ann Arbor night spots - Necto and Aut Bar, along with a weekend wrap up at Gandydancer's for a awesome Sunday brunch before our trek back to Western New York. The auto show trip always times up perfectly with the coldest weekend of the region and this year was frosty as always. I tell people I have no concept of Eastern Michigan outside of cold and snow. Some day I will make it back for a summer trip.