Late January Ramblings.....
Well, here we are, almost thru January already and I haven't said a thing yet about the new year. Things are quiet around here this evening so I thought I'd update y'all.
This has been a very mild winter. From about the 9th of December until the second week of January it just didn't snow. The weather was consistently in the 40's or higher. The last couple weeks though it's begun to act more like a Michigan winter around here with temps in the 20's and some snow accumulation, enough at least to cover the ground and hide the grass. Hopefully we won't have to pay for the mild weather now with snow in late April :-)
Work at Nowak has been interesting lately. Since Joe's death in October it's been pretty grim around there as far as an outlook for the future goes, but lately folks have been stepping up to get things going and I'm not as convinced that it's headed for the toilet as I was a couple months ago. Still, it's touch and go. The Irony of the situation is that while there isn't a whole lot going on, on the production floor, I've been busy as hell trying to get caught up, organized and writing programs so that we can maybe make quality parts to sell to customers and stay in business. This is the first Saturday I've had off in a couple weeks. I even did a Sunday a couple weeks ago so the paychecks have been pretty healthy for me personally even if the company itself ain't that healthy. It's not like the supersized paychecks are being banked though, they're just allowing me to stay ahead of all those things that come up that never seem to find their way into the annual budget. Things like property taxes, Car Insurance for the '56, Annual dues to the Whiskey Creek Condo Association, dental bills etc........so, at least for the moment, we're on a fairly even keel.
I've been enjoying my birthday present (the Ipod) immensely. Probably one of the best presents I've ever gotten. For a music collector / lover like myself this thing is quite an amazing piece of work. I have almost 6.5 days worth of music loaded up on it now and I've still hardly scratched the capacity of the thing. It's a gas to just turn it on, hit shuffle and see what pops up. It's like the ultimate personal radio station without any of the BS advertising. At my current rate of download I expect it's gonna take thru the summer, if not longer, to fill the thing up. Once I run out of room then I guess I'll have to start thinning the herd and skim off some of the stuff I can live without.
I made the Ipod even more useful last night by buying a Griffen Roadtrip at Best Buy. Now, I can play the Ipod in the truck / van / car by plugging the Ipod into the Road trip and then plugging that into the cigarette lighter in the vehicle. You program the Road Trip to an empty FM frequency and then turn on the Ipod and the radio and it'll play right thru the vehicles sound system. It's damn near magic. It also can broadcast the Ipod from the computer to my home stereo system by plugging the transciever into the computer but I haven't been able to get that to work yet and I suspect that it's because my receiver is a dinosaur, just too old to be compatible with the new technology. I wrote Griffen to ask 'em about it, but I figure a new receiver is gonna be the only way to get up to speed in the house. That'll have to wait until some other things are taken care of first..........
A couple weeks ago I attended AutoRama in Grand Rapids, took some shots and wandered around the place for about 3 hours checking out the awesome cars. Ran into some guys I knew from the summer shows, who were showing their cars and talked with them for awhile. Watched a guy do a magic show that was pretty entertaining and then headed for home.
Today the plan was to get up fairly early and head up to the campsite to cut up some firewood and goof around for awhile, but the getting up early part didn't happen and it was just too chilly to feel like cutting wood once I got there so what really happened was that I got up about noon, loaded up Ipod, camera gear and chain saw and headed north up 31. Got up there about 2pm and wandered around a bit taking some pics. Decided that cutting wood could wait until early spring, when the snow was not an issue. They had quite a bit more up there than we have around here. Enough in fact that I couldn't get the pickup up the hill to park it. I got it off the road and that was about it. After surveying the campsite I got back in the truck and rode around the whole campground, shooting some pics and taking in the view. About 4:30 I decided it was time to head back south for home.
That's about it for now I guess. No big plans to talk about, nothing note worthy in the immediate future. One day at a time until things start to green up again.
Later.
TC
This has been a very mild winter. From about the 9th of December until the second week of January it just didn't snow. The weather was consistently in the 40's or higher. The last couple weeks though it's begun to act more like a Michigan winter around here with temps in the 20's and some snow accumulation, enough at least to cover the ground and hide the grass. Hopefully we won't have to pay for the mild weather now with snow in late April :-)
Work at Nowak has been interesting lately. Since Joe's death in October it's been pretty grim around there as far as an outlook for the future goes, but lately folks have been stepping up to get things going and I'm not as convinced that it's headed for the toilet as I was a couple months ago. Still, it's touch and go. The Irony of the situation is that while there isn't a whole lot going on, on the production floor, I've been busy as hell trying to get caught up, organized and writing programs so that we can maybe make quality parts to sell to customers and stay in business. This is the first Saturday I've had off in a couple weeks. I even did a Sunday a couple weeks ago so the paychecks have been pretty healthy for me personally even if the company itself ain't that healthy. It's not like the supersized paychecks are being banked though, they're just allowing me to stay ahead of all those things that come up that never seem to find their way into the annual budget. Things like property taxes, Car Insurance for the '56, Annual dues to the Whiskey Creek Condo Association, dental bills etc........so, at least for the moment, we're on a fairly even keel.
I've been enjoying my birthday present (the Ipod) immensely. Probably one of the best presents I've ever gotten. For a music collector / lover like myself this thing is quite an amazing piece of work. I have almost 6.5 days worth of music loaded up on it now and I've still hardly scratched the capacity of the thing. It's a gas to just turn it on, hit shuffle and see what pops up. It's like the ultimate personal radio station without any of the BS advertising. At my current rate of download I expect it's gonna take thru the summer, if not longer, to fill the thing up. Once I run out of room then I guess I'll have to start thinning the herd and skim off some of the stuff I can live without.
I made the Ipod even more useful last night by buying a Griffen Roadtrip at Best Buy. Now, I can play the Ipod in the truck / van / car by plugging the Ipod into the Road trip and then plugging that into the cigarette lighter in the vehicle. You program the Road Trip to an empty FM frequency and then turn on the Ipod and the radio and it'll play right thru the vehicles sound system. It's damn near magic. It also can broadcast the Ipod from the computer to my home stereo system by plugging the transciever into the computer but I haven't been able to get that to work yet and I suspect that it's because my receiver is a dinosaur, just too old to be compatible with the new technology. I wrote Griffen to ask 'em about it, but I figure a new receiver is gonna be the only way to get up to speed in the house. That'll have to wait until some other things are taken care of first..........
A couple weeks ago I attended AutoRama in Grand Rapids, took some shots and wandered around the place for about 3 hours checking out the awesome cars. Ran into some guys I knew from the summer shows, who were showing their cars and talked with them for awhile. Watched a guy do a magic show that was pretty entertaining and then headed for home.
Today the plan was to get up fairly early and head up to the campsite to cut up some firewood and goof around for awhile, but the getting up early part didn't happen and it was just too chilly to feel like cutting wood once I got there so what really happened was that I got up about noon, loaded up Ipod, camera gear and chain saw and headed north up 31. Got up there about 2pm and wandered around a bit taking some pics. Decided that cutting wood could wait until early spring, when the snow was not an issue. They had quite a bit more up there than we have around here. Enough in fact that I couldn't get the pickup up the hill to park it. I got it off the road and that was about it. After surveying the campsite I got back in the truck and rode around the whole campground, shooting some pics and taking in the view. About 4:30 I decided it was time to head back south for home.
That's about it for now I guess. No big plans to talk about, nothing note worthy in the immediate future. One day at a time until things start to green up again.
Later.
TC
posted by Tom Eckels at 7:55 PM
2 Comments:
So being a grandpa again for the third time in 22 months isn't exciting??? :)
LOL! Well it's kind of an abstract thing kiddo when I'm so far away from where al the excitement is, but yes, that is pretty exciting.
And seeings how you're gonna harrass me I'm gonna return the favor and ask when the heck you're gonna get that website of yours updated and lookng good??
;-P
Post a Comment
<< Home