It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about, it’s just that my writing muse seems to have gone on vacation to the islands when the weather started getting warmer. I think it’ll be easier just to write bullet points rather than paragraphs since I can’t even gather my thoughts into an actual timeline. Such are the perils of journaling so infrequently…
• On Thursday of last week I rode up to the Winston-Salem area to a semi-annual User’s Group meeting for the engineering software I use on my job. Three of us from work attended, it was held at the race shops for Richard Childress Racing and in addition to the software presentations we had the opportunity to tour the shops and museum. I need to upload the photos I took of the museum.
• My air conditioner has been giving me trouble. When we arrived home from our Easter trip the house was hot and the A/C was having trouble pulling the temperatures down. We called for service, they came out and put in refrigerant and suggested changing the filters (which weren’t that dirty anyway). It never seemed to cool properly so three weeks later we called again. This time they checked for leaks and found the evaporator coil leaking. They added more refrigerant and ordered a new coil. The weather turned very warm again this weekend and the A/C was again having trouble keeping up, I hope they get the new coil installed this week. A cold front is supposed to come through here this afternoon which will help things a bit, but yesterday the A/C was running constantly and never cooling the house down enough for the thermostat to shut it down.
• I went to the firing range Saturday. I had some pistols that I had never fired, I wanted to run a couple of magazines through them. I was considering selling the Five-seveN pistol since I had bought it at a very good price and could more than double my money if I sold it. I thought I might put the money toward the A/C repair bill, but I needed to make sure it functioned properly before I sold it. Of course I found it to be the most accurate pistol I have, I put most of a 20 round magazine into a pattern the size of my clenched fist at 15 yards while rapid firing. Makes it hard to sell when it’s so easy for me to shoot so accurately. I’m definitely selling the Beretta Cougar in .40S&W caliber though. I’m just not a .40 cal person, even with the Beretta which has a heavy metal frame and a rotating barrel to tame recoil I find that it recoils more than either of my polymer .45 caliber pistols. It’s not unpleasant or hard to control, it’s just not my cup of tea. I originally purchased it as a pistol to keep beside the bed since it has night sights, but I picked up an FNP-9M with night sights last year at work at a very good price so the Beretta is expendable. It’s too large to keep in my car and slip on as my concealed carry weapon so it’s redundant now. I have a Ruger revolver in .357 Magnum for a woods gun and .40 is a little puny for a woods gun in bear country anyway.
• They had another layoff at work Friday, more fallout from losing the M240B machine gun contract. Only one person in Engineering has been let go so far, one of the CAD drafters.
• While on the subject of layoffs, my former employer back in Tennessee had a major layoff last week. They had been bought out by a competitor in 2004 when I left but the new owners surprised everyone by leaving the group in Tennessee for the past six years. About six months ago the company that had purchased the old company was itself merged with another competitor, Stanley Tools. Stanley announced last week that they were consolidating all the Product Engineering functions into the group in Towson, MD and would be shutting down the Engineering group in Tennessee. Very few people were given the opportunity to transfer, most were out of work as of last week. I feel badly for them, this is a horrible time to be out of work. That was exactly what I expected to happen in the summer of 2004 when I grabbed the first available life preserver that floated past at that time.
• Besides going to the firing range this weekend I also changed the oil in my wife’s car, smoked a pork tenderloin for pulled pork, and barbecued hamburgers. Other than that, my weekend was uneventful. I finished changing her oil on Saturday afternoon then showered and relaxed while watching the NASCAR race on TV the rest of the evening.
• The boss is out of town this week. Actually he’s out of the country, he’s visiting our Belgian overlords to discuss some of our projects. I have a full slate of work to keep me busy while he’s away but I did sneak away from it long enough to write this large catch-up entry. If I think of something more I’ll post again later. |
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