In the old days when I was mad, I would put on some Cream, turn it too loud, and let my frustrations out vicariously through Eric Clapton. Now days I just pick up one of my four guitars and play the blues. It's made me a fairly decent blues guitarist. All that hate energy can be channeled to some extent. It's arguably a shame to waste it. As a EE once told me, It's all a matter of perspective.
You know what; I truly think you have a future career as a writer.
But build your front porch first, and have few martinis, shaken not stirred, without alcohol.
* One question, and you don't have to answer it if you don't feel like it:
As an extension of your therapeutic processing, have you ever extended it to people? ...You know, ...beating on people you don't like instead of objects.
I'm simply humorous here; but you sure gave me some great laughs reading your writings. And it's true what I said about you giving a shot @ writing.
I tell you this; I've been reading all over the world, and you sure are a great writer. ...Unique, one-of-a-kind.
Say Hello to Sherri from me, would you please. ...The Canadian Frenchman Bob. ... D'un Ocean a l'Autre
How much was that job paying, $12 an hour. ...And how much to be a guard, @ your nearest county jail center?
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It might be a shame to waste it, but if must be vented, if allowed to build up bad things happen. I have gotten a lot better at channeling it in my later years, and in this case it is used to destroy the root balls that must be destroyed in order to kill the weeds. If not they will be back with a vengeance next year.
For me it was Jimi. Loud....did the neighbors call the cops??? Yes, so many times they quit showing up
Speaking of Cream, Ginger Baker has a new album out. I find it amazing that a life long narcotics addict can still play the drums at all.
Ginger Baker - Front And Center - "Why" Live Video - YouTube
It took maybe the first 25 years or so of working at Motorola and being very frustrated to realize that you can't win. Two of my former bosses worked their butts off only to die a short time after they retired. Allowing stress to build up will do that. Jack Welsh, CEO of GE wrote a book (called Top Grading?) that convinced many companies to rate their employees against each other on a relative scale, and reward the best ones, and lay off the worst. Motorola adopted this system, and like most large organizations it was inequitably applied. We were ranked against our friends by people who had no real knowledge of who we are or what we did. My department was ranked by people in Chicago that I never met.
Somewhere around 2002? a new reality show appeared on TV, Survivor. It was obvious to me....life in a big corporation worked the same way. Screw up and make someone look bad, get voted off (laid off), don't pull your own weight as part of the team, get voted off. Do TOO GOOD at something that makes someone look bad, get voted off! Yes, the key to staying at Mot longer than all of my old friends, was to strive for the middle of mediocrity. Also, like the reality show, figure out who is in the alliance of power, and NEVER threaten any of them even unintentionally by outperforming them.
Some research led to the fact that the show, and others like Big Brother, and The Amazing Race are designed around game theory. Specifically noncooperative game play. Want to learn more, read John Nash's "Non-Cooperative Games". More info here:
Game Theory .net - News stories by field of study
Despite my sometimes menacing appearance, I have never been in a physical fight, or hit another person. I have called the police once, and had them called on me once.
When I was younger I was more impetuous but time has changed me a little - now I like killing slowly. It's called torture. I take my time and I do it indoors. I know it's pointless but this inner satisfaction to create mischief hasn't changed much over the years. What am I to do? The Universe is very much like me anyways.
Those who have followed my antics here know that I have been known to torture more than a few tubes. Some of this was to find their true limits, and some was, as said in an old John Wayne movie, "...but Judge, he just needed killin'".
Ever dream up a circuit, work on it for weeks, and it just refuses to work. Sometimes you just toss it into the "box full of broken dreams" but sometimes you prefer to just turn up the power supply and watch it DIE....slowly in a red glow!.....NOTE put some Lexan between you and the electrolytics and have a fire extinguisher nearby!
Sometimes the fire gods smile on you and teach you something. I built a line powered (with isolation transformer) guitar amp for the Hundred Buck Amp Challenge using tubes rated for 150 volts max. No matter what I did it just sounded lifeless. After about 2 weeks, I just sat back and cranked up the power supply for the execution ceremony.....the thing refused to die...in fact somewhere around 250 volts it started to ROCK.....It flat out screams on 320 volts. OK, I rewired the power supply as a voltage doubler, and it is still alive today running on 315 volts. I made a little wood case for it and played it for a few months, haven't blown a tube yet!
I did not think you where that menacing in person . Then again you have not seen what I work with . Have you got your computer up yet ? for that ni program ?
So, bitch slapping works with tubes also. Good to know.
I am always learning from your posts. Thanks George.
😀
I think I enjoy reading this thread more than the other one; the Universe Expansion one.
@ tubelab (George); your appearance and writings are some of the most peaceful ones I ever read and saw.
- We were talking about how we can invest some of our time therapeutically in happy retirement mode, by well applied physical strength on the garden, with an ax or pic or flames (gas) or weed whacker or by playing music or my blowing tubes or all that sort of blues/jazz when sometimes in life the going can rather look 'tuff enuff'. ...To release life pressure, stress induced moments.
You are certainly well build for your young age, and walking nude in the snow is good for your health.
We all have our own ways to relax and enjoy life; mine was to plant trees for almost thirty years. ....Going up over steep slopes (up to 90° sometimes) in any kind of weather (heavy rain, snow, 150km winds, extreme heat, bugs by the zillions, etc.), like totally devastated war zones over heavy slash, and planting on the edges of deadly precipices, with rocks down below @ 2,000 feett, and encountering death with grizzly bears, deadly vipers, cougars, t-rex, etc. ...and that is one of the toughest jobs to do here on the west coast. ...Physically, extremely demanding, and mentally, extremely challenging.
I broke many bones in my body from falls and all, and what's out there are forests of trees (I saw them many years after), with over two million trees, and some of them hundred feet tall.
I am one the most peaceful person on the universe (multiverse), and reforestation was kind of my therapy for me, like music too.
These were the hard working years, and nobody, nobody ever can take that away from me. ...Sure many of them tress will be cut and logged again, but my sweat will still remain impregnated in their trunks.
Retirement is the peace collected from years of all type of therapy, hard work, and extensive labor of love.
And money has absolutely nothing to do with it; it's a spiritual thing, not a material one.
You don't need money to create what truly counts on our planet, you only need that state-of-awareness. ...That's my view, and it's not a universal one, but a personal one.
All the money in the world would never truly compensate for all there is "equilibrium" of man's spirit and true freedom comin' from real life values.
What you do in retirement is what you are. The world around us is one tough world for many people living in different countries of the globe, and it is expanding exponentially into an Internet communication highway of growing information. ...Wide Web World.
Fifty years ago was different, five hundred years ago was different, five thousand years ago was different, five million years ago was different; tomorrow will be different, and five billion years from now.
We live in our times, we are slave of our time in space, and on our planet and on our continent and on our cities, our countrysides, our homes, our gardens, our lawns, our beds, our own dreams and all that jazz. ...And we share with billions of others.
Nobody is above nobody. ...And some are in deep need of help...
@ tubelab (George); your appearance and writings are some of the most peaceful ones I ever read and saw.
- We were talking about how we can invest some of our time therapeutically in happy retirement mode, by well applied physical strength on the garden, with an ax or pic or flames (gas) or weed whacker or by playing music or my blowing tubes or all that sort of blues/jazz when sometimes in life the going can rather look 'tuff enuff'. ...To release life pressure, stress induced moments.
You are certainly well build for your young age, and walking nude in the snow is good for your health.
We all have our own ways to relax and enjoy life; mine was to plant trees for almost thirty years. ....Going up over steep slopes (up to 90° sometimes) in any kind of weather (heavy rain, snow, 150km winds, extreme heat, bugs by the zillions, etc.), like totally devastated war zones over heavy slash, and planting on the edges of deadly precipices, with rocks down below @ 2,000 feett, and encountering death with grizzly bears, deadly vipers, cougars, t-rex, etc. ...and that is one of the toughest jobs to do here on the west coast. ...Physically, extremely demanding, and mentally, extremely challenging.
I broke many bones in my body from falls and all, and what's out there are forests of trees (I saw them many years after), with over two million trees, and some of them hundred feet tall.
I am one the most peaceful person on the universe (multiverse), and reforestation was kind of my therapy for me, like music too.
These were the hard working years, and nobody, nobody ever can take that away from me. ...Sure many of them tress will be cut and logged again, but my sweat will still remain impregnated in their trunks.
Retirement is the peace collected from years of all type of therapy, hard work, and extensive labor of love.
And money has absolutely nothing to do with it; it's a spiritual thing, not a material one.
You don't need money to create what truly counts on our planet, you only need that state-of-awareness. ...That's my view, and it's not a universal one, but a personal one.
All the money in the world would never truly compensate for all there is "equilibrium" of man's spirit and true freedom comin' from real life values.
What you do in retirement is what you are. The world around us is one tough world for many people living in different countries of the globe, and it is expanding exponentially into an Internet communication highway of growing information. ...Wide Web World.
Fifty years ago was different, five hundred years ago was different, five thousand years ago was different, five million years ago was different; tomorrow will be different, and five billion years from now.
We live in our times, we are slave of our time in space, and on our planet and on our continent and on our cities, our countrysides, our homes, our gardens, our lawns, our beds, our own dreams and all that jazz. ...And we share with billions of others.
Nobody is above nobody. ...And some are in deep need of help...
Yesterday I had a vision: Forming a Unit of selected group of individuals (from here @ diy), to perform tasks they love to do (as a team/work force), and get paid very well for the great beneficial services they provide to the entire community, planet.
The idea is good, the practicality very tough to materialize, but not impossible, insurmountable.
And that would encompass all the various skills from each one of us put all together to form one Unit, one collective force of smart and strong individuals.
The idea is good, the practicality very tough to materialize, but not impossible, insurmountable.
And that would encompass all the various skills from each one of us put all together to form one Unit, one collective force of smart and strong individuals.
I didn't either, but some do.....especially some of my daughters high school boyfriends 😀
I didn't know it at the time, until the cop that was called on me explained that I was an unwitting pawn in a racial game of "play the media". I was in Sanford Florida about a week after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin. A black woman started screaming that I was trying to run her over and kill her "four fu*&#ng kids". I should have known that a rational person would not refer to her own kids in that manner. She kept yelling at the 911 dispatcher not to send her "no white cop." Things went very wrong for her when they did.
Was it any coincidence that it was on the same day Sherri snapped this phone picture outside a comic book shop????
The PC is connected up, and I am typing this on it. The Blu-ray drive in it will not read either of the discs you gave me. I have a USB DVD drive that got dropped during the move, and it has troubles with the discs. Some files read very slowly (hours) while the drive makes crunching noises. Other files (the activator) will not read. I have two new internal DVD drives in a box somewhere, but I haven't found them yet.
It is good to know that you left your mark on the world, and your life counted for something. I used to think that I was helping to make the world a safer place by "advancing the state of the art in wireless communications" (my words, not Mot's), but the last few years have clouded that belief. It started when I formed a small 10 man "hit squad" to reduce the cost on the original iDEN pocket phone. (Mike, and Telus in CA). After several incremental cost reductions, I went to the boss and convinced him to allow me to redesign the entire phone. He agreed with a 1 year deadline. We brought in a new phone in 9 months that surpassed all goals and took $35 out of the product cost. It takes about 2 months of internal testing to get "ship acceptance." During that time the management did one of their major reorganizations. The new management cancelled the program because a new phone was coming, and "we won't sell many of those old ones." I had just wasted a year of my life, and from that moment on, we sold 1.2 MILLION of those old ones. The new management got voted off, and I left the phone group. In the 12 years since, very few of my projects ever made it into a product, so I kinda quit trying.
At least here, I think I am making a little headway at keeping the tubes lit, and maybe helping a few people understand electronics in general. I liked the long thread where I worked with a guy on the other side of the world (Australia) to develop a unique amplifier design. I still use that breadboard to test stuff, and we haven't seen the last of it. Ditto, Pete Millett's Engineers Amp. I am looking forward to the time and space where those things can become a bigger part of my life.
And hopefully put those skills you spent a lifetime developing to good use.
Not sure how it will all work, especially with the players scattered all over the globe, but I have made it work with amp design.
I have seen some cool world wide collaborations in the music world too...todays tech is cool, and tomorrows' will be awesome! I saw a music video where one player was in California, another was in NYC, and two were somewhere in Europe. Each played his part into a computer, and one person reassembled it all.
Attachments
Yes, stress build-up can do strange things. It is sometimes a good way to get the best out of you. Life is full of examples. I particularly like De Niro's way of blowing off steam in Taxi Driver. He was just an ordinary guy but....you never know.
I generally don't trust mellow/quiet guys that much. They are the most dangerous - you just don't see them coming.
Well this runs afoul of the 1st (and really only) rule of retirement...we work for the pleasure of it and do not exchange our time for money. When you work for pay you are no longer the master of your fate and you are not, in fact, retired.
I bet Sherri has some pretty good stories to tell, from her point of view, of the interaction between yourself and others ... 🙂,😉
Should be good, Bob ... just need a few to start throwing some balls, ideas into the air - who knows ...
It's really pretty boring stuff. I make a lot of noise and do some things that can scare people, but I am not an aggressive or reactionary person....unless alcohol is involved, which is why I gave that stuff up a long time ago. I saw a bumper sticker on a BMW that said "Instant A$$hole, just add alcohol." I realized that was me. My father was an abusive alcoholic, so I just said no.....That was over 30 years ago.
I guess we all have our own rules.....for me, it's schedules, bosses, and deadlines that I would like to live without.