If you have read about my childhood shenanigans on this blog, you have seen me mention Raton, NM.  I just ran across this slide show on Flickr that you have to see.  There are over a hundred pictures, so sit back and enjoy the views!




Hint:  Hover over the slide show and click the square containing arrows in the 4 corners to view it full screen.

   
    A funny thing happened a couple of weeks after I bought the Yaris...my employer announced a major layoff.  Within a month, they went out of business altogether.  Dang!  Oh, well.  I did some quick figuring and discovered that I could survive on unemployment and still keep the car.  But it would be tight.  I don't live an exorbitant lifestyle, so there wasn't a whole lot I could cut from my budget.

    Luckily, I only wound up drawing one week of unemployment.  No, I didn't get another full time job, per se, but I did manage to land a consulting contract.  It is a contract to provide manufacturing support, product testing, product quality assurance, product evaluation, system evaluation, device design support, technical training, product failure analysis and other miscellaneous product support for the family of a product that I originally designed for this customer (while employed by my former employer).  This should take the better part of a year while the client ramps up production at a contract manufacturer.

    So, contract work is better than no work.  And I'm certainly no stranger to working from home.  I spent my first 4 or 5 years working from home after getting hired by my last employer.  There will be some travel, of course, but the client pays for all of that.  The biggest drawbacks to consulting is paying for my own health insurance and having to calculate and pay all the federal and state income taxes myself.  The health insurance for myself is bad enough, but I am also covering my two kids, who are full time college students.  It's about like making two more house payments each month (relax, I have a cheap house).  Still, I am indeed grateful for the work.

    Thinking back, it is almost as if I have been preparing to be a consultant for quite some time now.  I started a home business back in 2001 after getting laid off from a corporate job.  It provided no real income to speak of - at least not enough for me to make a living.  But it got me to set up a home office, purchase accounting and invoicing software, and to start thinking along the lines of working for myself.  Heck, I even upgraded my wireless phone earlier this year to a smartphone with Windows Mobile and Office Mobile.  Did I need it at the time?  No, but it is now proving to be quite a valuable tool for consulting with this client...tracking tasks and reminding me of weekly teleconference meetings.  This could turn out to be a good thing!

    I've now owned exactly two new cars in my life.  My first car was a used Toyota Celica, but the first actual new car I ever bought was a 1979 Toyota Corolla SR5.  I bought it at the age of 18 when I was a senior in high school.  It was yellow with black louvers on the rear window (remember those?), a 5-speed manual transmission, a black interior and no AC.  No power anything.  AM-FM radio with no cassette (CDs weren't around in '79).  I drove the dawg out of that little Corolla...for the next 18 years.  I kid you not - I was 18 when I bought it and I was 36 when I sold it!  

    The next two cars were purchased used.  One was a Ford Tempo and the most recent was a '99 Saturn.  Both were good cars and I got a lot of use out of them.  Yeah, there were repairs that had to be made along the way, but you expect that with used cars.  The Saturn started losing oil in recent months.  Well, I finally found the oil - in my coolant reservoir!  It wasn't just oily-looking coolant - it looked like oil that you would drain out of the oil pan.  Great - a blown head gasket.  Only it wasn't a head gasket.  It was a cracked cylinder head.  And a cracked radiator.  And, oh yeah, all the hoses needed replacing, as well.  I would have been willing to put maybe $1500 into it, but this was going to be $2200+.  I told them to take it off the rack and I'd pick it up after work (it still ran great, but I knew it wouldn't keep running for long).  

    When I got to the Saturn dealer, they didn't have anything I was interested in - new or used.  They had a crappy selection due to all the "cash for clunkers" deals they had been making.  The Saturn wouldn't qualify as a clunker since it was still getting about 30 MPG.  This was after 5:00 PM and I was determined I'd find a car that day.  I had to, since I live in one county and work in the next.  So it was on to the next dealer.  I had been looking at new cars on line at work (during lunch, of course) since Saturn had called me with the bad news that morning.  I was considering looking at a Kia or a Hyundai.  Toyota was another possibility and was in fact the very next dealer I came to.  They had about 3 Yarises...Yari...to choose from.  One was white (shows dirt), one was black (shows dirt and is way too hot), and one was silver.  As you can see from the picture, I opted for the silver one.  That is the picture from the dealer's website for the listing of my car.  

    I'm not crazy about the looks of a Yaris.  Its just a subcompact sedan.  But it had the features I've grown accustomed to (keyless entry, electric windows, cruise control, AC), plus some I've never actually had, such as a CD player and an audio jack for mp3 players.  The car has a surprisingly smooth ride for such a small vehicle.  Its gas mileage is rated as 29 city, 35 highway.  I checked it the other day and got 34 MPG.  That is a combination of interstate driving and city driving - with the AC cranked up.  I think the Yaris and I will get along just fine.

    

This song is about the troubles in this life and the promise of the one that comes after.<< MORE >>

My sisters and I were cleaning out the attic in Dad's home recently and found lots of artifacts from our childhood.  In addition to just about every birthday card we ever made for our parents, we also found lots of old school papers (including report cards, yikes!).  There was an entire suitcase full of my old school papers - class notes from US History, graded papers from 7th grade & up, and one curious picture mounted on construction paper.  It appeared to be a full page picture cut out of a magazine (see below).  I'm guessing it was from Omni Magazine, or ...<< MORE >>

Reverend Fred V. Ellis, 82, of Hickory, went to be with his Lord on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 at the Lutheran Home-Hickory West. Born on April 12, 1926 in Mitchell County, NC, he was the son of the late Joseph Mack Ellis and Naomi Randolph Ellis. He graduated from Mars-Hill College, Carson-Newman College and the Southeastern Theological Seminary. He was a bombsight mechanic in the United States Army and retired from the textile industry...<< MORE >>

Stay in the car, Joe

Yeah, right!  How many times did I hear that one as a child?  How many times did I ignore that parental order?  But I was too adventurous and had absolutely no fear.  Before you start thinking my parents were negligent, please remember this happened in the 60s.  It was pretty common for a parent to leave kids in the car while they ran in to the local grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread.  This was in a very small town, also.  Dirt road main street small.  Even Mayberry had ...<< MORE >>

Okay, I've been slack in posting to this blog over the last few weeks. Free time is hard to come by right now. This is partly due to a music project we are doing at church. The choir and orchestra are working on a cantata kind of deal and there are guitar parts in it. Some of it is acoustic, and some electric (including a few solo parts). Yikes! So all my spare time has been spent practicing. So far things aren't really gellin' during practice with the orchestra. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime, DomainOfficials.com just announced that we can now post to our QuickBlogs via email, which is how I am attempting to send this post. Perhaps I will be able to add some quickie blog posts using this method...you know, post a thought during lunch hour. Let's hope it works!

Growing up in the 60s & 70s exposed me to quite a mix of toys and games.  We all learned about the latest craze from the same source - TV commercials!  Being the child of minister / missionary, TV was often my only experience with many of the toys and games.  We didn't have a very big budget for toys at Christmas time or on birthdays.  Often the more expensive gifts came from relatives back in North Carolina.  But I did get a hands-on experience with some of the toys and games through the other neighborhood kids.

Our generation got to experience some toy ideas that were so bad that they ...<< MORE >>

Disclaimer:

DON'T PLAY WITH FIRE.  BE CAREFUL WITH ROCKETS - MODEL OR OTHERWISE.  'NUFF SAID.

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Since last week's article about fire, I remembered a few other fire-related stories.  Hence the title of this week's article:  Playing with Fire - Part II.

Paper Balloons

I'm pretty sure Philip was the person who told me about these.  They required an open space away from any dry vegetation or anything else that might be flammable.  And there shouldn't be any wind at all.

Paper balloons were made from a large sheet of newspaper, such as the piece that was used to form the front and back pages.  It needed ...

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