Good Morning.
Thursday already!
CP-Via-1406 by Edmund, on Flickr
Colorful CP-VIA
Cheers, Ed
The Cheese Roll is a simple “snack/ comfort food” that is a Southland and South Otago tradition, and no self-respecting Southern café would not serve them in some form.
Hi JaBear,
Sounds like my kind of food! Thanks for the recipe.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
up831Bear: those cheese rolls look delicious! Are those like pancakes or crepes wrapped around cheese?
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
Good Morning All,
Typical New England weather. mid 60's yesterday and 25F this morning. I'll have a regular in my to go cup please and a blueberry bagels toasted with cream cheese please Chloe.
MLC We have alarms with video for the shop here and storage and just an alarm on the house. they all have phone notification when disarmed or tripped. The video can be called up on an I-phone to go through the cameras and check things. The alarms can be remotely armed or disarmed as well. So long as no-one hacks the phone, very useful.
Ricky - What ever happened to the concept of your rights end when they infringe mine? It's not on risking someone elses health just because you have some personal problem with the rules. I'm surprised the visit from the police didn't settle the matter.
Three day week here seems to be working. We are going through the paperwork with the state for the hourly people to see if we can qualify for the semi unemployment program. They will make up the 10 hours a week we cut back and not jam us up on compensation so we went for it. Last downturn in 08 we didn't even shorten anyones hours but we had a 20% surcharge added on the business tax and unemployment compensation fund so I figured we'll get dinged for something anyway. I'm not looking forward to the invoice for all this nationally either. I will stop there as I see Vinny raising his head at the back table.
Still doing the one corner backround building. I have the last two walls ready to add to the existing parts so we'll see how that all goes tonight. I may have scored a 50" x 99" x .060" sheet of white styrene on closeout from the sign shop supplier. If I did, I'll never use it all so put your requests in now. I've just now reached the end of a 48" x 48" x .060" white sheet I have had for a decade. Works very well for walls and flat roofs if used on the roofs with bracing. Stay tuned.
Time to go back and start measuring wishbone parts so I can make some drawings for the machinist. Ciao, J.R.
last night I was outside from about 2:00 AM until 3:30 AM watching the meteor shower.
Not very much activity... I only saw about a half dozen in 90 minutes.
We hit 95 degrees today, and broke the record of 94 set back in 1944. The heat wave and drought are pretty bad. We need some rain soon. My yard is dead.
I went and did laundry today for the first time in 5 weeks. It took almost three hours to get it all done. I had so many loads that by the time the last one was started, there was only 5 minutes left on the one that was started first.
The Tampa Bay Bucaneers management have apparently been driven insane by isolation. They just spent millions and gave up draft picks to pick up a pair of has-beens for a premium price. One of them even had to come out of retirement. Who pays, plus gives up a draft pick, to get a former NFL player? NUTS! I guess Brady and Gronk heard Florida was a great place to retire. Tampa could be building a great team, but instead we are buying worn out retreads. Bummer.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Hi Everyone,
Bear: those cheese rolls look delicious! Are those like pancakes or crepes wrapped around cheese?
My son told me about six-sigma last year. I looked into it and was thinking of maybe signing up for training, but as time went on, I started having second thoughts because this training alters your perception of processes and I wasn't sure that would be a good thing. It's one thing to explore new ideas and concepts to improve processes, and quite another to have your perception of how processes work altered artificially. At least that's my take on it.
Went to Target with my wife to pick up an order. I asked about 91% isopropyl alcohol for paint stripper and the shelves were bare. Oh well, Sign of the times.
Jim (with a nod to Mies Van Der Rohe)
April?
Here is the scene in my back yard today, just before sundown:
April-Snow by Edmund, on Flickr
I really don't need any further advice to shelter indoors.
To the Trains!
Good evening all.
Zoe - A very big coke float please. Thanks.
MLC - Glad those miscreants didn't cause too many issues.
Ken - Glad you are still above ground.
W*^k - The employee who was extremely disrespectful yesterday today stated he will not be doing the masks longer than a few days. I responded that if he wants me to continue showing up, he will indeed wear it. We are already short two people, so if I walk, there will not be enough employees to continue operating the store. (It would leave only him and the owner.)
Trains - Still working on just small projects, no layout nor is the space ready due to the stoppage of the remodel project. I might just set up a small loop to run something though.
Hope all are well, and all enjoy the night!
Ricky W.
HO scale Proto-freelancer.
My Railroad rules:
1: It's my railroad, my rules.
2: It's for having fun and enjoyment.
3: Any objections, consult above rules.
Eveing Diners
Flo, give the gang and I a please and Dirk half a dog treat.
Just wanted to stop in and let you folks know I am above ground and breathing.
Later, Ken and Dirks say's Woof, Woof.
Edit Seems I am on the top of the page, Flo I will pick up there tap's.
I hate Rust
Charlie, sorry your missus is having issues with the plague. Not much you can do except be patient with her. One of our guys put himself in hospital obsessing about the virus and I think the hospital is the last place I'd like to be just now.
Kevin - Is the job $1600.00 in agravation if you do it yourself ? You could always get a second opinion.....
I just received an estimate for ceiling repair on a 480 square foot garage and 200 square foot lanai.
To scrape/remove all the old texture (including a bad repair), fix the sags in the ceiling drywall sheeting, seal everything with Kilz-2, and apply new texture is $1,600.00, which is about double what I thought it would be.
Ouch.
Good Afternoon,
A nice sunny day here with a temp of about 55F.
My wife is really having a hard time coping with the pandemic stress and it seems I'm one of her major problems. I was talking to a neighbour over the back fence and I'm sure we were at least 6 feet apart. My wife thinks we need to be at least 30 feet away and now I'm in the doghouse again. Not sure we can survive this.
Ed, forgot to mention earlier those nice shots of the CN Northern. I doubt Rapido will do a U2g given the fiasco True Line Trains had with theirs a few years ago. They made 1000 of them and while they were beautifully detailed, they had major quality control issues. I sent back 2 and got a refund from the shop from which I purchased it. I made a third try at one when they were dumping them for $400 thinking the later production ones would be better. I did manage to get one that runs great. The detail is truly amazing. The sound is good too with a speaker under the cab as well as in the tender. That experience was a major cause of True Line eventually going under.
I have some things to pick up at Home Depot but not sure I should leave my wife alone. I don't know why I just forget all we discuss and just charge ahead.
CN Charlie
In better news, we found a good butcher shop nearby. Monday I went for steak, and he gave me a free loaf of scrapple. I'd never had it, so we tried it this morning. I looked up how to cook it, but they told me to cut it too thin and cook it too hot. It ended up dried out and even a bit burnt. Not a bad taste, even so.,
The spicy breakfast sausage I also got was really delicious.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Gaaaa! 6 Sigma. We all had to go through that back before I retired. At one point they announced the company-wide cost savings from the previous year. It was, well, the entire corporate profit for the year. Sort of says that without 6 Sigma we, a large, profitable aerospace company, would have made nothing?
The government, our biggest customer, insisted on some kind of process improvement methodology for us to even bid.
I remember one guy who went off to become a Six Sigma Expert. When he came back from all that training, nobody wanted him back. I don't know what ever happened to him.
Tinplate ToddlerIs that still around?
6-sigma? Unfortunately yes. Just like a virus. They never seemed to develop a vaccine for it. It will eventually die off on its own, only to be reincarnated under a different name as some bright individual's new cost improvement program.
Be glad you didn't have to sit through days of school administrators' conferences or teachers' conferences.
There's a reason we drank so much in the hotel rooms in the evenings.
York1 John
SeeYou190I really do not miss being employed. The further I get away from it, the worse and worse it seems.
There comes a time when you will be so busy you start to wonder how you were able to fit in work into your schedule!
I remember the day my boss wanted to do me a favor and send me off to a 4-week management training in Switzerland. I told him if he wanted to get rid of me to just fire me instead of waisting precious company money and my time on such a nonsense. At that time I had 20 years of management experience on my clock and had over 1,600 staff reporting to me. It´s OK for young folks to go through this type of training at the beginning of their career, but not when you have more practical experience than the teacher.
Happy times!
Ulrich (aka The Tin Man)
"You´re never too old for a happy childhood!"
maxmanYes, you say that now, but I'll bet you sang a different tune when it was your job to go around and badger everyone else to do a (useless) project so that they could become green belts.
With my previous employer, in order to move into the position that I wanted, I had to be a Green Belt, and become a Black Belt in one year. It was a terrible excercize, but in the end I received credit for saving the company $500,000.00, which was a complete falsehood of data. Nonsense all the way.
I "recruited" three green belts, and we all did next to nothing. I handled the project the same way the girls and I did Science Fair Projects. The worst part was the weekly 2 hour conference calls about methods and measures.
My youngest daughter, who was a senior in high school at the time, actually did a lot of the work, and turned in the project for her "Future MBA" class. We both got "A"s for our "efforts"!
Yes... Six Sigma is still around. My previous employer still lists it on the ten Business Operating Principles.
I really do not miss being employed. The further I get away from it, the worse and worse it seems.
moelarrycurly4we figure it was the druggie miscreants ( riff raff) next door.
Probably 99% of all the burglaries in our area are from drug users. They ignore almost everything except loose cash. The problem is they cause hundreds of dollars of damage to get a few dollars cash.
Hopefully an alarm system will help.
Garry, nice pictures!
I'm afraid on my trips I am normally too busy watching, and I forget to take good pictures. It's usually in the motel that night that I regret not getting a photo of something.
Good morning, everybody ....
MLC .... Sorry to hear about th situation with your place in MS. I can't understand criminals. I'm glad the local people helped you out.
Meanwhile, Back In BC ........
Here are four more photos from our 2002 trip on the Rocky Mountaineer. .. The first three are as we approached Kamloops where the train stops for the night. Passnegers stay in hotels, and the train leaves in the morning. .. Kamloops gets very little rainfall. It is the desert of Canada. ....
The fourth photo is the next morning as the train continues east ward toward Calgary on CP tracks. The train was split in Kamloops, and the other section went on CN tracks to Japser.
We continued to enjoy having our seat at the front of the leading dome car where we had some great views.
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
Good Afternoon!
More dogfights high up in the sky above our house! Those hawks are busy preying on their victims!
Strange things happen in the times of the corona virus! Yesterday, I received an email from Kalmbach´s customer service department announcing delays in the international deliveries of the printed magazine. To "soften" the inconvenience, they´d provide a free of charge access to the online version. Guess what was in today´s mail? The thinnest copy of MR I have ever seen! 74 pages, out of which 20 were advertisements. Well, better than nothing.
Stay safe & healthy!
Good morning from flyover country.
A sure sign of spring: The cropdusters are working. I can hear one right now spraying the ground about a half-mile from here.
Several years ago I laid down some brick walkways. Over the past years of freeze-thaw cycles, they have become wavy. That's my project for the rest of this week -- remove bricks and level the sand, then reinstall. Since there's no cutting of bricks with this, it shouldn't take long. That was the worst of the original project -- cutting bricks to fit.
Have a good day.
Ricky,
Sorry to hear you experienced that at work. It's incredible how many people can't see past the end of their own noses and believe they are experts at everything. Good for you to stand your ground.
All,
The w*#k week is half way over. As far as I'm concerned, that's cause for celebration. Pick one. They're on me.
Over 100 different beers on tap, most (all?) of them craft. There has to be something for everyone.
Cheers!
Mike
Trains? Oh Yeah... Trains...
GUESS WHERE #422
ROARING!
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
Is that still around? Like all rather static, number-based management philosophies and tools, which usually have a short half-life, I thought it had already disappeared into the nirvana of useless parctices. The effects of said management ways we now see.
SeeYou190I would like to kindly ask our moderators to add this to the list of topics that cannot be discussed in the diner. -Kevin (6S Blackbelt)
Yes, you say that now, but I'll bet you sang a different tune when it was your job to go around and badger everyone else to do a (useless) project so that they could become green belts.
I remember when there was a period of time when drivers would flash their lights at you if you exceeded the 55 mph speed limit. Now they are nowhere to be found. Same thing with blackbelts.
I'm surprised that you would admit to being one.
Shame. Shame.
gmpullmanHere's a little keepsake for you. Wallet sizes available
Any darts come with that?
Hope all are well, and are all safe during these turbulent times.
W*^k - Had a discussion today, as the new mask rule (went into effect Sunday evening, is now an mandated governor order that all employees and customers of essential businesses in Pennsylvania, the only ones allowed to be open in the state, wear appropriate face masks, under penalty of fines and/or other penalties as needed.) was not only not being followed or enforced, but there was a ton of disrespect directed at me for actually following it. It all came to a very ugly head today, with another employee becoming very unprofessional in front of a customer, and being extremely disrespectful in the process. I was ready then and there to walk out and not go back. I did tell the boss exactly how I felt about it, and that, while I really like w*^king there, if it did not change then and there, I would indeed walk.
Now, there are signs posted everywhere throughout the store, that the mask rule required by the governor will be strictly enforced, with both employees and customers.
It was being followed for most of the day, by all, right until about 5 minutes before a Pennsylvania state trooper walked in the door....
Warnings were issued, and the rule requiring face masks looks to be staying this time.
I sure hope it is, because I will not play this game of disrespectful treatment over the fact I have asthma, or over the fact I obey the local authorities directions. If need be, I will still walk out.
I'm now headed to bed, so will post more tomorrow.
maxmanWhat plant was that?
Cleveland Wire Works, 1931 - 2016.
GE Shutdown Saturday 105_edited-1 by Edmund, on Flickr
Here's a little keepsake for you. Wallet sizes available:
Bobby_edited-1 by Edmund, on Flickr
I forget when his "tenure" was. We were going through managers faster than a revolving door could spit them out. Had to have been '81-82 I recall. Jim McNerney was the other leg of the tripod.
Crazy times, for sure.
Regards, Ed