Dietzgen Microglide Log Log Slide Rule

Comment: Found on Ebay (and purchased).

I used a slide rule all through college. These were pre-calculator days. It was amazing how fast financial and other math work could be accomplished with a slide rule. Mine back then was a Pickett yellow aluminum.

Sadly I've forgotten all the intricacies of the slide rule knowledge I once used. I bought this Dietzgen and just received it today. It was manufactured in 1959. Oh what a beaut it is!

(Bert ... I need to show this to you!)

More on slide rule usage here

Hudson River Plane Landing (US Airways 1549) Animation with Audio

HT: Boomer in the Pew

15 year anniversary

Today is my 15 year anniversary with Norwest / Wells Fargo. I thought my readers would find it interesting as to how I arrived at this point.

I graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a double major in economics and finance in 1971. Immediately I applied to graduate school to get my MBA. I was accepted into graduate school with a full scholarship. Instead of going this route I became a campus minister with Campus Crusade for Christ.

I served on the University of Buffalo campus for the 1971-72 school year. Looking back I was so green as a Christian (having been saved in 1969) that from my perspective today I was way too young and inexperienced to serve in that capacity.

My Pastor back at Westwood Baptist Church (Cheviot OH) was encouraging me to go to Seminary. I left CCC after 1 year and worked at the church for the summer and then went to Tennessee Temple (Chattanooga TN).

I gave up after 1 semester. The culture shock of being at a fundamentalist seminary in the South was too much for me. I don't blame Tennessee Temple but I was not a good fit.

In January 1973 I began looking for a job (a career job). I worked at Chattanooga public schools during the day and then would type up resume letters at night. I had borrowed a typewriter from the school and each night would work well past midnight typing letters and then mailing them at the post office at 2 or 3 in the morning. I desperately wanted to move back to Cincinnati and so applied at companies like P&G, etc. I had no takers. Along they way I applied to IBM (I think I mailed my resume to Armonk NY). The Chattanooga office called me up for an interview. I literally only had one tattered suit but I guess I did OK. Next the Tampa office flew me down and interviewed me. I was hired in February 1973 as a computer salesman trainee.

IBM was good for me, I made very good money plus met my lovely wife who was an Engineer with IBM.

In the Fall of 1976 we moved to Pittsburgh. I took a job with Digital Equipment Corporation and Kathee took a job with Mellon Bank. I was a large systems salesmen. Kathee programmed the Mellon ATM transaction system in Assembler language.

Shortly after arriving in Pittsburgh we became very active in Bible Baptist Church of Plum Boro, PA. One evening I told Kathee that I wanted to be a Baptist minister. We were not in agreement about that idea (we had just purchased a home) and so we resolved to pray about that idea for a long time. That summer Kathee became as convinced as I was. We took a summer vacation to look at Grace Seminary in Winona Lake IN and Grand Rapids Baptist in Michigan. We decided that Grand Rapids would be the favorable route for us.

We worked for another full year preparing ourselves financially, emotionally, and spiritually. Kathee and I both took correspondence courses via Moody Bible Institute.

In the Summer of 1978 we sold our home in Pittsburgh and moved to Grand Rapids. Kathee was rehired by IBM as an Engineer and IBM provided our moving expenses.

For 2 years I went to Seminary full time and Kathee worked full time. It was an EZ life. Nearing graduation I had 2 job (ministry) offers. One was to be the youth Pastor of Good News Baptist in Grand Rapids, the other was to be the discipleship Pastor in Haddon Heights New Jersey. We felt blessed by the Lord to have two options when many of my seminary buddies had none.

We moved to Haddon Heights New Jersey in August of 1980. We lived in a parsonage for a couple of months and then purchased a home in Cherry Hill, NJ. We were at Haddon Heights Baptist for 3 years.

Our next church was Moorestown Bible Church (New Jersey). I served as the Pastor for three years there.

In April of 1987 we moved across country to South Holly Baptist Church in Littleton Colorado were I served as the Senior Pastor for 9 years.

Shortly after arriving in Colorado I broke my neck in a trampoline accident. This was very serious and left me paralyzed from the neck down. I had one of those (I hesitate to call it miraculous for theological reasons) unusual God blessed recoveries. I am in the 95th percentile of recovery from a spinal injury of my nature. This means that only approximately 5% had a recovery with a better outcome than my own. Of all the C-4/C-5 injured people I only know personally one whose recovery was better than my own.

I stayed at South Holly for 8 1/2 years after my accident. The pay was sporadic. In 1989, Kathee went back to work as a programmer for Rocky Mountain Motor Tariff Bureau. In 1991 Kathee moved over to Norwest (which had just acquired United Bank of Colorado).

In the Spring of 1993 finances at the church were even more tight than before. As I recollect, I worked that summer without any pay or very low pay. I worried all summer about the church's finances and meeting our (the church's obligations). In September 1993 I took a job with International Multifoods as a computer programmer trainee for their VSA branch in Colorado. I really think I got the job because I was handicapped. I know at the very least that being handicapped got my foot in the door. I was interviewed by HR and then my second interview was with a Christian technology manager.

My church was understanding and even accepting of this arrangement. I continued to preach the AM, the Wednesday night and teach Sunday school. Another ordained man in the church preached Sunday evenings. We both served as bi-vocational pastors.

I served in this role for 2 years. It was hectic. I prepared sermons and lessons at night. I produced the church bulletin every Saturday morning. Dan, my associate, and I did church visitation. The church stabilized financially and we were able to pay all the bills and continue missionary support.

About a week after commencing with VSA (International Multifoods), I was told that I would need to work 60 hours a week. Because I was non-exempt I made some good overtime. My work schedule was to drive to the bus stop, take the bus downtown, eat breakfast the McDonalds and arrive at work at 6 a.m.

After 6 months this schedule was becoming too much and change was needed.

In 1994 Kathee became aware of a job opening at Norwest. I interviewed for this position and was hired in February and started the first Monday of March 1994.

My hiring manager, Jeff Williams, is a super guy. He has since moved to Minneapolis and I see him frequently. My first job at Norwest was as a DASD (Direct Access Storage Device) manager. Our team managed mainframe storage. I learned JCL, IBM mainframe utility programs, the MVS operating system and file systems, REXX, PL1, COBOL, CICS, DB2, and some MVS assembler language. My tutorial on MVS utilities is found at www.jrpeet.com.

In 1996, we felt led of the Lord to move to Minneapolis and I left the church that I had pastored for 9 1/2 years.

Many have asked me over the years about how I feel about "leaving the ministry". I actually don't feel I left the ministry. I am still in the service of the Lord I just don't earn a living in the service of the Lord. In some ways this has been a blessing to both the church and to me personally. I have had some very expensive medical procedures associated with my spinal injury. For example I probably have had 10 M.R.I.s Additionally since my initial injury I have had spinal surgery twice. These are expensive and a poor pastor with no medical insurance would not have been able to pay for them. In that way, leaving the vocational ministry has unburdened the church. Leaving the vocational ministry has also enabled Kathee and I to save for retirement. We have a long way to go in this regard as we got a very late start at it, but Lord willing when I am unable to work, I should be able to provide for myself and my spouse.

I started out with mainframe computing, then I moved to open source BCP (Business Continuity Planning). I learned Suse Linux, Red Hat Linux. I also have picked up quite a bit of HTML, Javascript, and CSS. 12 years ago I became the web master (it seemed like a big deal at the time) for one of the first internal Intranet sites. Along the way I picked up Cold Fusion. Knowing Linux, web tools, and Cold Fusion launched another career for me as the Desktop Release Manager at my company. This week our managed LAN reaches the milestone of 100,000 workstations. We expect with merger activity to double this LAN. It is pretty cool stuff and generally is interesting, and challenging.

Today I reached the milestone of 15 years. Lord willing, I would like to work 6 1/2 more years and then do something different. Perhaps pastor a small church that cannot afford to pay a pastor or be an associate Pastor of a church. The Lord knows and I commit my way to Him.

Audacity of hypocrisy

Putting the Vastness of Obama's Proposed Budget into Perspective

Excerpt:

... as a candidate, Barack Obama criticized Pres. George W. Bush for adding $2.9 trillion to the national debt over eight years. But under the budget released today, President Obama plans on adding $3.2 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2010, 20 months and 11 days into his term. Over the full four years, Obama will expand the national debt by $4.7 trillion

Comment: Or maybe boldface lying!

"Oracle of Omaha": "the economy will be in shambles"

Buffett Offers Gloomy Outlook for ’09

Excerpt:

In his eagerly-anticipated annual letter to Berkshire shareholders, Buffett also offered a gloomy economic outlook, saying "the economy will be in shambles throughout 2009 -- and for that matter, probably well beyond."

Still, despite what he called "paralyzing fear" resulting from the credit crisis and falling housing and stock prices, Buffett was optimistic about American resilience.

"Though the path has not been smooth, our economic system has worked extraordinarily well over time," he said. "It has unleashed human potential as no other system has, and it will continue to do so. America's best days lie ahead."

Comment: Other outlooks (and of course there are many!)

Dr. Sung Won Sohn (It is imperative for the Obama Administration to introduce a concrete plan to improve confidence in the credit process. Without improved confidence and trust in the credit markets, the stimulus plan won’t have the desired effect.)
Wells Fargo research (What is shaping up as the deepest and longest recession since the 1930s will end in the second half of 2009)

$145 a linear inch!!

Whistleblower: Is 1-mile bike path worth $9.2 million?

Excerpt:

A mile-long bike path planned for downtown Minneapolis promises a quick, safe way for cyclists to travel separate from busy street traffic. But its estimated $9.2 million price tag has some gasping.

It's a total that, in the past, paid for nearly 2 miles of highway lane on Interstate 94 in St. Paul, or 5.7 miles of bike trail on government land for the Midtown Greenway.

Proponents say it's the final link in a century-old vision for paths connecting the city's lakes and the river. It will extend the Cedar Lake Trail, an off-street bicycle "freeway" linking western suburbs with the heart of the city. Downtown, the paved route will take cyclists next to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, under the new Twins ballpark and to the Mississippi River Parkway -- without crossing a single street.

Others say the path has become too pricey to justify as governments consider cuts to critical services because of the recession.

At issue is a geographically difficult three-block stretch of construction to extend the path all the way to the river, a change of plans for which proponents raised an extra $4.8 million in federal and state funding in 2005 and 2006. A city plan would have put bike traffic up a ramp and onto painted bike paths along local streets at that point.

HT: Citypages

Comment: As long as it is someone else's money (sourced from the Federal government) or "creates jobs" the average Joe won't care about this kind of waste. The comments on the Citypages blog are humorous!

Rocky Mountain News - gone after 150 years

Rocky Mountain News: Goodbye, Colorado

Excerpt:

After nearly 150 years, Denver has lost the newspaper that it grew up with. The paper's publisher could no longer sustain the financial losses at the Rocky Mountain News

Comment: We lived in the Denver metro area for 9 years and from time to time picked up a RMN. The "other" paper is The Denver Post. It did not appeal to me because of the tabloid format that I thought was more difficult to read (in contrast with the traditional broadsheet format. The competition between the RMC and the Post kept newspaper prices low! The RMC had a great sports page!

Buyers' remorse

Obama Declares War on Investors, Entrepreneurs, Businesses, And More

Excerpts:

[President Obama] is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds.

That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all — either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy’s long-run potential to grow.

Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama’s left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements. Ditto for his sweeping government-planning-and-spending program, which will wind up raising federal outlays as a share of GDP to at least 30 percent, if not more, over the next 10 years.

...

Study after study over the past several decades has shown how countries that spend more produce less, while nations that tax less produce more. Obama is doing it wrong on both counts.

And as far as middle-class tax cuts are concerned, Obama’s cap-and-trade program will be a huge across-the-board tax increase on blue-collar workers, including unionized workers. Industrial production is plunging, but new carbon taxes will prevent production from ever recovering. While the country wants more fuel and power, cap-and-trade will deliver less.

...

Noteworthy up here on Wall Street, a great many Obama supporters — especially hedge-fund types who voted for “change” — are becoming disillusioned with the performances of Obama and Treasury man Geithner.

There is a growing sense of buyer’s remorse.

Comment: There have been no surprises!

Obama's trash talking the banks!

Bankers to Obama: Stop trashing us

Excerpt:

The American Bankers Association has a message for the president: Stop talking trash about banks.

In his unofficial State of the Union address Tuesday night, Barack Obama said that it's "unpopular ... to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions."

In a letter to the White House, ABA CEO Edward Yingling says bankers across the country were "disappointed and concerned" with rhetoric like that.

"Mr. President, of the over 8,000 banks in this country, very few ever made a single subprime loan, and they did not engage in the highly leveraged activities that brought down Wall Street firms," Yingling said.

Yingling referred the president to statements made by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the powerful chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, in which he said that the toxic mortgage lending that sparked the current crisis was done by mortgage brokers and others not subject to the strict rules that govern commercial banks.

"Mr. President, the failure to distinguish between Wall Street and the thousands of FDIC-insured banks across the country undermines the confidence in our banking industry, the industry which is the foundation on which our economic recovery must be built," Yingling said.

Electronic kits

Thanks for the comments on the capacitor post yesterday. I thought the video was fascinating.

I grew up with a Dad who loved all things electronic and mechanical. He would undertake almost any project: fixing radios, fixing TV's, repairing cars, home repair, small engine repair, bicycle repair, woodworking, etc. He had this incredibly cluttered workshop with all kinds of things ... including capacitors.

If Dad was a 10 in his interest and ability, I was a 2 or 3. But both my brother and I loved doing his kind of projects. My brother built a TV from a Heathkit. Today TV's are so inexpensive that it would seem a waste of time to do that.

Essentials (for electronic kits) where we were younger: soldering irons, ohm meter, multimeter, etc.

Some of the fun things I built when I was a junior: alarm clock, crystal radios, electric motor, electromagnet, etc. Some of the fun electrical projects I have done: adding outlets to our bedroom (when we set up our water bed), exterior lamps on the house, etc. (Obviously working with 110 is a different thing than DC!). Years ago I helped a guy fix a key on his Apple II keyboard. This involved disassembly and soldering in a new key. Today one would just buy a new keyboard! Also I had an old daisy wheel printer (I think it was a DEC). I was able to bump it up from 300 baud to 1200 baud (a little soldering) and wire up a RS232 connection to my TRS-DOS computer. Another time Kathee (wife) and I soldered in a graphics panel into a Radio Shack TRS-3 computer (she was not pleased to participate in this as I recall). Another project (also involving my wife) was running a new wire up the steering column of our VW bug, installing a new steering wheel, a horn button, and a new horn. Kathee did a lot of the manual work on this.

If you have young children involve them in electronics and kit building. There's a lot to learn and enjoy there!

Snow pics (02/27/09)

Comment: Kathee and I got out at about 6:15: I plowed snow (my driveway and Mrs. F's next door). Kathee cleared the walks, steps, and porch. The green thing is my trusty John Deere (now 9 years old). I snapped these photos from my open garage door as we left for work and from my car window (looking back at the house). It was 2 degrees this morning.

The Capacitor

MAKE presents: The Capacitor from make magazine on Vimeo.



Comment: Interesting

Housing Prices in 20 Cities

NYTimes Graphic: Housing Prices in 20 Cities

Comment: Check out Vegas, LA, Phoenix. Very interesting.

Vista top tech "Fiasco"

Microsoft Vista voted tech world's top "Fiasco"

Excerpt:

It's official, Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system gets the prize for being the most over-hyped, under-performing information and communication technology (ICT) project. Windows Vista garnered 5,222 of 6,043 votes (86 percent) entered via the Web to snag top honors

Comment: From the first time I saw Vista demonstrated (by a Microsoft marketing guy) - I was underwhelmed; through engineering and pilot; through pre-production; and our first production image ... A FIASCO! Now off the table ... Windows 7 on the horizon!

Major snow storm

Traffic Seizes Up As Snow Blasts Twin Cities

Excerpt:

parts of the Twin Cities to see anywhere from 4 to 8 inches of snow

Comments:

Kathee and I are downtown so we will have to brave the commute home. I canceled the Metro Women's Center board meeting for tonight. Will need to plow tonight: I'm thinking ... do I have enough gas in my John Deere tractor???

Obamamania "angel" float!

Yahoo news: Obama float

Excerpt:

A carnival float depicting a flying U.S. President Obama with Europe being dragged along is seen during the traditional carnival parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, on Monday, Feb. 23, 2009. Rose-Monday-Parades in the carnival strongholds of Duesseldorf, Mainz and Cologne are watched by hundreds of thousands of revelers and mark the highlights of Germany's carnival season.

Comment: GAG! Obamamania archive!

Updated w video:

Win a Calfskin Version of the ESV Study Bible!

From "A Boomer in the Pew"

Comment: Kathee and I have 4 ESV versions. We both have pocket editions of the NT, Psalms, and Proverbs; Kathee has the Literary Study Bible in the ESV, and I have the ESV Study Bible. Click over to From "A Boomer in the Pew" for instructions about how you can win a Calfskin Version of the ESV Study Bible!

Obama's new math

The 2% Illusion - Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough

Excerpt:

Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

...

A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

Comment: There's an opportunity for genuine fiscal conservatives (whether they are "blue dog" Democrats or Republicans) to define themselves and appeal to common-sense voters that "change that can be believed" will be a ballot choice in 2010 and 2012!

Fifth Third up 33% - closes at $ 1.94

My 5th 3rd Experiment: 1000 shares of FITB

Go go go!!!

Vikes stadium a "non-starter" at State Capitol

Vikings can’t get stadium momentum

Excerpt:

The Minnesota Vikings' already wobbly prospects of getting public financing for a new stadium this year got no firmer Monday at the State Capitol, where legislators said the state's dire financial picture made the project nearly unthinkable.

In doing so, a House panel brushed aside a new study by the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, owners of the Metrodome, that said a new stadium on that site in downtown Minneapolis would generate $734 million in construction spending, create 13,400 jobs during construction and generate $32.2 million in taxes during the first year after a new stadium opened.

Comment: Yeah like DUH! It's the economy stupid! A note about "the jobs" ... higher taxes on businesses and individuals have a negative impact on jobs too! Let aircraft owning Ziggy Wilf pay for his own stadium!