I thought I was back in the workforce again. Got hired for a 12 month contract testing WIFI/Bluetooth communication.

Well the 12 month contract lasted three weeks. The bean counters rebalanced their books and I was a casualty. There was much to learn and I picked up a bit. It might be very satisfying to make a expletive based entry. I just can’t do it. Numbers rule and some times we are in control of the numbers other times the numbers control us.

Traveling between Norfolk and Vallejo while I was in the navy in the winter months we got to St Louis and had  choice of going across the middle of the US and going the pure southern route. Weather forecasts were pretty localized at the time so we attempted the central Interstate I 70 to head for California. One hundred miles down the road the bad weather hit. We were creeping down a hill in the left lane on snow packed highway with traffic parked in the right lane. I looked ahead and saw two individuals waving us over. I could not see why but slowed down and pulled out of the left lane. Immediately after that a large semi with three small semis stacked on it’s back came down the hill. The semis or smaller pickups were dragging into the center of the interstate. If I had not stopped in the right lane we would not have survived it. Because the driver had no way to stop on the packed snow.

Then about 10 years ago we were following a real estate sales person around. While following her our car normally pretty reliable died three times and I had to restart it. Weird but it happens. We went to cross a four lane road. There was a pickup truck ready to turn off our direction. He waved me across. Being very careful I waited and he did it again. I finally decided to follow his advice and go across. I pulled out in front of him doing no more than 5 Mph. I then got T boned by an unseen car coming down the hill.

Here is my quandary. One time following a strangers advice saved

me. The next time it got me into an accident. The next time it happens should I heed it or ignore it?

Starting a new round of work!

I’ll be doing some testing and possible repair of some RF interface parts of a mobile device.  This is an opportunity to apply some expertise I picked up while out of work.  Interesting that I picked up training on Windows programing this comes from strickly hands on exploration.

The new target is Android using Eclipse, Android SDK, Java JRE and some Python. I have played with everything but Python. Edited a Python file on Friday and it doesn’t look too off the wall.

The ability to do some debugging is new to me so I’m really looking forward to getting down into that part. I have had to troubleshoot my own code for quite a while so doing it in this area should be fun.

Darn Android SDK caught me on Friday though. I was trying add virtual devices to Android and it wouldn’t let me update the files. Searched online and found out I needed to  run it in the administration mode. This is on Windows 7 the home PC on Vista didn’t require the admin step part. After finding that trick it cleaned up the issue

quite quickly. Amazing how I can search for 1/2 hour or more just to find out that the answer was only a couple clicks away.

The mud slinging is really in effect now. Each side wants to convince the followers on the edge that voting for their opponent  will cause the end of the world, more taxes than you can imagine and a continuance of a Washington DC spending spree.

If they were honest and exposed their true arguments it would be.  “My opponents  have been in office too long and is a much better thief than I can ever be. You have hired professional thieves to be in office too long. It’s time to put in some amateurs and reduce the graft down to more acceptable levels.I will gladly reduce my take compared to my predecessor.”

The political insiders and lobbyists would praise them because it would reduce the amount of graft needed to get their will done.

To misquote Ben Franklin:Politicians, like fish, begin to smell after three terms in office.

Original: Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.

There is a difference between the perfect world that you imagine and the world you inhabit now. Look around chances are you have bits and pieces from lots of places and times working together. There was never a plan to collect these pieces but when invention is required you put them together.

While working on a little woodworking project I ended up using a 1900′s era hand saw along with a 2010 version powered jig saw. There was no way that the hand saw maker could ever imagine that their product would be active this far in the future.

So when you start your next project keep in mind the old and new. One without the other would make life so much harder.