Just got done doing some coding work with Brent. We're still having issues, but we're modifying some of the program and it will be interesting to see if it helps with the problems we've been having.

In a couple of hours I'm off to Idaho. I'm not taking my computer along, so I probably won't post until Sunday night at the earliest.

This week and next will be a little lean on hours but fat on fun/family/fellowship.

Oh yeah, and I'm going to get a haircut. You folks have no clue how long my hair is because I've never posted a pic of myself on the by-log. But it's long! Shaggy's a better word, although it's creeping over my ears and stuff. Mom thinks it needs to be chopped. But not my sister and my Amanda my teen-aged cousin. See, girls like long hair. I've yet to hear one say "Dude, you need a buzz man!"

Achh...

So much to learn; so far to go.  But sometimes I wonder, though, if a more radical approach is necessary.  Am I really making progress?  Maybe I need to totally rethink how I come at this thing called "living the Christian life" or "being a witness."  Maybe I need to have a renaissance of sorts, a paradigm shift, a completely different perspective on being a Christian in my world.

I think I can idealize the "way" I want to be, but the idealized view is very different from practical reality.  This bothers me.  It bothers me that I pray for God to work in people in ways that I don't feel is going on in my own.  Wow, maybe I should pray those same prayers for myself! (in a related, yet unrelated, note, I heard a preacher on the radio say that we shouldn't pray for ourselves much because there's not much power there, but there is tons of power in our prayers for others).

I'm not depressed about it, but rather acutely aware.

Achh...

Odd audit today at the asphalt plant.  For about half of it, we just sat around because they were so busy they didn't have people available to facilitate us.  I do get to work on one idea, though.

Check it out.  They have these big tanks that they fill with water and chemicals.  The water comes in from the city at about 66 degrees but it needs to be heated to 150ish degrees in the tank.  Presently they heat the water with steam once it's inside the tank which is inefficient because you have the sun!

One of the other dudes figures that if you set up black pipes on top of some of the tanks at the facility, they could probably preheat the water so that they don't have to run so much steam into the tanks, and hopefully cut down on their natural gas bill, which is way high.

That, my friends, is a good look into what the IAC does.  This one will be wilder than usual, though, because we have to figure out first how much it's costing them now to heat the water and how much we can heat the water via the sun.  That'll be fun...maybe.  Hard...probably.

I got home about a quarter after six from the central Oregon trip and I'm off tomorrow for Idaho and Angela Strubhar's wedding reception.  And then it's family stuff next week.

Auditor

I still haven't gotten over the slightly sheepish feeling I get walking around at these audits with a clipboard, following managers around.  I blame that feeling on Tom.

But, today was exhausting but very, very good.  We went through a lumber mill and I got going on, like, four productivity ideas.  It looks like two will work out.

I don't drink, folks, and I don't think alcohol is a particularly good idea.  Not a sin automatically, or anything, but I've been conditioned to view it negatively, and that negativity often has merit.  But let's say you were eating at a restaraunt and someone with you ordered a big beer for the road, but decided to let it be refrigerated until he was done eating.  If you were walking out to the car and it was obvious that he had forgotten about it, should you say anything?

(Non-Magnificent) Obsession

I like to tell people that becoming annoyed at a non-physical irritant is simply a choice a person makes.  Which is why it's sort of ironic that I get so bothered about certain things.

For instance, I have this thing about having the radio on when I'm trying to go to sleep.  It's certainly in my head, but I have, in the past, had a difficult time drifting off if there is noise that demands my attention.  The reason this is an issue is because bro is all about having the radio on as he drifts off to sleep.  Furthermore, it tends to stay on throughout the entire night, because no one is awake to turn it off.

The last two nights he's turned it on "real quiet."  Hmmph!  You know how a radio being "real quiet" is!  It's real quiet until everything else is real quiet, then it's not real quiet at all, but very intelligible.

But I guess I've overcome it, let go, something, because I've gotten to sleep the last few nights.

And another thing I'm currently fighting obsessive tendencies toward is "the open door."  See, when the bedroom door is ajar warm air rushes up, so to preserve coolness you have to keep the door shut.

So let's say I'm sleeping and Randy needs to come up to his closet to retrieve something.  As soon as he starts up the stairs I, of course, have awakened and immediately start thinking about whether he'll leave the door open.   He comes in, turns the light on, and leaves the door open.  When he does, I croak, and he assures me that it'll only be a minute 'til he goes down again.  A minute's way too long for me, because I can feel it getting hot already (I've begun to sweat), so I stumble out of bed to shut the door.

And of course, if someone is preparing to leave the room as I lay in bed half-awake, I must remind them to shut the door all the way.

What a great time coding!  I love it when things come clear.  Not just in programming, but let's say you're working on any tough academic challenge and you don't understand and everything is a muddle.  Then you talk to the right person, someone who really understands it, and they explain it and it makes sense and you know that you could never ever have thought that up by yourself.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Central Oregon for a couple more audits.  I think we're hitting another sawmill and then a small airplane manufacturer.

I was over at Junior's tonight and he brought out the Oakville video, yee-haw!  This was AHQ in 1996.  I gasped, blinked, strained, and flatted.

Today was an odd day, I must say.  I let someone down.

I feel sort of weird.