The Honor Driven Life-

"I would rather be an honorable fool than a dishonorable man of great wisdom and power." Michael R. Lockridge

Yes, I am quoting myself. That is because I turned that phrase while thinking on my topic, and it sounded good. Like a quote I might have gotten from someone wise, and honorable. Perhaps I did. I will leave that for others to judge.

Honor, like Justice and Love and Wisdom, is an Ideal. Like most ideals, Honor is difficult to define. My wife considers my sense of honor to be obscure and inconvenient, at times. I agree. However, if I honestly assess who and what I am, I realize that I am an Honor Driven Man.

Oh. Honesty. That is another ideal. There really are quite a few.

Since all of you have read Plato's Republic, and I know you all have, we can refer to that. The ideal of Justice is addressed, and generally not defined adequately. There are a lot of problems defining Ideals. Plato came up with a whole theory, founding a whole way of philosophical thinking to keep generations of philosophers from falling into real jobs and doing anything productive.

I have sought the quote I most like on the subject of Justice. A movie quote. So far I haven't found it. "Justice is the ideal. The law is what we have to live with." Something like that. It shows how ideals don't always quite touch the ground. They are beyond what we can know and understand and achieve, yet we are compelled to pursue them.

Back to Honor. Honor can be confused with pride. Now Pride can be an ideal, of sorts, or something of a vice. It has an obscurity greater than most ideals. Perhaps it is a bit of a bastard, not quite up to the standards of its more ideal siblings. I don't know. I do know that pride can compel people to strive to great heights, and also prevent people from acting wisely, compassionately and honorably.

Now my own sense of honor does not allow me to lie for my own convenience. I have lied as a matter of performing my duties in my profession in law enforcement. I did so under instruction, and in my honor-driven moral structure I am able to transfer the matter of dis-honor to those giving me the instructions. My honor binds me to serve those with whom I have a contract, an agreement. If they require a lie that does not violate the law, I can follow orders and lie. The dis-honor becomes theirs, as the ones in authority. I have rarely been asked lie, largely because I am not a very good liar. I lack the skill due to a lack of practice.

Honor, conflicting with Honesty. Freedom, an ideal that is all too often achieved and protected by violating the ideal of Peace. Plato was right about this matter, at least. Ideals are not easy to identify, and very hard to apply.

Then there are also ideals that are compromised into pseudo-ideals. They appear to be ideals, but if you examine the context they are something else entirely. Self-seeking lovers of power like these pseudo-ideals, whereby they appear to be Good and Honest and True. Self-righteous people can also often compromise ideals. They can seem Moral and Righteous, without the inconveniences ideal Morality and Righteousness would require.

My ideal seems most often to be Honor, though I must be honest and recognize that my sense of Honor is obscure and more intuitive than logical. It may simply be my particular brand of self-delusion by which I have learned to cope with the uncertainties of life. That sense of Honor drives me, no matter how poorly I can identify and define it.

For the most part, it works well enough. Hardly anybody gets hurt.

Home Maintenance-

The other day my wife and I were out doing some errands. As we approached the front door of our house my wife pointed to the bottom of the exterior wall by the door and asked, "What's that?" There was a puddle of wetness on the porch near the bottom of the wall. On the other side of the wall was the garage, and the nearest point of probable wetness was the water heater.

Dutifully, I made my way to the garage, anticipating great expenses and unpleasant hours of repairs or negotiations with those who do repairs. I was not yet worried. I don't worry well. I went to see. I found the base of the hot water heater was wet. The wall behind it was wet. I could see where water was pooling along the base of the wall and running out to where my wife had first spotted the problem.

I tracked the water upward, and found it originating at a point near the junction of the copper flex hose and the acronym plastic pipe taking the hot water into the house. I could not find the actual leak. The water was coming out as a fine mist, and only became visible where it gathered on the wood structure of the garage. I looked, and looked. I stuck my finger (carefully) into the invisible flow. It became wet. Yep, a leak.

Using my iPhone I took a photo of the point of the leak and some of the related hardware. I then emailed my Dad. He has a lot of experience in doing the repair thing. I have much less. We communicated by email and phone. I was considering taking my photo to the big box store nearby. He advised me to go to Grover Electric and Plumbing Supply. I followed his advice. I am glad I did.

The people at Grover are knowledgeable. Not just the older male fellows working the back. The young ladies working the counter up front were also advising customers, and assisting in an energetic and beneficial manner. The fellow at the central counter helped me with similar energy and knowledge. He said he really liked the way people can bring in photos and videos on their phones. It helps him know what the problem is, and what to do about it.

Regarding that, I would advise taking both a video and several still photos. Gather as much visual information as you can to show the people at a shop such as Grover. Get images of the problem, and related components. Good advice will come from good information.

The man at Grover took me to where the parts were, selected the parts, and even assembled some of the stuff. He made sure I had all I would need to do the job right, and safely.

Armed with that advice and a bag of stuff, I went home. I called my Dad again, and he agreed to come over. I probably didn't need any help. The job was straight-forward, and the instructions at Grover had been clear. However, I really wanted to enjoy doing the job with my Dad, and the extra hands were helpful. We got it done in short order, and had a pretty good time doing it.

We were both introduced to a new product, which proved to make the job a whole lot easier. It was necessary to cut off a section of the acronym plastic pipe and replace it. That replacement would require some kind of joint. The man at Grover recommended and supplied a SharkBite joiner. You just put in two inserts, slide the PEX line in one end, and the PEX line to be joined in the other. Make sure they are seated. That's it. Tight joint. No leak. No obstruction of the water flow due to a reduced inner diameter, because the diameter remains virtually the same.

Now, I value the box stores for volume pricing and all. For the most part, I have had good advice from people in such stores. However, not all employees there have the kind of knowledge I found at Grover. The volume at the box stores assures better pricing, but few employees can attain the level of knowledge I found in a specialty shop. Based on the number of contractors running in and out of Grover, that specialize expertise is valued in the construction industry in Southern Oregon.

I can't pretend to know a whole lot about the economics and philosophy surrounding the advance of the big box stores and the demise of local businesses. Grover is a chain store, though not as big as some of the international chains. Could a more local shop have provided the same service? I don't know. Would I have better served the community by calling a plumber? Perhaps. I just know that I got the job done, and am satisfied by the results.

Now I just need to get the image of a fuzzy blue guy doing plumbing out of my head...

Woodworking and other adventures-

Our recent move has had many ups and downs. One recent up has been getting a little shop area together. Previous homes have not allowed for shop space, and for expanding my limited knowledge of woodworking. Additionally, my work took so much time that I really did not have the resources in time and money to do much. That is now changing.

Here is a shop tour. Here is a bit more. As I said, I am just beginning. Mostly hand tools and a few simple power tools. For a number of months the garage housed a lot of boxed items from the move. Those have been sorted, unpacked or shifted to a dedicated garage storage area. Eventually I excavated the shop bench that came with the garage, and only in the last few weeks have I been able to begin making it a work space.

If you have watched any of the many woodworking shows on television, you know what a real shop looks like. Even the most humble of these shops causes tool envy. "Now we need a mortise joint. Step on over to the mortising machine and I will show you how it is done." Then on to this machine, and that machine, all housed in a thousand square foot out-building.

These fabulous shops and their related programs can be inspiring and informative. I have learned a lot from such shows, and encourage anyone interested in woodworking to study such resources. These same shops and programs can be a bit daunting. So many expensive tools. So much skill, accumulated over many collective years.

I have had to compel myself to begin, even lacking a basic table saw. If I continue to wait on tools, I will never begin. So, today I began working up some wood to practice hand crafted dovetail joints. To do so I needed to get some wood worked down to blanks of uniform size. Lacking much in the way of tools, I studied what I did have. Here are two photos of what I came up with.

This is a Stanley miter box. It is a plastic unit which included a back saw. I have never before used a plastic miter box, but this one is designed well. The backbone on the back saw comes to rest on the top of the miter box when the cut is completed, so the obvious concern over cutting up the plastic is not an issue. Also, the unit came with two plastic cam clamps. Those black things there in the picture. They work surprisingly well for holding the work in place.

To set the stop for the pieces being cut I clamped a board the same thickness as the bottom of the miter box to the bench. The clamp is a basic F clamp running through a hole in the bench. On top of this bottom board is a block set as a stop for the cut piece. This set-up, though rather rudimentary, allowed me to cut out some blanks with which to work.

As a guide to hand cutting dovetail joints I referred to some YouTube videos. Here is a good one. There are others. Indeed, YouTube is a treasure trove of educational videos for just about anything. Since I lack a coping or fret saw, I shall have to wait a few days until I can get to the store. No need for a special trip, especially at the present cost of fuel. Next time I go somewhere will be soon enough.

Crafting tools and jigs is a big part of wood-crafting. Here is a jig made to do box joints. Obviously, the engineering and craftsmanship of tool-making is a big part of woodworking as a hobby. Matthias even made his own gears for the jig. Another aspect of the hobby is designing or re-creating unique pieces, unavailable from other sources. Often it is just the satisfaction of working with wood and tools and your hands.

Indeed, crafting furniture is not a real money saving proposition. With low-cost imports and the abundance of mass-produced components in box stores, making your own furniture is actually a costly venture. Just as the sport fisherman does not go fishing to save on the cost of fish, the woodworker is working for the satisfaction of the doing.

Some craftsmen move in the opposite direction from the elaborate power shop, and master the use of hand tools and ancient techniques for doing their work. Craftsmen have often done wonderful work with only a limited number of tools, many of which they had to design and make for themselves. Participating in that tradition has its own satisfaction.

Mastering the tools you have is far better than dreaming about tools you do not have. You learn more, and get a great deal more done. Sometimes I have to remind myself of this fact, kick myself in the butt, and get to work. Whether writing, knitting, gardening or working with such things as wood, nothing gets done until you get to the doing.

Just do it. ;-)

Frugal, or Cheap?

One of my friends and former co-workers once observed that a piece of coal shoved up my nether-regions would shortly be returned as a diamond. It was a coarse observation presented in more common vernacular to point out that I am frugal. Perhaps even cheap.

The observation was correct no matter what term one would choose. I strive to be frugal. It is a value I learned from my parents, and one I value as a value. Frugality seems good to me, and I am content following such a course. Unfortunately, I can also sometimes be cheap. Not always, but way too often. Cheap is the less honorable and dignified sibling of frugality. Not the better company to keep.

As an illustration, I shall bring my wife (unwillingly) into the blog. We were in the market for some new cookware. I looked around and found a set of cookware of admirable quality for an even more admirable price. Just under two hundred dollars. A good price, since this stuff would last a long time. Good metal. No high maintenance inner surfaces to worry about. A nice variety of pots, pans and covers. They had a good structure and form. Practical. Dishwasher safe.

My wife did not want to spend two hundred dollars. I quite understood, but argued for the investment. She shopped a bit more, and found a hundred dollar set on sale for half of that. Using a coupon or some other combination of discounts, she got it for less than twenty bucks. Now that was frugal.

Unfortunately, it was also cheap, at least by comparison. The set we bought has a high-maintenance non-stick coating. The pots and pans have serviceable structure and form, but are not nearly as versatile as the set I wanted. The metal is a light aluminum, not my favorite for cooking. The variety of pot shapes was not quite as good. They are not dishwasher safe, as the dishwasher may cause the outer surface to discolor.

Who was right? Well, I don't see it as an issue of 'right.' The lesser expenditure allowed us to keep some of our money, and the cookware is working out fine. Since a lot of my cooking is simply high aspirations, good intentions and little action, perhaps the lesser investment was the wiser. Frugal? Yes. Cheap? Probably.

I will never be a label shopper. I shall not be a slave to fashion. Those practices tend to part me from too much of my money just for bragging rights and to please people whose pleasure I don't particularly care about. Still, a label can sometimes point to good value. Something that wears well over a goodly span of time.

I will never be a political or philosophical shopper. I once had a philosophy professor who admitted that she shopped with unbalanced diligence to obtain a tooth powder that was not advertised in any way, and payed far too much for that 'freedom' from media manipulation. Some avoid a particular store, or another, because they are off-shore or use slave labor or indirectly kill baby Panda bears and innocent whales. I will go for the best price for the best quality, period.

Why so unconscionable in my shopping? Because it is a bit much to expect for me to weigh the issues and sift the facts from the feces just to buy toilet paper or a new pair of shoes. Because frugality is my dominant philosophical position. Because, in the end, I am cheap.

Anyone want to buy a fresh diamond?

Success is NOT accidental-

I think a lot about things like dreams and aspirations and strange concepts such as "success." How do we  discover dreams? What aspirations are worthy of pursuit? What defines success?

Sometimes our dreams go undiscovered. They are undiscovered due to not knowing how to find them. They are undiscovered because we don't seek them due to the influences of others or our own critical selves. Sometimes they frighten us, and we avoid them. Sometimes we just never think about dreams, and don't even look.

I recently watched a video, kind of a documentary. As a kid I fell in love with magic, the performing art. Like most kids, I learned a few tricks. Unlike most adults, I have kept it up, a bit. I have recently dusted off my magic stuff and practiced a bit. It is fun, and I might just find a way to make a few bucks with this in my retirement.

In the documentary you will see a number of teenage people aspiring to be the best in their age group. These kids are good. Really good. The documentary is valuable in documenting their aspirations and the effort it takes to be really good at anything. Yep. These kids sacrificed their time, focused on their art, and they practiced. They practiced a lot.

The art of magic is a fringe art. It is geeky and awkward, even among other performing arts. These are ubergeeks, these young people. Their devotion is amazing, especially to someone like myself who never really aspired to be the best at anything. I never acquired the passion and the focus. I have achieved successes in my life, but I never went for the gold like these kids.

I relate to this documentary because magic was one of my interests in my youth, and has been an interest through most of my life. I have some idea just how much these young artists had to work to get where they did. Teenagers. Not a group noted for their dreams and aspirations bearing such fruit. Only one among the competitors becomes the best in the world, but they are all huge winners. Not sitting around in a pool of teenage angst for them. Aspiration and achievement, even if they don't all grab the brass ring.

Watching something like this always leaves me with mixed feelings. Why wasn't I like that? Well, I just wasn't. We all have a lot of variables that comprise who we were when we were born, and a lot more variables come into play over time. The star performer, the most successful politician, the richest rich guy all catch the attention of the public, but there are a multitude of lesser successes which are achieved every day. Those little successes are the ones that really push us all forward as a people.

Think about something like, say, a documentary about a group of teenagers who aspire to be the best teen magician in the world. How many people would it take to make that documentary? Lots. Not as many as a block-buster movie, but a lot. Videographers, audio recorders. Lighting people. Writers. Administrators. Legal people. Somebody to pack and ship stuff. Lots of people. People with dreams and aspirations. People who have their own forms of success. People who, together, create a corporate success.

Success is not accidental. Oh, the final form of any one person's success might have accidental elements in it, but success itself is not accidental. Thought, study, planning and practice all go into success. Hours and hours. Most of the young people in the video practiced five hours every day. Every day. That, just to make the top fifteen young magicians in the world. Failure at that level is still quite a success.

Sometimes success is better defined in retrospect. For example, my career in corrections. I became a correctional officer as a consequence of having a family to care for and no real direction as to how to do that. I did not have a real plan, just the desire for a job that met the needs. The corrections thing became something to aspire to in order to provide for my family. It was never more than a job to me.

In the course of performing this difficult task I learned a lot about myself, and discovered I had the necessary skills to manage inmates successfully. I was not particularly adept at the office politics, and I have to imagine that there are plenty of people I worked for who would only consider me marginally successful. However, feedback from inmates and my fellow officers confirmed that I did the job well. I was a success.

In my youth I never aspired to be the best teen magician in the world. Striving for such a thing would not have occurred to me. Yet it occurred to at least a few young people. It occurred to someone else to document their aspirations, efforts and successes. As a consequence, I got to enjoy being informed, entertained, and inspired.

Find your dreams, and follow them. Aspire. Strive and loose. Strive and win. Value your successes, especially the ones you see only when you look back. Value the successes of others, too. We all need an audience, or a cheering section, or someone to help us get back up.

Success is not accidental.

Rug Hooking, Knitting and Wood Working-

My long time friend and co-worker, Craig Harlamoff, once noted that he and I could be happy as professional hobbiests. People who pursue new and old hobbies, all of the time. I had to agree. We have known each other for over twenty years, mostly as professional correctional officers. (I wouldn't recommend corrections as a profession, or a hobby.) Perhaps it was that profession which compelled all of the hobbying. Perhaps it was just something wired into our admittedly strange brains.

I have for years been a whittler, a wood-crafter who is not-quite a carver. I took up loom knitting a couple of years ago, needing something to do with my hands during a long period of waiting. Something not so messy as whittling. Loom knitting was cheap to get into, and not particularly messy. I still loom knit. I am presently making granny-squares to be crochet trimmed and built into a blanket or afghan. It is relatively clean, quiet, and allows me to use my hands and mind creatively when I need to do just that.

Presently I have been viewing woodworking shows on television. The Woodwright's Shop. Rough Cut Woodworking. Woodsmith Shop. Our move led to getting a pretty good cable package, and with the DVR I have been able to gather some of these shows and watch them. Repeatedly. I would love to get a shop together and do some of the fine work I have watched. Unfortunately, it costs a bit more than a five dollar loom and ten bucks worth of yarn to get into this hobby. Even though I have a few tools, I have nothing sufficient for this kind of work. Not yet.

It costs nothing to look at other people's hobbies. One I discovered was rug hooking. I thought I would look into this hobby when it was mentioned some place or another. I found a guy who was doing it, doing it well, and had done it for quite some time. His work was really good, and he knew people who were even better. I checked into the basics of the hobby, and found that it didn't come cheap.

I remain interested enough to look forward to blog posts on the subject, and I really enjoy the pictures of the works presented by proud hobbiests. Meanwhile I watch woodworking shows and continue to knit a bit. There is a lot I haven't done even with a five dollar loom, and there are many yarns I haven't worked with. Like most hobbies, loom knitting has many layers and a great deal of depth.

Oh, and I have been dabbling in making beer. Just a bit. Unfortunately, home-brewed beer and knitting are not complementary hobbies. More so than beer drinking and woodworking, but they really don't go together. Beer drinking and watching sports is a whole different thing, however. Baseball season is just around the corner....

Yep, look for me in my favorite chair, an afghan growing on my lap, a home-brew sitting frosty on the table next to me, and a whole season of baseball on the television. Unless some job comes along to spoil it all. Of course, then I might have funds to start building my wood shop.

Hmmmm. That might not be so bad.

Wealth and Power-

I have lived on this Earth for half of a century, plus a bit of change. Fifty nine years, in April. I kind of discount the nine years a bit, since most of us have a pretty limited perspective before the age of ten. We are still developing our prejudices and delusions, and so are not reliable as witnesses or as people to judge the value of one thing or another.

So, half a century. I have watched the struggle for power, internationally, nationally, and locally. I must have dropped the ball in those early years, because I really still don't get it. Much of it looks like a bunch of kids playing "King of the Hill" on a pile of manure. Sure, you might get to be king for a while, but it is still a pile of manure. If you play the game right, you end up covered in manure. Hardly worth the investment, it seems to me.

You might safely conclude that I lack wealth, and consequently am not very powerful. I am also relatively free of manure. I can't say if that is good, or not. Still, I eat regularly, live indoors when I choose, and have the power to write stuff. Stuff that is largely manure-free.

I am pretty sure people pursue wealth in order to gain power. People pursue power mostly out of insecurity. They fear others with power, and so if opportunity presents itself they gain wealth and power. Lil' Kim (of Korea, not music) proves that there is some wisdom in all of that.

So, wealth and power. Most of those who 'represent' me in government have a bit of both. How rich people can represent someone like me, a person of non-wealth and extremely limited power, I don't know. That may be a matter for another blog. Perhaps it already has been a blog I wrote, but forgot about.

How do you gain wealth? Well, if you do it legally you must live below your means. If you make X amount of money each year, you must live on less. We will call that, uh, Y. So, X-Y=I. See? Algebra was worth all of that time in school sitting in confusion as you watched the stud football player fondling the hot cheerleader in the back of the classroom. Oh, wait. That was just my experience. Sorry.

You take ( I ) and invest it. See? I. Invest. Variables. Important stuff. You put that money somewhere safe. As it builds up, some of the accumulated money can be placed in somewhat riskier investments. Keep in mind, an Emu farm is not considered a safe investment, and therefore should be considered risky. Still, who knows? It might pay off. Anyway, you do this living below your means and investing thing for years, and eventually you have a bit of wealth.

Unless you inherit something more to work with, this program hardly ever works. Earning your second million is always easier, because you have so much more to risk. Money you can risk which won't leave you living in a cardboard box behind the donuts shop. If you didn't inherit that first million, you may have to live in a box behind the donuts shop just to have a lifestyle below your means. You know, X.

Of course, this requires discipline in your youth. No fast cars, fancy foods and liquors. No big screen televisions. Just basic cable on your thrift store little television. It also requires discipline in later years. No botox or plastic surgery or trade-ins on spouses. Discipline. Order. Steady investing. Yeah. That's all likely to happen.

I came up with another plan. Say you can manage to save a bit. Just in a bank account. Put it back for the annual 'investment.' Go to a casino with your nest-egg. Every year. Put it on Red on the Roulette Wheel. Or, Black. One, or the other. It doesn't matter. The risk is the same. So close to a coin toss as to be the same. All on that color. One spin.

If you loose, you begin saving for next year. If you win, you walk away. 100% return on your investment, and  you still begin saving for next year. Put it somewhere safe. Never touch it again. Ever. You don't get to enjoy it. This is your wealth. If you keep doing this, year after year, you will win at least some of the time. Plus, if you keep going back to the same place you will get comps. Free stuff from the casino. Hey, you are a Big Roller.

Sure, walking away will take discipline. However, that discipline will only be needed once a year, rather than the discipline of regular saving and investing, requiring lots of homework and learning and gaining knowledge and all of that stuff. Eventually you can own that donuts shop, and live in an apartment above it.

What about that power thing? You won't get that much wealth, whichever program you use. Those powerful people either inherited their wealth, or stole it. Like Lil' Kim. Of Korea, not music.

Next up: Spend Your Way to Prosperity. Only $75 for my seminar. Reserve your place now.