Have I written this once before?

I know the following was once part of a letter to my sister. I try and keep copies of our correspondence so there is a good chance that she may recognize it...

"I may be a curmudgeon, I am certainly old enough to be one, but when I am reading or even having a conversation with someone and they start peppering the conversation with words such as ‘woke’ or ‘trope’, and ‘outlier’ then my interest plummets and I change my opinion of the writer or speaker to a negative or a neutral one. The writer/speaker should know their audience and then modify their speech to fit. Would this be welcome in Cedar Rapids? Could it reach an audience in Peoria? How about San Antonio? Yes, I know the meaning of the words. But, as soon as I saw or heard one that I could not understand, I would go to the dictionary to see if there was such a word. Even with that knowledge, my mind and tongue stumble over the words. I guess I am a curmudgeon (look it up)  

I know that I have been guilty of the same type of crime but with different audiences, and with different words. But I am 82 years old…and that great philosopher, my Nana, once said that her age allowed her the freedom to do as she darn well pleased. Of course she was right.

And if your audience is your family or friends, you are also given that same freedom, to use any words you like. It is a ‘perk’ that comes with age. And believe me, it is the only one that will be given to you freely. You will have to fight for all of the others.  

I finished another Peter Cawdron book and it was very good. I get swept up into his books and I am alternately sad/happy. My Sweet Satan was the latest title. 3Zekiel, Maelstrom, Déjà Vu, Starship Mine, Hello World, Cold Eye, Anomaly, Xenophobia, Wherever Seeds May Fall, Jury Duty, the ones with Bold lettering stood out a little bit but I have enjoyed them all. I found that if you search for ‘hard science fiction’ you won’t see books with kings and fairies, wizards and others of their ilk. You will get science mixed with fiction. I have Galactic Exploration loaded and it’s starting to look pretty good as well.

I am using Kindle Unlimited once again. I read these so fast; 3 a week, it made economic sense to just spend $11 a month."

How Clean?

 I  was reading this months Wired magazine and the featured article was all about TSMC...now that's a subject that I should know about as I had once estimated the cost for our company to build a Super Fab for TSMC. No we didn't get the job, but I am always looking at articles that mention this company. The first time I estimated a TSMC job was back in the 90's when when they were building a 200,000+ square foot fab in Taiwan. Their declared intent was to build an empty fab, complete with filters and grated floors. Then they were going to rent/lease spaces within the fab to smaller companies that couldn't afford a cleanroom of their own. It sounded brilliant! But we stopped our estimating process when we found out the cost of shipping containers and the cost of shipping them to Taiwan. We found out that you would have to buy the containers and then sell them later.

I stopped thinking about cleanrooms once I got into the "falling down, then Pnuemonia and hospitalization" routine. I stopped thinking about everything back then. This article and the recent number of news articles about TSMC made me curious as to what they were doing. My sister lives in Phoenix and the latest Super Fab in the neighborhood is a forty billion plus project with plans for a another forty billion addition. Intel was once the leader in the industry but had to abandon that role once TSMC grew in size and the TSMC chips became smaller than small. 

Their work force is renowned in the industry.  As motivation to work for TSMC they give all their.  employees a 10% discount at Burger King. Yes, that is it. The important motivator is a chance to work at TSMC and they are dedicated to the company.

Their latest products feature a size of 28 nanometers where a trillion or more switches are engraved on the silicon using extreme ultraviolet light lithography, using water as the lens for the lithograph camera. ASML, a Philips company is close partnered withTSMC. They are located in Holland and if you need a lithography machine that can do that, it will cost close to forty million. As the article says, "it's like etching on an atom" that may be, but what are they etching?

They are etching the circuits that will be used to direct decisions and power for a device. The circuits contain transistors  and a transistor is the equivalent of a 'Tube' just as once seen in old radios. It's also known as a 'Switch' as it becomes a Yes/No decision maker...a 1 or a 0 is what the decision is called most commonly.

 Now Intel is not out of business, or out of the race.they are currently building Super Fabs or upgrading their current fabs and they are located coast to coast. I know of 3 in Arizona and 1 in New Mexico, some in Texas and some in Massachusets. The company I worked and retired from has built most of them and when we would setup a job trailer on site, that trailer might be there for years as we remodeled what we had built. A cash cow...

The Golden Years of Infirmities to be Determined Later.

I'm not complaining, after all, I am still vertical. But...I was a child of the forties and fifties and so these current years are becoming strange/odd to me. I was born before World War ll and the age of the atom and its awesome power. There was no television set in our houses and the telephone we had was large and black (only) plus it was connected, in a semi permanent way, to our neighbors. We had what was called a ''Party Line" where we shared that connection with people we usually didn't know. When my mother went shopping, she walked to and from the store as she never had a drivers license and we couldn't have afforded a second car. My parents always had to rent a house and the first house I can remember was on Dover Place, in an area of Los Angeles that was bordered on the west by the LA River and Griffith Park, and Glendale on the east. I went to kindergarten in the school next door to that house.

It was 1945 when my Great Uncle Len decided to buy my parents a house; a beach cottage in Manhattan Beach. It had one bedroom and one bath  plus a 'sleeping porch' ($1, 500) and that is where my baby sister and I slept. There were 2 houses between us and Center Street (The primary street between 101 and the beach) There was a nursery school on the other side of our house and beyond that it was sand and more sand, with an occasional house scattered here and there. There was the only school in town directly across the street; Center Street Elementary School. Our next door neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Kaiser. Mr. Kaiser raised rabbits, Pea Hens and Guinea hens while Mrs. Kaiser baked cookies and listened to every 'soap opera' available. The rabbits were destined to become food and fur while the hens were for food only. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I could eat cookies with Mrs.Kaiser or watch Mr. Kaiser kill and skin rabbits. The rabbit skins were put onto wire stretchers to dry and hung from a beam that held up the roof of the rabbit pen shelter. 

My sister and I would walk all over our part of town while I dragged the red wagon behind us. We would even walk down to the railroad tracks and to the Metlox pottery plant. We would look for 'good' pieces of pottery in the scrap heap of pottery and molds that were close to the sidewalk. On our travels, we would look for empty beer bottles to collect and redeem for two cents each. 

Unfortunately, I was born with Asthma and that kept me at home frequently, where I stayed in bed and played with modeling clay, building whatever came to mind, then flattening it all and starting over. I also had Tinkertoys to play with and they would allow me to build fascinating structures...to me they were fascinating. Apparently I was easily amused and never bored. A good thing, as I had no friends in our small neighborhood. Manhattan Beach was a rural place attempting to become a suburb. It had been a low cost area for all of the workers in the aircraft plants during the war so there were very few wealthy people 

I will have to add to this story during the weeks ahead. I'm afraid the memories will not be in strict chronological order as I write what I remember at the time I am writing. One memory begets another.

The String Theory and...

Edward Witten. How did I ever become interested in Physics? Why didn't learn something about it when I was in high school? I do remember the time I became interested in the subject and that was when my most intelligent 'boss', Gordon Pinsky, took our entire department, all seven or eight of us, including spouses and secretaries, on a retreat to Port Townsend in Washington State. He had booked a very nice B & B for us. In fact it was every room! We had a choice! We met briefly and then we took a tour bus to a local park where he had arranged for a catered lunch. After lunch the bus took us to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Forest. Okay, enough background...I was sitting on the steps of the porch of said B & B when my 'boss' came over and handed me the book "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene and said "You really need to read this." and so I did. That was over twenty years ago

It was a fascinating read. I learned so much from that thin book. I now have it on my Kindle and will turn to it now and then for rejuvenating my mind. 

But, I had never heard of Edward Witten before. Xavier, my PT therapist told me to look him up as I had mentioned String Theory to him. Mr. Witten is a professor of physics, and many, many other things. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKapdscHwJ0 ) A fascinating man! Of course he works at Princeton University and on Einstein Drive. You can read some of his papers on his website.

I just searched through The Elegant Universe and found Edward Witten acknowleged for his advise to the author. Plus half a dozen others.

Photos, Photos, Photos, Photos, Photos, and more Photos.

 I had to take a break. I was having a sensory overload. I simply have far too many photos/Images. I think I have 60GB of images which includes photos, adds, art and ephemera. And duplicates, triplets and quadruplets of many of those. For some obscure reason, Apple's photos program which does a fine job of sorting will, at times, decide that I need more of a specific image and and will give me 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 copies of it. I'm sure I am at fault here as I was always in a hurry to file and save them and as soon as I started seeing the duplicates, I should have stopped and searched for a cure. 

A long way back

 I seem to be very 'chatty' or 'verbose' this morning. Not quite true. I wrote some of these posts that you are seeing posted today were actually written some days ago and left in the 'draft' stages until I needed them.

I also spent some time looking through the old posts; all the way back to 2013 and there were lots of posts beyond then. As I read them I could see where I should have said something different, something better. I was tempted but then realized that my readership would rarely go back to them. What I could do and may yet do, is add some of the images to the posts. It seems that one image is selected from the post and placed (in miniature) on the left hand side of the title, unless there are no images in the post. If none, the space will remain blank. Will I have time for all of this? I have a lot of annual Journals that need to be edited and converted to the Apple Pages format and that's a priority.

How high?

I have always had a respect for heights. Especially when I am the one up at the heights. I hadn't thought of that as a problem until I got into construction...it soon became a problem.

During my first 3 months as an apprentice I learned that an apprentice has to do what a journeyman tells him to do. One memorable day, I was working for "High Sheets" Heisler and he told me that we had to replace a piece of lath that had come loose. No big deal, a few minutes and we would be onto something else. Then he showed me where the missing lath was located. It was outside the 6th floor and about seven feet above the floor...if there were a floor there. But there was only open space all the way down to the floor of the inner courtyard. "How are we going to do that?" I asked. He assured me that it would be easy, all he had to do was take a plank from a nearby scaffold, lay it on the floor and slide it out of the building and then he would stand on the end while I walked out onto the end suspended over thin air and repair the lath. "Easy" he said. "Don't worry" he said. "I weigh more than you do and I won't step off the plank" 

The short story is that I did it and he stayed on the plank, though he managed to give the plank a small bounce just as I started back to safety.

I have lots of 'heights' memories and I may start writing about them. Obviously, heights had a larger than normal impact on my working life than I thought. 

Too many memories

 And I have plenty more of them. It seems as if it only takes a word, seen or spoken, for me to suddenly race down memory lane. I wonder how many of them are accurate? Well, they are my memories so I suppose I should make that decision.

The majority of my memories are of my working days. That makes sense as that is what I did, work. I may have retired a year early but I started quite early. But it was after I left my career in the Navy that I found the career that fulfilled my ambitions. Construction became my second life. Starting as an apprentice carpenter, I was sent to my first job, a nine story lift slab apartment building in Hollywood. I believe that I have already written a story of that first day so I won't bore myself by recounting everything that happened that day. I had always been quiet and reserved and I continued to be. (Myers Briggs type INFP,ASD) I didn't enjoy being taught unless I chose to be, so I kept my eyes open and mouth closed during those first months on the job, and always learning. 

Construction was my 'dream' job. I was usually outside and I never stayed working on the same job. We would finish our part of the project and then we went to another. Starting all over but on a different project with different goals, different subcontractors, everything different! Staying 6 months on a project soon became boring. 

Old Age...sigh

It seems at times that all we know about old age is a lie. The ads show happy and fit looking seniors romping through the surf, hand in hand, on some tropical isle or enjoying a day of golf, or tennis, or just hiking through the forest to a stream where they spend the day catching beautiful trout. Those ads are a lie. But you already know that.

I was fooled by those happy daydreams. I had wasted time and money when I should have been preparing for this stage, this final stage of life. Financially we are doing better than a lot of other American people. But as it is said, money can't buy you happiness.

I retired early at the age of sixty-four and I thought I had it made! I seemed fit and when I wasn't competing in 5K, 10K, half marathons or marathons, I was training for the next one. The house was paid for. I was getting money from the Carpenters Union retirement plan plus money from the PCG retirement plan plus money from the PCG 401K. Oh, I was getting my Social Security benefits as well. Why should I worry? 

It seems that the things I could not see, my spine for instance, was fragile and flawed by years of abuse while installing drywall. My lungs were in sad shape, but I hadn't known it because I was so involved with the training and the races. I was training over 30 miles a week normally and 60+ miles when I was getting ready for a marathon. Plus, I had lived and worked at an elevation of 4,500+ for some eleven years and I had stopped smoking many years ago.

Then one fateful morning I felt a sharp pain in my lower back as I was finishing an eight-mile walk around the park. It would not go away and so I went to see my PA and he referred me to a neurosurgeon. That was it...it was all over. Surgery followed surgery and as I recovered my health declined and declined some more until this present day.

I could give you a sad litany of all my physical problems. But I won't because it only makes me sad as well. I think I will look at those ads again, that should cheer me up.

 

Exercise? or type something here?

 I was just reading the last weeks Economist which had an article about the Amazing economy of the USA. I keep looking for an amazing moment in our economy but haven't seen it yet. After reading the entire article, I saw it and it's happening amongst the wealthiest among us. The poor are doing better as they are coming closer to the middle class, while the middle class remains stuck. That sounds so familiar. None of the homeless were included in that data. That is a whole different problem.

Another part of the same article reveals what a lot of us already knew. The average life expectancy among Americans is now down to 77 years. Average European's live about 5 years longer. Why is that? Lifestyle is just part of that. And a major reason is the better quality and availability of healthcare in those countries. Here, in the USA, I can't imagine going through all the work and expense of medical school just to become a GP. A plastic surgeon or a dermatologist or a hundred other specialties will give you a much better reward for your time and money spent on medical schooling. That is the one big reason for the lack of family doctors and emergency care that we see now.  

Homelessness could be solved by courage. Political courage. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had that courage when it was needed and so the WPA and dozens of other programs were created to employ the jobless during the Depression. Roosevelt lost that courage when it was needed to protect the Americans of Japanese heritage. Thousands of them `````````````````lost their homes, their health, their savings, and dignity, when they were put into American concentration camps. 

The wealthiest at that time hated Roosevelt for meddling with the wealth of the nation and the racist were happy to see the concentration camps built and filled. His wife would have done better at that time in our history.     

Of course, there are no simple answers for any of those major problems. It will take work from our elected representatives. That is something that they seem unable to do.

Once more unto the breach

 It's just about 6:30 AM and I have my coffee in hand, and I have finished off my cup of Tapioca pudding that I enjoy every morning. Why Tapioca? I don't have a great answer for you, it's simply what I do. Tapioca doesn't have any health benefits that I know of. It's a vital part of Boba Tea but I have never tried that.

It's time to start my exercise routine for the morning. I have been doing that, exercising, for about 7 or 8 weeks now and always adding some time or repetitions to increase the difficulty but I have not seen any big improvements. True, I do have more strength in the mornings, but that strength begins to fade around 2 P.M. Now I have become aware of Peripheral Neuropathy and can add that to my list of health concerns. I am not diabetic so that is not the cause of neuropathy in my case. It doesn't hurt and that is a plus. But it does affect my balance and that is a worry. A big worry!

My memory is another concern for me. I have lost the timeline for most of the events during the past year. I should take the time to create a spreadsheet and a graph of that period. I know that I was in the hospital for a period, but it is a jumble of memories, and I can't get a good handle on it. It is time for a spreadsheet!

I have been reading a lot of science fiction lately and I have found it difficult to find talented authors. Editors are in short supply as well. I used to read Sci-Fi in monthly magazines when I was in my early teens. I would go Stuart's Pharmacy where the store had a great magazine collection and there, I could find Isaac Azimov, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, plus others whose names are now forgotten. Today's authors seem to write for a pre-teen audience and the editing is simply terrible. But I have found a few professionally written books in the "Hard Science Fiction" category. Brandon Q. Morris is one that I can depend on. Other science fiction authors I like are James Corey, *Joel Shepherd, *Peter Cawdron and others mentioned in my Goodreads pages. I definitely enjoy all of Joel Shepherd's books, but he writes only when he wants to. He promised a new book 'soon' but that was 2 years ago. Since I read often, I have subscribed to Kindle Unlimited which requires a monthly payment of about $11. For more enjoyment when reading "Hard Science Fiction" I would recommend reading any of the free Kindle books on Quantum Mechanics/String Theory or one of Stephen Hawking's books on the same subjects. (Not free) I really wish they had physics classes in high school back in the 1950's. Now, 60 years later, I find the subject fascinating. But 60 years ago, physics was all about e=mc squared and not much else. Particle Entanglement and the possibility of multiple universes weren't even theories at that time, and nobody was thinking of the Large Hadron Collider as a tool to discover more particles.  

More later today... It is later now. I decided to get the shower over with before getting into my exercises. Taking a shower is dangerous and I need all my wits about me before stepping into that ceramic tiled death trap. I. Must. Not. Fall. And I need to take a walk this morning. Doing that will give my feet some exercise and, just perhaps, remedy my neuropathy. 

Okay, the walk has been accomplished. Down to the corner and back.

 

Fit (Fitness) Sounds like work to me

I just finished the first 15 exercises of the 20 I have been doing each day. I selected these exercises based on memory and some logic. But now I wonder if they are doing what I hoped they would do. So I am going to look at YouTube and see if I can find the ones I need.

In the meantime, I checked out the ankle weights on Amazon.Com and finally decided on a cheap set. My decision was based solely on the fact that it was returnable for free. Now it's time to watch YouTube....

What a chore that is! Not exercises but trying to get the sound right. I did find some good exercises, new ones, and verification that the first 15 were almost correct. Now I have to redo my list. 

2 1/2 hours later. I have been sitting at the table on the patio while reordering the list of exercises by value and practicing my handwriting at the same time. I think I have a good list now. 

It was time to go back inside...but I thought I should take some more photos of the garden. Laurae helped me get my walker over the barriers and we made it to the bench where I could see the whole garden spread out below me. I found that the Sun was too bright for me to see the screen on the camera, so we moved to a spot where I could. I had to take them in a hurry as I could only stand for a short time. The photos should be on my Photos shared pages now that I am back in contact with network. The two Redbuds' have spread their tiny purple flowers? all over the dark compost that surrounds them.

I'm still around...I think?

My memory is terrible! I forgot to mention ? ? ? yesterday. See, what I mean? I look all around searching for a clue but nothing jumps out at me.

Boo is still around and she is becoming more and more like me. She can't always stay on her feet and she is deaf and missing quite a few teeth. She has ingrown claws but she still purrs and wants to sit on my lap. She does not have any distress that I can see so I just want that to continue. She finds a sunny spot every morning and moves along with it, just napping.

Our landscaper has made his annual or semi-annual trip to our yard and it's looking wonderful out there. Every day we see more plants beginning to flower. Of course I don't know the names of all the plants; that's something that our oldest daughter can do. Speaking of which...she sold the Plant Barn. She still holds the mortgage on it for the new owner, so she really hopes he will succeed. Her sister, our middle child, still works there, doing the bookkeeping for the new 'owner'. Our son, and the youngest child, has moved to Idaho. I'm sure it's a nice place to visit, and I have done so in the past, but I can't envision ever living there. Our youngest grandson is still looking for the power company lineman job and in the meantime he has a job working for a communication company...He is like me; hates boring jobs and loves working outdoors. Our youngest granddaughter is heading toward her 3rd year at the University of Arizona, Tucson, where she is on the women's basketball team (wheelchair). Our oldest granddaughter has a baby daughter, our great grandchild and she is 11 months old.        

I am still a patient of Enloe Palliative Care and getting great care. Of course it's not free. We still pay (&paid Social Security for years) plus our supplemental insurance. I don't know how some of our elderly can survive on the pittance that the gov't throws to them. We have one of the least efficient health care systems among the 'wealthy' nations. I think we are in 23rd place now.

Health care here in Chico is abysmal! The only care you can get if you are indigent/or in a hurry is the emergency room at the one hospital. We have just one pulmonologist in a city that has lots of elders. Luckily, he is one of the best doctors in town. A lot of doctors have quit and hired themselves out to the hospital as 'Hospitalists'. The hospital then does the billing and gives the doctor a salary. The people that the doctor used to employ? They are out of a job and on their own. The town is still just a dusty spot on the road. Nothing to see here folks! Move along...

Health...I hate to keep on talking about it...but it's a big part of my diminished life. Close to 20 years ago, I was training for my 6th marathon (Portland again) when my spine gave up and I had to surrender myself to the health system. And I am still here. I lost about 45 pounds and now I have to use a walker if I'm interested in staying upright. I am!

We had such great dreams for retirement. I was going to enter marathons all over the country. I managed to get in Anchorage, the Redwoods and 3 in Portland. But still missing were Catalina Island, Duluth and a dozen more. We managed to get in the P.F. Chang 1/2 Marathon in Phoenix. 

A beginning again

 I just finished looking over a good deal of old posts. But, I am using my Dell with Windows 11? and it seems to have lost my instructions to display the text in a readable size...Ah! I finally found the smaller text.

Yes, I know that I have not been consistent in my posting. But, I have a good excuse. I had been on "hospice care" with the good people at Enloe coming to visit every other day or more. Part of that care involved physical therapy and over a period of a month or so I began to get better. I began to think with a clearer head and found that I wasn't thinking about death as often as I had been. The change was noted and I was soon upgraded to "Palliative" care status. The physical therapy changed to include more balance workouts and I bought a pair of 5# weights to replace the single 3# weight that I had been using and I put together a list of exercises that would help me to get my strength back. The nurse's and therapist have been great and I owe them a big debt of gratitude. 

It wasn't all pleasant, as I finally decided to use a Foley catheter so that I wasn't waking Laurae up 2 or 3 or 4 times a night so that she could help me get out of bed and into the bathroom. So I am stuck with this irritating catheter for a long time ahead. With occasional bouts with a UTI and far too often bladder spasms, it has not been pleasant. Well that's old age for you! It's not all "golden".

I started by saying that I had looked through the posts of this Blog. Not true, I had browsed selectively. And so I am not sure if I found all the errors. Please forgive. 

I am still troubled by memory lapses but then again I am 82 years old. My exercising daily and walking more often are helping me to keep a clear head.

if you want to see any of my other 11 Blogs, you will find them by clicking on the symbol on the upper left corner. I had plans to make those blogs lengthier but time slipped away and so what you see is what you get.

Also, I used to follow other Bloggers. I would imagine that there are fewer of them alive now. I hope I am wrong...I guess I should look and find out what I can.  

Well, I looked but was held up by memories...I would start reading some of my old posts and just couldn't stop. I ended up opening up all 11 of the titles and reading a few of the posts.