Power tools, they are great things that help us do things quicker, with less strain on our bodies. They have helped build America.
The Good
Due to companies sending their manufacturing overseas, the price of power tools has fallen across the board. What used to cost $400, can now be obtained for $200. This makes building that project or replacing that power tool much cheaper. What may have prevented one from starting a project due to the cost of the equipment, now has been greatly reduced. Due to competition and the reduced cost of manufacturing a tool, many companies offer 5 year or even lifetime warranties on the tool. Wow, now you can buy a tool and it will be good for life. If the tool can’t be repaired, the manufacturer simply sends you a new one. That is the good.
The Bad
If you purchased a tool that has only a one year warranty, there is a good chance that the repair parts for your tool are not available. Possibly, there is a law requiring manufacturers to provide repair parts for their products for so many years, but we are seeing power tools where the repair parts aren’t even available one year after purchase. Those parts that the manufacturers do provide aren’t cheap either. Even though the parts cost them pennies on the dollar, the retail price for these parts is higher than they need to be in many cases, thus allowing the manufacturer to stock less of these repair parts. Many of the manufacturers that we deal with, have either raised the price of their parts to an unreasonable price or they put multiple parts in very expensive kits. Those tools or parts that do not sell are quickly eliminated. We have heard that one of our manufacturers simply throws the unsold repair parts in a dumpster.
We have become a throw away society. When was the last time that you took your TV to a TV repair shop? How about that computer or cell phone? Did you attempt to get it fixed or did you simply remove the data and buy a new one? My guess is that you bought a new one.
I sell repair parts for a living. We are having to change our business model due to manufacturers hiking up their parts prices or simply not making them available.
Many people under the age of 40 simply do not know how to repair things, nor have the interest in doing so. I know that when I repair something, I have a feeling of accomplishment. I know that I probably saved money as well as kept whatever I repaired out of the landfill. A generation ago, products were designed to have their high wear parts easily accessible as well as repairable. Have you tried changing the light bulb in your car lately? A simple task like this isn’t even, well simple. The last car that I had, I had to remove the tire, the fender well cover, the light bulb cover, then I had to squeeze my hand into what was a very small and sharp space. It ended up being a 2 hour project. Cars are built in sections, then dropped down over the frame, then the body parts are added, holding hostage any repair part areas. No wonder I was quoted $2,200 to simply replace timing cover gaskets on my 17 year old BMW. The cost of the parts was less than $50, but the labor was very high, more than the price to replace the entire engine!
The Ugly
What we are not going to see in the future are repair shops for ANY products. We are in a microwave society. Everything is instantaneous. If you are in a digital job, you know that you can create and send content very quickly. We have the tools to create, design and launch a website in less than a day, one that will reach the entire world without even licking a stamp. A stamp? What is that?
What is sad, is that people that have great troubleshooting skills like I have, will no longer be needed. We have AI (artificial intelligence) that will be able to take all the knowledge of millions of people in it’s database, that is able to troubleshoot based upon everyone’s voluntary input into it’s database brain that will eventually replace you, me and others thought process. Just because we can doesn’t mean that we should. Just because we can send all of our production overseas to reduce costs doesn’t mean we should. We are eliminating jobs for our country, making products cheaper so that we don’t have to repair them. Instead of a tool lasting a couple of generations, we are lucky that it will last a couple of years. With lifetime warranties on power tools, this has to tell you about the actual cost to the manufacturer if they are able to continue to replace your power tool each time it breaks.
The next time you purchase a tool or appliance and you are pleasantly relieved at the low price of it, think of these things:
Where was this made? Are their wages comparable to what I earn?
Is that manufacturing plant down the street still humming along or is it a vacant building with broken windows?
How much do I think the product costs the manufacturer, to be able to offer a lifetime warranty?
How long do I expect to own this? Will I get to pass it down to my children?
We have traded low cost of a product for quality and the ability to have the item serve us well over the years. It bears contemplating if nothing else.
I’ve been thinking lately, and that is a dangerous thing! Much of our life is on auto-pilot, much like getting in the shower to shampoo, rinse and repeat; the instructions on the side of our shampoo bottle. In all actuality, I only shampoo my hair once each time I shower, not twice, but alas I regress.
It is so easy to go through life doing the exact same thing we did the day before. I know that I get in a routine. I leave the house each day, vowing to make this day unlike any other day, but when I get to work, I see the exact same visual clues and I settle back into the same actions that I did the day before. Don’t get me wrong, many of these actions have proven very successful, but when the actions that you do are not giving you the intended results, then something has to change.
I believe that the reason that many of us do not veer off of our routine is due to comfort and fear. It is very comfortable to experience the same thing every day, even though it may not be healthy for us. We know the outcome, we don’t have to really put our mind in creative gear, we just put it in drive. Just like going to the gym, our muscles get used to the routine and stop developing. We are told by trainers, you have to switch up your routine or your muscles will not develop as they should. Our minds do the same thing, we stop growing as individuals when we go to that comfortable routine that isn’t delivering results any longer. The other reason I believe is fear. Doing anything new has some level of fear to it. Here I am writing this during my work day. Since I own the company, I should be able to be creative and write to my blog, right, but do I typically? The answer is no. I do not because I fear that if I don’t do the same thing that I did yesterday, my work results would change at the end of the day, and that is very uncomfortable. I can talk all I want about making changes, but do I really do it? Doing the same thing gives you consistent results, even when the results are not what you want, but hey, that are consistent. Doing something different or new makes us venture to that unknown land that takes us out of our comfort zone. God forbid that we might end up with superior results.
The same visual clues can also be a hindrance I believe. These are triggers. They cause us to repeat the same action the last time we were in that place. Why? I believe again it is comfort. Our brain associates an image with an action or thought process. It’s hard to stop thinking or doing something that has been ingrained in us. For instance, when I walk by my computer, instead of thinking of how can I write a really interesting story, I look over my work schedule, look at a profit and loss statement, look at our recent web rankings, look at my budget, check my email and any creative thought that would have been birthed has now vanished. You have to figure out what visual triggers cause you to fall into that trance that steals your life. Don’t get me wrong, many of our visual triggers are good, they get us moving and we get stuff done, but when you wake up with a purpose for the day, promising to brainstorm, don’t let the visual triggers side track you.
Purposeful living is hard. It’s much easier to simply repeat what you did the day before, in the exact same way that you did it yesterday. Also, being creative is hard as well. It’s much easier not to be creative. Creativity takes real effort. I don’t see being creative and routines as going hand in hand unless you call sitting still every day (the routine) to let God drop some really out of this world ideas into your head.
When I was a kid, my teachers used to tell my parents that I sat and daydreamed too much during class. I was guilty of this for sure, but I wasn’t daydreaming about the kind of cereal I ate that morning, I was dreaming of all kinds of inventions like space travel, underground cities and flying cars. I am also off the charts when it comes to dreaming each night. I joke about my multiple dreams per night, saying that I should have popcorn to go along with my dreams since many of them feel like cinematic experiences.
Somehow, the older we get, we seem to stop daydreaming or dreaming in general. We get into a routine that has proven to work for us. It pays the bills, keeps us out of prison and doesn’t cause people to hurl insults at us as we walk down the street. I guess you can say that we start to settle. What if our shampoo bottle said, “Shampoo, rinse, wait a couple of days, rinse, then shampoo and if you feel like it, shampoo some more.” Well, they wouldn’t sell as much shampoo and for those of us that like instructions, we would just melt into total confusion. Shampooing twice in one day does sell more shampoo, but for those of us that shampoo every day, that’s just too much shampoo in one’s life! Back to the analogy. Routines are not all that bad. For instance, I started playing cello two years ago. Unless I set up a routine to practice, I won’t get better. I know that for myself, I also have to set up a time that I practice each day, which for me is around 9PM each night. My teacher gives me different techniques to help me improve. I use these multiple exercises which are all different, yet I use the routine of my practice to perfect these. This “routine” works for me and gives me the desired result that I want in this area of my life. Exercising is another routine that I know is good for me. I need that routine to keep my body in good shape, but even with exercising, I choose different activities to keep my body from getting used to the same motions so that I can get a full workout.
One good routine that I have started to do is to take the first part of the day to write down 10 different ideas. (By the way, this isn’t my original idea, I borrowed this from James Altucher) These 10 ideas are not a to do list or a task list, they are ideas where I let my mind go wild. Some of them are great practical ideas and others are Buck Rogers type ideas. When I write down many of these ideas, I think of how silly they are, but when I go back and read through many of the old ideas, they don’t look so silly. Anyway, who said when we grow up our ideas have to become all serious and boring? I don’t think that Elon Musk starts his day by thinking, “I just need to start thinking of some boring ideas and businesses that nobody will get excited about, but will guarantee that I will make loads of money.” Nah, I think that Elon Musk believes that the future doesn’t have to be as bleak as we are all signing up for. It doesn’t hurt to have investors and the financial backing to make your dreams a reality, but we can all dream. This is the thought behind the movie Tomorrowland, that I wrote about last year. The future can have some golden moments and opportunities if we will start to dream again. We don’t have to stop dreaming just because we are older than the age of 12.
I remember when I finished college. The biggest wake up call was that the summer season would take on a whole new meaning. When you are in school, you have the summers off, for the most part. This was a time of going on vacation with your family or finally inventing that really cool rocket part that you didn’t have time to do during the school year. When you finally finish going to school, every month is like the previous, shampoo, rinse and repeat. Maybe you get a week or two of vacation during the year, but for the most part, it’s groundhog day. My wife and I recently read a book by Bob Goff called Love Does. Bob has these zany stories where he strives to live a life that has a good amount of whimsy in it. He is an attorney, but he does not let his vocation dictate how he lives his life. He allows ideas to pop into his head, then has the bollocks to act on them. Our home group read his book. Most of the people in our home church group are retired. This book really challenged many of them and made us think differently about how we should live each day.
I feel that each day is a gift from God. I don’t know about you, but when I receive a gift, I’m very thankful. I take time to write a thank you note to let the person who gave the gift know how much I appreciated the thought, and for remembering me. My thank you note to God is taking the time each day to allow Him to fill my mind with the vast possibilities of what this world was meant to be and for allowing me to be just a small part of that grand plan. Maybe someone one day will look back on one of my ideas and say, “Wow, that idea was bigger than Gill, he must have had someone help him with that one.” My answer would be, “You’re right, I don’t have that kind of imagination, but let me introduce you to the One whose imagination started this whole planet we live on!”
I used to have hobbies. When I was a kid, I would focus on one hobby each summer. One summer, I was a biologist. I had one of those Tasco microscopes that many of us got for Christmas. With this inexpensive microscope, I was able to discover a miniature world, hidden from the human eye. We lived next to a swamp and just one teaspoon of swamp water resulted in a myriad of wild creatures. I bought some petri dishes and had quite a collection of swamp goo in my room. I would draw what I was seeing through my microscope. I bought some slides that had a small concave area that would hold liquid and this is where taking a medicine dropper, I would place a drop of swamp water so that I could view it through the microscope. There were all kinds of creatures swimming around; many of them had lots of legs and flagellum. Wow, I haven’t used that word since 9th grade.
Another summer, I took my Chemistry set and decided to be a mad scientist, creating god awful smells. It seemed that all of my experiments had a good amount of sulfur in them and sulfur melting in a spoon over a bunsen burner is the most awful smell there is. It seemed that I was always running out of denatured alcohol which is what fueled my bunsen burner. If my chemistry experiment didn’t smell, explode or make some kind of foam that spilled down the side of a beaker, I wasn’t happy. There were all kinds of experiments that just changed the liquid from a clear to a blue. It was supposed to teach you something about the chemical you just added, but to me that was boring. I wanted to be Fred Macmurray and invent flubber. For some strange reason, the chemistry set included all the sulfur you needed, but they seemed to always be missing the saltpeter and charcoal. Hmmmm, I wonder why. I think that the chemicals permanently ruined the finish on my maple desk I had been given.
Many of my summers, I built model rockets. I loved to build rockets, but soon got bored with the small models. Back in the late 60’s, the largest engine they made was a D engine. The small rockets used an A engine. As you have already figured out, A is the smallest and D was the largest. After building all of the rockets that looked interesting, I decided to build my own. I found an old cardboard tube that held mylar sheets in it. It was about 48″ long and 2″ in diameter. This was just wide enough to fit an old frozen orange juice container inside the bottom where I took 3 D engines, glued them together and slid them up into the bottom of my rocket. Igniting 3 engines at one time was tricky. It took more than one attempt to get it to work. My grandfather from Alaska was visiting. He got a chance to go to the field where I was going to launch it and watch. The launch rig that they sold couldn’t hold my large rocket, so I made one out of a 6×6 and a nice straight rake handle. It was satisfying, seeing my own rocket creating head up into the sky. I was finally pushing past what they sold in the stores to satisfy these kids obsessed with space travel.
The next summer, I intended to build a 12′ tall rocket made from a carpet tube. It was going to have a second stage made from a smaller tube. This would require making my own rocket motors. To do this, I talked my dad into buying me a 50 lb bag of ammonium nitrate fertilizer which was going to be the oxidizer for my rocket fuel. I dried it out in the oven on a cookie sheet. It’s a wonder that our house didn’t explode. I talked to a chemist at our church prior to drying it out and asked him why the ammonium nitrate was so wet when I ground it. He said I needed to dry it, so hey, an oven seemed like a good idea at the time. I wish I could say that I was able to create my own engine, but I did not posses the skills to weld or fabricate the nozzle that was required to compress the flame into a concentrated blast. I quickly found out that making a nozzle from copper and solder quickly melted when faced with the intense heat that the engine produced. Oh well, it was fun getting to the point I got to.
One summer, I bought a 3 wheeled go-kart frame from a kid at school for $25. I was determined to build a screaming machine out of it. My dad had an old self propelled lawn mower engine from a reel mower which meant that it had a horizontal output on it. I figured out how to mount it on my go kart frame. I bought the 4th wheel for the kart, which wasn’t exactly the right size and made the go-kart kind of teeter like a 4 legged stool where one of the legs was too short. Eventually I got it going. Once I got it going, there was a line of neighborhood kids wanting to ride it. I told them to go build their own, but my parents made me give them all turns. The go kart wasn’t fast enough for me so I found out how to rig the governor so that it went faster, that is until the motor blew up due to exceeding the maximum revolutions per minute than it was designed for. That didn’t stop me though. I went on the search for a new motor, one that was faster. I had another friend that raced go-karts, and his engines were super fast. I bugged him enough so that he sold me an old used one for $20. It was a 2 cycle engine which meant that it was as loud as a chain saw. This one was difficult to mount onto the go-kart frame, but I somehow finally managed to make it work. The chain kept popping off, but in between the chain popping off, this engine would scream I think it got up to 45 mph, which was fast for a 3 legged go-kart! Eventually the go-kart made way for my first car, a 1967 VW Beetle, not much more than a go-kart. When I had kids of my own, I did buy another go-kart frame that was 70% finished. This time, I bought a book on how to properly build the go-kart. By now I had a repair shop with the proper tools. We had 3 acres and the kids used that go-kart for years until it eventually rusted and was sent to the scrapyard.
When I was in my 20’s, there was a hobby shop in Portsmouth. They sold all kinds of things, but what sparked my attention were the radio controlled airplanes that were hanging from the ceiling. Years ago, I had a small control line airplane. I wasn’t quite sure how to fly it, running in circles, but it was fun, but these in the hobby store didn’t have a wire or line holding it to a handle that you went in circles flying, these used a transmitter and receiver to fly. I had to have one. I talked to the manager of the store and asked which plane was a good beginner to start with. He pointed me to the Falcon 56.
It took me forever to build it. Between work and other interests, the RC plane took a back seat, but finally when I was in my 30’s, I finished it. I went to a RC club and watched them fly. They told me that I needed to be trained to fly it. They said that someone else would get it up in the air and I would slowly take over the controls. I brought my plane to the field the next week only to find out that there were some tips on building the plane that I was not aware of and I really needed to add these features to fly it. I took the plane home rather dejected, but altered the plane so that I could fly it. Instead of return to their field, I decided that I could fly it in my backyard which was a pretty good size. How hard could it be? I started up the engine, walked back to a safe distance and revved up the engine until it started to roll forward. As soon as it got enough speed, it took off. Never learning how to fly it, I jerked the control to the left. The plane took a quick dip to the left and hit the ground. The wing broke and the propeller dug fast into the dirt shutting off the engine. Immediately I told myself, “You are an idiot. How in the heck do you think you could have flown this without any experience.” I picked up the broken pieces of my plane and took them back to the garage, to my workbench. Slowly over several months I repaired the wing and vowed to not repeat this exercise.
When I was in my 30’s, I read somewhere that these guys were building their own rocket engines. There was a how to book that showed you how to build a solid propellant rocket engine. It required buying a lathe to make the forming materials for the nozzle and a rock tumbler that would be used to mix the propellant along with non sparking brass plugs the size of a good Tootsie Roll section. I also had to buy a triple beam balance to measure the chemicals. There were quite a lot of steps in making solid rocket motors, but I methodically made all of the tools necessary. I even built a small rocket motor test stand so that I could test all the different mixtures, varying how much of one chemical to put in to achieve the best thrust. Eventually, I built size G rocket engines, about the size of a flare. These were much larger than the D size engine that I bought from the hobby shop. To see how high they would go, I would attach them to a long wooden dowel, just like a bottle rocket and launch them out of a 4″ PVC pipe that was 8′ long to guide them. I didn’t want to blow up a rocket that I had spent tons of time building so I tested it this way. What I learned out the hard way was that you can’t rush the drying process of a rocket engine. I had some of my kids friends show up one evening and I got to talking about the engines I was building, but had none to show them. I figured, hey I’ll just whip up an engine from some of the propellant that I had in the garage. I packed the engine, put it on a dowel and inserted it into the 8′ long PVC pipe. I was standing about 25′ away and pushed the ignition button. Instead of the rocket engine shooting out of the top of the PVC tube, it detonated in the tube sending shards of very sharp PVC chunks all over the yard, over the house and somehow missing me entirely. There must have been an angel somewhere protecting me, because none of the shrapnel hit me. My neighbor about a half mile away said it shook his house. My kids were standing on the porch with their mouths open, not sure what to think. The next day, I walked around picking up the chunks of white PVC. Somehow a good number of them had gone over the house and ended up in the front yard. I realized that this was not a toy. These were explosives that had to be handled with care.
Fast forward about 10 years. One day, I packed up all of my toys, my RC plane, rocket making tools, triple beam balance and rock tumbler. I took them to a friend that was into the same type of hobbies and said, “Here you go. I want you to have all of my stuff because I know that you will find good use for it.” He looked at me with a quizzical look and simply said, “Well, uh ok.” I got back into my car and left without another thought of what for so long, had been a big part of my life. I’m not quite sure why I did this. It was if the whimsical part of my life had just fizzled out. Maybe I said to myself, “It’s time to grow up. Quit playing with toys.” I never really thought of it much, but my business had gone from working with my hands to managing other people and typing on a keyboard like I am doing now. Instead of standing back and looking at a project with pride, I was looking at a profit and loss statement and trying to figure out how to grow my net profit. This is pretty much the progression of most business owners.
I had “grown up”, …but at what cost? The childlike wonder and enjoyment of spending time working with my hands building something that others would consider a hobby had been replaced with spreadsheets, meetings and managing employees. I find that I also had become much more cautious. I now tend to over analyze every decision, not wanting to make any errors at all, even if it would bring enjoyment or fun. Instead of becoming more confident and wanting to push the envelope to discover new worlds and ways to do things, I signed up for doing life the way that Harvard Business School said to do life, starched, tried and true. Don’t get me wrong, I have a successful business, even in the wake of extreme competition on the web, but I haven’t been exploring any new lands or opportunities either.
Why do we trade that childlike imagination and curiosity for what I call shampoo living; shampoo, rinse and repeat. I haven’t figured it out, I mean why I gave away my hobby things. I really can’t put my finger on it at all. My wife bought me a drone. I had been eyeing them for a while, so she bought me one last year. I haven’t used it much. I gave the excuse that we have too many trees around our house and I don’t want to get it stuck in the tree like Charlie Brown’s kite eating tree. It’s still sitting in a drawer. There are all kinds of really cool things that you can do with a drone, but it still just sits in the drawer. Just a few decades ago, I didn’t care about trees, but now I’m so cautious that I have refused to let myself have fun. My other excuse is, “It’s too windy.” Well, that never kept me from launching any of my rockets when I was a kid. Wind or no wind, I launched them. I simply adjusted the initial launch angle to compensate for the wind, and most of the time it worked, that is until the parachute opened and it floated into that rocket eating tree anyway. There is a phrase that has been used for young people called ‘Failure to launch’, but what if you own a drone and don’t fly it. Would that be called ‘Failure to fly a drone’?
When I would here a guy’s wife saying “He like’s his toys, he is always buying some new gadget.” I always felt kind of proud because I didn’t buy any toys. I didn’t play video games. I didn’t buy golf clubs. Should I be proud? Not buying ANY toys is rather extreme. Buying too many toys is irresponsible. Guess what, I’m not irresponsible. A happy medium would be nice. I have tried to be a little more whimsical in the past month or two. We need more whimsy. When we are young, our parents want us to grow up, but when we grow up, nobody says to become more childlike. We just heap more responsibility upon ourselves and drown out that childlike wonder and imagination.
I think that the reason that I gave up my toys is because I gave up on my imagination. Between trying to take care of everyone else, I stopped taking care of myself. Somehow I thought that by continuing my hobbies, I was being selfish. Imagination and ideas is the core of who I am, but I have seen this parts of me slowly dying. That scares me. To see the part of me that God created dying, is really sad. I refuse to let this happen. How will I change this? Well, I’m going to Disneyworld next week, that’s a start. I will also sit down and write out fictional story about what I have always wanted to do, writing it as if it was already in existence. This will cause me to use all of my imagination as I live in a state of uber reality. This will cause me to leave all of my limitations and excuses behind as I revel in the land of whimsy.
The next post might be of me climbing a tree while wearing a super hero outfit!
You’ve heard that phrase before. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.” Sometimes, no most times, what is obvious to others is overlooked by us.
Have you ever been so focused on something that you don’t realize that your direction is totally off? Running into consistent road blocks it’s obvious to those watching us to try another method, but we continue on hoping somehow that the results will be different this time. It’s like trying to chop down a tree with a hammer; maybe if I just keep hitting it harder it will fall. Does it occur to us to use another tool? When you are the one doing the activity, it’s hard to get another perspective. It requires leaving the activity for a season to gain proper perspective. At times it requires even more, or should I say less. It may require quiet contemplation seeking the divine guidance given to all of us, if only we should ask.
There is a saying out there, “If your dream doesn’t scare you, it isn’t big enough.” For one, finding that dream sometimes is the biggest challenge. I’m a dreamer, but for some reason I seem to be stuck; I mean really stuck, like for 2 years stuck. I’ve never had problems coming up with new ideas, but to come up with that one big dream for myself, I am stuck. I would think that this “big dream” would just come up and slap me in the face, but so far this hasn’t happened.
When I was a kid, I wanted to build space ships, amusement parks and flying cars, but now that I am 61, the reality that this takes major money and education that I just don’t possess. I know that seems like a cop-out. For one, Disney already built some of the coolest amusement parks, so unless I want to work at one, why duplicate something that is already almost perfect. Flying cars, well it seems that these are just starting to evolve, in the way of drones. Since this is new, maybe it’s not too late for this. Space ships, well SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing this, but still they are stuck using LOX and SRB’s. For space travel to be a reality, some physicist needs to discover anti-gravity.
I started a tool repair business because I enjoyed tinkering. I mean, it wasn’t tinkering with cool cars, but at least it was tinkering, using a modest sum of money to be able to launch my self into business. This evolved into selling tool parts on-line which does a pretty good job of paying the bills, but lacks in the creativity department. I would actually let this business be run by someone else IF I discovered that big dream, but I haven’t.
Do I discover the dream or does the dream find me? I think dreams are like seeds, divinely planted within us. It’s up to us to water and nourish the dream, but we can’t make the seed. Man has tried to make seeds to no avail. We can make new plants by making a hybrid which produce seeds, but we can’t create seeds. Only God can make seeds. In the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus says that it is the smallest of seeds, yet it grows into a tree that the birds of the air can roost in. When God plants that seed within us, don’t minimize the size of the seed, because we don’t know what God plans to do with that seed.
I have decided to not force the dream. I’m the kind of person that doesn’t like down time. I must redeem the time I have been given each day, but this is something that I need to learn to do. I will release it, let it go until I know that another dream has been planted within me.
Being a CEO on the go, I use Google search quite a bit. I love that “she” (Google voice search) talks back to me with the answer which allows me to continue to focus on my task at hand. The ideal search is one that is almost like conversing with a human. AI is getting to the point where it understands what we need and want to search for.
Currently, if I want to know something that Google hasn’t found a definitive answer for, I get silence. This is when I know that I have asked for information that I will need to stop, put on my glasses and read the many web entries. Everything was going great until……silence. The relationship just broke down. In any relationship, silence isn’t always golden, and when it comes to Google Voice Search, silence means “she” is broken. Google, talk to me, but no, I get the silent treatment.
Progress towards real AI would be so that Google would continue the conversation. Here is an example.
Me: “Google, how can I make a music video?”
Google: Silence
Instead, let’s keep the conversation going.
Me: “Google, how can I make a music video?”
Google: “What kind of music video do you want to make?” (Google just asks predefined questions: “What kind?” “Where?” “How?” “Why?”)
Me: “I want to make a Latin music video.”
Google: “Would you like me to change our conversation to Spanish?”
Me: “No, just tell me where to go to make a music video.”
Google: “Do you want to make a music video here or somewhere else?”
Me: “I want to make one here.”
Google: “Why do you want to make one here?”
Me: “Because I just do.”
Google: “Do you want a list of recording companies?” Me: “No, I want to use YouTube.”
Google: “Ok, let me search for some YouTube music video how to sites.” (Google is simply taking my answers and forcing me to give “her” more defined answers.)
Me: “Great, can you email me the list.”
Google: “Sure, Gill (add name of the Google account holder), do you want me to send it now?”
Me: “Yes, send it now.”
Google: “Ok, I will send it, Do you want to talk some more, or are we done?” (personal and almost real)
Me: “We are done.”
Google: “Ok, goodbye, let me know if you need anything else.” (again, personal and almost like an assistant)
What we want to do, is to keep the user engaged. As we all know, images are very powerful, but now an actual voice is even more powerful; it is conversational. In this era of virtual everything, we desire that our virtual relationships take on an almost human interaction. AI can be friendly. It can be inquisitive, simply mirroring our questions like a good therapist. The therapist doesn’t need to have the answers, they simply need to learn how to rephrase our own questions so that it make us think and solve our own problems. The beauty is, we don’t even realize it.
Today, I found myself wishing that I was the age of 12. That was an age when I was still young enough to dream of building a spaceship and going to the moon, yet old enough to not to have to have a summer job, or any job at that point.
My mom and dad took care of me. They made sure that I had food on the table, clothes on my back and a roof over my head. All I had to do was to go to school and do my chores. The world was my oyster, or at least a clam. The future held every possible hope for anything that I wanted to be. Sure we had the Cuban missile crisis and civil defense drills which were scary, but I didn’t focus on these things. I wasn’t old enough to be drafted into the Vietnam war but saw the headlines which were very confusing to a 12 year old. I just focused on my latest science experiment and discovering the wonders of God’s universe.
There were piano lessons, but I enjoyed them. All I had to do was practice, which was easier some times than others. Life just wasn’t that hard up to that point. Walt Disney was still coming into our homes via the TV each Sunday night. Gilligan’s Island kept us rolling on the floor laughing. Life was easy and good. Life also appeared good, even though there was evil in the world, I was living during a new industrial revolution where anything was possible. They were talking about landing a man on the moon. All America watched as NASA developed the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs. The inventions that were created to get man on the moon filtered to the commercial market. It seemed that new inventions were popping up daily, amazing all of us.
My life was filled with my chemistry set, microscope, ham radio and model rockets. I was discovering a world of science. We had a small pond in our backyard that held all kinds of microbes that came alive under my Tasco microscope.
I started experiments to discover the true validity of Listerine. Did it actually kill germs? In my petri dish, with just a couple of tablespoons of Listerine, in open air, it actually started to grow mold. I guess it doesn’t really kill germs like they claim. My chemistry set had a bunch of experiments on little index cards. I always looked for the ones that would blow up or smell awful!
My short wave radio was an amazing thing that at night, the air waves came alive due to the atmosphere being more crisp. The radio waves would bounce off the ionosphere from a far off country. I would hear music and voices in other languages that brought the world a little closer. Building the short wave radio, then putting up a copper wire antenna to catch the radio waves was as much fun as using the radio.
Model rocketry was popular back during the formative years of the space program. I flew almost every model rocket that came out. I wanted bigger and better, often modifying the design so that instead of just one engine, I would use three at the same time to launch bigger rockets. A good percentage of my rockets ended up floating by parachute into the many trees that were in our neighborhood. This didn’t deter me, I just saved up enough money to go and buy another rocket kit to build. After awhile I got tired of launching them vertically and decided to launch them horizontally at the side of the neighbors brick house. This wasn’t as exciting because the parachute never opened and it was over too quick. The cardboard and balsa rocket ended up in a thousand pieces. Back to launching them vertically.
The next couple of years life started getting more complicated. I discovered a species that I wasn’t aware of; they call them ‘girls’. I really hadn’t noticed them too much before, even though I did have a one week crush on one or more during grade school, but I really couldn’t be bothered. At age 13, something strange started to happen to my voice. It had it’s moments when it just had a mind of it’s own, changing pitch for no apparent reason. Then at age 14, my face decided that it wasn’t happy with it’s smooth appearance, it needed to add these little mountains of acne that would cause me to skip school from time to time, embarrassed about my latest zit the size of Mt. Everest. Let’s not forget the good old hormones. Talk about your body having a mind of it’s own. Why would a simple ride to school in the school bus cause the zipper area of your jeans to suddenly shrink? This made getting out of the school bus an awkward endeavor, one where your school
books could cover the awkwardness that was going on in your jeans without your approval.
At age 15, some alien life form, tripled the female population in my world. I was sure that at age 12 there were a lot less of these creatures. Everywhere I turned, these giggling, over matured girls were now a focus, messing up my whole science discovering world. At age 15, these girls looked like they just got an extra dose of growth hormones, leaving us poor boys to wallow in our crackly voices and under developed biceps. 16 was on the horizon with the ever promising drivers license waiting. What the heck was I going to do with a car and a drivers license? I had plenty of ideas, but these ideas seemed to steal more and more of my interests in science. They were competing, even winning over what had brought me delight over these few short years. I was more interested in my ability to impress girls than stay true to what had brought me joy over the past 5 years. It was as if this caveman inside of me was ready to pick up his club, ‘me find woman’, knock her on the noggin’ and drag her back to my cave. I wouldn’t have known what to do with my prize should I had been successful in clubbing one and draggin’ her home.
Age 16 was when life really started getting complicated. I saved up enough money for an old car. Now I needed gas for the car. That meant a job. After school, on Saturdays I worked for gas money and repairs. By then, ‘me find girl’ was my main goal as well as having enough money to buy pizza. I needed more money which meant more hours after school and working on Saturdays. Guess what happened to my chemistry set, ham radio, rockets and microscope? They were put in a box and shoved in the attic. Now my new projects were working on my car, not making it a hot rod, just fixing whatever decided to break that week. When you are 16, you buy the first piece of junk that you can find, then if you are mechanical, you just keep fixing it. I had dreams of creating a hot rod, but when you only
earn $2.50/hr, it does not afford you any cool parts.
Since my parents put me in the first grade at the age of 5, I was a senior in high school when I was 16. This meant that I had a bunch of important decisions to make that my emotions were not ready to make. I was a year and a half younger than most boys in my class and this meant that I was smaller and less mature, not making it any more easier to be self confident in my decision making. College was looming and my grades suffered. I was just a big emotional mess. I wasn’t ready to go to college. I really wasn’t ready for the whole girl thing. I just wanted to go back to watching Walt talk about creating Epcot and dreaming of man landing on the moon, of which by now had happened 4 years earlier. Instead of applying to go to a school in engineering, somehow I got this stupid idea of
majoring in theater. What the heck was I thinking?! Theater? I had been in a little theater production of ‘You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown’. I had played Linus. I did an OK job, but I wasn’t a mousekateer, that was for sure. One play and I was bound for Hollywood? Where the heck was that microscope anyway?
My grades were pretty abysmal, so I ended up going to community college for two years before transferring to Old Dominion University. What did I major in? Piano and Music Therapy. What was I thinking? Sure I was a natural at playing the piano, but having a career in music is a hard life. Having a career as an engineer is a good living, good people to work with and decent hours. Those hormones that I had started to experience at 13, 14 and 15 were ruling and ruining my life. It seemed unfair that God puts these hormones in our innocent bodies. Why can’t they just show up around say age 22, when we are done with college?
After four years of college my parents said, “That’s enough. We paid for four years of college. You have no degree, so the rest is up to you or you can get a job.” I remember that day. It’s like this cloud that I was living in just vanished. The fog lifted and reality was like a 16 wheeler heading straight for me. The realization that it was now all me, hit me like a ton of bricks. Mom and dad were not going to pay for me any longer. The roof over my head, even though it was in great shape now seemed to be leaking over my bed. My parents talked about me living at home long enough to save up money for an apartment, but not forever. An apartment? I hadn’t even thought of living away from home, but that idea took hold of me. Soon, I was looking for a job, any job that would provide me with a real living, not just being a cook or selling radios at Radio Shack. I found a job as a salesman at a local Christian radio station which now afforded me the ability to get an apartment. Before long, I was telling my parents that I had found an apartment and would be moving out in 2 weeks. They tried to tell me that I should try and save up more money, but the thought had been planted within my head and I was bound to be on my own. Where the heck was my microscope? Where was Walt when I needed him? Walt had passed away 8 years ago and I was still trying to get used to the idea of it. I sure did miss him coming on our black and white tv on Sundays. Life was moving too fast. I wasn’t ready for all of this, but my emotions seemed to be pushing me to independence. I found a small one bedroom apartment 7 miles from my parents house. I signed a one years lease. I went to the local thrift store for furniture. I made a dining room table from a big spool and a bed frame from plywood and cork. There was not one matching piece of furniture in my place, but it was my place.
Living on my own was fun at first, the first week, but then having to cook for myself, wash my laundry, work during the day left me little time to dream and consider the questions of the universe. I now had a steady girlfriend and that was stress enough. Eventually I proposed to her and for some stupid reason she said yes which she would later regret. More unnecessary drama in my life. My boss at the time owned a very small home in Portsmouth. He was being transferred and said that I should consider buying his house. The mortgage payment would be the same as my rent payment. There was a first time home buyers loan that allowed me to buy a home with only $500 down. So now, I was a homeowner. My parents only lived 20 minutes away, but going back there to live may as well had been 20 hours away. My simple life with hot food on the table was now a distant memory. I was a homeowner with a yard to mow, my yard, no dad to yell at me to
mow it and rooms to paint. When things broke down, I couldn’t expect my parents to take care of it or even the apartment landlord to fix it. It was all me.
In the work area, going from one sales job to another, I realized that I was getting into a resume slump. I had to get out of sales. I guess I looked good in a suit and people just assumed I could sell. After being told no thousands of times you learn what to say so that people will say yes. Since I was paying for the roof over my head I had to learn how to make a sale and got pretty good at it even though I hated it. I needed to jump ship quickly for happiness, so I quit my sales job and turned to the sciences. I worked for a coal testing lab and really enjoyed the work, but the pay was abysmal. I had to eat potted meat sandwiches and heat my home with wood just to survive. I lasted a whole year with the science job before I got back into sales where I could afford to live. All of this time, I never told my parents how poor that I was. I froze that winter as heating a house with wood is really a chore. My tiny wood stove was so small that it would go out around 3AM. I had to set my alarm to wake up and put more wood in it. There were some good things about being on my own. I did learn to sew and mend my own clothes, so it wasn’t all a waste. I did all of my own home repairs because I couldn’t afford to call anyone. I learned a lot. Sometime during all of this, my first wife woke up one morning and decided that she really didn’t like being married and left, never to hear from her again. Eventually I ended up getting two room mates to help with the mortgage since she took her income with her when she left. Where was my damn microscope?!
Eventually, I ended up remarrying and had 4 kids. Suddenly what seemed overnight, I was now a father. I wasn’t just me depending upon me, 5 other people were depending on me. It’s amazing how that affects your decisions and makes you grow up. Day in and day out I played the sales role for a career. More sales jobs, more putting on a suit, until one day I just had it. I had to do something else. I just couldn’t stay in sales. Because of all of the home repairs that I learned to do out of necessity, I started a remodeling company and enjoyed that for years, but it was a hard way to make a living. I really missed the engineering type of guys that I had hung around with when I was young so I tried going back to college to get an engineering degree, but having 4 kids and living off of savings proved too stressful. I lasted about 1 1/2 years and loved every minute of it, but calculus was kicking my butt and money was running out. Life wasn’t easy, that’s for sure.
Somehow I had to return to simpler times.
We bought a house in the country because I wanted to create a version of what I had grown up with, for my kids to experience. We had almost 3 acres to have fun on. The kids had go karts, motorbikes, tree houses and zip lines. We launched rockets and almost got killed building our own rocket engines. We enjoyed the big yard and the kids had friends over all the time to enjoy the go-karts, barn, chickens and all the rest. Even though my children were having fun, life was much more complicated for my kids than when I was growing up. Instead of 3 TV stations, there was now cable, computer games and VHS movies. The media was beginning to flood our homes with drama that as a kid the networks would have never been dreamed of putting on TV. Walt was long gone. There were no Disney endings. Parents were losing control of their children. Rebellion was now the norm. Respect was something that only Tina Turner sang in a song. It was hard raising kids. I didn’t have the answers. Life was out of control. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ was now my favorite movie. I seemed to be able to relate to George Bailey. When was Harry Bailey going to come and rescue me? It was my turn to go to college to become an engineer and let Harry take over the savings and loan business. I felt like a teenager inside, but now I had teenagers of my own. When does one feel old enough and wise enough to raise teenagers? I think never. Soon, my teenagers were facing the very same decision that I had to face what seemed only a few years ago, what college to attend and what to major in. This can’t be happening. It was only a couple of years ago that I was in high school contemplating the same exact thing. Where had the years gone?
Fast forward. Now, I’m 59, but inside I still feel like a kid. I feel like Tom Hanks in the movie ‘Big’. At least once per week I tell someone “When I grow up, I want to…..”. I do say it in jest, but sometimes I feel as if I really mean it. I don’t ever want to stop dreaming. I don’t ever want to stop looking for my microscope. I think I remember where I saw it now, it was under the train set and old petri dishes in the back of the attic. Hopefully my parents didn’t throw it away.
I have been accused of being a dreamer. I accept that. It’s not that I don’t like reality; really, I do! I just think that when we stop dreaming, we stop the ability to wonder “what if”. Some people call it imagining or brain-storming. I call it purposeful thinking with no boundaries. You see, inside of your head, you have the ability to imagine things beyond our realm of physical limitations, or at least what we think are physical limitations.
A dreamer needs to put his dreams into a more concrete world to make them a reality. If you only dream, yet do not use the present tools in the real world to develop your dreams, well then you are simply a dreamer.
With all of the noise of the world around us and the constant interruption from our personal devices, it’s no wonder that many of us have stopped dreaming. I know that it takes more concentration and a concerted effort on my part to enter that place where I ask God, “What if I did this or that? Does the world need this new idea to be a better place?”
I find it hard to be by myself much of the time. I have gotten into the habit of wanting people around me all of the time, yet that doesn’t do much for those times when I need to be creative, like right now. I can always think of something that I have to do, something that needs fixing, someone that needs calling, something that needs to be viewed or read.
If your life is important enough to live, then it’s important enough to record. Others may be very blessed by your words and thoughts.
When you hear someone use the phrase “pay attention to detail”, one usually thinks of an OCD person, at least I used to. Isn’t it interesting that we have labels that we now place on people who don’t fit our perception of ‘normal’. Anyone that has achieved anything noteworthy most certainly would have had a label placed upon them. People who fit in this category are usually not easy to work with; they upset the status quo for sure. Instead of being able to submit our work to them and go eat lunch, they say, “not good enough, what can you do to make it better?” Damn, there goes lunch. I just want to punch a clock, get the work done, then go have a beer! If you have a boss or fellow worker that “pays attention to detail” and you just want to punch the clock, you better look for a new job. You just want a paycheck? Go work for the government, there are plenty of people there that are little cogs in the big wheel of government that love becoming invisible in the huge machine that the government provides. Enough about those of you that just want a paycheck. I’m here to challenge you. I love old houses; I’m talking houses that are over 100 years old. The “attention to detail” was amazing. The interior trim wasn’t just what we call “Ranch style” trim, which to me means BORING. The trim had detail. It took time to create this molding. Look at the brick work. The modern ranch style house did not look like a house on the ranch. It looks like a box. If it has brickwork, typically it’s just your standard running bond style brick. Pediments and even the use of herringbone style brickwork is rare these days. Look at these Tudor brick chimneys at Hampton Court Palace in the UK.
As you can see, this brickwork has detail.
I just finished watching a documentary on the building of Disneyland. Disneyland was built in one year plus one day, yet the planning and “attention to detail” is amazing. Every attraction, every tree and walkway was put in a certain place by design. Walt was never satisfied with the first set of plans. He wanted those that visited to notice his “attention to detail”. He hired experts in their fields to help him build Disneyland. If he wanted something built and he didn’t know how to do it, he hired others that could help him realize his dream. He wanted his visitors to experience something that was outside of their reality, this is why he had earthen berms built all around his park to shut out the reminder of their normal lives.
Every time we create something new, be it a recipe or a new building, we have the opportunity to take the mundane and transform it into something that we and others will remember because we made sure to “pay attention to detail”.
Good enough isn’t good enough. Good enough gets you nothing extra, it gets you by. It might pay the bills, but is that what you want out of life, just to have enough to pay the bills? If you “pay attention to detail” and create something out of the ordinary, put yourself into it so that it is a reflection of who you are, you will be able to do more than just pay the bills!
Why do we like secret rooms? Is it because it is unexpected? Someone took the time to create something of intrigue, not just another room off of the hall. It took some planning to be able to hide this secret room. The room had to be concealed so that it wasn’t obvious from outside nor inside the house; unless you knew of this room and it’s secret entrance, you would never have know that it was there. It’s a lot easier to build a house without “attention to detail”. Most people are happy with a great room, nice bathroom with an en suite and kitchen with granite countertops and a few rows of stone around the front door. Our ancestors who built these incredible homes found in the older sections of most cities around America would have never been satisfied with what we are satisfied with now.
Faster is not always better, it’s just faster. Just because you can get away with the minimum doesn’t mean that you should. The way I look at it, if you put little into this life, just to get by, you will get little out of this life. If you put a $1 bill into a change machine, do you expect to get out 5 quarters? No, you get out of it what you put into it. Life is the same way.
If you want an extraordinary life, you need to put in an extraordinary amount of effort. So, the next time that you are tempted to just put in the minimum, why not “pay attention to detail”!
What makes a dream a reality? How does a dream either evolve into a reality or vaporizes into a puff of smoke? Every dream, not the kind we have during our sleep, but the kind of dreams that we want to be a reality, I believe go through these natural progressions. First, there is the what if stage. This requires quiet contemplation time for the dream to form and take shape. Dreaming is a learned art, it’s not something that comes naturally. It takes time, just like anything else. A dream can be compared to the creation of a child in a mother’s womb. It is born out of passion, but after this, it takes nurturing and a close attention to what the mother eats and how she keeps care of herself while this new person is developing. Your dream has to be carefully cared for. At this stage, it is very fragile. You may not want to share your dream with those that are not apt to agree with your dream. Slowly, your dream then turns into an idea. How do you take your dream, turned idea, into a reality? This is the thing about dreams, there is no one way to make them a reality, but there are helpful things that you can do to help them marinade. This idea is something that you can start to write down. I encourage you to also draw pictures and color them to make your idea more vivid. it’s been shown that colorful pictures make more of an impression on us than plain text. To make your dream a reality, you need to nurture it, like a seedling, fertilizing it with research and steps that each day, give you more information than you had the day before. There will be road blocks, but don’t give up, these road blocks are only routes that will not lead you to your dream. It took Rocket Chemical Company 40 attempts to get the Water Dispersing formula worked out, 40 dead ends, but they eventually found the right route to success, hence WD-40. The great thing about dreams is that it gives us something to strive for. If you make some progress on your dream everyday, you will be one step closer to realizing it. By continuing to work on your dream, you will gain momentum and no matter what anyone says, what may have originally, while your dream was in it’s infancy, squashed it, now nothing can keep you from reaching it. Your dream may take on a new shape as you research it and devote time to it, but one thing is sure, your dream will eventually lead you to great things, all the result of taking the time to say to yourself, “what if”.
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ey to buy pizza. I needed more money which meant more hours after school and working on Saturdays. Guess what happened to my chemistry set, ham radio, rockets and microscope? They were put in a box and shoved in the attic. Now my new projects were working on my car, not making it a hot rod, just fixing whatever decided to break that week. When you are 16, you buy the first piece of junk that you can find, then if you are mechanical, you just keep fixing it. I had dreams of creating a hot rod, but when you only
I had to set my alarm to wake up and put more wood in it. There were some good things about being on my own. I did learn to sew and mend my own clothes, so it wasn’t all a waste. I did all of my own home repairs because I couldn’t afford to call anyone. I learned a lot. Sometime during all of this, my first wife woke up one morning and decided that she really didn’t like being married and left, never to hear from her again. Eventually I ended up getting two room mates to help with the mortgage since she took her income with her when she left. Where was my damn microscope?!
When was Harry Bailey going to come and rescue me? It was my turn to go to college to become an engineer and let Harry take over the savings and loan business. I felt like a teenager inside, but now I had teenagers of my own. When does one feel old enough and wise enough to raise teenagers? I think never. Soon, my teenagers were facing the very same decision that I had to face what seemed only a few years ago, what college to attend and what to major in. This can’t be happening. It was only a couple of years ago that I was in high school contemplating the same exact thing. Where had the years gone?
As you can see, this brickwork has detail.
