Reminiscing

I still haven't found the charger to my digital camera. So here we go, some oldies but goodies.

Long hair and silver hoop earrings. As far as I know these are the only two pics I have of me during those long hair days, though I think my sister may have others. It got half way down my back before it was time to clean up. This was back during the last year of high school through maybe the first or second of college.

This is me feeling very cool sitting in the parking lot of the Fat Burger on the Vegas strip. I felt even cooler making vroom vroom noises as I passed Caesar's Palace. This is summer of '97, I believe, right before entering my last year of college.
This is neither a shooting range nor a college laboratory. Its a picture of my dorm room at MIT. This picture isn't so interesting to look at (were the others?!), but I like it because it reminds me of a time and place. Someone was throwing away a chalkboard so I dragged it home. The target and carriage is just for kicks. Looks dangerous.

And finally, a very young and skinny looking me considering it was only about eight years ago. That's the door to my dorm room back there.

Looming large

Relationships have loomed large in the last few months of my life. I returned to California and reestablished ties with old friends, joined a new church wherein I'm trying to build new ties, had an uncharacteristic short-lived romance, started emailing someone I met at the airport years ago, got reacquainted with an MIT friend over Christmas and now an old high school friend sends me a very welcome message out of the blue.

Wow, such a rush of memories come to mind and heart! If she's happened upon this blog--and she might have, I'm not sure--I won't be saying anything she doesn't already know when I admit I had quite the crush on her way back when. We were never anything but friends, though, and after high school I went to school out of state and she started a family. Naturally that was the end of any romantic notions I might have had--and I'm not so sure I had any notion of what romance was at that age anyway!

So why mention all this history? Most people can relate to this story or one very like it. It also sets the mood for my musings over how the passage of time affects our heart, feelings and memories. Time tends to smooth out the peaks and valleys sure enough, but I don't believe we really ever "get over" anything in our past. Those seismic events that loomed so large when they happened to us are like the proverbial ripples in a pond. Their repercussions continue indefinitely, though often attenuated. Mind you, I don't mean that we are doomed to forever be handicapped by the bad things that happen to us. We can and should mourn the crummy things that happen to us and but then we should use the experiences to form valuable life lessons. Maybe in that sense we do move on, but we don't "get over" anything and that is by no means necessarily a bad thing at all.

So what repercussions do my high school experiences with this friend have on my life today? Hmmm....that really wasn't the point of this post, you know!

The Pilot

I think I'll make this the last of my what-I-did-before-law-school series. There was the jewelry post, the scooter post, and now I'll write the pilot post. I'll skip the fishing post. *yawn*

As I said elsewhere I had a few months before school to indulge my hobbies so I decided to get my pilot license. There were four of us, about the same age and all of us just "had to get our license" within like a month or two. So we hooked up with this crazy eighteen year old aviation genius who was on his way to earning his jet rating. Crazy guy because, though he was bright and gifted, he was still, well, a crazy eighteen year old! It's to him, for example, that I owe one of my Vegas stories. He also had a penchant for accelerating 40 year old Cessna airframes down the runway under ground effect and yanking up on the yoke a couple hundred feet from the end. It brought back memories of my materials course and aluminum samples stretched to snapping in the tensile strength testing machine.

But I was talking about me. I had a friend who introduced me to the Aero Association of Caltech/JPL and I joined up. They had cheap rates, but you had to put up with controlling engineer types. When I wasn't flying I was hanging out at El Monte (EMT) airport, flying backseat, visiting folks in the hangers, listening to the radio, hanging out in the pilot's lounge and just being an airport bum. I eventually got my solo endorsement, starting flying myself around and all was right with the world. But then I scheduled my check ride with the FAA examiner a week before classes started. I got socked in by morning overcast and I had to drop everything and fly back east for school.

I was this close, but I never got my license. I definitely will, though, it's just a matter of putting in some more hours. I figure I was going to fly them anyway.

But here's my ultimate goal: I am going to build me a flying machine! The picture shows an F-1 and I'm pretty sure that's the one I'll build. It's a souped up variation of the RV-4, a popular mainstay in the homebuilt scene for decades. This F-1, however, is modified to accommodate the six cylinder Lycoming (the RV-4 uses the 4 cylinder Lycoming). As such it has a huge front end that gives it the sexy look to go along with the performance numbers. How does 230 mph cruise and 3500 fpm climb grab you? (and about 12 gallons per hour. ouch.)

Justifying insomnia

Gosh, I've got this impression that anyone who doesn't know me would read these posts and think I go around moping and self-analyzing. Not true; it's just a blog persona that tends to be a little more introspective. After all, a diary is often written to some future Self. Likewise many of these posts.

But to whom am I justifying myself here?!

Man, I'm just rambling now. That's what happens when you've got crazy insomnia and you're out of things to write about. [shaking my head as I turn this thing off and head to bed--again]

Another autobiographical bookmark

I behaved rather shabbily Friday night. An old friend invited me and her roommate to spend an evening in the sailboat of a friend of hers. Sounded like fun. I brought a cooler, some food, a cheesecake. All well and good. After a while, though, I got to feeling like the third wheel and I wasn't able to make my exit gracefully. And there's reason to doubt whether I really had any good reason to feel like the third wheel at all. Well, there really was, but on the other hand....

It's forcing me to think about some ugly shortcomings on my part that I would rather brush under the rug. I often come off as a "good guy" and I suppose I take a little sinful pride in having that distinction. But why spend vane effort in keeping up an appearance when the same effort can be placed on really becoming as good a person as I can? That latter is the better approach, though it means chipping off some of the patina from a comfortable self-image.

When I was a kid I remember it was the particularly mossy, overgrown bricks under which crawled the most prodigious insects. Well, better to shine a light on them.

I know I've left out tons of details that the casual reader would most definitely find relevant. I guess this is just another one of those autobiographical bookmarks written more for myself as a way of coming to some understanding of my thoughts and feelings. Then again, a good novel leaves vagaries enough for the reader to interject his own experiences and make the story his own.
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My dad and his wife come back from Columbia today. *sigh* I need to vacuum, mop and clean the kitchen and bathrooms tomorrow morning. That's all right, though. No biggy.

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That last got me thinking how the Lord can make even a menial task fun, like last Saturday when we helped someone move. It was actually fun---a bunch of guys laughing and joking around all day, topped off with a home cooked meal. Praise God! Now if I could only remember to do that while I'm scrubbing the toilet tomorrow!

:-( <---> :-)

I've been so sad because I haven't been able to find the charger for my digital camera for a week now. I really want to put up a picture of my new Jesus soap-on-a-rope which my sister picked up for me at the 99 cent store. So sad.
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I got one of these :-) in my inbox last week. It felt nice to see one again, but I probably won't get another. Were that the only consequence of my bad decisions I would count myself lucky. Luckier, I should say. I'm pretty fortunate and have reason to :-) every day.

Fortunate

I got these two fortune cookies the other day. Anyone familiar with my bouts of chronic insomnia will laugh at the first. But as for the second...

...kinda ironic it came about the time I wrote this one post a few days ago. Now I'm not exactly claiming to have found God in a fortune cookie (nay, nor an image of the Virgin Mary neither!) but it's a reminder that there are some very specific areas of my life I think God is having me deal with right now. This is one of them.

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Apropos of nothing, but by way of salvaging whatever battered Mexican credentials I may possess after the last post...

I just finished eating a "plato" my sister brought home for me from one of her friend's parties. The food was way-Mexican. It was some sort of "barbacoa" made from some animal that, I assure you, never mooed or oinked in it's entire life. I think she told me it was lamb, but it tasted like goat to me. Whatever, they both kinda make a "baaa" sound. Very tasty, though. I scooped it off my plate with four corn tortillas and washed the whole down with a bottle of Pacifico beer--which she also brought me from the party.

Very delicious. Very nice. Thank you SisterE.

Jujube

Wow. It's been interesting the past few days. I've had about 4 barbecues in one week with about as diverse a crowd as I could wish. Monday, a couple a of my old, old friends came over and we barbecued some chicken--my own invention, a sort of jerk sauce emphasizing brown sugar and allspice, replete with home-made tortillas and plenty of that universal happy-sauce beer.

Then on Thursday it was more of the same, though my sister skipped out. Saturday I helped out a sister from church to move to a new place. It was actually a few guys that helped and she and her mother were kind enough to make us some carne asada tacos for dinner---so good, so very blessed indeed (the topic of another post, really)! Just as an aside, something that struck me: after I declined a roast corn on the cob from a street vendor she jokingly asked whether I was truly Mexican (having spoken to her in Spanish much of the day) I maybe-too-passionately insisted I was American with an inclination to appreciate the more "ethnic" aspects of our Southern California culture. I'm not sure how that went over, but I'm inclined to think that my reaction was appropriate for a red-blooded American. I love my country so very, very much, a counrtry that is inherently open to broad cultural influences, but a country inherently protective of its openness to differences. Well here's something different: A Spanish-speaking guy of obvious Mexican extraction who calls himself true-blue American!

Ok, I know I'm making too much of it. Certainly she meant no harm whatsoever, but I guess I do have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I don't think I let it show too much, though.

(Oh, and another barbeque Sunday.)

LI

I should feel compelled to write a special V-day post, shouldn't I? Something sweet and syrupy? That's what Hallmark would want, right?

It's me ma's birthday and the sisters and I are taking her out for dinner. 'nough said.

Myspace

Ya, I'm hip now. I got myself a Myspace thingy and put a link there on the sidebar.

Forgiveness

My friend who stood me up Wednesday night left me a voicemail tonight. She apologized and I forgive her--of course I forgive her!

This got me thinking about forgiveness, a topic I spent quite a bit of time thinking about a couple years ago.

We are commanded to forgive "not seven times, but seventy-seven times." Matthew 18:22 NIV. But what is forgiveness? A one-sided letting go of resentment and rancor? Should it be contingent upon some act of repentance or contrition by the offending party? We see time and again that forgiveness of sins follows from repentance, an act which is more than merely feeling sorry, but requires a concomitant turning away from the sinful behavior. Acts 2:38, 10:43; Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3, 24:47.

This stuff is not just so much theoretical theology (hmm...same root). Take for example, the family who's had a child killed by an unrepentant murderer. We've probably all seen such an example where the family has been quoted as saying they've forgiven the murder despite his unwillingness to own up to his atrocities. Is that the right thing for the family to do? Do they do it more out of a wanting to remove some of the anguish from their bosoms than out of a sincere forgiveness? Is this what Jesus meant? Are we too quick to let people off the hook and so cheapen what is meant by forgiveness?

Maybe. I'll say this much. I was dealing with these questions a couple years ago and this is the revelation I got: repentance is God's requirement. These are His terms for forgiveness. They need not be, and shouldn't always be our own terms. Sometimes we need to forgive even those who have neither acknowledged that they've wronged us nor turned away from the behavior. Always? No, but I did in my particular case a couple years ago.

Character

It occurred to me that the last post was fine until the end. That sort of sexual innuendo joking around, mild as it may have been, just doesn't comport with the character I want to cultivate in myself. Someone asked me the other night what I would change about myself and I was surprised at how quickly I came up with a handful of things, most of them having to do with aspects of character such as integrity. On that score I would do well to heed the advice of a fortune cookie I once got: "Character is what you do in the dark."

So what am I doing about it? Well, as a first matter I'm recognizing my flaws, hence this post, and then conscientiously working to avoid repeating the offending behavior.

Lusting after hams

Does anyone remember that part of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland where a pirate is seen chasing a woman round and round?

At least that's the way it used to be. They were these two manikins standing on a large rotating table so that they could be seen chasing each other, first out one door of the house then in through another, cuckoo clock fashion. Well, the PR people at the Magic Kingdom put their little politically correct minds together and decided it just wouldn't do. Amongst scenes of violent cannonades, debauchery and drunkenness and a convivial little tune whose original lyrics went something like, "We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, and loot. Drink up, me 'earties, yo ho. We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot, "--- among all this they just couldn't bear the portrayal of a little ol' fashioned wenching! (Incidentally, at least according to one guy, the song's been sanitized over the years.)

I'll give those PC pinheads a thumbs up for their creativity, though, because they elegantly resolved their problem by placing in the hands of the maiden in question a platter full of meats and other food. So now when we see that crazed, glassed-over look in the eyes of the pirate and wonder at his tongue hanging out through that licentious grin we may meekly fold our hands in our laps and utter a constrained chuckle as we make some insipid observation along the lines of, "There goes that crazy ol' pirate again, lusting after her hams!" Indeed.

Night out

This was a weird night. My friend has been asking me to join her at one of these weekly burger outings organized by some MIT expats here in LA. I love burgers so it's up my alley, but I've been dragging my feet because they're way the heck out there about 20 miles from where I live. I finally said yes and tonight was the night I was supposed to join them at Ercoles. I call her up a few hours before. Everything's a go; I'll be meeting her at Ercoles. I show up about 5 minutes early, order a pint and wait…. Now, I've known her for years and I totally expected her to show up about half an hour late. Well, an hour later it's a no show, but the night's not a total loss yet.

Here's the weird part. I meet this guy at the bar who's really high up at Boeing for which I used to work. Turns out he's got a penchant for philosophic talk and we hit it off. He eventually leaves and I leave soon afterward. I'm still miffed about my friend not showing so I'm wonder up and down the street looking for another comforting pint when the guy calls out from his car. We wind up going to Sharkey's in Hermosa Beach and having a couple more pints and some pretty good conversation. And that's it. Funny, I used to go to this bar in Philly where I'd often meet interesting folks like this. I had some great conversations and made some great connections, but this is the first time it's happened here in LA. Guess I'm pretty good at chatting up professional types. And yes, I'm perfectly aware this sounds totally gay, but it wasn't.

Columbian sojourn

When I was a kid I once took a nap only to wake up around dusk to an empty house. My parents had abandoned me and I was deathly scared! I ran all over the house tying to find them until they finally walked in the front door to find me lying on the bed with my knees to my chest and sobbing. I think that little episode has something to do with why I just don't do daytime naps.

A few days ago my dad and his wife abandoned me for three weeks. They've gone to Columbia to visit the wife's family.

Interestingly, I'm not finding myself sobbing very much these days. No, I've regressed only to pick up another of my toddler habits: running amok naked! I get up and make me a sandwich at 3am--naked. I play my sax in the living room whenever I want--naked. I sit at my piano--naked. Adam with his little fig leaf had nothing on me!

I'm sure when our recent spat of warm days come to an end the novelty will wear off and the trousers will come back on...but I'll still be naked under there!

All right. That's enough sensationalism for a day. Actually, maybe too much.

The inventor

OK, it's time to continue the what-I-did-with-my-free-time-and-money-before-going-back-to-school series.

Who doesn’t want to on their own business? Since I had the know-how and certain connections with local machine shops I thought I’d design and sell retrofit kits for Razor scooters. The first few picture below are of the first prototype I made using a small 18cc engine from a leaf blower. The pictures at the bottom are CAD models of the electric version I made. I actually made the electric version, but I don’t have any photographs to post.

After looking into liability issues I realized it as going to take a lot more money, time and research to make this venture work. I was due to start law school in a few months so I abandoned the idea. Now the market is flooded with powered scooters and prices have dropped dramatically. C’est la vie.

Shown here leaning up against my milling machine on which I made all the parts for this scooter.In the background you can see some of the trimmers I was going to cannibalize for parts. I got a good deal on "remanufactured" trimmers from Harbor Freight, though it turns out all the engines were brand new.




A better view of the power unit. The engine is mounted on a pivoting bracket. At the bottom you can see one of a pair of springs. The pivot point is that pin right above the spring. The springs keep the drive roller (pictured below) pressing on the drive wheel.




This is a better picture of the drive roller. Notice the cable attached to the pivoting bracket. Through a lever on the handle bar of the scooter (a brake lever from a bike), the cable pulls the bracket and roller off the wheel and acts as a clutch.





This is a CAD model of the power unit. Notice the light-green brake shoe to the bottom-right of the wheel. It is rigidly attached to the pivoting bracket (pivot point is the orange pin right above the brake shoe). When the clutch lever is pulled the drive roller is pulled away from the wheel, but the brake shoe moves toward the wheel because the brake shoe is mounted on the opposite side of the pivot point.The clutch lever, then, acts as a combination clutch/brake. It disengages the drive roller from the wheel when it is pulled half way; it engages the brake when it is pulled the whole length of its stroke. Genius!

This is the electric version. You can see it’s a lot simpler in design.The round orange thing is the motor to which is attached a small sprocket. The yellow brackets mount the whole assembly on to the scooter. To the drive wheel I have attached a large sprocket, offset from the wheel with spacers to allow clearance for the chain. A loop of roller chain (not shown) transmits power from the motor to the wheel.



This is a top view. Ya, I know the top yellow bracket is not attached to the scooter! So sue me!