MY NEXT ADVENTURE

Later this month, April 28th to be exact, will make my second anniversary of employment with General Electric. In the past 24 months, I have transitioned from military service to civilian employment, and I have learned much about GE's aviation business. Tomorrow, I will start a new phase with GE, as I am changing jobs from working in Engineering Services as the Reliability Group Manager to working as the Section Manager, US Flight Safety for the Chief Engineer's Office. Yep, it is going to be an exciting week on the western plains of the Enchanted Mitten.

One "holiday" I dread...

A retread, but worth repeating:

Those of you who know my heritage know that I am half Irish and half German. My mother's family came over from County Mayo in the 1800s and settled in eastern Pennsylvania. The Irish did not stray far away from other Irish when it came to marriage, so I come from a long line of Hastings and Clancys. My father, however, is a first generation German. His mother and father emigrated to the United States in 1921. My parents met when they were

both stationed at Parks Air Force Base in California. They married and moved back to Michigan where I was born and raised.Well, my mother is quite proud of her Irish heritage and when I was growing up, St. Patrick's Day was always a cause for celebration. We would go to the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in downtown Detroit, we would wear green clothing and sometimes put on silly hats and pretend to be leprechauns. One part of the celebration was the evening meal, which invariably was Corned Beef and Cabbage. For the life of me, I think that the reason why so many Irish left the Emerald Isle is because like me, they could not stand this vile cut of seasoned meat.

Back to my story. Each St. Patrick's Day my family would look forward to eating what was essentially boiled shoe leather. My mother would fill a cauldron with water, throw in a hunk of corned beef, some potatoes, cabbage, maybe some salt and pepper, perhaps some celery for flavor. How one could ever flavor shoe leather is beyond me, but she would try nevertheless. The aroma of this dank cut of meat would fill the house, so I would try to spend as much time as possible outdoors whenever this "dish" was being prepared. After my father came home from work, the table would be set and the carcass of beef would be removed from the pot, along with the soggy vegetables and potatoes. My siblings would rejoice at the thought of the meat, while I could barely keep myself from retching at the stench of it.

So, we would then take our places at the table, grace would be said and then my parents and siblings would relish in the consumption of this thoroughly proletarian dish. I was forced to eat this wretched excuse for a meal, so I would slather as much mustard as possible between two pieces of bread, then put a slice of this offensive meat there as well. I would then try to gulp this down, chewing as little as possible so that I would not have to taste it, much.

So, while I applaud the celebration of the birth of the patron saint of Ireland, to this day I cannot stomach the smell, taste or appearance of corned beef. So tomorrow I will probably have a beer or two, maybe even a green one. I will leave the consumption of corned beef to the peasants.

Top 10 reasons why Oscoda is a cool place:

1. Amazing views of Lake Huron.

2. Bald Eagles fly by your window with stunning regularity.

3. Sugar sand beach.

4. Tait's Bill of Fare.

5. Northern Accents.

6. $1 draft pints of Killians at the VFW.

7. Sunrises.

8. Winky.

9. Wiltse's Brew Pub.

10. How everybody wants to be your friend.

Furnace Troubles

Friday afternoon started like any other. Deirdre got home first and started to tend to Samson's needs. She then noticed that it was a little chilly in the house. I got home as she was noticing the chill and she saw that thermostat was not working correctly as the batteries that powered it were exhausted. We replaced the batteries and the thermostat appeared to be working correctly again. However, there was no warm air coming out of the registers. I went downstairs to check on the furnace (it is powered by natural gas) and I heard the vent fan turning on, but it was apparent that the burners were not operating. I called Kevin (a good friend who is a plumber/HVAC technician) and he talked me through the process of resetting the furnace. Despite his directions, the furnace still did not work. Kevin said that he would come by in a few minutes and take a look at the furnace.

Kevin arrived a few minutes later and after checking a couple of things, he discovered the cause of the problem: the ignitor. The ignitor is critical to the operation of the furnace as it ignites the natural gas that is sent through the furnace. There was a small white spot on the bottom of the ignitor, so the internal safety interlocks in the furnace worked as designed. What that meant is that we would not have forced air heat until Saturday at the earliest. Kevin said that he would get an ignitor in the morning and install it.

We have two electric space heaters, which we quickly brought on line. We put one of the heaters in our bedroom, and the other was put in our living room. We also closed off all the doors that we could to focus the heat in the bedroom and living room. We also turned on our gas fireplace in the living room, which helped keep the temperature in the living room at 68F.

We went to bed around 11PM and we stayed quite warm in the bedroom as the space was more than up to the task to heat the room. When we got up a little before 7AM, the rest of house was chilly. The living room was 64F. We turned on the fireplace again, and that helped make the living room a little warmer. The back room in our house was a different story. During the night, the temperature in the back room of our house fell to 44F. It was warmer outside than it was inside our back room as the image above shows.

Kevin arrived a few minutes after this image was taken and in about 15 minutes he installed a new ignitor and the furnace was operating again.

All I wanted was a mission...

... and for my sins they gave me one. As some readers of my blog have pointed out to me, my posts have been a little lacking the past few weeks. Well, there is a reason. My employer, GE Aviation Systems, has been keeping me busy the past few weeks as we have been chosen as the avionics lead for a new aircraft that is being built in Shanghai, China. The Chinese company is called COMAC, which stand for the Commercial Aircraft Company of China. This company is trying to do what Airbus did in the early 1970s, to build a commercial airliner to rival Boeing. As I have learned since I started working for GE, building an aircraft is a complicated business and you do not have any margin for error. COMAC is trying to build, fly and certify a commercial passenger aircraft in a little more than 6 years. COMAC is located in Shanghai, China, and in a few weeks, it appears that I will be living the in a 3 weeks there, 9 weeks in Michigan, 3 weeks there, rotation for a while.

After being deployed and away from home for so many years in the Navy, I was in no hurry to travel in my civilian career. However, when the General asks you to do something, it is really not a request. I will know for certain in a few days, but there is a 95% chance that I will be racking up a bunch of frequent flyer miles in the near term.

So far, so good...

Last night Suresh from the Microsoft Windows 7 Technical Support Center told me that I needed to do a "clean install" of Windows 7. When I installed Windows 7 the first time, it was an upgrade to Vista. This meant that all my applications and personal files were not affected by the installation. A clean install would require me to format my hard drive and install the Windows 7 operating system. After spending 15 hours the past few nights on the phone with Microsoft, I was ready to try almost anything. I had all my personal files and applications backed up, so I completed a clean install of Windows 7. Since I formatted the hard drive and installed Windows 7, my computer has been stable as a rock. I am still trying to make it crash, but so far, so good.

East of the Equator Cottage

OK, a disclaimer. My blog has been pretty quiet the past few weeks and the reason why is that I took the bold step of buying Windows 7. Yep, I fell for Microsoft's advertising and thought, "This time, things will be different. This time, it will just work." I have the sad duty to report that despite the fact that the Windows 7 Support website checked my computer for compatibility with Windows 7 and told me that my computer can run on this operating system, I have experienced nothing but problems with Windows 7. My computer is stable for maybe 45 minutes or so, then I get the Blue Screen of Death with the same error code: 0X000000F7. I have spent a couple hours each night since last Friday on the phone with a Microsoft technician trying to solve this problem. As I type this entry, I am waiting for another call. This, dear reader, is why I have not done much blogging. I have spent my evening hours trying to fix something that is just supposed to work. I am telling you, my next laptop is going to be a Mac.

On a happier note, we are about to close on a cottage located on the shores of Lake Huron. It will be known as "East of the Equator." Below are a couple of image of the cottage:

And this is a view of the beach. Life will be good, just East of the Equator where it is always a quarter past five.

Planning...

I have had the past two days off. I had three days of vacation I needed to use prior to the close of business on 24 December. Thus, I have had plenty of time to plan the menus for the next few days as well as to procure the items I need to make the meals I plan to make over the course of the next few days. I was fortunate to have the ability to takes these days off as I have been able to purchase everything I need for our Christmas Eve and Christmas Night. Tomorrow, I will drive Deirdre to work, pick up a fresh loaf of bred and wait for her day to end at noon. I will pick her up and then we are having lunch here.

Life is good here in the Enchanted Mitten, just East of the Equator.

Christmas came a little early for us

So, there I was, wandering around D&W picking up the food we need for the next couple of days when my cell phone rings. Pam, our loan officer from NFCU, called me to let me know that the appraisal recently done on the cottage we are hoping to purchase had been sent from underwriting to the mortgage department. The appraised value of the property is $11K more than the purchase price and no repairs are needed prior to closing. This is fantastic news as now we can set a closing date. Yep, Christmas came early for us this year!

Amateurs discuss tactics...

... professionals discuss logistics. I am off the clock with the General until 4 January, 2010, so I am back to being a house husband. Today, I am driving Deirdre to work, then I will be a busy little shopper. Updates to follow as conditions warrant.