Four Days

I wanted to give a little update on my sister’s situation. I can’t say a whole lot. Maybe I’ll never be able to write about it in any detail, but I can give a few general facts.

This has been a perfect storm for her. I wish I could explain, but I can’t. There are a number of problems we will have to deal with. It’s not just the cancer itself. I would almost draw a parallel to the story of Job, although his situation hit harder and faster.

It would have been great to get her into chemotherapy this week, but there were reasons it couldn’t be done. So we’re hoping to get it going on Monday. I believe we are looking at over four months of treatment, and I suppose I’ll be driving her to and from the hospital three days a week. It depends on how she reacts. My mother didn’t get very ill from chemotherapy, but people are different, and the drugs may be different.

There will be more work to do. I know about the three weekly trips now, but we’ll find out about other needs and obligations as we go. We’re hoping to give her house a going over this weekend, for example. Maybe it’s good that I’m not working on a project right now.

The suffering cancer causes concentrates at the beginning and end. The first couple of weeks are very hard, and if things don’t work out, problems ramp up later on. That’s a general observation from a person who has seen several relatives endure this disease. I’m not predicting anything regarding the outcome in my sister’s case. These last two weeks have been difficult. Some days have been especially heavy with upsetting information. I think things should level off somewhat now that we’re about to begin the treatment routine. We’ll have to get proficient at living with cancer.

I recommended she find a support group. The assistance of professionals is no substitute for the fellowship and insights of other sufferers and their families.

We are hoping to end up with a powerful testimony of God’s power. No one is ceding the battle.

I felt I owed this update to all the folks who have prayed for her. I would write more if I thought it was wise.

Non-Tool Stuff Starts About Halfway Down

I’m trying to figure out whether the stuff I’ve learned in machining videos is correct.

A long while back, I ordered an “as new” OSG carbide end mill off Ebay. Seemed to work okay, and it was really cheap, so yesterday I ordered two more. I also looked at roughing mills. I have a 3/8″ roughing mill, but now that I know about the fun of changing collets, I realize I should try to put together a few mills with the same diameter. I found a 1/2″ roughing mill, and I noticed that the tolerances were not impressive. I think the diameter was listed as within 0.003″ of spec.

That confused me, because–I have not confirmed this yet–I’m fairly sure some of the videos suggested using an edge finder to locate the spindle relative to the work, and then popping in an end mill of known diameter, and using that diameter for calculations when moving the table. If you’re a machinist, you know that a diameter that’s off by 0.003″ is going to give you errors half that big in your work. And that’s more than big enough to be a concern when you’re trying to be precise. It doesn’t matter with a roughing mill, but other end mills have the same issue.

On top of that, I’m almost sure the ATI videos I watched endorsed carbide end mills. Carbide is really hard, and it’s expensive. The benefits are that it lasts a long time and performs well and cuts faster. Now I’m being told it should not be used on manual mills, because you’re supposed to climb-cut when you use it, and that will make a manual mill flex. I hope I have this right. I believe I was told that if you cut conventionally with carbide, it breaks up over time, and you get bad finishes.

The upshot seems to be that edge finders are worthless for some of the uses I hoped to use them for, and I was dumb to buy carbide. Apparently cobalt is a better choice for me. A lot of people tell me not to get cobalt, because it costs a little more, but it seems to work way better than HSS. At least in drill bits.

I guess I won’t regret spending $10 each on two carbide cutters, since they’ll definitely work long enough to be worth the money.

If you can’t use an edge finder to locate a cutter precisely, you have to do it some other way. I believe that sends you back to the rolling-paper method. You embarrass yourself by buying rolling papers like a depraved stoner, and then you find edges by holding them between the work and the cutter. The edge finder will tell you where the spindle is, relative to the work, but that’s not the same as telling you where the edge of the cutter will be.

I’ve been trying to find a good used rotary table, but it’s not that easy. You also need indexing plates and a tailstock, and by the time you get done looking for this stuff, you’ve been shopping for six months. It may be time to bite the Enco bullet and go Taiwanese again. You can often save three figures by getting old American tooling, but what does that savings cost you in lost time you could have been spending machining? It amazes me that people brag about shopping a year for a taper attachment or a steady rest. How long do they expect to live? These are usually middle-aged or older guys. A year can easily be five or ten percent of their remaining time on earth. When you decide to dedicate a lot of time to something, you need to ask yourself how much time you have left. I find life so interesting, I want to live a thousand years. That seems unlikely, however.

A few months back, my dad was talking about getting a travel trailer. I’m very, very glad he still has enthusiasm for things like that. But my mother has been gone for 12 years, and he’s 77. A lot of the people we could have visited 35 years ago are dead or elderly. It’s late.

My grandfather once leased a house to a 67-year-old man, tying it up for a number of years. Someone in the family complained, and my grandfather said, “He’s an old man. He won’t live long.” When he said that, I believe he was 72.

He was right, but you can still see my point.

I guess it will sound funny, but one reason I bought a convertible is that we didn’t do anything fun when I was a kid. My uncle Jim had a couple of convertibles in the Sixties, and some family members talked like he had gone insane. That’s how boring most of us were. My dad, my mother, my sister and I were pretty dull. We rarely went on real vacations. We never toured the US. We didn’t have a boat or an RV. We had no regular activities, like shooting or bowling. We belonged to no clubs or organizations, apart from the country club. We didn’t go to church regularly. We never belonged to a church. Golf was the only sport, apart from games my friends and I played in the yard, and my dad was the only one who golfed. We watched TV; that was our main activity. Isn’t that awful? I hate to admit it. That was our life. I went to school, and then I came home and watched TV, and I refrained from doing homework unless I had absolutely no choice, and after that I went to bed. My mother was the only one who wasn’t a TV addict, but she didn’t really do anything with the time she saved. My sister and I didn’t have many toys, which is weird, since we were well off. Mike says the other kids felt sorry for us. I had no idea back then. My mother bought me a banjo when I was 15; that was nice.

I guess I wasn’t as bad as the others. I enjoyed shooting BB guns, fishing for inedible fish, breaking things, and fireworks. Mike and I used to get together and do the kind of stupid, aimless things kids do when they’re on their own. Like Beavis and Butt-head, I guess, except we weren’t that mean or stupid. We tended to do strange, creative things. I had another friend nearby, but he wasn’t bright enough to come up with things like that. We also had CB radios and other passing interests. My sister didn’t do much of anything, but that’s normal for girls.

I remember Mike somehow got ahold of a surplus parachute. We put it in his yard, on a busy corner, and we weighted the perimeter. Then we put a fan under it and put some lights inside. It blew up into a big, quivering white dome, and we went inside and hung out. Cars slowed down so people could see this glowing object and wonder why these two abnormal kids were doing something that wasn’t ordinary.

I got my first convertible in 1980, and Jim was part of the inspiration. His branch of the family had more fun than the others. I’m sure my mother told me the car would flip and burn immediately, and I would be trapped underneath it like a chicken in a roasting pan. Oh, Lord. A convertible. Please, don’t let this happen to my child. Next he’ll be base-jumping. My mother didn’t like electric windows, because she thought any car with electric windows would plunge into a canal at the earliest opportunity, and there she would be, unable to roll down the window and escape. Meanwhile, she smoked at least two packs of cigarettes a day. I was crazy about my mom, but I knew there her logic had its weak points. I’m ancient. So far, I’ve know ONE person who was in a convertible that flipped, and he didn’t roast. I don’t know anyone who has driven into a canal. You can keep a punch in your car to break your windows, if that kind of thing worries you. I think my Glock will also do the job.

Once in a while, you have to do something. Just spend the money and do it. It isn’t going to do itself. I’m really glad I’ve had two convertibles and two motorcycles. I’m glad I lived in Israel for four months. I’m glad I published three books and got a bunch of tools and guns and learned to make beer. I can’t even guess how boring life would be if I didn’t do things like this. By and large, the strange and challenging things you do will be the things you remember with the most pleasure. That’s an extremely important lesson young people should learn. You shouldn’t be a sensation junkie or a hedonistic wastrel, but you should embrace opportunities to shake up your life. You should be conscious of their value and jump on them instead of avoiding them. You don’t want to leave your kids a diary that has entries like, “July 17: I celebrate 63 victorious years of resisting buying a motorcycle. I will celebrate by putting a small amount of real sugar in my oatmeal.”

I think a rotary table will be a real asset. Right now, I can drill holes and make straight cuts, and that’s about it. Not much utility for what I paid. A rotary table will let me cut arcs, and it will allow me to do tasks that require breaking circles up accurately into sections. Circles of bolt holes, for example.

I should take one of the bikes out today. I hope my mom will be too busy in paradise to notice.

I am Wearing my X-Ray Specs

This morning I found myself thinking about a strange trait which is common among human beings. When you try to help them, very often, they respond by attacking you. You expect gratitude, and instead, you are treated like an enemy. This is why we have the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished.” It reminds me of a great lesson my mother taught me. She said to avoid lending money to friends, because they would end up resenting me! Sounds crazy when you’re young and you haven’t seen much of life, but she was absolutely right.

Sometimes in prayer I ramble about things like this, and today while I was doing that, I found myself asking who I knew who had had this experience. And I felt stupid when the answer came to me. The answer was God. This is what he deals with every day, and in the past, he has had to put up with it from me. Seems like every time I think about a particularly exasperating human failing, I immediately realize I have been guilty of it.

Observant Jews avoid putting young single men in positions of authority. Why? Because their knowledge is incomplete. People who have raised kids and dealt with spouses and provided for families know things cloistered, subsidized virgins don’t. In a recent comment, Aaron said this:

Interactions with people are frequent temporal opportunities to improve one’s relationship with God. Judaism, in requiring things like minyans and numerous communal requirements, is opposed to living like a hermit. We don’t have monks or nuns or gurus on mountaintops. There’s a saying “a tzaddik in daled amot”, “a saint within his 4 cubits”.

I tried to think of respected Biblical figures who were hermits, and I drew a blank. John the Baptist had disciples, and he attracted large numbers of people for ritual immersion. He didn’t sit alone in a cave all day. Some say he was an Essene, and the Essenes were atypical Jews who practiced celibacy and asceticism, but rumor isn’t fact. You can find references to the wives of Old Testament prophets. The priests married and had kids. Peter, who is considered the first Pope, was married. Jesus was constantly around people, except when he set himself apart for short periods. Paul had so many friends, he never shut up about them. Greet this one with a kiss. Send my love to that one. It’s half of the New Testament.

Some of the prophets ended up isolated at times, but I don’t know of any reason to believe that was how they normally lived. Maybe I missed something.

What does this have to do with helping people who are hostile? The answer is that parents do it all the time. One of the purposes of parenthood must be to teach us how to love people who don’t deserve it. And by “love,” I don’t mean “have affection for.” We often act against the best interests of those for whom we have the most affection. Consider stalkers. I use the word “love” to describe concern for the well-being of others, which is probably the only accurate definition. John 15:13 confirms this. You can love someone you dislike, and you can love someone while you’re angry at them. God himself gets angry.

I have been ungrateful and stupid, so I can’t let myself feel cheated when others give me the same treatment. This is the job we were created for. It isn’t always fun, but it always brings us blessings.

I guess nobody goes through life without changing a few dirty diapers. Parents get the worst of it, and I think they learn the most, but just about all of us find ourselves cleaning up after others at one time or another, and expecting thanks is just plain dumb. If you do it for gratitude and admiration, you are going to burn out fast.

God promised to give us wisdom, provided we asked for it. I ask. You may know Ronald Reagan’s anecdote about the kid who tunneled into the pile of horse manure, looking for a pony. I guess wisdom is what allows you to see the pony before you start digging.

May we all have good luck with our manure piles today.

Scattered Bricks

My dad and I are working to get my sister’s cancer treatment going, and to put some order into her life. It is not easy. The situation is considerably worse than we feared, so my sister can’t afford to waste a minute, and we are experiencing a fair amount of discord. Prayer would be appreciated.

Speaking of prayer, I had a funny experience last night. As I’ve noted earlier, I pray when I lose things. When I put things down, I don’t realize it, so I generally don’t know where they are. The solution is to have predesignated places for things, but I only have a few things I have managed to nail down to specified locations. Lately, when I say such prayers, they are often answered before I can finish them. It has been a little shocking at times.

I wanted to hear a certain CD last night, and I didn’t know where it was. I checked the two most likely rooms and came up dry. I was standing next to the dining table when I decided to pray; there is always a certain amount of junk down at one end of it. I hesitated for a minute. I thought about the amazing streak I had been having, finding things so quickly. I was worried I’d ruin it. I might pray about this thing and then be unable to find it. I realized how stupid that thought was, and I started to pray. As I began, I picked something up from the table, and while I lifted it, I saw the CD.

There was no reason for it to be there. It’s not where I would ordinarily put it. Of course, I was freaked out.

The CD was one of Perry Stone’s. He talked about the importance of giving, in order to have prosperity. He’s not a flashy “God wants us all to be rich” type. You know the kind of person I’m talking about. “God has given me a special anointing to get people prosperity, so send me money, and God will send you ten times as much.” They beg and beg and beg, and they never tell you what they do with the money. Because they’re spending it on mink toilet seat covers and orange Bentleys and really big black velvet paintings of Elvis and Jesus riding their Harleys together. You know about common white trash and easy money; it does not have to be explained. Perry Stone doesn’t beg, and he explained why. It’s because he doesn’t particularly like doing TV, and it wouldn’t bother him a great deal if he couldn’t afford to do it.

I got very fed up with the “God wants us all to be rich” movement back around 1990, but I do believe blessings, including financial well-being, are linked to generosity, and the Bible repeats that message over and over. The hitch, I believe, is that you have to give correctly. You have to support your own church as well as well-vetted charities and ministries. You can’t just hand it over to the Christian equivalent of Billy Mays. If you do, you’re rewarding a rotten person for doing evil. You can’t expect God to get behind that. And you have to handle your own money in a way that isn’t sinful. I don’t think God is willing to give us rope with which to hang ourselves.

It seems like we are supposed to imitate God, and God is generous. To a large degree, he is to us as we are to others. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing; life will never be free from problems. But I believe we are supposed to make the most of his general willingness to treat us as we treat others.

He started talking about our need to be familiar with the Bible, and how we build “line upon line, precept upon precept.” That struck me as interesting. To get anything out of the Bible, you have to be familiar with as much of it as possible, because different parts of the Bible explain each other. You have to read different parts in pari materia, harmonizing them to avoid idiotic results. For example, we are taught that God will do what we ask in Jesus’s name. Well, go outside and ask God, in Jesus’s name, to drop a billion dollars in gold bars on your lawn. It’s not going to happen. Your silly prayer goes against other ideas expressed in the Bible. We are not supposed to covet. We are not to be greedy. We are to seek his kingdom and his righteousness first.

For a long time, I’ve been aware that faith can’t be explained in a linear manner. You can’t lay out propositions and conclusions in order, in a single column, to explain Christianity. It’s multidimensional. The Talmud reflects this. You take one piece of the Torah, and from that page, commentaries shoot out in all different directions. They work in parallel, not in series. Like a matrix, not a sequence. Trying to explain God using ideas linked in series is like trying to get all three stooges through one doorway at once.

It’s impossible to present everything you need to know in a single-file progression of ideas. And even if it were, the Bible is not written that way. The only way to make sense of it is to get it into your unconscious mind–your memory–where ideas roll around and collide and interact like clothes in a dryer. Some Christians call this area of consciousness the spirit, and maybe it is. This is where the synthesis occurs. It’s like building a coherent wall from bricks found in random locations.

Jesus and the Apostles took this approach. Look at the annotations in the Bible. They quoted the Old Testament over and over, and they followed the Jewish practice of quoting one line as a quick way to refer to the part of the Bible in which that line was found. The more scripture you know, the more like them you are. You’re supposed to be armed with the sword of the spirit, and that means you should be able to quote enough scripture to have it handy when you’re in trouble and you can’t get to a Bible. This is how Jesus defeated Satan after the 40-day fast.

Interesting stuff.

It also explains why nonbelievers find Christianity so hard to absorb. They like debate, which is a totally worthless way of looking for the truth. Debate only establishes the identity of the best debater; this is why good lawyers win bad cases. To understand Christianity, you have to listen for a good long while, as seemingly unrelated ideas are imparted. You have to shut up and hold your objections until you’ve heard enough to know what’s going on. A lot of people who don’t believe are not willing to do that. They will settle on some part of Christianity that doesn’t make sense to them and use it to invalidate the whole religion. They’ll say, “There is suffering, so there is no God.” Or, “Fossils prove Genesis is a lie, so there is no God.” Or, “Verse x contradicts verse y, so there is no God.” They can’t see the sweater; just what they perceive to be loose threads. They’re like the jurors who concluded OJ was innocent because one or two pieces of nonessential evidence were excluded.

The more I learn, the more I realize how obligated we are. You have to submit and obey and be productive, and you can’t demand that God help you while conforming to your guidelines for his nature and behavior. You can get God to do great things for you here on earth–better things than you can comprehend–but you have to live his way.

I have to get up and get some things done. I don’t know how much blogging I’ll be able to do this week.

DENIED

I just received a phone call that offended me.

The American Bar Association wanted me to rejoin. I shut them down fast. I said they were too liberal for me, and that they should give me a call when they ceased being a political organization.

This bit of pandering filth is from their own website: “The ABA opposes federal, state or territorial legislation to create special legal immunity for the firearms industry from civil tort liability.”

That, all by itself, is sufficient reason to oppose these overweening social engineers. You can find plenty of other reasons if you Google.

I joined the ABA when I was in law school, to get substantial discounts on a few things I needed. Bar-prep classes. Bar exams are idiotic; the ABA accredits law schools AND helps write bar exams. Does that make sense to you? “We vouch for this school, but we want to subject its graduates to an overly difficult test which bears almost no relationship to practice or to the materials they learned in school, to make sure they’re qualified to take entry-level jobs where they sit around looking at Westlaw all day.”

One of two things has to be true. The ABA’s accreditation is garbage, or the tests are unnecessary.

Very often, money explains this kind of foolishness. That’s probably the case here. It is virtually impossible to pass the Florida bar exam without a prep course. The crap on the test is not substantially related to the material taught in law schools, and you can’t pick it up in practice. So you have to spend thousands of dollars and waste months preparing. Where do the thousands go? Down here, they go to a company called Bar/Bri. It’s a great thing for them. No one else can get you through the test, and the test is mandatory. They could charge ten thousand dollars, and people would have to pay it. My guess–and it’s only a guess–is that Bar/Bri has been known to spend money cozying up to bar associations, to make sure this silliness continues. A lawyer who can make his “educational” services indispensable can become wealthy without ever entering a courtroom. That’s a fantastic temptation.

If law schools are producing people who can’t practice–and they are–the answer isn’t a redundant test. The answer is accreditation that means something. Law schools accept truly inept people because of affirmative action or because they have pull, and the result is a substantial number of graduates who are beyond hope. At my school, they flew affirmative action recipients to another state before their freshman years, to teach them in advance and give them a patently unfair jump on the rest of us. And a lot of these people still washed out or could not pass the bar exam or could not keep jobs because they simply did not have the mental horsepower to do the work. The others didn’t need the costly cheat, so it was a waste.

There was never any doubt that I would be able to practice law. That is true of the majority of law school graduates. It’s wrong to subject us to expensive tests, wasting months of our productive years, to weed out the people who were admitted and passed because of bogus accreditation. If a law school produces substantial numbers of graduates who can’t do the work, that law school should not be accredited. Aside from that, the free market is the best bar exam. If you’re not bright enough to practice, the free market will remove you from the system. You will not be able to earn a living. The inept graduates law schools should never have accepted eventually run into this natural filter, and it does a great job.

If you try to set up a solo practice, and you stink, judges will squash you, jurors will laugh at you, you will be sued for malpractice, people will refuse to hire you, and you’ll leave the profession. If you work for someone else, and you stink, that person will eventually fire you, unless he marries you. This is all much fairer than an exam process which costs a tremendous amount of money.

I needed the ABA to save money on the tests it helped perpetuate, so I joined. Like a lot of people, I did not renew my membership. I’m not paying these socialists to slander conservative judges and attack my civil rights. I’m not paying them to support bottom-feeding tort parasites in their efforts to bleed society dry. What are they thinking, taking offensive political positions and then asking moral, patriotic people to fund them? It’s crazy.

They claim to promote professionalism, in order to make the public happy. The public doesn’t hate lawyers because we’re unprofessional. Not primarily. They hate us because we’re greedy, ruthless bullies who destroy other people’s lives unnecessarily. No popular legal association will ever do anything about that. The foxes aren’t going to guard the henhouse.

I took the Bar/Bri course. I took two courses, now that I think about it. I’m sure my law school made money from it, because they supplied the facilities. I paid to see a lecture by a famous professor who travels around the country reciting the same spiel over and over. About 95% of the material I studied in the courses has been of no value to me in practice. And I have to wonder; if I paid $80,000 in tuition and still had to do this in order to be considered qualified, am I not entitled to a refund?

If you’re a conservative attorney, do not let the ABA have your money. If for no other reason, decline to join because I refuse to accredit them.

Some Prefer Machine Tools

I guess a lot of people already think I’m a kook, so it can’t hurt me to post this.

Last night, I tried to make myself some T nuts from 12L14 round stock. I enjoyed it tremendously. I had to figure out how to position round stock in the vise. I had to decide which cuts to make first and which cutter to use. I had to use the DRO, which is fantastic. I can see why no machinist should be without one.

I used the lathe to cute a short piece of 12L14, and I put it on parallels in the vise, and I started cutting. I took shallow cuts, because the bar was round and smooth, so I was afraid big cuts would apply so much torque it would turn in the vise. I made a flat side, and then I cut two shoulders down from it, and then I flipped the metal in the vise and flattened the bottom of what would eventually be two T nuts.

It worked like a charm. The surfaces were beautiful, and they even had wonderful patterns in them, like woven silk.

I was going to leave the metal in the vise and call it a day, but I couldn’t resist taking it out so I could play with it. Here’s what I have so far.

While I was looking at it, I discovered a surprising and pleasing feature which would force me to scrap the part. How can something good render a part useless? See if you can guess.

Can you believe that? How can I throw that away? I had to play with the Photoshop controls to bring it out, but when you see the actual part, it’s much more obvious. There is an ichthus in the steel. The tail doesn’t show up well in the photo, but it’s there. The ichthus must have been put there by the saw the metal dealer used. I would have ruined it had I continued with the project.

Don’t email me for tickets. I’m not opening a tourist attraction. And so far, it hasn’t healed me or anything. I don’t expect it to start weeping blood, and it hasn’t uttered any prophecies. But it was still a nice surprise, and I would never assume a thing like this happened by chance.

Isn’t that just like God? Present in everything, but you have to know where to look, and you have to want to see.

Incidentally, I just learned that we are coming into the Days of Teshuvah. This is a 40-day period preceding Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. On that day, and that day only, the high priest used to enter the Holy of Holies and perform actions that covered the sins of the Jewish people.

Teshuvah (that’s the spelling that seems to be preferred, if Google means anything) means “repentance.” Aaron posted a comment recently, explaining it in more detail.

A crescendo of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services is the three-word phrase: “Tshuva [return/repentence], tefilah [prayer], u-tzedaka [and charity] avert the evil decree”.

http://www.ou.org/about/judaism/tw.htm : Repentance, or return to G-d or the G-dly way of life; modifying one’s behavior by the following four steps: stopping the sinful behavior, confession before G-d, regret over past actions, and commitment to changed behavior in the future. If done out of fear of Divine punishment, Teshuvah turns past deliberate sins into “accidental” sins; if done out of love of G-d, Teshuvah has the power to transform deliberate sins into “good deeds.”

This refers to personal sins between man and God. Wronging another requires compensating damage and gaining forgiveness from the wronged party. One can’t steal from another and confess to a third party and expect to be forgiven. Judaism teaches that God won’t forgive sins committed against those made in His image. In cases where it isn’t possible (not merely inconvenient or uncomfortable) to make amends and ask for forgiveness, a competent clergyman might suggest a suitable action to compensate the community. A vandal might devote years to reversing the damages of vandalism in his town. A corporate polluter that harmed the rivers in a community might work in environmentalism.

Obviously, no Christian assumes the Jews are right about everything, but they knew God during tens of centuries during which my ancestors were worshiping trees and eating each other, so when they talk, I listen. I haven’t read anything expressly explaining the purpose of the Days of Teshuvah, but I suppose anyone can see that it is better to arrive on the day of atonement with repentance well under day. It shows respect and gratitude, and it shows you don’t expect to do whatever you want 364 days a year and then show up so God can change your diaper.

Whenever I think of the metaphor of washing our robes in blood, I think of parents changing diapers. I am positive God was trying to tell us something when he arranged for babies to take two years to be toilet-trained. I think this whole life is a lot like a diaper. We soil it and discard it and move on to better things.

The Days of Teshuvah are coming. “Coincidentally,” last night, my pastor preached about lukewarm Christians. That type of teaching necessarily involves repentance. There is no other way to fix the problem. He mentioned Revelation 3:19 and 3:20. I’ll tack 3:21 on, since it makes the message even more pleasant.

19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

This family is facing a special need at the moment, and we will be dealing with it throughout the 40 Days of Teshuvah, which start on August 21. Knowing the significance of this time period will surely be helpful to us. I think God alerted me to this, and the series my church is teaching, which is all about turning up the intensity of your walk, is very supportive.

Maybe I’ll give that piece of metal to my sister when I pick her up at the airport today. It’s too small to glue to my car.

Last night, I listened to Perry Stone. He did a series of teachings in the obscure town where I was born, and I bought the CDs out of curiosity. In the session I listened to last night, he talked about the frustration he has experienced, leading his own son into a strong relationship with God. He told his son he only needed to “get zapped” by God once. He needed to see something miraculous, whether it was a manifestation of God’s presence or a miracle. He thought that would fix him. That may be true of his son, but I am apparently not that smart. God physically entered my car, when I was on the highway in 1985. He made another appearance a year or so later. He gave me a healing. He showed me two spirits. But I left the church twenty years ago, with those memories still in my mind! How do you do something that stupid? I don’t understand how I pulled it off. Where would I be today, had I paid attention? People go their whole lives without receiving treasures like that. You can’t buy them. They are more precious than anything any billionaire has. Still, I treated them as though they were unimportant. The Jews may recognize 40 days of teshuvah, but for the especially dense and spoiled, it can take years.

My sister and I need to take full advantage of this time. The warnings are not subtle. I don’t know how it could be any clearer.

Reese’s Ups the Ante

I have to tell you about a diabolical new plot. You know how hard it is to deal with Reese’s peanut butter cups? Sure you do. You have to peel the paper off, and you get chocolate under your nails, and half of the chocolate sticks to the paper, and then it gets on the steering wheel or the surgical instruments or the flight yoke or whatever you’re handling at the time.

Well now Reese’s has gone medieval on us. They are selling enormous BARS of their trademark confection. Yes, you have to gnaw through the paper, but after that, it’s pure uninterrupted pleasure.

Stay away from these things. Reese’s was never intended to be this easy.

Get the Brillo and Lysol

Yesterday, I went to a dealership and drove an F150 with an eight-foot bed. I was pleasantly surprised. The truck was slow compared to the Thunderbird, which is not a big shock, but the ride was very pleasant. Not like a truck at all. I instinctively slowed down for the speed bumps in the parking lot, being used to the Thunderbird (bottoming out), motorcycles (jumping in the air), and Explorer (jumping then rocking), but when I hit the bumps, nothing happened. The length of the truck doesn’t seem to be a problem. It’s 18″ longer than the next size down. That’s not a real burden when you drive, but it would be a big help at Home Depot. They had extended-cab versions that were the same length, but you lose some payload.

This truck was an XLT which means “cheap but not scary-cheap.” It had cloth seats and power windows. I thought it was fairly luxurious for a truck. In the showroom, they had a $43,000 truck that had rain-sensing windshield wipers and–you may think I’m kidding–motorized running boards that extend when you touch the door handles. I like nice stuff. No doubt about it. But when you’re too lame to turn on the windshield wipers or get into a truck without a boost, you need to be euthanized. It would be humiliating to be seen getting into that atrocity.

The guts of the truck seemed very good. The base V8 plus the towing stuff. This means a better suspension and more cooling capacity. That might mean the air conditioner works better, now that I think about it. I guess it depends on whether the radiator limits the air conditioner’s cooling capacity. I assume that is not the case, since cars don’t run hot in Miami with the air conditioning on. The air conditioner worked very well, and if it cooled on August 7 in Miami, with no clouds, it will cool in hell.

The truck was not much to look at. I didn’t realize it from the photos, but white pickups are somewhat better looking than silver ones. I don’t like these “colors,” but anything else will be a heat magnet.

The dealership was empty. Do not believe the Cash for Clunkers PR storm. There were maybe two other customers there. Ford sales have increased 2%, which means they are still in the process of going out of business.

They had a funny sales setup. The first Internet sales contact was a man. Then they palmed me off to a Latin girl with lots of cleavage and tight pants. When I showed up, she came out to greet me. All I can say is, I doubt she was hired for her LSAT score. Very spicy addition to the showroom decor. I don’t think she was Cuban. She seemed South American. Cubans will be mad when I say this, but South American girls tend to run a little hotter. But she handed me off to a third guy, who was a regular floor salesman. So it’s not the same deal I got when I got the Thunderbird. The other dealership, owned by the same conglomerate, had a separate Internet crowd, and they were much nicer to do business with. I think I’m going to contact them. They may be able to get me this same truck. I hate to do that to the guy who rode with me today, but his boss was very pushy, and he added $1500 to the price they quoted me, so they’ve had their chance. His behavior was not respectful. I realize they’re supposed to try to make money, but I’ve done some negotiating myself, and I know something he doesn’t: being obnoxious doesn’t help. You can be polite and take someone to the cleaners.

My dad has finally concluded he doesn’t want to go the Obama route, so I don’t have that option to worry me now.

I think I finally…FINALLY…have a viable milling project. Enco wants $15 for a proper set of nuts and studs to mount my vise. I used stuff from my clamping set, but I would rather have a separate setup. Today I realized I had enough stuff to make my own T nuts and studs. I don’t think I can make a flange nut, but life isn’t perfect.

I figured I would make a bar shaped like a T nut and bore and tap holes in it and then slice it into nuts. Then I realized I didn’t need to slice it. I can make a single bar a little wider than the vise and put a hole in each end. A T nut can be a hundred feet long and still work. There is no reason you do it this way, and it would save time.

A guy on the Chaski forum made an incredible ball cutter for his lathe. The ones you see for sale are very simple. U-shaped tool holders that pivot on steel bases. This baby has a table on ball bearings. Totally unnecessary, I’m sure, but who cares? He’s selling plans. I might take a whack at it. I would probably end up spending fifty bucks on materials, but a premade cutter would cost something in that neighborhood anyway.

I don’t have a lot to say about other matters that are going on in my life; don’t expect to read much about that in the near future.

Two things:

1. Dan Howell’s sister is not doing well, so keep her in your prayers:

Steve, will be Praying for your sister. God is control of everything and we just have to let him have His way. We need to let go and let God work. My sister, Mary Ellen has been put back into Hospice House and is her last days of the beast, cancer. Thank you for your Prayers on her behalf, we will miss her, but I will not judge God for not healing her in my way. She will be Healed and we will see each other again when I am healed of this world. Touch her now God and make Steve’s sister whole.

2. Heather’s mom is in the hospital.

Praying for your sister.
My mom was admitted to the hospital last night.

Uselessness is Not a Virtue

I hope people will not fault me for returning to blogging as usual. Things will continue to go on behind the scenes, whether or not I write about them.

I guess I can mention one thing. It’s something I’ve written about before. In 1987, I received a miraculous healing, and last night my sister asked me how I got it. I tend to assume all Christians know these things, but I guess that’s dumb. I’ll go back over it. Maybe it will help someone.

I decided I had to find a church. When I started looking, I became ill. I thought I had a cold, but it would not go away. It wasn’t like an allergy; I know the difference. It persisted for weeks. It drove me nuts.

I had been watching a number of TV preachers. Somewhere–maybe it was from Kenneth Copeland–I heard that if you wanted to be healed, you had to “confess” your healing orally and stick to it, no matter what. You prayed for healing, then you announced aloud that God had healed you, and you continued to do that, without waivering, until your healing came. I gave it a try. I was sick for days after that, but I never once permitted myself to say I was not healed.

One day I was standing in my dad’s kitchen, and I looked in the freezer. While the door was open, I saw a dark transparent shape travel from me into the freezer, and then it made a turn and went out through the back door of the house, which was closed. I was instantly healed. My mother and father were in the next room. They didn’t see what happened, but they both saw that I was healed when I came out of the kitchen. My father forgot it. My mother never did. Oddly, my father has forgotten it several times, and so has my sister. I’ve had to tell them more than once. I’ve told my sister at least twice this year, and there is nothing wrong with her memory.

It wasn’t a leg growing back. It wasn’t cancer. But it was a miracle anyway, and it was a big relief to me.

Today I would do more. I’d add fasting and repentance and offerings and prayer. But what I did in 1987 worked. I think sometimes God does more for a new believer than he would for someone who knows the ropes. Just a guess.

I don’t endorse Kenneth Copeland, but no evangelist is wrong all the time. Maybe this story will help someone.

Back to normal life.

As time passes, I am more and more inclined to get a pickup and sell the T-bird. I was sitting in church the other day, thinking what I always think: “I wish I were of more use to these people.” I have all these tools now, and I have time. But I drive a car with two seats and a trunk the size of a lunchbox. The trunk is amazing; it may well be the reason this car was not popular. You can get two suitcases in it, and that’s it. Period. I would guess that it’s impossible to put anything more than 14″ tall in there. If I take this car to the gun range, I have to put my range box in the passenger seat.

It’s starting to look like we’re going into a deceptive plateau in the decline of the United States. That means cars will start selling, and prices will go up. I’m thinking I should snap up a truck before the dealers develop a false sense of confidence. Then I can hold onto the convertible for a few months to see if the used-car market gets a boost. If not, I unload it. Or I drive it occasionally. The only problem with that scenario is clutter. The positive side would be that I would not have to drive a huge vehicle all the time. I find that when I drive a big vehicle, every once in a while, I really miss driving small cars I can turn and park easily.

The picture is complicated because my father unexpectedly announced that he might want to take advantage of the Obama handout. I can’t blame him. The IRS treated him like a slush fund all his life. He will never break even. He’s thinking of getting rid of his old Explorer. The best truck he can extract from Obama’s udder is a Toyota Tacoma. It’s smaller than I would like, but it will work. I can’t put extremely heavy objects in the bed, but it will pull a rented trailer just fine. You can’t rent a trailer if you have an Explorer. Uhaul’s attorneys have seen to that. And the Explorer’s odometer died at 109K, so I wouldn’t trust it with a trailer now.

He has an idea about getting a travel trailer; I don’t know if that’s a great idea, but the Tacoma will pull it. It’s not the best choice, but it can be done. If he gets a Tacoma, I’ll be a good son and borrow it constantly. No need for an F150.

Either truck would be a good move. I would like to have something practical. When I got the T-bird, I didn’t need a utility vehicle, because I could always borrow the Explorer. Now the Explorer is old, and it’s not an ideal vehicle for hauling things, and I have more reason to haul. Maybe I’ll run up to the Ford dealership and take a look at the F150 I have my eye on.

I was practicing law when I got the T-bird. I thought it would be fun to have a car with a little style, and I am addicted to ragtops. You don’t need a big car when your payload consists of a briefcase and a laptop, and it wasn’t a bad car for a single man to have. You know how women are. But I am shedding the upscale trappings I started to accumulate in law school. I wish I could burn my suits. I wear sneakers and cargo shorts all the time. I have given up on expensive sunglasses. The people in the better men’s shops used to know me by sight. Those days are long gone. And the women I am likely to meet now are not going to have a lot of interest in flash. A woman who will not let you take her out in a pickup is going to be trouble eventually. Like a man who expects his wife to give him an itinerary whenever she leaves the house. Or a guy who drives with no shirt on. I am convinced they always make bad husbands. It’s a hunch.

If I have a truck, I’ll be better able to pursue my own hobbies, and I’ll be in a position to make myself useful to others. If the church needs a sliding miter saw or a table saw, I’ll be able to pop it in the bed and get on the road. I won’t have to sit in the congregation feeling like a doofus because I drive a self-indulgent roadster.

If they know I have tools and a truck, won’t they bother me all the time, asking for favors? Probably. That’s what I’m hoping for.

I should go look at that thing. I dread meeting a salesperson. I’d rather have a snake thrown on me. But I guess there is no other way.

Trust

Here’s an update, although it won’t be very informative. I am not ready to say anything about my sister’s condition, but I will reiterate–I can’t remember if I’ve said this already–that I think it’s remarkable that she went in for treatment of a fungus and ended up learning she had a more serious and unrelated problem, which may well have been caught at the earliest possible stage.

God is unfathomable. Sometimes he blesses us by preventing misfortune. Sometimes he blesses us by ameliorating misfortune. Sometimes the misfortune is not remedied, yet it carries tremendous collateral blessings. Believers who suffer disease or injury will point to the good things that came afterward, as proof of God’s love. Nonbelievers will ask why God allows disease and injury to happen in the first place. One of the hardest lessons in the Bible is the teaching that we must always continue to trust. Job lost his fortune, his children, and his health, but he said this of God: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” His mistake was in following that up with a declaration that he would convince God he had earned a better fate. Nonetheless, in the end, his trust was rewarded.

My hope is that we will find out that the fungus was a gift, because it brought the cancer to light early enough to allow it to be cured. But I am not going to make a prediction.

I think sometimes you can pray a person well, and sometimes you can’t, and maybe it all hinges on that person’s relationship with God. It is probably easier to get healing for yourself than anyone else, because while you ask, you can also search your heart candidly and turn from anything that might stand between you and God’s power. That would seem to make sense.

Sometimes people get angry with me when I suggest our behavior can cause our misfortunes, but I apply the same principle to myself, so I have no reason to apologize. I am very aware that I fall short, and whenever something goes wrong, I look at my own actions and attitudes to see if I can find a cause. How can that ever be the wrong approach? You can’t cure unless you diagnose. Self-criticism is essential to growth. If I treat myself this way, and I profit from it, shouldn’t I encourage others to do the same thing? Maybe my sins aren’t always the cause of my problems. So what? I profit anyway, do I not?

I do not understand the objections. Perhaps it seems cruel to suggest that a person who is already suffering search himself to see if anything about him is not pleasing God. But it’s better than telling them everything is fine, when a little introspection might turn things around. You wouldn’t give a diabetic pound cake. When did enabling ever help anyone?

Sometimes you pray for someone to get a certain outcome, and it doesn’t happen. When that happens, there has to be a reason, and it can’t be God’s fault. Maybe it’s their sins. Maybe it’s your faith or their faith. Still, you have to trust. Whatever suffering you may experience while serving and trusting God, you will be infinitely better off than a person who abandons him.

The more I suffer, and the more my family and the people I care about suffer, the closer I will draw to God. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. That’s the only way to win.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to write about this from here on out. With that in mind, I am going to try to move on and write about life the way I always do. I hope that doesn’t offend anyone. I will still be grateful for everything you have done.

Sorry

I don’t have any news about my sister yet. The doctor said he would talk to her this morning, and it is 1:43 p.m. where she is.

I’ll post something as soon as I know what’s happening.

More

I just spoke with my sister. The biopsy is positive. I don’t want to say any more than that, out of respect for her privacy. Hopefully, I’ll be able to write more about this challenge in the weeks to come. Thank you again for your help.

Overwhelmed by Fruit

I am getting mixed results with the gardening.

With the increased rain, the peppers are thriving. My prig ki nu bush is nearly as big as my lime tree. I am going to have to prune it back before it kills the tree and the pepper bush next to it. The Trinidad Scorpion bush is so big it fell over. I am going to have to tie it up. I have a number of pods on my Fatalii bush. My only weak bush is the yellow habanero.

I have two bunches of Orinoco bananas going, with several big trees nearly ready to fruit. I’m going to try to manage them better, cutting off hands instead of bunches. As soon as you cut a bunch down, the bananas get ripe, and then you have a problem.

My nam wa bananas are finally nearing bearing size. I expect a bract any day now. The PHIA 21 plantains are growing well, but not as fast. The French Horn plantain is in third place, and unlike the other trees, it only has one pup.

The bigger of the two Carrie mangoes is getting huge. For a while, it had new pinkish leaves on it nearly every morning. The smaller tree is healthy but it’s about a third of the big one’s size. I am hoping for a decent harvest this time. I’m pretty sure the demented mango-cutting squirrel that terrorized the neighborhood has been called home to paradise.

My ponkans are fantastic. This little Home Depot tree looks wonderful, apart from a small spider mite problem I can’t get rid of, and it has so many fruit on it, I can’t see how it remains upright. My Sunburst tangerine has never recovered from the weedeater attacks, but it’s getting better all the time. The tangelo tree is healthier than it used to be, but I should still replace it. My cara cara tree looks swell, but it dropped its fruit. Maybe next year. The grapefruit tree looks great, but the fruit are small, so far.

My dragonfruit has two new buds. I am hoping the weedeater maniacs will manage not to gouge it again, so the fruit won’t fall off.

The lime and Key lime trees are out of control. Every day I harvest one to six limes and at least two Key limes. I have maybe three dozen fruit slowly drying up in the kitchen. I am literally throwing them out. Sometimes I try to leave them on the tree longer than I should, and they start to rot and have to be dumped.

The mamey is completely dead. Never buy a tree that doesn’t look happy at the nursery. The lychee is healthy, but I didn’t get fruit this year.

I keep seeing funny little green lizards wrapped around my fruit, waiting for bees or something. I should photograph a few.

I may as well dig up the mamey and replace it. What a gyp that was. I might plant black congo and yellow congo peppers, since they’re rare, and I happen to have seeds. I should kill the peppers I have in pots. The maintenance is too high, and they grow fine in the dirt.

I think I’m going to have to learn to love bananas, starting this fall. I sure hope so. It would be great to have a steady supply of fruit better than the stuff they sell at the store.

Plus Fun with Chinese Tools

While I am sitting here waiting, I thought I’d write some tool-related stuff.

First, I read my mill’s manual the other day. It’s not fantastic, but it’s much better than the manual for the DRO, which might as well be a Jackson Pollack painting. The manual says the mill is built so the front of the table (toward the operator) is supposed to be higher than the back. How much higher? Uh…guess. They say it should be around 0.005″ higher, but that’s as close as they’re willing to get. So I have no idea what to do. I trammed it with all four sides at the same height. I guess I can do it again and assume 0.005″ is the right figure.

Second, I got a quote on a pickup. I suppose I shouldn’t be looking while the socialist, wealth-destroying, deficit-increasing clunkers disaster is ongoing, but I doubt full-size pickups are moving well right now. I don’t know if big pickups with V8 motors are ever eligible for handout money; if they are, it wouldn’t happen very often. You would have to drive a tank in order for a full-size pickup to be an upgrade under the Obama plan.

This morning it occurred to me that this is sort of like the Fannie Mae mess, except it applies to cars. My dad pointed out yesterday that Obama is encouraging new buyers to go further into debt, and that will take money out of circulation. My guess is that many people who own cars worth turning in under this program are poor loan risks. If your trade-in is worth substantially less than the handout figure, you are probably not well off. And car dealers are notorious for writing bad loans and dumping them on GMAC and other institutions. It’s an accepted practice. It can only get worse with this plan in place. Maybe next year we’re going to see a wave of repos.

I got a quote because I wanted to see how desperate the dealers are, and my effort was rewarded handsomely. They took something like six grand off MSRP, right away. I suppose I should be able to chisel another two thousand off.

The truck I looked at was a fairly basic F150 with an eight-foot bed and no back seats. It has the towing stuff, and the payload capacity is about 3,000 pounds, which means it can move heavy objects such as milling machines. I ought to go take a look at it. The Thunderbird has been fun, but I’m starting to feel like it’s no longer in character for me to drive it. It’s a party car. The resale value is surprisingly low; I would be lucky to break even on the truck buy. I am tempted to hold it for six months and see what the economy does, but I think Obama is steering us into the toilet, and we are probably experiencing a deceptive lull before the storm. I can’t believe God would reward socialism and hostility toward Israel.

It would be nice to have a vehicle that can carry things. Many times, I’ve had to borrow my dad’s old Explorer, and it’s getting creaky, and it’s no substitute for a truck with a bed.

I don’t want a backseat, but my lifestyle may not always be as solitary as it is now, so maybe I should rethink that.

I’d like to get a truck made by a company that did not accept the tainted Obama nipple, so Ford is a good choice.

I don’t know why I should hesitate to buy a new vehicle. We’re all buying new vehicles for other people now; might as well buy for ourselves. I need to get a shirt that says, “Kiss me. I paid for your house and your car.”

Fateful Day

This is the day my sister gets her diagnosis. On Tuesday, she was told there was a high probability that she had some type of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, but it was not a firm diagnosis. My prayer has been that upon further analysis, it would turn out to be something other than cancer.

Last night I went to church, to get prayer for her. My church only has one Wednesday service a month. They call it “Breakthrough Wednesday.” Last night was my first time.

I thought it was excellent. On Sundays, we show up, and there is music, and then there’s a sermon, and from time to time during the service there are prayers, and then there is a blessing, and we go home. Nothing wrong with that. But on Wednesdays, the music is more intense, and there is a bigger focus on entering God’s presence. Before the speaker starts, altar workers go to the front, and people are encouraged to go to them and receive prayer. They also have a table at the front where people can take communion. I would say this lasts around half an hour. I am assuming it’s like this every Wednesday; I’ve only gone once.

It seems like a very good arrangement. The congregation is more involved. All over the church, people are praying and so on. By the time the speaker shows up, a lot has been accomplished, and the congregation is in a very receptive state.

I went up to the front and explained my sister’s situation to an altar worker, and we prayed for her. It’s wonderful to know another believer is with you. This is probably the primary reason God encourages us to marry.

The speaker was Bishop Harry Jackson, from Washington, DC. I had been planning to go to this service before I got the news about my sister, so I could check this man out and see if I could recommend him to Mike, who lives in the DC area.

As it turns out, he is a cancer survivor. He had a tumor in his esophagus. He talked about it last night. He said the survival rate with conventional treatment was low, but that he had undergone a potentially lethal new treatment with a higher cure rate. And as a result, he was in remission or cured.

It was a horrendous story. They removed the part of his esophagus that joins the stomach, and then they put him on a chemotherapy regimen that combined two harsh drugs. At one point, he had a stroke and lost control over the right side of his body. But he made it. Now he’s strong and healthy, and he’s busy making a name for himself as an opponent of gay marriage. He’s getting death threats from the patient, enlightened people who disagree with him. Last night he pointed out that it’s hard to scare a man who has survived cancer.

His sermon was a little strange. It meandered a lot, and although he had talking points, it wasn’t always clear what he was getting at. Nonetheless, he imparted some valuable teaching. I think sometimes the Holy Spirit will permit a speaker to have failings yet will still see to it that he teaches a valuable message.

He made an interesting point about gays. He said no matter how wonderful sex is, it takes up a small part of your day, and it is therefore odd to define yourself by the type of sex you have. He said gays defined themselves by their sin, which is interesting. It’s a little like calling yourself a bank robber. Or a player.

I remember someone telling me that a gay acquaintance of his had made the same complaint. I can’t recall who it was. He said gays were boring because their whole lives were centered on being gay. I guess that makes sense. That would be true of any person who only has one interest. Even bowling. Actually, it can make religious people a little taxing, now that I think about it. Even Noah had a hobby.

I’m going to call Mike and tell him my impressions. I think this guy is worth a look.

I’m starting to wonder; will I ever go to this church without encountering a strange “coincidence”? Mike is looking for a church in DC, and my sister is in the midst of a cancer scare, and look who shows up.

Thanks again for all the help.

Vigil Starts

I want to thank everyone who is praying for my sister. I take it very seriously. Elijah prayed, and God sent fire from heaven which completely consumed a slaughtered bull, the wood it lay on, and the water that had been poured around it. A negative result on a biopsy is a much smaller order, and I know your prayers and mine can get it done. Human efforts, on the other hand, can’t accomplish it.

Ordinarily I think it’s wrong to let people know when I fast, but on this unusual occasion, I think there is some benefit to be had by acknowledging it here. I know of three things I used to fail to take notice of when I needed an answer to prayer. One is the need for repentance, the second is fasting, and the third is the wisdom of making an offering when you receive what you need. I never pray for anyone to be healed, without praying that they will examine themselves and turn from anything that could impede their recovery, and recently I learned that it is good practice to follow up with some kind of offering or alms, when a prayer is granted. This is good information to have, so I’m presenting it. I’ll be fasting until the lab results come in.

I don’t know what else to do. I’ll be going to church tonight, and I’ll get them involved. I’ll pray on my own. Other than that, I guess I’ll go on with life as usual.