Messing Around

So I watched the Motor Trend Video about chopping the Roof of a Van. I liked two things. One was the the fact that they used a 3D printer to make the model. The number two thing I liked was that they also built their own Wind Tunnel using plexi-glass and Vape Juice. Albeit, they removed the nicotine from the Vape Juice, just the fact that Vape Juice is involved is cool as Hell. Oh, I cannot forget to mention that they used a bunch of straws to. The straws really top it all off. It's one thing to use a 3D printer, but another to use Vape Juice. The fact that you add straws just tops it all off for nerds everywhere. Straws are awesome and in this configuration they used the straws to direct the Vape over the model van. I need to mention that they had three model vans. First was the regular van with no custom changes. Second, they had a Chop Top van and third they used chopped, but only the front of the van, so the roof was slanted and appeared that the front by the windshield was lowered while the rear of the roof by the back windows was regular height. This gave the roof a "Wedge," that the builder really wanted to use because of the way it made the van look. Sorry to say, the wedged roof did not do very well in the aerodynamic test. Did I mention that the straws and the Vape Juice were for an aerodynamic test? Well, I just did, so all the nerdiness and coolness are considered covered in this article. Customizing a van by chopping the roof isn't anything new, but adding vape juice and straws is. I'm happy they found a very creative way to test the models. Plus, saving money is always important, but not neccesarily required. I mean your customizing which kind of is the epitomy of wasting cash, right? Anyway, the test was very cool. It showed the Wedge design to be not all that aerodynamic which is really the goal, so it ruled that design out. What it also showed though was that the chopped design which was just a straight chop maybe six to eight inches straight across the entire height of the van made a big difference with aerodynamics. You could see the smoke (vape juice) just straight blowing past the roof where in the other model tests the smoke gathered at different areas on the roof and at the back of the van. Maybe this article was so interesting to me, as was the video because I've been interested in the concept lately. I had an SUV that was nearly egg shaped and when someone blew by me on the road, I could feel the air blowing off of their vehicle and onto mine. What I noticed though was that the vehicles which a person would think are most aerodynamic appeared to be blowing the most air, so it made me curious unto how it actually works. I mean it's not a terribly complicated idea. You have air and resistance really not much detail, but when the air moves fast past a vehicle all sorts of streams can be followed. Like the air hitting the wedge of the van in the test. The smoke actually bundled up about half way past the front of the roof, so it showed them that it wasn't as aerodynamic as they thought. I was thinking maybe my Egg shape experience was because the air, instead of being allowed to blow by the vehicle as in the chopped roof example, it was sort of billowing in circles around the vehicle and that is why I felt so much air pressure as I passed by vehicles. It's almost like an Anti-drafting effect. The air pressure around my vehicle was not high because of it's aerodynamic shape, but because I didn't have that high air pressure around the vehicle it would be really sensitive to other vehicle draft air. I don't know how to explain it any better than that. Think of it like heat. If you have no insulation, you will initially feel the heat move toward you, but because you have no insulation the heat will eventually move right past you and you feel cold air again. Well that is almost like this in that you don't feel much air resistance when you have an aerodynamic vehicle, but also you feel a lot of billowing air and extra resistance when you pass a vehicle that is not very aerodynamic. Especially if your traveling in the opposite direction. It's like a wall of air. Temporary resistance, but still you feel it. This test and the video with the discussion around it, sort of gave me insight and I haven't even watched the whole thing. All I watched was the first couple of minutes than I saved the video for later. I've been getting a lot of ideas lately about how to do certain things using different media techniques like how the video showed a small aerodynamic test using straws, vape juice and a 3D printer. Seguay into another subject that still discusses some of the properties of physical elements, but shows how I arrive at my conclusions by way of history & experience. Speaking of history & experience, I've been reflecting back on a lot of things since the, "Lockdown," and had a lot of time to think about things which I usually don't give much thought to like taking all the bookmarks out of one google account to put them into another. It's not the kind of thing people do everyday, but in my case since it was relevant to something technical, I got real deep in the weeds about it. I guess, I might of answered my own question there by using this discussion where I attempted to understand why it was neccessary to export my old bookmarks out of Google since they won't be saving them anymore. As soon as I used the word "Purge," it hit me that it's where all of the old source code for probably a compromised internet adressing system was making things less secure while people searched without realizing all of that old saved data in there browser history was opening them up to breaches & hacks. Nobody semed to care about Breaches & Hacks up until we were all forced to do things differently. During the Lockdown people were working from home and that made everyone aware of normal technical issues that guys like me work with and around every day, but now all of a sudden everyone was having to deal with it. Think of it like an old telephone number. Unless you call everyone that you previously contacted with the old number and give them your new number, you'll lose contact with them because they don't know what your new number is. Well that is what old links and bookmarks do is they save the location on the internet where you connected to something and by renewing your links or your bookmarks, you can go back to that exact same location only using a more secure path. That's what I was doing. I was rebuilding all those connections during down time, so that when things did get back to normal, I was sure that they were secure. Come to think of it, some of those links go twenty some years back to when I was a starting technician in ITS at the Casino. Wow, it's been a long time since then. Twenty years ago, I started over there across the street and everything was so new and exciting. I remember I used to tell myself to just keep using good documentation and I'll go far. Well, physically I didn't go that far because I'm like 200 yards from where I started, but technically I've traveled around the cyber-sphere and back a couple of times. I would have never guessed twenty years later I'd be still working in the same industry. Well, to be accurate it's not the same industry because I went from gaming to financial, but it's close and I still work in technology. I sort of feel like and old school O.G. now though. I catch myself telling the young kid who works here with us old war stories from the days of analog and what not. Especially since we recently switched out those old analog phones for digital one's. Now here's the thing. I started writing about Motor Trends project about Aerodynamics which is more science than hobbyist activity. I am swinging back towards the area I started my journey in the automotive field. Not as an actual job to feed my family, but more of a side project and I cannot wait to get started. The thing is, I need some room to store my vehicles and some disposable funds to finance my projects. I did quick analysis in finances and it appears that I can get started. The first thing to be decided though will be what to choose for a project. I have a long term project and a short term project in mind. Oddly enough, those two projects involve the same vehicle. Out in Naches there is this second hand store and it's run by a couple country boys name Rick & Estaban. Now Estaban I've met before, but Rick I just met. They have this PT Cruiser that's in pretty good shape. They're not asking a lot for it and it appears to have no cosmetic damage. The thing is, it's a PT Cruiser. Not exactly known for it's durability. My sister had one and she liked it enough. It wasn't very big and I'm not interested in it for it's size. Well, I might need to take that back because I'm interested in it because it's small. You know, teacup full of gas and that sort of thing. I also have my eye on a Honda Accord that nobody wants or probably even know it's for sale because it's at the end of a dead end street way out in the sticks. The honda, I believe needs a whole control panel. At least all the things I've read online talk about needing a new control panel based on the systems. I don't know if it really needs one. All I know is the guy whose selling it never bothered to look which would make it a killer deal for me because I could take that one thousand dollar car and turn it into a three thousand dollar car with just a new panel. It's stuff like that I'm interested in doing. Besides, it appears my itch for projects just cannot be contained. I've gone a whole two years without a speck of doing anything and it's not by choice. The quarantine slash isolation slowed everything down around the world and now they're talking about production line delay. Man, if it's not one thing, it's another. Anyway, if there ever is another shutdown, I'll be ready with a boat load of projects ready to go. Last week, I saw some fun rides. I think I saw two vehicles practically the same color within blocks of each other. I can't quite remember where at, but I wrote it all down in the little notebook I keep in the truck. I finally just started writing stuff down instead of thinking I could take a picture and it might jog my memory. It's funny because I'll look at the pictures and ask myself, "Where is that at?" I'm sort of skirting the elephant in the room which is my truck which I drive daily will need to be parked soon and the vehicle I parked when I got the truck needs some repair, so I can use it for winter. Maybe I'm kidding myself because the truck is better on gas than the other vehicle. That's not really the issue in the winter though because we're looking for safety and being that I drove the other vehicle all winter long, it proved to be safe and comfortable, plus it's All Wheel Drive. I didn't think about it that way until one day it was snowing and the road was ice under the snow. I was driving up a hill a few blocks from the house and this camaro just spun out in front of me. I felt pretty good driving by him in my little rez ride with traction as his forty thousand dollar automobile appeard useless against an icy hill. Re-reading this really takes me back. I wrote it in 2021 and now it's twenty twenty two. A lot has changed, but some things have stayed the same. I think I was distracting myself with nostalgia because it seemed the pandemic would never end. I still ask myself, "Did it end though?" or "Did we just say it ended because everyone was tired. It's nearly the middle of April and it's snowing outside. Ground Hog's revenge I guess. To answer the question, the pandemic didn't end. We just took our masks off to breath for a bit until the next round. I don't believe it will ever really end. The elite Billionaires in the world have to much riding on things not ending. They still have a lot of money to make. If you've read any of my Blog Posts, you know I blame capitalism for just about every evil in the world because it's true. Why should the pandemic be any different? Oh, maybe because there is a war in Ukraine? I don't know. Is there? Can you really call it a war when one country is just literally bombing the piss out of an area that they used to control just to regain control of it again? It's War-Like, I'll admit, but not really a war. Not the way the nightly news acts anyway like were all being bombed on a daily basis, but you know the media is the biggest tool in a capitalist society, so they need us all to be scared of something or the other so we'll keep buying stuff we don't need because that's the American Dream they're selling. It's not my ideal of principle and values, but compared to fighting Nazis on Twitter and the daily shooting of some innocent people in Mericu, what else do we have to look forward to? That's why I choose to focus on my two hands and what I can do with them. It doesn't hurt anyone and it helps one very important person and that's me. Plus, when you build stuff, it keeps that old hope alive that maybe it's not all for nothing. You know what I am saying? It's easy to get down in the dumps about things if you don't figure out how to look forward to something. I believe one of my very first posts in a blog of my own was just a bunch of pictures of a table set that I had purchased that came in pieces. I called it Snooki's Nook. The title should give away the time of about when that happened because I wasn't really a Jersey Shore Fan, but I thought the video footage of that little chick being so drunk all the time, staggering around was like something you would see on the rez. I guess to be honest, it's not as common anymore because they got this new thing called tweekers and those folks are pretty interesting to watch. This isn't related to anything in this post, but I think it's just a crazy story. I was in the Tri-Cities over the weekend and in the store I was in, I could hear a baby crying. Suddenly, the crying got louder and louder until the person with a toddler was walking right by me. I kind of looked at the little girl to see that she was alright, but mostly she was scared of something. Like she could sense something and it hadn't happened yet. I could sympathize because I felt the same thing. They went away and went to the other side of the store. Pretty soon I see people running away from where those folks went and they were running toward me. All I could hear is people said those people are fighting over there. I couldn't see because I was clear on the other side of the store from where it happened. All I could see was people standing in the aisles, looking over in the general area where this was supposed to be happening. Later the employees gathered around and they were like trying to decide what to do. I could hear people say, "Call the Police," but I was to far away from where all of it was going down, so I don't know. I imagine that's what they said or at least I hope that's what they said. I just remember that man walking by me with that scared little girl in tow and I realized that I could've been smack dab in the middle of it had I said something like I wanted to. I'm not quite sure why I didn't say anything. Like I said, I felt like something was about to happen, but I wasn't quite sure about what it was. All I knew was that little girl looked scared and in my mind I was thinking. "Excuse me sir,..." This is what I was thinking about saying, "Excuse me sir, but you ought to not have the little girl with you." I thought it might catch the guy off guard because he had that kind of anger in his eyes like he was going to definitely get violent, so I didn't say anything because I didn't know if he was the parent or if he was kidnapping the kid. I didn't know what was happening. All I knew is it was going to be bad. The crazy thing is that right before I arrived at the store where this happened, I was making a joke that I was shopping in the "Bouji," part of town and if I wanted to find some lower prices, I needed to go to a store in the "ghetto side," of town. Well, it did not fail to impress that is for sure. The prices, I mean. Not the violence. Kind of ironic being how I feel about capitalism and all, but what can I say? At least there weren't bombs dropping on us. At least not on me this particular day anyway. The craziest thing though in the whole episode is that I wouldn't go in the store across the street because someone I know who worked in the store got shot in there. I know that's a Dark turn in commentary, but it really happened. All this in a city that I describe as, "Well, when you have over 300 thousand people in one place there is bound to be a few of them with some screws loose." That's just my take on reality. It just so happens that the places I like to go many other people do to, so unfortunately that's where the activity is. At least I don't live there. Not like I can say where I live is actually that much better because crazy things have been happening there to. The other running commentary that threads through many of my posts is this narrative discussing race. It's not like I've set out to chip away at this subject that there are racial connotations to many things by continuing to mention it, but in reality "There are many connotations to race because there just are." Did I mention that this "ghetto," that I speak of is at Fred Myer locations? Yeah, this isn't happening at your Dollar General or the 10 cent store. This is happening at some of the best stores around. I think it's because there are many affluent caucasian shoppers that are members of the store, so it attracts the lesser affluent members of the same race to try to victimize the shoppers. I'm not saying it's race related, but you never see any minorities around those stores holding up signs for money. They're all white folks. I don't want my non-minority friends to read this and get upset, but reality is reality. The connection between a rise in violence and mental health appears to be connected to people who usually don't find themselves in financial stressful situations being in a position where they're newly unemployed and finding all of the circumstances and situations that go along with it. I'm not saying minorities are better at handling life changes. I just want people to see the connection between the two. Some people have experience with being mistreated by society and others when it happens to them, they most certainly "flip out," in the most dramatic way. Sure there has been the usual violent behavior inflicted by minorities against other minorities and that's a shame because we accept it, but once that activity crosses over to other parts of society, most people certainly take notice. I think the problem is that we've all been conditioned to accept this sort of behavior on some level, so now that it's happening everywhere were just not all that concerned. Take the example of the man with a small child in the store. I saw them. They walked right passed me. I didn't say anything because if that were a minority, the average person is most certain that the person is armed. That thought didn't really cross my mind at the time. I just saw someone in the middle of a crisis and that moment I was concerned for the child. It's different because I'm not all that use to observing what appears to be "Well to do," people having a moment, so I just looked on. The point is violence is rising and it's showing up everywhere. I thought it was safe because I was in a store where you usually don't see that many incidents. Let me rephrase that. In the past. you usually don't witness that much activity at Fred Myer, but now it's like "I got to stop going there to?" Walmart is out of the question because either there is gangs outside trying to shoot each other or the people walking through the aisles are armed. The last part, I don't really know if it's true but there was this day when gun owners were having an "Open Carry," day, so all these people were walking around Walmart sort of brandishing firearms. Let me tell you, you don't understand fear until your kind of trying to shield your kids from a crowd of people with guns. I'll always remember that day and it makes me realize, "what about all the people with concealed weapons?" That was an "Open Carry," day. On regular days people are carrying side arms they're just concealed. I just didn't want my own children traumatized by seeing packs of people with guns. If I wanted to have my children see people with guns, I'd take them hunting. That's the things about fire arms that is different between Natives and other cultures. We see it as a total utilitarian circumstance. We equate guns with hunting because it's a sacred part of our heritage. Like most things sacred, we wouldn't be displaying them at Walmart or any other store like other groups who claim to be reverant with their side arms for the exact same reason, so you can clearly see that it's not really true in their case. I'm not a "Make more laws about guns," person. I didn't mean to discuss it, but somewhere in there I felt I needed to say this. You know, "Put it out there in the Ethos." Society is in a strange position. I take things with a grain of salt because it's not like I'm all in the public all the time. It's just turning into the kind of place I'd rather not be, so I feel I need to at least say something. If you get enough people to talk about this sort of thing than maybe something will change, but if you go around and it's something nobody ever talks about than most certainly things will never change. I've read up on a lot of analysis that's happened in just the last ten years about how ideals are being denigrated. People look at this fact and there examining, "The how?" & "The Why?" Well, it turns out that were just sort of doing this to ourselves, as a way of developing a new reality. Call it what you want no matter if it's influence or a "Libertarian Moment." The fact is that societies changing and not in a good way. You see it's just like I started this post with commentary about aerodynamics and went on to discuss my own interests. The reason I did that is so the reader could imagine air flow and I could describe something, an activity with words, but you would see a picture of it in your mind. Than I just sort of made small, "chit chat," to cover what I've recently been up to before I really dove into what I wanted to say. That's what writers call a style or technique for the real good ones. I don't claim to be a writer, I just write. I write about things that have been on my mind. In this post I'm writing about a certain subject, but I'm sure you've probably heard it or witnessed it for yourselves somewhere. I mean, I can't be the only person watching these things happen? The thing is, what is going to happen next? I mean where do we go from here? Do we just say, "Oh well," and throw our hands in the air about it? I've witnessed countless demonstrations and rallies about all sorts of things in the last couple of years. Sure, I'm glad people are finally speaking out about things that bother them because it's good, but are we seeing any difference? I've seen blog posts. I've witnessed the piling on people do, but what does that change really? Oh sure, the other day I saw a car with the Ukranian Flag painted across the back window and thought, "Oh wow." It's not all that new because big 4X4 trucks been driving around with actual flags on them for a long time now. It seems like everything is just an allegience now days. We all fly our colors of what ever we support and that's about it. I think okay, I can definitely see who supports what, but what does it even mean? Where is the Flag for Little scared girls being dragged through a store towards violence? Where is the flag for the thousands of people in the streets everyday? Why is society willing to support this or that, but not actually do anything for those in need? To me, all the pageantry is just that. It doesn't mean anything. So go ahead and write your little smirking updates to your friends on social media, it doesn't mean anything. Words are just words! I love words and I like to write them to, but it doesn't mean anything unless there is some action behind it. Good or bad, I guess society is making some sort of progress because everyone is expressing themselves and how they feel about certain things. The next step to change though is action. Before we are ready to take action on anything, I'd think it would be a good idea to examine things though. Let's look at each other no matter if were on different sides of a debate and consider what we have in common. What would you hope to gain from change? What is in your heart about the state of life today and how would you like to handle things differently? It's a simple questions like this that create space for dialog to happen. I have many friends that are much better writers than I am, but the thing is they're all saying the same thing! Everyone's still complaining or on a quest to point out how unfair the world is, instead of coming up with a plan to fix things. That's what I do. I fix things. I sit and I think about what the problem is than I come up with a plan to fix it. Can I fix that people are different and believe different things for different reasons? Well, no I'm just one person. I can ask questions though. I can show a common interest in doing the right thing and than hope that who ever I share these thoughts with could tell me their version of the subject. See that's the thing that's so crazy about the world and everyone in it. We can change at any time. We all have the power to do that. You can just wake up one day and decide for yourself, "I'm not going to do what I did yesterday because if I keep doing the same thing, I'll most likely get the same result. So you started exercising or going to places you always wanted to go. You started dressing different and acting different until one day someone walks up to you or texts you to say, "what is this change alll about?" That's the moment I urge you to prepare for by thinking about how you want life to be before doing anything. When we don't know, we often stop what were doing to think about it and that's all I ask anyone to do. I don't have a charity that I'm asking you to donate to. I don't even have a business to promote or see myself and my personality as a brand to sell people. I'm just a person with my own life and my own way of doing things just like everyone else, but I have a special power. That power is self empowerment to not be afraid of what people think about me, but to ask myself "what do I think about this or that?" We all have that power, so I'm not better than anyone. Thinking turns into doing and doing becomes a habit if you keep doing it. I decided some time ago that I needed to learn how to write. I haven't mastered it yet, but I'm still doing it. I still enjoy the written communication. I enjoy reflecting on life and I mostly enjoy imagining what is possible when we allow ourselves to think differently. Now I tried to think of a way to end this post and right there in my previous sentence will work fine, but it doesn't leave a good lasting impression on anyone because it just sounds like I want to be left alone in my own little world. So, I'm going to use an excerpt from a story about Michael Jordan that I think sums the whole thing up. In the Nineties "Air," Jordan was asked to endorse an African American politician who was running against another that let's just say he's fit in with the Republican politicians today, "If," you know what I mean? Anyway. Jordan didn't campaign for this guy but he donated money. Even though he was from the same state of North Carolina, Jordan famously said at that time the reason he wouldn't campaign is because, "I don't want to jump into the race publicly because Republicans buy sneakers too." Sam Smith sports reporter, recalled the exchange on Jordan's Documentary, "The Last Dance." Those words have haunted Jordan ever since. The reason it haunts Jordan is because it pose's a question, "Is Jordan just another selfish, greedy celebrity with no broad sense of civic obligation? Now remember, this was something that happened over thirty years ago. In today's atmosphere, it's an actual crucial thing to be selling to the public and making statements that you have the interest of everyone in mind. At least that's the way I take it because nobody asked Pepsi how they felt about protests. They just decided to wade into the debate themselves. So here's Jordan three decades later and a Billionaire including something like this into his own autobiography. Jordan at first dismissed his remark as a joke. But then he offered a defence of his underlying decision, and it was anything but a joke. "I think that statement needs to be corrected because I said it in jest on a bus with Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen. It was thrown off the cuff. My mother asked me to do a PSA for Harvey Gantt. I said look mom, I'm not speaking out of pocket about someone that I don't know. But I will send a contribution to support him." He continued, "I commend Muhammad Ali for standing up for what he believed in. But I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player." The last part is best. He said, "I wasn't a politician when I was playing my sport. I was focused on my craft." I had to think about what Jordan said, "I wasn't a politician when I was playing my sport." That is why I started this post with just talking about what I do. Because I'm not a politician either. I do read though and while I was reading an in depth recollection of the entire affair I am relaying here, I came across these words from Yuval Levin in his article, "How to Curb the Culture War." His words are, "By implicitly setting a limit of the proper uses of his celebrity, Jordan asserted the possibility of meaningfully distinct spheres of human action, and of boundaries on cultural and political conflict that might make a healthier common life possible." He goes on, "Our lives are unified wholes, and our moral commitments must not be compartmentalized into insignificance. But those boundaries also cannot be eradicated, or else the bile of bitter partisanship will flood into the broader culture and dissolve our capacity to live with others in a vast and diverse nation." I know it's a bit of alphabet soup for the timid, but what he's saying is that we cannot let this phase of life consume us. At least that's my take on it and that's what I'm trying to convey here. Allegience is good, loyalty is good, but blind loyalty and complete allegience isn't very good when it starts to make it harder to live a real life in a real world. "Jordan's experience three decades ago shows why the work of marking out such boundaries properly can be so difficult. But our own experience in this century should help us see why such work may be essential to the flourishing of a free society, and to the task of social renewal that now lies before us." So you see, I was describing a phenomena called aerodynamics in the beginning to make a point. My point was about "Resistance," we feel when were going somewhere. Kind of like how I felt when I was simply trying to shop and people were getting violent in the store. My second point is that we all have to reset our connections to things. I did this by talking about renewing some Google communication tools. Finally, I went into this long drawn out description about society in general and I tried to use humor here and there to make light of what I was actually talking about. These are not easy discussions to have and there even worse when you feel like your tapping away on a keyboard into the ethos. That's why I used the phrase. The ethos is out there, where ever there is and me I'm right here. I'm on this side of the monitor typing words onto a screen, but that doesn't mean that I completely forget about the audience (which is you). I don't sit here assuming everything I am saying is right and nobody can say it different. All I'm doing is describing my own experience. That is why I titled this post, "Messing Around."