Lowe's stands by decision to pull ads from TV show | CharlotteObserver.com & The Charlotte Observer Newspaper

So now this. I now refrain from commenting on politics here but Lowe's is based in my home state.

Good on Lowe's.

Lowe's stands by decision to pull ads from TV show | CharlotteObserver.com & The Charlotte Observer Newspaper

Good. How dare Congress critters try to dictate to private companies how to conduct business. If you don't like the decisions Lowe's made, don't go there. 

How did we get to this state? What the hell happened?  

Vote them all out!

I went Christmas shopping today:

Christmas Tree.. Train... Stuff....

So I have laid the track and am awaiting the new sound car from ebayness to replace my fried one. I took the time to at least put out the Ford Dealership:

Time is short this year. I do not have time to dress things as well as I should, but you get the idea.

Full video as soon as I have the new sound car!

I will also put a post out on what to do if you want to put a Lionel under the tree next year. First step though is to go get one if you can in a yard sale. Barring that, I will give tips on what to look for on a new one.

Whew! Almost done!

Remember this thing from last week? The PLC that had to go?

45er called it a "hot mess". Yeah it was. Behold the after pictures:

It ran on time Monday. Small issues and working on points for style now. I am fortunate to have really talented technicians. They make me look good!

HA! Gun Song!

Odysseus over at By Other Means has a link to a funny song. Go look. Me, I do have preferences, but as he says over there, whatever works for you is fine by me. Reminds me of auto mechanic humor when I am in these spots. Mechanic pushing a car into a stall: "Well, at least its not mine"!

For one moment......

So a busy weekend. Congratulations to my eight concealed carry students on Sunday and to my three new shooters on Saturday!

Last night I had a friend over. She and I go back some time. She needed help in transferring her data to a new laptop. She is a road warrior because of her profession. It is an honor that she trusts me implicitly with her data. 

She knew that I would have been at it all day teaching, she also was at it all day to travel to her annual sales meetings starting today. 

She was waiting on me in my driveway yesterday. She texted me and asked if she could take me out to Supper, I deferred. After a day of teaching, I just wanted to get home. She brought a full spread of Outback take out. We had Supper and conversed. For one brief moment this house was a home, filled with laughter, stories of times past and things done and said back then. Those stories have much import simply because she was more than a friend way back then. 

We both excuse the exuberance of youth for those stories simply because we did some remarkable things back in the day:

So for her, this:

The 80's called......

Not this 80's; sigh....

This 80's: 

They called, they want thier Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) back. Reliance Electric Remote I/O drop that runs a small process.

One of the things I found refreshing about this little Blog thing is that very few ask about the "day job". In fact only Old NFO and Murphy's Law have asked, but only in person.

Here is a sample of what I do during the day. In the picture above is a part of a PLC commissioned somewhere around 1993. It still works great after serving for 24/7 all this time, but when you have to get spare parts off of Ebay and running the programming software under a Virtual Machine in a Windows 2K box running Fedora it might be time to do something.

I was asked to create a task list for this project. To me its simple: Step 1: take old stuff out. Step 2: put new stuff in.

Step 1:

New standalone PLC installed in the top of the backplane, now all that is left is to convert the old wiring to new, program the PLC and operator workstation, test and have ready to go by Monday at 5AM. 

It looks like this:

Lead Tech calling out the old Octal based wire numbers to me, I look up on the left side documents, find new wiring numbers from the right document and print the new wire label for him. After he terminates, I cross off both as complete. We still have a lot to do. 

I also have Basic Pistol class this Saturday and CCH Sunday. This should be an interesting weekend! So, if the posting and commenting is light, please understand! 

So if you came here and viewed this, here is some holiday cheer in my style:

The Mustang fender emblems are special, but the one from a 1964 and a half is really the one of honor. It is the driver side original. NFO asked me what Mustang I am working on now. Sadly, no time right now for it but it is next. Brigid had a wonderful post up that combined several things that I love too, but again, time is short right now.

I hope to be back soon! 

Almost there!

So I get the tree up and lay some track. I try the Engine out first and life is good. Then off to find the Railsounds car for testing. NOT so good. Lionel made these for a couple of years in the mid 90's. They add a great deal of realism and just well, fun to a old train.

It is not responding to whistle or bell commands. Sigh. I disconnected the original whistle in the tender when I got the railsounds car. So I guess its time to hook it back up! 

But for an hour at least, I was once again on the floor, playing with a train. Now time to go. Big project at work starts tomorrow. Wish me luck or I will be spending a lot of time there!