Tractor

I've been thinking of putting together a pin up shoot involving my photography friends and vintage military vehicle friends.

Lucky there are some old guys in there that actually know things. I try to get them. Another genius works at the hardware store/carquest in Sunbury. He tried to give me a bunch of DOT rules and ORC crap when I just wanted a semi truck glad hand to make an air hose adapter for air tools.

I get very tired of asshat retail employees telling me the stuff I'm buying for a project won't work. If any of them had a clue they wouldn't be working there anyway. My latest favorite dumbass works at the napa warehouse in linworth. I try so hard not to get waited on by him. When I go to napa I have part numbers and know what I'm doing, but the dude refuses to get me the numbers and insists on entering vehicle info. Last instance was filters for my duece and a half. Dude argued over and over that those "tractor" filters wouldn't work and didn't know what kind of car I had, but it wasn't in the system.

I get a ton of stuff sent to my house monthly and it seems to depend what part of the country it comes from. I do hate when I see something show up in Obetz because it usually means another day or two of routing before it arrives at my door. Especially if its USPS via FedEx. Not usually so bad when its UPS, most things for me come in through Marion or Maumee.

I think about something like this from time to time. Will be interesting to see what reply's you get.

Yeah, thats sorta how I see things. Its just world economics, but within our country "politicians" keep us either reaching for the past or fighting each other in the present over trivial "hot issues" instead of thinking clearly and towards the future. I feel we as a planet have reached a pivotal point in our evolution with two main outcomes A) We'll either continue down the path of exploiting our resources and sell the last drop of everything to the highest bidder which will likely end very badly for most of us including possible wars and a return to the stone age except there won't be those resources to reinvent much this time. B) World peace isn't really that far off at this point. Think about it? Everyone's economically joined at the hip so if we can just get past a few more hurdles mostly involving greed we could work together as a planet and start to really explore our solar system and beyond. I'm hoping for B, but somehow I don't think we'll pull it off and if we do it will be more of a combination of A sorta like the bad guy with the plastic hair in 5th Element with a mega corp exploiting on a mega scale gets us out of earth orbit for a bit. If we don't work together soon we'll simply have to many people on Earth and the wars will start over water, etc.

This is global economics. To me the answer to the question "Can America survive without manufacturing" is Yes. Sure its a part of our economy, but its not the only part. It does however need attention and that will not be in the form of "good factory jobs for blue collar workers" that politicians keep pounding their fists about. It is foolish for American companies to continue paying a worker in the US even minimum wage when in another country they can staff a whole shift for the same price (depending on product being created of course.) Now as our "need" for "cheap products" increases we've done the world some good. When I was a kid things where "made in Japan", then "Taiwan", etc and those places have gotten more wealth and better labor laws as a result. China is the huge holdout here. They suppress their currency and keep labor laws at a minimum, but they have been forced to change over the past decades and now jobs have been moving to Vietnam and more recently South Africa. I'll predict that China will continue to be a very cheap place for labor for many more years, but it won't be the only place. We as Americans need to rethink industry here. We simply can't compete man to man, but maybe we can use our superior education level (meaning most of our people graduate high school and therefore can be trained to do more advanced tasked if sufficiently motivated) to create businesses that create products that cannot as easily be made by the truly uneducated. I'm not sure what we'd make, but its either something like that or we all work service sector or administration for a long time. I do however see things coming full circle some day and the US gaining back some manufacturing, but that time is probably 100yrs off (just a guess.) The rest of the world would have to create labor laws to the point where our lower class could then compete in a global job market.

Lol yeah, kids. Before I had them I used 1 sick day every 1-2 years. Now between myself and them getting sick I managed to nearly use them all every year.

Yeah, at this point maybe I should see if I can sell the kids. Little gem magnets.

blah, this year is kicking my butt. I think I've been 10 days since the end of July without having some type of cold. I thought losing weight, working out, changing eating habits would make me healthier. I'm about to stop and go back to gaining a nice layer of insulation.

I really hate when I don't hit that period right before rush hour on fridays. Asshats backed up half way back to polaris. Lots of times I end up taking sunbury rd up through galena so I don't have to deal with it all.

I've had centurylink for over 5 years and its worked great. <> $50/mo for 8mb download. Upload is under 1mb usually 700-800kbps which is fine except for when I'm uploading something huge like my client DVD backup to my online backup service. Otherwise you don't notice any lag or other problem. Now I did have a bit of a run in with their customer service, but you'll get that with any service provider at times. These jokers at the help desk insisted we start at square one every time I called in for repair for a difficult problem that ended up clearly being on their end. So they followed their troubleshooting chart exactly even with clear notes on our account that the problem was external and needed a service call. That went on about 2-3 weeks and I decided google is my friend and found a phone number which got me inside of the local century link office where I was able to voice my concerns to the service dept manager and now have his direct line. Problems all solved now and its working great. Now I will say that over the past year speed has gotten more "unstable." Since we've fixed everything between my house and the century link building about a mile away, I'm going to attribute this to increased loads on the system at peak times. If do speed tests at odd hours everything checks out fine. Summary, I like century link, if I could the stability that we had a year ago I'd be happier.

Cpd has several choppers. I go to their hangers a lot and see several on the ground and at least one is in the sky somewhere.

My boss is getting tired of trying to find a super experienced person and needs at least one more guy on our team and we're in a position where we are now willing to train the right person. This would be great for someone wanting to get into the "skilled trade" type of jobs. I told him I know a lot of mechanical and electrical techie guys and would put the word out. We're based out of Westerville, but the job will require nearly 100% travel around the Columbus area fixing office equipment, ie copiers, printers, etc, but very little if any computer stuff so its great for guys who work reliably, can talk to customers without making a mess of things, and can follow a logical troubleshooting process to fix machines. I've worked there 10yrs and its a great company and great job if you don't mind working alone and driving a lot. IMHO it pays great too for such a simple job. The downside is, the pay might not be so great at first due to needing a lot of time in our classrooms and in the field getting up to speed on the equipment. Also the bonus program does take 6-12mo to really start paying well, but once you get through it, its well worth it. PM me for further info,

I've been hearing about plans for awhile, though this is the first time I've heard, who, what, and a timeline.

The reports sound like a hot head with a gun couldn't handle the responsiblity of carrying.

The bed is still a few layers of primer. I'm thinking of getting durabaks milspec bed liner. Just waiting for better weather to apply it or something similar.

I picked up 3 jerry cans from a guy on craigslist a couple weeks ago for a great price. There a little rusty, but I'll have them restored soon.

Lol, saw your photos, I'm still out shopping and can probably get to them when I get home.

Not much, but I did find a couple close ups of the original military lettering that give an idea of what I was working with. http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f185/EWhytsell/M35A2/IMG_06341.jpg http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f185/EWhytsell/M35A2/IMG_06321.jpg

Between catching various colds, work, and family stuff I finally finished painting my M105a2 trailer this weekend. Started with a lot of rust and even had to cut out some of the side panels and weld in new ones. I still have the pintle and front landing gear to paint, but the primary concern was restoring the bed. I also installed a Hi-Lift Jack mount on the passenger side fender. http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f185/EWhytsell/M35A2/2012-11-25155904.jpg

I've always heard that reloading doesn't save money, but allows you to shoot more for the same money;-)

Yeah there's few good ideas/general rules. Personally I really like the direction that digital photography has taken portraiture. I learned classical portraiture, but never cared for the look and looking back through 100yrs of photography its now pretty dated and causes me to think 70-80's. I suppose it could still have a place in the "art" realm.

Open and concealed carry are both legal except in the buildings from what I've read.

Im seeing a lot of poor execution in those poses which it's why I try not to pose people unless they already know how to do it. As soon as you start to pose someone they tend to lose their natural look. I focus on letting them be themselves and getting the lighting decent during portraits.