Neanderpundit

The shit is beginning to hit the fan. Major (And I mean MAJOR) industries are purchasing components from substandard sources to ostensibly improve their bottom line. A LOT of the components in question are those used for safety systems and other critical components. I would NOT purchase light curtains or safety switches from a couple of manufacturers now, JUST because of the way they’re made, and since those components are now made out of country under license there is no legal protection. You lose your arms in a press because the light curtain failed, good luck suing a dummy corporation in Sao Paolo.

The big player in this is, again, Siemens. They are muscling their way into the market with systems that are truly awful. Their medical equipment is several times the cost of the same MRI’s and other diagnostic equipment made by people like GE, but they are price dumping here to get the market share and shut everyone else down- and it’s working. Their NC/CNC stuff is- well, if Fanuc is apple (Always works, all parts play nicely together) Siemens is PC- a vast array of software levels and versions and revisions combined with an almost limitless array of hardware options many of which are incompatible and when assembled in certain combinations are certain to cause issues.

I am having the whole Siemens issue inserted in me against my will, and it bites. I will be making it all work, because that’s what I do, but I am not happy, and that is going to be repeated all over the country in all manufacturing- people will be forced to use cumbersome, difficult, and unnecessarily complex equipment more and more to do their jobs and it is going to start pushing people over the edge. All to save a few dollars (And I’m literally talking single percentages or less) while spending twenty times that in maintenance costs. And then the maintenance department who are all underfunded will be beaten up because they can’t keep the equipment running.

This is the beginning of the end of manufacturing here. the US is still a giant manufacturing powerhouse, despite everyone’s claims to the contrary, and if you want to run that into the ground, the surest way is to make the equipment unreliable, tax the output mercilessly, and increase the cost of electricity. Welcome to the new soviet.

Today I shot the 30-06 for the first time since I “remodeled” it.

The timney trigger is awesome. The Talley Mounts are incredible. And the Nikon scope is spectacular. Most of all the stock is incredibly comfortable, and it shoots like a house afire. More to follow. I just went to stick a couple rounds through it. More later with pictures.

where we realize we will not be a star pitcher for the Yankees. We won’t be the President of the United States, and we aren’t going to cure cancer. oh, sure, SOME of us do, but that’s a bloody small number.

No, most of us are going to spend most of our lives affixing the left front quarter panel to GM cars, or making sure all the bars on rt 6 between Griffith and Lansing have enough beer each week, or wrangling a bunch of teenagers into flipping burgers and dropping fries.

We will lead normal lives. Oh, more than a few of us will write good books, more than a few will become well known for one thing or another, more than a few of us may even become famous, but we will all all be working class folks, within a range of incomes and a range of lifestyles. And that’s fine, that’s what we’re supposed to do. Humans have been doing that for years.

Probably the only thing that is really important is to do what you do, well. To make the best of the talents given you by the creator. That is the truly important thing.

Today is Pentecost Sunday. We are reminded that Jesus came into a locked room to endow the apostles with the Holy Spirit, and give them the gift of tongues- that is, being able to be understood in any language. They had a very special message to deliver, and delivering that message was important enough to the Christ that he “invented” the reverse babel fish, a couple thousand years before Douglas Adams.

The message was the important part, not the speaking in tongues. Jesus did not endow the apostles with tongues and the Holy Spirit so they could yammer like fools at home. And yammering like a fool pretending to be endowed with the gift of tongues and the holy spirit is just wishful thinking, and it’s the most self aggrandizing type of wishful thinking there is. Christ came to earth and walked among us; while he was here he chose men to carry the burden and carry on the work and sent them out into the world. No matter what you think, you are not an apostle, that age is long gone. You have your own part to play, and you should be aware of your need to do it well. If you don’t understand what it is, pray and ask the Creator for guidance. meanwhile try to do the things you do well, and a lot of the time, the rest will take care of itself.