Neanderpundit

then went to sleep.

Dreamed I was in a hollywood movie. No! Wait, that’s another dream. I dreamed I was in (You guessed it) a post apocalyptic robot planet being hunted by robots.

The Ogwife had designed a pretty bulletproof security system for our underground lair, and took a great deal of pride and pleasure at chasing bots around and annoying/blowing them up. The Oglet, being a cute teenager, was more troubled by the post apocalyptic teenage boys wanting to get in her pants, so she carried a Kukuri and had a collection of chins with goatees still attached hanging on her bedroom wall.

Don’t know why it was the chin rather than something more unsavory, but hey. I suppose I should be pleased she never let it get that far.

The ogwife stepped out into the thick of battle- to have a smoke. I was tired of her putting herself in harms way just to support her addiction, so I started installing kiosks all around the battlefielfd for free upogrades to Win 7. When the bots showed up they were injected with a healthy dose of Win Vista, which caused them to all shut down randomly and boot up with half of the plugins missing, so I was able to herd them all into the dump where I sprayed them with fuel oil and tossed in a match. The fire burned a long time, during which time I was in the doghouse for ruining the Ogwife’s fun.

From the time I was eight, I could read blueprints. I was rebuilding engines by 12. I was designing machinery by 20. I do systems now, of incredible complexity.

I would be doing that full time, but for the fact that I can’t get out of repair.

I make industrial engineer money, but I’ve spent SO much time inside machinery of all types, and am so skilled at repairing it, that i keep getting sucked back into a repair capacity, usually when there are issues so difficult the “professionals” won’t touch them. (AND I still keep doing design, in the middle of a repair THIS MORNING I got a call from a colleague who needed my help sourcing unusual components) I know more about machinery and how it works, and how it should be designed and maintained, than most people will ever know about anything

None of this is mine, incidentally, lest anyone accuse me of hubris, these skills and this talent come directly from the Creator of the universe; I have merely accepted the gift, and never did anything to earn it. I only hope I work hard enough to deserve it.

Consequently I understand more about machinery of every kind, from autoloading pistols to flight controls, from donut packaging to coin sorters, from cars and trucks of all kinds to the machinery that makes every individual piece therof. I have been exposed to a good deal of it firsthand, and can extrapolate the rest. At least once a month someone says something to the effect of:

“You look like you know what you’re doing. How long you been doing (whatever task it is I’m working on)?”

“About fifteen minutes”

I don’t take those skills lightly, and I use them where there is great need, though I (or, well, at least my employer) gets paid handsomely for them. I take a good deal of comfort in knowing that I am helping good, solid American companies stay in business competitively. I sleep like a baby.

But it’s not for those resistant to change, either.

When I was born, there were 48 states. Newspapers were printed from slugs of type, and some of them didn’t even use lino. A fax machine was an oddity, and mostly only police departments had them. Men had yet to walk on the moon, cars had carburetors, trucks rode like- well, trucks, and they were only driven by hicks and farmers.

The world has changed- a LOT- since I was born. A lot of those changes are just fine. A few are disasters. What changes to the world do you hold as most important?