Photo of the Day, Saturday

Man, what a crazy day yesterday. I was jammed up at work, flying around, trying to get a few steps forward on as many projects as possible. We tossed in a Veteran's Day Celebration at work. Pretty cool, we partner with the Grand Rapid Vet's Home and so it's always a nice event. To all my family and friends that has served this awesome country, I tip my fedora! Most especially to those still serving, John stateside and Taylor offshore. Be safe guys, you are both my heroes!

To add to the stress, we were going camping with the scouts and thus I needed to get out of the office early, especially early since Spencer was at a middle school party and thus the transportation got even more confusing, but no matter, we would get to where we were supposed to, they'd wait, after all, I had the chili for the adults dinner.

Set up the tents in the dark, very interesting. Great dinner, after dinner we all went to our tents early since it was starting to rain.

Interesting points:

None of the Young's brought a jacket

Spencer's patrol was dubbed the sloths, because their meals were pretty low effort, hot dogs, boxed pancakes, BLT's. Oh, wait, someone got into the bacon in the morning and so it was LT. Spencer didn't care for tomatoes, so he had a lettuce sandwich. I was having hot soup and a sandwich, but while I felt bad for him, I hoped that he'd learn to plan better.

Ian's patrol never set up a regular kitchen, they just bounced from group to group "borrowing" utensils, pots, dishes, you name it.

It kept raining/sleeting/snowing off and on until well after we left.

It was awesome.

Holly and Ian headed out to a concert tonight and Spence and I stayed behind, promising to hang together. So what did we do? Turned on VH1 and watched I Love the 80's Follow the link at your own risk, I only verified that there was a page. Anyway, here's one of my pal and one of me rockin out to one tune or another. It was fun and for those that want to know, number 5 is Prince's When Dove's Cry. number 4 is Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, number 3 is Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf, number 2 Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar on Me and number 1 is Bon Jovi's Livin on a Prayer. Rock on!

Have a great day!

Pat

Photo of the day, Thursday, 11/6/08

Work was work and as far as I can, that's a good enough day. No major meltdowns, no freak outs, just an exceptionally long dull tooling meeting, again.

Someone asked me how to post a comment today. Thanks Jean! Click to the link that gets you to the website blog. Once there scoot to the bottom and click on comments. Type in your thoughts, and then click on the anonymous button. Give it a try, you can't break the internet!

Today was the payoff for Spencer's structures project. If you recall from Holly's post, those that don't can read about it here, Spencer had a project that was a free build.

We delivered the project tonight to the origination of the idea. Rosie's Diner, as regaled on Food Networks Diners, Drive Ins and Dives.

Here he is. And he was given an authentic Rosie's T-Shirt too.

Have a great day,

Pat

PotD Archive, Wednesday, 11/6/02

Too tired to write, so I thought I dip in the the archives. This was from my first week with Byrne. Kind of interesting. I was already working a lot with Steelcase. Hmm.

Anyway, here's what I was thinking 6 years ago. By the way, that's not my office anymore.

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Steelcase was in again this morning and we finished up the marathon part review/sign off. Nice to have them out of my hair again so that I can get back to figuring out what it is that we do and how we make money. It’s starting to make some sense, not a lot, but some. This afternoon I did some problem solving with the owner and his son. The guy is very smart and his son is pretty good too, just not as innovative. It was a great way to learn more about the product, how the boss works and how the people on the floor react to him.

Ian asked for a photo of the new office so I figured that I’d have it do double duty and send it out to you guys today. If you remember the last office, this one is about the same size, the thing is, there are 3 workstations in this office and it’s not nearly as fancy as the last one, but it’s comfortable. Holly asked if I missed the really great office that I had at Nabco and after a bit of thought, the answer was easy. The office was easy to give up, it was the people that made it so hard to leave. I don’t miss the office or the view because in just a few minutes I can be home for lunch or at the boys’ school for an event.

Have a great day,
Pat

Photo of the day, Tuesday, 11/4/08

Happy Voting day! I hope that you got out to vote. It's a pretty awesome responsibility that we have.

That said, I have really gotten tired of the ads, posters, bill boards and worst of all, the "personal" phone calls. They called again tonight while we were at dinner. We knew it was a pre-recorded political call by the caller id. Ian jumped up to take the call, we were going to let it go to voice mail. He answered and he starts hamming it up for his audience, us.

It goes like this, Ian is using an Eastern Indian dialect, straight from the movie, "Help", by The Beatles. Yes, they were watching that this afternoon since he was caught up with his homework.

Helllloo!

No, I am NOT!

No, I am NOT!

I will get my mother.

It turns out it was a live caller and she was cracking up with the crazy dialect and the fact that she could hear us laughing in the background. Ian comes stumbling back to the table giving us a blow by blow of the actual questions that were asked. She asked if he was Holly. She asked if he was Pat. She asked if she was in fact connected with the Young's. Pictured is our voice humorist.

Have a great day!

Pat

Photo of the day, Monday, November 3, 2008

Today I went to a customer to review and have them approve of the tool design on 7 new injection mold tools that we are working on. For us this represents a significant amount of work. As such, it's been a pain getting them this far and now we're in the home stretch. In 2-1/2 hours we were able to review and approve...None. We have quite a bit of work to do and so we've invited them to our place this Wednesday to attempt to get them focused and maybe get one done. We'll see.

Scouts tonight and we are planning another campout for this weekend. Let's see, the weather is awesome this week, so it ought to be pretty cold for the weekend, right? It doesn't matter really, it's only an overnight and well the boys are jazzed because it's outside and running amok.

Here's a self portrait that I took tonight with Ian on my wing. I enjoy these shots because the boys and I just are never really sure what's in the view finder.

Have a great day!
Pat

Photo of the day, Sunday, 11/2/08

Happy Sunday!

Ian was under the weather today. Stayed home from church and just laid on the big comfy chair with his feet up. He's seeming to be bouncing back now, so that's good. Not sure what got to him but I hope it skips the rest of us.

Holly's out tonight for some small group stuff. Before she left she made up an awesome salad with caramelized pecans, dried crasins, feta cheese, red onion and Romain lettuce. I added some grilled chicken and BAM! We had dinner.

Holly and I copied a lot of old photos from our disks to a backup drive. I guess it's easier to get to. It's amazing how many photos we have and really, it's just since we got the first digital camera when Spencer was about 5.

This is one of my all time favorites and I'm sure many of you have seen this one a lot of times, but I just located the original and so I wanted to start putting up some of my all time favorites.

Have a great day!

Pat