I looked out the window today, and realized that the sky had miraculously turned blue. You see, yesterday was one of those miserable Atlanta fall days, 45 degrees and raining. My least favorite combination there is. And today, the sky has cleared up, and with the laack of any heat, the smog around here has been stymied a little, resulting in a great bright blue sky. So I decided to take adnatage of it, for work purposes.

So i went up to one of my buildings that I don't have good pictures of, and shot a few. This is the one we are going to be using for the building in our marketing materials. I liked how the shadows framed the building, I got there at just the right time today. I am pretty proud of this building, it turned out really nice, it was one of the first that I got to really have my input on, and do the design, and the drawings, and the CA side of it. It was a great project, despite the difficult client.

Enough jabber...the picture.



I have on my Christmas wish list both a fisheye and a wide angle lens, hopefully I can scrape up enough cash to buy them this year, they would have made for some really cool pictures of this building.

History Repeats Itself, must be about time.

"Great nations rise and fall. The people go from
-bondage to spiritual truth,
-to great courage,
-from courage to liberty,
-from liberty to abundance,
-from abundance to selfishness,
-from selfishness to complacency,
-from complacency to apathy,
-from apathy to dependence,
-from dependence back again to bondage.”

Alexander Fraser Tytler


We follow the path of history, we know where it will lead, yet we do it anyway.

The Final Product

OK, the Entertainment Center is done. Well, it was done this past weekend.

Just after the paint was done, probably still wet.


And with all of the equipment in place. It really does everything I wanted it to.


I would do it again too, we got the piece we wanted, that met our needs, works in our odd living room, and we did not spend a fortune on it. Only downside, it weighs a ton. I had to recruit the neighbor to help me move it in. I suspect it weighs close to 200 pounds. But it had to be solid, and it is. And we love it.

Flying in First Class

I have been flying a lot this year. More in this one year than I have in my entire life. Enough to actually make one of the upgraded status levels at Delta. I made Silver Medallion on my flight to my job site last week. This means, you get a few little perks, and right now, the best is an automatic request for a free upgrade to first class, if there are any seats available. Now, I am not in the front of that line, because after all, I am only Silver level, there are 3 more to go. But, this morning, I got a little email, that tells me that on my flight tomorrow, I am upgraded to First Class. First flight after being Medallion, and I got a new big chair...woohoo! Maybe it is just a courtesy, since they want to keep me interested. But, when i looked, the plane is half empty, so, I picked out a nice window seat, at the very front of the plane. First on, First off. That is the real benefit to First Class. If I was not driving when I got there, the free drinks would not be bad either.

Working in the Woodshop

Sometimes in life, you just can't find what you want, or you can, and you can't afford it. That is the case with our living room, and an entertainment center. When we bought our house, we also bought ourselves a fairly nice TV, a projection 57" DLP TV. And I love it. the problem is, right now, it is just sitting on an ugly base, and all of the audio/video components are just sitting on the floor, wires everywhere, and it just looks bad. We have wanted an entertainment center for the room for a while, but can't find one that we like and that we can afford. Most of the pieces we find now, are designed around flat panel TV's, that don't weigh as much. Our TV would sit too high on most of those, if they could even hold the weight. So, after being tired of not finding anything, I decided to design, and build my own.

This is the fruit of my labor. It is not done yet, I still need to do all of the finish work.

I am very happy with how it came out, I can stand on top of it, and it does not budge. It should provide great support for our TV, and hide all of the wires and cables. I designed into it, a large pocket in the back to hide all of that stuff, so that none of it is visible. This weekend I will be trying to get it finished up. I think that my next projects...will be end tables and a coffee table, since we have not found those that we really like either.

545 People

This will probably be the one and only time I post anything about politics. This was passed on to me from someone much smarter than me, who has political views a little like mine. So I will share it. It is a small editorial written by Charlie Reese, a former columnist for the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper

545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.

If the Marines are in IRAQ , it’s because they want them in IRAQ .

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!