I am a frequent reader of the Chicago Tribune Online. I stopped for a while after they endorsed George “I’m a fucking moron” Bush, but at least they are better than most online news outlets. I have to say one thing STOP CHANGING YOUR WEBSITE. Every time they do, it gets uglier and harder to navigate. Now, even the fonts are screwy, at least in Firefox. Another word of advice for every website out there. Stop trying to make your online edition look like your print edition and vice-versa. I am looking at you Wired magazine.
All right, I have made my peace.
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I have seen quite a few complaints on automatic watches online pertaining to the watch stopping at inopportune times. The owners often admit they live a sedentary lifestyle. I was wondering, how sedentary do you have to be to not wind your automatic watch?
I did a little research and my automatic watches, which use a Seiko 7S26 movement, take about 3200 swings to fully wind. This sounds like a lot, but for every stride you take, it swings the watch 2 times, so you have to walk 1,600 steps a day to keep it fully wound. 1,600 steps is really not a heck of a lot. Anything below 5,000 and you are considered sedentary. So, we are talking about less than half of this. An average person takes 2,000 steps to cover a mile. So, if your automatic watch stops, you are walking less than 4/5 of a mile a day. Also remember, you don’t need to walk to wind an automatic watch. Just moving your arm around winds it as well. So not only are you not walking, you are not even moving your arm around while you are sitting.
Now, why would watch companies design a watch that stops occasionally? Well, turns out nearly all of our ‘modern’ automatics were designed in the 1950’s. The modern movements are just refinements of older designs. I would venture a guess people in the 1950’s walked and moved around more than people in the ’00s. So, yet another example of how Americans have degraded into useless couch potatoes/cube dwellers. You can’t even move your arm enough to keep a watch wound.
According to the IRS:
Q. Is my stimulus payment taxable?
A. No. You will not owe tax on your payment when you file your 2008
federal income tax return. But you should keep a copy of the IRS letter
you receive later this year listing the amount of your payment. You
will need to know this amount next year when you fill out your 2008
return.
Q. Will the payment I receive in 2008 reduce my 2008 refund or increase the amount I owe for 2008?
A. No, the stimulus payment will not reduce or increase your refund when you file your 2008 return.
So, that’s a little bit of good news for next year. I guess it is more or less free money, except for all borrowing and interest the government will incur to provide us this windfall. Personally, I think we are going to save this little bonus. Though, it would be fun to spend it 🙂
It’s been 10 years now since I graduated from college. Scary. Where does the time go?
I don’t talk about what I do much on my blog, but here is a summary of what I have done for the last decade, work wise:
Worked at a company called Dalec Electronics. Real small place. I was a big fish in a very small sea. I started as a technician, then as a lab manager, then as sales person. I really really hate sales. I will never do it again. I learned a lot about test and measurement there. Load cells, pressure transducers, panel meters, thermocouples, RTD’s, and many other measurement devices. Turns out I would follow the path of test and measurement for most of my career to date.
Then, I worked at a place called Instrument Repair service for a little more than a year. They are out of business now. Word of advice, never base 95% of your business on one client. I repaired telephone linesmen equipment. Stuff like butt sets (telephones you can ‘butt’ into a line with), break down boxes, cable locators, and other mundane devices. I did learn two things: How to fix something without schematics, and why land line phone calls sound so bad. They sound bad because some of the junctions formed by creating a carbon bridge.
After that, I worked at MPC Products as an Environmental Test Engineer. That basically means I got to torture test aerospace equipment. I learned how to perform temperature, vibration, shock, salt fog, icing, vacuum, and many other tests. I tested the cooling pump for the F-22, I tested the engine cowl opener for the A380 and much more in my time there. Good people, crappy pay, too much stress and deadlines.
Now I work at Grayhill. This has been my most challenging job so far. I design automated testers for all sorts of rotary switches and joysticks. My first big project is something I named F.A.T.E. Fully Automated Tester for Encoders. In this case, optical encoders. It measures torque, pushbutton force and travel, duty cycle, phase angles, and many other parameters that separate a quality switch from crap. I have learned a lot of LabView and data acquisition and motion control. Pretty cool stuff if you are an electronics engineer, which is what I am.
Overall, I am pretty happy with the choice I made 13 years ago. To be honest, it was kind of spur of the moment. I really didn’t know what to do with my life. At the time, electronics was a very hot industry in the U.S. It somewhat is now, but so much is being shipped to China. I find it nice to work an American electronics manufacturer. I only really hated the end of one job and my year fixing dirty telephone equipment. One thing is for sure, it sure beats working retail or flipping burgers.
Well, it looks like most of us will get non refund refund checks. The money they will be sending will just be an advance from next years taxes, unless you have little or no income. So, for most Americans, the incentive check with be total loss for next year (after the elections, of course.) The government is depending on Cletus to open up his mail and call out “Hay, Maw, the gum’ment just sent me a chee’eck! Lets go and spend it down at Walmart!”.
The way I see it, you have two choices, save all of it or don’t cash the check. That way, you won’t be penalized next year and you may make some interest on it. If you actually follow financial planners’ advice and have your withholdings set such that you get little or no refund, you will OWE ALL OF THAT MONEY BACK NEXT YEAR. So, you can’t even give the money away to a good cause. It is not real money. Thanks for nothing.
In other thanks for nothing news, Bush wants a plan to stop foreclosures for 30 days. Wow, talk about bailing out the Titanic with a slotted spoon. 30 days won’t do jack shit in the big scheme of things. ARMS are going to be resetting for many months next year. Most people buy in April through August, so all those ARMS will reset then as well. Stopping foreclosures for 30 days in March is really going to be pointless. In any event, yeah, it sucks hundreds of thousands of people or millions of people will loose their homes in the next 18 months. They are the ones who took on houses they couldn’t afford. The bigger crisis is correcting itself, the housing unaffordability crisis. It hurts, but bubbles have to burst and the economy needs to find a new level. When it is all over, the people who can afford their homes will still have them, the price of housing price increases will reflect general inflation ( 1 to 3% a year instead of 10 to 30% a year), and maybe, just maybe, we will all start saving money again.