Running Bear's March 2023 Coffee Shop


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I have a very good friend who was a VP and huge stockholder in one of the largest industrial fan companies in the USA. When they started moving production to China in the 1990’s they became one of the largest in the world. It was because of labor costs. He told me a few weeks ago he still does consulting for them and just returned in January from fact finding trips to South America and VietNam. The issue moving production out of China is not finding cheap labor, it’s the facilities and start up costs and training. It took in the 90’s to go from nothing to a full operating factory 12-18 months in China. Plus he said the government handled the worker training costs. That is no longer done, anywhere.

He says to go to VietNam it would take 20-36 months now. To go to So. America depending on the country he says would be longer for his company. The thing he said that isn’t mentioned to often that if the Chinese find out you are going to close a factory there and move elsewhere your factory workers mysteriously stop coming to work. The only So. American country he named was Brazil and he says no smart USA company would take a chance there. Too much social upheaval. When I asked about Africa he laughed and said other than So. Africa there is too much danger from revolutions and shipping every where there is hindered by pirates.

I did ask if they could bring everything back to the USA. He says doubtful but he is not consulting on any actions to come home.

The golf is done. Tonight I will find out how we as a team did and all the individual stuff. I was asked here to produce a score card but I really can’t. We weren’t using any. There was a tablet in each cart and the scores were entered and we could see how every team was doing. We entered the number of shots and putts and the software did the rest.

I did embark on some retail online shopping therapy this morning. Mainly supplies of paints, brushes and only a few pieces of rolling stock. It felt good.
 
Good Evening All. Mostly cloudy and 49°. A potential disaster here didn't develop. We and many surrounding counties were under a severe storm watch, which includes tornadoes, hail and very heavy rain for the entire North Central Texas area. Dallas, Ft Worth and many cities east and south of here are still being clobbered with a possible tornado in Ft Worth. A horrific front with 30+ mph winds came barreling down from the northwest and collided with the very high humid south winds from the Gulf of Mexico, but fortunately the really severe stuff stayed around 30 miles east and south of the SFW estate. We didn't even get any rain! I will be starting a fire in the wood-burning heater, probably early in the morning instead of tonight, as it is still in the upper 70's in the house. Wind advisory remains in effect until around noon tomorrow. It's all moving to western Louisiana and Arkansas, so if you live there, watch out. Some of this weather probably slapped Patrick a few hours ago.
 
Goooooooooood Moooooooorning Coffeeeeeeee Shop!

It's Troy again.

Coffee with MCT oil and half-n-half, FLO, and don't let Mel try to tell you his french fry oil is MCT.

ALMOST done with the current book. I edit as I go, so this is a mostly ready for the editor draft.

I got double my normal words in yesterday: (Top line is book total word count. Bottom line is yesterday's accomplishment)

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And, then celebrated with this to kill off the bottle.
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Need to write one more chapter. then it goes to the alpha readers. Editor gets it Monday morning.

Back is still functional. Going to take a while for it to get back to normal. I skipped a couple of days of stretching, so it started to lose some mobility.

And, this far out, an infrared heating pad is helping keep everything looser. Yes, I started up the stretching again this morning.

Back to wording some words.

Keep the coffee coming FLO.
 
PS: If you're not into corned beef and cabbage, nor into green beer, and just want to stay home with your cats:

Happy St. Gertrude Day!

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Note: this is not Gertrude the great. You can read about her here!
uscatholic.org

Meet St. Gertrude, cat lady of the Catholic Church

The patron saint of cats is a woman named Gertrude of Nivelles. In the age of viral cat videos, it’s no surprise cats have a saint of their own.
uscatholic.org uscatholic.org
 
migalyto said:
I'm not just singling out Athearn here (even though it sounds like it). I love Athearn products and own many of their models. Atlas, and various other manufactures have the same issue of over announcing and underdelivering!
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Yeah, so many of Athearn's and other manufacturers products are announced and they don't have enough want for them, so they just drop it. This reminds me of Athearn re-announcing a Flat Car with a boat on top. This is a model they have made for decades and decades, and it has hardly changed. They announced it 2 or so years ago, and I'm not sure if it has, or will ever, be released. And it is true that a lot of this isn't due to Athearn being lazy, probably just a lot of stuff compiling up into it being put back a while. I'm sure if not enough people ordered it, someone took an executive decision and said to block the production of it. Happy St. Patricks day everyone!!
 
migalyto said:
I'm not just singling out Athearn here (even though it sounds like it). I love Athearn products and own many of their models. Atlas, and various other manufactures have the same issue of over announcing and underdelivering!
Click to expand...

So true! I have a friend who is a partner in a small manufacturer and he tells me of the headaches involved bringing a model to market. From the initial design, prototype model build, design revisions, language issues, production delays, shipping container procurement, and final quality control inspection with failed models being fixed, scrapped, or returned, it's a wonder we get anything done! Each one of these little headaches causes a time delay from the initial target date.

Happy St. Patrick's day everyone!

Desmond says Happy feast of St. Gertrude! (He's always down for a feast!)

desmond.jpg
 
Morning all,

Corned beef free day in this Catholic house as our local bishop said only members of the St. Patrick churches in our Diocese could refrain from abstinence this year. Different Bishop then the last time St. Patrick's day was on a Friday. I told our priest last week that since I was named after St. Patrick (I was according to my mom), I'd be ok or I'd be Lutheran for Friday. He laughed and said to be Baptist as some Lutheran traditions follow the Catholic abstinence rules.

Wasn't too bad yesterday, just busy. We are still in the what's different phase and thing worked out as they occur. Still think we need to let the city council know they are a security issue with forwarding email to their outside address. Next we we roll out MFA on the email system.

Oh well, Not much else yet today.
 
migalyto said:
I learned several years ago that there was almost never a need to pre-order something. If you were aware and watching, then it is available to purchase somewhere.

How many of us have been caught with several pre-orders arriving at the same time.
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Really, it's happening right now. However, I no longer pre-order, and haven't since I learned my lesson in 2021. Exception....Scale Trains GP-30, and yeah, I could have waited for that also.
 
migalyto said:
I'm not just singling out Athearn here (even though it sounds like it). I love Athearn products and own many of their models. Atlas, and various other manufactures have the same issue of over announcing and underdelivering!
Click to expand...
No one is singling out Athearn/Horizon. They are all guilty. To increase their, (profit), margins, they sold their souls to the factory. As a result of arbitrary actions, they lost tooling, production schedules are unreliable, there are QC issues with everything, and pretty much the factory runs the importers business.

Atlas is also on my list...for the very same reasons as cited above. They also have stuff dating back to 2021...as does Rapido...and my experience has been that Rapido has more QC issues than some of the others, although their detail is impeccable.

Another issue...everything is a theoretical pre order. Even stuff that should be inventory items, like track! Seems every time I plan on an extension, I find necessary components out of stock...doesn't matter if it's Micro Engineering or PECO, (I'm primarily Code70), Even If I used code 83, where there are theoretically more options, much is frequently out of stock. My crystal ball doesn't work that well...Yet Walthers track is frequently subject to pre-order.
 
NYC_George said:
Tom that's to bad because I wanted to see the 79 with 6 three putts. There must of been a few no putts in there?
I did have a 19 putt round once with 3 no putts.
Swal
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Par was 71

6-3 puts = 7 over par
1- triple = 3 over par
2- birdies= 2 under par
I made 2 pars from the fringe, so yes 2 no putt holes

Yesterday at Kapalua we played the Plantation Course that the Sentry T of C play to start the PGA Tour’s year. Par was 71 played from tour tees rated at 73.6. Shot 84 with only 1-3 putt. A very long course and the winds that normally don’t bother me drove me nuts off the tee. Every tee ball seemed into the wind.

Overall, the games were satisfying and in the 72 holes I made 2 eagles plus my handicap on those holes winning the low ball on the holes. With carry overs I won 26 of the 72 holes play. That was a nice chunk of change last night

I will play the next outing with this group but with my coaching friend as the playing partner. It’s in Vegas the last week of April. Terry ordered tickets yesterday to see Katy Perry and is looking for other shows.

enjoy the day
 
Good Morning All. It's clear and 37° out on the back porch, and the wind has died down to around 10 mph. Storms have moved over to the east and we'll see cooler (mid-50's) but settled weather until Tuesday when it warms up again. Damaging winds and hail in a lot of areas about 45-50 miles south of here and over into the East Texas area. Not as severe as the system that slid by me two weeks ago though .
Happy St Patrick's Day, bringing to a close St Patrick's Week, and ushering in St Patrick's Weekend! Corned Beef and Cabbage in the crockpot today, but no green beer for me. However I do drink Heineken which comes in a green bottle! Does that count???

Grocery trek went as planned yesterday, but some prices were noticeably higher. Eggs were lower though. There were some outages in the produce department which the girl said were things ordered but not on the truck. Gasoline was weird, two weeks ago it was $2.89/gal, last week it was $3.19/gal, this week it was $2.99/gal. Our weather guy must be setting those prices.
I did purchase a new garden tractor yesterday, a Simplicity Regent, with a 48" deck and 25 hp Briggs and Stratton engine. Had the highest Internet reviews of all that I looked at which included Cub Cadette, John Deere, Troy Built, Stihl, Toro and some other off-brands. I actually wanted a wider deck (old one is 54") but they are generally unavailable in my area. It will be delivered either late today or early tomorrow depending on when my wife drops off the check this morning, I didn't have the checkbook yesterday. Interesting that they charge a $175 upcharge for using the debit card, which I didn't want to pay. Price with tax and delivery was just under $4750, just $750 more than the old 18 year old Craftsman, which came with a bagger that I didn't get this time. Can't wait to use it this weekend. Yeah!:rolleyes:

I did visit out in the train shed yesterday. I mainly worked on installing a couple of LED's in the Gateway Cafe structure that I will be using in the area between the existing scenery and the Ethanol refinery. I gotta come up with a name for the refinery! I rearranged the structures there and came up with this. I need a road in and out of this section.
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Then I added another road, this time on the left or south as the RR runs.
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I mopped up the glue squeeze-out after the photo was taken. The area to the left of the road will be a mostly tree-filled area, and the area to the right will be a parking lot for Gateway Market, another of Chet's structures. I'll do backdrop art and other disguises to lead it out of the scene.

Tom O - I do believe that there is a lot of back room deals and manipulation going on between banks and politicians right now, especially SVB. Reading about it on either left or right leaning media seems to indicate an awful lot of cronyism regarding both "woke" investment and political contributions. Bailing out uninsured depositors means that the government is helping the very same folks that they constantly rail against, the 1%. I haven't seen this much crooked government since the 60's with LBJ.
Sherrel -
Sirfoldalot said:
The scrap train - with a caboose - looked great; just needs some bending of the sides of those gons!
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Perhaps you missed it in the last picture just ahead of the caboose, and these which may not be visible in the shots that I posted.
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Everybody have a great St Patrick's Day and an awesome weekend.
 
Forgot to mention yesterday's weather. Started at 60° and ended up with snow flurries about 6:30p. Supposed to be below average through the weekend with highs about 40°-42° tomorrow and Sunday. Currently sunny and 29°.

Boss wants me to start scheduling updates a lot more frequently than once per quarter. We are big enough that it probably should happen more often. It's also about time to restart the process anyway. I do finally have most of the systems backing up since our outage of January. Seems the same actors got the Ring systems this past week....
 
TLOC said:
Par was 71

6-3 puts = 7 over par
1- triple = 3 over par
2- birdies= 2 under par
I made 2 pars from the fringe, so yes 2 no putt holes

Yesterday at Kapalua we played the Plantation Course that the Sentry T of C play to start the PGA Tour’s year. Par was 71 played from tour tees rated at 73.6. Shot 84 with only 1-3 putt. A very long course and the winds that normally don’t bother me drove me nuts off the tee. Every tee ball seemed into the wind.

Overall, the games were satisfying and in the 72 holes I made 2 eagles plus my handicap on those holes winning the low ball on the holes. With carry overs I won 26 of the 72 holes play. That was a nice chunk of change last night

I will play the next outing with this group but with my coaching friend as the playing partner. It’s in Vegas the last week of April. Terry ordered tickets yesterday to see Katy Perry and is looking for other shows.

enjoy the day
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Tom Well you guys have to add a putt bet so after the 3rd 3 putt you can say don't bother keeping track of my putts anymore. We do full handicap. $25.00 entry fee - Pay Outs Low Score with handicap 1st. $5.00 2nd. $3.00 3rd. $2.00 - $10.00 skins, $1.00 low putts, $1.00 closest to the pin on par 3's. All payouts are timed by how my golfers are entered. If there's 20 people in and you win Low Score you get $100.00. If there's 5 skins out you get $200.00 / 5 $40.00 and so on. This goes on every Friday Saturday and Sunday during golf season. I played in this my whole life but last year I only played about 7 times 4 in Myrtle Beach. That's why my handicap is now18. I hope this year will be different.
Swal
 
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