Nordic Visit

Well, we haven't posted anything to this blog in over a month-and-a-half. We've been quite busy. And with the need to get our annual newsletter out, we don't foresee getting many posts up in the next few weeks.

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Jon went with the sales manager, project manager and a fellow engineer to a local job site - Nordic in Rockmart, Georgia. The picture above was taken in the room where we've just completed the installation of new rack. The rack is cantilevered, so it looks like it's levitating about 8 inches above the ground...a cool effect. Practically speaking, it allows the end user to store more loads because their lift trucks can slip under the rack, and the bays don't have to be as wide. It allows 320 additional loads to be stored in the room.

The room is a freezer, and had been cooled down to -10 degrees (yes, 10 degrees below zero) on the day we visited (yesterday). They store ice cream and chicken in the two rooms we racked (in separate rooms because the ice cream will smell like chicken if stored in the same room). This was a $1.2M job for our company.

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We hope to post some "catch-up" blogs soon, telling of such things as Syndi & Jon's hike, our trip to Michigan for Thanksgiving, our new homeschool co-op, Syndi's piano performance at a homeschool Christmas event, our family Christmas and more. Stay tuned! And maybe we'll even get the newsletter out to those of you who get it.

Time for A New Freezer

Praise the Lord for allowing us to see we needed a new freezer!

The freezer shown above was our old freezer.

Time for a little story...
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We have some girls who come to clean at our house every Friday or two. (They are the sweet Smith girls, whom you can find in blog posts gone by.) Now these girls have been coming to clean for a couple of years (less a summer or two), and they almost always have to empty a bucket in the basement tub. So each week, one of them goes downstairs, passes by our chest freezer, and empties the bucket in the next room.
Last Friday, Leah Joy went down and emptied a bucket just before they left. After she returned upstairs, she mentioned to Sylvia that it looked like the freezer might be unplugged. Sylvia thanked her, and the girls left. A few minutes later, Syl went to check on the freezer, and found it plugged in. We surmised that the cord pictured above was mistaken as being connected to the freezer. This coiled wire has been beside that freezer for years, so it was odd that it was noticed only now. Syl, just to be sure, opened the freezer...only to find water pouring off the lid, and the items inside thawing!
In August we purchased over $600 of beef (a whole cow), which was all stored in this basement chest freezer. After calling Jon at work, and after some further investigation, Sylvia found that only the top items - which happened to be the liver, which we didn't plan to use - had thawed out, and the beef below was all still frozen. The freezer had died! The freezer had to be over 30 years old. We got it after Syl's grandmother passed away over 9 years ago, and she had it long before that. Syl and the kids immediately went into action. All of our beef was squeezed into the freezer upstairs and our neighbor's freezer.
That Friday night turned into a very hectic night. We had an AWANA conference Saturday morning, and had to leave the house by 6:15 am. Friday night we farmed all the kids out to different houses. The Blackwelders picked Julia up, which eased the stress. So I came home from work, we ate dinner, sent Jules with the B's, drove to three other houses and dropped kids off, then headed to the mall. Sears closed at 9 PM, and we raced around and got there at 8:25 PM! We looked at what they had, waited for them to see what they had in stock and selected one. Syl was paying for it at 8:55 PM while Jon went out to the minivan and started dropping down the Stow-N-Go seats and clearing the massive amounts of kids' junk that had piled up since Jon last cleaned it (the June trip to Michigan). Syl came out, and we went around to the pickup area. I've never seen Sears bring out a product so quickly. They had that thing out in 30 seconds after we arrived at the door! I was still trying to clean up and drop seats!
Well, we got it in the van, got it in the house, and managed to squeeze it through the basement door...uh, somehow...and slid it down the stairs. (How many engineers does it take to get a freezer in the basement? LOL) We got it up and running, let it cool down overnight, and stocked all the meat into it Saturday! And the above picture is what it looks like now. (Ever seen that I Love Lucy episode with the sides of beef???)
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So all is well now.
We have a new Kenmore freezer.
The Lord was gracious to us and let us not lose 280 pounds of beef.
And thanks to the Smith girls...glad you came to clean Friday!!

Jon Passes FE Exam!

Yes, folks, I actually PASSED the FE exam, and am now a licensed Engineer-in-Training! We received the e-mail above (I've marked out the license number) last night, about 3 weeks prior to what we anticipated. Great news! Praise the Lord! He is very gracious.

FE Exam on Saturday

Jon is taking his Fundamentals of Engineering Exam this Saturday. This is the book (above) he's been using to prepare for it. The exam starts Saturday morning at 7:40 AM, and goes for 8 hours (two 4-hour sessions) with a lunch break in the middle. He should be done around 5 PM. He's been studying as he can over the last few months, but still feels totally unprepared. There is just so much material. The things he covered three months ago are a distant memory.
The book is about 2 inches thick. The exam will cover engineering math, statics, dynamics, materials engineering, fluids, electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics, engineering statistics and probability, chemistry, computers, engineering economics, ethics, process design and control, health and environmental engineering, and even biology.
They provide a 250+ page book with equations and tables (above).

It should be interesting.

Your prayers would be much appreciated.

Treehouse Roof

Just before Stephen was born, we bought a playset for our back yard. The original roof over what the kids call the "treehouse" (in spite of the lack of a tree), was a tarp-like material. It survived the first summer with no damage,but that first winter took its toll. In its second summer (last year), the combination of wind and sun shredded and disintegrated the tarp roof. By the end of last summer, I determined to put a real roof on The Treehouse.
So, as all good Jon projects go, I bought materials at the end of last summer, started work on it this winter, and completed it this spring. In fact, I actually still have a few minor touch-ups to make.
Above: Before (December 2007)

Below: After (March 2008)
Now that was fun!

I Are An En-gun-ear

Okay, so I'm heading downstairs to leave for work the other day, and Junior says something to the effect of "Stephen is sad because you're going to work on the train today." I made some acknowledgment response, but was a little puzzled. Then I realized he must've meant Stephen was sad because I was leaving and wouldn't work on some toy train he had. (Our kids have lots of train toys.) I knew Stephen couldn't be thinking I was an engineer who worked on a train, because Junior would've corrected him and laughed at the idea...um, right?

As I walked through the family room, where Syndi was reading (as she spends hours a day doing!), I paused to ask her if Junior thought I worked on a train, which got a nice laugh out of her. I asked her to try to make sure Junior knew what kind of engineer I was sometime during the day. Then I headed off to work and forgot all about it. The next day I went to work again, but this time I remembered Junior's statement, and decided to ask Sylvia about it. I called her, and she insisted Junior didn't think that, that he knew I didn't drive a train. I asked her to ask him just to be sure.

Well, I heard back from Sylvia a little while later, and, sure enough, Junior actually thought I was an engineer that drove a train. The only thing we could figure was that he learned the term engineer from watching Thomas the Tank Engine and associated it with the knowledge that I was an engineer. The obvious conclusion - obviously - was that Daddy drove a train!

So Junior was off a little on that one, but he was way cute in his innocent misunderstanding.
So just for the record, I don't drive a train. I work in a firm that supplies material handling/warehousing storage rack. But if I did drive a train, it'd have to be one of those super-high-speed puppies, because I have a need for speed, baby!