The iMentor® Hints and Rants bLog (webLog) is a weekly journal. Rick Thues (the iMentor®) began writing the bLog in 2009. All of the past episodes are in the Archives. While this bLog began as hints and rants about Apple products and technology it has evolved into a technician's observations of the human condition.
Episode #796 May 4, 2024 Camping at Salton Sea, laying on a cot, my 8 year old mind watches the Milky Way spread out against the night sky. Satellites streak across the sparkling inky blackness. I fly along with them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BlK7sx6syo I am reading Space Cat at the library in the fifth grade. Flyball floats over to me in a spacewalk and high fives the glove of my spacesuit. My neighborhood is laid out below me in my dream. I know it better from above, flying, than I do from the ground. The doodles on my fifth-grade notebook...
Episode #795 April 27, 2024 It begins in Brother Tim’s freshman high school algebra class. We are solving for variables. I just don’t get it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ags5PUDKLi8 “This is baffling to me Brother,” I say. “What don’t you understand, Rick? “Why do we perform the same operation on both sides of the equal sign?” “I hate to state the obvious, but everything on the left side of the equal sign is always the same as what is on the right side. If you do something to one side, you must do the same thing to the other.” Lights and bells...
Episode #794 April 20, 2924 When the Disneyland Fantasyland project ends, we are all laid off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCl7tXmpc8 I spend the beginning of summer on unemployment doing projects at my home in Santa Ana. Bob looks for work and finds the Exhibit Place. He calls me up. “I found this great company, the Exhibit Place, in a great industry. They build trade show exhibits. You get to be a cabinetmaker, electrician and plumber. They are hiring and they pay three times the carpenter union rate. Get down here right away.” When I arrive for my interview, my other old...
Episode #793 April 13, 2024 My fiancé’s father needed help in his cabinet shop, Precision Cabinets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-h5Qp-r_OM So, I quit Huntington Beach Trailer Supply and move to Tustin to begin work for him building custom kitchen cabinets. Fred is old school and runs a tight shop. If I ask him where the countertop draw bolts are his answer is, “In the draw bolt department.” The thing is always in the place it belongs. Fred teaches me woodworking from scratch. His patience is only exceeded by his kindness. This new career suits me well. Soon, I will be married....
Episode #792 April 6, 2024 I wake in my childhood room. The dawn flows into my bedroom windows. The familiar distant sound of the Knott’s Berry Farm train whistle is a low harmony for the song of bluebirds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SCzVEUlqqA There are sea change events in my life where I have no obligations, no pressures and no goals. They have occurred at my birth, when I quit a job and after a graduation from school. This most current change has left me with a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Notre Dame in my back pocket and nothing to do. I...
Episode #791 March 30, 2023 There is a wooded path on the land bridge between the two lakes at Notre Dame. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky57Jo3-BaU I need a break from studies, so am strolling down the trail. I notice a station of the cross carved into a wooden plaque on the side of the path. A little farther along is another plaque, then another. The Simon and Garfunkel song, “The Boxer,” comes to mind. After the 14th station I arrive at a clearing with Jesus on a crucifix. The lyrics ring in my head: “In the clearing stands a boxer And...
