the iMentor

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This weB-LOG is about the musing of a technical consultant. It is the iMentor's thoughts on technology and the human condition.

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Ricki T Thues Retired

May 6, 2024 Uncategorized 5 Comments
Episode #797 May 11, 2024 My plan in high school is to retire at age 40. Looking forward to such an age seems reasonably distant to my teenage mind.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc1faEHF01Q   It is 1993 and I am 40 years old. The European Union is created this year. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is appointed to the Supreme Court, the first humans are cloned, Frank Zappa dies and I am at the height of my trade show exhibit career. I am not motivated to retire. Life is pretty good. In 2001 GFB, the company I have worked at for nearly 20 years,...
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Rick and Paula Skydivers

May 1, 2024 Uncategorized No Comments
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...
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RickIT iMentor

April 24, 2024 Uncategorized No Comments
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...
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Rick Exhibitionist

April 17, 2024 Uncategorized No Comments
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...
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Rick the Cabinetmaker

April 2, 2024 Uncategorized No Comments
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....
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Rick Does What it Takes

April 2, 2024 Uncategorized 5 Comments
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...
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