So Many Pies

I feel like I’ve got a little bit of something in everything right now.  “A finger in every pie” I believe the saying goes.  I’ve gotten the opportunity to dive into a few more projects here recently, and some still waiting to get done.

The Basement has been sitting in pre-construction phase for a while now.  After the flood and ripping everything out, then flood 2, I’ve been a little gun shy to put it all back together.  But my Dad kinda has been leaning on me to get past the fear that it might flood again, and start rebuilding, so I have.  We got some drywall put up and I almost am done putting in another in-wall shelf that Andrea and I have talked about for years to go under our TV.  We’ve been making some visible progress, and that feels good!  We should have some help coming this weekend to finish off the drywall.  That would be fantastic.  Then it can really come together after that.

For fun I’ve been having some good times with the Apple IIe from the side of the road, cleaned up and restored that.  Stopped short of retrobriting it because a) It’s not too yellowed, and b) I’ve seen some of those projects go bad.  So I’ll leave it be.  I’d like to find some junk electronics to test the process on and see what works.

Another side project is an old Dell server that I’ve absconded from work.  It was taken out of service several years ago, and honestly doesn’t even have a TB of storage across all the drives.  But it’s a thing I’ve been playing with, the ultimate goal is to set it up as a file server, and VM box for emulating retro operating systems.  So far I have Windows 95 up and running.

I’m still studying spanish, though more passively.  I need to get back to it actively, I still expose myself to spanish media, my devices are in Spanish.  But I want to make another hard push leading up to the new Animal Crossing game coming out in March.  I have resolved to play that game from the beginning in Spanish only.  It should be fun!

Basement is the big looming thing though. I want to get that put back together to the point we can get the carpet ordered, which is still a few months away at this point with all the painting to do even after the drywall is up.  So I’m trying not to look TOO far down the tunnel.

After that, it will be time to tear into Andrea’s ATV and see what’s up with the engine.  It runs, but it makes an awful noise.  I don’t know if it’s a bearing, a piston, or what.  Won’t know until we tear it apart.

It all gets done… slowly!

Mi Coche “Hermanito”

I need to spend some more time practicing writing Spanish.  I can read and listen pretty well, but when it comes to choosing my own words, I still have much work to do. So much to my vergüenza here’s a short blog in Spanish.  It’s really bad Spanish, but I’m trying.

Después mi coche negro y durante mis anos de escuela, tuve un coche rojo. Este coche no me gustó. Por supuesto yo estaba joven y tonto. El coche era muy confiable pero tuvo solamente una problema. Era muy feo.

El nombre oficial del coche era Pontiac 6000. Pero lo llamé “Hermanito”. O en ingles “Lil’ Brudder”. Se recibió su nombre de un dibujo animado se llamado “Homestar Runner” del internet. Hay un personaje perrito que tenia solamente una pierna y “el corazón del campeón”. Eso nombre lo quedó bien porque el carro vivó una vida muy difícil.

Se chocó mucho. Un pickup a la atrás. Una chica conduciendo en el nieve atrás también. Un trailer a la derecha. Y una cierva en frente. Pero el carro se mantuvo. Los gases del motor rellenado dentro del coche mientra conducí. Tenia que abrir las ventanas para respirar. Cuando la temperatura estaba tres grados y mis ventanas estaban abiertos yo sabia que era la hora para vender el coche.

Se vendó por 50 dólares. Un precio muy justo.

 

 

 

Aprendiendo Español

I don’t know if I’ve ever written about this here, or not.  But over the last year, I’ve been making an actual effort to learn Spanish.  I have no good reason to learn Spanish.  Of course it’s one of those things that everyone around here who doesn’t know Spanish says, “It would be really good to know”.  Inferring that it opens up opportunities and maybe will let you know if someone in the cereal aisle is being critical of your fashion choices.

On of my friends is bi-lingual.  I grill her on the language a lot and she obliges.  If I were to look into the future (far future) of my Spanish speaking existence, I don’t  know that I see myself finding that one great reason that learning Spanish will finally pay off.  My impression is that she finds herself being the nearest available translator in random situations.  Never compensated, and more than anything burdened with a responsibility of “getting it right”.

I never really thought about a second language being a sort of weight to carry with you.  Think about it.  When people need a translator, they need a translator.  Because whatever it is, whatever they’re doing, language barrier or not, they need to get it done.  So if you step in to translate for these people… you need to get it right.  That’s kinda of a big liability to sign up for out of the goodness of your heart.

Learning the language has taught me a lot about people.  I see how language can be so divisive.    Over the years, I’ve encountered people who know little or no english at all.  As a person is struggling to get their point across, searching and grasping for the phrase that will trigger a mutual understanding…  In the moment it’s hard to see that person as intelligent.  As your equal.  It’s easy to think, “this person is dumb”.  But how can you really make that judgment then and there?  What if you’re actually talking to the smartest most compassionate person you’ll ever meet in your life.  But because you can’t understand them you write them off as another idiot too lazy to learn.

More than any other quality we possess, skin color, lifestyle, education, I feel like language is more intimately tied to our culture.  A black man and a white woman can sit down and discuss what makes them the same, what makes them different.  Whether they agree or disagree on any concept that exists.  An english speaker and a spanish speaker can’t.  And what I’ve learned in my own admittedly narrow world view, is that so far… people are a lot more alike than we are different.  Traditions, beliefs, cuisine, humor might all be wildly different.  But what is right and wrong.  How a person expects to be treated.  What is fair.  We’re all on the same page.  It’s really brightened my view on humanity.

This is hard.  Really hard.  I’ve been at this for 10 months now.  Practicing at least a little bit most days.  I can read so so at least knowing enough context to make sense of it.  I can barely write and speak.  I don’t really have the opportunity for conversation, but listening to podcasts and watching shows in Spanish leaves me about three or four words behind and then I’m lost.  I don’t think it’s HARDER than I expected.  Just that I couldn’t do it “my” way.  Which was basically just expose myself to as much of it as I could and one day it would all sink in.  There’s just more too it than that.  You can’t learn something you don’t know by osmosis.  You have to put in work and effort and just straight hard memorization.  Just this week, 10 months into it, I finally broke down and ordered some textbooks.

I’m excited to get more comfortable with the language.  I’m excited to be able to express myself in it.  I’m excited to be challenged by people.  And to be quite honest, I’m excited for it to get easier.

En este momento, estoy feliz para saber que se.  Estoy feliz de hacer esta oración.  Quiero continuar aprendiendo mas.  Gracias por leer y si decidas hacer algo, no tengas miedo.  Si es dura.  Entonces el regalo sera genial.