"Carl's Lounge" (Off-Topic Discussion, Traditional Knife "Tales & Vignettes")

I disagree that you have to see something physical that you made with your hands to have a sense of satisfaction in your work. Taking years of knowledge and experience along with your natural skills, and solving problems for others that allow them to work effectively, which they could not do without you, is very satisfying.

Some business operations depend on properly functioning computer systems. If those systems are down, hundreds of people at a factory or distribution center may be idled, and sometimes sent home without pay until the problem is fixed. Some of those people are pure hourly and not highly paid, and they won't get to make that money back up. So notwithstanding the impact to the company's profits, there are a bunch of fellow community members who may have a tough time making a bill payment, or who may have to skip a meal if they miss a day's pay.

Among the many things I do is keeping systems like that working properly, and fixing them when they have problems. So when I quickly find a bad piece of data that got into a database that caused a program to hang up, and that program controls automated equipment in a factory or warehouse, and I can fix the issue in 30 minutes, it's just an early meal break and everyone goes back to work. If it's down for 4 hours, they send everyone home and we lose half a shift's productivity, and a bunch of people have to either burn PTO or lose pay. So yeah, all I did was do some mouse clicks, thinking, and typing, but it has a real effect.
 
What a fascinating and insightful thread of conversation that has stemmed since my last post! I feel like I should clarify my position a little bit. The “Stress and the Strop” post was the last essay I had to write for my personal and exploratory writing course, and because it was knife related, I decided to share it here. The prompt was to connect a current theme in our lives to an object — and with finals coming up and deadlines for work looming I naturally chose to write about stress.

I don’t believe that one’s work has to be physical or tangible for one to take pride in it. There is inherent value in whatever you work hard at. A couple of quotes stick out here:

“Whatever you do, do it well”

And

“What I do may be for others, but how I do it, that’s for me.”

You IT folks and code writers make the modern world spin round, and even that spreadsheet I mentioned that I was working on exists solely to help Idaho State policy makers best allocate funds from natural resource extraction to county schools.

I do, however, believe that some people aren’t cut out for the modern workplace. I think that many people would be better off being furniture makers and cutlers and butchers and tradesmen — yet in today’s amazon.com culture this is becoming increasingly difficult and also stigmatized.

I am fortunate in my ability to cut it in academia, but do I feel like it’s what I’m meant to do? Not really.

I have found a pretty cool balance that leaves me feeling fulfilled, though. There’s the things I do for everyone: policy work, volunteerism, activism. There’s the things I do for “Us”: earning a paycheck, cooking dinner for friends, working in the garden and on our house. And then there’s the things I do just for myself: climbing rocks, making wooden kitchen utensils, and collecting traditional pocket knives.
 
Man I wish I had the the time and energy for all of that stuff. Making a paycheck to support the family and getting close to enough sleep seems to be about all I can swing, most days. When I was younger, I seemed to have vast amounts of time and energy. Not sure where all of that went.
 
kamagong said:
No more Boy Scouts. From now on they'll be just "Scouts." I guess it was inevitable, once they started allowing girls to join.

Girls still have their Girl Scouts.

Our boys are getting short shrift.
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Somebody's boys have to join the Girl Scouts.
 
I got another one of those Lansing maker's scandioid knives at the first day of the outdoor flea market. This one was free, because I bought two for $10, and sold one to the pushy guy behind me for $10.
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jackknife said:
Spam, umm!

We like to fry it nice and down and serve up with a couple of eggs sunny side up on top. Spam and eggs is the breakfast of champions. Add it a cup of nice black shade grown Costa Rican coffee and it's a meal to kill for. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:
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I dice it, fry it and mix with scrambled eggs and some shredded Wisconsin sharp cheddar :) I call it Spam Surprise because people are always surprised how good it is :thumbsup: The jalapeño Spam with scrambled eggs is excellent ;)
 
veitsi_poika said:
All this talk about cutting Spam is making me hungry. o_O

https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Spam-and-Cheese-Sandwich

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Firstly, as much as I love American pocket knives I love seeing Japanese steel in the kitchen.

Second - and this is important - the best breakfast sandwich I’ve ever had, and I’ve made it many times now, is fried slices of spam on toasted Hawaiian sweet rolls with a fried egg, green onion, and sriracha mayonnaise.

One slice of SPAM fits perfectly on two squares of Hawaiian sweet rolls.
 
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