breadcrumb chatillion Blog

Hate...

35 years ago I worked for a high-end custom cabinet shop and the owner had a sterling reputation to his clients. His relationship to the employees was very different. But... one thing I learned from him was not to use the word hate. He said it was the 'end all' and there is no way coming back from using it... especially if it pertains to a relationship, business or personal.

That said, I disliked working there. His expectations from everyone he employed was often unfair, even when they did a good job.
Our biggest disagreement was his method for calculating the amount of time allocated for a cabinetmaker to work on a project. He used a 'man days' formula that was strictly by the sales price and not by the difficulty of what was sold.

A lacquered wall unit could take a few days to build, then go to the finishing department to be stained and painted.
If it was a mica unit, the cabinet maker would need nearly the same time to cut and build but the laminating didn't go to another department. It was the job of the cabinetmaker to do all the laminating and assembly. More work (for the cabinetmaker) than a painted product.

Two totally different procedures but the boss used the same calculations in the time needed to build the furniture.

I was in charge of production scheduling using his formulas and suggested we use different formulas for wood cabinetry and mica cabinetry. It was as though he wanted the guys making mica furniture to fail as no one could achieve the time schedules imposed on them.

We would give a cabinetmaker drawings of what was needed and how much time allocated to do the work. Depending how desperate they were for a job, many would pack their tools and leave.

Putting an ad in the paper for a cabinetmaker was a joke as he probably employed everyone in the county at one time or another. He had quite a reputation for having a bad company to work for.

Hurricane Andrew struck and the area was without power for nearly 2 weeks. The owner demanded I work outside in the sun, so I took a portable drafting board and folding table and set up in the parking lot making shop drawings for the upcoming orders.

I stayed until a door of opportunity opened and I moved on.
Often when asked who some of my previous jobs were I mentioned that place and so many knew how bad it was there.

While I wanted to say I hated working there, I always said, I disliked it.
Post Comment

Dead men don't tell tales...

If you poll 100 people asking if they think Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide, probably 98% would say no. That's my opinion and I could be wrong... the number could be higher!

Yeah, dead men don't tell tales... but their secret tapes do.

Last week, Ghislaine Maxwell admitted Epstein had secret tapes of DJT and BC. There is a good chance there could be more.
Old story? Possible motive on her part? To date, from what I've read, no tapes have come to light. Another conspiracy theory for the books.
Everyone was his friend, yet everyone 'hardly' knew him. Distancing is crucial.
I'm convinced we won't know the true details and much of the evidence has vaporized into the night.

Dead men don't tell tales and the secret tapes may be gone forever!
Post Comment

How to turn 1 photo into 1,000,000...

Saturation of photos on the internet is logarithmic. Take someone with a Facebook account posting a single photo that a hundred people 'like' adding to their accounts and you now have a hundred identical photos on the internet, who spread that to another hundred who spread that to another hundred. Digital Pandemic (you can quote me on that)
Do the same with the websites Pinterest or Houzz and one photo turns into a gazillion clones on the internet.
Clients come to me with examples of furnishings/designs they see online and ask me to reproduce that in their houses. Small problem when they see a 15' by 25' kitchen design and want it to fit their 8' by 9' space.
Of course that make me look like the bad guy to tell then it's not possible to fit all those things into their kitchen.
"But, I showed you a photo of what I want" said one client.
Post Comment

Mummified rice cakes...

I don't have a better name for them right now, but it's a traditional Chinese New Year meal where you have seasoned pork in the center, beans around that and sweet rice on the outside. The entire loaf is wrapped in banana tree leaves and tied with string.
Boiled for a while and allowed to cool then sliced into sections about 2" long.


Embedded image from another site


Embedded image from another site



There you have it... Mummified rice cakes!
Post Comment

The bait...

Most dating sites I've been a member of have rules for photos.
No nudity (including guys bare torsos showing off muscles) one person in the photo, face shot where the person must be clearly recognizable, no children, no display of weapons, etc.

That doesn't stop people from doing what they want and not what's listed in the requirements.

A feature that was on POF allowed members a chance to view random photos uploaded by other members. It was amazing to see what people tried to get away with on their profiles. I believe if you flagged a photo it went on a list for the staff to review.

Tattoos for example. I suppose if you were an inkaholic posting only photos of your tattoos and none of your face is your calling card in life.

Your face obscured by smoke billowing out of your nostrils while you're holding a reefer is a clear sign what you are and your bait for what you are interested in.

Another form of bait is a photo of an older woman with her young, attractive daughter in the foreground. I'm sure she gets lots of hits that way as guys will check out the daughter and then bypass the profile of an older woman... that is unless guys are thinking that by getting to meet mom, there's a chance they can actually get to meet her daughter!

Using the wrong type of bait could catch you the wrong kind of fish.

Blur...

The past few years have raced past me. My granddaughter is turning 10 this month. I remember getting the call at 11pm my daughter was headed to the hospital 'baby wanted out' so I rushed over to meet them. The nurse said 'not for a few hours, at best' so I went home to catch a few hours rest. By 7am no baby. I was working for a millwork company and had to open the factory, so I stopped in to unlock the doors and headed back to the hospital and was present to witness the birth.
Yeah, she's going to be ten.
So now, I'm working for a kitchen and bathroom remodeling company and we are seeing as many as 3 new leads a day. More than I care to take on, but the percentage of closed jobs is lower since COVID. While they have money to do renovations they are also using unrealistic budgets.
I usually take 30-40 photos for every client visit and upload them to my computer and backed up on a cloud storage so my partner can review. Names, I may not remember, but photos bring back the visit and what they were looking for.
After backing up more than 7,000 photos that are stored on my phone I began purging old photos, especially the jobs I didn't get. More than 1,000 were deleted.
In the 70's I was a draftsman for a kitchen manufacturer in Miami. One of the largest. We had a house account with a builder who did condos. Lots of them. I remember the name of a 'village' that had hundreds of units in 5 or 6 buildings.
One of the first jobs I signed last year was a replacement kitchen... for one I did 40 years earlier. It's finished and paid and the owner, who is 86 years old wasn't the first buyer of the condo, but he smiled when I told him the story.
Interesting stories along the way, but mostly things are becoming a blur...

I've expressed my dislike for my current employment situation and though I can pay my bills and have a happy life, I feel my talents are being wasted doing bathroom renovations. For now, I'll continue doing what I'm doing until another opportunity presents itself.


Thanks for reading my blog!
Post Comment

More Gorilla Glue... you betcha!

A guy came into the showroom today with a part that dropped out of this drawer slide.
I recognized it as a 'euroscrew' which is essential in European style cabinet construction.
He lost one of two so I went into the warehouse where we keep a drawer of miscellaneous hinge and cabinet parts and found 2 just like the one he came in with.
He wanted to drill a hole in a new location but had no tools to do so. We talked about how it screws into a metric hole (5 millimeter if I recall) in wood and since his fell out, my suggestion was to use a small amount of 5-minute epoxy, press fit it and wait for the glue to harden.

He asked if he should use Gorilla Glue and without hesitation I said "Yes, that will work, but don't get any on your hair!"
We both laughed and wanted to pay me for the part. It was no charge, but I told him should he need a kitchen renovation he should come back and we will talk business.
Post Comment

Heavy blanket...

A few weeks ago I saw a display at Wal-Mart of quilted blankets that are filled with glass beads. The theory is a weighted blanket gives more comfort and can relieve stress, decreasing movement and allowing the person more deep, restorative REM cycle.

I sleep with a comforter year round and now, in winter months have 2 layers.
South Florida had a few weeks of cold weather this season... cold by our standards with nights as low as 45 degrees Fahrenheit. It was 70 outside last night, the a/c was off and a window fan was on. Too warm for a double layer blanket, I was up several times tossing and turning. I'll make an adjustment for that tonight as I typically get better rest with blankets than sheets.
Post Comment

Quality... the lack of it.

About a year ago, life changed and suddenly products disappeared off the grocery store shelves. Canned foods, rice, water, laundry soap, bleach, disinfectants and most importantly... toilet paper.
I've been through a bunch of hurricanes and this was 10 times worse.
Fights were commonplace when workers stocked the shelves then opened the doors. People literally ran to the paper products aisle and started filling their shopping carts.
Management wasn't smart enough to post signs limiting quantities at enforce it at the cash registers.
At first, some off brands began to appear. That must have been 4-6 months into the pandemic and when things slowly began to normalize nearly 8 months later I noticed the quality of the products I've been using for years was not up the the standards of a year earlier.
Paper cups for example. I've been buying the same brand for many years. Always reliable. Sometimes, I'd forget and come back in the morning and my beverage was intact. Now, I find that after a few minutes, liquids start to seep through the seams in the bottom of the cups. it's not a bad batch as it's become consistent for a few months now, even if I buy the same brand from another store.
Premium facial tissues would pop-up for the entire box and now, there are breaks so you have to reach inside and get it started again. A box of 160 tissues with 4 sequence breaks usually wastes 8 tissues.
Back to toilet tissue. They are made on machines as one really wide roll then sliced into individual rolls that we are used to using. The edges are perfectly cut... well, they used to be. I'm finding the slicing machine is off and some rolls have jagged edges.
Those machines crank out thousands of rolls per day without human intervention. Maybe it's time someone should check the adjustment of the machines!

Quality... the lack of it!

Post Comment

Using the wrong Gorilla... there's more to the story!

A few days ago social media went ablaze when Tessica Brown misused a spray product named Gorilla Glue in place of a hair gel named Gorilla Snot when her normal hair spray Got2B Glued Blasting Freeze Spray was unavailable. She claimed that 'a mont' later 'it don't move' because it was still glued hard.

Amazing as I had doubts the story could be real.

Today's update: the woman goes to the hospital for help where they attempt to soften the glue with acetone but it was too painful and they had to stop.

Also reported Miss Brown has set up a GoFundMe account that's raised more than $12,000 and considering her legal options against Gorilla Glue since the product didn't specifically warn against hair usage.

Gorilla Glue made a statement they are sorry to hear about the woman's unfortunate incident and the product is not indicated for use in or on hair.

More information gathered from Miss Brown's TikTok account states that she's a 40 year old teacher from Louisiana. That should rule out a lack of reading comprehension.
Maybe not...

Blog Category HowTo because NotHowTo isn't one of the selections.
Post Comment

Which side of the zipper does your Ying Yang hang...

I wore tight jeans when I was a teenager and the placement of my family jewels was significant. Make the wrong move (like getting out of a sports car) and the pain was eye watering.
If I bought a few pairs of the same style jeans, it was easy to determine the safe side of the zipper. With a different cut of pants and I'd have to rearrange the location of Fred and the twins. As the jeans faded (note: I'd wear clothes until there were rags) you could see wear marks on jeans near the bottom of the zipper and know where the jewels resided.
This wasn't of much importance until my band played a few times at a local pub and the waitress made note of it. I believe it was her hobby and the size of the wear mark was a determining factor if she was interested in a guy or not. Looks to her weren't important.

Anyway, it's been years now that I'm wearing relaxed-fit jeans and 'placement' is no longer an issue. I stopped drinking juice and drinks with sugar, cut out cakes and donuts and my weight is 10 pounds less. My jeans are noticeably baggy. I'm opposed to wearing a belt and suspenders are out of the question... that means I'm constantly pulling up my jeans. It's not 'hip-hop' territory yet, but I'm working on a plan. I ruled out a strip of Velcro on my backside but there is merit to stitching some elastic on the inner waistband so no one can see it.

If I lose another 10 pounds I'll be shopping for new jeans with regular fit. The fear then is having to worry about which side of the zipper to hang my Ying Yang.

Embedded image from another site
Post Comment

Think before you ink...

I'm watching a Youtube video of tattoo competition on the show Ink Master.
This episode is a collection of the worst tattoos in the event.
Think before you Ink is the name of one of the teams who failed in a middle round.

Post Comment

This is a list of chatillion's Blogs. Click here for chatillion's Blog List

We use cookies to ensure that you have the best experience possible on our website. Read Our Privacy Policy Here