Modern Vespa

I firmly believe that racism is learned behaviour. Of course, I'm an IT guy not a psychologist, so my opinion may be suspect. But I can tell you that I grew up in an area so small that I met exactly one person who wasn't white before I went to university. In that environment, and helped along by late '70s and early '80s TV shows, I believed the stereotypes that were presented to me. My environment gave me no means to develop a contrary opinion.

Then I went to a university in a much larger city. Forced to interact with people whom I had been taught to believe were 'lesser', I found that as a demographic, they were really no different than the people I grew up with. Some were very bright, some weren't. Some were honest, some weren't, etc. It probably didn't hurt my re-education that I fell madly in love with a woman from a Caribbean island while at university (and I'm still married to her decades later). That allowed my re-education to spread. My father refused to speak to her the first time I brought her home. My friends were visibly uncomfortable with her presence. My future bride, knowing that these people were important to me made it her mission to win them over, and she succeeded dramatically. Six months after he first refused to speak to her, and after numerous occasions where he was forced to interact with my beloved, Dear Old Dad was dating a black woman from Jamaica. Most of my friends came around in relatively short order and genuinely accepted her as part of the group, the few that wouldn't found themselves pushed out of the group, not just by me, but by the group as a whole. The same can be said about one branch of our family tree, who just couldn't come around.

But don't let me tell you that this 're-education' was easy. Confronting what you've been taught from an early age is emotionally traumatic. To accept a new view of the world, you first have to accept that your parents, friends, and extended family have been lying to you your entire life. They will not make that acceptance easy, they will push you to maintain what they believe to be the truth. And should you successfully win one over, they will need your support as they go through the same struggles. So much easier just to hold onto what you've been taught.

It took an individual of remarkable strength to lead that effort in re-education, but fortunately I married well, and she was up to the task. Please don't take this as an attempt to excuse racism. I've seen closer than I'm comfortable with how it has affected my wife and our children, and I recognize it for the evil that it is. But breaking this particular cycle is going to take a lot more than telling people they're wrong. You're challenging their entire belief system, their family history. That's a very hard thing to let go of. It will take a better mind than mine to figure out how to loosen that grip on a broader scale.

Very Well Said.

Makes it even better!!

I guess that I was lucky that I was brought up not to hate. I did not have the best parents or upbringing and always just assumed that from my sketchy family if I was at least taught not to hate that others from what seemed like better families would surely be taught that.

Your sharing what your family experience was makes me think that being somewhat of a feral child was actually to my benefit in many ways. Modern psychologists say that you need to let your children from a very young age deal with stresses and anxiety on their own and if not, if parents step in to help or protect the child does not learn to deal with those ever present feelings themselves and this leads to greater progression of depression and other mental illness. I remember reading that even with service dogs the ones that flunk out were not "stressed" enough as pups by their mom's.

The TLDR is if you are keeping your young kids safe and comfortable you are doin it wrong. I have long said you are not doing a kid any favors by making it easy on them. Something that my wife has trouble grasping but since she was born deaf (90% hearing loss) her Mom did everything for her and you have a tendency to raise your kids how you were raised. And then there is personality and family dynamic in the mix as well.

I have had several things in my life happen to me that were learning experiences that caused me to question the status quo. Born in December of 1958 grew up with the stereotype of Japanese being weak, inferior, and nearsighted. As a young teen I read Saburo Sakai's book Samurai and I learned that the stereotype was total fiction and that caused me to question a lot of other things.

Saburo in his book wrote about not doing well in kindergarten and bringing shame upon his family...for a poor performance in kindergarten by a 5 year old but he was descended of Samurai and expectations were high. He also wrote of the training for naval aviators prior to WWII and what he described made Marine Corps boot camp seem like a walk in the park. I served with several Marines that had the tattoo "death before dishonor" and lived it. That was only USMC culture imagine an entire nation with that culture. And yet the stereotype in the west in the early 60's of Japanese as inferior? Total fiction. I cannot imagine a tougher and stronger culture for an entire nation.

That wasn't the last time that I realized that I had been "had" by western society's stereotypes but having that first one under my belt at a young age made it easier to recognize the other ones as they came along and accept them for the bullshit they are once recognized.

I can see how that might be more difficult for people who did not have similar experiences to mine. It also makes sense that when threatened they push back.

Thank you for the educational post and the perspective! The understanding helps.

This.

Recieved an email from my bank informing me that my SS# was taken from an place called National Public Data. My bank suggested I call Social Security for things to do. SS tells me to contact the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). FTC.com tells me to contact Social Security. Not really. FTC tells me to Freeze my credit reports. Several hours later, two of the three are frozen. One fails every time I try. I'll try again tomorrow.
Now, I wasn't born yesterday, so I figure my number is floating around anyway, but it pisses me off that companies can't keep their own shit secure. Sheesh.

If you really want to be pissed off (and you should) the root of all evil here is that Social Security numbers are incorrectly used for authentication, rather than their intended use as identification.

Being bedridden for a month. (Allegedly)

Also due to someone not paying attention when they typed up paperwork, at my preop appt last week they kept "confirming" that it was an ACL and possible MCL reconstruction on the left knee.

It was the right knee (this was the crash on 6 March that tore my ACL and the government refused an MRI until i did physical therapy for 6-8 weeks to make sure it wasn't just a sprain).

Story about the sharpie will be in the cheering you up thread though because it's better suited there.

The left says "ON".

From theayn's post.

A benefit of going to college is getting some of your core ideas from home questioned. This is a real benefit in your personal growth and understanding of what is going on in the world around you. I was enlightening to discover that some of old Uncle Fred's ideas did not hold water.

I grew up in a midwest suburb without exposure to black american culture. I did meet John (played football with him). He was the only African American in my High School with a student population of 3000. I do know, John was nervious when we went to parties that were all white.


Bob Copeland

I'm in awe of people who can do so. On the surface it doesn't seem that difficult, but it's different when it's personal. I deal with that with my Hispanic wife and the stuff she deals with. It's pretty easy to just get tired of it. Fortunately my family has been supportive, but dealing with the general public is another story. Anyway, she motors on.

On the racism issue in general, I'm grateful for having little to unlearn compared to some. My grandfather, an outsized influence in my life was firmly in the "people are people" camp. Also grateful for a Black college friend (and his brother) who messed with me to give me a taste of what it felt like to be stereotyped. There's always been something to learn, though.

I've raised my children to look into the person's eyes while they are talking as they are windows to the soul. And that's what counts - race, creed, religion - does not matter. We are only here for a little while.

F#*&ing reading glasses!! Enough said. 😡

My own grandfather, also a huge influence in my life, was not at all concerned with the colour of my Darling Bride's skin. He was not overly pleased that she was catholic though...

It seems I was determined to chose a bride that would annoy everyone.

My dentist died a couple years ago, and it has been that long since I had a good cleaning. As it turns out, Mrs Syd and I have different Med plans, so it took some doing to find a dentist 'In Network' for both of us. First appt this morning, and they inform me they do not do teeth cleaning.
But they do do crowns, and I have two temporary crowns as of this morning.

Tolerance has its limits.

If my grandmother hadn't intervened, I'd have had a totally different mother...and perhaps Catholic upbringing. I often wonder if dad would have been happier with the first woman he loved....

Ha. Reading Glasses. Worst thing is having to buy a pair and within a year realise that you'll soon be needing a stronger set.

That's why reading glasses are cheap as chips.

I like these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GTZNF6T

One of my classes is pissing me off today (or more accurately, this week).

It's an 8-week online class called Graphic Design Tools. It is to introduce us to Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. it's all been very basic for the first 5 weeks. This week is different.

It feels as if a medical student had an 8 week course that went like this:

Week 1: This is the human body. It differs from other animals in a variety of ways. List the differences between a human and a tiger.

Week 2: These are the arms and legs. They are known as appendages. They have a variety of uses. List as many uses as you can think of.

Week 3: This is the head. It contains the brain, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Review the list of the various functions of each item in the head. Create a Discussion Post listing the advantages and disadvantages of each item in the head. Post a comment on at least two other student's posts agreeing or disagreeing with their lists.

Week 4: This is the torso. It contains the heart, lungs, liver, intestines, and various other organs. The heart is for pumping blood. The lungs are for breathing. The liver processes alcohol.

Week 5: The intestines extract nutrients from the food we consume. Write a one-page Word document explaining the process of how the nutrients are extracted from a Burger King Whopper. Format your document with 1" margins, using Times New Roman 12pt font. Cite your references using MLA format.

Week 6: Here is a Human Body. Perform open hear surgery to replace the left ventricle. Also, perform a lung transplant. You'll also need to perform brain surgery to repair the synapse connections between the frontal lobe and the medulla oblongata. Document every tool that you use, how you used it, and why you chose that tool Cite your sources in MLA format.

It's like the course started out incredibly basic, then suddenly jumped to much more advanced content, and is asking us to do things we haven't been shown how to do. I have years of experience using InDesign, so doing what they're asking me to do isn't that big of a deal, but I'm having to Google how to do the tasks in Photoshop and Illustrator, and I shouldn't have to do that.

The fact that I've found 2, 2017 Suzuki S40's in San Jose. Both with less than 1500 miles and both recently serviced for around £3200.

Why don't these bikes appear at the same time as I'm booking flights ?

Jumpin right into it 3 days later.....

You need a knee replacement. My new gnees have had the posterior and anterior recruciates removed...

All the best on your recovery!

Trying to watch the Olympics in the U.S.A. is fucking infuriating! Every so often they interrupt the commercials to bring you a smidgen of inane coverage.

Even with cable (or satellite service), it's not much better. I enjoy and play, at a pretty low level, table tennis. I was able to watch one match, then on to swimming running diving gymnastics women's beach volleyball. NBC has shown a fair bit of fencing, which is fun but not nearly enough.

We just use Youtube TV. We've caught everything we wanted to watch, and fast forward through any adverts.

I saw the opening ceremony and I thought to myself, that was pretty messed up and never went back.

Apologies in advance, I have a problem that I could use help with. It will be a long post and it helps me to sort the problem just to write it out even if I get no helpful advice from the forum. It should have maybe been a separate thread?

I know there are some engineers/architects/tradespeople in here so maybe I will get some help but the TLDR is I am tasked with building a round 16' diameter 20" surface height sectional round stage suitable for multiple kids to be on top of at high school band performances on the field.

The design considerations are it has to be sectional so that it can be disassembled and reassembled multiple times. It has to be on wheels obviously, and it will have to be loaded and unloaded with a ramp onto a truck (semi trailer) multiple times. There will be a dozen kids on it at a time (but they are kids so they are light says the band director) so it is designed for a live load.

They wanted 18' at first but I pointed out 16' aligns with the material for the surface better, 4' X 8' by 3/4" plywood subfloor.

I found out about this project on friday last, the first show is in 7 weeks and it would be nice if they had it in 5 weeks or so, so they can practice with it.

They want it to be in sections that are no wider than 4' so they can move them in and out of different fields gates. I came up with a design that uses 8 rectangular sections with one side of each rectangle radiused so they were no more than 4' wide but that would require 32 expensive rough terrain caster wheels.

I was asked if we could do cupcake shaped sections using 3 wheels per section instead of 4 for a total of 24 wheels instead of 32. I made a very rough sketch to scale that shows the cupcake shaped sections to be 8' long and 6' - 1 3/4" wide at the outside radiused edge.

I submitted both the rectangular section and the cupcake shape section very rough sketches for consideration and have yet to hear back.

I proposed to use 14 gauge sheet metal "C" channel for the frame construction. I like this material because it is light and easy to work with. Once pieces are cut accurately they can be assemble with self drilling sheet metal screws and then welded with strategically placed one inch tack welds for a very rigid yet still relatively lightweight frame structure. Much lighter than using thin structural steel square tubing or angle iron or a wooden structure.

Also with the sheet metal C channel it is easy to cut holes and then weld corresponding blocks made out of the same material to keep the assembled pieces from moving both vertically or horizontally. The outside of the radius pieces will be held together with heavy duty cam lock hasps similar to what holds the door of my propane smoker door closed.

In the show it is planned for the two halves of the round stage to be separated and moved apart...the theme is the sun and the moon. Of the four sections that compose each half there will be a cam lock hasp on the underneath in the middle holding the two halves together separately when they are apart. The rest of the pieces will be held together with the same cam lock hasps on the exterior radius with the welded blocks and corresponding notches keeping it all together and flat/flush on the top on the uneven grass field surfaces.

I took pictures of my sketches and sent them to the band director with an explanation of how they would have to be constructed. I said each piece will need to be detailed in drawings so that they can be accurately cut to size efficiently. I also said I would need a crew of 4 experienced fabricators and estimated 200 man hours. This project has an unrealistic budget of $2,000 so all volunteer labor.

I told the band director in text message after sending pictures of sketches that the good news is I am willing to do it, the bad news is not enough time or money in the budget.

Here are some photos, thoughts both productive and non-productive welcome and encouraged. I enjoy puzzles like this ( I play Sudoku for fun!) so that doesn't really piss me off it is the prospect of being unsuccessful in accomplishing a task with unrealistic expectations that bothers me.

The first four are what I was sent by the band director saying something like this...and then my very rough sketches which I will polish and detail once design is approved.

Then there is this which is neither 16' in diameter or 20" high. This example is 12' diameter and 24" high with an expanded metal top. A painted plywood or possibly painted canvas top could be used I think.

Unfortunately no price on the website. I suspect it's one of those if you have to ask you can't afford it.

https://corpsdesign.com/products/round-stage/

Also of note is from the photos the band director sent me you will notice that the plywood top does not match the cupcake pieces of the frame. The plywood provides horizontal and vertical stability whereas my design does that with corresponding notches and blocks. The surface will not have to be removed with my design.

The plywood would have to be removed and reinstalled every time. These kids take the props up to the field from the band room every day through the rough parking lot. Then the kids assemble and practice with them and take them back apart and roll them back down to band room for storage.

Last year when we build smaller rolling props out of plywood and screws they had to be repaired and reinforced multiple times. I am striving for a little sturdier this year.

Lastly I am just getting in the habit of spelling out cupcake instead of pee aye eee and will begin using this everywhere from now on, the modern vespa forum has conditioned me...I sincerely hope this provides at least some entertainment value.

Is it necessary for each piece to have its own wheels? If you had a custom cart (with wheels that really would deal with any terrain) each piece could be lifted on, wheeled to wherever and lifted off. No worries about wheels digging into soft ground, or skidding about on solid surfaces when in use.

Yes minimizing wheels is a good suggestion and the kids are capable of lifting and carrying as a team but then we would need to build the cart.

I also thought about having every other cupcake shaped piece not have any wheels, just flip the wheelless section over onto the wheeled section for transport but you would only be able to do that with two of the 8 sections as they plan to pull the halves apart in the show. It would save a couple wheels though.

I did hear back that they will measure the truck to see if the 6' wide cupcake sections will fit. I think they are also considering a cheaper non wheeled version of just painted plywood.

The first band parent meeting is aug 21 so the ideas will be presented then and I doubt if that meeting results in a decision.

I will remind them again this year that I don't mind building stuff but I need next years plans now. Low budget is the main hold back but they will come up with something. If they give me a vague description and want me to engineer it and build it I need much more time and even with me volunteering all labor the cost of materials.

Good people and great teachers translate into a great experience for the kids. Not just mine but all of them. The kids complain about having to figure stuff out and I tell the band director this is the best learning experience they could get, they have to work together to figure it out.

Last year the rickety props barely made it to the last show and required multiple repairs all at the last minute. We do our best to support and stay positive.

The idea of turning one 3.14 piece on top of another could be made easier with hinges to help alignment in place and during transport. It would still be possible to have 2 halves sorted out. Presumably you want some simple method to keep the pieces aligned in use and that simple method will allow the split during the performance. 🥧

Trying to sell my old LX150....One of the listing sites is FB. I wasn't surprised at getting asked lame questions and then crickets, but I got an initial request, which I answered, then a response of like 169 photos of their Stella (including shots of an oil bottle, add-on mirrors, etc. I was perplexed, then they followed up asking about their offer....I'd missed the message preceding the photos...they wanted to offer a trade for their scooter. Umm. No.

Then I get something similar with a guy offering to trade his old Harley. FFS. Am I missing a potential scam, or do people just want to unload their stuff on me in exchange for mine.

This is also an excellent idea that improves the design! I will incorporate hinges as a design suggestion.

Unfortunately time constraints and budget probably will not allow me to make anything of quality for them. Now that I have informed the band director Mr. Williams of the difficulty of constructing what he asked for as well as my estimate of man hours this project will not progress.

I think that they will compromise on something simple and cheap and my thoughts towards designing something nice were an exercise in futility. I don't mind because these good people are not builders/fabricators. They just don't realize what goes into it.

Analogous to the compliment you pay the nice lady knitting on the bus..."Wow you could totally sell those they are so nice" and the lady knitting away has so many hours into the sweater never mind the cost of real wool knitting yarn that she would be steadily losing money to sell anything she makes, it is a labor of love which I would totally do if only they gave me enough lead time so that I could do all of the labor myself. I will present this suggestion at this years band parent meeting for next year.

Mr. Williams told me how well my son was doing this his junior year. He is assistant band major this year and he is part time color guard and part time assistant band major. Mr. Williams says it's nice to see the work he puts in and the progress he is making.

My response is leadership defined, it's great to hear my kid is doing well but this is about the band, the group comes first and the newest weakest members of the group get the most attention to bring them along. This is embodied by the entire band and it is why they do so well. Top down from Mr. Williams you put others first selflessly to lead effectively. He has such a great staff and group of kids because he takes care of them. That is exactly the message I want to send and I am so glad my kid is exposed to this environment at such a young age. It took me a few more years to figure out what he is learning now.

In this day and age to get a group of really good teachers, the kind that make a difference in so many peoples lives that it may actually affect repairing the fabric of our society... I am happy to support them and thank you for suggestions.

Don't need to be told not to piss on the floor.

Crickets??

Crickets

North American slang for "no more response" or "silence"