Anachronism

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mikenixon
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Anachronism

#1

Post by mikenixon »

Killing time after successful big box store christmas shopping offensive maneuver, I step into a dollar store. Not a place I go often. Amble in, look around. Hmm. I remember. The Harbor Freight for the non-mechanical crowd. Yes. A miniature Walmart for those who avoid social interaction and enjoy the murderous smell of insecticide. I shuffle from one aisle to another, seemingly time-warped Dorothy-like into a strange universe.

Hey, a calculator! A dollar, of course. Still over-priced by three hundred percent. This might do to replace the one on my workbench that keeps getting fouled by aerosol fog. A source of Chinese replacements a good way to keep a calculator always at hand? Buy a new one every three months? Buy several and scatter them all over the house? Why haven't I thought of this before?

Wait a minute. How did this happen? What have we become? When did we morph from the build it, preserve it, maintain it uber-resourceful commercial leaders of the free world to the replace-it-don't-fix-it consumer sponges dependant on developing but more industrious peoples we frightenly find ourselves to be now? I don't understand this. I don't like it.

Now an antique shop. Expect to turn around and see a sepia background. The paintless relics celebrate something, I'm not sure what. A feeling, an epoch. Ornate metal castings, forgings and machined parts glaringly, unapologetically overbuilt. Anachronistic. Massive. Elaborate. As if metal was as once as plentiful as dirt. As if mass was a virtue. As if time was once not a commodity to be hoarded. Obviously, hands wielded tools carefully, lovingly. Script boldly cast into surfaces unabashedly singing testimonies to an age and ethic lost in the mists of time and irreconcilably foreign to our own. The existence of these things in 2020 sunlight like having your picture taken next to the Lincoln memorial; the surroundings make it plain you are an intruder.

When a new votech instructor in the 1980s I worked alongside an individual who was an authority on W model Harley-Davidsons. Flatheads. Machines, not people. I remember thinking a maven in 50+ year old motorcycles was strange. An intelligent man marooned in another age. Zealous for something patently antediluvian. Years later came the realization. A different aperture but the same photograph. Now with my face. I am now the anachronism. The thing that does not fit. The product of an environment. Memories are curious things. So powerful. So evocative. And potentially determative. No rationality in liking so strongly a motorcycle so archaic. Definitely a huge bit emotion at work here.
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Re: Anachronism

#2

Post by 77Gowing »

I too find myself an anachronism. I've been made fun of for my lack of understanding modern so called pop culture. I had a fellow bragging to me about how fast he can google, Bing or Yahoo subjects. He really thought he had me. But I just laughed and asked, "how much of that research did you read and how long did it take you to...digest that information into useful cognition?" Then I told him, inspite of the March of speed in our ability to gather information, once we have it, it still takes the same amount of time to digest and synthesize the information into useful thoughts in our minds.
Funny, now I teach computers, mathematics and phonics to all ages of people at our local literacy council. I have two recent high school students I'm teaching phonics to because they can't read worth a nickle. But, boy can they use a cell phone. My best student is 85 year old Celia a very smart and intelligent Hispanic lady. I relate much better to her than my two 19 year olds fresh out of HS.

I still marvel these days how I came to this. I love it just the same. Beats laying around the house bored and depressed. I love it when I get to witness a dim bulb suddenly turn bright.

WP on Ole blue is still waiting, but it's too cold and wet. Plus, I've decided to set up my shop properly. I've developed bad habits by being poor. Not any more. After getting a second tool box set up and almost full I just bought a tool bench and tool box cart and flux welder from HF. Went to Amazon and bought a drop light and a drop power chord to mount on the garage ceiling. Guess I just got used to making do. Well not anymore. My man cave is getting a make over with MC posters all around. Even gonna buy a wood tool box for all my sewing machine tools that i use to keep the Mrs happy, (she has 9 or 10 sewing machines).

Sigh!........>
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Re: Anachronism

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Post by mikenixon »

Wow! Great insight into your work ethic! Ten sewing machines! Tools in a wood toolbox! Like a Gerstner? Good thing you're doing too, the teaching thing. Must be very fulfilling.
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Re: Anachronism

#4

Post by flyday58 »

I like being the anachronism vs.being the lemming. Anachronisms don't freeze to death in their cars on backcountry winter roads. Anachronisms don't wait in remote mountain areas for someone else to change the flat in the ice, snow, and mud. Anachronisms don't hang out in forums dispensing NoobToob vidbytes as if it were genuine knowledge, while hiding behind the anonymity of their keyboard to snipe at and disparage others.

Anachronisms don't live in fear of the day they wake up, pick up their phones and realize the internet was killed in the night by some hacker group for their own purposes; they'll find a way to survive the ensuing chaos. Anachronisms are always checking their blind sides, it's just the way they are: questioning, seeking, never too old to learn. Anachronisms don't need to talk, they don't need my approval, and they won't lose any sleep if I decide that their advice is not worth taking. They know.

Mike Nixon. Chris Harris (BMWs). Cowpuc "Half-pipe" (Yamaha Ventures). Anachronisms. Worthies. Throwbacks. God love'em and bless'em.
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dontwantapickle
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Re: Anachronism

#5

Post by dontwantapickle »

I didn't know what anachronism was........... so I googled it. :mrgreen:
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Re: Anachronism

#6

Post by rcmatt007 »

My residents want to use their phones to "look things up". They have a resource called Up To Date". I frequently remind them that up to date is ONLY the opinions of people who actually looked at the research (and often incorrect).

So now I have my latest editions of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine and Nelson's pediatrics sitting in the precepting room and I point to them and tell the resident "now really look it up."
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Re: Anachronism

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Post by CYBORG »

dontwantapickle wrote:I didn't know what anachronism was........... so I googled it. :mrgreen:
So did I. We used to call that "old school" :lol:
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mikenixon
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Re: Anachronism

#8

Post by mikenixon »

:)
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Re: Anachronism

#9

Post by Old Fogey »

dontwantapickle wrote:I didn't know what anachronism was........... so I googled it. :mrgreen:
Me neither. My daughter - 'go look in the mirror, Dad!'
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Re: Anachronism

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Post by desertrefugee »

Nothing really to add to Mike’s eloquent musings… But I can relate.

Picture it, any group of three or more of us cruising a frontage road at Laconia or Daytona or San Diego in 1980. Digging our 70s era Hondas. As noted, at that time, a flathead Harley Davidson of 1940 vintage would be about the age of the bikes we hold dear today.

It is a rather sobering thought now that you bring it up, Mike.

Dang it. Mortality is a drag.
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Re: Anachronism

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Post by mikenixon »

Old Fogey wrote:
dontwantapickle wrote:I didn't know what anachronism was........... so I googled it. :mrgreen:
Me neither. My daughter - 'go look in the mirror, Dad!'
I really did LOL (laugh out loud)! :lol:
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Re: Anachronism

#12

Post by mikenixon »

rcmatt007 wrote:My residents want to use their phones to "look things up". They have a resource called Up To Date". I frequently remind them that up to date is ONLY the opinions of people who actually looked at the research (and often incorrect).

So now I have my latest editions of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine and Nelson's pediatrics sitting in the precepting room and I point to them and tell the resident "now really look it up."
Much respect for you...
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Re: Anachronism

#13

Post by mikenixon »

desertrefugee wrote:Nothing really to add to Mike’s eloquent musings… But I can relate.

Picture it, any group of three or more of us cruising a frontage road at Laconia or Daytona or San Diego in 1980. Digging our 70s era Hondas. As noted, at that time, a flathead Harley Davidson of 1940 vintage would be about the age of the bikes we hold dear today.

It is a rather sobering thought now that you bring it up, Mike.

Dang it. Mortality is a drag.
Yes. The tables have been turned. :)
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Re: Anachronism

#14

Post by 77Gowing »

mikenixon wrote:Wow! Great insight into your work ethic! Ten sewing machines! Tools in a wood toolbox! Like a Gerstner? Good thing you're doing too, the teaching thing. Must be very fulfilling.
Mike, thanks for your kind words of encouragement. Yes like a Gerstner, but a cheap Chinese knock off. It's sort of my arc of the covenant with my years of working with Instrumentation. I'm putting all my "special" measurement and inspection tools in it. Alas they are all cheap Chinese knock offs too. I cannot afford what I used to use in the testing labs for the Army. I figured out how to work the Gubmint procurement system and worked my way through all the loop holes I could to buy the best for the labs I worked. Bent many a rule. Had the IT geeks after me all the time. But though they thought they were GOD when it came to IT equipment I was still able to get my work done. They used to come up with all kinds of reasons for not to do something. After all it was their network to control.
Solution?...Nothing in the rule book said I could not build my own internal network in our labs where we often had to write our own scripts in an unknown unmonikered language. They used to throw fits with my boss. But he knew I was getting things done working around all of their log jamming impediments.

Yes, I, keep my Wife in...stitches. dancr dancr
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Re: Anachronism

#15

Post by mikenixon »

77Gowing wrote:I figured out how to work the Gubmint procurement system and worked my way through all the loop holes I could to buy the best for the labs I worked. Bent many a rule. Had the IT geeks after me all the time. But though they thought they were GOD when it came to IT equipment I was still able to get my work done. They used to come up with all kinds of reasons for not to do something. After all it was their network to control.
Love it! Getting er' done despite the moles and their roadblocks! :)
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