Imposter syndrome? Or "Fake it till you make it"?

[Scott NC]

  I'll tell you about a fish I ate down in Mexico City sometime.  Changed my outlook on life.  No joke.

[Frosty]

Dad and I used to go fishing in Mexico a few times a year. We'd drive to Ensenada Mexico on the Pacific side of Baja California for Albacore, Yellow tail and I don't recall what kind of bass. The runs were seasonal but spectacular. 

We flew down to Loreto Mexico on the Gulf of California side and discovered Cabrillo a BIG bottom feeding bass that is so good it's a close match to fresh halibut. We trolled for Marlin and Swordfish in the channels and over the edges of the trench. We used Sierra for bait and fishing for them was a blast. Anchovies would school around the docks at high tide, they'd drop a treble hook into the school and snag one then throw it out near the edges of the school and catch Sierra. 

The bait boys were fishing with hand lines and home made hooks. $0.10 USD would buy 5-6 nice Sierra for bait but one packet of Mustad treble hooks earned me a personal servant for the week we were there. Dad and I brought our ultra light spinning gear and I started spending high tides on the docks with the bait boys. The bait boys weren't too crazy about me catching my own bait but I was catching 3-4x what we needed and left the rest to my bait boy who did well selling to the others. At the time it was a surprisingly poor area. 

Sierra are a Mackerel and with the right marinate pretty tasty. We donated our catch to the lodge and enjoyed it at the next meal. After having Sierra for dinner is when I started giving my catch to the boys on the dock. It wasn't bad but not something I'd choose for dinner.

Really good times with Dad. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Scott NC]

  Good times indeed, Jerry.  I wish my experience was so much fun.  I typed a diatribe about my adventure, but erased it.  Good memories should be preserved.

[Frosty]

Not all our Mexico trips were good ones, some were el-STINKO  busts. Nothing could diminish my memories of Loreto, they'll make me smile on my death bed.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Scott NC]

  I think I was doomed when I climbed the million step pyrimid down there.  I don't know what god they worshipped up there but it wasn't good.  Turns out I was there for the day of the dead.  Some coincidence.   I would never go thru that again for all the anvils in existence.  But it was the fish.... Or something.  Mole?  Can't tell what's in it.  No, the fish.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

I have some good memories of night fishing for Snook in South Florida with my dad in the late '50s- early '60s. We were lucky enough one night to spot three UFOs while out on the lake.

[rockstar.esq]

MerlincMan

Your post touched on a few things that sound familiar to what I've seen others struggling with.  

Breaking stuff is seldom down to a single variable.  Phillips head fasteners do indeed cam out, but there's more to it than that.  The camming is worse if there is a poor fit between bit and head.  Impact screwdrivers make a huge difference, as does using a torque limiting device like a clutch on a cordless drill.

I often watch youtube videos of luthiers repairing instruments.  There are a lot of materials used in guitars that not only age very poorly, but only have strength or structural integrity in specific ways.  

Three things stand out among all of these videos.  The first is patience where it matters.  A luthier might spend an hour or more softening glue to separate delicate wooden parts from one another.  That same luthier will often use a slapped together fixture or jig which allows them to make finicky changes to failure prone parts in a few seconds.

The second is a willingness to establish limiting principles.  They are often quite candid about their standards as they go along.  If a part is just shy of viable, they don't languish over the decision to replace instead of re-use or repair.  

The third is setup, to include fixtures and jigs.  Here's a good example of what I mean.  A lot of old guitars have tuner knobs made out of celluloid that rots, crumbles, and falls off the metal shaft.  Replacement knobs are installed by heating the tuner shaft, which softens the plastic, allowing them to be seated where they cool.  Now a lot of people might just use a marker on the steel shafts where the knob needs to stop so that all the knobs look right.  A luthier doing this might take a block of wood the length of the exposed shaft, cut a slot wide enough for the shaft, and use that as a depth stop while setting the knobs.  Why?  Well, it's because the depth stop block also helps to keep the knob perpendicular to the shaft.  If you only looked at one side of the shaft as you're sliding the knob on, you might not notice that it's cocked until the plastic cooled.

The setups aren't just about the first objective, they're about the entire result so they don't have to re-do anything.  It's pretty remarkable to see how simple the solutions end up being.

 

[Scott NC]

On 5/19/2022 at 6:42 PM, Irondragon ForgeClay Works said:

 We were lucky enough one night to spot three UFOs while out on the lake.

  Did you really see UFO's?  A lot is coming out about them including military pilots reportung.  A lot may be man made with today's technology, but who knows.  The universe is a big place!

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

We definitely thought they were UFO's. There were three lights moving in a V formation heading East. At first thought it was a single aircraft flying very high. Then they slowed way down and stopped, turned South and accelerated rapidly making a loop around to North. Then while heading North the lights separated and each headed in a different direction at such a speed that they vanished in about a second.

The night was crystal clear, no clouds, moon or city light pollution. We had watched them for probably an hour, while they made moves like no aircraft we had ever seen and unbelievably fast.

[Scott NC]

  I would love to have seen that.  Around here if you look up all you see is trees.  Maybe I will see a  Sasquatch someday.  Everybody has those lifesize metal cutouts of them everywhere.  

[ThomasPowers]

Sounds like you need one of those silhouettes working at an anvil cutout...

[anvil]

I had a near encounter with a Sasquatch once upon a time, or said the navy way,,, "this is no um,,er,,stuff."

A small community up Ute Pass, above Manitou has a Sasquatch as part of its myth and legend. 

one night about closing, coming up the pass, at the local bar turnoff, I saw a red shaggy biped about man sized shambling/running across 4 lanes of highway in a poor stoplight light situation upright. Now if I'd been coming out of the bar and only got a quick look, for sure there was Sasquatch! However, I had plenty of time to observe and what I actually saw was a upright shambling black bear, no doubt. Black Bear is a species, not a color. They do get mansized occasionally and they come in red\cinnamon as well. Dang, there goes the story.

[George N. M.]

Anvil, that reminded me of the truism that much, much more fiction has been preceded with "This ain't no xxxx, man" and "There I was ..." than ever has beginning with "once upon a time ..."

I think that humans are hard wired to register anything looking bipedal as humanoid just as we see a face in anything that has 2 dots and a line in a rough triangle.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Scott NC]

  Once upon a time  out on the farm I used to think anything that went bump in the night was either a spook or a big foot.  

  One night I was sleeping and woke to a horrible, crashing ripping sound on the wall of the trailer right by my head.  Sounded like something ripping the wall down, trying to get in.   I went out to look with flashlight and firearm and all it was, was a deer scraping it's antlers on the siding.  It managed to rip a bunch loose and tore off the trim.  I wonder what my blood pressure was....

[Frosty]

That'd be a rush alright Scott. Did it fall into your freezer?

On the drill crew I spent about 3/4 of 16 years in remote locations and we tented most of the time. After a while night noises aren't so frightening, you learn what most are. A porcupine eating the bark off a tree is loud and scary the first couple few times you hear it. 

What you don't hear is REALLY scary once you discover a big brown bear went through camp and opened everything while you slept a few feet away. Keeping a clean camp and your food hanging high in a tree away from the tent  is REALLY important in bear company. NO as in ZERO food in the tent! is the only way to be reasonably sure a bear won't check you out in the middle of the night!

Frosty The Lucky. 

[ThomasPowers]

Been a few "candy bar for a midnight snack" horror stories over the years.   

[Scott NC]

  Jerry, when I moved there there was a voodoo tree about a mile from my property line.  I found it by chasing my dog down that got out of the fence.  Somebody (I suspect my neighbor) hung dead chickens all over the tree and there were wierd carvings on it.  I think I told that on here before but not the whole story.  Odd happenings....  That's why things concerned me out there. 

[Frosty]

It's hard for me to imagine anybody hanging dead chickens from a tree, here it'd not only be a potential felony but Darwin award behavior. Bear's main food gathering tool is their sense of smell, they track like scent dogs, it's legendary. Carrying live chickens into the woods and killing them or killing them and packing them out would draw that territory's bear for the meal. Chances are, after eating them it'd track the people back to their origin and begin watching the food source for easy meals. 

Keeping a bear watch and serious firepower close when you take game is pretty standard here. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Scott NC]

  I don't think they much cared about the law.  As far as bears go, they have them here, I've never seen one but I would consider it a delight if I did.  From a distance.  

  Back home there was a resturaunt down by the Missouri river that kept a bear in a small cage as some kind of "attraction" for diners as they walked in.  He had some kind of permit, I assume, I was just a tyke then but I remember it well.  You can't fix stupid.

[anvil]

George, that came to me via the navy. It goes like this.

Whats the difference between a fairy tail and a sea story?

A fairy tail begins "once upon a time" and

A sea story begins "This is no ____" 

[Scott NC]

  Stand Navy out to sea, fight our battle cry! We'll never change our course so vicious foes steer shy-y-y-y! Roll out the TNT, anchors aweigh! Sail on to victory, and sink their bones to Davy Jones, hooray! Anchors Aweigh, my boys, Anchors Aweigh! Farewell to Foreign Shores, we sail at break of day-ay-ay-ay; Through our last night on shore, drink to the foam, Until we meet once more, here's wishing you a happy voyage home! Blue of the mighty deep, Gold of God's great sun; Let these our colors be, Till All of time be done-n-n-ne; On seven seas we learn, Navy's stern call: Faith, courage, service true, With honor over, honor over all!

  I like the sinking their bones to Davey Jones Locker part.  Go Navy!

[anvil]

And lest we forget the True motto of the Nav,,,

"300 years of tradition, hampered only by progress"   Or how many years its been to date.  But dang, the total organized chaos on the flight deck of an air craft carrier is only different from that on the gun deck of a man-O-War is the change from the smell of black powder to that of JP5.

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Been a couple years since I’ve heard the term jp5

[Scott NC]

  Smells better than bilge water...    I wonder if ships at sea still pitch their garbage off the stern.  Left a long trail and sometimes attracted sharks.  We used to throw it all over.  I remember throwing a bunch of office furniture and scrap steel off.  Kerplunk.

[anvil]

Such memories,,, When headed out on cruise, you made sure there was an excess of spare parts etc,,, and upon returning home, guess where they went. Too many questions and paperwork as to where they came from. Fantail,,,,