Thursday's Dose

Here's one you may not know or believe for that matter. It took me a very long time to come around since I am a performance car enthusiast but maybe this will put a few bucks back in your wallet (or pocketbook, lest I forget my audience).
I met the father of one of my daughters friends and he is an independent auto mechanic. He says that most engines run fine on regular gas. The amount of additives and detergents in gas these days make regular just as good as the higher octane. The variable valve timing in most newer engines adjusts to the octane that's in the fuel automatically. My Nissan Pathfinder's owner manual says to run only 91 octane or higher in the 3.0l V6, and that's what I did for the first 75,000 miles. Since I met Tony, I've dropped down to midgrade 89 octane with no noticible difference in performance or mileage over the last 25,000 miles. (The corvette still gets premium though!)

A dose for Wednesday 11/05/08

Well I'm going to take a slight time-out to offer my congratulations to President-elect Obama and his ticket. He was elloquent, smooth, made his points clearly and could clearly captivate an audience to the point of being charismatic. John McCain certainly had his hands full. As a registered Republican even I crossed party lines on this one. I hope that country is in a much better place four years from now than it is at the moment.
The thing I don't like is (and this could be your daily dose) when people make uninformed choices. Chris Shays was the only remaining Republican congressman in New England. He is very moderate and even seemed to lean a little towards Obama. He was a senior member of the house and served on the Homeland Security commission and was very protective of Connecticuts many jobs in the defense industry. So when I see things like...
[Kristyn Castaldi, a 22-year-old social worker who just cast her first ballot, said she voted for the 42-year-old Himes because Shays, 63, seemed to have held the job for too long.
"I don't know much about the candidates, but I believe Jim Himes will support the middle class," she said outside McKinley School. "There's nothing wrong with Chris Shays, but he's been here for a long time."] ...it just makes me shake my head. Anyway good luck to all you Democrats, you have a great opportunity to make a historical impact on America for a long time, try not to blow it!

Tuesdays dose 11/04/08

Once again I'm a few days behind since I can't get to my blog at work and the last few nights have been busy with other stuff, but here we go, I'll try to get up to date.

A place for everything and everything in it's place. It may be an old adage but it still makes a lot of sense. Take car keys for example, if you have a place to put your keys every time you come in the house, as soon as you enter the house, you will never lose them!

I can now go and continue to search for the second set of keys I've lost in the house, complete with keyfob, Mobil Speed Pass and very expensive key with computer chip. ugh!!!

Your dose of common sense for Monday 11/3/08

If you deal with the US Military on a regular basis for business, here is a good tip: (First can you name the branch and rank of the insignia here?)

During working hours and in meetings use the persons rank and last name to address them, i.e. Lieutenant Commander Davis or Captain Peters. Also end your answers with "sir" when addressed. Even if you are on a good first name basis, only use it after hours or when not engaged with the rest of the group. It may give the impression of favoritism to other business partners or even competitors in the room. If you are unsure of a rank, for instance is the person a Lieutenant Commander or a Commander, err on the side of the higher rank.

Sunday's dose lest you should doze!

Ok, here is some real common sense for all you working grad students:
Get enough sleep! I myself don't perscribe to this as there aren't enough hours in the day, but there are some very good reasons to get enough sleep, especially these ten. Be sure to check out number 10, it's a shocker!

Saturday's Daily Dose

Sticking with the Halloween theme:
If you coach youth soccer (or any other fall sport) do not expect the team that shows up at 8:00am the morning after Halloween to remotely resemble the team that played brilliantly the week before (coming back from 2 goals down to tie the first place team).
Maybe I should take up extreme ironing instead!

Friday October 31's Daily Dose of Common Sense

Since my work laptop is firewalled against blogs and I didn't get to my computer until today, I'll give you two for one.

Never assume if you change suppliers (or a supplier changes one of their suppliers for that matter) to make the same part per the same specification, that it will come out the same! If you don't have time in your schedule for a first article inspection and trial fit, you better keep the old supplier in the pipeline until you do!

Ok here's one for Halloween: If your children ask you to carve a pumkin from a template in a book, make sure you really look at it before you accept the challenge (kind of similar to Thursday's dose!). Three and a half hours later you'll know why (but it did come out really cool!).

Today's dose of common sense

I've thought about this doing something like this for a while now and this seems like a good vehicle to do it with. These are all my own observations, hopefully I can post one each day of this course.

Your Daily Dose of Common Sense - Don't sign off as a reviewer of a document unless you've read it first!

The good, the bad, and the Intro!

Hello to all,

I've been trying to decide to go with the good, everything is fine, these classes are great, I have such a sense of accomplishment intro, or the bad, I should have dropped this program after the first class, this is a full time work load program disguised as a part time one, my wife and kids hate me when I'm entrenched in these classes, I'm in a sleep deprived stupor and find it hard to function well at my job or with my family when taking these classes (AD645 was the exception). I guess I've had a week of normal sleep so I'll go with the good one.
My name is Scott Poarch and I have been working at Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, CT for the last 23 years, all in engineering. I've had the opportunity to work on aircraft designs for every branch of the service as well as some international military programs (Japan, Austria, Australia). In 2006 I was promoted to a Project Manager on the US Navy's MH-60R program. I started my MSPM nearly on the same day and this is my 10th class towards my MSPM. I do not use e-commerce at all in my job. I generally work in middle management, middle meaning trying to get very blue collar, unionized, mechanics, electricians and inspectors to build helicopters faster so very white collar senior management won’t hammer me on a daily basis.
Other than that I'm very soon 47 (2 weeks) and have three great kids. A 14 year old daughter, 12 year old son, and a 7 year old daughter, not to mention a very understanding wife (less so with each passing class!), without whom this pursuit would be impossible. Besides my day job, I coach soccer and sing in a 50’s Doo Wop group that’s been together for 19 years now. So for all of you first timers, give your family a hug and kiss tonight and tell them they can have you back in 7 weeks, because you wont have time for anything else!

I hope everyone has a great class and I’m looking forward to working with you!

Scott Poarch