Tuesday, June 24, 2008

EBay Underway

We are installing an EBay system at a casino near here. The first day of the install went badly. The schedulers or coordinators forgot to send parts and the games were installed with whatever trim was available. There are four different configurations of games, when there was only supposed to be one. This is a new product and production is still ramping up, but it would certainly have been smart to wait another month while everything got in order. I am sure that we will find that there are lots and lots of problems with the install, but we will get through it eventually. I obviously can’t go into the details of the work or the hardware here, as those include company trade secrets, but the games are neat, if we can get everything in working order in the next couple of days.

Dad

Mom called in the middle of the night to say that Dad had an accident in the barn. We don’t know exactly what happened, but the evidence suggests that a calf (a 400-pound heifer) either kicked him or bumped a gate. In either case, Dad fell in or across the gutter. He ended up with some bad injuries, including broken ribs and a punctured lung, and was airlifted to a medical center in the Twin Cities. His injuries were severe but he is going to be okay. Dad isn’t a young man anymore, so that certainly exacerbated the extent of the damage. We will go visit him in the hospital later this week, but we are waiting for clarification on his injuries. I am sure that he is looking forward to being home again, though this may change his working life as a lifetime farmer. Dad is one of the old-school guys who shows that farming isn’t just a job; it is a life. Maybe some day we will be in the country raising a few animals, but we will never farm like my brothers and uncles do. It is a hard life, but the living is good for you. I think that our kids would do well in that environment, but it isn’t going to happen anytime soon.