May 26, 2011

A long overdue update - What's new

It's hard to believe, but I haven't posted here in almost four years. The time has flown by, many things have changed but the most important things have stayed the same.

	Lori and I both turn 50 this fall, where did the time go? I am having a birthday party for her on Friday, October 21, 2011. If you follow the news you may be aware that this is also the day predicted by Harold Camping to be the Rapture, so I decided to make this a BARP (Birthday and Rapture Party). Dress appropriately for a birthday party, Rapture, and/or BBQ. I will have live music, beer, my famous BBQ beef ribs and Potato Salad, and my mom's famous baked pork and beans for our guests. This is the third date Harold has predicted, but just in case, we will start the party at 5:30 PM, and the party will continue after 6 PM with anyone that is left until everyone is taken up or taken home. Later those remaining will have a big campfire, and guitars, and singing so bring your guitar or other musical instrument for the evening festivities. Campers and tents are welcome, let me know what space you will need and I will save space for you and your family. Lori and I also celibrate our 25th wedding anniversary next week, so this is a special year indeed with our 50th birthdays and the other news I am pleased to share.
	Logan won his long hard battle with cancer, exchanging a leg and half his pelvis for a life he is now working to make what he wants it to be. Logan is getting married this September 30th, 2011 to a lovely and smart young woman named Stephanie. Stephanie is studying Psychology at Michigan State University and is talking about going into Child Psychology. She is a wonderful addition to the Brasic family and we are all very happy for them. I took this photo of them in April at The Pegasus Taverna, one of our favorite restaurants in Greektown (Detroit). He has been working at LeMatic, Inc. for the past two years and has taken over most of the I.T. role within the company. He has rewritten the company website, manages issues with the servers, the engineering software, and all the computers. Lately he has been studying the controls programming language called Ladder Logic, and he has real talent as a controls programmer. I have equipment coming in today that he will study on over the next week to gain a few more programmer levels of knowledge and experience. He and I will go to Canada in June to upgrade two systems there and Logan will do some of the programming in advance of that trip, so he will get to see his work implemented at a bakery.
	Linden returned to college last fall after working in the "real world" for a couple years after high school. She worked hard at the kind of jobs young people can find with a high school education and no special training or prior work experience, mostly counter jobs at stores. Linden was dilligent about getting to those 5 AM opening shifts on time, and treating customers with professionalism, but discovered that it's very hard to be self supporting in today's world without a degree, or special training, or valuable work experience. She dove in to her classes last fall and did very well at JCC, and has had a good Spring Semester as well. She wants to get a business degree and run her own business. I don't doubt for a moment that she will do great, she is ready now to chart a course and follow it to a destination she desires. We are very proud of Linden's accomplishments, and we love the adult she has grown to be. Linden is holding her dog "Little Dog" while sitting on her 2nd cousin Layla's scooter. I took this photo in April 2011 on a day we were all home enjoying a beautiful spring day on the farm.
As a family we have decided to make more use of the farm again to produce food. This photo, taken in May, shows myself, Lori, Logan, and Linden showing off the Half Free Morrels (mushrooms) we found in our woods. They made a really awesome dinner that night. We recently built a really nice henhouse this spring and now have twelve laying hens for fresh eggs. I chose good laying breeds: Isabars, Buff Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks, and California Leghorns; so we have a colorful flock of birds. Two of the "hens" appear to actually be young roosters. Their fate has not yet been decided. Stay tuned. We also have six Guinea Hen chicks and they must be the dumbest birds I've ever raised, except for the time when I was a kid that we got a dozen turkey chicks and they all walked into the lake and drowned. Linden saved one of these Guinea Hen chicks on the first day when it stumbled and fell face down into the water dispenser and drowned. She brought it back to life by putting it face down on a towel and rubbing its back to get it's lungs clear.
	We are putting in a large garden this spring, with lots of corn, tomatoes, jalapeņos, beets, carrots, parsnips, leeks, radishes, and squash. We will also start a few watermellon plants, and a perennial herb tea/butterfly garden with German Chamomile, Purple Coneflower (Echinacea), and St. John's Wort. Lori and I are slowly planning the gardens and planting the perennial flower beds and trees to make the yard beautiful and bountiful. Someday we want to retire and have lots of fun things to work on in the yard together. One of the projects this summer is getting seeds for Dawn Redwood trees to sprout. This rare type of Redwood tree is native to a small area in China, and is tolerant of cold winters. The trees will grow about 3 feet per year and could reach a maximum height of 250 feet tall !!! We plan to plant all of the seedlings we can germinate on the farm, so someday the farm could be famous in our region for the towering Redwood forest that will eventually thrive there if we do our work well this summer.
Lori and I had planned a 25th wedding anniversary trip to Europe this year, but unfortunately work got in the way again. I ended up going a week later by myself to set up a robot cell for the Interpack 2011 Tradeshow in Dusseldorf. I flew into Amsterdam and took the train from the airport to the main train station to get my ticket to Dusseldorf. I had an hour to walk around while I waited, so I got to see a bit of the inner canal area of Amsterdam which is one of my favorites cities.
	The ICE 123 Intercity Express Train arrived exactly on time, departed exactly on time, and got me to Dusseldorf in two hours which was exactly on time. The cost was only about 58 Euros ($81.78) so the round trip was cheaper than flying from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf. The EuroRail train system is far superior to the under used and poorly maintained rail system in the USA. When I used to tell people this years ago they would reply that the USA had a far better highway system than Europe and they preferred to drive cars. I am not happy to report that Europe's highway system is now a lot better than ours too. Time to think about catching up, we are falling too far behind.
I got to Dusseldorf and went to work that same afternoon. Three of my colleagues and I worked well as a team and we got things ready for the tradeshow. I had originally planned to have three days to get ready for the tradeshow, but the late departure left me with only half a day to prepare. There was a lot of work to do but we got it done. In the photo to the right I am attaching Ethernet communications lines from an ABB robot controller to our main controls enclosure where the vision system controller and the machine controller live so all the controllers in the system can talk to each other.
	We made a very nice looking demo robot cell despite the short time we had to prepare, and 7 PM of the evening before the tradeshow opened found us tired but ready for the next morning in every way except robot programming. I had the robot moving and communicating, just had to get in early the next morning to program a demo cycle that showed picking up and loading packages into a basket and into a box. We didn't actually have any packages or product (buns or hot dog rolls) so the owner of our company volunteered to go shopping for packages of buns or hot dog rolls the next morning. He had to look hard but he found some perfect packages that we were able to use for seven days straight without changing them. The robot demo worked great, everyone stopped to watch it and some asked us about doing projects for them. Hopefully we will see some new business from this trade show.
By Friday evening I had been in Europe three long days and was ready to head home the next morning. The trade show was set up and the sales people were ready to take over running the robot cell after a briefing where our main international salesman took careful notes. Fortunately he is smart, and detail oriented. He ran the cell successfully himself for the next five days without a problem. To celebrate, we went out on the town. First we went to dinner at an awesome Thai restaurant. In this picture our interpreter Rodica brightens our company with her smile while Dale (our owner) checks on progress at another installation in the USA.
	Since last October I have been talking to a very talented engineer in Netherlands that started a company which makes robot arms that are controlled by traditional machine controllers instead of robot controllers. I hope to start a North American division of his company, Codian N.L., here in the USA. This photo shows Freek Hartman, owner of Codian N.L. with his two new employees John and Tieme.
Rodica ordering us a great meal, she takes her job very seriously and does a great job for us every time we work with her.
	It was a very nice time at the dinner and the food was excellent.
Afterwards we went to an Irish Pub called The Irish Pub. Steve Wolfington of Newsmith and his colleagues joined us.
	Things had gone pretty well at the trade show so we all had a few drinks. Rodica is great, always the life of the party.
We all enjoyed the night out.
	About 1:30 AM it was time to call it a night.
Goodbye for now Dusseldorf, until next time.