Monday Afternoon Preaching - Nail Polish Remover

Guys and Gals,

Been a bad couple of days so I will take the pulpit and do some Monday afternoon preaching. Sorry. DIY – Do It Yourself. Interesting.

I will repeat this later – I think the major value of this forum is the ability to ask a question and get assistance. Not the capability to post our successes. I do enjoy posting my successes.

I teach college part-time and I find one major issue common with more than zero of my students. They only want to try if they know they will succeed. They do not want to be guided or developed to success. They want to be walked, led, or carried, to a solution. Education is learning without physical pain from someone else’s experience. Experience is getting hurt in some way and figuring out how not to do it again that way.

The Thomas Edison exchange goes something like this “Mr. Edison, you failed over 1,000 times to make a light bulb. Did you ever think about quitting along the way?” The response was something like “I learned more than a 1,000 ways to not make a light bulb along the way. My efforts at learning not how to make a light bulb were very successful in my opinion.” More people were telling Edison it could not be done than were telling him someone needed to finish the light bulb project many others had started – AND STOPPED.

If you did not know this, Edison was a DC – direct current fan. Westinghouse was an AC – alternating current fan. In the power grid of the world, Edison lost and Westinghouse won. The primary charging system of your car is alternating current, from there the vast majority is direct current. The alternator replaced the generator with the 1960 Plymouth Valiant. Success often takes a while. Sometimes success and failure are intermingled.

Life is a series of challenges with successes and failures. Often the failures are only temporary setbacks causing you to redraw the map to success. DIY is often because “a professional” would not attempt it or said it could not be done and someone (we) thought it needed to be done or that it could be done the way we thought it could be done. The Wright Brothers were DIYers. Almost everyone knew man would never fly. At one time it was thought that if man exceeded thirteen miles per hour he would explode and die. This constrained railroad propulsion engineers for years. In the 1800s the British Admiralty was told that iron ships will never float. That hampered nautical innovation for years because every nautical engineer in the world knew the Brits knew more about marine technology than anyone else. The French launched one of the first steam powered ships of war and one of the first iron / steel ships. Maybe because the French designers were not bilingual.

Ask the Rust-Oleum research and development people. I would bet hundreds of concepts start the cycle, few end up the way they were conceived, few make it to the retail shelf. Many end up on the lab shelf waiting for something else to come into play. I was told by a drug company that only 1 out of 100 concepts pass through each stage of development. That tens of thousands start and only one drug finishes the cycle. IN MY OPINION, professionals often fail because of their formal (constraining) education, (lack of) imagination, and (lack of) personal need.

Candy(lea) sent me a picture of this “truck.” New project in the offing. I would have never thought of it. I will most likely change it but you will see the heritage when I am done. Someone else thought of it and I doubt it was a professional. I would guess it was a Mom, a Dad, an Aunt, an Uncle, a Brother, a Sister, or a Cousin of a child in need. It says Love. It does not say "outstanding skill," "superb ability," or "unparalleled craftsmanship." It says "Love."

I have a similar situation to Madeoday’s. Nail polish remover at the corner of my dining room table. How? Hmmmm. It will be a project behind many others. Why? Because it holds less value than other projects in my mind. I would rather make stuff to help someone, for the Vets at the Naval Medical Center, the VA Medical Center, my Family, or my Wife’s school than fix that table.

Sorry, not picking on Madeoday and do not mean it that way. She is facing a problem and “a professional” let her down. Time to DIY it. Time to pause at the temporary setbacks and replot the course to success. The U.S. Navy “owns” the U.S. Marine Corps. A Marine plaque and the Marine Corps pay checks say “Department of the Navy – United States Marine Corps” and I was a Navy Officer and Naval Aviator for my career. So I will borrow, and paraphrase, from the Marines - Improvise, adopt, modify, act, react, SUCCEED.

As stated earlier – I think the major value of this forum is the ability to ask a question and get assistance. Often that assistance is not from the professionals but from the other DIYers. The true value of the forum is not the capability to post our successes but to get help, ideas, assistance. Madoday has a question, needs help, she needs an answer. She needs to listen to a lot of comments and then decide on a course of action. I would wish success.

I am looking for ideas, I am looking for people to help. I wish Madeoday was a lot closer to San Diego so I could try and help.

Sorry for the preaching. What supportive input do you have for Madeoday?

Thanks for getting here.

Rex