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I am 67 and a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair. I renovate homes for my family and friends. I’m not talking about hiring contractors. I actually do the work. Here are some pictures….I installed this gas fireplace for my son. I built the framework, did the stonework and built the mantle from poplar. I resurfaced the knee walls, installed new baseboard mounding and wall-mounted the TV.This was a bathroom remodel for my oldest son. I installed vanity, quartz countertops, installed fixture, sink and tied in the plumbing. I Installed the tile and ran new electrical/mounted new vanity lights. I also tiled the floor, installed the baseboard molding and installed a new toilet.I installed this fireplace at my younger son’s first house. I built the mantle and surround, laid the marble, and designed and built the custom bookcase and entertainment center.The upper left part of the entertainment center has a removable back (just lift out the shelves…no tools are needed) that hides the unsightly electrical panel from view. The lower left cubby (containing the subwoofer) has a removable floor panel that hides a sump pump.I then added a wet bar. I built it from scratch and tied in the plumbing.I installed these oak stairs, designed and built the rail. I created all the spindles as well.In this bathroom, I tiled the floor, installed the vanity, created a template and installed the countertop and wall tile. I installed the sink and tied in plumbing. (The project was not completed at this time as I still had to install the lighted mirror, drawer and door hardware, and crown moldings around the tops of cabinet and tiled area.)I created this built in entertainment center (doors had not been painted in this picture) and installed fireplace and mantel for another son. (The door on the right side next to the fireplace is fake. It hides a section of knee wall as this room is located in a walkout basement.)In the same room I added this built-in shelf unit (made from scratch).I turned this:Into this (by building drawers and doors). My son took care of the painting.Here are the doors under construction.I built this dry bar unit for my son. I installed cabinets, created template and installed countertop, wired electrical and did the tiling.This was my first major renovation which I did about a year after being injured. I tiled this bathroom floor. I also designed and created this wheelchair accessible vanity from two drawer units, installed and fabricated the accessible inset and added an end shelf unit. I did not fabricate the countertop but I did install the sink, faucets and tie in the plumbing. I also installed and tied in a new, one piece ADA toilet.I tiled and grouted this kitchen backsplash.I installed these bamboo stairs and risers for my brother. At the same time I tiled his two bathroom floors.This week, I started a kitchen renovation, my biggest project to date.This was a father-son project that we worked on together, complete with the occasional few choice words and a couple of thrown hammers! (Seriously, as I age it is important that I pass on as much knowledge and skill to my two sons so that they will be confident and self sufficient in doing this type of work when I am gone. In fact, I was hospitalized for a couple of days when the counters were installed so my son actually tied in the sink, garbage disposal, reverse osmosis water filter and faucets alone while I instructed him using FaceTime!)After ripping out most of the old kitchen, we started by installing this 20 x 13 foot tile floor with cement board underlayment. This alone was a two week job.We installed all the new electrical, plumbing, and gas lines. Working as a team, we rewired the entire countertop and island with new plugs, 5 separate circuits and ground fault breakers. We also installed all new baseboards, installed recessed and hanging ceiling lights and under cabinet lighting. We did the herringbone tile work on the walls and installed all the appliances and range hood. We also installed the framework for the built in table with quartz countertop.(My son decided to contract out the installation of the cabinets and countertops because he has two young children and could not be without a kitchen for the two weeks it would take us to do that part of the job. The cabinet installer actually gave him a very inexpensive price as well so it was an offer too good to refuse.)This is the completed kitchen (as designed by my son).And a few other projects…I built and finished this cherry wood table….I built this dollhouse for my two granddaughters as a Christmas gift. Although it comes as a kit, everything must be assembled and painted. It is so complex that a factory completed model sells for $1,800.00. The kit is only $125.00 so it was a no brainer to choose this option. However, it took two months to complete, working an average of 6 hours a day on it.This is a picture of a factory completed model for comparison. Notice the assembled price does not include painting nor interior finishing. That option raises the price to $1800.00!I have a lot more photos of projects I have done. I can add more if requested.It is worth mentioning that I have had no formal training as a carpenter, electrician, bricklayer, tile installer or plumber and have never worked in any of those trades. My profession, prior to retirement, was a public school math teacher. I just retired this past year. All of the work you see above was done by me after I became disabled during the last 25 years to the present.(As satisfied as I am of my completed projects, they pale in comparison to those of a former neighbor of mine. He was a mechanical engineer before retiring and he too has never worked in the building trade. His hobby is building heirloom quality furniture. He also runs classes to teach those skills to others.)

If you were to open up a traditional desktop, you would find many things, all of which are important, even crucial, to the boot process of a PC. The process starts from the outside, when you push the power button. If you look on the inside, you should see a bundle of several wires going from the motherboard to the relative location of the power button on the inside of the case. Two of these wires connect to pins on the motherboard (sometimes called headers), and when you push the power button, you allow a current to flow through those two pins. If you wanted to start your computer without a power button, you could simply short those two pins together to cause the same effect. From there, you may notice a cable going from your power supply to the motherboard. In most cases, this is a 24 pin connector. The green wire on this connector is a signal wire, and, when the switch is pushed, the signal wire shorts to the ground wires (all the black ones). You could start your computer without a power switch by shorting the green wire to any black one with a paper clip. After this, power is now distributed from the power supply to all connected components, which must include the motherboard and the CPU, and may include a graphics card (if it takes its own power connector), hard drives, optical drives, fans, and other components of the computer.From there, the CPU initializes the chipsets, which are the Northbridge and the Southbridge. The CPU communicates directly with the Northbridge for high-speed communications such as PCI-Express and memory controllers. It also communicates with the Southbridge through the Northbridge in many cases. The Southbridge initializes the BIOS chip on the motherboard, and the CPU begins to execute the instructions that are pre-programmed on the BIOS chip, which is a form of ROM (Read-only memory). The BIOS does what is called a POST, which stands for Power on Self-Test. In this test, the BIOS checks that certain required components such as a CPU, CPU cooler (processors get extremely hot, extremely fast), RAM, some sort of video interface, and, in some cases, a keyboard, are installed and functional. If all is well, it begins the next step, if not, it generates beep codes that tell the knowledgeable IT technician (and his good friend Google) what has gone wrong with the computer.If the computer passes POST, the BIOS then searches all available storage mediums for a valid bootloader. The order in which it searches these mediums varies from setup to setup, but, in most cases, goes something like this:Floppy Drive (if installed), Optical Drive (if installed), USB device, Network bootloader, Hard Drives.When (if) it finds a valid bootloader, the bootloader takes over operation of the computer. It is a VERY small (512 byte) program whose sole function (in most cases) is to load a larger program that actually loads the OS. When the OS is loaded, drivers for hardware are located, the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer, I know I have an answer about this somewhere if you care to learn more) is initialized, the kernel is loaded (the kernel is the core of the OS), and operation is handed over to the kernel. The kernel then loads applications and prepares the system for use. Finally, a GUI is initialized, and (in most cases), you are presented with a login screen!The boot process is really quite fascinating, and it’s quite interesting to find out how it works on the inside. I didn’t truly understand it until I wrote my own simple Operating System (using MikeOS as a template and learning guide). But what smart 9 to 12 year olds! I praise and cherish them from the bottom of my heart. It makes me beyond exuberant that such young children have an interest, the intelligence, and the background knowledge required to even begin to ask questions like this! These kids are the engineers, inventors, and leaders of tomorrow! They will push the limits of what is possible. I’d be very interested to watch where they go in life.

I’ll use an example of a small business that was a subsidiary of a mid-sized business. At the time, the VP of the corporation was the manager of the small business. The VP didn’t understand anything about cash flows. He just assumed that there was infinite cash, and so he instructed the office manager to make wire transfers, or pay other bills by mailing a check, without regard to whether that made any sense with concern to the cash flow situation of the business.I came into the picture, first, to replace the office manager when she retired, and then when the VP quit the corporation, I added the subsidiary manager job to my role at the company. — The President of the corporation was my boss.Knowing the general situation of cash and financial demands on the corporation, as a whole, and on the subsidiary, I started to make changes to the capital structure of the subsidiary.For instance, for some reason that made sense at some point, prior to getting a delivery of the most important material to the manufacture of the subsidiary’s main product, a wire transfer had to be made — paying for it, in full, prior to it being sold.This was probably a provision that was put in place by the supplier when the subsidiary was new. — It was now two or three years old.I contacted the saleswoman for the supplier and asked for a trade credit application. We were approved to have more invoices outstanding, in a month, that we’d ever had in a couple of months. And, if we paid the invoices within a few days, we got a discount.So, if this had been in place all along, each immediate wire transfer (not taking into account the bank service charges related to making wire transfers) would have given the company a discount on the materials received.Not figuring that out years before was a dereliction of duty on behalf of the VP.But, let’s go back. — Both the President and the VP thought the manufacture of the subsidiary’s products was a simple thing. Anybody could do it.And, that’s how they treated it. — If they weren’t there, then they’d let basically anyone do it.That led to product inconsistency — even substandard product manufacture — when the product being sold was a commodity. Commodities are undifferentiated, or at least they are supposed to be. — A banana is supposed to be a banana. There’s not much room for “creativity” in a banana, at least in the basic fruit market. — That logic held for what we were doing.By letting almost anybody make this product, there was significant differentiation in what customers received. — It may help to explain that the product was concrete.Customers would get concrete that was too flowable (i.e., too wet) for what they needed, despite telling the dispatcher how they needed it.It might be too dry. It might be too rocky. — At times, it wasn’t even concrete.Concrete is made of rock or gravel, sand, cementitious (cement-like) materials, and water. Sometimes, specialized chemicals are added.Before I became manager of the concrete plant, sometimes, customers were getting loads of “concrete” that had no sand, or no rock.That’s not even concrete!These small moves — of delegating major responsibilities to people who were not qualified to do them — led to a situation in which almost no one was willing to buy the products of the plant. Hence, why the VP left.These same unqualified people, who might have zero computer experience, were expected to make out concrete load tickets, in Microsoft Excel, that the customer would sign and that listed how much the customer was expected to pay.Very high strength concretes, which should have been more expensive, were being sold for regular price. — Mandatory fees were being left off because someone before had hit the DEL key and then saved it as the template.It was just a mess.When I took over the subsidiary, I had five concrete mixer trucks; one commercial driver; and, one guy who could batch the concrete. Oh, and one guy who “cleaned up around the plant” because he needed a job and his parents knew the ex-VP.This is a ridiculous setup for a bona fide concrete plant. This was not some mobile concrete plant. It was a plant I would later use to pave the local paradise in grey solids.I got rid of the guy who needed a job mowing the grass in February. Since I then had two offices, and I wasn’t always at the plant, I noticed that, when I was gone (since there were few orders), the batch person and the driver usually were out in one of the mixer trucks, burning diesel and listening to a radio. — Yes, I do mean one of the old kind, with the antenna and the cassette option? — They had the truck running because it had a heater and it was cold outside.Very soon, the batch person quit because of my insistence that he do something, and I became the dispatcher, the financial guy for the corporation, and the batch person. — The President taught me how to batch concrete, and I improved on that over the years.Remember: having me to batch concrete, originally, was the same idea of having anybody do it. — It didn’t work well in the beginning, especially during the summer, because — it’s not child’s play to batch concrete well.By having an idea of cash outflows and cash inflows of the entire corporation, I was able to improve, gradually, what was going on with the subsidiary. — It still did not do well for the first two years.Then, as I was able to get and retain customers, and provide a steady voice of control over it to those customers, its revenues and profits exploded. They were up over 400% by Year 5.By that time, I was the CFO of the corporation and the manager of the plant, so there was no concept of the “manager of the plant (aka VP)” telling the person in the office to do anything.The lady who originally trained me would often tell the VP that there was no money, and he’d reply, “Just give me the fucking check!”I saw a year in which there was five digits’ worth of overdraft and NSF fees. — Not the best thing for cash-on-hand.Prior to suggesting that I become the plant’s manager, I saw the President hire someone who had some basic construction skills to be the plant’s manager. It didn’t work out, because he then was hired to be head of the local airport. That shortly didn’t work out when he got a DWI?I don’t know what people were thinking about sophistication in the workforce, but it was not endemic to that particular corporation.And, if someone had not stepped in who had some formal training in how to run a business and a willingness to spend time, after hours, learning how to do a job — it would have destroyed the business.Even after taking it over, sales fell from $738,000, to $550,000, to $445,000 — those last two years being ones in which I was in control of the subsidiary.Even competence and good intentions do not erase bad memories from customers’ minds immediately.Sales were in the millions when I passed the torch. — After 445, they jumped to 938.So, hard work does pay off, but not always immediately. And, crap work will kill a business that has potential.