Random Thoughts on Money

There is one event that objectively and measurably defines a person’s opinion for the worth of money. This event is the transaction. Despite people’s opinion, dollar bills are worthless in virtually every sense of the word. You cannot use it for anything; it doesn’t make a good tool, it doesn’t provide much warmth, it doesn’t even taste good. The only thing I can think of doing with it, is make a small paper airplane. The only way a dollar has value is if you use it in a transaction.Other than in a transaction it just sits in your wallet, does nothing, and is only dead weight (not much weight though). This correlates with our sense of worth in a dollar, it can get us something which has intrinsic worth to us.

Megan Pretending with Ponies

            Megan loves ponies, especially My Little Ponies. Not only does Megan love playing the My Little Ponies board game, she also enjoys playing pretend with her pony figures. Megan must have at least a hundred My Little Pony figures, some of which are small. Not tiny, just small enough that you don’t notice them when walking barefoot in the dark and stifle expletives when walking over them. Anyway, all these ponies, big and small, are played with often, in very imaginative ways, by our little girl. One day I came upon Megan playing with two ponies and, with a concerned expression, I asked, “Megan, what are the ponies doing?” “Pony is kissing ponies but,” she said lifting up one and gesturing toward the other. I guess she was learning about body parts that day.

            Due to the annoying names the ponies have, and Megan’s tendency to play and talk with them all the time, a just started creating my own names for them. This started about two months ago when Megan and I were playing with two pink ponies in her room. “My name is Pinky Pie,” Megan said thrusting her pony into my pony’s face, “what’s your name?” “My name is Pink Eye,” I said chuckling. Megan’s sincere response was, “Nice to meet you Pink Eye!”

Megan and Coloring

             Megan loves to color. She has several sets of crayons, boxes of markers, and a bucket of colored chalk, along with a truckload of coloring books. Megan loves coloring, but loves coloring more with daddy. One day I got bored coloring with crayons in one of her Color-Me Sesamestreet books; so I started drawing angry eyes on all of the Sasamestreet characters. “Why is Elmo angry?” Megan asks the first time I drew them. To which I responded, “Because it’s funny.” Apparently Megan thought so too, so now she draws angry eyes in a lot of her coloring books.

After Megan and I are done riding our bikes we usually draw on the driveway with coloring chalk. Megan draws lots of colored blobs and I write out math equations, and explain to Megan what they are. One day Megan was using more colors than usually and I was writing out math equations and describing them to Megan. I wrote out 1 + 1 = 2, and told Megan that one plus one equals two, to which Megan rolled her eyes and responded, “No, Daddy.  That is not how you do it.” Megan then tightened her grip on several different colored chalk and made a big arc on the asphalt while exclaiming, “This is how you draw a rainbow!”

The Psychology of Value and Dollars

Updated this article which is now in Google Doc format.

Systems and Order

Updated talk and placed it in Google Docs format.

Klapheck Family Newsletter - just found this.

Merry Christmas from Klapheck 2.0

(Christmas 2009)

            Hello to our many friends and family once again. We hope that this year finds you and your loved ones happy and well.

BSA Merit Badges

The following are the 4 merit badges I am planning on teaching: Communication, Personal Management, Family Life, and Engineering.

Megan Swimming

Megan loves to swim. Here you are at 28 months swimming!



Megan no longer use arm floaties but still need help and uses a small inner-tube. Just last Sunday we went swimming as a family. Megan and I walk to the pool together from Grandma's house (Lynne). Once at the pool Megan rushes to the water, inner-tube around her waist, and carefully walks down the steps into the water. Megan continues walking down the steps until the water is at her waist and then jumps the rest of the way into the pool. There are three things Megan loves to do in the pool; jumping, spinning, and piggy-backing.

Brendan and the Metric System

I had a 6 month construction rotation during which time I worked at the Beale Air Force Base and the Sacramento Resident Office (SRO). When I worked at SRO there was one Mechanical Engineer I worked with as much as possible; Brendan. Brendan and I had an ongoing lighthearted debate about the Metric vs. English unit system over the course of several months. For those who don't know my stance, then see a previous post of mine about the English unit system. During our conversations Brendan did help me understand the English unit system much better. I had always been confused with units like lb/BTU. In this case lb is not referring to the force of an object divided by its energy content. Instead, it is referring to an amount of a substance (measured in weight) per its energy content. This is because, as Brendan says, the fundamental unit for an amount of substance is not mass but weight. I would very much disagree with this, but I can understand where this idea comes from; one cannot measure mass, mass must be derived from taking its weight and dividing by gravity. Although we could understand each other we still enjoyed teasing one another; Brendan and I would tease each other almost every week. One of my favorite instances is when we were looking at a pump and calculating the load the pump puts on the equipment pad. Brendan said, "That's right , the load, not the mass but the force." He then broke out into a big smile and we both shared a laugh.

Mechanical Insulation Design Guide - Design Objectives | Whole Building Design Guide

Just finished a Webinar on this subject:
Mechanical Insulation Design Guide - Design Objectives | Whole Building Design Guide

The most useful part of this guide I found was the condensate control calculator: http://www.wbdg.org/design/midg_design_ccchp.php

and the financial investment calculator: http://www.wbdg.org/design/midg_design_mifc.php.

The financial investment calculator can be used to calculate the rate of return on any investment!