Memories of Dad’s Career

Dad said when he joined the Navy in 1973 that he was doing it just in case the draft was reinstated, and he wanted to determine what branch he joined, and have some influence on what he was going to do while serving. He wanted to fly jets, so he went with the United States Navy. He ended up serving as a nuclear technician, thus signing up for six years, two years of training and four years of service. He did so well in training that they asked him to serve his first two years of service as a training instructor at the training facility in Idaho. His third and fourth years of service were on a nuclear battlecruiser. He was on a deployment when I was born with several months remaining before he would return home. He told me that the day he was given word that I had been born was the day that he made up his mind that he would not have a career in the Navy.

Once he was discharged, he started going to Lamar University to attain his bachelor’s degree in industrial technology. He worked his way through college and ended up going to work for Gulf States Utilities in safety and training, at least that is my best recollection of events. He said the guy who interviewed him was also former Navy, making the process a bit easier than most.

I know that for a time, he worked in the technology department. He was telling me something about how at one point, they were scrambling to get RAM because it was available for the low price of approximately $400/MB, and they were buying all of the 4MB and 8MB sticks they could get. He brought that up the first time I showed him a phone I had with a Windows mobile on it with 2 GB of storage. This was a few years before the first iPhone came out.

He made his way back to the safety and training department when Entergy bought out GSU and he enjoyed his work there. He used to brag about getting to build computer-based training modules that were used throughout the company. It was a benefit to him and the company because he was able to continue working but benefit the company by reaching more people for a longer period of time than what he invested. He loved the fact that he had put one of my brother’s drawings in one of the CBTs about ladder safety.

He went 20 years without using a sick day and received a pen to signify that milestone. He came to the realization that those sick days that he did not use were more valuable than the company recognition. He stressed to us later in life to use the benefits provided to us rather than to buck up and push through, because our health and well-being were more important. He used to complain to Mom about my brother and I being sick all the time, and shortly after he had received that pen, he said “I was blessed with an ear infection”. He said that was the first time he ever used sick time, and it was truly a blessing that he learned from.

Entergy management decided to move the safety and training department to the Woodlands (just north of Houston), and Dad didn’t want to move to Houston or anywhere near it. They lived just west of Beaumont, where they had been located for 20 years at that point. He looked up on the Intranet at work and found there was a job opening available in vibration and leak testing, so he walked down the hall and said he was interested in the position. He finished out his career doing that, retiring as soon as he was able.

My brother brought this up during the celebration of Dad’s life and I’m glad he did. Dad had bought thousands of baseball cards over the years and had them stored under his desk at work for decades. He brought them home and put them in the storage building on his last day of work. Mom found them a few months later, when he had to come clean about buying them all back in the 90s. I saw the receipts that he had kept for them, and it added up to quite a bit of an investment on rookie cards that didn’t pan out, but apparently it was a vice that we didn’t really know about until later in life.

In 2007, I asked my boss for a raise when I was doing IT work. He replied that I had topped out my income with my skillset. I had a wife, two kids, and a desire to have more. I talked to Dad about it, and he suggested an associate’s degree in instrumentation technology, as he had seen that it was good work that paid well and seemed like an occupation that I would be successful in. He was right.

Dad’s Memorial Service


John Raymond Kunefke, 69, of Baytown, died Friday, August 30, 2024. He was born on September 13, 1954, to Clella Faye Bryce Kunefke and Raymond Theodore Kunefke, in Winnie. In his lifetime, John enjoyed hunting, baseball, traveling, kayaking, zip-lining, and spending time with his family and friends. But he enjoyed his faith and serving God most of all. He taught Sunday School and was Choir Director for years. Singing brought him joy.

Survivors include his wife, Lana Kunefke of Baytown; brothers, Marion Kunefke and his wife, Mila, of Godley; and Bobby Kunefke and his wife, Julie, of Fannett; sister, Janna Kunefke and Kathy Morgan, of Winnie; children, Brandon Kunefke and his wife Christle; Joshua Kunefke and his wife Destiny; grandchildren, Alaina Hutchison and her husband, Devin, Lily Kunefke, Sunni Kunefke, and Justus Kunefke; great-grandchildren, Riley, Blake, Blaine, and Samuel Hutchison; and numerous nieces and nephews.

He is preceded in death by his parents.

My Computer Experience So Far

My first experience with a computer, if I remember correctly, was playing the Atari with Dad in the living room of the trailer we lived in the early 1980s.  I distinctly remember playing pong, but there may have been other games. While some of you may not consider that a computer, I will take this opportunity to let you know that you are wrong.
In 1985, my brother and I received our Nintendo game system with Mario Bros. in what I consider our first real “house”.  We had a blast playing it and other games, some of which we swapped with the kids next door and across the street.  I never got into the geek mode that the older kids did with games.  I just liked trying to figure out how to complete the games, and learn their quirks.
In 3rd grade, we were introduced to the Apple IIe at school (1986). We did not do much on them.  The only thing I remember doing was drawing a picture using graph paper, translating that into code, and slowly typing said code into the computer to see the drawing in color on the screen.  We saved our code on a 5 1/2″ floppy disk.  There is no GUI (Graphical User Interface) on the Apple IIe.  At least, there was no GUI on the computers at my school…

I found out recently that my old school was torn down a few years ago…  🙁

Dad brought a computer home a few years later.  It was installed with Windows 3.1, or some version close to that. He showed me all of the components on the inside.  He taught me the basics of how it all worked together.  I helped him put together a few that he had sold through his side business. He taught me how to install the Microsoft Windows OS (operating system), as well as the applications to actually be able to do work, such as Microsoft Word and Excel (There was no MS Office at the time).
We upgraded to Windows 95, which was one of the biggest advances I had seen in computer interaction.  AOL came a year or two later.  It was difficult to use AOL, though, because it seemed like we couldn’t call 10 miles down the road without getting charged for long distance service.  It made the potential uses of the personal computer exponentially greater, though.
In the fall of 1996, I went to the local University and learned about HAL (C++), which was the name of the University mail system.  It wasn’t completely isolated from the rest of the world, but it was very limited and text based.  I did, however set up at least 2 blind dates by looking for nursing students on there.
In 1997, I did some computer upgrades for a power company.  We upgraded all of the computers from Windows NT 3.51 to Windows NT 4.0.  It was a cool experience because I learned a little networking (Token Ring, which they were dropping for TCP/IP). I knew very little about these technologies at the time.
I bought a Gateway PC in late 1998 shortly after I moved into my own place.  It was really cool to be able to dial in to AOL (local number) and not have to time my dial-up connection.  I also used Netzero, and some other dial-up (EV1.net) services for several years.
In 2000, I was asked to work at ExxonMobil as a computer technician. I learned about Laser Jet Printers and repaired those along with the computers they were using at the time. I took part in their upgrade from NT 4.0 to Windows 2000.  I was laid off in 2002 because the upgrades were complete, they had fewer positions available, and I was the low guy on the list at the time.
In 2003, the cable company came by the house and upgraded our cable box for who knows what reason (I knew the reason), and I called them that afternoon to come back out and install my cable modem!  THAT was awesome!  At the time there was a BMW Films series that I had been downloading over the modem that took me at least a day of downloading to complete each 7 minute video.  When I got cable internet service I downloaded them again just to see the difference and it only took a few minutes.
I did some data recovery work from 2003 to 2004.  We took crashed hard drives, cracked CDs/DVDs, and even some broken floppies from people who really needed the data stored on them, and recovered the data.  I worked in a clean room, and swapped the platters out.  I did some really neat stuff to recover data off of destroyed media.  The only one I can remember not recovering was a drive that the heads had broken off of the arms.  The person had tried accessing the data so much before sending it in, that the arms had scratched the metal off of the discs.  The drive was filled with metallic dust, and the discs looked like scratched glass.
For a few years in there, I had my own DBA (Doing Business As), doing small computer jobs for individuals.  I built, repaired, and freshened up computers, as well as installed extra phone cables and hookups in their homes.  It didn’t take me long to realize that building computers was turning into a losing business strategy.  The big computer makers were lowering their prices so drastically, that my labor to purchase the pieces and build myself just had little to no profit.
I went back to work at ExxonMobil in 2004 for the upgrade to Windows XP, and worked for several of their sites through the upgrade to Windows 7.  Shortly before the upgrade, though, I changed departments, and started working on the control systems.
I installed my own network cabling in my house for our home network when I installed the CAT6 cabling for our new cable service. The idea of installing my own network infrastructure has always been intriguing. I do not know why, because it is really simple. I just like knowing how everything is built, because if you know how it is built, you can figure out where the problem is when there is one.
Since the first Gateway computer I bought, I have built several computers for myself, family, friends, and church.  I have also purchased a few desktops and laptops. Windows XP was beginning to feel a little stale after a few years, so I started using Ubuntu (Linux) for approximately 9 months solid (at home). It was a pleasant experience, but there were too many things I couldn’t (didn’t want to take the time to learn how to) do there that I could in Windows, and eventually went back to Windows.  Microsoft Windows 7 was the best version I have ever used. Windows 8 (I have had approximately 45 minutes of experience with it) makes me sick to my stomach. On a desktop, it feels like I should be using a touchscreen tablet. On a tablet, it may work well, but I’m not gonna spend the cash to find out if I like it. For the past year, I have been using a Mac Mini, and it is the best desktop I have ever owned.
I’ll write another post about my transition from Windows to OS X.
I no longer work at ExxonMobil (the correct way to spell it, btw), but I have been working on Honeywell, Foxboro, and Emerson Delta V control systems for the past 5.5 years. To put it simply, a control system is a computer system that controls all of the instruments in a refinery or chemical plant, and transmits data to the operators in the control room. It allows them the safety of operating the process without having to be in the danger zones.
It seems that every part of computer technology I have used in the past is in use in some part of the control systems I support today, except for the games.

Time

I have spent countless hours wasting time on an online game.  I’m not gonna say what game, because then I might actually be guilty of hooking someone else into it’s claws.  It’s a fun game where you work with others around the world, building cities, making friends and enemies alike.  It’s free to play and interesting to see how a game like that changes with online interaction.
I started out on it innocent enough… looked interesting, met a few people.  The game requires time to build and interact to make it great.  If I were single, I could have maintained it and not let it control my time.  However, it was taking way too much of my time.  I gave it up today.  Well, I’m gonna log on to send a message to my former co-players, but after that, I wont log back on.
Time is one of our most precious commodities.  It is limited, as gold is limited.  The longer it takes to realize that, the less time there is to correct it.  So long, unnamed game.

Humberto

Last night was really strange.  I went to bed thinking that Humberto was just a tropical storm.  I couldn’t sleep due to the noises the wind was causing my house to make. 
About two hours after I laid down, the power went out and came back on several times.  I heard a bang in the living room and went in there to find that my screen door was being banged around by the very strong winds.  It was banging up against the door, making an awful noise.  I would have opened the door and closed the screen door completely, but I didn’t want to risk a bodily accident by opening the door.  Then the power went out. 
I then noticed that the wind was driving rain into the living room window on the north side of the house.  It was coming in pretty quickly.  I put some towels on the window and tried to at least stop some of the water from coming in.  I didn’t seem to be making much of a difference.Christle called her mom to find out what the storm was up to, and that’s how we found out that Humberto was a hurricane.  We also found out about where the path was.

Hurricane Humberto Path

We live a few miles east of where I-10 turns N/E to go to Beaumont, and the storm was just south of us.  Basically, the only thing we could think to do was to pray, get dressed in case we had to leave the house, and wait it out. 
It took about an hour and a half before the wind started to die down, and another hour for power to be restored.  Before the power was restored, I was able to look out the kitchen window, because the screen had been blown off, and saw that water was standing over my driveway.  That’s the deepest I’ve ever seen the water level here.
I went outside and found that the screen door had been shattered, and glass was all over the porch.  Our swing set was folded over on itself.  Tree limbs were all over the place… I only specify ‘tree’ limbs, because there were no other type of limbs (separated from their host) anywhere on the property.  The water was flowing very swiftly because it appeared to really want to get off my property and away from all the limbs… maybe it was confused about what type of limbs they were.
I finally got to sleep sometime around 5:30am.  I got to work around noon.
This is where I have to explain the lesson I learned from this experience.  Ever since evacuating for Rita two years ago, I have held to the plan of staying around instead of evacuating for another hurricane.  I will not stay home, thanks to this experience.  Worrying about the safety of my wife and kids during this was too much to handle.  Given the choice, I’d much rather deal with traffic than to go through this again.

Posting

I seem to have had a lag in my writing over the past two months.  I am not really sure why that is, I just know that I want to pick it back up. 
My mid-year resolution is to post more frequently.  Maybe even do some video posts.  We’re getting a new camera this week.  I’ll post about it when it comes in and I have a little time to play with it.

April was Boring

I waited for inspiration to come to me all month long, and I couldn’t think of anything to write.  I think it’s that fact that has led me to lose sleep last month.  I didn’t use this outlet that I set up to get things off my chest.
Up until last night, Heroes was getting a little dull.  Last night was probably the best episode so far.  There was a little continuity error in there, but all-in-all it was great.
There have been some great strides in solid-state hard drives over the past few months.  Having a history in hard drive data recovery, it looks like that industry may be taking a turn for the worse once these solid-state drives become the standard.  At the rate that the size increases, the odds are that they will be the standard is good within the next 4-5 years.  Instead of physical defects in the platters, our primary worry will be bad currents of electricity.
I got a new phone a few weeks ago.  Christle did, too.  They are pretty cool, and if we can keep from dropping them too often, I doubt that we’ll get tired of them very soon.
A friend of mine from high school passed away on April 21.  Joey grew up down the street from me.  We moved in to that house in April of 1989.  We hadn’t really kept in touch over the years, but it is heartbreaking to see someone I grew up with pass away.  While at the funeral, I found out another classmate of mine died in a car wreck about 7 years ago.  I didn’t know him very well, but I remember that he was the kind of guy who always seemed to be happy.  I remember playing football over at his house with Joey, Chad, Bobby, and a few other guys.  I also found out that a girl I used to “date” in Junior High committed suicide a few months ago.  I don’t like thinking about this.
Christle’s been going over to her parents house a lot this month to get things done for her sister’s wedding.  The knot-tying ceremony is coming up rather quickly, so they’ve been working very hard lately.
I’m excited to finally have the opportunity to visit Schlitterbahn in Galveston in a few weeks.  I’ve almost gotten the park map memorized.
So, I guess April wasn’t so boring.  I wish I had less to write about.  I just need to remember to write when I need to so that I can get it out instead of bottling it all in.

Long Week

Wow… was this week long enough?  It seemed to creep by quickly even though I worked a lot while trying to get through it.  I was trying to keep my posts up, but just didn’t seem to get to it as often as I’d have liked.
This has been a good year.  There have been a few things we’d have skipped if we could have, but the good things have far outweighed the unfortunate.  I’ll expand on that next weekend, though.
I’ve got to get back to the gym.  I haven’t been in almost 4 weeks!  I’m going Tuesday morning.  Really.
Merry Christmas!

She’s Leaving

My grandmother wasn’t breathing for over 10 minutes yesterday.  The tests have confirmed that she has barely any brain activity at all.  The breathing machine will be removed in the morning.
I spent some time at the hospital this afternoon.  It hit me harder than I thought it would.  The hardest part was seeing Dad and Grandpa saying goodbye.
Grandpa told me that for the past few years at night before bed that he’d play his harmonica for Grandma.  He said that for the past few weeks that he’d been playing “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You” for her every night.  He said that when he finished, she’d just say “I love you, too, Honey”.  He’s really happy that she’s not in pain any more.
They raised a family rooted in God and His Word.  They have remained faithful to studying their Bible, and keeping active in their prayer life which amounts to keeping up their relationships with God.
Grandma will be sorely missed.  She has been a real blessing in mine and many other lives.

Creativity

I started this blog as a way to get my thoughts out and share stuff that’s on my mind.  I have an overwhelming sense of “creativity” in me that seems to have to fight it’s way out.  I want to create a NetCast (aka podcast) that allows me to speak my mind rather than type it, but it’s a lot of work.
I have spent the last few weeks struggling with the amount of time I spend in front of the computer instead of with my family, yet I haven’t been able to figure out what to add to this thing.  I don’t like the amount of time I’ve spent in front of the computer over the last few weeks, but I also don’t like the fact that I haven’t posted anything in that amount of time as well.
I’m starting my second class for the semester tomorrow, and I have no idea how that’s going to affect my schedule.  I feel like Macroeconomics is a breeze, even though it’s not that interesting to me.  It may be a little different when I write my papers for it, but I don’t think I’ll have much of a problem with that.
I have to write a paper soon about an economic situation going on in the world.  Does anyone out there have any ideas about an economic situation going on right now that I can write about?  I’d appreciate any help that doesn’t require me to use any more brain power than I feel like using, which isn’t much.  Heck, I’ll even give you credit for the idea.
After this semester, I think I’m going to cut myself off from media for a few days, just to relax my brain.  I need the break, because I think I have a problem… an addiction to news.  Digg provides the fix most of the time, but I have to go elsewhere every now and then, because I get caught up with Digg stories pretty frequently.
The Texans lost today.  The road to an 8-8 season looks like a far away dream for us right now.  The Astros didn’t pull it out this season like they have for the past two years.  I wouldn’t expect Roger Clemens to come out again after this season.  I’d almost be willing to bet that this season’s final Astros game will be Clemens’ last.  It really stinks.  My only reason for thinking that is because I don’t know why he’d want to play for a losing team again.  He probably already regrets signing back up this year after helping them get to the World Series for the first time last year.  That was an accomplishment that will probably not be met this year.
I’m not a sports expert, and that’s about all the sports talk I have in me.
I had a great weekend.  Christle and I met a few new people and really enjoyed the time we spent with them.  This should be a good week.