Paramount Textile Machine Company - Paramark 20 Transfer Machine

 The Paramount Textile Machine company is no longer in operation.  They were located in High Point, NC and manufactured the Paramark 20 machine that we use at my company.  It is old and parts are hard to find.

I could not find anything in Google Search about this machine so here is what I have on it:

Paramark 20 Heat Transfer Machine

Shit Adrienne Says

Mom, when you have grandkids from London they will be mixed.  You better learn how to do corn rows.

Enfitnix XLite 100 Smart Tail Light

I purchased the ENFITNIX XLite 100 Smart Tail light for my bicycle.  Since I can't see it while I am riding and I have not remembered to ask those riding behind me (of which there are very few) I do not know how this perfroms.  I do know that I have it set on automatic and I have it on a table in my garage and if the table is bumped or very slightly touched the light recognizes the motion and turns on.

Since I could not find the manual for this thing on line and I hate keeping hard copies of manuals or anything paper, I have scanned it and added it to this link for anyone else to use:

 ENFITNIX XLite 100 Smart Tail Light

The Motley Fool Effect

I subscribe to the Motley Fool Stock Advisor (their lowest level I believe) where you are sent stock recommendations about every week.  I don't always buy their recommendations but occasionally I do if I feel the recommended stock fits my overall strategy.

An interesting phenomenon I have noticed is that on some of the stocks (especially the smaller cap stocks) immediately after the Motley Fool email is sent recommending the stock the volume and price jump on that stock.

Case in point: the recommendation today is Charlotte's Web Holdings (CWBHF) and the email I received today at 1:38 PM GMT -4 (EDT).  Take a look at what happened after the recommendation was sent out:

There was an immediate spike at 1:00 PM.  Did some people get the email before me?  Did someone know that the email was going to go out and bought beforehand?  Are they staggering the emails sent?  Does my email server (Office 365) suck and not deliver my mail in a timely fashion?

Who is acting on the recommendation before I get it?  Are Motely Fool employees buying the stock before the emails are sent out?

In this case it is not a big deal to me because I don't particularly like this stock but if it were one that I really liked, I would be upset that everyone else was able to buy early and drive up the price before me.

Yoga Pants

Am I the only one who really likes the new fashion trend that has all those young women wearing yoga stretch pants everywhere and in all seasons?  It adds just a touch of positivity to traveling through airports.

New Parental Names

The kids have give me and the wife yet another set of names:

Hers - Squinchy
Me - Imaginary Squinchy

I won't go into details here but they can be viewed as non-loving nicknames.  At least hers.

They have given each other names too which they use in conversations with very annoying low forced voices.

London's name is Roger, Adrienne's name is Alfred and Atticus' name is Chloe.

Newton, North Carolina Post Office - Getting your passport

So since we are doing this epic trip this summer in the RV and planning to go to Canada, it is time to get the three kids passports. To figure out how to apply for passports I went to the site travel.state.gov and followed the directions.  For an individual getting his or her passport for the first time, one must go to either a passport office or a Passport Acceptance Facility that handles the applications.

So I did a search for a Passport Acceptance Facility near me on the travel.state.gov website. It showed me the results below:

So I thought it would be no problem to take the children to the Newton, NC Post Office Passport Acceptance Facility on a Monday to submit their applications for their passports.

So I leave work and meet the wife and three children at the Newton Post Office at about 3:30 PM.  The nice lady in the Post Office kindly informed us that the person who did the passport applications was not there today and that he took appointments.  We had to schedule an appointment for this coming Thursday.

It would have been nice if the travel.state.gov website actually made mention that we needed an appointment to get a passport application submitted.  I guess I should not be surprised that when dealing with a government agency I would have my time wasted.

So if anyone needs to know:
If you want to submit your passport application at the Newton, NC Post Office, you need an appointment.  Call ahead in plenty of time and don't expect that you will be able to get just the time slot you need.  They were pretty full.  The person who accepts teh applications is not at the Newton Post Office but on certain days.

The Hickory, NC Post Office accepts walk-ins for submitting passport applications but there is often a significant wait.  The travel.state.gov website doesn't indicate that the Hickory Post Office accepts walk-ins.  Lots of room for improvement with that site on this front.