I am a big fan of randomness; to me living in a place where the weather was the same everyday would be a real trial. Given the need some of our species have to organize everything it is somewhat surprising that we have stayed with a seven-day week and months of varying lengths. You never hear the crew of the Starship Enterprise talk about the forthcoming “weekend” and I wonder if all that warp driving has thoroughly messed up their sleep cycles. Never is randomness so well displayed as during the year end holidays. With Christmas and New Years being seven days apart, we get a double dose of whatever schedule destroying day they happen to fall on. It was always interesting to debate just how many vacation days one needed to “save” to achieve the optimum amount of time off during what is typically our worst weather of the year. This year many organizations are just shutting down for an entire week plus an extra Monday for football and parade viewing. We considered skipping a new blog posting but decided it was a great opportunity to thank our regular readers for their continued interest in these musings. We will be starting our fifth year of twice weekly postings and are long past any worries about running out of ideas. Every time I finish one series of ideas, the phone rings or an e-mail arrives with a topic that needs exploring. During 2018 we’ll have a renewed emphasis on fundamental gear knowledge. For those new to gearing we realize that many of the technical papers we publish are a bit like expecting a grade school music student to play a symphony on a kazoo. We hope to help our “rookies” master the basics so they can fully appreciate the  Gear Technology online archives. An archive that never takes a day off no matter what the calendar says. So, enjoy the time with family and friends. We’ll be back in touch in January.