Daily Archives: December 4, 2014

Turkey Redux . . .

If it’s Thursday, it’s Turkey and Dressing . . . at least at Cracker Barrel.

For our family Thanksgiving Dinner last Thursday, our son Chris whipped up a batch of his great Seafood Gumbo, which we all really enjoyed, but Jan is always jonesing for Turkey and Dressing. So much in fact, that we stopped off at the Conroe Cracker Barrel and picked up a Turkey and ‘Dressing’ Thanksgiving Dinner for her to have the next day while she was house/dog sitting for Chris, Linda, and Piper over Thanksgiving weekend.

But, ‘Dressing’ is in quotes because Jan didn’t get any with her Cracker Barrel take-off. She got the Turkey, she got the Ham, and she got the veggies, biscuits, and pumpkin streusel dessert, but no dressing.

Today was her day to make up for it. So about 3:30 we drove down to the next exit to have a Turkey and Dressing lupper at Cracker Barrel. And this time she made sure she got her Dressing

Finishing up at CB, we drove on down to the Wal-Mart to pick up some stuff, before finally heading home for the night. All in all, a very nice day.

I’ve had some more time to play with the Arduino computer kit, and have been working through the hardware/software projects. The hardware stuff is pretty basic, i.e., this circuit varies the flash rate for the LED by turning the potentiometer, but I’m more interested in the software programming part.

Arduino Breadboard

So what I do is go in and rewrite the software for each project to make it do different things, learning as I go. Always fun.

I’ve been reading a couple of good books lately, both by the the same author, Steve Lehto. The first one is the story of the development of the rocket belt or jet pack. And there’s even a murder in this story. Even better, you can read this one free with Kindle Unlimited. A really interesting story.

 The Great American Jet Pack: The Quest for the Ultimate Individual Lift Device

The next book is the behind-the-scenes story of Chrysler’s decades-long project to develop a viable turbine-powered family automobile. And despite what you may have read or heard, they did. Able to burn just about any fuel, from gasoline, diesel, and kerosene, to jet fuel, tequila, and perfume, the last version proved to be as good, or even better than anything on the road at the time. In fact 50 test cars were loaned out for 3 month periods to over 200 ordinary families that put more than a million miles on the cars.

Chrysler’s Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit’s Coolest Creation

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As it turns out the US Government pretty much killed the turbine car, but not deliberately, and probably not for the reason you might think.

A very good book, and a great read.

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Thought for the Day:

“You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.” – Robert Heinlein

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