My Birthday Girl
Though this blog is dated October 24th, most of you, including Jan won’t see it until tomorrow the 25th, which is Jan’s birthday.
Sweetheart, you know how much I love you, and that I probably wouldn’t be here without you.
Tomorrow we’re going down to Galveston to have dinner at our go-to celebration place, the Saltgrass Steakhouse on the Seawall.
Really looking forward to it. And Jan’s looking forward to their Pumpkin Cheesecake.
Thought For The Day:
My age is very inappropriate for my behavior.
October 24, 2010
Happy Birthday and Wings Over Houston . . . part 1
First off, I want to wish my wonderful Sweetie a Happy Birthday today. It’s today, the 25th, even though this is posted late on the 24th. I couldn’t have made it without you.
Yesterday we spent the day at the Wings Over Houston Airshow. We used to go just about every year when we lived here full-time, but the last time we did the show, it was 2007, right before we hit the road full-time. The problem was that the show is always the end of October, and we don’t normally get back to the Houston area until right before Thanksgiving.
But thanks to the arrival of Master Landon, we’re back early this year, so we couldn’t pass up a chance to go again.
Luckily, my Sweetie is an Air Force brat and likes air shows as much as I do. The last show we actually attended was at Eielson AFB, Alaska in June of 2008. We saw the AF Thunderbirds then, too, just like we saw yesterday.
The first thing we saw walking thru the gate was NASA’s Super Guppy. This is the last one of four that is still flying. We saw one one of the others this past February at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, AZ. The later ones were kind of Frankenstein’s monsters, patched together from several different aircraft types, including C-97J’s, Boeing 707’s, and others.
NASA used these to transport large rocket, Shuttle, and Space Station parts around the country.
The next thing we came across was NASA’s 747 Shuttle Transporter. I guess this will end up a museum pretty soon.
Right next door was one of NASA’s T-38’s. The astronauts use these to keep their flying hours current and to fly back and forth to the Cape. I spent some time working on these back in the 80’s. They were also used by NASA to fly along side during the Shuttle’s approach and televise the landings right down to the runway, and the NASA contractor I worked for maintained the cameras.
The show started out with the landing of the Flag by the REMAX Jump Team.
Here is a C-17 backing out to the flight line. It’s neat to see these newer jets backing up on their own, without a tug to push them out.
An AH-64 Apache attack helicopter
A P-40 Warhawk. This was the plane used by the AVG (American Volunteer Group) Flying Tigers flying in China against the Japanese before America entered the war. Later, after America entered the war, this group, known as the ‘Black Sheep” Squadron, of Baa Baa Black Sheep fame, was absorbed in the US Marines.
A Grumman F8F Bearcat. One of my favorite WWII planes, the Bearcat was designed to out-fly any German or Japanese plane in the war. Unfortunately, it did not enter active service until right after the war ended. It was the last new prop plane ordered by the military. Flown by the Blue Angels from 1946 to 1950, in 1946 it set a world time to climb record of 94 seconds to 10,000 feet. This record was not broken until well up into the century series of jets.
An AD-1 Skyraider. Another plane delivered too late for WWII, the Skyraider, (nicknamed the ‘SPAD’), was used as a ground attack plane as late as the Vietnam War.
One of several B-17’s at the show.
Close-up of the engine on another B-17.
A C-130 landing. Up until a few years ago, one of the demo flights here at the airshow was a JATO short field takeoff which was very impressive. JATO stands for “Jet Assisted Take Off”, but they’re really RATO “Rocket Assisted Take Off”, units, and are used to basically just ‘jump’ the plane into the air with little or no take-off roll.
Here’s a shot of the Blue Angels C-130 transport doing a RATO take-off at another airshow. Supposedly they don’t do the demos anymore because they don’t make the RATO bottles anymore and the supply is starting to run low.
Bummer! Watching a big C-130 just leap into the air and start flying is really something.
A B-25 Mitchell bomber, like the ones used in Jimmy Doolittle’s famous Raid on Tokyo in April 1942, the first US raid to strike the Japanese homeland.
An F4U Corsair. Called “The Whistling Death” by Japanese pilots due to the sound it made in a steep dive, the Corsair more than out-matched the Zero in all regimes except slow speed. And being very well armored, it was also hard to shoot down. “Pappy” Boyinton, leader of the Black Sheep Squadron, is credited with 22 kills in one.
An SB2C Helldiver. This is the last one still flying in the world.
As usual, the crowd was very large. especially since the weather was so good.
A C-17 C-47 Heritage Flight, showing 70 years of cargo plane history.
Tora, Tora, Tora. Every airshow they do an Attack on Pearl Harbor reenactment with a lot of planes in the air,
and a lot of big explosions on the ground, along with very large balls of fire coming up. They also do reenactments of the Battle of Midway, and a Vietnam War firefight.
And, up until a few years ago, they always finished up with the A-Bomb drop on Hiroshima, but, apparently that was deemed offensive by some, and it was discontinued.
So it seems OK to show the Japanese attacking us, but it’s not politically correct to show us attacking the Japanese. Who knew?
This AT-6, SNJ, Harvard, Zero Heritage Flight shows the various models of the venerable AT-6 advanced trainer, including the one in front made up as a Zero for the movie “Tora, Tora, Tora”.
A P-51C painted in the colors of the famed “Red Tail” Squadron flown by the Tuskegee Airmen.
A couple of shots of two of the B-17 Flying Fortresses at the show.
A B-24 Liberator. The B-24 holds the record as the most produced American military aircraft, at over 18,000 units. At its peak, Ford’s Willow Run plant was building one an hour.
As compared with the more famous B-17, the B-24 was faster, had better range, and carried a larger bomb. But it was harder to fly, and due to its design, more prone to battle damage. Also, it’s high wing design was much less safe during a ocean ditching, or a crash landing.
B-52
This A-10 Warthog was the jet-age replacement for the AD-1 Skyraider, and excels as a ground attack and tank killer.
The UH-1 Iroquois as known as a ‘Huey’. The Huey got its nickname from the fact that the original designation for the helo was the HU-1, and although it was changed to UH-1 in 1962, the name Huey stuck.
One of several aerobatic displays, this one flown in a T-34 Mentor trainer is amazing due to the fact that the T-34 is not really considered a aerobatic plane. The pilot, a retired airline captain named Deborah Rihn-Harvey with over 30,000 hours with Southwest Airlines, does some outstanding maneuvers with the T-34 since its oil and fuel systems are not certified for inverted flight.
I’ll finished up the rest of the show tomorrow since this has been a long post.
October 24, 2011
Happy Birthday to my Sweetie . . .
First off, I want to say ‘Happy Birthday’ to my beautiful wife, Jan. I’ve loved you almost since the day I met you, and you’ve made my life complete.
I got up about 9:30 this morning to find a call from the RV/MH Hall of Fame. The accountant was there to do the payroll and was having problems with the program.
Getting down there I found the problem was with the setup of the new copy of the program I had installed. Apparently some settings are kept in the program directory, and not with the data, so we had to go back in and configure the correct check formats to get everything working OK. I ended up staying until about 4:15 fixing up loose ends, and double-checking everything.
On my way home I stopped off at Lowe’s to pick up a 2” wood chisel to help me get the rest of the carpet up. When we leave here Wednesday we’ll have 12 days at the Indian Lakes Thousand Trails Preserve in Ohio, and I hope to make some more headway on the floor. We’ll see.
About 5:15 pm Jan and I headed over to King Wha, our great local Chinese restaurant, where we met Al Hesselbart and Dave and Jean Damon for dinner. Another night of great food and good conversation.
I’m more and more impressed by the 4G speeds on my new Droid Charge . . . when it’s working.
Not my phone, it’s working great. But the 4G has only been turned on in this area since last Thursday, and apparently they’re still working out the kinks. Within a 15 minute period, I’ve had 4G, 3G, 1X, 4G, 3G, 4G, all sitting in the same chair.
But when it’s working, it screams. This evening at dinner, I checked with Speedtest.net and was showing 20 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up. Then Jan took my phone away and said it was impolite to play with it at the table. Awwwwh! No fair. Dave was playing with his.
Four years ago, the last time we had broadband in a Sticks & Bricks, I had 5 Mbps and thought that was fast. But 20, WOW!
Wanted to give you a sneak peek at one of Landon’s Christmas presents. Hopefully he doesn’t read the blog and won’t see it.
We saw this rocking horse yesterday at Sam’s Club and just had to get it. Besides rocking, if you squeeze his ears, he whinnies and his head and tail move back and forth.
Tomorrow is our last full day here in Elkhart, and we plan on spending it driving around through the Amish countryside around Shipshewana, and then end up back at El Maguey for Jan’s birthday dinner.
October 24, 2012
Quito and Quesadillas . . .
One of my website client’s called yesterday afternoon asking permission to give my phone number and email address to a friend of his who wanted some website work done. I told him to tell his friend to give me a call.
So a little after noon today the guy gave me a call.
From Quito, Ecuador!
He’s an American who owns a Bed and Breakfast down there, and also does some immigration work, and he wants some updates done to his websites, and also some help getting higher in the Google listings. So it looks like I’ve got a new client, albeit a longer distance one than normal.
On the strange side, a little before 3pm Jan and I heard a sizzling pop in the rig, and then a few seconds later smelled something getting hot. She thought the sound came from my side of the rig and I thought it came from hers.
I started checking everything electrical in the rig with no luck. Nothing that was on quit working, or smelled burnt. And in a little while the smell was gone and never reoccurred.
So I guess I’ll just have to keep a close eye on things and see if it comes back.
About 5pm Jan and I headed into Savannah to have dinner. Since we were both wanting Mexican we ending up at Jalapeno’s Mexican Restaurant. Jalapeno’s is pretty much at the top of everyone’s list of best Mexican in Savannah, and after eating there this evening we all agree.
The Combo Platter that Jan, and I both had was just fantastic.
And we weren’t the only ones who liked the place. The parking lot was overflowing, with cars parked on the grass, on the road shoulder, and in front of No Parking signs.
We both agreed we wanted to come back here before we leave.
So many restaurants, so little time.
October 24, 2014
Happy Birthday to My Sweetie . . .
Although this blog post is dated Friday, the 24th of October, most of you, including Jan will be reading this on Saturday, the 25th. Which just happens to be my Sweetie’s birthday.
We plan to have dinner tomorrow night at Outback Steakhouse, one of Jan’s favorite places, while we’re over in B/CS.
FedEx came through and found the GGS yard out here in the middle of the country, delivering our new Galaxy Tab 4 about 11:30 this morning, so I’ve been having a lot of fun getting it set up, duplicating many of the apps I have on my phone.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 10.1-Inch, White
So far I really like it. I’ll keep you updated as I get to spend some more time with it.
While we were parked here at the yard, I thought I’d take a go at replacing our lavatory faucet. I hadn’t tried it while we were on the gate because I knew I’d have to turn the water off, and these things always take a lot longer than they should.
And today was no different. I got the water hoses disconnected with not a lot of problems, but the fasteners that hold the faucet to the counter proved to be a lot more trouble. In fact, after fooling with them for about 3 hours, they proved impossible . . for today.
There is a special wrench available for just this purpose, and I’ll pick one up at Home Depot tomorrow when we’re over in Bryan for Jan’s Birthday.
I’m not sure where the name comes from, but I came across a interesting website called CamelCamelCamel. You enter an Amazon product and CamelCamelCamel tracks the price for you, letting know when the price drops.
Turns out Amazon, and apparently many other online sellers, regularly raise and lower prices based on some weird algorithms that they’ve come up with. So CamelCamelCamel will let you know when the price drops.
October 24, 2015
Not Even For Special Occasions?
or It’s Alive!
Well, it started raining yesterday and it’s still raining today. And it’s supposed to rain tomorrow and the next day. But if we had to have a lot of rain this is probably the best way to have it. Just a steady, light to medium downpour, with no wind.
And even better, we stayed inside pretty much all day since we had almost no traffic. Jan did stay outside for part of the morning, just knowing that the long-fabled Flowback crew was going to start coming in today. But she gave up after a while and came in where it was dry.
While we were having a lunch of Jan’s delicious homemade Pimento Cheese and fresh sliced tomato sandwiches, I suddenly had a thought about how to fix my problem with the new charger port on my ASUS laptop.
As I mentioned a few days ago, after I got my laptop disassembled and the old charger port unsoldered, I discovered that the new, supposedly OEM, replacement did not fit. The leads themselves were too big to fit in the circuit board holes, and, in addition, did not match up with the holes either. So I did what usually works for me. I just put it all aside and didn’t think about it. And today the solution popped into my mind.
I didn’t need to solder all five leads to the the board. I only needed two, power and ground. I checked the new port with my ohmmeter, and as I had hoped, the power from the center pin came out the lead at the back of the charger port.
The other four leads and the case were all grounds. So I snipped off the four ground leads flush with the bottom of the port, fastened the port to the circuit board with a drop of Super Glue, and then soldered the single rear lead into place. The rear lead was always the correct size so this wasn’t a problem.
Then I soldered a small piece of wire from the case to one of the ground pin holes, and it was done.
To recap, here’s how I took the laptop apart.
Above on the left is the hard drive, in the center is the Wi-Fi chip, and the green boards are the system memory.
I use cupcake papers to hold the screws for each step, and label them as I go.
I also have this set of tools for the small or weird screws. It also has the plastic ‘spludgers’ that are very useful for prying things apart without scratching or breaking them. A great deal for less than $7.
Kaisi 16-Piece Precision Screwdriver Set
The keyboard now just pops out.
There are a number of these small ribbon cables that must be unlocked and carefully removed from the socket.
One more screw lets you remove the DVD drive.
At this point the top of the computer can just be popped off,
and seven screws later, the motherboard comes out.
And finally the culprit is revealed.
Here I’m using the solder wick to ‘wick’ the solder from the joints to remove the old port.
And this is pretty much where I left things until today when I figured out how to make it work.
About 45 minutes after I soldered in the new charger port, I had it all back together.
And now for the moment of truth, I.e. the ‘magic smoke test’. Because everyone knows if you let the ‘magic smoke’ out of a piece of electronic gear, it won’t work anymore.
So holding my breath, I pushed the power button . . . and no magic smoke. Instead it started booting up. And a minute or so later I was looking at my desktop.
And note in this photo, I have the obligatory one screw left over. As they say, if you don’t have parts left over, you didn’t do it right.
As least that’s what I say.
After checking things over, like the keyboard, sound, Wi-Fi, and the touchpad, it was time for the final test.
And after plugging in the charger cord, I now had a charge light.
It’s Alive!
That done, I took the rest of the afternoon off. It’s not like I was really planning to do anything else, but I took it off anyway.
Later I came across this product on Facebook, and asked Jan what she would think about me doing this for Christmas.
“NO”
“Not even for special occasions?”
‘NO”
Party Pooper!
October 24, 2016
Jan Did Good . . .
Jan’s definitely not a night person, so she was worried about staying awake all night last night, but she did fine
Of course I helped out by calling her about every hour, just to be sure.
It wasn’t a very busy night, with most of the traffic after midnight. And even with that, the iPad locked up on me. Well, not as much locked up, as locked me out.
I last used it around 6:30, and then no one came or left until after midnight. But when I went to log someone in, I found the program had dumped me out and was now asking for a username and password. Which was nowhere to be found. So it was back to paper logs. Not a problem for me. I later found out there was supposed to be a sticker on the back, but nothing was there. I looked.
I think I mentioned that we have TV in the shacks. Nominally I think it’s so we can monitor the six cameras around our site, but it is set up for over the air TV. And I was very surprised how many stations we get. Probably about 30.
But probably the most entertaining ones are MeTV and Cozi TV, both of which show oldies. As in VERY oldies, like Car 54, Where Are You?, Sgt. Bilko, Maverick, Love Boat, Kojak, Our Miss Brooks, Donna Reed, Hogan’s Heroes, Perry Mason, etc.
So yes, VERY OLDIES.
After our shift was over, we got back to the rig about 6:30am. Jan went right to bed, and was already asleep when I came in about 10 minutes later. I had to email our invoices in to the office. Yesterday was the last day of the two week pay period, and the invoices had to be in by 9am this morning. Of course we only had one day on this one, but hey, money is money.
Jan actually got up about 10:30, grabbed a bite to eat, and then went back to sleep on the sofa, while I didn’t get up until about noon. I made coffee, fixed us some muffins, and got a load of laundry going. Later, we heated up our leftover La Fonda from last Friday. Still good.
Then it was another nap until about 4:30 when we started getting ready, and were out the door a little before 5pm. It’s only about a 15 minute drive so we were there in plenty of time.
Since I’m normally a night owl anyway, I’m not having a lot of trouble adjusting to the long nights, but it’s a little more difficult for Jan. But a couple of more days of this shift should help.
Of course that presupposes we’ll stay on this night shift. You never can tell.
October 24, 2017
I Know It Doesn’t LOOK Good, But . . .
About 2:30 Jan and I headed into Conroe to first have lunch, well, breakfast anyway, and then do some shopping.
Jan has been seeing the Denny’s ads on TV showing their Holiday pancakes, Pumpkin Cream and Cranberry Orange. So she decided we were having breakfast for lunch.
She got the Pumpkin Pancakes with the Cinnamon Cream topping, as well as eggs, bacon, and hash browns.
I went with the Cranberry Orange Pancakes with the Orange Glaze Cream sauce, also with eggs, bacon, and hash browns.
I know in the photo that it doesn’t look that good, but the Orange Glaze Cream Cheese topping has bits of orange in it was delicious.
Next up was a stop at Sam’s for a couple of prescriptions, and then Wal-Mart for some groceries before heading home. While I got all the groceries in, Jan walked next door to spend some time with the Evanses, et al. while I tried to fix some client stuff that just broke.
One of our blog readers, Snowbird, commented, reminding me of some info about Sears that I forgot to pass on yesterday. People talk about how Sears could have been Amazon by moving their catalog online if they hadn’t dropped the ball. But Sears actually had already dropped the catalog in 1993, just as the Internet was getting started.
Amazon got its start the next year, 1994, selling books out of Jeff Bezo’s garage. And it actually might have been very difficult for Sears to put their catalog online. The necessary net infrastructure just didn’t exist.
But anyway, corporate infighting had already doomed the Sear’s catalog sales model. The problem was that the stores and the catalog operation were too separate corporate entities competing with each other under the Sear’s umbrella, and they hated each other with a passion.
The store side of things saw every catalog sale as one the store was losing, and the catalog group accused the stores of sabotaging the in-store catalog sales pickup. This was because although the stores got nothing from a catalog sale in-store pickup, they still had to supply the manpower to staff the in-store catalog operation.
Finally in 1993, the store side of things managed to kill off the catalog, even though it was still profitable, by saying that the money would be better spent using it to expand and upgrade the stores.
Now Sears seems to only exist as a real estate and product liquidation company. They’ve been selling off stores and real estate in a frenzy and sold off their fabled Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker this past March, so can Kenmore be far behind? And today it was announced they’ve severed their 100 year old relationship with Whirlpool.
So it looks like eventually it will all go down the tubes. Sad to see.
October 24, 2019
A Phone, Resurrected . . .
Jan’s phone, my old Galaxy S5, started acting up a few days ago, constantly rebooting, even after pulling the battery out for awhile. And that’s when I noticed how swollen the battery was.
Seeing this I was pretty sure that the battery was the problem, even with the phone plugged in. This is because the phone is actually powered from the battery, so even with the phone plugged in, if you pull the battery it won’t work.
So I put in an Amazon order for a new battery, but as usual I had a backup plan. I’ve had this S5 since June 2014 when we were up in Elkhart, IN, so refurbished ones are available on Amazon for about $75. And since Jan pretty much only uses it for calls at home while I’m gone, a 5 year old phone is just fine.
But I lucked out because the new battery fixed the problem.
Not So Fast:
I mentioned yesterday that after we possibly do a Mexico/Ruins cruise in 2021, we’ll be ‘cruised out’. But regular blog reader Lois piqued our interest in maybe doing a Mississippi Riverboat cruise.
So I guess we’ve got something else to keep simmering on the back burner now.
October 24, 2021
Happy Birthday, Sweetie!!!
Tomorrow, which is Jan’s Birthday, is also when we’re attending our first Immersive Van Gogh exhibit. Really looking forward to it.
It’s certainly possible, based on some felines I’ve known.
The ‘mouse delivery’ part of this reminds me of Karma back before she went blind. She had a collection of about 8 or so small multicolored fuzzy mice. There were red ones, blue ones, orange ones, etc. All bright colors. She would bat them around the rig, and then would often gather them into a pile until she wanted to play with them again.
One morning I found her staring down at the pile and then looking up at me. Wondering what she was so interested in, I looked closer at the pile. And saw a color I didn’t recognize
It was gray, kind of mouse-colored.
And then it moved.
At this point Karma reared up and struck. And it didn’t move anymore.
After she stared at the pile for a while longer, and nothing moved, she wandered off to nap on the dashboard.
What’s amazing is that somehow Karma associated the real mouse with her multi-colored playtoys, and put them all together. And when she came back later and found I had disposed of her new toy, she pawed through the pile looking for it.
Check out this video.
Bohemian Catsody
