Category: family

What I Did This Afternoon

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The Enola Gay


SR-71 Blackbird


A rear view of the Blackbird, illustrating how flat it is


The Boeing 707 prototype, the Dash 80, in the fugliest color scheme I’ve ever seen


Gemini capsule


Samuel Langley’s Aerodrome


Bell-Boeing XV-15 tilt rotor demonstrator


Concorde


Space shuttle prototype Enterprise


Spotted on the tail of an F-14, Felix the Cat from VFA-6

I went to the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, located right next to Dulles Airport in Chantilly, VA.

Charlie’s Cub Scout Pack went there for an outing.

While is is a most impressive collection of aircraft, as a museum, it left me a bit cold.

Unlike the branch on the Mall in Washington, DC, this was basically just a shed full of aircraft, and the exhibits, such as they were, were basically just afterthoughts.

I enjoyed myself, but I would much rather go to the DC museum.

Waiting for the 3rd Shoe to Drop

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11 days ago, my wife’s car’s timing belt broke.

This morning, at about 7:10, while stopped behind a school bus, I was rear-ended, and pushed into the car in front of me.

If anyone saw a black 2 door small hatchback driving rapidly along Gwynnbrook east of Owings Mills Blvd with some damage to the grill (or so I assume, I never saw the front), please contact me.

I don’t hurt, at least not yet, and the car drives fine, though I am not sure if I can open the hood which is bent.

Still, on the assumption that these things happen in 3s, I’m expecting demonic possession of our lawn mower.

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Snowpocalypse: Aftermath

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About 6 feet

Well, I ain’t cleaning the sidewalks for a while.

Thy finally cleared the street on Friday, and they were very thorough.

All the snow, except immediately around some parked cars, was put on the curb by front loaders, and our little road is completely clear.

The resulting berms of snow are vary between 4 and 6 feet.

Ok, Maybe Not “Meh”

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That mound with the wiper blades is a 1996 Honda Odyssey


The lump in the center left is a trash can


Back Yard

When I wrote about the Snowpocalypse, I said, “meh”.

OK, not so much.

I managed to get the back door open by about a foot, and then had to shovel the stoop to get the door open the rest of the way, and it’s still snowing.

Also: this is not the light and fluffy snow. This is heavy and sticky.

Maybe the kids will do a snow man, but I’d give less than 50-50 that there will be school on Monday.

Again, apologies for the crappy cell phone camera pix.

We have plenty of food, and if it stretches on for weeks, a very fat cat who looks good for stewing.

(Not really, the cats are family, and besides, they are not kosher)

Snowpocalypse

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Just starting at about 3:00pm


At about 5:00pm

We’re getting somewhere between 12 and 28 inches of snow, probably more than 20 inches.

People around here are freaking, but having spent 6 years in Alaska, and about 12 years in New England during and after college, so for me, it’s just, “Meh.”

No driving for at least the first half of tomorrow, but it’s really not that big a deal.

It will be a mess for a day or so, it ain’t the end of the world

Wish Me Luck

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I have a job interview for a short term contract, it starts now.

I posted this last night, but forward dated it.

It’s lower level than I would like, but hey, it’s work.

I won’t provide any information on the client, I think that it is a bad idea to blog about potential employers.

Hopefully, This is as Close as I Ever Come to Pledge Week

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Charlie in front of the control room


Pledge drive studio while programming is going on


Pledge drive during requests for donations


Control room for studio


Control room for satellite up and downlink


Server room

Charlie just had a tour of the Maryland Public Television (MPT) studios, courtesy of his cub scout troop.

As the crow flys, it’s only about a mile away from us.

It’s pledge week at MPT, which meant that there was no escaping it on a tour.

We swung by twice. the 1st time, the regularly scheduled program was showing, and the 2nd time, they were in the break doing their pledge fund stuff, and I couldn’t change the channel.

One of the things that I notices, and it really wasn’t much of a surprise, is that the studio is actually rather a lot smaller than it appears on TV.

Seeing as how square footage costs money, this is really not surprising: You see the same thing with the Star Trek™ bridge in the Smithsonian.

As to Charlie’s thoughts on his visit to MPT, he thought that it was an OK way to kill an hour.

A final note, I need to remember to clean my cell phone camera lens before take pictures.

My Life Is Less Exciting Than This Sounds

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Yesterday, I went to an event for a medieval reenactment group, the Society for Creative Anachronism, and I left without my pants.

The full story is that I went there in street clothes, and changed into period garb there, and somehow or other, the jeans that I wore to the event did not make themselves back into my bag.

I had to pick them up today.

Pretty dull, but that first sentence is intriguing.

Much Better…..

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I’ve been visiting my Mother-in-Law in New York, we saw the Museum of Natural History yesterday, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art today, and I finally managed to give her my Hanukkah Gift to her.

I offered to upgrade the memory on her machine, a Dell Dimension L800r, from it’s current 128 meg to 512 meg of ram.

When she got it, it had Windoze ME, but she had to upgrade to Win XP, and with 128 meg, less a couple for video memory, it was slow, particularly after a nasty bit of spyware, and the multiple passes of various software to fix it, created a spaghetti registry.

I ordered the memory online, but they were out of stock, so today, before going to the museum, I hit B&H Photo Video in Manhattan, and picked up 2x 256M DIMMs.

Still slow, but not glacially so, and the CPU actually maxes out without the hard drive light indicating massive thrashing.

It’s still slow, but no longer glacial.

Another Snow Day

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Yesterday was given, seeing as how the snow on Saturday was a December record, and a near all time record, about 20 inches, but they actually did a good job clearing the streets, so I figured that the kids would be in school today….Not happening.

Tomorrow is the last day of school before Winter break, and I have no clue as to whether or not they will have class tomorrow, but it doesn’t make sense for them to do so now.