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  • Grad ceremony and cameras (and little girls)

    May 29, 2016 By

    Omg, so much to share, don't know where to start. (Maybe, we'll only share one story right now) FYI: If you bring your 4 year old granddaughter to a one-time event, such as someone's college graduation ceremony, don't let them play with the camera before taking the pics. Camera "setting" icon was supposed to be on "green/auto". Ended up set on an icon of a "track/field runner". Which, if you're not a Canon camera owner, means "Sports mode". What does "Sports mode" mean, you ask? It tells the camera, for every click of the shutter, the photographer wants the camera to shoot a "burst" of pictures. For example, you want to take pictures of someone pole vaulting, or a relay runner doing the hand-off, or a quarterback throwing a pass, etc. Just how many is a "burst"? Anywhere from 5 to 10 … [More...]

    Modrl Railroading – structure building summary for 2023

    January 31, 2024 By

    Since late last summer I’ve been beating myself up with regard to my model railroading ‘structure building’ hobby. It all had to do with me finally getting motivated last yr around this time (Feb/2023), getting back to my hobby table building my “kits” (I hadn’t done anything project-wise during all of 2021 nor 2022). So, it was a big deal to getting back and start making things again. Then, something (I believe) occured in my personal life in/around July and I just stopped building; some minor depression occurred. First, weeks went by, then months went by, and I could see I was in a rut, or a tiny bit depressed, or tv (and/or FB) was occupying a significant amount of my time. By the way, the TV watching area is two feet away from my project/hobby table area. They both are in the … [More...]

    Toastmasters Speech #3 – Inspire the audience!

    February 5, 2014 By

    I’ve been a late bloomer in some areas of my life: ok, a late bloomer in most areas of my life. But, a really late bloomer when it comes to my home life. I figure this was partly due to not having a father figure after high school, as well as not becoming a home owner until my mid 30’s. I never thought I had the skills to do homeowner type projects like the usual improvements of painting, woodworking, wallpapering, or even deck building. It wasn’t until I was in my early 40’s that I began to develop these skills that some people have by that age. I’m here to tell you today that it’s never too late to develop these skills. I am living proof that you can learn how to do these types of things late in life – even if you’re in your 40’s, 50’s and, yes, even you, (John)! I want to share … [More...]

    Releasing new software once again at zero dark thirty

    November 11, 2018 By

    Up at 4:45 am to do a software application release/install, with a colleague. Fortunately, this can be accomplished at home. install went fine without any issues. Our testers/validators are scheduled to start testing at 7. Will have to wait until 8 for them to finish with that before (maybe) heading back to bed for a few hours. My body/head does not like getting up this early. I remember doing one of these a few months after I’d started with , it was first week of December, I’d just had had my first eye surgery (with eye patch on), and I didn’t want to trust dialing into work from home (on my first software release for them), so I drove in, and it had started snowing overnight - not a whole lot of visibility and roads were a bit bad. Fortunately, I was only going 30-40 MPH, and there … [More...]

    Thrivent reflections – followup to a post from 2019-05-24

    May 24, 2020 By

    Huh. How things rapidly changed after I wrote this post a year ago. A month after this, myself and twenty others in the IT dept were given four weeks notice that we were to be laid off at the end of July; the VP mentioned below (Sanjaye) was subsequently arrested for child abuse (teenage daughter/step daughter), leading to his termination; And lastly, within just three weeks of the actual layoff date, I was truly fortunate to be able to find a new job and start working at my current employer (along with its associated unexpected relocation to a different state). Angie Buelow Sarah Wilkowski … [More...]

    Being down – and how I (temporarily) fixed it.

    March 13, 2022 By

    Several weeks now, I’ve been kinda down. Lots of reasons. But, once I knew BFF Rick was going to come over (originally yesterday but we moved it today), I got my stupid, sorry, depressed ass off the couch, out of bed, out of the funk, out of the mope, whatever, and started cleaning and tidying; I’m the type who doesn’t make the bed each day; and I sometimes ‘laugh’ (or, roll my eyes) when I see someone’s response to one of those FB questions about making your bed. I made my bed today - it LOOKS fantastic. I tidied my kitchen counter/island, removing/discarding the papers, gizmos, projects, screws, nuts, nails, bolts, and various junk - it looks FANTASTIC. I had several ‘projects’ going on, on the LR floor (organizing my CDs after the move) for past several weeks, cluttering the LR; … [More...]

    Model railroading kit building and ‘stash’ backlog

    October 13, 2018 By

    Post number two this morning due to insomnia/tinnitus. ==== Here’s a crafter’s dilemma, as a crafter gets older, toward retirement age. I’m going to make this a bit easier to understand by reducing the actual quantities. Let’s say, you have enough crafting “projects” (yarn, quilting material/projects, wood in workshop, or whatever) to last you for the next three to four years (or longer), at the consistent rate you’re making things now - let’s say completing one project a month. But, during these next few years, you are also adding (buying) new materials for new projects, every few months. You’re making consistent progress with your current projects, but you’re still adding onto your project supply. Because, the manufacturers still are coming out with new materials, different … [More...]

    The question was “what exactly was/is a mainframe?”

    April 3, 2024 By

    So - in my opinion, “back in the day” - BEFORE windows/Linux/unix/intel/dell (from 1950s thru, let’s say: 1985-1990 - before Unix/windows NT servers came into existence), and take this (at first) with a grain of salt: A mainframe was not ‘commodity’ hardware; each computer manufacturer (before AND during the advent of the seven dwarfs / BUNCH), had their own proprietary hardware AND OS software. Once you bought IBM, or Burroughs, or NCR, CDC, Sperry/univac, Honeywell, you were ‘stuck’ with them since each manufacturer - (while most all of them did COBOL, FORTRAN, etc.) had proprietary ‘stuff’ - moving from one manufacturer to another was very hard to do: their customers (us) had a significant investment in training their programmers, mainframe support people on each manufacturer’s set of … [More...]

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