It IS Rocket Science
These guys have some balls… As if simply shooting a box of metal off of one planet and hitting another isn’t complicated enough, check out what’s about to go down on August 5th. If they pull this off I would have to say they are all certified grade A bad asses.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISmWAyQxqqs]
Eclipse 2012
Well I haven’t seen a solar eclipse for years. Never seen a total solar eclipse and this one wasn’t either, but still pretty cool. We all got together to watch it this evening, starting in the garage, then moving to the end of the block after the sun went behind the trees.
Here’s the setup I rigged up. Using the binoculars in my vice and an old JC Penny shirt box. Not bad for scrambling to find stuff in 5 minutes.
It’s beginning! I was even able to see some sunspots. I’d looked at the sun this way before, but either I never noticed them, or just didn’t see them before.
As the sun got lower in the sky, we had to relocate as the neighbor’s trees were blocking all the sunlight into the garage.
Had just some light clouds, only obstructed our view for maybe 10 minutes.
And that’s about the maximum eclipse that we saw from our location. You can see the power pole getting in the way, and after this the sun got too low to get a clear shot at. It was pretty fun. Made me feel like a kid again!
Speaking of kids, here’s Luke checking out the eclipse in this video:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/pF4AV0lSU_g]
04.28.12Cutting away
The Guild Wars 2 servers were down for a couple hours, so I decided to go outside and be productive.
Man, I have cut a lot of limbs and trees around here over the past year. I really need to find someone with a truck to help me haul ’em off.
I chopped down a tree that has been left to it’s own devices for many years. As you can see it has become one with the fence.
Makes for a lot of waste.
And all these…
Speaking of plants, the garden is still alive, though my potatoes got nipped by a cold night. I didn’t notice any frost, but apparently it got cold enough that the plants didn’t like it. Onions did OK, but the potatoes sure looked better a week or two ago. I think the might bounce back though.
And my pumpkins are just starting to sprout!
So onward we go!
04.27.12
Storm Just Missed Us
Catch-up Post
Okay, well, here we go. I’m running a remote today so I have a little time where I’m tied to the studio here and can’t go anywhere so figured I’d try to get a post cranked out.
Starting middle of the week BEFORE last week, we started streaming coverage of a murder trial here in town. We were going to do video, but couldn’t get the equipment together, so we were at least going to stream audio on our website. Well after the trial was scheduled to start, apparently they were running behind, however someone flipped on the microphone before they were supposed to and the name of a juror went out over our internet stream. So the judge flipped out and banned us from the trial. So that day sucked.
Then, feeling like we got the raw deal on something that wasn’t our fault, got our lawyer involved. That moved about as fast as anything you can expect to move in the legal system. So right about the time I’d given up hope, we were let back in. And by now we’d finally got our video equipment.
So I spent about a week with half of every day sitting in an van by the courthouse monitoring our stream to make sure that nothing like that happened again. Sufficed to say, I was WAY behind on all my work for the week, which included updating about 500 items for our radio auction, and getting audio edited for upcoming charity radio-thon fund raiser. I ended up working 15 hours on Friday to get all the stuff done I HAD to do because we were hitting the road for the weekend.
I did a lot of relaxing at the in-laws’ house over the weekend. That was much needed. And we got to see Titanic in 3D. I’m still not a huge fan of 3D movies, but they did pretty good converting a movie that was originally shot in 2D, I thought. But still, it was the same old movie I remember. For some reason I thought the ship looked smaller in 3D… oh well.
So that brings things up to this week. Not as hectic as last week for sure and I’m thankful for that. Still a lot to do, but I’ve been fairly productive. I would have been more so, but I got really sick Monday night. Terrible sore throat and the chills. I told myself if I didn’t feel any better when I woke up, I’d stay home. Luckily I felt quite a bit better by morning and headed in. One of the nice things about my job is I was able to go take a nap on the couch downstairs when I wasn’t feeling too swell. I’m glad Andrea and Luke didn’t catch what I had… at least not yet.
And now it’s today. I’m waiting for my paycheck to come in. Not something I usually “wait” for, but I got a small bonus on this check which I’m going to use to pre-purchase Guild Wars 2 which went on sale yesterday. I don’t want to wait too long because I don’t want the collector’s edition to sell out. Supposedly very limited supply.
So there ya go. That’s why I’ve been absent from the blog recently and I should be back to posting more regularly now!
12.23.11Special Treatment
The snow came down earlier this week. They were calling for as much as 14 inches at one point in time. We ended up getting around 5 inches. Seems like that’s the way it always goes. Better to freak everyone out and over prepare, than to catch everyone off guard with a foot of snow I guess.
It’s no suprise Andrea’s car get’s the nice dry garage. But that’s okay. The Toronado is tough. I had to head in to work early the next day and I think I was the first person to hit the roads here in Albert. The Toro trudged through the five inches of snow like a champ.
02.9.11Snow Fun
Got about a foot of snow yesterday. Shoveled the driveway last night. Then started shoveling again at about 6:45 this morning. Anything to make sure my sweetheart can get out of the driveway, right!?
It did make for some fun pictures today though.
Camping at Kanopolis
Took the weekend to go camping for the first time this year. It was just Daisy and me. Andrea was down in Wichita doing some much needed wardrobe shopping. It was nice to get away for a while. It’s nice to be away from the world once in a while and alone in my thoughts. While I’m not a very social person, there’s times when you’re out camping by yourself and about three hours go by and you realized you haven’t said a single word out loud, you feel the need to just start talking, just to say something. I ended up recording a few videos into the camera for no reason. I read a lot of my book, and otherwise just did a lot of thinkin’.
Kanopolis seems like a nice enough lake. I didn’t really stay near the water, I didn’t have a fishing license anyway. But I sure could have. There weren’t that many people camping there at all. Pretty much had my run of the place. And best of all. It was quiet and peaceful! Here’s a few pics of the outing.
My campsite, got a compliment on the car on the way into the campground!
Storms looked to be rolling in most of the evening, but never saw a drop of rain!
Saturday was just too hot for Daisy. She was much more lively on Sunday.
The storms all around made for some cool weather pictures.
It’s officially storm season in Great Bend.
Had a nice rolling thunderstorm come through about 7AM this morning. Nothing severe, but it dumped quite a bit of rain in a short amount of time. Looks like it overwhelmed the drainage system near my house. Nothing flooded, but I did have flashbacks to the apartment in Manhattan!
It was fun watching folks go through the water. Some people slowing… stopping… and then cautiously proceeding. Some flew through blasting huge rooster tails into the air. A couple people briefly stalled out, then got going again. But nobody got hurt.
Ugh. Snow.
I remember when I was a kid there was nothing better than a snow day. The more the better. Now as I slowly transform into a grumpy old man, I find that I could really do without it!
Well that’s not entirely true. I just wish it would snow, but that somehow driveways, sidewalks and roadways were immune. I shoveled my driveway enough to make it passable today, but tomorrow I’m gonna have to hop to it and get the thing cleared out. I guess I’m always looking for a workout, right? hehe
But at least the Toronado handles it like a champ. It just trudges right through that stuff like a big lumbering… lumberer. I can’t help but smirk when I see people plowing along in their little Hyundais letting the snow decide where they go. It’s good to be the king.
Another Toronado not being stuck.