This blog is not about this house in which I live. It's about the blogs:
I've got a fairly modest shack here on Wunderground but it suits me. Especially when somebody comes over and decorates it with a bit of music, a link to something interesting or some of their own thoughts and experiences.
Sorta reminds me of the dynamic around the kitchen table where visitors would drop in, get a coffee or whatever and sit down. Then the fun would start. Stories (usually told by the most deaf because they were more comfortable talking than trying to understand what others might say) would start up and everyone tossed in a bit here and there - quite often the piece they contributed was: "Heard that."
Now and then the "Thang" would take off and the group around the table seemed to meld. The "Feather" went to anyone who wanted to speak loud enough for the deafer (mostly old loggers and farmers) to hear.
If you were not loud enough they simply started another story most had already heard.
I am mixing childhood with later life here. When I moved to the Island I gravitated to a wider group but selected those who knew about the "Farm House" Kitchen Table. (Or they selected me).
So the blogs remind me of that table.
Everyone is welcome and we make our own call as to who we read and who we respond to.
Every now and then a "Drunken Uncle" would show up in my early experiences. They also were welcomed and served but there was a general sigh of relief if they could drive away to harass someone else.
I see a lot of parallels on the blogs with the Kitchen Table.
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May I never become someone's "drunken uncle"!
I gotta work tomorrow and Tloml is off with her sister in the Rv. So This music is the high point of my night.
Me too Ylee:
Though I am in danger 'cause I have some nieces and nephews.
My solution: I don't drive after even a shot of liquor. The law here is: ^.05% big trouble.
Can't argue with that 'cause they tell us that highway fatalities are suddenly way down.
So my nieces and nephews have to visit me if they need input from a drunk. And now and then they do.
Or was that my grand children?
'course I fell asleep.
I still miss the real Kitchen table as we all moved on to the sundecks or patios.
But now we have this here "Thang" - Wunderground.
When it works well it is amazing.
For Cold Beer to be effective the environment should be warmer than the beer. That has not been the case here lately.
Somehow I lost a day as well.
Monday?
Gotta go
http://gorving.ca/main.asp
Now I'm really late!
I went in to work and the gate (at 0930) was locked. Figured Jim would be along soon to unlock it.
Sat a while and started to notice a 'post it' way back there in the part of the brain I don't exercise much: memory. Oh yeah. Jim and I had set up for about 1300 hrs.'cause he had some other business. He had phoned while I was sleeping in my "Jesus on the cross" yoga position and since I really don't care what time we start work anyhow the conversation did not register fully.
So my daughter lives a few blocks away and I went there to pass the time.
Her dog Jupiter was happy to see me, her husband was "doing rounds" in his M.D. mode, Grand daughter was either sleeping or still playing on an iPod and daughter was getting up from some birthday gathering last night.
We had a good visit.
I plugged in Patrap's JK # 3 on her laptop while she made tea and I cracked a beer.
Then we wandered about her house to see where we could modify things a bit - she's got a good eye when it comes to renos and I seem to be able to "Shape Shift" the final product sometimes correctly.
She made us some breakfast and we watched this weird storm approach from the west. When it got to the house it was snow. Nothing stayed on the ground 'cause it's too warm but between sunny breaks it has snowed now and then throughout the day - even saw a short "Snow Bow".
Dad loved to tell about the time he went to see the one old guy lived "Up the Hill". They were sitting on the front porch and the phone began to ring. Old guy didn't bat an eye, just kept on with whatever yarn he was spinning. Fellow had worked saw-mill and any number of other jobs so conversation was higher pitched and louder than average, if you get my drift. Dad figured fellow wasn't hearing the ring so mentioned the fact that the phone was ringing.
Fellow said, "I ain't all that deaf young man, I can hear it plain enough. I had that infernal contraption put in for MY convenience and it ain't convenient right now, I'm busy visiting with you."
Every now and then I have to remind myself who's convenience the infernal contraptions in my life exist for.
Amen, Brother!
:o)
Just dropping by, or goin' neighborin' (I like that phrase) for a quick hello. Hope all is well. See ya'll round the cyber-table.
Can't smoke in the borrowed RV so I did not bother to warm it up and came back in the house.
One thing that occurred to me while sitting in the gloom of the windy and rainy morning was:
As long as the computer will work I never take time to sit and cogitate over what I have seen. I go on reading blogs or news and getting more input then I drive to work or go to bed depending on the time of the day.
Gotta schedule some "off line" time, I guess.
If whoever does not choose to leave a message there ain't much I need to do. Quite often the calls come from a computer anyway and all they want is for me to connect and start to confuse me about how I probably have just won a new car or some rich man in Nigeria has left me a pile o' cash and all I need to do to get it is give them my bank ID numbers..
Evening Rob:
All good here. Wind has abated and the ferries are running again. Just wet and grey and cool now. Power is back and I had electrical power all day at the worksite.
Tloml said it came back here at about noon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs
Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein
Now we are (sort of) looking for a rig to buy. I could use such a vehicle for work as long as I kept tools and dirt under control. The pickup is still running fine (and I do like 4x4) but my tools sit under a cover in the back and in a metal tool box.
Rust never sleeps.
My blog was at the bottom of the first page - can't have that!
Wet snow and wind most of the day but calmer now.
That loop in the Jet Stream that Dr. Masters' mentions can bring up colder conditions but quite often the jet runs south to our east and we are mild enough due to wet warm Pacific winds.
I'm getting down to some pretty good fire wood, though - the stuff we never use 'cause it is at the back of the shed. i would not mind having a bit of it left when things start to warm up.
..get a matchbook and put er under dat one short leg.
Rock & Roll..
You talkin' about some fine tuned "Geo-engineering"? Just get my pet butterfly to flap it's cold wings and see what happens.
Dat comet got Sol yet?
Had a waiter let me in on a trade secret to leveling any table. Get a wine bottle cork and split it catty-corner . You now have 2 wedges with a flat and rounded side. Place flat side on floor. Slide under low corners then go just a smidge beyond and press down. Voila`! Use an almost full wine glass for a level. Even works on a table with a round base on uneven plank floors. (Where I learned the trick.)
Back in the day when phones were all wired into the wall, I equipped my phone with a long cord so I could move around the house with it.
That's when I felt like talking on the phone. At other times, I put the phone in the refrigerator, which served as a dandy ten dB audio attenuator for the ringer.
Alas, nowadays I'm married to a regular phonin' phool, and we have phones in dang near every room, including our bedroom.
Geez, the things we do for love!
Those are not Graphite..the SR-71 was made out of a New Material in the early 60's.
Titanium
Design
A particularly difficult issue with flight at over Mach 3 is the high temperatures generated. As an aircraft moves through the air at supersonic speed, the air in front of the aircraft is compressed into a supersonic shock wave, and the energy generated by this heats the airframe. To address this problem, high-temperature materials were needed, and the airframe of the SR-71 was substantially made of titanium, obtained from the USSR at the height of the Cold War.
Lockheed used many guises to prevent the Soviet government from knowing what the titanium was to be used for. In order to control costs, Lockheed used a more easily worked alloy of titanium which softened at a lower temperature. Finished aircraft were painted a dark blue, almost black, to increase the emission of internal heat (fuel acted as a heat sink for avionics cooling) and to act as camouflage against the night sky. The aircraft was designed to minimize its radar cross-section, an early attempt at stealth design. The aircraft's call sign was "Blackbird", because of its dark color.
Tloml ubrews wine and has kept the corks for years. We have bags of real cork corks somewhere. I like beer and my grandson (without any encouragement from me) decided to collect beer bottle caps. I started saving mine for him and, shall we say, my yogurt container runneth over.
Maybe I could pay my way around the whirl just leveling the tables.
Har, har, har! Bogon:
Dat's worth a quote:
"Geez, the things we do for love!"
Tloml puts the walkie talkie in her hair and I come up here to this terminal.
What's next in our technological stroll? Telepathy?
Morning Pat:
Very interesting - both the "deleted" comet and the history of Titanium. 'Course watching the pilots get ready to ride that black bird rang some bells too.
You mentioned Pat's SR-71 so I went to his blog looking for it.
Ahhhh...here it is!
Cool machine but not the source of my boom yesterday.
Just a fighter jock that got a little over-enthusiastic.
I don't mind.
signing off for a bit. Have a great day.
Another for your collection.
Impressive bit of technology.
Yes, titanium, and as I recall, leaked like a sieve sitting on the runway. I'd love a chance to ride in one.
Whall - the SR 71 was flying in the late '60s or so. Can not imagine what the kids are up to now up there.
From a few searches it seems that speed in the atmosphere is limited by materials and thrust available.
Favorite ride: DHC "Otter" serial number 02. She brought our groceries and flew us out from "Loon Sh*t Lake". She is now in a museum near Ottawa as far as I know.
#01 augered in
baktun 12 katun 19 tun 19 uinal 3 kin 19
Haab: 7 Cumku
Tzolkin: 9 Cauac
Mayan epoch: 11 Aug, 3114 B.C.E.
...date based on local time 2:53:21pm, Thu Mar 15, 2012
I can't even find my iPod to see what time it is here.
Oh yeah. Starboard bottom of the screen:
1:25 PM on the "Ides of March"
I can't, either! :)
One of those could make it from Vancouver to almost anywhere, PDQ!
Jetfire, from the Transformers.
Only three choices. Pat gets one and you and I fly "wing". Lots of airports only accept cash for fuel, though.
Probably told this one: Coming back north on "Aero Cancun" we landed/re-entered at Las Vegas 'cause the "Stretch 9" DC was runnin' low. Taxied for what seemed an hour or so and passengers were starting to pipe up with comments like: " Stop here - I've got a Shell credit card!"
We eventually flew on to Edmonton after stopping in Vancouver.
It had something to do with picking up a vehicle in Calgary "If My memory serves me well".
Alvin Lee "Goin' Home":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFpfureaCVs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-142 35920
The related articles are interesting. One scientist quoted there said:
"It may be too late to build ships." (to spray sea water to cool the Arctic)
"Bubble Bubble, Toil and Trouble"
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate
Only place I've found Beer colored green was in the "Angkor What?" bar in Siam Reap.
Had some "green" beer a few times here but the occasion was the end of a breweries strike, not St. Patrap's.
This forum is the best I have found. I've learned many good things here. The folks that post on my blog are special to me, of course, but I certainly learn from other people's places whether or not I come up with anything to say.
There are other blogs I check regularly: Monbiot.com and thetyee.ca especially but when something is actually "happening" (besides more explosions in places not obscure to the locals, I'm sure) I always check Dr. Masters' blog. From some years of this checking I have found: Dr. Masters' #1, CBC.ca #2 and BBC generally #3
I find myself looking a lot like that dog.
And vice versa.
I'm worried about methane clathrates, too. Methane is a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. We'll have big problems if those clathrates destabilize. Probably cheaper (not to mention nicer, saner etc.) to keep what we've got now than to attempt global remediation later.
How should we do that?
Jethro Tull "Locomotive Breath"?
Daredevils and risk-takers, the gauntlet has been thrown ... from 13-miles up.
Felix Baumgartner, the 42-year-old who plans to break the speed of sound with a jump from the stratosphere later this summer, completed his first test this week, skydiving in a space suit from 13 miles up in the sky about 5 miles higher that a jumbo jet usually flies.
Baumgartner pulled off this high-flying stunt by heading aloft in his custom designed Red Bull Stratos capsule attached to a 100-foot-wide helium balloon. In a fully pressurized jump suit, he launched himself into a free fall that lasted nearly four minutes and propelled him to speeds of over 360 miles per hour.
The high-flying act is just a dress rehearsal for Baumgartner's ultimate goal: to jump from an altitude of 23 miles, a free fall that will take him past Mach 1. That leap would beat a previous record held by U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger, who jumped from nearly 20 miles up in 1960. OK, dude, put a diving board on that Red Bull Capsule and a kiddy pool on the ground, and we're talking business.
I took one "tandem jump" from a Cessna at about 6 angels.
I don't know if that makes me the most qualified but what the? Speed of sound increases with altitude n'est ce pas?
"Hold My Beer and watch this!"
Here is the story about U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger! We say folks like this are Different! :)
He is the Project Engineer and Consultant for the Red Bull Team.
Reading is a wunderful thing
I was pretty high when we touched down.
So it is Pat!
Matter of fact: this morning Tloml took over this here computer so I picked up a book from the kitchen table: "How Shakespeare Changed the World" Checked out the "Ides of March" there. My grand daughter showed up with her mom and dog and she put down her iPod and picked up the same book. I agree that reading is wonderful but some one has to put the characters on the page, eh.
In the not too distant future,
YouTube, Twitter & Facebook will merge to form one giant, idiotic,
super time wasting website called...
UTWITFACE
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