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"Challenge is an essential ingredient in a perfect life."--Charles Dowdell

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Central Asia

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We are back from our most recent crazy trip. This time it was Central Asia and the "five stans" - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. We made all of our objectives. And we have now been to 104 countries. Angie has 95 and I have 94 countries. Together it is 104. These five countries were packed into 12 days, 7 flights, 2 high speed trains, 1 cable car ride, 1 horse ride, and lots of hours in car trips. They are all Muslim countries, but they are better characterized as former Soviet countries. Russian langauge is a strong second language in all of these countries. There isn't much English spoken in any of them. Angie being fluent in Russian made all the difference and did intrepreting for me as well as a couple of British backpackers we met in Turkmenistan. Tajikistan is the Country with the distinct langauage being a derivitive of Persian with the others being Turkic. Ethnically, Southern Uzbecs are Tajik. Interesting, the spelling of many...
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I lived thru a Sunday. I spent a lot of time in the library. We watched the debut of "Emperors of the Ice" last night as part the science lecture. The producers/lecturers gave a talk as well. The documentary will be seen this coming year in the US. It is a National Geographic Special. It is pretty interesting to see a film like this one. It is all staged around McMurdo. To my eyes it isn't that exotic anymore. Don't get me wrong. I find it exciting and all that. However, it is like seeing a documentary about your family Thanksgiving day dinner. It is familiar. I have a very busy day today. I actually got quadruple booked today with work and training. That has to get worked out this morning. Here's me in the ham shack. I have a bit of work to do for the shack but we are going to be using 14.243 MHz USB. I will be using the station callsign KC4USV. Schedules are forthcoming.
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Early Fall in North Georgia

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The weather is great-- cool, low humidity, dry. It is easy to get used to. I found an original air-box for the Honda on Ebay. I needed a few other parts to put the car air intake back to factory original. Things always cost more and take more time. But it was a mini-project and it is done. This is a pic of our cat jewel. It was great to get a pic that makes her hetrochromic eyes stand out. She is a beautiful cat for sure. Rare and beautiful. At work we had our 2024 Demo Days where we invite customers through their respective dealers to try out many different types of equipment. There were many Excavators, Dozers, Dump trucks, Wheel loaders and even some forestry equipment. It is a annual event and it is fun/busy for employees. As part of the event we were lucky to get one of the current year's Williams Formula 1 cars on display for a couple days. It was very cool showing up for work in the morning and seeing it in the lobby. I have never been so close to F1 car during its act...
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Domestic Travel -- Milwaukee

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This past week I was in Milwaukee Wisconsin for a Global meeting. It was my first time spending anytime in the city of Milwaukee. It was good. Lots of bars, coffee houses similar in old factory buildings. We make some large mining equipment in Milwaukee. The size is staggering. The shovel in the pic is NOT the largest rope-shovel we make. I had fun with this pic of Gracie. I doctored it up a bit. I decided pile out my collection of boarding passes from the last 15 years. It is certainly not all of them and there are a few randow receipts besides airlines in there but it is most airline boarding passes. I just noticed today that they dont have the year listed, just Month and Day. I am sure with forenscis we could figure it out, but it was easy to remember what year it was I took the particualr flight. Also, the printing is low quality ment to be no permanet many are fading some are totally blank. The information has totally disappeared. It is the high speed hign reliability thermal ...
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