Road Trip

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I am back from my most recent roadtrip. I loaded up the Tesla and started letting the hands-off Full Self Drive (FSD) supervised take me to points North. First stopping in a campground in Tennesee and up to Pittsburgh for the CIDM Convex Conference (which was the best conference in years). There was a celebration of the 20 years of DITA XML. I was an earlier adopter. My presentation went well and I semi-stealth launched wisdomino. I demo'd some extra cool software we developed and will be selling in weeks to come. It's truely game changing. Of course, there will be much more than that to come. After that it was on to Franklin, PA. to meet with some colleagues in the mining division and onto the farm stopping in Olean NY for the night. I am pretty sure it was the first time I had driven across the entire Allegany National Forest. I ended up driving through the very dark forest expanse during a night time thunderstorm. Although I normally trust the Tesla FSD on the Interstat...
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What a difference a week makes with weather. We had over a foot of snow last week and this weekend it is in the 70s and is just beautiful.

I have been working on farm work, gathering firewood for next year, tractor work, and so on. It is easy to over do it. I am a little sore so I am taking a break. I was outside enjoying the sun and warmth and tried to relate it to sleeping in a tent in Antarctica. There is no comparison. Even here out in the country there are signs and traces of humans everywhere and the sounds and smells of all the wildlife is more like a jungle than anything else. It is a remarkable difference. I have been looking through photos from Antarctica as a screen saver on my computers. Some one them I am seeing for the first time.

We are still working on Rosey, but it is not looking good. She is up and down. Last week she got out of the barn and fell in freezing water out in the pasture and couldn't get up. Bonnie and I were out there dragging her back in the barn at 10:00 pm. She would have died out there from hypothermia. I had to go to the doctor and get some antibiotics for my cough. He said that me being in Antarctica probably did reduce my resistant to all these germs. Maybe we will eat out back tonight. The jeep is running and the weather is great. I am supposed to have a flying lesson Monday night. Next Friday I head to Idaho and Bonnie will meet me out there a few days later for a couple of days.

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