100 and Done! (Countries that is...)

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We are back! This last trip brought the total countries visited to 100! It is a crazy milestone. It is difficult, time-consuming and can be (IS) expensive. After I got back from Antarctica in 2007, I started thinking about it. After 2010 I was thinking about it more (as I moved from NY to Georgia) and in 2014 it had become a real goal. Between Angie and I we have been to 109 Countries. We are tied at 100 countries each. We have 9 countries different in our lists. For example, I have been to San Marino. She has not. She has been to Israel. I have not, yet. There has been some fun competition in this area. That's why we had to establish rules. 1.) Must be listed (as a country) with the US State Department 2.) Being in an airport doesn't count. You have to get through immigration somehow and not in a DMZ or a no-mans-land 3.) A passport stamp is not required. I have been to Canada, Paraguay, and Uruguay without getting my passport stamped. There are friendly borders in many places...
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Man o' man getting on the internet has really been working againist me lately. I got the new tv (great). I got the dish for "Cable" tv, and I had my new internet dish installed (Wild Blue). The Wild blue worked for exactly 2 days and quit. I am trying to get it fixed. Hopefully today the guy will be out. I am currently using a WIFI connection down in Binghamton. We can receive 7 hi def stations locally, about 12 analog signals and then we have the dish and the internet connected to the TV via VGA. I am working out the details of how to hook all this stuff up including the subwoofer I installed in the coffee table.

I have been taking a lot of photos lately, stopping the truck on the way to work or whatever. It is worth it. Of course ;-) at this sitting I have almost none of my new pics with me.

I am working on getting my electric car drive train working. I built a test stand and a programming interface for the controller. I bid on a geo tracker with a bad engine on ebay, but I let it go. There will be others. The idea of 4 wheel drive makes sense. I am working on getting a range of 60 miles on the battery power. One of the really nice features about the controller I plan on using is the regenerative charging of the batteries. I will have a pot hooked to the accelerator as well as to the brake pedal. I am using one set of batteries for testing/development and another for the car probably. Fun stuff, pure playtime.

I have been communicating with the guys on the ice as the season starts up and they are trying to get the equipment working. I insist on them sending me photos when they email me or I won't comunicate with them :-) I miss some of the aspects of the work environment.

Of the pics I do have with me at the moment I have Bonnie's jack o'lantern and a view on my ride to work Monday.

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