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Showing posts from February 10, 2008

4th of July - Camping, Deer Babies, Wake Boarding

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We have had a new resident. Actually there several new residents. A deer decided to have her kids in the back yard. They are here often. I can see them from my Zoom Room, so I apologize if I seem a little distracted sometimes when I am on a video call. We went canoeing and camping in South Carolina. We were exploring without a lot of planning, so you get what you expect- adventure and discovery. We stopped by the Tallulah Gorge lookout. When I rode my motorcycle through the area in the early 80's, I vowed I would come back. And I have come back-- again. I ate my traditional moon pie there as well. The Tesla is a great camper. Charge the battery, run the AC and enjoy the filtered ventilation with a nice entertainment system. Crazy. The paddleing wasn't that good. We found ourselves in Lake Keowee. The campground was good if you speak Spanish, and only enjoy power sports on small boats. I am a bit disturbed by the new trend of wake boarding. Instead of skiing being towed by...
Some cool stuff at the conference. NLP or Natural Language Processing is a way of the future. Computers are fast enough. It is time to have the tools to copy edit english. The payoffs are huge in translation and quality management.
Pilots Arms Next time you have the opportunity look at your pilot's arms. The arms are not strong in an obvious sense. You would think that the particular part of the hero-body that with literal single-handedness guides hundreds of tons of metal and humanity would be well-formed, masculine and muscular. In fact, these very arms countering fears of passengers actually appear weak, almost stick-like. The elbow seems to drop from the shoulder unsupported, without the expected thigh-sized bicep. The short sleeve appears large and underfilled. There are tendons strongly connected from the core without strenght, but filled with confidence and grace. In place of muscle there are highly developed nerves in the elbow and shoulder that firmly connect with the brain and the art of flight.
I am on my way to North Carolina for the FrameMaker Chautaqua conference. This is a meeting of XML, DITA, FrameMaker nerds from around the world. I am waiting for my flight out of the Binghamton airport. There has been quite a weather delay. The driving was terrible. I almost went off the road this morning. The 4WD helps me get up the hills, but it doesn't do much otherwise. It actually creates a fair amount of oversteer. I am refinancing the farm. I am surprised how and fast and efficient the process has been so far. The property appreciated quite a bit in the 6 years we've owned it.
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The roads continue to be slick and unpredictable. It would be one thing if the roads were plain slippery, but they are clear and then occasionally have patches of ice or are otherwise changeable. It was 7 below zero F this morning. This guy's company car got stuck just south of here on RT 15 in PA.
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I ended up in Watkings Glen Saturday. I went to the Rochester Public Market went and saw some friends and generally had a very full day. This is the falls at Watkins Glen. Some weird and unlikely coincidences came up again with some friends who knew each other and didn't know me.