Road Trip

-
Image
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...
Post a Comment
-

I had an MRI of my foot. The achilles tendon is torn. I am getting around, but I have to be very careful. I am using the crutches a lot. If I am not careful I can rupture it then it has to be connected surgically. I expect to be in a splint boot for a number of weeks. With the boot I can safely apply pressure to the leg.

I got the back field mowed. Every time it gets better. We will take hay off it this year. The Holder tractor mows about 4 acres an hour. It takes me a bit over 4 hours to get the field done. I seem to have run over a skunk with it or something. The smell is pretty well dissipated now, however.

The project is to rebuild the basement wall this Memorial day weekend. I have two new swinging patio doors. They were not cheap. They set me back about 4200.00 bucks and took two months to arrive. It is in preparation for getting the decks done and the house finished.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
This picture is the plane that flew me in last Saturday. It is an US Airforce C-17. As you can see from earlier pics they let me up on the flightdeck for the view. That plane is the most stable aircraft I have ever been on. They land here (this time of year (for a couple more weeks) almost every day (one flight). They turn the plane around in about an hour usually. It brings all of the supplies this time of year including fresh fruits and veggies (freshies), mail, parts and people. I just heard at lunch that the LC-130 flights (on skis) may start to the pole station tommorow. No one has been in or out of the pole since Feb 2006 I think.
Read more
-
I am buying a new truck. I am pretty close on figuring out which one. It will be a duramax diesel with the 5 speed allison automatic I know for sure. Where I am getting it from and whether I am getting the dump trailer is not so sure. The class I am taking (Financial Management) is demanding. I am going to have to really knuckle down. It has been as cold as 26 below zero the last few days around here. It hasn't got that cold at the house, but when I went into work the other day it was so cold your lungs hurt when you breathed in. The diesel starts fine if you remember to plug it in the night before. The llamas don't care for the cold. The heater keeps their house about 25 degrees warmer than the outside temp. These temps are tough on the animals no doubt. I know after last year I would never think of cold temperatures the same again. The animals are just at the mercy of their owners and the temperature. We got one of the GE radios working on the desired frequency ...
Read more
-
It was hot this past weekend. I don't know what the temp was but it must have been well into the 90s. I decided I was done making excuses about the trim on the southside of my barn, so I was up there sweating buckets "gettn r dun". I moved and chopped firewood, cleared some for the fence and generally did farm work. I finished mowing my hay field this week. It feels great to look back at the 18 acres and see alternating stripes of grass. Next year, I plan on baling. The big news is that Bonnie "made me" buy a fish pole as well as a new reel for my larger pole. That was fun. I have a very nice Fenwick/Abu Garcia ultralight now. Sunday morning I got up at the usual early hour (about 5:00), drove through the woods with my Jeep to the far corner of the property. I then carried my fish gear through the park about a mile to the very serene, slightly foggy, glass-smooth lake. I fished about 45 minutes. I hooked a nice bass. The fish jumped nicely and then spit the ho...
Read more
-
Image
Today I am supposed to leave the pole at 11:30 AM. Delays and flight changes are common. It is all part of the deal. They announce to the whole station when a plane takes off from McMurdo, when it gets to the last checkpoint and when it lands. So it is pretty easy to be there when you need to get on. All the LC-130s (hercs) unload and load hot at Pole. They do not shut the engines off. I have to say it is the first time I got off a running airplane. It is windy and there are a lot of fumes with those 4 big turboprops. I still have a lot to do when I get back to McMurdo. The first thing is to take a shower. Showers are restricted to 2 minutes twice a week at pole. At McMurdo I can take as long as I want, but conservation is encouraged. In the deep field camps showers are basically impossible. It is so dry it really doesn't become a real problem. I got this picture yesterday on my way out to the RF building. It is a piece of the C-130 that crashed here in the 1970s. They are di...
Read more
-
Image
In looking closer at my eclipse photos I saw something interesting. During totality, the corona light seems to actually refract around the moon illuminating the surface features (craters). Cool.
Read more