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Showing posts from April 10, 2011

Expidite the expidited

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I am headed to the passport office this AM to get a new passport. I didn't have time to do the expidited renewal after getting back from Japan. So I made an special expiditing appointment with the passport folks in Atlanta. I am glad I only have to drive into Atlanta, not fly up to NY or Washington DC. It seems I have had to do some expiditing everytime I have renewed my passport. Passports are good for 10 years. When you get a new passport it is a time to ponder where you will be and what the passport will look like in 10 years. The pic belows shows the wear on my now cancelled passport. it was a 50 page book (the extra pages version) and 46 pages are fully used. Many countries require 3 empty pages to enter their country. So, I got full use of the larger size passport. If you need more pages, you send the passport in and they will "sew-in" more pages. The thickest passport I ever saw was at the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan border. A truck driver I saw had a Uzbekistan passpo...
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I am in Sevenum, Netherlands at the moment. I landed this morning at 7:00 AM local (Dusseldorf) and put in a full day. I only feel a little tired. I must be getting the hang of this. One of the tricks is to stay up after your first day is over. You have to move towards the new time zone. http://www.techworld.com.au/article/383125/facebook_biggest_bank_by_2015/?fp=2&fpid=1 I think the above article (and pasted as a image below) is important and a potenteous, and a bit scary. Especially, since it was written by the the founder of what facebook has become.
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I like this piece of music. It ties US immigrants together; New Orleans (African and French), western Appalachia (Irish), and the Midwest (German and Scandinavians). You can almost see tributaries of the Mississippi river. How shallow it is to think that we don't each come from a particular heritage. Pride (deferred or demonstrated), genetics and familiar water holes is what makes us real.
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I just received a Medal from the US Government for Service in Antarctica. Certainly, it isn't every day I get a medal. It is one of the few medals that the federal government gives out to civilians. I am not sure what to do with it. Maybe I can find an old Webelos uniform to wear it with (not that I could possibly fit into it). I would like to get back to Antarctica again someday. Early next month I am giving a presentation called "Aviation in Antarctica" to the Atlanta chapter of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). Tuesday I am headed to Dusseldorf Germany, The Netherlands, and Denmark. I will be spending next weekend in Copenhagen. I hope to rent a bicycle.