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"In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Author

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Thanksgiving 2023

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Another Tranksgiving Holiday has come and gone. No travel this year over the holidays as we normally do. Interesting travel is being planned. We decided NOT to participate in The Macy's Day Parade this year. We had some small regret perhaps, but we marched in the parade two years in a row. We are convinced there would NOT be sufficient novelty in the third year. We invited Vlad over for a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, tossed salad, sweet corn, cranberries and pumpkin pie for dessert. Angie was trying to make her deadline in creating subtitles for some Netflix shows. I made dinner, no issues at all. A pic shows a symptom of excess. The small roaster pan was my grandmother's. The large one was the one I just bought. A modern turkey won't fit in the old one... maybe a cornish game hen or a chicken will, but you would be hard pressed to find a turkey as small as what was available 50 or 70 years ago. Turkeys are larger. According t
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The Balkans 2023

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Dowdell's 2023 Balkan trip Wow! What a trip! 10 New Countries (based on what the US state dept considers countries) Romania Bulgaria Moldova Serbia Bosnia and Herzegovina Kosovo North Macedonia Montenegro Albania Greece 3 Different Alphabets (many different languages, sometimes with multiple alphabets) 10 Currencies 14 Taxi or Uber Rides 3 Rental Cars 15 Border Crossings 9 Flight Segments 4 Bus Trips All that in 14 days. I am only now convinced that we could complete a trip with those stats, because it is over. It was a complex trip. We tried to take a version of this trip in 2020 but were thwarted by Covid. This time we pulled it off. The Balkan peninsula countries are fascinating because of the deep history, unique cultures, but also with current events and intercountry relationships. We learned a lot about the region and relationships with other countries. Since it was such a travel intensive trip we l
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Sawmill, Microwave Oven and other random stuff

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I have made some improvements to the sawmill, specifically designed/created these bifurcated dogs. It was suggested by a friend that the new dogs need a name. He suggested "spot" since is is denotive of being in a fixed poistion. I enjoy innovation and also the ability to fabricate or do the simple development to whatever it is that needs to get done. The microwave oven stopped working. Since it is a built-in wall unit connected to the conventional oven, replacement would not be cheap. I has amazed at how many videos are available on how to fix microwave ovens there were on Youtube. The most amazing thing was the number of videos there were in regards to actually fixing the magnetrons themselves. The microwave is now fixed, but I opted to replace components including the 20 year old magetron, not repair the components. Fixing microwave oven magnatron . Adulut care? Neighborhood sign. Spelling errors are just that. I understand what was intended. I also know that it affects
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VLJs --- 20 years after all the hype

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20 years ago the world was abuzz with the VLJ (very light jet) movement. I got to park next to this one the other day in South Carolina. Here is an article from Wired magazine from 14 years ago indicating the demise (or morph) of the hyped VLJ. (Wired article from 2009). The plane in the picture is the Cirrus Vision jet. It probably won the contest in actually (mostly) delivering on the promise of a VLJ. The actual cost of the plane here (about 3 million USD) is way outside what the ridiculously low projected pricing of 20 years ago. But, the plane is cool for sure and is very relateable to the Cirrus piston aircraft. The cruise speed of the vison jet is 345 mph. The Honda jet cruises at 424 mph and the Phenom jet at 466 mph. The speed of the vision jet is incredible compared to my Cessna 172 at 140 mph, but the Vision jet speed is pretty much with the turboprops. (King Air 360 mph and the PC-12 at 311 mph).
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Travel Planning with Chat GPT 3.5 Artificial Intelligence

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I am planning a trip to Southern Africa. I am planning on Zimbabwe, Eswatini (Swaziland), Botswanna, South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Mozambique and Zambia. I decided to ask Chat GPT 3.5 to help direct me in the sequence of travel. The result seems to have saved a lot of my time. Let's see how that order works out as a finish booking. I am skeptical since travel efficiency on commercial airlines has little to do with a straight line being the shortest (cheapest) distance between two points. A couple weeks back I did a co-presentation at a conference regarding AI in language translation and have been attending other events to educated myself better on AI. It is a real thing and a game changer. Executives will be able to skip over middle management more relying on the "pseudo-wisdom" of AI prompt chats. It will work. The issue will be finding executives smart enough to leverage it. A couple of things are clear with the current state of AI. It only does what you tell it an
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