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Showing posts from July, 2019

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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A friend of mine in Brazil sent me some pics from Paraty Brazil. That's not trash in the water. Its colorful tropical fish. Very cool. I keep a Hawaiian Shirt inside my office door at work. You never know when you might need it.
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The weather this week in SoCal has been pretty much as it has been for months, 75 Degrees F and 50% RH. The rest of the US is having a heat wave. I remember the first "man-on-the-moon" as we called it. I was 8 years old. Some of the memories I have was that it took soooo long for each phase of the mission. The decompression of the LEM after they landed seemed like eternity. I complained and my OLDER sister said something like "You don't want the astronauts to open the door early and get sucked out of the lunar module"... followed by the typical "DUH." I remember the video simulations (not real video) of the events when there was not video available (lots). I remember the actual video as well with "live from moon" I think it was blinking. It was analog B&W. It absolutely sucked compared to today, but it seemed a lot better than what I am seeing on youtube today. Maybe because my Dad probably put fresh vacuum tubes in the TV just before the...
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The penthouse is more difficult to furnish than initially figured. But we are working on it. I went to the Orange County (California) fair. It is close-by. We will be back this season in the next couple of weeks. The ionizing radiation levels have been slightly lower today than normal in Costa Mesa, CA. I had some vivid dreams this past week. I miss my friend Pete. He really was amazing. We are trying to tally his patents. His goal was 100. Beside the measurement using patents (post Polaroid-Kodak patent lawsuit~4.5 million) there was so much more.
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We decided to hang out in SoCal over the 4th Holiday. We also moved into a new apartment, a penthouse. It is a bit better and a bit cheaper. We felt the first earthquake. The chair I was sitting it started rocking and then the curtains. We went outside as a precaution. No one else did. We didn't even feel the larger quake here in Orange County. We will rebuild. ;-) I took this picture of the "homeless" just inside the border of Santa Ana. Notice neither one of the folks has shoes on. They are also not near a bus stop. It reminded me of what I have seen in India. Everyday Rolls, Ferraries, McClearens, travel this road. I would have liked to get the dichotomy in the same pic. The story goes that CA has great tax incentive programs for funding rehab facilities, actually houses with some sort of basic credential. So folks come from all over the country. When they mess up in these facilities they get kicked out. They used to kick them out in parks, now they are kicking them ou...
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