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Complaint: I think I swallowed too much rust-oleum today. That's what happens when the wind decides to change direction in the middle of spray painting. It feels like the sky fell on me and collapsed a lung or two.
Non-complaint: My rust-ridden wrought iron gates look as good as new, after 8 hours of scrubbing, rinsing, scraping with a , brushing, brishing on rust disolver jelly, rinsing, more brushing with a drill attached to a steel brush-bit, and 4 cans of rust-oleum semi-gloss spray paint. (Cough-Hack-Cough)
I want to go to bed soon.
...I've had similar except we always ended up on the freeway for the rest of the trip.
...yes they are rare these days but in 2010, 21 C-47s and DC-3s participated in a mass flyover at the EAA airshow in Oshkosh WI This was the largest ever collection of these aircraft to appear at one venue (apologies for the wind noise).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQizDu-dFp0
The flyover begins after eh B-25 takes off at about the 1:22 mark.
One of the issues other than age that threatens keeping these old prop aircraft in the air is that the old radial engines still require leaded fuel to run properly.
This has become a concern for freight carriers in remote areas which still use converted DC-3s, DC-4s, DC-6s, DC-7s for cargo transport given short often unpaved runways in many of these areas that are not conducive to jet operations.
Maybe you have extrasensory perception. These things do happen. https://wtop.com/loudoun-county/2024/01/small-plane-makes-emergency-landing-on-loudoun-co-parkway-near-dulles-airport/
Thanks for the link, that looked like fun!
I understand and even to some degree agree with the environmental concerns around these planes, but - aside from practical needs where they are still in use - it'll be a shame when they disappear from the sky.
My rent is going up due to the electric bill is too high.
Non-complaint: Yay, a mini-adventure.
Went to breakfast with my symphony buddy and his roommate. Also took me to a proper grocery store for some heavy items (potatoes, onions, milk, juice, jars of pickles, etc.), also took me to the computer fix-it shop in the same block where I got some encouraging advice from the fix-it lady, that my laptop problem is worth the risk of a $20 new battery, and a fresh install of Windows. If not, then she'll keep me in mind next time she has a half-decent used laptop for a reasonable price.
Hmmm..., headache for a couple days? Bummer.
Sorry to hear that. Couple of days? Not fun.
I met a new friend. He won't tell me his name so I'm calling him Aaron. Actually he won't talk but he does gap his mouth like a fish. Oh wait! He was probably swimming the entire time I took a nap.
I think he likes his ten gallon swimming pool so he will stay there.
Complaint: A friend wants us to learn a foreign Language and go to Germany. I told him I knew a foreign language, and he asked what it was. I told him English. He told me it was not foreign, but I said it would be when I arrived in Germany.
I'm not getting on any airplanes anyway. No, I'm not scared to fly. My Wife is terrified of heights and planes, but I would love to fly again.
I understand the fear of heights, and I'm not terribly fond of falling, but heights don't bother me much, as long as I feel in control of my safety.
I've stood on the 38th floor of the Vehicle Assembly Building(VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center and looked down over the edge of the unguarded naked floor slab overlooking the main "Transfer Aisle" at the seemingly little toy cars and airplanes and ant-like people on the ground level.
I've stood on the roof of the VAB and climbed out over the edge of the building onto a metal girder support structure that was used to hold the detached Apollo/SaturnV capsule escape rocket while the SaturnV was in the building(escape rocket was too tall to get through the door).
I've drifted through clouds over a thousand feet above the ground in a balloon and watched a mob of kangaroo hop through a pinapple plantation below us. But as long as I held onto the basket's rope, higher than my center of gravity, I was OK and wisely decided to not jump out in a panic.
I love to watch out the window of an airplane, even when it is flying.
But in all of those instances I had control of my center of gravity and felt "safe".
HOWEVER, one time a friend took me mountain climbing in the Rockies near Denver, really simple stuff, no equipment, but there was one place where we had to walk along a narrow ledge over a near vertical cliff, and I chickened out. Not sure I could maintain my balance or not slip on a stone, and the fall would have been positively fatal, i.e. I chickened out because I didn't feel in control of my own safety.
I had the opportunity to climb Uluru (the big red rock in the center of Austraiia) but after about 50 feet I chickened out. The rock was smooth and hard, and slippery. And there was another 50 feet of rock without a guide chain to get through from a place called "Chicken Rock" to the bottom of the guide chain that went up the rest of the way another eleven hundred feet. I know now why it's called "Chicken Rock". I didn't feel in control of my safey. So, I decided to come down and just take the alternate tour, a couple mile walk around the base of Uluru. That turned out to be the more scenic route. Lots happening around the base, and from what the other people in the bus said, nothing was happening on the top, and the view was unchanging and boring after 10 minutes of it. "Oh look dear..., desert to the east, west, north & south, and smooth hot rock surface underfoot and not an inch of shade."
I had the opportunity to climb a 500-foot tower to replace some cables and lights. It was a dollar a foot up and a dollar on the way down. It was a good payday, but I didn't like being up there all day. Then, about 15 years later, I saw this movie.
I found a picture of a John Wick variant.
apparently John Wick is on tubi on tv
Climbing a tower like that might have interested me 30 years ago, but it would have been a "once is enough" experience. A "been there, done that, burned the T-shirt" experience. There are a lot of activities that I've done, once, and been wise enough be happy with survival, and the acquired story. Some I still suffer from.
(Activities, not stories)
Cliffhanger was a good one for that, too!
Awesome Movie.
This climb was after six states: building and raking out the old cable. Over five years of that, my last calculation and the Cable company calculation, I climbed over 100,000 telephone poles—one of the many jobs I have had. I was a nomad most of my life—a have a duffle bag, will travel sort of guy.
It reminds me of the series Reacher on Prime. Roll into town with just a toothbrush and the clothes on your back. In one of the shows, someone broke his toothbrush, and he says Now I truly own nothing.
I can say I, in person, have seen some things that can't be unseen.
I just started messing around in Unreal Engine, and I could not have more contempt for the interface.
Yeah, yeah, right!
You've got a good start, but I'm sure you could have more contempt if you really tried. 
Non-complaint: Yay, my gaming machine is working again. 'Twas an accidentally dislodged cable from my KVM switch. Should've seen it days ago, but I wasn't looking hard.
'Nother non-complaint: Yay, my broken LED desk lamp is working (sort of) again. Must've been a loose connection, 'cause I started to remove the lamp and it came on again. But only in "low" mode, but it's been like that for a year.
I made a cake. I left it in the kitchen while I watched wheel of fortune.
now is the time to put pjs on and finish cleaning the kitchen. But my leg hurts.
...I've been in aeroplanes many times, in calm and rough air. I even took a few flights at airshows where we did aerobatics (once on an open cockpit Great Lakes Biplane). I've have no trouble of fear with going up to the top floor or observation deck of tall buildings like the John Hancock Centre and Sears Tower in Chicago or the Empire State and World Trade Centre in New York, as well as the Space Needle in Seattle, I've hiked up to the top of "Granddad's Bluff" just outside of LaCrosse WI along the east bank of the Mississippi river as well as to the top of Diamond head on Oahu and Haleakalā on Maui all which offered breathtaking panoramic views.
Even big roller coasters with loops, corkscrews and near vertical drops don't bother me 9there's one back in my old home state if Wisconsin a big wooden one that plunges fron the frist hill down into a darkened tunnel where it does a 90 bank...fun).
But ask me go up one of those flimsy warehouse stocking ladders to the third rack level to fetch a 35# box. and I'll be shaking like a leaf until I got back down.. Crikey these days I even dread having to climb on a chair to change the battery in the smoke alarm every 6 months. I used to be able to reach it from the floor but with my elbow and shoulder joints totally shot, no longer.
Like LeatherGryphion, as long as I can maintain my CG, my hands are free, and there are protections like rulings, fences, or walls between me and "oblivion", I'm fine
Rock climbing, skydiving, or washing windows on a 20 storey building? Not on your life.
You don't understand. I used to find texturing in Houdini incredibly tedious. Now I'm trying to figure out if I can texture a set in Houdini before exporting it to Unreal.
Complaint - washing slug-slime off ones fingers takes a lot of soap.
Context - I was putting the shopping away. We keep vegetables in a little lobby at the back of the kitchen. I was consolidating the remaining potatoes to put the nw in at one end of the box when my finger met something squishy - "Ick, an off potato" I thought, lifting it out. "Hmm, that;s very neat for a potato, and why does it have a mottled pattern on it?" ... "Ick, it's a slug."
Complaint - this probably explains why the carrot that had been on top of the same box had odd, hemi-spherical divots when I peeled it the other day.
I totally messed up on a dirt cup dessert I was making for a party tomorrow. Now I have too many gummy worms since the project got canceled.
OT: The Slug Slime, Complaint Thread
Complaint: Argh...., another of my retired computers died in its sleep. I have a Dell Dimension 2350 with WinXP as part of a pair of Dells of similar vintage (the other is a Dimension 3000) Both have maxed out RAM, two hard drives, and able to play old games. The 3000 works fine, and has been connected to my network and tested periodically. However, the 2350 was disconnected a year or so ago because I ran out of connections to my KVM switch. And additionally, the 2350 is slow as molasses when compared to the 3000. And the last time I used it, it had misbehaved some way. So I retired it and set it aside.
Today for some mysterious reason, I got curious to see if that old 2350 wanted to play again. Dragged it over to my workbench, plugged it in to keyboard, mouse and monitor, turned it on, and it came up all bright and happy. Until I tried to log on. It wouldn't accept my password. Then after a few minutes it blue-screened saying I had a problem with file "ialmrnt5". Turned it off, turned it back on, and nothing except the case fan. Nada, zip, bupkis, gzorked. Tried a few more times and finally noticed that the motherboard is displaying 4 lighted indicators, probably indicative of something seriously wrong. Sigh..., gotta dig out a specification manual to see what it's saying.
Right now, the main suspects are: Power supply, and everything else in the box.
This machine is at least 20 years old, so everything is suspect.
I'd thought that this would be just a quick "yep, it's still alive", and send it back out to pasture. But no, it has teased me with a diagnostic adventure. Unfortunately, I have to put it away again for a while, because tomorrow my new laptop battery arrives and I'll be trying to resolve or at least verify the status of my sick laptop(a much more useful machine). Meanwhile I'll think about the rationale of fixing a 20+ year old machine.
Non-complaint: Wow, that was quick. A 15 second search of the Internet found the Dell manual for the Dimension2350 and the meaning of the light pattern. Memory.
So, I took out one of the two memory cards, and the system booted. OK, so I put the memory card back in and the system booted again. Yay! However, the fact remains that it doesn't accept the password that is written on the back of the machine. But it hasn't crashed yet. It's XP so I can get around the password problem with a few minor magic spells, but at least the machine isn't completely borked.
However, it will have to wait. I have other things to do today, and then the laptop tomorrow.
Anyone want some gummy worms? I got enough to share.
I don't know how good you are, but if you download Hiren's BootCD PE (hirensbootcd.org), a utility will reset the SAM files to defaults and let you log in without a password. This is how to do it. HOWTOs | Hiren's BootCD PE (hirensbootcd.org)
Complaint: Sigh..., new battery has arrived. Laptop now turns on when battery inserted.
Laptop boots OK, but after about 10 minutes will completely shut off, poof, gone!
But reboots without complaint.
Ran "HwMonitor" to watch the temperatures. CPU is around 40C, RAM is around 60-68C, SSD is about 50C.
Battery instructions had recommended discharging new battery to 2% before charging to 95%. Currently still discharging,
Has been running for about 10 minutes during current restart, expecting crash momentarily, temps still sane.
Boom: System went dark while I was typing. HOWEVER, upon reboot it was obvious that the system had gone into hibernation, as instructed by my settings when battery hits 7% But battery went from 35% to 7% in just a few minutes, and came down from an initial 77% fresh out of the box, to 35% in only about an hour encompassing 3 or 4 reboots. Hmmm..., excess drain on battery? New battery should last 2 hours on this machine. But, then again, it's not an official HP battery, and may be cheaply made, because I paid a cheap price for it.
System now on and charging seemingly normally, up to 14% now. Felt the keyboard for heat, and there is a little warmth above where the power circuits are, but not alarming or unexpected.
System is busy doing something. Disk activity light is very active.
30 seconds later: Ah ha, the system was doing a Windows Update and has now rebooted.
Non-complaint: Knocking on wood here, but the system hasn't had an unexplainable crash for about a half hour, is running several programs that I started, and is also scanning system for more updates, New battery up to 35%.
Sorry about the running commentary, I'd originally just wanted to say laptop is back in service, but that would have been a lie, and since I had the computer open typing this entry, I went into "Lab Mode" and do what I always do when fixing computers, take copious notes of observations, actions, and thought paths. It's a habit, and the notes help keep my ancient brain on the rails, and the notes come in handy when interrupted by life.