Pumpy Umpy the rabbit and the Cuppycake song

| April 30, 2016

You would think an over 17 million viewed video on YouTube with a Pumpy Umpy reference would be something I would have watched before … nope … but now I have. So much for knowing about Amy Castle or the Cuppycake song.

Buy Apple (AAPL) and hold it for the long haul

| April 29, 2016

It has been a rough couple of days for Apple ($AAPL) shareholders as growth this past quarter was elusive. Most blame the global economy, and in particular China, for the weak quarterly numbers. It does remind me of late 2012 and 2013 when analysts questioned whether management had lost their way. The same is happening […]

Difference Between Heat Treatment, Annealing and Tempering 

| April 28, 2016

Archiving a bit of information from a company I’ve purchased metal from in the past — good info. Heat Treatment Heat treatment is used to alter the physical and mechanical properties of metal without changing its shape. It is an essential process in metal manufacturing as it increases the desirable characteristic of the metal, while […]

Rafting the Upper Gorge on the Cuyahoga River

| April 28, 2016

Just a few steps from my old office door … who’d a thunk it?

A battery hack has revived the analog Triplett meter

| April 27, 2016

A leftover weekend project was to see if I could get my dad’s old Triplett 630PL meter back to working shape. As a boy, I remember "carefully" using "his" meter when I was in junior high school and attempting to build Heathkit projects … like my shortwave radio. Thankfully I never has to depend o […]

Maintenance on my old Mercedes Benz 300D Turbodiesel

| April 26, 2016

Since I’ve been driving the 1982 Mercedes Benz 300D Turbodiesel most of the late winter and spring this year, I’ve been racking up the miles and am due for a full fluid and filter change. Tonight was the night and after 4 filters (2 fuel, 1 oil and 1 air) and 8 quarts of oil, […]

More to go … but recent evenings have been great for yardwork

| April 26, 2016

  Our lawn has never looked greener than this year (above, although cloudy in the photo) even if the landscaping and general cleanup leaves a lot to be desired. Which reminds me, we have a lot to do before calling it summer, but for now just getting the limbs and fallen trees cleaned up is […]

Music, mood, memories … Incommunicado.

| April 26, 2016

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Salvaging a non-working florescent fixture with LED bulbs

| April 25, 2016

Since I have a bunch of florescent lights in my shops (most are 8 footers) it is getting to be a challenge to keep up with replacing both tubes and ballasts, I’ve decided it was time to experiment a small 2 foot 2 bulb fixture and replace with a couple cheapy “warm white” (2700 degree) LEDs […]

Archive link to Volvo Shaft Seal to add to Encore maintenance

| April 24, 2016

General Propeller Co. link

The Bill Envall segment from Dorkfish on African animals

| April 23, 2016

The other day after seeing Bill Engvall on the ABC sitcom Last Man Standing, I tried to remember his comedy bit where he used the line, "Bob, he’s a smoker."  I could remember much more so I mentioned it casually to a friend — a few days later he text me the segment from his […]

Downloaded iOS Carly for BMW app and ordered OBD adapter

| April 22, 2016

The saga of our poorly running 2010 BMW X5 35d continues while replacing component by component the SUV is inching back towards running condition. The most recent hiccup was a bit of a computer glitch after getting the ECU back from the tuner. I was hoping that as as soon as I powered everything back […]

TechFriday: Testing Amazon S3 hotlinking policies

| April 22, 2016

While learning a bit more about Amazon S3 data storage, it was time to experiment with the hotlinking and leaching of stored content, be it video or photo. Although the S3 storage is relatively inexpensive, every byte that is stored (no biggie) … or megabyte that is downloaded/streamed (photo/video) is billed whether or not it […]

A new book to read from Fox News host Juan Williams

| April 21, 2016

I would have put the title of the book in the subject line, BUT it is a long one: We the People: The Modern Day Figures Who Have Reshaped and Affirmed the Founding Fathers’ Vision of America … whew! Title aside, I’m really looking forward to readings Juan Williams thoughts on the impact on America […]

Archive: Looking forward to seeing this at the 2016 TDIFest

| April 20, 2016

In an email exchange with Andrew Rodriguez of FixMyVW.com, he hinted that he’ll have a few new products up in Wisconsin at the 2016 TDIFest this Labor Day. One item that caught my eye was a billeted chunk of aluminum "goodness" as the marketeers say — he knew what he was doing sending it to […]

Americans are giving up independence for dependence

| April 19, 2016

Recorded a bit of audio off the television this week as the intellectual thinker Charles Krauthammer summarized in about a minute and a half just how and why our country move from its independent founding to the dependent populous we see today. Krauthammer’s best comment in the exchange was “the big debate between left and […]

A photo that is just begging for a caption

| April 19, 2016

I’m sure there are some naturalists who will point out the difference between alligators and crocodiles … but the rest can work with the "crocs" thing.

Why would someone make a Volkswagen Beetle bigger?

| April 19, 2016

Have you ever wondered what a 1959 VW Karmann Cabriolet Convertible would look like if it was built 40% larger? Well here you go … Tumbler LINK

Going through sentimental memory items with my brother

| April 18, 2016

While cleaning out my mom and dad’s house in preparation to sell it, my brother and I are getting bogged down looking through items my parents kept. Sunday’s "finds" were sentimental treasures that my mom kept tucked away in her memory box. There were items like my first pair of glasses, the leg tag for […]

Spring weather is fickle — cold and snow or sunny and warm

| April 17, 2016

What a difference a week can make come April here in Cincinnati. Last Saturday we woke up to snow (backyard photo below) and this weekend after cutting grass Friday night has the grass green and tulips blooming yesterday morning.  Instead of shoveling snow that means yardwork and time to think about spring cleanup. Also wanted […]

Newer cars are too complicated. What have I gotten myself into?

| April 16, 2016

What a mess of "tiny snakes" as my daughter call the the organized harnesses of wires connected to my cars ECU. I have to admit, I was taken back at the perception of a rats nest of connectors and wiring all tying into the BMW X5 35D’s computer. The air and water tight box under […]

Comparing chip temperatures on the Raspberry Pi2 and P3

| April 15, 2016

Since I’m running a couple of Raspberry Pi computers 24/7 and have both the Pi2 and Pi3 forwarding their processor temps a couple times each day with a Python Twitter script, it has been interesting to compare the two boards.  Obviously the Pi3 is in every way faster at computing and running stock at 1200Mhz, […]

Anchoring a Boat: The Ultimate Guide — Fatty Goodlander

| April 14, 2016

Although Fatty Goodlander’s book "Creative Anchoring: Everything About Anchors and Anchoring" is a more in-depth guide to anchoring your small boat, a 2014 AllAtSea.net article by the same author is shorter and very good advice. I’ve read it before, but it is worth archiving on my personal blog just in case the link disappears. Anchoring […]

Russian jets make provocative passes over Navy ship

| April 14, 2016

This isn’t the first close call incident according to the news coming from the Pentagon, but a very close and dangerous pass over the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic. They halted exercises with a Polish helicopter landing on the flight deck and shared the video below.   Thankfully cooler head prevailed but at some […]

Happy THIRD anniversary to Katelyn and Drew

| April 13, 2016

It is hard to believe that 3 years have come and gone already, but time does not stand still. Katelyn and Drew will be celebrating their wedding anniversary over the weekend rather than today; they have a special getaway planned!  I’m so glad they found each other (Pumpy Umpy is glad too).

Keeping a Raspberry Pi 3 cool for 5 dollars

| April 13, 2016

It looks like a small heatsink might be a good idea in order to preserve the stability of my Raspberry Pi3 as well as a cooler processor making the little American Pi microserver last a bit longer. Temperatures are generally 20 degrees higher than the Pi2 and have reached 90 degrees C a couple times during […]

Mt Washington New Hampshire -231 mph record wind in 1934

| April 12, 2016

Did you know that "on this day" in 1934 in a small weather station (chained to the ground) atop of Mt. Washington in New Hampshire measured record setting winds speeds of 231 mph? Wow! That record held until Cyclone Olivia was recorded at 253 mph wind gusts on Barrow Island in Australia in 1996. I’m […]

Who knows what emoji you are really sending and receiving?

| April 12, 2016

Ever notice that the emoji you send from one device to another isn’t always translated the same? Well that because each platform has their own unique way of translating that "grinning or grimacing face" that we once-upon-a-time type as punctuation marks and called emoticons. A study by the GroupLens Research team at the University of […]

Raspberry Pi security video and nearing the end for the Rav4

| April 12, 2016

We found out a couple things Monday … first, the Raspberry Pi garage camera seems to be working just fine after tweaking a few thing while experimenting in the house, albeit the video is a bit delayed (15 seconds maybe ???). So far so good with video … next to get some motion detection so […]

Who is reading what — the top blog posts from the past decade

| April 11, 2016

While cleaning up the MyDesultoryBlog.com WordPress install in preparation for an eventually PHP 7.0 update, I decided it was time to see just what posts were getting the most eyeballs. For years, the top post was the Great White Shark following a kayak … and rightly so. After a few years and a popular Accelerated Medical […]

Testing my old Raspberry Pi as a home security camera

| April 10, 2016

It is pretty easy for me to get distracted when I’m suppose to be working on taxes … especially when my Raspberry Pi2 has given up webserver duties to the Raspberry Pi3. There were a couple glitches in imaging the new 64GB micro SD card but all is as it should be now. With the […]

YOURLS on a webserver for personalized shortened URLs

| April 9, 2016

A little more tinkering with webservers and websites this weekend lead me to adding open source YOURLS project to my little used richc.us domain (it was just place holder for a server). Its use gives me a simplified bit.ly or goo.gl "like" personalized URL shortener. Initially I thought about opening it for public use, but […]

Updated to PHP 7.0 on the Raspberry Pi 3

| April 8, 2016

American Pi (richcorbett.us) is up and running PHP 7.0 on this Raspberry Pi 3. So far no issues with the Iconic One WordPress theme, handful of plugins or the speeds on this Apache2 server (is it faster?) Click to check PHP Version

TechFriday: A digital thermometer is a must have gadget

| April 8, 2016

On our last trip out sailing on Encore I noticed the Volvo was running hotter than it should be. My first thought was a lack of cooling water flowing in through the new smaller strainer, but then it was possible the coolant was low — I added about a quart. After returning home I also […]

Talking taxes, politics and old #TBT high school reunion pages

| April 7, 2016

Here’s a personal "what I’m doing" post after spending an evening with my son Taylor finishing up his taxes. We of course used this excuse to have dinner together too. I think we have both always enjoyed our time together, but the older (and more mature) he gets, the more I really do enjoy talking […]

The Raspberry Pi 3 is up and running with a LAMP stack

| April 6, 2016

After buying a new 64GB Samsung EVO+ microSD card and imaging Raspian on it, I started the Raspberry Pi 3 in my home office.  It is now time to start installing software and updating it to make it a proper "micro" webserver … although I already have WordPress and American Pi running on it (even […]

My fair weather daily driver: 1982 Mercedes 300D Turbodiesel

| April 5, 2016

Love this car and the whole W123 thing!

Neither is a good option if you are the enemy

| April 5, 2016

BMW X5 35d weekend wrenching update

| April 4, 2016

In order to start working on the BMW X5 35d upgrades this weekend, I ordered a set of "star" sockets known as E-sockets. I picked up the larger set partially because I wanted the plastic storage box … and the Torx bits (already have "some") came with it — Amazon’s price with Prime shipping was […]

Replacing parts on Encore and a couple spring break photos

| April 3, 2016

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Catch up post: Evening thunderstorms aboard Encore

| April 2, 2016

We had a few wicked thunderstorms last week while in Florida and enjoyed watching this one “from a distance” in the cockpit of Encore (also a very short clip of Katelyn and Drew heading off to explore distant shores in the Zodiac – below the break).   —

A package from the Pine A64 Kickstarter FOOLED me

| April 1, 2016

It has been a couple months since I backed the Pine A64 Kickstarter, but I did noticed my credit card was billed last month … meaning it was shipped??? Besides the hint of a March shipment in a previous email, there hasn’t been an update as to "if" the micro 64-bit computer board has left China […]

Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
My Desultory Blog