This has not been the week for U.S. space oriented vehicles

| October 31, 2014

The debris photos are starting to show up on the Internet on Twitter after the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo prototype was lost after its first powered test since January. The crash of this suborbital “passenger carrying” spaceship happened at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California according to officials. Two pilots were aboard the craft […]

Equities rally, dollar stronger and precious metals decline

| October 31, 2014

A big morning for stocks as global markets celebrate Japan expands their stimulus. The DOW hit an all-time intraday high as giddy investors bought blue chip equities expecting the economy to continue to grow. The good news of better corporate profits and the Federal Reserve’s finalizing their stimulus makes Wall Street feel good … BUT […]

Test post from iPad — Surfing at 1000 frames per second

| October 31, 2014

Chris Bryan Films

Senator Ted Cruz is beginning to sound appealing

| October 30, 2014

The left, the media and even mainstream Republicans had me convinced that Senator Ted Cruz was not a viable candidate to put on the national ticket … and that his ideas were “just too radically conservative” for today’s America. BUT … listening to him for 6 minutes (below) on CNBC’s Squawkbox this morning, I’m not […]

Ting and Freedompop – A successful week only using wireless

| October 29, 2014

Since moving away from Sprint and finally down to two cellphones in the family …except for a couple of spare emergency “burner” phones (grin) –one with my overseas travel SIM and the other a Samsung Galaxy S2 total free wireless plan on Freedompop. The point is that we were able to travel comfortably with our […]

Sailing Encore with the one I love doesn’t get any better

| October 27, 2014

What a wonderful life. I’ll let our video speak for itself. "God is good, God is good all the time. All the time God is good."  from the movie God is NOT Dead. But it applies …

Vacationing, taking a walk and having lunch with friends

| October 25, 2014

  Brenda and I enjoy a lunch out at GoodFella’s for cheesesteaks with our friends Mark and Darlene Jones on Friday and walk along the new bike and pedestrian walk along the Fort Pierce inlet. The city did a great job of making it attractive and include cute features including mosaics of all the fish […]

Can a Kyocera 135 watt solar panel produce enough juice?

| October 24, 2014

The last 24 hours I’ve been running a two person battery test to see just how comfortable we can be on minimal amp hours. Obviously we need to do better since even with a fair amount of sun hitting Encore’s single Kyocera 135 watt solar panel our battery bank is depleting. The clouds are passing […]

My new cologne – Old Diesel

| October 23, 2014

After our 16 hour drive on Wednesday from Cincinnati to Florida, Brenda and I were welcomed by our liveaboard friends Mark and Dar with a cold drink. They had already turn on our refrigeration making it convenient to repack a few items from our cooler box into the galley. I sure appreciate them keeping an […]

The Ebola Song – humor from the IMUS in the morning show

| October 22, 2014

Youtube VIDEO was Removed It is probably in bad taste to be chuckling at anything related to Ebola … but neither my wife or I have been able to get the Imus show’s Comedian Rob Bartlett‘s ‘The Ebola Song’ (audio mp3) out of our heads. I’m hoping you’ll don’t have the same problem every time […]

A 12-pt Albino Buck taken by an 11-year old in Michigan

| October 21, 2014

Having never seen an albino deer, let along a 12-pt buck albino, it is shocking to know a young 11-year 6th grader old hunter with a crossbow shot the deer. Gavin Dingman from Oceola Township in Michigan knew the deer was in the area his family hunted since they have spotted it several times over […]

Prepping project for my next trip to work on Encore

| October 20, 2014

An “easy to put off” project on any sailboat is marking rode or chain for the anchor. I added a purchased yellow tab to our previous boat Brenich’s nylon rode, but haven’t figured out how I was going to mark the all chain on Encore. Earlier this year I save a copy (testing iCloud Pages […]

Update to Apple OS X Yosemite and all is well

| October 19, 2014

Against my better judgment I upgraded my iMac to Apple’s OS X Yosemite this weekend … bold move after my frustrations with iOS 8 and my older iPad2. So far all is well and it should be an easy to adopt upgrade … particularly since it was free. I’ve had my frustrations with both Apple […]

Glen Campbell performing I’m Not Gonna Miss You

| October 18, 2014

Glen Campbell was always a favorite entertainer, singer and songwriter while I was growing up … especially that 1975 “Rhinestone Cowboy” year. He was one of the few musicians enjoyed by both my parents and me, which either made me an “odd” teen or very fortunate to have similar musical taste?  Unfortunately for his family, […]

Wild card teams will face each other in MLB World Series 2014

| October 17, 2014

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Visiting Dad, having breakfast and enjoying the fall colors

| October 17, 2014

I stopped to check in on Dad this week while driving as is my work routine since my mom passed away in 2012 (1 year 10 months ago to the day). We had our normal breakfast at Bob Evans in Sidney, Ohio and I filled him in on Katelyn, Drew and Taylor (sometimes it’s dinner, depending […]

Tooltip: Carabiners for boxed end wrench storage

| October 16, 2014

Here’s a tip for using carabiners to organize boxed end wrenches that was posted on Lifehacker. Since I keep most of my wrenches in my drawered tool box, this is unnecessary and would slow access … but I do keep a few wrenches in soft tool bags in the trunk of my car and on […]

World economic conditions impact the financial and oil markets

| October 15, 2014

It’s October … why would anybody be surprised by the market heading violently in the down direction? I posted earlier this afternoon while watching the market selloff across the board and figured the end of the day deserved an update.  At one point the Dow was down 460 points with most stocks moving sharply to […]

Market sell-off impacts Apple shareholders and market cap

| October 15, 2014

Will the Apple event on Thursday do much to ease the pain $AAPL shareholders are feeling in Wednesday’s afternoon sell-off? Share prices dropped over 3% in the last couple of days with today taking the biggest dive. The expectation is for an iPad mini 3 an improved iPad Air with the new A8 64-bit chip, […]

Policies need to change to stop Ebola and protect U.S. citizens

| October 15, 2014

WSJ’s “Ebola’s Deadly Reach” map of locations I understand our government’s reluctance to over react to the deadly Ebola virus, but disagree with the lack of precautions being taken to prevent the spread by those traveling from Western Africa to the United States … particularly by air. Commonsense dictates that we expect too much from […]

Battery replacement for my Uninterruptable Power Supply

| October 14, 2014

Most offices (home and commercial) protect their computers and electronics with at least a surge strip and many of us with Uninterruptable Power Supplies … or UPS units. I’ve owned a couple from APC (now Schneider Electric) and over the years have been frustrated with having to replacing the expensive back-up batteries. The replacements are […]

Archiving Bing maps aerial photos before they are gone

| October 13, 2014

  Before my childhood home photos are gone from Bing’s Maps, I wanted to archive a couple aerials of the house where I grew up in a rural Curtice, Ohio on Lake Erie. Although my family moved to the “metropolis” of Sidney Ohio when I was in high school, my fondest memories were of growing […]

So Lonesome – Dome homes in Cape Romano Florida

| October 12, 2014

Somewhat an excuse to slip in a Hank Williams song, but the Dome Homes article was intriguing because we explored this area with my college buddies in the late 1970s every Christmas break. I’d still like to get back there by sailboat and anchor for a few days …weeks … or maybe months … and […]

Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers with a new Bus Session 1

| October 11, 2014

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TechFriday: MeteoEarth website, mobile app and weather

| October 10, 2014

Sort of a timely website find if you are an amateur meteorologist or just enjoy watching and learning about weather. Check out MeteoEarth.com or their MeteroEarth smartphone app for $2.99. (explainer video) There are some pretty powerful features and the real time software offers stunning visual views of weather happenings — like the current Typhoon […]

Why do most investors see October as a scary month?

| October 10, 2014

Investors have a love-hate relationship with the month of October. It is a volatile month and has had its share of stock market ups and stock market downs. Those of us who were around and investing in 1987, we mostly remember the “down.” In those days before Internet investing, hearing and seeing share prices drop […]

Investors get jittery and decide to sell – DJIA down 335 points

| October 9, 2014

Volatile financial markets seesaw so far this week. From 2% down on Tuesday, to 2% up on Wednesday and now back down 2% on Thursday … Friday should be an interesting day and right in keeping with October trading. Here are a few thoughts from Jeff Macke (Yahoo Finance) concluding that the “stock market has […]

Ebola: How serious is it in the U.S. and what should we do?

| October 9, 2014

Reality … as of yesterday … is that the long studied Ebola (EBOV or the related strain Marburg virus) is now a killer in the U.S. Hopefully those having contact with the first U.S. death, Liberian Thomas Duncan, are quarantined and that the infectious virus is being contained to the Dallas area. After a couple […]

Staying in touch and keeping up with careers

| October 8, 2014

It is nice to stay in touch with family and now with cellphones, email, text messaging and video calling, I communicate with both children often – probably more now than when they were in college? My daughter Katelyn calls regularly as she is driving (just like me) and seems to enjoy updating me on the […]

Getting out the vote: The control of the legislature is at stake

| October 8, 2014

It’s getting ugly as we close in on mid-term elections. Democrats are making a desperate attempt to convince voters NOT vote them out of office. Republicans see blood in the water and are doing their best to tie previous and recent failures to Democrats and the president. Kentucky’s Democrat for Senate, Alison Grimes, has gone […]

HAMing it up with HF radio and Winlink Pactor connections

| October 7, 2014

Summer has passed without giving much of a thought to turning on my HF rig or making any amateur radio contacts. The recent Last Man Standing amateur radio event had me firing my ICOM IC-718 and connecting my upgraded SCS PTC-IIe Pactor modem. Obviously using it for “slow” Winlink email is not a priority when […]

Happy Birthday to our aging pup – Tootsie is 17 today

| October 6, 2014

It is shocking that our Australian Blue Heeler Cattle Dog is still hanging in there after 17 years of loyal companionship. Wow … that getting up there for this breed … or any dog. Our Tootsie is deaf (kind of like her owner) and  her eyesight is beginning to fail as well. Her hip displasia […]

We switched our cell service to Ting.com this weekend

| October 6, 2014

After a few months of talking, we finally switch two of our phones to Ting. Hopefully the service won’t change and that with only two of us on the account we’ll be able to save a few dollars. As I mentioned before, my daughter made the switch a couple months ago after her move to […]

Think about it – Internet devices and anti-social networks

| October 5, 2014

Customer info exposed again: Suffering data-breach fatigue?

| October 4, 2014

The year 2014 is turning up to be the year of the data-breach. It seems every month another high profile company reports that their clients and customer data has been compromised. JP Morgan Chase is the most recent and perhaps the largest loss of data – a information from a “mere” 76 million households and […]

TechFriday: Apple special event scheduled – the new iPad Air?

| October 3, 2014

Rumors have been floated but Apple hasn’t announce the date for the new iPad until today. October 16th is scheduled for a "special event"… assumed to be the launch of its new iPad. Most expect an iPad Air 2 device with the new A8 processor and touch fingerprint sensor. It is also possible we’ll learn […]

Finish yard work in the dark but am slowing down now

| October 2, 2014

Finished spreading the last of the topsoil – then seeded and put the straw down just as it turned dark. Hopefully we won’t have to dig up drainage pipes for a while. Now it’s time to sit back and "slow" down … (playing with the slo-mo mode on my iPhone 5s)

Why North Americans will like clean diesel vehicles – Range.

| October 1, 2014

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