Posted By RichC on February 24, 2022
Russia, lead by the wicked Vladimir Putin, has invaded and attacked their neighbor on February 24th after massing their military around Ukraine this past year. They started the invasion with missiles and air strikes to all but eliminate Ukraine’s air defenses and are currently crossing borders from all directions with overwhelming military force. For students of history, it triggered thoughts of 1939 history as Nazi Germany expanded their footprint in Europe … as world leaders at the time bloviated and watched. We all too often discount and forget the past and as the Winston Churchill axiom goes, “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
The questions facing the west at this point is … “if sanctions and talks don’t work, will NATO, lead by the United States, be required to mount a military deterrent?” And … (more…)
Category: History, Millitary, News |
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Tags: attack, axiom, biden, churchill, History, invasion, leaders, martin niemoller, peace, prayer, praying, putin, quotes, russia, sanctions, ukraine, war
Posted By RichC on February 24, 2022
Last week I was talking to an online friend from Alaska about outdoor cold-weather activities who shared a winter camping photo.
He was complaining about the freezing rain and less than ideal weather this year on his 20 mile snowmobile trip, so he cut it short and drove to Wasilla to watch the start of the Iron Dog.
The conversation shifted to the the correct verbiage: snowmobile vs snowmachine … and which term to use. He commented that once you get to the Arctic, they call it a SnoGo.
The chat had me remembering growing up and enjoying winters on Lake Erie and only knowing them as a Ski-doo … which was the popular brand at the time (and may still be?) We enjoyed riding ours “with permission” on farm fields, the snow covered roads in our rural area of NW Ohio … and even on Lake Erie in front of our house (winters were obviously colder, the ice on the lake was thicker and it probably snowed more). Here is a Throwback Thursday #TBT photo “taken by MomC” of DadC, my brother Ron, our dog Skippy and me for the blog archive. Good memories.
Category: Memories, Personal, Photos, TBT, Weather |
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Tags: alaska, dadc, lake erie, memories, momc, richc, ronc, Ski-Doo, skippy, snow, snowmachine, snowmobile, TBT, throwback, winter
Posted By RichC on February 23, 2022
Interesting tidbit: According to a post on social media (take that for what it is worth), “the average person lives in 11 homes in there lifetime.” It doesn’t detail if a college dorm is considering a “home,” but if I eliminate them … I’m up to EIGHT that I call “a residence.” In pondering my future (it said “lifetime”) … I’m estimating there are 2-4 moves yet to make. Gulp. It surprised me that I was even at 8 … and that ALL were in Ohio?
This has me wondering about my friends who have moved constantly due to job changes or from a life in the military (like my friends Mark and Dar who move more often that I change clothes – humor). They obviously punch up the averages.
Category: Human Interest, Social Media, Tidbits |
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Tags: home, house, interesting, residence, social media, tidbits
Posted By RichC on February 22, 2022
For years now we have been satisfied with the bulky (and older) Canary Cams for added security at home. The first Canary continues to work flawlessly “inside” our house and thankfully just perches quietly in our great room and is suppose to trigger when motion is detected “when we are not home.” 
The plan was to use it without the monthly monitoring costs associated with adding a camera to our normal windows/doors/fire/etc home security setup.
Being early to the game, we added a second one for the detached poolhouse garage, but since then added a low-cost Wyze Cam and have been pointing the older 2nd Canary out the window to monitor the driveway. It works great during the day when the glass reflection is low and the bugs and birds stay away.
Unfortunately the cam switches to infrared mode at night and does not work very well through a window. I’ve contacted Canary.is to see if there is a away to switch off the night-mode, but after going through their re-calibration and trying everything their customer support offered … there is not.
So … I’ve added a new Wyze Cam3 (outdoor safe) driveway camera to the Wyze side of my accounts and am currently paying their “lower-cost” PLUS service which offers more cloud storage and AI to detect people, vehicles, packages, etc. The product I opted for this time was their Socket Cam that plugs into a garage light and offers a sunset-to-sunrise feature for the outdoor garage light. This is controllable on their app, but better yet is that it feeds power to the Cam3. The shipment arrived and unfortunately would not powerup … but giving me the chance to test the Wyze customer service. I was far better than Canary and they quickly sent me a new camera (testing it below) to plug into the socket. So far it has been flawless. Stay tuned as I’ll soon be testing the new Wyze Cam Floodlight for our HOA’s pool as mentioned last month for a Tech Friday post.
Category: Cloud, Gadget, Misc, Photos, Technology |
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Tags: canary, floodlight, house, security cam, socket, wyze, wyzecam3
Posted By RichC on February 21, 2022
Although the artist wasn’t mentioned, Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan tweeted out an impressive painting this afternoon. Happy Presidents’ Day.
Category: Art, Holiday |
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Tags: congress, Holiday, jim jordan, potus, presidents day, united states
Posted By RichC on February 21, 2022
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Category: Memories, Music |
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Tags: 8-track, album, band, boston, cassette, college, flooding, mp3, music monday, musicmonday, rock and roll
Posted By RichC on February 20, 2022
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Category: Archive, Misc, Personal, Photos, Woodworking |
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Tags: annalyn, birthday, drew, ellerie, facetime, family, katelyn, michigan, Photos, richc, rocking chair, woodworking, workshop
Posted By RichC on February 20, 2022
The photo to the left is one of those photos taking up bandwidth and being passed around the Internet in emails and on social networks. The assumption is that most people see a photo of a girl who is NOT smiling.
The suggestion is that if you “squint” a bit, you can see a photo of a girl who IS smiling.
Any luck? The mind is impressive … just like trying to read typos and jumbled text (see below).
(more…)
Category: Human Interest, Social Media, Tidbits |
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Tags: brain, eyes, mind games, Photos, spam, squint
Posted By RichC on February 19, 2022
I used the word “customized” because besides getting the “rocker” for this chair from a set of plans … for safety sake … I’ve been tweaking the children’s rocking chair from collected ideas … and trial and error. Besides wanting to use dimensional lumber and running it through the planner for the frames, I’ve pulled couple ideas from other plans — like the single angled back post, seat and arm dimensions and slat on the back (not shown). The goal is to to use only oak dowels (photos above), biscuits and Titebond III waterproof glue on the project and no mechanical fasteners, then paint with an
exterior paint so that the chair can be left out on a patio or deck (have I mentioned how much I like the Silicone Glue Spreading tool?)
Anyway, I’m archiving a few photos marking my slow woodworking project progress below. (more…)
Category: Archive, Hobby, Personal, Photos, Tidbits, Tools, Woodworking |
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Tags: biscuit, dowels, glue, project, rocking chair, silicone, titebond, tool, workshop
Posted By RichC on February 18, 2022
Over the years of playing (learning) Linux, setting up APIs and running webservers on a few Raspberry Pi computers, I’ve set up a Twitter “bot” in order to track them and keep them running.
Last September 2021 Twitter launched an experiment of labels for these kinds of accounts that was voluntary. I run a “bot” for this blog (not on Raspberry Pi computers and I have not set it up yet) and another on to update my Quickdex “bot” (on the Raspberry Pis) which is Qdex (sample below, now setup).
So far so good and the only notification is that each Tweet is now labeled “automated” and under the Qdex profile is indicate that the account is “Automated by @quickdex.” Someday maybe I’ll work a little more on the Quickdex database project, although I did connect earlier this week with entrepreneur James Altucher on his latest website idea.
Category: Computer, Raspberry Pi, Social Media, Technology |
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Tags: automated, bot, bots, james altucher, qdex, quickdex, tech friday, techfriday, twitter
