My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on April 4, 2018

Having owned Mercedes Benzes for years now (first was our 87 MB 560 SEL –  reminder that I need a photo) and using several resources for buying and maintaining, some of the best advice for for the, W123 which I’m particularly fond of, (my current 1982 Mercedes Benz 300D Turbodiesel) comes from Kent Bergsma, of the online site Mercedessource.com. He and his daughter produce YouTube videos as well as sell tools and parts that I’ve mentioned before, but this one is particularly helpful if you are new to old diesels … and in particular older Mercedes diesels know for their “million mile engines,” although probably not something you want to take to the bank.

Category: Automotive, Diesel, Idioms, Mercedes, Video | No Comments »
Tags: 300d, diesel, kent bergsma, mercedes, mercedessource.com, turbodiesel, W123, youtube

Posted By RichC on April 3, 2018

The other day I mentioned “selective focus” as a photography technique to my son … so I took advantage of the low light and ugly rainy weather to use the “longer x2 lens”on the iPhone7plus to hide the ugliness. The telephoto lens on any camera, especially in closer up photography), is that it is easy to use selective focus (blurring areas other than the subject). The low light also requires a wider/open aperture (smaller f-stop) and tightens the focal range even more, especially with the automatic exposure features of a smartphone.

The subject in this photo (click photo for full size) was Brenda’s 2008 Mother’s Day gift, a White Star Magnolia, which blooms each year without much greenery fairly early in the spring, some years earlier than others!

As for a more photogenic subject, my daughter Katelyn included a recent Annalyn “smile” for us … after her 1-year check up. She could not be parented more perfectly, although what else would one expect from Drew and “pediatrician” Katelyn! HA!
(more…)

Category: Advice, Apple, Cellphone, Photography, Photos, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: flowers, house, iphone7plus, landscaping, magnolia, photography, spring, yard

Posted By RichC on April 2, 2018

This content is restricted.

Category: Audio, Memories, Music | No Comments »
Tags: album, marshall tucker band, mbt, mp3, music monday, musicmonday

Posted By RichC on April 1, 2018

Happy Easter brothers and sisters in Christ!

        He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed.

This past week I’ve been listening to Alistair Begg speak on Life After Death recorded from Parkside Church and shared on the Truth For Life podcast. Ever since Katelyn and Drew gave me the Amazon Echo Dot for Christmas I have tried to start or end my day with a little from Alistair’s teaching. It might be easier to use my phone and play the audio on the "already" installed Truth For Life app or iTunes, but having to sit quietly near the Echo speaker and LISTEN is a little more contemplative on my part. 

The two parts on Total Transformation (Corinthians 15:51-57) focus on "death swallowed up in victory" through the resurrection of Jesus is the way Christians ponder death. The "sting of death" (sin) has been carried by Jesus for all who accept Him as their Savior … and through His resurrection on Easter, death is no more than "a passing shadow." How comforting for those of us who miss recently love ones, but know they are with the Lord.

As I write this, the most recent podcast from Truth For Life that I listened to had me pondering a ministry project that I work on with my friend Pastor Keith Thomas. We include a heat ClusterMap from countries that use GroupBibleStudy.com as a "measure" as to where there is a hunger to study The Word — hm? (…but it also helps in allocating donations to translate bible studies.)

Category: Audio, Faith, Holiday | No Comments »
Tags: bible, christianity, easter, Faith, groupbiblestudy, jesus, podcast, study, truth

Posted By RichC on March 31, 2018

I’ve been around long see banking change from daily dealing with a local banker that I knew by name … who also knew me (and my business) by name … to just a drive up teller window or ATM to the latest technology of snapping pics of checks and tapping on a smartphone. I sort of miss the friendly hello and invite into the bank manager’s office just to talk or ask if they could do anything to help me or my business? Times they have changed. 

For the most part I happy with doing banking online or rarely needing to stop at the local branch office. They few times in 2018 I’ve needed a semi-banking service has been for notarizing real estate documents … which two of my local banks refused to do based on corporate liability or some such thing? When I do stop, there are few people in the building reinforcing the trend to close branches and focus more on online services (one would think some innovative bank could offer other services and better utilized their offices … be it legal services, tax services, financial planning, etc? 

This week after scheduling a few online transactions myself, a forgotten handwritten IRA contribution check cleared before the ACH (Automatic Clearing House) transfer I had scheduled arrived into my account … who knew USPS & paper check could clear before an electronic transfer? Anyway, in praise of the Ohio based Huntington Bank, I thank them for offering the polite and friendly "24-Hour Grace Alert" reminiscent of local banking the way it use to be, minus the friendly phone call (although the text message was appreciated!) Thanks!

Talking about ACH, here’s a great NPR Planet Money episode:

We just need Amazon’s bank to send money electronically to a checking account at Chase bank. It’s just information traveling over wires. How long could it take: A minute? An hour?

It took five days.

Before the money could land in our bank account, it had to go through a 40-year-old program— the Automated Clearing House.

MORE

Category: Audio, Financial, Misc, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: ach, audio, bank, banking, huntington, mp3, npr, overdraft, planet money

Posted By RichC on March 30, 2018

Now that our home theater has seats again, we are able to enjoy movie watching … sort of. When Katelyn and Taylor were home last weekend, I realized our old LG Blu-Ray DVD player didn’t work(it was a remote issue without any button overrides on the box). That frustration was followed by an older home theater receiver/amp that only had one HDMI "in" port which meant I had to unplug and plug in gadget boxes – DVD, Roku or Fioptics TV box. Brenda asked, "don’t they make an extension hub" (she surprises me with her commonsense sometimes) … to which I shrugged UNTIL checking the Internet. Sure enough, they are relatively inexpensive and so opted to order one with yet another remote for switching input sources.

While I was at it, I read a few of the reviews on inexpensive Blu-Ray DVD players and decided the slightly older Sony BDPS3700 would be perfect … and that for only $55, was a fairly good WikiBuy … I do enjoy that shopping plugin BTW!

Category: Personal, Shopping, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: amazon, bluray, dvd, hdmi, home theater, tech friday, techfriday, wikibuy

Posted By RichC on March 29, 2018

It is exciting to share the happy moment of a birth … especially when it is a member of our family who really has wanted a baby. Brenda and I are SO very happy for Madison and Nathan … as well as grandma and grandpa Skinner (Brenda’s sister Chris/Jerry).

Riley Howard Kling did not arrive without concern or worry, as he was a premature; both mom and son did just fine. We were all on pins and needles praying for all to go well while watching our phones all day for text message updates from Chris and Jerry.

The baby shower for Madison and Nathan was this past weekend and I’m sure I was not the only one noticing just how happy Madison looked; I don’t think her smile could have been any bigger while I was talking too her … holding Annalyn! They obviously do not know what is in store for them, HA!
As I’ve mentioned before, "marriage was nothing compared to becoming a parent."

Category: Archive, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: baby, birth, family, madison, nathan, premature, riley howard kling, skinner

Posted By RichC on March 29, 2018

After noticing once again my business email box pushing the limit on storage, I did the normal "sort by size" in order to delete old and unneeded larger emails with hefty attachments. This is a common practice for me as several times each month my servers automatically back-up databases and email a .ZIP archive and customers often still prefer emailing design files and art rather than sharing a folder, file or link in a cloud-based archive like Dropbox, Box, Apple iCloud, Google Drive, Microsoft’s OneDrive or Amazon’s Clouddrive and S3.

Usually for my personal Gmail account I’m not concerned as Google generously offers 15GBs of shared storage across Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos. BUT … even with that, I’m starting to push limits as our family shares photos back and forth (I rarely delete them). Unfortunately Google does not make sifting through the larger emails easy and it requires a search string (although there use to be an extension to Chrome that sort, but it is no longer available???).

ie: 

Back to the point of the Throw Back Thursday of this post … while sorting through some of the older and larger files, my daughter Katelyn sent me a bunch of photos from a spring break trip with college friends to the Delray Beach condo and a visit with her now late grandmother and grandfather. Wouldn’t you know, a nice #TBT memory photo!

Category: Memories, Personal, Photos, TBT | No Comments »
Tags: 2009, dadh, delray beach, florida, gmail, howard, katelyn, momh, TBT

Posted By RichC on March 28, 2018

We have a couple of Canary cams in our home and they constantly trigger for one thing or the other. I’m still having problems with one of them sending “Person spotted in Away mode” which usually means my iPhone has not been detected as being “home.” I’ve tweaked the setting, played with masks, double and triple check my location services and made sure the geofence circles don’t intersect. Still the iPhone occasionally is not seen as “home” and therefore sends a “motion detected” or “person spotted” message to our phones. It happens enough that we are beginning to ignore the triggered alerts — not good.

A cam trigger this week was humorous, although it was recorded as just “motion” NOT a “person spotted” alert:

Finally the #personaldetection feature ignores these kinds of narcissistic @canary #selfie photos! pic.twitter.com/5hjGe2EHcY

— Rich Corbett (@RichC) March 27, 2018

Category: Environment, Humor, Misc, Nature, Photos, Social Media, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: bird, Cam, canary, dove, gadget, security, selfie, twitter

Posted By RichC on March 28, 2018

Q: What is the best breakfast deal?

A: Taco Bell’s Mini Skillet Bowl

My son Taylor and I in agreement that the best deal around for a tasty, quick and inexpensive fast food breakfast is the Taco Bell Mini Skillet Bowl.

Where else can you jump start your day for $1.00 … and get as much taste, value and convenience? I don’t think you can … and am hoping that Taco Bell continues to keep this “value item” on their breakfast menu.

I also think Taylor will be making this a regular stop since he is always up early (probably scrambling) in order to drive 30+ minutes to work in order to avoid traffic and get his day started early (right – his photo Monday morning eating a TB Mini Skillet Bowl at his desk)

Category: Advice, Financial, Misc, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: bowl, breakfast, eating, fastfood, mini, skillet, taco bell, taylor