Leap Seconds

Leap Seconds

Why? Here is the history of time measurement based on the Cesium atom and why it is necessary to insert (or remove) a second from our time keeping to stay in synch with the rotation of the earth.

If you watch here at 11:59:59 UTC (6:59:59 EST), and you don't blink, you may see the USNO clock go to 11:59:60 UTC before advancing to 12:00:00 UTC.

Mutts for Obama

This cartoon is cute and the writer is an advocate for animal rescue shelters. Here is his strips from the last week. (Click the image for a larger view)

No!

Nightmare! The sale of our house fell through. We are now stuck in Danbury, likely through next spring, when we hope the housing market picks up and we can get out of here. The RV is parked and winterized. Argh!

Yes!

The long, national nightmare is over!

Escape and Suspense!: Escape - Three Skeleton Key

Escape and Suspense!: Escape - Three Skeleton Key

Wanna hear something really scary, listen to this in a dark basement at night. I did (well not dark but it was still scary). These old radio dramas make me think of Bill Cosby's story about his childhood, "Chicken Heart".

Sound Off, Sarah

Under Contract

We signed the contract for the purchase of our house in Danbury today. The closing is scheduled for October 31st. It seems unbelievable that we were able to sell our house for near to the asking price, to a couple who seem eager to get into it, and quickly as well. It was only on the market for about 4 weeks when these folks first saw it. They came back for a second look the next day and made an offer on the third day. They are getting a VA loan so the chances of it falling through are slight. We will know in a couple of days because the contract calls for them to be oked for the loan on 10/16. We will be on the road very soon!

Camping

 

This map shows the places we have camped in our RV. I will be updating it as we go. Obviously, it is not covering too wide an area so far, but, as soon as our house sells, we will be ranging far and wide.

I'm Going to the Races!

Hey, I have not been following the Spring Cup too closely lately, partly because I was way too busy to sit down and watch it each week, and partly because my interest had flagged a little. Too many "young guns". Guess I am starting to show my age.

So when I realized that "The Chase" is starting this coming weekend, and Ellyn and I saw  of the "chasers" on GMA yesterday, and Ellyn said "you could go to the race on Sunday, if you wanted", and I realized we are less than 1 hour from the Loudon racetrack, I thought "why not".

When we got onto the internet at the Rochester, NH library, Ellyn looked up for tickets, and found some still available. I will be sitting at the top of the stands behind turn 3. Not too bad for coming in really late.

I have to go alone, since Ellyn would not really be interested, but I should have 100,000 other fans to keep me company.

Be Careful What You Pray For

The right-wing group, Focus on the Family, thought it would be good if they could pray for rain during the Barack Obama acceptance speech in the outdoor venue in Denver. If you believe in a G-d who would listen and deliver on the "wrong-leaning" politically, then you have to wonder why the Republican Convention is being threatened with postponement and/or toning down by hurricane Gustaf. Hmmm. Define "irony".

House For Sale

 

Ok, we're into this now. We signed the papers yesterday with our realtor to put our house on the market as of 9/2/08, next Tuesday.  It only leaves us 3 more days to get the house ready because we are heading out on Sunday for about a week in the RV. We have a dumpster to help us clear out the garage and basement and another load of stuff in the RV to drop off at storage in MA.  This will be the first trip taking the kayaks on the car in tow, and also our bikes.  We will spend a few days on Cape Cod and then up to Boston and on to Vermont after that. I can't wait.

Brian's Northern Exposure

Self Portrait Overlooking Sitka
Originally uploaded by B-B-Bizarro

Brian has been in Alaska this week with his girl friend, Katherine. I love that they have taken and posted lots of pictures of their adventures. I am tempted to go there myself, to see if the scenery lives up to the pictures.

Oh man, I needed this a long time ago...and still do.

Buy and Sell Electronics, Sell Cell Phone, Recycle Electronics

Wow, they buy your old camcorders, cell phones, mp3 players, I'll bet we have a lot of stuff to send them. I will get on this as soon as I am back home.

Rest in Peace, Dad

Arnold Frank Ingalls











August 18, 1925 - June 5, 2008

BirdCam - A Sad Ending

mayhew.it - Blog Archive - BirdCam - A Sad Ending

Too bad. Well, maybe next year.

mayhew.it

mayhew.it

Watch birds hatching eggs in Italy. This guy has a camera mounted inside a bird house and is watching a nest of several eggs.

Men Hear What they Want To Hear

Ellyn thought this hit a little too close to home. I had a hearing test last year because she thought it was deteriorating. I found out I have excellent hearing. Must be my listening which has gone south.

Maiden Voyage

Well, we are out and about in our new RV. Today we drove to Foxboro and are now parked at the Normandy Farms campground. But on the way we stopped at a storage facility to make our first "deposit" of goods to be held until we finish our ultimate road trip, and a shopping trip to Bass Pro Shop near Patriot Stadium to get some camping supplies.

Couch to 5K - Week 3

It is going pretty well. I am keeping up with the training, although I have had to do most of it on the treadmill. It has been too cold out in the morning to run outside. If it will get back up around 40 in the morning, I will probably run outside.

Training Days

Ok, I have finally started training for a 5K. I am following the "Couch to 5K" program from coolrunning.com. I started once using the podcasts put out by Robert Ullrey, but I found the music to be too "techno" for my tastes. Also, there was only one for each week, so I had to run to the same music each day for a week before getting a change. Finally, I found there was no pause for stretching after the warm-up.

This lead to me creating my own MP3's for exercising, using classic rock, and a voice track I created using Audacity. Simple and I can change the music each day and will change the voice track each week. I have done the first week's MP3s and will be following the final one on Friday.

Now, if I could just do the training while standing at a computer, this would be much easier.

Tileable Escher Images

I recently started looking around for some new background images for my desktop. I found some Escher images which are really intriguing but were created mostly by hand, and so are not very symmetrical and so do not tile well. To be tileable and look really nice on a background, without noticeable defects, they have to be exactly the same at the edges.

So I started putting them into an image editor and tweaking them until they were tileable. Then I could use them. This got a bit obsessive as I had more and more success and then found more Escher images I liked.

So here are the ones I have converted.

A Toad/Dinghy for the Road

In our quest for an RV, we have also been considering a tow vehicle. We had thought the best thing would be to get something smaller and lighter than the cars we have now (Accord and CR-V). Also, we are going to sell the Accord before we sell our house so we thought we would pay off and then sell the CR-V as well and then get a smaller car for towing. We had seen the Honda Fit and thought that might work out. After talking to our financial expert, I thought that we might not want the extra expense of purchasing a new car, and I thought about just keeping the CR-V.

After telling Ellyn about this idea and finding the weight of the CR-V to be about 4,000 lbs., Ellyn was searching the forums online to see what people thought was the best car for towing behind a motorhome. Guess what? The CR-V came up most often. Not only that, it looks like it does not even need to be modified, except to put on the towing hardware.

The owners manual has a couple of pages describing the exact procedure for towing a CR-V. (Click the picture to the left to read) Notably, it says to shift through all gears, then to drive, then to neutral and let the engine run for 3 minutes before shutting off and towing. DO NOT shift from reverse to neutral before towing. Odd. You have to repeat every 8 hours if continually towing and it can only be towed on "all fours" or you can damage the AWD system. Perfect!

BTW, "toad" and "dinghy" are both names for the vehicle towed behind a motorhome. I haven't decided which I like yet.

Jumping The Gun

Well, I hope we didn't mess up big time here but we found the RV we wanted to get and so...we got it. Had to jump into financing and put the down payment on our credit card but it is ours. It is staying at the dealer for a while though, for one because we have nowhere to put it and they will keep it indoors for us, and two so they can continue to show it. Ok that last one is no advantage to us but we will allow it anyway.

We were at a show in Foxboro on Saturday and we were unhappy that we did not see very many Class "C" RVs, which was what we thought we wanted. We talked to a factory rep. for Jayco and he gave us the info on some of their Class "C"s. We looked in a couple of Winnebago Class "C"s but they seemed too small. When we walked by a Bay Star Class "A" that looked smaller than many of the others there, we decided to take a look. Turned out it was about the same length as the Class "C" we were thinking about, but had noticeably more room, mainly because the cab seats were at the same level as the rest of the living space, and was more a part of it. Also the windshield is the front of the vehicle instead of having a long hood out in front. The driver and passenger seats in the cab also swivel to become part of the living area seating.

We left the show thinking that the 29' long Class "A" might be the way to go. It is really the smallest of the Class "A" motor homes available. That night, Ellyn found a used 2007 Bay Star on line at a dealership here in Danbury. We stopped there on the way home on Sunday and thought it really looked good.

On Monday, we called the dealer to see if it was still available and he said he could put us in a new 2008  for about  the same amount the seller of the 2007 wanted. We went and talked with him and looked at the 2008, and decided we wanted it. If we waited, we would probably have had to get a 2009 and pay more or place a special order and pay more. He was selling this one off the lot. We had seen the list prices at about $15,000 more than his price and he was sell this for about $4000 less than the show price on the one we saw in Foxboro. It also was a color we liked better.

So we applied for the loan and got accepted (suckers!) and, when the house sells, we can pay the loan off right away without a penalty. We took it for a short test drive. It handled like a bus, I guess, but I have never driven anything this big and did not know what to expect. Plus, it was a bit windy today so probably not ideal conditions. They suggested we do some local camping with it before going on a big trip. Sounds like a plan. Now we just have to figure out how to travel with the kayaks if we are not towing a car (yet).

 

"We're On Our Way"

This has been running through my head for a few days now and I just had to put it on paper.

(Sung To Billy Joel's "You May Be Right")

We'll sell our home of 20 years
And hit the road for who-know-where
A year of wanderin' 'round the USA
We'll go looking for some fun
Living life upon the run
And we'll see all of the sights there are to see


We raised our kids and watched them bloom
We worked so hard in corporate gloom
And now we want to reap what we have sown
But when we say we'll make the best
Out of a home with GPS
People look at us like fuses might have blown

They may be right, we may be crazy
But it just may be the lunacy we're lookin' for
We're on our way, don't call in Oprah
They may be right for all we know, but we're on our way


Well, remember how we landed here
In '86, with sobs and tears
Who knew we'd live so long at this address
You said "Now we need a change"
I said "RV life's quite strange"
But it could be fun to be livin' with less stress

Now think of all those years we tried to
See the country from our Volvo
We might have been as crazy way back then
But, if we're crazy now we're owed
A leisure life upon the road
And we might not get this kind of chance again

They may be right, we may be crazy
Oh, but it just may be the lunacy we're lookin' for
We're on our way, like the "Who" we're mobile
They may be right for all we know, but we're on our way

{Instrumental}

They may be right, we may be crazy
Hey, but it just may be the lunacy we're lookin' for
We're on our way, who needs a landline?
They may be right for all we know, but we're on our way

They may be right but we're on our way! (6x)

Everyone Thinks We're Nuts...

...and they may be right but, here we go. Ellyn is retiring from her IBM job of 34+ years on Leap Day and we are preparing our house to go onto the market in May. If all goes well with that and with other plans we have, we would like to be on the road in an RV by mid-summer. Our dream has been to take a one-year, open-road-ahead, where-do-we-want-to-go-next type of excursion of North America.

When we tell people this they look at us like "are you sure your meds are working correctly?". Hopefully the reality of it will not be as hectic as the lead-up is going to be. We had a realtor go through the house with us yesterday and talk about everything we should do before putting it up for sale and the list is very long. However, with a little elbow grease and perhaps some help from outside sources, we can do it and divest ourselves of much of the worldly goods we have hoarded over the past 21 years in Danbury plus the other 9 years we have been married.

In April we will celebrate 30 years of marital bliss and hopefully, shortly after that, we will start another 30 of retired bliss. You may be right, we may be crazy, but it just may be the lunacy we're looking for.