So the girlfriend and I are babysitting her 11 year old nephew (one radical dude) Bryson, who is in to making videos for the youtubes. We’re sitting around after some tasty lunch and decide to make a short little film. Bryson calls his friend Mason over and we scheme a little story together and are on our way to youtubedom. Exclusive video inside!
Jump in the fire! We found a house, made an offer, and closed! Ups and downs abound, a few weeks late- but done! Supposedly it went smoothly, it was still emotionally exhausting. I’ll spare you the details of the buying process; lets cut to the meat of this hush puppy-
Quick update on the lack of updates. In the last few months I have been trying to buy a house which has been pretty interesting and emotionally crazy, both the ups and downs. It has also sucked up a lot of free time, an amazing amount of time/energy actually. I’ve put an offer in on a place in Fort Worth, if the loan goes through I should close on the 25th of Sept. I have also moved out of the house I was renting, so until there is closure on the new house front I am “homeless”, or squatting with my parents and friends. I did get a chance to goto the MotoGP race in Indianapolis at the end of August, it was great. Lots and lots of motorcycles there, good racing and photos galore. I have a lot of photos to go through and upload here from MotoGP and other trips. Anyhow, still alive over here, just busy. Look for images from recent trips soon.
Gee, wouldn’t it be swell if 2 friends could go in on a house together? Too bad no sane bank would lend good money to 2 oafs…
These long held thoughts, became verbalized over lunch between myself and my good friend and many year roommate Jon. We are running out of our lease at the place we are renting with some other roommates so new housing is in order. We have noticed rent houses we like in the areas near our place of work seem few and far between, however homes for sale are all over the place. Again, the question of buying a house with a friend has come to mind… is it really that crazy? We consulted google- sure enough, banks are dumb enough to lend good money to 2 oafs like Jon and I.
When the girl friend tells you there’s a family gathering and she wants you to come, primal instinct kinda kicks in; you grimace and plan for the worst. When the girlfriend then tells you that the family gathering is in the Texas hill country and SHE suggests you take your motorcycle; you perk up a little, at least I do. I don’ think she had in mind the same route I did though. Once she learned that my route stretched a 4 hour car trip into an 8 hour bike trip she regretted the suggestion. Oh well! Too late now, hopes are up, let’s find some dirt!
So it is here, a week early even. The new iPhone software has magically found it’s way through torrents on to my phone, joy. I can not begin to express the wonder that is the ability to copy and paste; I can not begin to express the wonder that is the ability to copy and paste. (yes that was copied and pasted; copied and pasted copied and pasted; copied and pasted copied and pasted; copied and pasted copied and pasted; copied and pasted copied and pasted; copied and pasted). This opens the ability for me to create and use pseudo templates for blog posts via my phone, again, joy.
Just a quick day ride down to Lake Whitney and back, this ride was about 6 hours. The end destinations were 2 loops, both dirt, both swing by state parks. Actually, they probably weren’t even state parks, just parks, very basic. First was Nolan River Park; second, was Lake Whitney State Park. Just nice weather, no traffic, and big skys. The trip was pretty uneventful, lots of time to think to myself about this that and the other. OH! I did learn a lesson, PACK EVERYTHING ON YOUR BIKE. I had my camera bag on my back… 3 hours in and my shoulders and back were KILLING ME. I’ve since done longer rides with nothing but a camelbak on my person and what a difference!
Enter one three day weekend and the desire to ride motorcycles and camp. Day one is a Friday, my good friend Oliver and myself have the day off; we decide to make a 2 hour trip to Possum Kingdom Lake from the center of DFW last 8 or so hours. How does one do this? Why does one do this? On bikes one must seek out the twisty and the rough, or one is not having fun. Riding strait down the highway is for Harleys. We’re young and full of piss and vinegar as my dad might say. Bring on the monkey butt!
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“Dude, I’m gonna build a potato gun”, and with that quick blurb our destiny for this Wednesday night was set. Further plans were hatched, materials were purchased, apple juice was drank and we had ourselves a shiny new potato gun; dubbed the widow maker. Twas actually one undisclosed friend/co-worker and his undisclosed female friend who conspired to make le ole widow maker come to fruition. I could not have been more surprised with how well the pictures came out. I basically grabbed my camera last second thinking perhaps i’d get a neat blurry fireball out the end of the PVC canon…. boy was I wrong. I just threw it into manual, set the shutter to 2 seconds, iso to 800 and hoped for the best… 3, 2, 1, thoomp… whoa! It looks like flippin red hot steel!
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So Tuesday evening it snowed, or slushed, here in good ole Tejas. Me being a good citizen, I decided it’d be a grand idea to take the opportunity to meet up with a friend and try driving sideways on empty streets/parking lots at midnight.
I bought a used Lexus IS300 not too long ago and had not had the chance to drive it in a limited grip situation, so I jumped when a buddy of mine in his older rear wheel drive Corolla wanted to go gallivanting. So long story short; I am astounded at how well the ole IS300 performed. First of all its a rear wheel drive car, manual transmission with a limited slip differential. Typically this kinda spells disaster when traction goes by the way side as once you loose grip, both tires are spinning and that’s all she wrote. The IS300 though performed amazingly, I could be 90 degrees off to direction of travel and still recover with ease. I actually found it hard to make the thing spin out in any type of slush other than solid ice. I really had to abuse the throttle and throw the car into a skid to make the rear end step out beyond recovery.
So I guess that’s all I wanted to say really, I’m super super super impressed with how stable the ole lexus can be when tossed around. Sorry no pictures, there is video, but not in my hot little hands. If I get a hold of it I will update. That is all.
The first generation FRDS system has been around in one form or another since 1991. The system has been continuously upgraded over the years to add features and reliability. All of this ‘feature creep’ made the system more and more complex and in some ways more unreliable and complex than it should have been. Couple that with poor maintenance in the field and a growing number of components being obsoleted by various manufacturers and you’ve got a pretty good reason to do a ground up redesign. At some point in 2005/2006 Air Tractor decided it was time to move forward on the Fire Retardant Dispersal System Gen 2 and who better to design the system than the guy who built the first one?
I’ve been jonesing for a tilt-shift lens for a while now, but their price tag kept me away. The more I read about them the more I decided I wanted one. Did you realize that in the early days of photography with the large view cameras getting your focal plane correct was as important as exposure? Yep, it wasn’t until cheaper/easier to use cameras became popular that the focal plane was fixed parallel with the film. As their popularity took off people became accustomed to seeing photos a particular way and that was that. Once I found out that the tilt shift lens would let me get just that little bit closer to the way the famed Ansel Adams took pictures i was sold. Anyways, how’s that phrase go? If I never asked, I never would have gotten any? …I dunno, an old boss used to say it. Anyways, I put a tilt shift lens on my Xmas list, on the off chance that my parents would spring for it… well they did, and I’ve got me a shiny new 24mm Tilt Shift lens, boom chow.
So there I am walking from corner to corner at a joint ALMS/CART race in Houston, Texas when a golf cart limo stops in front of the ole porta potty station with a load of Pirelli girls, oh my. So me with my camera and no sense of decency decide to document this rarely witnessed occasion. I’ve never taken my self too seriously, so convincing myself to camp and wait for the shot of an attractive girl, fully decked out in a Pirelli jump suit exiting a porta potty wasn’t too difficult. Fortunately it didn’t take long and click click click, I had myself the shot of a lifetime.
In 1991 the owner of the company I currently work for developed a fire retardant delivery system (FRDS) for a Texas agricultural aircraft company, Air Tractor for fighting forest fires. This system controls bomb bay doors on the bottom of a 800 gallon hopper that is normally full of fertilizer. The FRDS takes into account head pressure, g’s and a number of pilot inputs to achieve a linear flow rate by hydraulically servoing the doors, or firegate. Pilots use this control over flow rate to lay down even “lines” of water or retardant out in front of a forest fire.
Ever hold on so long you just knew you were going to split? I’m sure we’ve all been there. I just happened to catch the tale end of a couple of these episodes. Anyway, I know its crude and what not, but I’ve got these pictures on my computer and I can’t NOT share them; so read on.
Somewhere between DFW airport and Japan an age old tale plays out…
We’re almost there, I can hold it for a real bathroom. Toilets on planes are too small and this late in an international flight they’ll be dirty… I can hold it. OK final approach, doing good, just a little longer. I’m sure they’ll have a restroom before customs, I’m sure. OK common common, let us off the plaaane. RestroomRestroomRestroom, TOILET, home free… Read the rest of this entry »
Well, I’ve finally gotten around to posting a few picture galleries over in the image section of my site. I’ve been busy organizing and editing pictures from the days of yore. I’ve finally gotten a queue of 10 or so galleries built up so I figure I am at a point to start posting them online. I’ve got a long way to go before I can call it quits editing images. I’ve got something like 50,000 images to sort through dating from 2003 to present. I’ve been using Adobe Lightroom to organiz/edit and I am really happy with it. It has greatly sped up the process of sifting through hundreds of pictures and doing quick little edits. I hope I can post a few galleries a week and eventually catch up to current pictures. Fortunately with wordpress I can date the post so it looks like the post was made when the photos were taken. This is real nice as it puts the posts in cronological order. Anyhow, enough blabbing, swing by the image section and leave me some comments! Thanks for reading.
So Thursday, November 6th my parents house decided it was too cool for school. It caught fire sometime before 3:30 in the afternoon, a neighbor called 911 and then my parents. Another neighbor (perhaps the same one) kicked in the back door and was greeted with super heated smoke. At this point there was already fire licking its way out of the roof in areas with smoke billowing from the eves. It is through this door that we believe a dog and perhaps a cat escaped. Sometime later when the firemen showed up and broke more windows and kicked in more doors 1 or 2 other cats escaped; another cat was rescued from inside. The last cat was unaccounted for until late that evening when making a pass through the house. All animals survived unharmed.
When I arrived the fire was out and the firemen were surveying for hotspots and unstable sections of house, as well as looking for the culprit. It wasn’t long before they found a charred fuse box on the exterior of the house servicing the AC unit; this little box had indeed started the fire. As far as my parents know, the box has never been messed with since the house was built by the previous owner years and years ago. An electrical lug appears to have been loose which caused arcing, over time this arching heated up the wire enough for the insulation to catch fire. This lead the fire into the wall and up into the attic where it quickly spread across the whole house.
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OH! I should also mention that in Internet Explorer the site is bollocks; so if you’re running IE you should use this as a reason to upgrade to Firefox, really. Just imagine all of the page errors you’re seeing that other users don’t. Imagine all of the pain and heartache webpage developers go though to make you happy. Seriously though, getting things looking good in IE is on the list of things to do.
Hello World.
Here will be a general blogging area. I don’t think I really have too much to say, so I think I’ll use this area to post pictures that are less than serious. Snapshots from trips, or interesting things that I come across. Pictures of motorcycle rides, camping trips, solidworks projects, etc. Anyway, thanks for looking, be sure to inform me of any bugs or flim flams you run across on the page.
Speaking of the webpage; I should mention that the coding is not done yet. I have lots of tweaks to make to the formatting before I am content. I’ve also got a few more features I would like to add, but I’m going to hold off on those until I get the formatting tweaks taken care of. I am more or less at a point where I can finally add content easily, so expect more images showing up over the next few days.