Hey Jimmy:
You might think that you look good with long hair, but a potential employer might not agree. I suggest that you get a reasonably conservative hair cut and keep it that way until you have landed a job. Shine your shoes too!
[2c]
Dave
Good Morning, Folks!
It´s a grey day in our neck of the woods, but still no rain. Mother Nature has become rather thirsty now.
It´s the last day of our guided tour throught Austria. Austria is not a big country, only 90% of the size of Maine, so it´s now wonder we have pretty much covered what there is to see and do.
Today, we will head for Graz again and board a steam train to Köflach, a small town about 50 miles from Graz. The town itsel is nothing really spectacular, but the steam engine pulling the train is! It is the last survivor of a Southern Railway (Südbahn) class 23 0-6-0 built in 1860 and in service ever since. It is the oldest still working steam engine in the world, but still going strong in her 158th year!
I hope you have enjoyed the tour and will join me again in one of the coming months on a tour throughout - well, I am not going to tell you, yet!
Have a great day!
Hi fellow birders!
Dianne and I just got back from Point Pelee on Lake Erie. We started out Monday morning to head for the tip of the point but decided to go back to the hotel rather than walk around in the woods during a heavy thunder storm. Things cleared up in the afternoon and although there weren’t huge numbers of birds we were able to see a total of 51 species between the two of us in about four hours. The highlight was a pair of Sandhill Cranes feeding in a field north of the point. We got good use out of our new spotting scope looking at shore birds and ducks at the Hillman Marsh which is a man made wetland close to Point Pelee. The scope is not high end but it works well enough.
Dianne was given a bird clock as a retirement gift. It sings a different bird song every hour. It’s cute but it sure isn’t going in our new kitchen! I believe the proper way to look at the gift is that it was thoughtful, tacky, but thoughtful.[swg][(-D]
Cheers all! May the birds circling directly above you not be turkey vultures![(-D][(-D]
Dave
Over 17 hours since the last post; I hope it’s not vultures overhead, at least not quite yet. I think it is finally spring, high 80’s in the TC area. Things have been pretty dull in this area. My big “excitement” has been 2 ambulance rides to the hospital: end of January, severe case of arthritic gout in my left knee, which feels like the leg is packed with broken glass being microwaved. Sunday night, trouble breathing. Back on track for the most part now; I talked the doc into letting me come home Monday PM.
They did tell me it was good I came in, as things probably would have gotten a lot worse at home. I’m a bit envious of some of you at or beyond my age who are still going with a full head of steam (73 in a couple weeks). The last 15 years have been sort of an adventure, with a 3-bypass, abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, a-fib, COPD, CHF, PAD, and probably more I can’t think of. If you look at a map of the Central U. S., follow Interstate 35 from Duluth to Dallas: that pretty well shows my surgical scar.
I’ve probably bored everybody silly by now, so a very early good evening. Cheers back at you, Dave, and I don’t think they are vultures after all!
Gary
Gary we are still on the right side of the dirt, so we are doing better than some. Once in a while I think back on friends who where killed in car accidents in high school and college. They missed out so much.
I saw some click bait on the internet, 120 year old woman says longevity is a punishment. Never met anyone 100 years old, but if you lived to be 120, there’s a good chance you outlived all your friends, some of your kids and grandkids. Enough of that, celebrate being alive everyday.
My day was spent waiting for my wife’s colonoscopy. They knew she had a polyp but had trouble finding it, they went in and out twice before they found it. A number of people in the waiting room were having conversations on their phones, none of them less than 50 years old. I could hear both sides of one conversation and the guy was on the other side of the room from me. Then a woman sat 3 chairs away. I can’t smell very well but her perfume started me sneezing.
I started recording loco numbers on the Deshler OH webcam. I have 51 locos in 24 hours. It’s possible to back up the recording 3 hours, so I am not glued to the webcam, like some. I have only seen one loco twice.
Not sure I will get the hang of modern nomenclature, ES44AH,ES44AC, AC44CW, AC4400CW
Afternoon diners, (echos in the emptiness of the diner)
Yesterday went to the club, we operated with dispatcher, even with a dispatcher all the traffic jams up at “(un)Pleasant Hill” I suggested we consider adding double track from say Grand Cane through Robeline, to relieve the bottle neck, I contacted BLI about various problems one being the T1s derailments.
Leaving tomorrow for Pensacola for graduation!
Eveing Dinners
Flo, the gang and I will have a [B] please and give Rick and Steven what they like.
Weight Master Gary Sorry to hear about your problems. At age 62 I feel like walking death most of the time. I am Diabitic but have that under control. I have lost around 30 pounds and with good A1C test I still don’t feel like doing a thing. [sigh] I think there are some other life changing things a head of me. I just hope I can make the changes.
Steven I have read the real PRR T-1 where problem engines. What kind of derailment problems are you having? Front trucks, drive wheels, rear trucks or tender? As much as I love steam they can be a pain in the caboose!
Later Ken
HHHHHHeeeeelllllllllloooooo,
WHERE IS EVERYBODY!!!
What’s going on no posts in 4 hours?
Anyways if anybody shows up I’ll be talking to myself.
So assorted updates, BLI has not emailed me back, hopefully they will tomorrow, issues I contacted them about? Quite a few, first problem, my brothers RSD15 P2, the decoder “appears” to be fried, no motor function and the sounds and lights only sometimes work, I thought about it perhaps a upgrade in decoders is in order. Second the T1 is a derailment dragon and I’d like to slay it. Third a fellow club member wants to sell his BLI P2 Santa Fe 4-8-4 Northern only two problems, first the foam packaging inside the box is nonexistent, second at low speed the locomotive surges slightly, if I end up buying it (only 200 bucks) I’d like to remedy both issues.
Got paid! And my grandmother gave me a $100 bill as a graduation gift, that’s the largest denomination and amount of money she has ever given me!
I talked my mom into lifting the ban and letting me buy some tools for kit bashing, I’ll also be ordering the stuff I need to upgrade 1 IHC car, I’m going to fix one at a time and run it on the club layout a while to get it running smoothly.
When I get some more cash saved I am buying a new lawn mower (self propelled push type) I figure I’m going to have to start small to get my business going.
Leaving tomorrow morning for Florida!
My therapist mentioned something about a big train store up in Ponchatoula does anyone have some information on this? We might make a detour on the return trip.
I was looking at twitter and came across a rumor that movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson will be running for POTUS in 2020, his prospective VP is Tom Hanks, at least we model railroaders won’t need those tacky commemorative cars to show our support, just get a few of these!
Gesundheit![swg][(-D][(-D][(-D]
My eyes totally glaze over when things get beyond the Geeps and SDs. Even those I don’t understand very well. Please give me Fs and Es, and maybe an RS-2 or 3. Even the S and SW switchers confuse me![D)]
The weird thing is that I can identify an older car simply by seeing a tail light or a part of a fender. I’m sure many others have the same ability. We were in a restaurant earlier this week that was housed in an old garage. Naturally it had an automotive theme. Right beside our table was a hood. I immediately identified it as being from an early 70s Thunderbird. Could be wrong of course, but I was pretty sure what I was looking at. Why I can’t do the same thing with locomotives is beyond me.
It’s the same with watching birds. I have been watching birds for 45 years and I still have to use the bird book most of the time![banghead][D)]
Dave
Good Morning!
The day starts grey, but still no rain in sight! Actually, the grey morning we had yesterday turned into a rather pleasant day, with a nice breeze to keep the daytime temperature at a comfortable level.
Western Germany was under a tornado watch yeterday, and it didn´t take long for one to form.
That beast did considerable damage.
I´ll be heading to our local DIY place in the afternoon to order the lumber and the plywood I need to build the table for my new tinplate layout. I am just glad the cut everything to the exact size I need without an extra charge. I´ll be meeting my friend Claus tomorrow morning to pickt the stuff up, as it wouldn´t fit into our little car. His is a Mercedes E class station wagon, which has ample room for jobs like that. I am happy to be back into building a layout again!
Gary - I am sorry to hear about your ongoing health issues. The last year has not been kind to me, either, but I try to ignore it as much as I can. Does not work always.
ES44AH,ES44AC, AC44CW, AC4400CW - I am los! I know my way around SD´s and GP´s, but wouldn´t be able to tell which is which with those new, but look alike generation of motive power. It´s the same here - it´s mostly electrics of the Bombardier Traxx family, which all look very similar if not identical. Boring!
Steven - congratulation! IIRC, your graduation from highschool must have been yesterday - or is it today?
Have a nice day!
Ulrich:
I never associated Europe with tornadoes. How often does that happen on the Continent?
About 10 days ago we had some really severe wind storms in Southern Ontario and the North Eastern USA. There were thousands of trees downed, and tens of thousands of people without power. The damage was worse than the really bad ice storm that we suffered in April. I had to pick Dianne up at work and there was large debris flying around us for most of the trip. Nothing hit the van but we did drive over several branches that landed right in front of us as we drove. There was no time to brake and no shoulder to run around them on. It was hard to stay calm.
Dave
Tornados were unheard of in my youth, but have become a regular phenomenon during the past 10 to 15 years. Fortunately, they don´t do as much damage as the ones on your side of the Big Pond, which is partly due to the more solid construction of buildings, power lines being undergound and few billboards “adorning” the countryside.
Here is a video taken of yesterday´s beauty:
That is pretty scary stuff!! I can appreciate the language the observer was using.
When we lived in Chatham, Ontario in the 1980s we watched the formation of a tornado right over our house. The skies were a strange green colour and the clouds were swirling above us. Amazingly, the air at ground level was quite calm. Fortunately for us it moved on before it generated enough force to touch ground, but it ended up doing a lot of damage in London about 80 kms to the east. We had heavy rain but no wind damage. Unfortunately for us, we were in the midst of having our roof replaced and all the shingles had been stripped off. The contractor applied plastic sheeting over the bare roof before the storm, but the rather stupid workers installed the plastic sheets starting at the peak and working down. That meant that the sheets overlapped the wrong way so that the water landing on the top sheet flowed under the next sheet below it, and then into our house!![:(!][banghead][:'(] We had about an inch of water on the dining room floor and the ceilings started to collapse. The dining room chandelier had water flowing out of the arms like a fountain, and it was still on! We gave up trying to catch the water and just let it flow into the basement.
To add insult to injury, the roofing contractor lived right next door. He told us afterward that he could see us moving around in the wee hours of the morning during the height of the storm. Apparently he was too lazy to get out of bed and offer us a hand. I can’t comment here on his moral standards other than to say that he was not the ethical religious man that he professed to be. I had tried to do my neighbour a favour by giving him the contract. He turned out to be the worst person I have ever dealt with.
Please pardon my venting. After 35 years I am still bitter.
Dave
Dave - there are only two more videos available on this incident, one by a guy who got stuck in his car when the tornado hit. His language was even more explicit.
By no means is Germany prepared for tornados. I am really surprised not more people get hurt or even killed by the debris flying around, consisting mainly of concrete roofing tiles - needless to say what you will look like when got hit by one of those.
I am fortunate only to have seen the birth of a tornado, which hit Hamburg less than half an hour later.
Morning diners,
Graduation is this Saturday, that’s why I’m going to Pensacola, to walk in the graduation ceremony.
I’m actually a year early, so I’m taking a year off, next year is my senior/18th birthday trip, I was thinking of taking Amtrak out west somewhere.
Here’s a link to the ceremony live stream.
http://athome.abeka.com/GraduationEvent/Default.aspx
One thing I learned recently is here in Louisiana if a tornado has been through an area that’s where they’ll usually be.
Getting the final stuff together to leave.
I’ll be back in a while.
Howdy…
Steven NWPSWP… Congratulations on your graduation.
Good Morning peoples!
“The sun is a shining to welcome the day…” Yep, nice bright sunshine out there so hopefully today will be a good day for solar enery from my roof!
[color=red]Ulrich[/color], Tornados are scary things to be near! I was right near an F1 that hit in Batavia, NY back when I taught in Elba, NY. It tore up some brand new houses right in it’s track. Tore the roof off of one of them and put it into the swimming pool behind the house, Drove a 6" limb from a tree right through the walls of another new house. There used to be 5’ wide willow tree near the side of the road on the route I drove every day to get home from Elba Schools. Can you imagine millions of toothpicks being about all that was left! That guy who took that movie was putting himself in harm’s way big time. He should have immediately gotten into the safest inside or basement room in the house (the bathtub is usually a good place to ride it out)! Our tornado came up to within a couple hundred yards from the mobile home we owned and miraculously turned at the last possible moment to not even blow over the chairs outside on our patio… Our poor dog who was at home at the time was always terrified of storms after that. He would sit and shake and cry loudly and want to be held!!!
Well… MLK Dinner was great last night. Got to see some parents of the kids who were students of mine way back when. Lots of hugs and grins going around! I asked the featured speaker (who was one of my students back many years ago) who graduated from the U of R if his paths there ever crossed with an old friend and classmate of mine from Eastman School of Music. The guy now has a Doctorate in Music and is a Vice President of the University and still a dean of some dept. The kid got very wide eyes and a huge grin on his face. Told me that Dr. Burgett was a men
I couldn´t agree more. people in this country do not know how to deal with tornados and I am really surprized the number of folks getting hurt or killed by them is so low.
Congratulations - what an achievement. I am at 260lbs. now, which is way too much, but I have a hard time doing the necessary exercise with my wobbly knees and hurting back. In addition, Petra is feedimg me too well and too much … [swg]
Ulrich I did not know Germany had tornados. A friend of mine in the panhandle of Texas has alarms in his house for tornados. On the east coast we might have a tornado every other year. I’ve only ever seen one in my life, a waterspout in the Bahamas.
We have had rain all week and more rain to come.
The ads were there for me, off and on, over a couple days. I am not sure of cause and effect but I installed Privacy Badger ads are gone without side effects. It is currently blocking google-analytics addservice.google.com and s7addthis.com and a few more of 15 potential trackers. Not sure what any of that really means.
I didn’t do anything else to my browser or cookies. Yesterday there was a big Windows 10 update, but they disappeared before that.
I am in Delaware house-hunting right now. We had a tornado warning a couple of nights ago. It ended up being very wet and windy, but no tornado.
I wish they would use better words than “warning” or “alert.” How many people know which is which?