Today I spent most of the day at a trap awards banquet. Grandson and I arrived at about 8:50 and found that no one but the chairman and his son were there, setting up tables. We pitched in, then opened the field and set up the microphones and such.
I noted that we didn't have sign up sheets for the various types of trap we normally shoot, so I printed a few, and set them out.
I helped run the trap field most of the day, although I couldn't shoot myself due to some surgery on my right cheek. I'll have more to report on that soon, I'm building a shotgun I can shoot without putting the stock to my face.
Food was served at about 3:30, and most excellent BBQ chicken and pulled pork it was, with a selection of dressings for salad, a decent macaroni salad, and good if not unusual baked beans. The whole thing was made from scratch, not pulled from cans, and there was a raspberry chipotle BBQ sauce for the pulled pork which was outstanding. I took home a "doggie bag" of pork and sauce for lunch Monday.
I felt good about helping, I was trap chairman for 22 years and know how much work it is even with good help, but I was sad that I couldn't shoot, missed winning in my class (AA), and missed being in the top ten overall by one bird over ten matches. I would normally say "next year," but I'm not sure how well I'll shoot without using a conventional stock and firm contact, the holographic sight is a fine thing in theory. Time will tell.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Monday, September 17, 2012
Little quirks of insurance policies
I just found out that some insurance policies will pay for lab grown spray-on skin if you have major burns to your face, but if you lose part of your face to cancer they pay for a skin graft from your buttocks or neck. Wonder what the thinking on that is.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Wine and Apples
Yesterday I went to the Wine and Apple Festival at the Altamont Fairgrounds in Altamont NY. In addition to the wine tasting and buying there was a lot of apple (the round fruit) related stuff, both edible and items made from all things apple. There was the usual collection of craft vendors, spanning the spectrum from works of art and useful items like cutting boards to cheap crud to give as gifts to people you don't really care about. There was a lot of jewelry, spices, marinades, rubs, sauces, decorative dishes and platters on which to serve, and signs for your kitchen wall from funny and wise to trite and rude.
The only thing I can say about the wines is that if you think of NY City as "New York" you need to look at a map. Most of the state is farm country, horse breeding and training, huge dairies, vegetable farms, vineyards from Long Island to the Adirondack Mountains, hop farms, wineries, small cheese making operations, microbreweries, and two of the four major national brands of "Greek Style" yogurt. In short other than a few large cities an agricultural state, where lovers of locally made food and drink can choose from the offerings of hundreds of small craft producers who can compete only by the quality of their products.
Almost too much of a good thing
I went with my kids who share similar taste in wine to my own, which favors dry or semi-dry wines, will enjoy fairly sweet wines with tons of fruit flavor, and doesn't find overpowering oak character from barrel aging to be a substitute for the flavor of the grapes. With that in mind we quickly isolated a number of wines from grapes grown within 150 miles of Altamont, and bought our winter stash of wines. Not surprisingly we found that we had rather a lot of wine to take back with us, and regretted not bringing some means of transporting it more easily that carrying it. Next year we will bring a small cart to take back our haul, this year I prevailed on two maintenance guys in a golf cart to give the wine a ride to the gate while I trotted behind.
High and low points
The unexpected high point was finding a really hot hot sauce with pretty good flavor. Hot is easy, flavor is not. As always, due to the large number of vineyards and hundreds of micro climates in New York, there was a lot more variation between products than is typical in states were the wineries are national and the climate more uniform. And because we have a lot of variation from year to year in weather (last year tropical storms and flooding this year drought) we do tend to buy more of a wine we like, because next year it may be totally different.
The low points for me were seeing jewelry which I would have bought for my late wife, and later while putting wine in the cellar finding the champagne we were saving for our 50th. If you live long enough you will find that not all your memories are happy ones, comes with not having a boring life.
The only thing I can say about the wines is that if you think of NY City as "New York" you need to look at a map. Most of the state is farm country, horse breeding and training, huge dairies, vegetable farms, vineyards from Long Island to the Adirondack Mountains, hop farms, wineries, small cheese making operations, microbreweries, and two of the four major national brands of "Greek Style" yogurt. In short other than a few large cities an agricultural state, where lovers of locally made food and drink can choose from the offerings of hundreds of small craft producers who can compete only by the quality of their products.
Almost too much of a good thing
I went with my kids who share similar taste in wine to my own, which favors dry or semi-dry wines, will enjoy fairly sweet wines with tons of fruit flavor, and doesn't find overpowering oak character from barrel aging to be a substitute for the flavor of the grapes. With that in mind we quickly isolated a number of wines from grapes grown within 150 miles of Altamont, and bought our winter stash of wines. Not surprisingly we found that we had rather a lot of wine to take back with us, and regretted not bringing some means of transporting it more easily that carrying it. Next year we will bring a small cart to take back our haul, this year I prevailed on two maintenance guys in a golf cart to give the wine a ride to the gate while I trotted behind.
High and low points
The unexpected high point was finding a really hot hot sauce with pretty good flavor. Hot is easy, flavor is not. As always, due to the large number of vineyards and hundreds of micro climates in New York, there was a lot more variation between products than is typical in states were the wineries are national and the climate more uniform. And because we have a lot of variation from year to year in weather (last year tropical storms and flooding this year drought) we do tend to buy more of a wine we like, because next year it may be totally different.
The low points for me were seeing jewelry which I would have bought for my late wife, and later while putting wine in the cellar finding the champagne we were saving for our 50th. If you live long enough you will find that not all your memories are happy ones, comes with not having a boring life.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Significant days this week
For the first time in my memory Election Day isn't on a Tuesday. Being New York, it was felt that having it on 9-11 would distract the attention from the anniversary memorials, and therefore it was moved. All in all a good thing, and to some extent the politicians restricted their campaigning, although how much was typical "let the PAC do it today" and how much was real.
Also for the first time I'm not voting in the primary, because I'm now an independent. After years of watching politics get worse and worse, I finally decided that I didn't want my name associated with any of the local parties. Tough choice, and I may regret it, but for the moment I feel releived that I no longer pretend to be part of a party which stopped paying even lip service to what I wanted and believed.
9-11
Very sad, I was working near NY City on that day, and my wife called and said a plane had hit the tower. I went down to the cafeteria where there was a big TV, and watched the second plane hit. Then I called home again and had a long talk with my wife about contingencies, and went back only to see the towers fall. I was in a room with people who were watching their families die before their eyes.
Drug Takeback Day
Twice every year the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) sponsors a "Drug Takeback" day, during which unwanted medications can be returned to be disposed of properly. This year it's on Sept 29th, and relevant details are on the Takeback website. Hope people find it useful.
Also for the first time I'm not voting in the primary, because I'm now an independent. After years of watching politics get worse and worse, I finally decided that I didn't want my name associated with any of the local parties. Tough choice, and I may regret it, but for the moment I feel releived that I no longer pretend to be part of a party which stopped paying even lip service to what I wanted and believed.
9-11
Very sad, I was working near NY City on that day, and my wife called and said a plane had hit the tower. I went down to the cafeteria where there was a big TV, and watched the second plane hit. Then I called home again and had a long talk with my wife about contingencies, and went back only to see the towers fall. I was in a room with people who were watching their families die before their eyes.
Drug Takeback Day
Twice every year the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) sponsors a "Drug Takeback" day, during which unwanted medications can be returned to be disposed of properly. This year it's on Sept 29th, and relevant details are on the Takeback website. Hope people find it useful.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Doing things the hard way
I was looking through some photos I took around Belfast ME on Penobscot Bay, some manually generated stereo pairs and some panorama shots I took "the hard way" because none of the cameras I have with built-in panorama have good lenses and resolution. Doing one panorama and one stereo pair took me almost three hours, although I did learn some things about GIMP I didn't know.
End result pleases me, and I'm sending them off to a professional photo printing service because doing them on a printer doesn't satisfy me, either. These may become Christmas presents for those of my family who went with me, and nothing but the best I can do is good enough.
In the end, "Perfect is the enemy of good enough," and I keep that in mind, but some times good enough isn't. Like the old Hallmark commercial, "when you care enough to send the very best."
End result pleases me, and I'm sending them off to a professional photo printing service because doing them on a printer doesn't satisfy me, either. These may become Christmas presents for those of my family who went with me, and nothing but the best I can do is good enough.
In the end, "Perfect is the enemy of good enough," and I keep that in mind, but some times good enough isn't. Like the old Hallmark commercial, "when you care enough to send the very best."
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
RIP Bill Moggridge, Inventor of the Laptop Computer
I know it's popular to attribute an invention to whoever makes the most money from an idea, but the actual inventor of the laptop computer was an industrial designer named Bill Moggridge. The Grid Compass, released in 1982, was the first laptop, and is credited as such in the Smithsonian collection. The display was color, sort of, yellow characters on a black background, and a $8150 price tag which would be about $19,000 2012 dollars. Given the state of the art at that time, with most "portable" computers about the weight of a sewing machine, the price was not an obstacle for business people and technocrats, one flew into space in 1985 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Wow, typing that makes me realize just how OLD the shuttle was.
Moggridge went on to write several very good books on industrial design, among them Designing Media, which was just published in 2010.
So thank you Bill Moggridge, and thank you Grid, for not patenting and trademarking the idea, so that we didn't have to carry sewing machines for the 17 years. In a broken patent system where the most obvious old ideas are patentable doing nothing was the right thing for the consumer for sure.
Constant value calculation from Measuring Worth.
Wow, typing that makes me realize just how OLD the shuttle was.
Moggridge went on to write several very good books on industrial design, among them Designing Media, which was just published in 2010.
So thank you Bill Moggridge, and thank you Grid, for not patenting and trademarking the idea, so that we didn't have to carry sewing machines for the 17 years. In a broken patent system where the most obvious old ideas are patentable doing nothing was the right thing for the consumer for sure.
Constant value calculation from Measuring Worth.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Drug side effects of the odd kind
I had some surgery yesterday, and was given some pain killer (hydrocodone) for it. I don't like to take pain killers, so I didn't until about 10pm to try an get some sleep. Now I have tinnitus (ringing in the ears) as a result of some decades of target shooting, and other than having a dead spot at one narrow band of frequencies it isn't much of an issue.
Much to my surprise, about 30 minutes after I took hydrocodone I noticed that I was listening to the TV at a much lower level than I normally do. I hit the mute button and found that the tinnitus was almost entirely gone. Somehow I doubt that this will become a standard therapy, but I did take another about 5am, and the phenomenon was replicated.
I probably won't repeat the test, I'm feeling better today.
Much to my surprise, about 30 minutes after I took hydrocodone I noticed that I was listening to the TV at a much lower level than I normally do. I hit the mute button and found that the tinnitus was almost entirely gone. Somehow I doubt that this will become a standard therapy, but I did take another about 5am, and the phenomenon was replicated.
I probably won't repeat the test, I'm feeling better today.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
How great to find an honest car dealer
I was in central coastal Maine for a few days, and noted a noise coming from my right rear wheel. Looking for a Ford dealer in the area, I found Quirk Ford in Belfast. I called for an appointment, and brought the car in. After diagnosis there was a problem found with the wheel bearing, the single use seal over the bearing needed to be replaced, and there was a broken part in the emergency brake mechanism. I got an estimate of about $600, and parts would have to be brought in next day.
When I picked up the car I was delighted to find that that the bill was much less, because the broken part for the emergency brake system was in a mechanics tool box and they were able to avoid buying the whole kit to fix the problem. They could have charged me the full estimate and I would not have ever known, but they saved me a bunch of money and earned my trust. They also warned me of a weak battery, and I believe that their load test indicates weakenss. But being an old mechanic, I use the old "if it will start in sub-zero weather with the headlights on, the battery is good enough" test, and the factory store for Interstate batteries is just down the road from my home, so I do not pay retail list for batteries.
So a big +1 to Quirk Ford in Belfast, where you get honest service. Thanks, guys!
When I picked up the car I was delighted to find that that the bill was much less, because the broken part for the emergency brake system was in a mechanics tool box and they were able to avoid buying the whole kit to fix the problem. They could have charged me the full estimate and I would not have ever known, but they saved me a bunch of money and earned my trust. They also warned me of a weak battery, and I believe that their load test indicates weakenss. But being an old mechanic, I use the old "if it will start in sub-zero weather with the headlights on, the battery is good enough" test, and the factory store for Interstate batteries is just down the road from my home, so I do not pay retail list for batteries.
So a big +1 to Quirk Ford in Belfast, where you get honest service. Thanks, guys!
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