General Blog

General Blog

June 1, 2024

Heavy yet Virtual Metal

o I’m sitting on the end of a runway in nighttime New York at the controls of an Airbus 320. James Paul, our instructor, goes through the basic controls of this advanced passenger aircraft (it must be advanced – the doors stay on in flight). The engines are rumbling – I can feel them spool up through the bottom of my seat. James tells me to just keep it on the runway centerline during takeoff, hold it there until he calls rotate, and then I’ll pull back into a fifteen degree climb out, and then I’m to pull the gear […]
May 30, 2024

Brightline

mage of an egg. “This is your brain”. Crack the egg and dump it into a skillet “This is your brain in downtown West Palm Beach.” Sizzles. “Get the picture?” My buddy Pete F got some Brightline tickets (I don’t wanna know where), good for two seats from Orlando International to West Palm Beach (this high speed rail goes all the way to Miami). So we drove out and went into their sleek space port – I mean railroad station, waited in comfortable seats and were eventually permitted to enter our coach. While there was lots of leg room (and […]
August 25, 2020

Quarantine 2

he second and last installment of a short two-part series. I got my results today and they were negative. Not bad – CVS Pharmacy took them at midday Sunday and posted them by Tuesday morning. So it’s interesting that, with a mask and precautions, I still caught some sort of low-grade cold. That’s worrisome since it means that, even with masks and hand-washing, you can still catch things. Also interesting – provided I have a computer to program with and books to read, I’m quite the happy introvert. Yesterday I stayed in a closed condo (with a view of the […]
August 24, 2020

Quarantine 1

‘m in quarantine. Saturday night (August 22nd), laying in bed, I found myself with a bit of night sweats going on. Also, I’d had a sore throat, on an off, for days. And that’s when it hit me. You might have Covid. Not a good time for this – the wife has pre-surgery coming up. I’ve got all sorts of hobby things going on. I don’t have time for a virus. But I don’t have time for a funeral, either. So I immediately sealed myself off in the den, sleeping on the floor that night. Found that my Doctor Sister […]
August 17, 2019

Squirrelly Retyrement

oday was my last day at FedEx. It’s been twenty years (counting in my contractor time) and it’s been a hell of a ride. I’ve gone through a number of managers and made more friends than I realized. So today was the going-away party. I was thinking it would be maybe some sheet cake and a dozen mooching well-wishers. Ended up with a large packed conference room with two orgs, a bunch of returning retirees, cake (yes, but still), food, drinks, a plaque, speeches, roasts, handshakes, hugs. Two hours of this. It was a choke-up moment that went on and […]
April 25, 2019

KittyLog – 4/24/2019

ast night I woke up at 2am. Wondered what was going on in the house. Found the doors open in the Florida room, but Chinki and Ritz hanging close to the night light. Apparently our dark and sizable (sic) house scared them. So taking one in each hand, I carried them back to the bedroom and put them aboard. They found it interesting – lots of whisker-bristling excitement. Looking out the back window was a real gas for them. And then Chinki started hanging around the edge of the bed so I lifted her down. Off she trotted, back to […]
April 23, 2019

KittyLog – 4/22/2019

ell, we got our two kitties last night, Chinki (a Hindi word employed for cute daughters and such) and Ritz. We decided that this time we’ll get two so they won’t be lonely when left alone (and can destroy the house together). When we got them home Monday night, we decided to keep them in the Florida room for the first night (where their poo-box and food is) so they’d stabilize to the environment. We sat out there for the evening, watching them play and explore. They kept their distance, slightly nervous around us. However, later in the evening I […]
October 23, 2018

Japan – Day Nine – This can’t be good

ike I said, I’d only post if something bad happened. And here we go. Final day in Kyoto – shuttle pickup at 1pm, so we had a morning to wander around the city and enjoy it for a little longer. Went into a bookstore (I sound like a broken record). Look, we were travelling with small backpacks and mine was stuffed full of old clothing but hey, in the bookstore they had a copy of The Art of Porco Rosso (a movie I just adore) so I had to pick it up. JB said, sure, go ahead – if we […]
October 22, 2018

Japan – Day Eight – Raked stones and backwards panels

oday was our free day in Kyoto – our final full day. So we each picked something we wanted to do. JB went for the Ryoanji Temple with its internationally famous racked gardens. So, while JB was getting ready, I hit the streets on an errand – I needed to pick up a little spending-yen, about $50 would carry us for the day, I figured. The thing was, on the ATM machine in the nearby 7-11, I got the number of zeroes mixed up and pulled $500 (i.e. 50,000 yen) by accident. No way I needed this amount of money. […]
October 21, 2018

Japan – Day Seven.Point.Five – A relaxing stroll to dinner

(This one ran long so I’m breaking the day up. Sorta like an afternoon nap) hile JB slept off our post-Yagi-san day, I slipped down to the lobby for any information on how we could spend our final full day. While there were no pamphlets anywhere, I did find a nice guide book in the gift shop (which I cheaply flipped through). In its pages, I did find something about the “Kyoto International Manga Museum”. And, the hell! It looked like it was a block from our hotel! When the wife rose from the dead, we decided we’d scope it […]