Wondering what to write about this last Friday in October.

Here I sit with nothing good to say, so I read the blogs that I follow that have been posted already and commented on most of them. Still nothing hit me to write about today. I want to thank you for all your kind comments concerning my last painting. You were all too nice. Now I need a new idea for a new painting. So how can I come up with a painting idea when I can’t even come up with a blog idea? Well, I guess I could start the painting just like I started this blog post, not having the slightest idea what to say or how it will turn out.



So, what do you all do when you have no idea what to post? Probably what I should have done; just not posted anything. You know, if you have nothing good to say, keep your mouth shut. . . right? No. The problem is I post every day and if I miss a day without prior warning, some of my followers worry that something happened to me. I do the same when someone skips a day without notice. I worry that something bad may have happened to them. What about you all? And how would I have known yesterday that I would have nothing to say today?


We did get a little rain yesterday evening when the cold front came through and dropped the temperatures from the 80’s to the 60’s. It was 53 degrees here this morning and they are predicting tomorrow morning to be in the 40’s. That is cold for this time of year. At least with the hot, dry summer, it sounds really cold.


Hey, I am rambling on with nothing to say so will just say; “have a great Friday and a better weekend, you hear?”

Wondering about H-bombs in space & new painting.

I watched a program on TV last night that sure did surprise me. It was all taking place just after I graduated from high school and the final test was the summer after my first year in college. That was a long time ago; I graduated high school in 1961. What am I talking about? It started with the Russians exploding a hydrogen bomb in the upper atmosphere. So as not to be outdone, the US decided to detonate a much larger bomb, a 1.4+ mega ton, in the Van Allan belt which was just recently discovered and confirmed by Dr. James Van Allan in 1858. Dr. Van Allan was notified and was asked to let them know within three weeks if it was safe to detonate such a large bomb in the radiation belt that he had discovered. Since they were going to do it anyway and he had no idea what would happen, he told them it was OK.



The results were a heavenly light show, very similar to the northern lights only south over Hawaii. The street lights went out in Honolulu, near by satellites were destroyed, and a new “Van Allen Belt” was created that took over two years to dissipate.


I knew nothing about these tests, the Russian tests, nor the many other atom bomb tests in the upper atmosphere. The atom bombs were a lot weaker than the hydrogen bombs, so didn’t make much of a show. Maybe at that age I just didn’t listen to the news or read the papers much. I was interested in other things, weren’t you at that age? Heck, I had enough trouble just trying to squeeze in my studies.


Google “starfish prime” and see what all you can find. Here are some links I found:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128170775
and
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/07/06/starfish-prime/
and of course Wikipedia.com has info on it.


The major powers in the world at that time sure did some scary and dangerous things that could have done irreversible damage to the earths delicate balance to the end of the life / inhabitable system in which we live.






OK, change of subject. I completed a painting yesterday. I always wanted to try a night view painting. As you know, I love looking at the sky with or without a telescope. I tried to get the night sky and the moon to look similar to what it really does. This was my first attempt using black gesso. Had a lot of trouble with the darker colors fading into the black. Sure was a learning experience. Let me know what you think of it and any suggestions would be appreciated.

You all have a great day now, you hear?

You wandering what we got at the flea market?

Here it is, Wednesday already and I haven’t told you what treasures we found at the flea market last weekend. I didn’t find a thing I couldn’t live without, but as usual, my wife did. She has the uncanny knack of always being able to find something that she can use or enjoy. Along with some minor stuff, her “big” find were tapes of old radio programs. She bought two containers each had 20 cassettes with 60 programs and 30 hours of shows. That is a total of 60 hours of old radio shows.



I am old enough to remember a lot of them, but I bet most of the population never heard a radio program other than talk, news, sports, or music. They don’t know what they missed. These shows were every bit as good as today’s TV or movies and most were far better. They had big name “stars” that got their start on radio. To name a few, there was Jack Webb, William Conrad, Richard Widmark, Eve Arden, Steve Allen, Joel McCrea, Ozzie Nelson, Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, Don Ameche, Vincent Price, William Bendix, Frank Sinatra, and Allan Ladd. Do any of them sound familiar to you?


My wife has been listening to old time radio shows on satellite radio for awhile, now she can listen to what she wants when she wants to. Luckily we have a player that does CDs and cassette tapes. Probably the price was low because few people had anything that would play cassette tapes.


Back then, radio had almost any kind of show that you would want. They had musicals, comedy, thrillers, cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, science fiction, intrigue, mysteries, and almost anything you could think of. A lot of the radio shows moved into television, in fact, way too many to list here.


Hope I brought some memories back to some of you who are near my age. You all have a great day now, you hear?

Wondering what will happen to our pets.

As we get older we start to think of things that we shrugged off at an earlier age. We start thinking of our end and what our loved ones will do and what will become of our beloved pets. Heck, I have already lived over 8 years longer than my Dad did. OK, let me start with this scenario. What would happen if my wife and I were killed in an automobile accident? Who would rescue our pets from our locked house and then who would take care of them in the manner they are used to? Yes, they are spoiled rotten.



We have lived with them for quite awhile and know their moods, their wants, and their needs. Each one has its own personality and we have learned how to respond to each of them. My wife is their chef and creates healthy, tasty meals for them. How can we find someone who would take over? If we could find someone, how much monetary assistance should be provided for that person in our wills and what stipulation should be made about the treatment and care of our surviving pets? Should that person be allowed the use of our home for the duration of the dogs’ lives or deeded over to that person for good?


The worst part of this is that I would have no idea who we would want to take care of our pets. Now, if we lived back in Pennsylvania where most of my wife’s and my relatives and friends live, it would not be as big a problem. That would still be a viable option, I just thought it would be an easier transition if they were to stay in the same home that they have lived in all their lives.


You may think we are crazy to worry about such things, but our dogs have been our children, our friends, our companions, and a huge part of our lives for years. Since I worked out of my home for the last part of my working career, I didn’t get to meet many new people. Most all of my friends are my age or back in Pennsylvania or in the blogger world. I just don’t know what to do.


I have heard of people having their pets put down and buried with them. No way would I even consider that option. Do you think that I am crazy for thinking about such things and for loving my pets so much? What would you do?


You all have a great day now, you hear?

Wondering how far down the water is.

When we moved on this property about 27 years ago, you would hit water just digging a fence post hole. I dug lots of holes, since I had a big auger that attached to the rear of my Farmall 200. Back then, the pond covered 5 to 6 acres and never dried up. But as the years progressed, it seemed to get increasingly dry and back in 2002, it dried up enough so I could get in with a borrowed tractor with a front end loader and dig it down deeper in one area. Since then, even in so called “dry spells”, the old deepest part and the new deep “hole” I had dug never dried up and therefore it preserved the fish population. There were some big ole bass in there. Even then, the old deep hole still held water, so up until this year, as far as I know it has never dried up in the past.



Now I have to wonder just how far the water level is dropping. Of course I am worried about my water well. As I told you once before, one time the water level dropped below my foot valve and I had to add another section of pipe to get it down lower. At that time, the drought we were having was nothing compared to the year long drought we are having now. I suppose the thing to do if the well stops pumping water, is to get in the RV and take a long trip until it rains. Now that sounds like a good solution. Drought has created nomads in the past, right?


You all have a good day now, you hear?

Wondering about comment settings and heating homes.

I got an email from someone that said that they could not comment on my blog. I am not sure if this just occurred after blogger updated to its new format or if it has always been that way. I went into the settings and corrected that, now anyone, even anonymous commenters, can leave comments. If anyone has trouble commenting, send me an email and I will try to fix any remaining problems. Thanks for letting me know about the commenting problem.



I got to wondering about heating homes since winter is coming soon to some of our northern states. I used to live in Pennsylvania and always had a big complaint come winter time. It seemed to me that everyone kept their homes way to hot and it also seemed that the colder it got outside the higher they turned the heat. Oh how that bothered me. It not only was uncomfortably warm, since in the winter I usually wore warmer clothes (not shorts and t-tops), but it dried out the air and made your nose and throat sore. Why did people do that and I suppose they still do.


I must have been the exception to the rule. I kept the temperature in my home around 68 to 70 degrees in the day time and turned it down further during the night. I could breathe better and had less nose and throat irritations. I wonder if it is an instinct to turn up the heat in reverse proportion to the outside temperature. There were two things that I hated in the cold winters of Pennsylvania. One was the darkness and the other was the over-heated homes. I did love the snow and a warm bed on a cold night, but just hated the hot, dry, stagnant air in most all the homes. Keeping the inside temperatures down and burning a fireplace to suck in some outside air made it a lot more comfortable.


How many of my “northern” readers understand what I am talking about? Are any of you the ones who super-heat their homes? Tell me what temperatures in your home are you the most comfortable? Do you run a humidifier in the winter?


You all have a great day now, you hear?

Wondering about the digitizer and the mouse.

If I were to come and take your computer mouse away from you, what all could you do on your computer? On today’s computers, not much. You can use the arrow keys to move the curser around to an icon of a program that you want to open and then press the enter key. So far so good, but most programs today require a mouse or some kind of pointing device. Back in the old, old days, data was entered via a keyboard and punch cards.



OK, I am again going to show my age. When I got my first computer, a mouse was not part of the system, although they had been invented. Therefore, I bought a digitizer board to use with it, since I had one of the first AutoCAD programs and the digitizer had its own mouse or pen, which ever you preferred. The mouse (it was not called that) on the digitizer had a clear glass circle on it with cross-hairs in the circle along with two buttons; one for selection and one for enter, just like today’s mouse does. I suppose the cross-hairs were used for tracing something. Even way after the mouse became popular, I still used the digitizer for engineering drawing work because it was much more accurate.


“What brought this on” you may ask. Well, I just bought a new mouse and plugged it in. When I would just move it a small amount the curser would jump across the screen. Dang, got to do something about that. So, I went to the control panel and found the mouse settings and slowed the thing way down. This is the first time I ever had this happen with a new mouse. Either they are getting faster or I am getting slower or both. If it starts speeding up again, I am going to get me a mouse trap for sure.


You all have a good weekend now, you hear? Yes, of course we are heading off to the flea market again.