Canopyflyer

1. Oh, that’s sweet

2. Very cool, great choice.

3. WTF!!! DUDE!

Cirque du Soliel Crystal: A lot of amazing choreography and skating.

Cats: We took our then 4 year old son and had seats in the first row. One of the cats came up to my son, who was standing in front of me. She scared him and he jumped up into my arms. She looked horrified and actually told me “SORRY!” I told her it was OK as my son actually started giggling after his initial fright. He turned in my arms and gave her one of his patented smiles. Later in the show the entire cast came out into the audience singing. They were so close that we could hear them singing directly without the PA. That was 15 years ago and our son still talks about it.

Concerts:

Chicago/ Beach Boys co headlining. By far the best rock concert I’ve attended.

Black Crows opening for ZZ Top (Recycler Tour): ZZ Top was always known for spectacular shows. On this one though, the Black Crows performance was light years ahead of the headliner. They were a really good live band.

Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops at the Riverbend Music Center: 1812 Overture. The Cincinnati Pops used actual cannons for the performance. Yeah, real cannons.

I’ve heard that.

His birth cost was around $20k with a stay in the NICU the first two days.

He was diagnosed before he even left the hospital. He had visible indications of Spina Biffida Occulta (Tethered Spinal Cord). Exactly 8 weeks after he was born he underwent the surgery. Which took a lot longer than expected because they couldn’t get a good MRI image. So the Neurosurgeon ended up doing exploratory surgery to find how far up the tether went.

Total bill for the surgery and a week long hospital stay was $40k.

Fortunately, my wife works for the same medical foundation that owns the hospital, and she still works there today. Plus they own the insurance company. So we were lucky to have the best health insurance available in our state.

Black Magic Woman – Santana. Original by Fleetwood Mac.

Touch and Go – Emerson Lake and… POWELL. Cover of an old folk song called: Lovely Joan

Blinded by the LIght – Manfred Mann original by Bruce Springsteen.

Alone – Heart… Can’t remember the original artist off hand.

The gap in my employment is NONE OF YOUR GOD DAMN BUSINESS.

It’s none of your fucking business that my kid required major neuro surgery at the age of 8 WEEKS and I needed to take a year off form work to care for him.

You and all the other idiot corporations decided to fuck around with the economy and didn’t hire anyone for several years because YOU fucked it up.

To be more flexible I decided to work a series of contracts instead of full time employment and fuckwits like you treat contractors like trash.

Do you really want me to go on? Because I fucking can…

BTW: The kid is OK and today (19 years later) is an accomplished figure skater that competes internationally.

Back in 2000 I lived in Loveland, OH which is just north of Cincinnati, OH. There used to be an old fashioned barber shop on Loveland-Madeira road.

I walked into the barber shop and was greeted by the barber and told to take a seat. There were two other men in the shop. One was in the chair and getting his hair cut and the other was reading a newspaper and I was unable to see his face at all. The barber finished with the guy in the chair and looked over at the man reading the newspaper and said:

“Neil you’re up.”

The man closed his newspaper and laid on the chair next to him…

And I found myself looking at the first man that walked on the moon.

I completely blew every circuit breaker in my brain. Somehow though I managed to keep my composure and didn’t turn into a complete idiot. As he got his hair cut we talked about mundane things, never once talking about space flight, although we did discuss aviation. At the time I was a skydiver and he actually had some questions about it. He told me that he had a ride under a parachute… I replied, yeah I’ve seen that video.

And that is how I met and had a conversation with Neil Armstrong.

Irrespective if the meaning has been reversed over the years.

What most people miss about this saying is… IT GOES BOTH WAYS.

If someone mistreats you and uses their blood relationship to you as an excuse, then that is not a member of your family. Family supports and goes through things together. Friends can become family. At this stage of my life, I have cut off my entire blood relations due to their toxic and stupid behavior. My family is the woman I married, my kids, and a few choice friends.

In the movie “Stripes” the scene where Bill Murray’s character stops the cab in the middle of the bridge and throws the keys into the river was filmed on the 2nd Street bridge in Louisville, Kentucky. My family and I lived on the Sunny Side of Louisville, otherwise known as Hell… errrr I mean Indiana.

One of the cars passing by Bill Murray is my Dad in our family car. He was going over to downtown and the production were by the side of the road asking people if they would be willing to drive by for the scene.

Nationals is going on in Houston this weekend. A local robotics club here flew there on Spirit.

They’re supposed to fly back to O’Hare tomorrow. Kind of wonder what they’re going to do.

Xanadu

No, not Olivia Newton John’s version written by Jeff Lynne…

Rather the one by RUSH.

The University of Wisconsin Madison Arboretum has several acres planted with a combination of; magnolias, crab apples, and lilacs.

During April to early May that field smells AMAAAAZING.

I think Lemmy is doing a pretty good job of that already. :-P

After many years, I finally found decent LED lights to replace the incandescent bulbs on my two McIntosh amps (MC7108, MC7100).

Not a huge project, but it was something that I had been wanting to do for many years.

Here is a photo of my MC7108 with the new lights installed.

I have a wicked sense of humor and a penchant for puns and word play. I also have a very large vocabulary from being a voracious reader from an early age which feeds my puns.

I can trace the point in time when my wife and I fell in love with each other was when we spent an entire car trip doing puns and word play. Not just any puns but as the trip went on they got more and more esoteric. We discovered that we could keep up with each other and we’ve been together ever since.

Not to be “that guy”…

But doing crap like this on guard should be grounds for getting a ticket pulled… Permanently.

It shows a complete lack of decision making ability and safety awareness. There are plenty of places to screw around and have this kind of entertainment.

On the guard frequency is not one of them. It’s not a stretch to say people’s lives could be affected due to this utter stupidity. People have died in the air due to a lot less.

The only time you truly fail is when you give up prematurely.

Every Chess Grandmaster has lost more games than the average person has played.

My oldest has moderate to severe dyslexia. The poor kid finished 1st grade at just a Kindergarten reading level. He was going to fall behind very quickly as he progressed through school. Fortunately in our hometown there is a very good program for Dyslexics, and other learning disabilities. The tutoring program used the Orton-Gillingham method.

Fast forward 13 years and he was just accepted to Northwestern for the next fall quarter. Northwestern uses a quarter system rather than semester. He read the first 3 books of the Stormlight Archive (~630,000 words each book, or longer than Lord of the Rings in its entirety) in the span of about a month. He has turned into a voracious reader and had not had to make use of any of the accommodations afforded to him as being a diagnosed dyslexic.

Stargate

Lost in Space: Season 3 You’ll never guess who composed this one. Go ahead and look it up, I want you to experience the sheer awe I did when I found out.

My god, it’s a crying shame I had to come down this far to find this one.

It’s really really good.

I love Farscape…I’ve been a huge fan since discovering it in 2001. I’ve watched the show from start to PK War many many times and have introduced my wife and kids to it. They have subsequently watched the whole thing multiple times as well.

I skip the intro every single time. Sorry, but it just grates.