Charles W. Moore

First warm day in a while

I went to a funeral celebration of life this morning and it was capped off with a great meal by the ladies of Mt. Zion. Somehow it is comforting to be surrounded by people you have know all your aware life. SAM & I sat with a whole group of people who have know me forever – but forgot what I looked like as a man of age – and after the connection was made it was was like one happy big chat. It is strange that living in a village where there are only 500 people that you do not see people for years. We are so busy doing “stuff” that seems more important we fail to notice or it may be the fact that there are less intersections as we branch out from the epicenter called home.

I have been spending a lot of time on the computer for entertainment, church and maintenance reasons. My new super duper Dell Precision dual quad core Xeon processors are happily churning out whatever I demand. I have the Wacom Tablet attached, a lit up roll button mouse and a lot of software that I use from time to time. Open Office has become my office platform every since MS decided to hood wink me into sending back my Office 2010 discs – that is a long story – so like GM products, MS Office is history. I have been thinking of cloud computing for SAM via the Samsung Chromebook. A discussion heard yesterday on the radio got me thinking so I did a little research and it seems like a good platform for her while on the road. I’ll think about it for a while to see if the light bulb dims before really doing anything.

This week has been quite cool, Fall like really, with steam rising off the lake in the mornings. A couple inches of rain last week cause the lawn to grow again so I had to mow. I also had to bail out the sailboat for the 3″ of water in the cockpit. It was a joy to do both in the mid-70’s temperatures with full sun and low wind. Ok, I am trapped into doing and edit of some photos on G+ so I’ll be back.

Busy, busy, busy

This year most days are spent doing something we consider important. Yesterday was especially occupying: up at 0600 to go to the EUB church pancake and sausage breakfast held as part of Pleasant Lake Days. After that it was home to get ready for the Land of Lake Hamfest at US20/200W Nazarene Church, then on to the Angola Pilots Club lunch for the Juanita Grey Memorial Aviation Scholarship Fund. The 1700 hrs Pleasant Lake Alumni dinner was good too and it was fun to see all the old classmates and people I grew up with who were older than me and my hero and heroines. After that came the Johnson’s Party at the old Enfield House that they remodeled nicely: We had a chance to meet the newest of our town’s residents and some of the people that belong to other groups of which we have membership. To cap off the night we went to my sisters house for a chat. A long day!

Earlier in the wee we went to the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis with Ann & Lee. Along the way we picked up one of our grandson’s and A&L’s Granddaughters. We had a good time at the fair and delivered some Gideon Bibles to their booth. This was a long day as well and we returned with Grandson D. who decided he could make an overnight with us. We returned him to home the next day because he missed his mother and brother.

The next week is stacking up to be a busy one too: so much for the lazy retired life!

PS: BTW, I found time to take all 7 tests and passed the Florida State Boaters Safety Certification course. Now it is SAM’s turn to sweat.

Lots of computer work

I have spent the most part of the last two weeks just doing IT Administration things for Angola Assembly of God. I spent all day yesterday and today making things ready for the transition of the office computer to a new one. Today I have almost determined that I will wait for the present Office Secretary’s retirement at the end of August to finalize the demise of the current office Dell Inspiron 530. In the mean time, the new Dell 960 is ready for the Treasurer’s transactions, the Quickbooks master and Board Secretary’s contributions. At the end of August I will copy over the emails files and add the Outlook Accounts for Office. Not too sure what we will do with the Pastor(s) accounts yet. It will be a whole new world at the end of the month that is for sure.

Also, assisted a client with her technical issues with different machines and that was successfully resolved. My Dell Precision T5400 Workstation seems to be functioning well and as I write it is running the Dell Full Function test. So far she has passed with flying colors. I have been doing a lot with Team Viewer lately and the latest itteration has the WOL feature activated. Strangely, the T5400 does not seem to have a Wake-On-Lan function or if it does I have not found the key yet. BTW – If any readers have a couple of new 10K / 15K RPM 320+ GB HDD’s give me the price. My 160GB 10K Platters just do nt have sufficient space so I need to port over to the bigger drives and RAID 1 them. Perhaps I will just buy a external drive but that will slow things down a lot but some data I hardly ever use so it may not be too bad.

Time seems to be at a premium lately and there seems to be less and less of it this year. I can only imagine what it will be like this winter when we move onto the boat. I am trying to get the computers ready so I wish the WOL for the Precision worked. Oh well, maybe I need to add a PCI NIC that has WOL. You would think that the Broadcom 57xx would have this so I better check right now.

A Saugatuck Work n Sail

SAM & I traveled to Saugatuck/Douglas, Mi Wednesday, leaving early, to meet up with Dan & Kathleen on S/V Kathleen.  We arrived just before lunch, which Kathy served up, and after a brief catchup of the past year we planned our work for the afternoon. The weather was cool and the sea fog was rolling in by the tonnes but Thursday weather promised bright skies and warmer inland temperatures.

Dan and I started on the radio project to check out his antenna system and then install a Standard Horizon Matrix 2000 VHF/GPS/AIS unit.  This DSC radio is very cool and reasonably priced at about $400±.

The antenna system checked out good with the old DSC radio reading 21W forward and about 2.5W reflected.  Not too bad for a boat system.  I mostly lent Dan moral support and watched while he did all the work on the install.  Well, actually, I played with his new chartplotter / sonar unit.  I did find out the sequence to adjust the depth offset so the chartplotter depth agreed with the standard depth guage so I guess I held up part of the bargain.

Prior to the real install we made a mock-up of the place below decks that the radio was to be installed to determine if the radio would receive the GPS signals: the GPS receiver must be very sensitive because it worked well and agreed with the chartplotter position.

After we got the unit installed I checked the power output of the transmitter and it was 19W forward with 2W reflected so it agreed with my previous readings.  After this we played with the radio and I must say the audio was excellent.  This is on my purchase list.

Today, Thursday, we took Kathleen out on Lake Michigan for a few hours but the winds were 5 – 8 Kts so it was not a real good sailing day.  The further we went out the worse the winds became and the lumpier the 2’ seas became.  Water temperature was 55°F in July.  This is a cold year on the water.

We had a great chat but soon it was time to make the three hour trip back to Indiana.  D&K promised to visit us this winter towards the end of February – Yea.  We cannot wait to have them aboard Inspiration II.

Of sailboats and things

I have been dreaming lately.  More and more of my dreams are of sailboats and specifically, of Inspiration II.  I dream of all the work to be done this Fall and Winter.  I dream of all the materials I must collect and take with me to the boat.  I hope she does not sink after loading all this “stuff”.

I started a “Ship’s Log” yesterday.  It has 10 sections that deal with items needed to manage a live-a-board vessel for several months at a time. Now I need to generate the document forms for each section.  For example, Section 1 will have a form that lists Time, Date, Vessel status (in port, mooring, under sail, motoring, person on duty and position reports plus other elements of interest to the vessel and authorities.

• Section 1 is the day to day log of all activities of being onboard.
• Section 2 is all about Maintenance & Repairs.
• Section 3 deals with Fuel status, concerns and hours of operation of the two diesel engines.
• Section 4 documents Improvements
• Section 5 contains Schematics of electronics, electrical and mechanical systems
• Section 6 is a catchall Miscellaneous grouping.
• Section 7 chronicles Ideas for the boat and sailing
• Section 8 contains To-Do Lists
• Section 9  formally presents the vessel Survey(s)
• Section 10 is an area reserved for guests who have visited the boat

I need to get motivated to generate some ham radio related project like getting the AllStar operational on a BeagleBlack and IRLP on a PiIRLP board.  This will reduce the size to a form factor suitable for the boat.  Right now I think I will work on the forms for each section of the Ship’s Log.  Bye.

(to be continued)

KANQ Balloons Aloft 2014

Here are some pictures from this years Balloons Aloft event this year that was held on July 11, 12. Another great event thanks to Walt and Marsha, et. al.

New Stuff & House Bound

Ok, so I recovered from the password adventure.  Now what?  Well, I bought a Dell Precision T5400 w 2x 4 core Xeon processors. a full win 7 32/64 bit disc set with COA and a cheapy reactivation code for a Win 7 Home install.  At this point all are operational.

The Dell Precision I bought from eBay arrived and it was much heavier than I expected. In addition, when I pulled the cover plate off it is extremely tightly packed.  Working on it is not your usual Dell Optiplex experience.  In fact, it is down right uncomfortable except if you are in a Precision expert.  Perhaps I will become one but it will not be without travails. Spent the afternoon on this beast.  Still to come – clone the 160GB HDD for the future fail – and then clone it to a 500 or greater HDD. It is a nice machine.  Really.

Before the Precision, I took an old Dell Latitude D620 with Win XPP and applied a face lift with a new life of Windows 7 Home. It installed OK with a full format install and is not too slow.  Unfortunately, I found out later that the replacement battery I bought a couple of winters ago is kaput.  Therefore, it is a run without battery only and this is a disappointment.  Anyway, jobs are all done and I am going to relax a bit.

The Friday Night Net on IRLP is on so I have to go.  Bye.

Windows 7 – a word to the wise

Oh oh, recovering Dell w Win 7 64 Bit. This happened when the auto-update did not perform correctly. A word of wisdom: make a thumb drive with the password restore on it and make a repair disc. I had neither for the 64 bit install so I was sad for a while. BTW – this was a two account machine but the other account only had standard user rights – which means I could not change someone elses account password.

I installed the original 64bit install disc and managed to back off the last update and – walla – the password was my normal one. I this whole process I generated another account that has admin rights so if it ever happens again I can for a start log into that account and restore my password.

It all started with ……

—--still waiting and bought a full version Win 7 Pro for the Dell Precision Server:  will it live up to expectations?  This is an experiment that may be a throwback to some older server version.  

Alternative Medicine: Part 1

In the past I have been a scoffer at such stuff as alternative medicine.  This is based upon my very conservative Midwest upbringing, a critical and conservative nature with a bit of mis-trust thrown in and finally a belief in the big business scientific process.  I admit that you cannot just throw all the junk being made these days into the public realm with no authoritative confirmation that it has “some” value:  With a worldwide audience of “ready-to-jump-for-anything” people there has to be a “control” of some sort but the with the national mania for “tag’em, bag’em, book’em” these days who can believe anything?  Folks, there is a thriving counter-culture spending good money on things that merit some research and a modicum of “control”.  So what does the term ORGANIC mean to you?  It really means nothing at all, in any sense.

I prefer the term “Naturally Grown” and this means that a seed can reproduce itself in the same exact form as its parents, year after year, without patent or other encumbrance year after year.

Now, after that comes the “wild” label and this means it is free grown in the world, from its own seed,  with no artificial means of support from human intervention, other than planting the seed,  for 10 generations.  I like the Wild label.  I strived for that but finally caved to the $$$ and lack of familia support needed during the heydays of my farm days.  So here I am at the end of my statement and wish that others will win.

This is by no means an endorsement but just a reprint:

http://www.bluemorphotours.com/scientific-research/mental-health-and-ayahuasca.html