Author Archives: momdude

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About momdude

Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into
December 7, 2021 · 23:34

Random Old Photos – December 07th

The directory said “2004/Dirty Paul.” I knew exactly what photos they were, even 17+ years later.

The old house wasn’t on a slab, there was a crawlspace under the house. Not much of one, maybe 18 to 24 inches, sometimes less, sometimes a little more. Fortunately, there were not a lot of spider webs or other critter-spoor down there. But it was dusty as hell.

I would end up down there once every couple of years for some plumbing or other problem and it was a pain. Getting in was only accessible by a teeny, tiny portal, maybe 18 by 24 inches, and that was at the bottom of a knee-high wall surrounding the portal and the screen door covering it. Getting in was a real contortionist trick, as was getting out. Immediately inside were some of the larger drain pipes from the two big bathrooms, so it was a really tight squeeze.

Moving around in there was also a royal pain, crawling on my belly, not even able to get up on my knees to crawl. As you can see, I was not in the finest of physical shape at the time (not that I’m any freakin’ Adonis now, but at least now I’m about 40 pounds lighter) so by the time I had been under there a few hours I was sore, sore, sore.

This particular day I believe that I was running coax cable for internet and cable TV. I had drilled holes in the floor in all five of the bedrooms, as well as the kitchen and living room. Then I dragged a drill underneath the house, drilled out a hole though the foundation into the family room/den at the end of the house (where the internet & cable hookup was), and started dragging cables. LOTS of trips from, each room to the portal to the family room. Hours and hours under there.

I got done what I wanted to and we did like having internet and cable in each room on a nice, high-speed, secure, wired connection. This was before wi-fi was real fast or reliable, and in a 3,300 square foot, one-story, ranch-style house, wi-fi always pretty much sucked over about half the house once you got away from that end. (That, of course, got fixed and upgraded a few years later, but at the time it was a big deal.)

Nevertheless, when I finally crawled out, exhausted, one of my kids was there with the camera. (None of those apples fell very far from that tree!)

At least my hair was still dark!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Paul, Photography

December 6, 2021 · 23:40

No Context For You – December 06th

A simple photo, a couple of slapdash visual effects (isn’t “slapdash” a wonderful word?), and 23:30 desperation searching for inspiration turns into…whatever.

NASA introduced the 2021 astronaut class, otherwise known as “Astronaut Candidates” or ASCANs. Ten fine, wonderful, and über overqualified individuals, some or all of whom will in the next five to ten to twenty years walk on the Moon or even Mars. I watched them with bittersweet joy as they were introduced, excited to see them and truly looking forward to following their progress as they pioneer the road forward off-planet, along with all of the other current astronaut corps which I’ve followed for decades.

Bittersweet because that was the course I had dreamed of since I was about five years old. I’m starting to think that maybe I won’t get my shot at it. I’m not giving up hope, but there comes a point when you realize that you’re down by 10,000 points and there’s only a couple minutes on the clock and it’s 4th and about four miles. The odds are thin and getting thinner. But, as Commander Peter Quincy Taggart was known to say:

OFFICE HOURS: Ask DC Universe Your Questions Every (UPDATED) TUESDAY Night! - #2883 by DeSade-acolyte - Q&As - DC Community

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Filed under Paul, Photography, Space

December 5, 2021 · 23:27

Cheap Thrills, Orange Tags

tl;dr – too many cross-country road trips as a kid crammed into the back seat of a station wagon with nine (or more) other people, “license plate” games to keep sane, now have a “January baby” vehicle, so every year I have a little head game going on to see if I can be the very, very first one on the block (or in the city, county, or state) to get the new DMV registration tag for the license plate with the new color for the next year. See? It’s a sure fired sign that I’m “easily amused.”

So here’s this year’s demonstration that I still have a pissed off and bored ten-year-old trapped inside my head.

Welcome to the 2023 Pregame Show!

 

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Filed under Paul, Photography

December 4, 2021 · 23:25

Dune

The tl;dr version – GO SEE IT!! Go see it in the theater if you can! Go see it in IMAX if you can conceivably find a way!!

I know you may think that it’s not in IMAX any more – check again, and do it quick. It was out of the IMAX theaters for a while when “Eternals” came out and bumped it out, but at least in the Los Angeles area it’s back for anywhere from three to five days only, depending on the theater. Check IMAX theaters in your area, but if you didn’t get a chance to see it in IMAX on its first run you might have a reprieve.

A funny thing happened when we tried to see “Dune” in IMAX when it was first out. Things are really super busy (big surprise…) and I kept putting it off until our son pointed out that it would only be out a few more days before it got bumped by “Eternals.” I pushed some deadline work around and got tickets for the final showing at our local IMAX. But when we got there we were told that the theater was having technical issues and the show was canceled.

We went back to the front desk (we had bought our tickets online) and got a refund, as well as four passes for any future shows. As much as I would have really liked to scream and yell and raise hell about it all (I was REALLY disappointed), screaming at a minimum-wage teenager working the night shift at a movie theater isn’t going to solve anything. They were doing their best, it was just a shitty situation for everyone involved, and we went home.

Then I heard about this “encore” engagement for just a few days. I went onto the “Dune” website, looked up IMAX showings, and was told that the nearest theater was in Toronto. The one in Canada. But in a few days, that would change. It’s just for a couple of days – my guess is that on Thursday there’s another big blockbuster opening up in IMAX, but in the meantime, they’re slipping “Dune” back in. (“West Side Story” perhaps? “Spiderman” next week? Whatever.)

Take a shot. Find a theater near you. Go see it.

If it’s not already the greatest film I’ve ever seen, it’s at least in the top ten.

So utterly fantastic.

I’m going to need some time to sort it all out. And probably a few more viewings.

Go.

See.

“Dune.”

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Filed under Movies

December 3, 2021 · 23:58

Random B&W Memories – Pushing Fifty Years

Not sure what random chance dredges this up, but from about 48 years ago here’s one of my high school football games.

The odd thing is that I’m not even sure who was taking the pictures. There are photos of me on the sidelines, so it wasn’t me. It’s my film, and the way it’s cut tells me that I developed and printed it. And I know that I scanned the negatives a few years back. So it’s not someone else’s pictures. But I wasn’t the photographer.

My family never came to any games, so it wouldn’t have been them. A friend? Maybe.

Anyway, you can rest assured that we lost. We were 0-8 that season. THAT much I remember!

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Filed under Photography, Sports

December 2, 2021 · 23:30

Foggy Sunset

Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, DEADLINES, busy, busy, busy… Well, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it. (Fred!)

Going out about 16:15 to check to make sure the Christmas lights were turning on correctly (they were) I noticed the fog and haze moving in early and quickly.

(As always, click on the image to see it full sized.)

The hills of Woodland Hills and Calabasas (left and center-ish) were already getting hard to see, and even Castle Peak, less than a mile away on the far right, was starting to fade into the mist. And the temperature had dropped a dozen degrees.

Now, just before midnight, I see that it’s completely overcast and it looks like visibility is down to well under a mile. IFR flight rules out there, friends and neighbors! Stay safe.

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather

December 1, 2021 · 23:45

December Raven

It’s the first of December and if the rest of the month is anything like Day 01, well… Let’s just say that it will be a fitting end for this particular year. I was hoping for better.

But it’s not all a nightmare. I’ve been putting out bits of “wildlife seeds” over in the far corner of the yard, making peace with the squirrels, but also hoping to entice some larger avian friends. The lighter, smaller, “songbird” feed goes out near the house, but I’ve seen the ravens down in the yard at least once.

Ravens are extremely intelligent, capable of problem solving, using tools to get food, and so on. They also have shown that they can recognize and remember individual humans. (Don’t ever throw rocks or sticks at them – they won’t forget.) While I can’t recognize individual ravens (they’re all just pretty much…black?) I suspect the two that hang around here are regulars.

Hearing one of them in the back yard when I was on a break from the computer, I looked out and saw that it was way down in the lower branches of the pine trees off the back edge of the yard. I thought it might fly away as soon as I got out in the back yard with a camera, and it would most certainly fly away when I walked over to the edge of the hill where I was only 20-30 feet away. But I took out the bag of food, moved slowly, chatted quietly, spread some of that food around as I approached, and took my chances.

It stayed for a few minutes. Deep in the shade and interior branches, so contrast is low and focus sucked a lot as the camera’s autofocus and my standard issue Mark I eyeball both kept trying to focus on all of the small branches in there. But a few came out okay.

Giving me the hairy eyeball, but not fleeing yet.

Definitely a raven, not a crow. All of the standard indicators. For example, the ruff of thick feathers under his beak – crows have smooth feathers here.

Its beak has a downward hook on the end and has a curve, where a crow’s beak has a straight separation.

In this and the next picture you can see the “moustache,” a few feathers that stick out from the forehead out onto the top of the beak.

Plus, the size of the beak is much larger than a crow’s beak. Okay, enough paparazzi, I’m outta here!

Let’s hope for more ravens and other birds and critters, and fewer double shifts of data entry and “challenging” deadlines.

But let’s not bet on it.

Say hello to your birds for me!

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Filed under Birds, Photography

November 30, 2021 · 23:49

Motion Vs iPhone 13

This effect is much easier on a more stupid camera.

With any old DSLR, set it on a 1 second to 30 second exposure, open the shutter, and swing the camara around a bit in front of some bright Christmas lights.

But the iPhone 13 is a very clever beastie, with a built in assumption that anything looking like this is an accident, AND IT’S GOING TO *FIX* IT FOR YOU!

But when I want to get this effect, then I have to trick the iPhone into doing what *I* want, not what some software designer in Palo Alto assumed (incorrectly) that I would want.

It’s a challenge. Practice, practice, practice!

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Photography

November 29, 2021 · 23:36

Don’t Look Down

At the peak of the roof on the side of the house. Fifteen feet up? Eighteen?

Heavy duty ladder, solid footing, moving carefully and staying close to the ladder, moving the ladder instead of reaching.

If anything starts to go south, try to go west, to the left, where that big, soft (ish) bush is, not onto the A/C unit or that fence or those hard, metal, pokey things are. A good plan, never tested.

Pity it’s been so dry, from up here you can see over all of the neighboring houses and since we’re on top of a hill to begin with, the mountains can be seen clearly. If it were colder and wetter once in a while there would be snow. Not now.

The worst part was having to do it twice – not much holds the big lights on and if anything hangs up and pulls the wrong way… Ziiiiiiiiiiip, down they all come. The second time a few more solid anchors got added. Fool me once, shame on you, and all of that.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Photography

November 28, 2021 · 23:29

Critter Tracks

While working on the Christmas lights this holiday weekend, it was immediately obvious Friday morning that some critter had been using my car as a perch of some sort. It’s been really, really dry and dusty and there were muddy tracks all over it.

Onto the hood…

…up onto the windshield…

…and then meandering all across the roof.

The critter had obviously just crossed through some mud, probably from the dirt around the roses next to the driveway. Given the tracks I’m guessing it was a raccoon, which are known to be around, although I guess it could also be a cat or an opossum. But my money’s on raccoon. I’ve seen one in the yard that was probably in the 30-40 pound range. I’m not sure what this dude was doing on the car, but no harm, no foul. Maybe he got spooked by the sprinklers turning on and was just trying to find a dry spot.

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Filed under Critters, Photography