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A Hellish Weekend... Not Much Better Today

I had been very slowly recovering from my long-lingering COVID symptoms but things drastically worsened again this past weekend. We had about 13 inches of snow Friday night into Saturday so we had to head outside to at least clear off the roof especially since the snow wasn't supposed to stop falling for another 12 hours or so.  We didn't need a collapsed roof on top of all my health problems so we headed outside for a painful couple of hours.  It turns out we had another three inches of snow through the night on Saturday night after we cleared off the roof so it is good that we took care of the roof when we did. I started up the snowblower and made my way toward the driveway.  I had just broken through the deep snow with one slowblower-width path when it started making a terrible noise.  I noticed that one of the four augers was no longer held in place with its pin.  Fortunately, I had two spares on the control panel of the snowblower so that was a quick fix.  I started up th

Homemade Solar Finder Scopes

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I 've made a couple of homemade solar finder scopes in the past and have written about them here in this blog.  I made two additional solar finder scopes over the past few days out of unused parts for two reasons...  first, I could always use an extra solar finder scope for a second or third telescope, and second, we have an upcoming solar eclipse and I plan to have a few telescopes set up for viewing that day.   The upcoming solar eclipse has prompted me to jump on this little project just in case the weather is good enough for us to view the eclipse (which still does not look promising).  I plan to have a few telescopes in the backyard so that a few people can view at the same time and there really should be a finder scope on each telescope to make pointing the telescope at the sun much easier.  You'd think it would be easy pointing a telescope at the bright sun but the sun is so blindly bright that this usually becomes an exercise in frustration.  I've had two small 30mm

A Change to a Homemade Eclipse Viewer

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A bout a week ago, I wrote about an eclipse viewer that I made out of a discarded cardboard box for us to use during our upcoming eclipse.  I adapted this old shipping box to become a pinhole projection viewer.  The sun is projected through a pinhole and onto a screen at the bottom/back of the box so the person viewing the sun isn't looking directly at the sun but is instead looking at a screen with the sun projected onto it.  Actually, the sun in the sky is at the viewer's back so the person isn't even facing toward the sun.  There is no getting blinded by the sun using this little homemade viewer. This little project turned out well.  I have a large cutout to peer into the box toward the screen at the opposite end of the box and another cutout to mount a pinhole plate made of black construction paper.  Making the pinhole in construction paper made it quick and easy to test different sizes of pinholes.  After some experimentation, I sized the pinhole at 1/4 inch and that s

Some Corned Beef and Cabbage

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I 'm feeling well enough this weekend (not to be confused with feeling well...  I was just feeling well enough) to cook a larger than average meal today so we're having corned beef and cabbage today, St Patrick's Day. I put the corned beef in the oven about an hour ago and it will be in the oven almost all afternoon.  The house is already smelling delicious! Most recipes call for simmering corned beef on the stove but I'm not much a fan of boiled meats.  Back awhile ago, I tried a Dutch oven...  that was better than boiling but it still was lacking.  Besides, neither one of us likes cleaning the Dutch oven either! Then I decided to slow cook the corned beef in the oven, covered, with spices and fresh onions and garlic.  I add a bit of liquid to this too (beef stock, watered down to cut the salt a bit) and then seal it up in foil.  It slow cooks for at least an hour per pound. This is the same way I slow cook pork so I don't know why I didn't always cook my corne

Good Day Not Without Problems

I haven't mentioned much about my health in the last few blog entries so I thought I would add an update since my health has been quite lousy in recent months.  No news definitely does not mean good news.  A select few of those who read this blog might be wondering how things are going so I figured I would add a blog entry just about my current health. To start...  I have long-COVID and actually have been struggling with long-COVID since mid-2020.  This is on top of a rare myeloproliferative disorder and extensive spinal injuries.   For those of you who may think that this long-COVID stuff is nonsense, I can advise you that this long-COVID stuff is relentless, severely debilitating and, usually, intensely painful.  Anyone who thinks long-COVID (or even COVID) is nonsense or "like the flu" or "like a cold" is an ignorant fool.  Anyone who doesn't see the dangerously dark direction this virus is headed for humanity is blissfully and selfishly blind to what is

Eclipse Solar Glasses

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W ith the upcoming eclipse, I want to make sure we have everything we need to safely view the eclipse especially if Lukey and Kenzie are going to observe it with us.  If the weather doesn't cooperate (which is likely) then at least I'll have these items for other days of solar astronomy.  If the weather does cooperate, I definitely want to be able to view this eclipse as many ways as possible and these solar glasses will come in handy. Obviously, since I have a few telescopes, I'll have telescopes set up in the yard too.  Each telescope will have an appropriate solar filter and will be ready for viewing at any time.  However, when you are sitting back in a chair, it would be nice to have solar glasses available to watch the eclipse as well.   I just purchased these solar glasses, below, about a week ago.  They came in a box of three.  The great thing about these solar glasses is that they have sturdy frames and they fit over regular eyeglasses quite well.  These are definit

Upgraded New Solar Mount

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The new saddle for my new SolarQuest mount arrived this morning...  finally (USPS shipping is horrendous) ...  so I spent a little time upgrading the mount this morning.  I did a bit of work upgrading it yesterday too but I had been waiting for this new saddle to arrive for quite a while and I finally got that done this morning. In the photo, below, you can see the original saddle that came already installed on the SolarQuest mount.  I've had some bad experiences with this type of saddle...  the cast aluminum tends to crack and break eventually, the single bolt damages dovetail bars, and the single bolt isn't a secure as it should be...  so I wanted to replace it with a better one to keep my telescopes as secure as possible. In this next photo, you can see the new replacement saddle.  It is a much heavier duty saddle and it is actually a large clamp to hold the telescope rather than just a single bolt holding the telescope in place.  Replacing this saddle was easy when the new

April's Forecast Has Changed

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As expected, April's weather forecast has changed.  Unfortunately, it has not changed in the way we need.  Now, rather than there being only three clear days forecast for April, there are zero clear days in all of April!   It is not looking good for any sort of astronomy in April.   Of course, we could get extremely lucky and get a few hours of clear skies in the early afternoon of the eighth...  from 2pm to 4:30pm...  I'm not holding my breath though.

First Run of the New SolarQuest Mount

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T oday is an exceptionally rare clear, sunny March day so I immediately collected some astronomy gear to bring outside.  There are a few things I want to try before the solar eclipse next month.  Really, I need all the practice I can get.  The weather has been so miserable for the past year that I haven't done any solar astronomy in almost a year! The temperature this morning was still only in the upper 30s (it is early March, after all) but I was comfortable in just a fleece sweatshirt.  Being comfortable helps.  Well...  I wasn't completely comfortable...  I'm still experiencing significant spinal pain and I'm still having difficulty putting weight on my right leg without my knee buckling underneath me.  I was more comfortable than I have been lately though so that helped. I set up the new SolarQuest mount in the backyard in the same area where we'll be observing the eclipse next month.  I could have used a small table too but I didn't feel like digging one ou

Stairs and Unlevel Ground

A fter my spinal problems and walking problems on Tuesday, I thought I was doing fairly well now.  I've been walking around the house with only mild difficulty and relatively mild pain which is a great improvement over my experiences on Tuesday and the excruciating pain in the weeks prior to Tuesday.  That was great.  Then, this morning, I attempted to walk out to the mailbox... Inside our house, everything is on one level.  Plus, the house is very small so I don't have far to walk while inside the house.  We do, however, have one step off a small deck at our side door.  When I stepped off that one step, my right leg buckled under me and I almost ended up on the ground.  Then, I had one more step to traverse about eight feet later...  the same thing happened and I almost ended up lying on the ground.  From this point on, the ground was unlevel and I continued having problems keeping my right leg underneath me holding my body weight.  Clearly, this new spinal inflammation is not