Scattered Thoughts . . .

D uring our trip out to Ohio with Lukey and Kenzie back in June, we suffered a few relatively small photography equipment failures.  This is not surprising in the least when traveling with enough equipment for three people and, in the big scheme of things, the failures were quite small.   I'd say that the worst failure was finding that a 21 minute video of fireworks was out of focus throughout the entire video.  I can blame this on small LCD screens when paired with old eyes!  So that was my fault.  We lost one or two little things too.  The only thing that actually broke was my Peak Design Capture Clip which is a $60 item (well...  that is what I paid...  to replace it with the newer version would cost $80). I use this Capture Clip to hold my camera on my shoulder strap.  The Capture Clip allows me to quickly remove the camera from the shoulder strap whenever necessary.  This clip also allows me to securely (supposedly) clip my cam...

S ince we missed the big train show event a couple of weeks ago, I decided to do some eBay shopping to see if I could find one or two of the items I had planned to search for at the train show.  One of these items was a large scale street car.  I prefer finding these items at shows so I can inspect the item closely rather than just looking at a few photos on eBay.   It turns out that I found what I was looking for very quickly.  It was listed as being in "Excellent" condition and the price was appropriate for a used item in excellent condition so I purchased it.  There were less expensive street cars available but I chose to purchase this particular one because it was listed as "Excellent".  This street car was delivered yesterday.   The trolley was packaged well and it was delivered to me in about three days so that was good.  I appeared to be in very good condition so that was good too.   After unpacking it from its shipping ...

I had mentioned in a previous blog entry that we had to call a service technician to repair our furnace.  He made a bunch of necessary repairs but we still had one intermittent recurring issue.   I kept an eye on all the parts that the service technician replaced and I have to say that it is good that we called for service.  Some of the parts were cracked, deteriorated and corroded.  Those parts definitely needed to be replaced.  The service technician was at our house one night and then the following day doing repairs.  It really hurts when you have to call for service during the night! The day after his second day working on the furnace, we noticed some odd sounds coming from the furnace.  I was still feeling miserable so I was of no help.  I can barely think straight nevermind work on a furnace.  Sheila called the fuel company again to schedule service.  It would be a week before the service technician could fit us in again unle...

I 've been waiting for some new leg brackets to arrive from England so I could fix the tripod for my little Celestron CG-2 telescope mount.  One of the brackets that holds the legs in place broke about two weeks ago.  This mount is no longer available new so finding brackets was a bit of good luck!  (The new bracket can be seen in the photo at right.) I briefly contemplated just purchasing a newer and better manual mount to replace this broken one.  I had recently upgraded this little manual mount with a new saddle as well as installed ball bearings on both axes.  This upgrade project required a bit of time and effort.  I had cutting and grinding to do...  drilling and tapping to do...  and I had to find the exact right ball bearings to fit each axis.  After my upgrade, this mount was really working very well up until this little bracket broke.  Admittedly, having a newer and slightly better manual mount would be advantageous but, since ...

W e've done a lot of walking over the past week which has resulted in my ankle and knee swelling up again so I'm laying a bit low lately.  To recap, back in January, I first sprained my ankle badly enough that I could not put any weight on my left leg at all.  That required about four months to heal well enough to do some things again.  However, the four months of hobbling around with all my weight on my right leg only resulted in a sprained MCL (medial collateral ligament) on the side of my right knee.  The knee injury was mostly better until we did miles and miles of walking this past week.  Now my knee is painful and swollen again so I am now back to ice and elevation for a good chunk of each day.  My left ankle is a bit painful too but nothing like my right knee. Putting my health problems aside, I always try to accomplish something, anything, each day.  Mostly, I've spent my time at the piano lately but I have managed to squeeze in a few other lit...

Actually, the last two weeks of 2017 and the first three weeks (so far) of 2018 have been exceptionally lousy but this is giving me a very uneasy feeling about this new year.  In our case, it seems that things are constantly breaking. If it is not one thing, it is another. Touch this... it breaks. Look at something else... it breaks. Fix something... turn around and there are two other things broken. The list is so long at this point that I can't even remember everything that has broken in the past four weeks! The first two problems I can remember four weeks ago were related to our electrical and our furnace.  Our electronics were all acting a bit odd and quirky. Things were shutting down on their own. Other things weren't working correctly. After a couple of hours of troubleshooting with an electronics tester, I found myself at our circuit-breaker panel with the cover off testing the monster main lines coming into the house (something I'd prefer to avoid) ... the vol...