Scattered Thoughts . . .

I 've written a few times about a long-discontinued classic Fuji compact camera that I finally found a few months ago after a years-long search but I thought I'd write about it again.  This little camera is a really outstanding compact camera but I'm always looking for ways to improve whatever gear I use.  In this case, getting a slightly wider view would be nice for those occasional times when you need a slightly wider view.   I've had a few different wide angle converter lenses on hand for many years...  perhaps decades, actually!  I dug them out to give each of them a try.  I think the smallest one I own has worked best.  Below, you can see this converter lens sitting next to the Fuji X30 camera. In this photo below, the wide angle converter lens is mounted on the front of the Fuji X30...   Below, you can see the difference between the views when using the camera without the converter lens (inside the red box) and when using the camera with the converter lens (the w

I am about due for another visit with my primary care doctor.  I saw her last month for my ongoing breathing problems that started with an ambulance ride to the hospital back in January.  My breathing was still terrible in August so she started me on a new drug and I'll be checking in with her again next week to follow-up on the effectiveness of this new drug.  When I saw her about three weeks ago, I was telling her that the worst of my horrendous gastro-intestinal problems seemed to have been traded for the breathing problems.  I was still occasionally experiencing the debilitating gastro problems about once or twice a week but the severity had lessened and the frequency had significantly lessened.  However, my breathing had become unmanageable and, if you can't breathe, you can't do anything.  I haven't been able to do much this calendar year as a result.  Far too often, I feel like a fish out of water gasping for air. On the rare day when I feel halfway decent, I at

I n mid-August, we went to another one of Kenzie's figure skating lessons and practice sessions.  I really enjoy going to these sessions because, when the rink is empty such as it is during these sessions, I have access to the ice from one of the team benches rather than from behind hockey-puck-marred glass in the stands.  When I'm on one of the team benches, I have no marred glass in my way...  no safety nets in my way...  I can even open the door in the boards to get down low to the ice rather than shooting down on Kenzie.  Shooting photos at ice events is far more difficult because of all of these aforementioned obstacles when needing to sit in the stands.   I always shoot a lot of photos during these practice sessions so, as usual, I came home from this practice session with far more photos than I need.  I sometimes shoot video during these sessions and I did on this day too but, for some reason (really multiple reasons), I'm never really happy with the video files.  

B ack about a month ago, I wrote about our two year old grandson getting a new bicycle from Gee and Papa for his birthday.  Liza and Ace spent the morning with us before we all headed to a local park.  After eating some breakfast, we went for a walk while Ace rode along on his new bike.  I shot a lot of photos during this relatively short outing and I shared about two dozen photos here in another blog entry.   I decided to revisit all of those original photos that I captured that day to see if it would be worthwhile trying to put the photos together as individual frames of a video.  I actually got this idea for a video while looking at images of one of Kenzie's figure skating sessions.  As I was scrolling through these images, I noticed that when I scrolled through the photos quickly, it was just like watching an old home movie.  "Hmmmm....  I wonder if I can put these photo together as a video?" I opened up my video editing software to see if I could figure out how to li

B ack in January, my primary care doctor referred me to the University of Vermont for some skin cancer on the side of my head.  At the time, I had all sorts of other significant medical problems including, but not limited to, an upcoming bone marrow biopsy so the skin cancer was pretty much forgotten or, at least, put on the back burner.  I had much more immediate problems including ongoing anaphylaxis and significant breathing problems so the skin cancer referral seemed insignificant at the time.   In the past month or two, we noticed that this growth of skin cancer has grown significantly so it was immediately put on the front burner again. Last week during my last medical appointment, when my primary care doctor found that I had not yet seen a doctor for the skin cancer she immediately looked to see what happened with her referral way back in January.  She noticed that the referral was indeed put into the online portal but it just sat there.  The specialist's office at UVM never

S heila and I spent a good part of this past holiday weekend cleaning up the outside of the house.  The rain finally stopped for Labor Day weekend after an entire summer of daily rain and dark overcast skies.  We spent almost the entire summer indoors sheltered from the terrible weather. This past weekend, we washed all the windows, inside and out.  We cleaned screens.  I even cleaned mold, algae and mildew off one side of our house including the oil tank and gas tank.  The amount of moisture we've had this summer seemed to cover everything in filthy growth, some black, some green, some very crusty.  I also did some landscaping and Sheila did some gardening attending to our remaining flowers.  The gardens are still looking pretty good for this time of year even though they got very little sun through the summer! While I was cleaning windows on the back side of the house, I noticed that our neighbor's lawn is completely covered in leaves already!  Even though the temperature and

A fter using the new Alexa-enabled dimmer light switch for the train room for a few days, I still wasn't completely happy with the lingering potential for future train car disasters on these shelves.  As I mentioned in previous blog entries, when people would reach into the shelves to access the light switch that was mounted flush on the wall inside these shelves, they would sometimes snag or bump a locomotive and the locomotive would come crashing down to the hardwood floor resulting in significant damage to the locomotive(s).   I added an extra shelf immediately below the switch to help mitigate where the arm could swing as well as adding a voice controlled Alexa-enabled dimmer switch but I wasn't convinced this was enough.  After using this new configuration for a few days, I decided I should extend the switch box outward a bit to play it safe.  This would move the dimmer switch closer to the front of these display shelves so people wouldn't have to reach into the shelve

A fter five or six half days of cutting, sanding and painting shelves, on Saturday morning, I got started right away on installing these new shelves.   I  started installing at the top shelf and worked my way down the wall installing one shelf at a time.  I had to refine the shape of a couple of the shelves with the belt sander so they fit the wonky wall perfectly but, other than that, this job went relatively quickly.  The only casualty is a long drill bit that ended up bent at sharp angles in two places.  (Hmmm...  I'm not sure I ordered a new set of long drill bits yet...)   Now, when you enter this room, there are display shelves on both sides of the door.  These new shelves can be hidden safely behind the open door to the room.  I might even add a latch to keep that door secured to the shelves when I don't want curious little fingers and hands near my fragile trains.  The new shelves can be seen in the photo below.   After completing these shelves, I spent an entire aftern

S ometime back about seven or eight years ago, I installed a new hardwood floor in one of our bedrooms to be used "temporarily" as a multi-purpose room until we get further along in our renovations.  This room is slated to be the "train room" when we eventually finish playing musical chairs with bedrooms and renovations.  It actually is more like playing that numbered tiles game where you slide the numbered tiles to get them in numerical order.  In order to renovate one room, we need to move a few tiles out of place to make room for the appropriate tile.  Our numbers are still quite scrambled here for a variety of reasons though so this room is still a multi-purpose room.   So about seven years ago, I built a walk-in closet, repaired the walls and ceiling, painted the room, installed a hardwood floor and baseboard trim.  After I installed the hardwood floor over the subfloor, I built some display shelves right next to the door to the room.  My plan was to neatly sto

I had a medical appointment today to discuss my medications as well as some of my more bothersome current health problems especially my ongoing breathing issues.  The appointment went well, I suppose, and we added a new medication in an attempt to get my breathing issues under control.  I have another follow-up appointment in a month to see if there has been any improvement in my breathing. So, the main thing today was about my continued breathing issues.  Since my last bout of COVID, my breathing has been terrible.  I seem to be slowly...  very slowly...  improving but this has been a significant and debilitating problem for the past eight months. Consequently, I have been using my rescue inhaler two to three times every day.  My doctor would like to get this use down to no more than twice each week so I'll be starting on a corticosteroid inhaler, taken twice a day, as soon as my pharmacy can fill the prescription.   The general consensus is that my last bout of COVID has affected