Monthly Archives: July 2017

Monday Meanderings

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I have sad news, Apple is not making any more Ipod Nanos. I have three of them including two of the type above with 32 gig of memory. It holds thousands of songs and I use them every single day. I have a brand new iPhone with 128 gigs and I got a bunch of music on it. In fact I have every song I own on it but I love the micro size of the nano and its simplified interface compared to the IPhone. The only drawback is that it is so small. That is why I have two of the above models. I lost and then found the first one.

I have also gone through three Ipod Touches. My first one didn’t have a camera and when I found out about Instagram I had to get a Touch with a camera. I wore that one out. Yep, the buttons wouldn’t work on it at all. I am now on my third. I think they are wonderful devices. All the benefits an none of the costs of an IPhone. Of course I have an Iphone now also. And an Ipad. I love Apple products. They should love me. Apple has made a lot of money off me when I think about it.

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I love the sign above. 20% off the Ten Commandments. What a deal. Take off your least favorite two commandments and don’t worry about them.  What a deal!!

Wagon Wheel Lake - Turkey Mountain

It has been a long hot summer and I am totally acclimated now. I ran seven miles on Turkey Mountain, after work, last week and it didn’t bother me despite the mid 90 degree heat. I started running the mountain with a hydration pack last year and it makes all the difference in the world. It is a backpack with a 1.5 liter water bladder with it so I can stay hydrated while I run. I recommend it highly.

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One reason I need to run. I love the Chili and toasted, buttered, french bread that I can get at downtown’s Take2 Restaurant. I am guestimating about 1400 calories. My seven miles were probably 1050 calories. So I’m losing the war!!! But I’m enjoying the battle. You know what I think. You cannot enjoy eating and craft beer and lose weight. You know what a good diet would be? Take a bite or a swig and if it tastes good spit it out. You will be skinny as a rail and miserable in no time.

How about you? What have you been up to lately?

Skywatch Friday All About Town

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This is downtown Tulsa. Thursday Heather came down and we had lunch and then we had ice cream at a fancy new shopping center downtown built out of storage containers. It is called the BoxYard. It is all so fancy and new. They let me in though so it can’t be that fancy.

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This is the view out of our office window Thursday morning. We had a fraction of an inch of moisture an it was welcome. We haven’t had too much rain lately.

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I went running on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness on Wednesday night. I love it on Turkey Mountain.

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This is another view out the office window on a sunny day. This effect is generated by a “Tiny Planet” App on my cell phone. There are lots of them. I love a good cheap app.

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This is our neighborhood last week.Sorry about the grainy photo but I loved the color.

This week I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Monday Meandering in the Heat

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Son likes to shop for used video games at a place named Vintage Stock. They have several stores in the Tulsa area. They sell not only video games but new and used DVD movies and CD’s. I don’t mind the place, they know Logan and treat him well and I like to head over to Sun and Ski and look at all the outdoor gear and bicycles that I can’t afford. They treat me well also. Anyways, it is in the biggest strip mall in the universe and I like to walk the long ways around instead of shortcutting across a parking lot. Mainly because I don’t like getting run over by wild drives in a parking lot that would do a football stadium proud. (Hold on, there is a point to all this) Anyway in amongst the many empty storefronts (courtesy of online retailers such as Amazon) there are some real businesses including a Japanese restaurant named Shoguns that has decorated their storefront.

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Another view of Shogun’s storefront. I like it when a business does more than absolutely necessary.

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Son went to a friend’s birthday party so Heather and I had a little us time at a local restaurant. Us time is important.

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I’m still sampling beers that I bought in Alabama from our vacation a couple months ago in Alabama.

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Our family likes to go to lots of movies. Theaters now have lifesize displays that encourage one to take pictures of family an friends to post on Instagram and Facebook. Free advertising except the displays are huge and complicated and I’m sure they are expensive. The movie pictured above isn’t going to be out until late this year. The green part of me wonders what happens to the cardboard display. Do they recycle it or do they put it in the dumpster out back. I love the new theaters in town that have the reclining seats. No better way to beat the heat than going to the movies in my book.

Shadow Shot Sunday – Shadows in the Heat

It has been hot here in Tulsa lately. Hot and steamy, just like a good movie (sorry couldn’t resisist). So I’ve been seeking out the shadows.

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Friday was my day off so I went running in the early morning. I captured a leafy shadow selfie.

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I like to walk a little bit downtown at lunch. I found myself this short, twisty turny path, with a bench. For some reason I never see any homeless people sitting in it. Everybody talks about how the economy is improving but it seems to me that the homeless population is exploding. Lots of businesses have taken out benches because so many homeless people sit on them all day. Of course with less benches, the people are now just squatting down on sidewalks. They are not threatening people and I feel for them.

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I love these purple flowers in the shade downtown.

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This is a repaired section of fence in our back yard. The two posts shown got rotted out. You can see their previous remains in the lower right hand corner. Years ago I used to help put posts in for my Dad on our acreage in Eagar, Arizona and then several years later, as summer help, in the oilfields of Texas’ Permian Basin I put in lots of posts for my employer. Fast forward forty years later when my neighbor and I were discussing this and I was thinking I’m going to have to do this. He said, “You know Alan, I am not much into manual labor any more.” Music to my ears. I found a contractor to do it and you know something it three of them two hours to dig the two posts out. It cost a pretty but it was hard work. I contributed to the effort you know. Yes I did, I took photos and passed out bottles of ice cold water. Nearly wore me out.

This is from my new personal weather station in my back yard. You can see, temperatures close to 100 every day an hardly any wind.

How about you? How are you beating the heat? Those of you in the southern hemisphere tell me how you are staying warm.

I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday

The Hero with Sam Elliott

We went to see The Hero on a flaming hot Saturday afternoon. The movie stars Sam Elliott, of the craggy face, big mustache, and wonderful voice, playing an actor, Lee Hayden, who had one great film, The Hero, forty years ago and has been living on that fame ever since. He now spends his time doing voice overs for commercials, drinking bourbon, and smoking pot. He has an ex-wife, played by Elliott’s real life wife, Katherine Ross, and an estranged daughter, other than that he keeps to himself until he finds out that he has a very lethal form of cancer, and he immediately doubles down on the pot smoking and whiskey drinking. On an outing to a former actor buddy who is also his pot dealer he runs into Charlotte, played by a smoking hot Laura Prepon, who is also there picking up some weed. So we start this May December romance thing that just appears out of nowhere.

From there the movie plods along and we have lots of long walks on the beach and more drinking and pot smoking along with pills and mushrooms. We have indecipherable dream sequences and a sound track that features lots of iPhone sound effects. Things kind of brighten up a little bit as Hayden starts telling people about his illness. Overall though the movie doesn’t seem to have much of a message and is pretty much a downer. I’m kind of fifty-fifty on it. If you like Sam Elliott, you will love this movie. Otherwise, its a movie that seems confused about itself.

Leave the kiddos at home, lots of casual drug use, a little side boob view of Prepon and some suggestive scenes.

Adios Android – Getting Rid of my HTC Desire Eye

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I got rid of my work cell phone last week. It was an HTC Desire Eye that I had for two years. I have had Android phones for years and I liked them because I could add memory very cheaply and I could replace the batteries very inexpensively also. I loved the phone for about a year and a half. It made excellent photos and synched very smoothly with our email servers. About six months ago the performance suddenly died. There was about a three to five second delay between I pressed a button and then get the response. Emails were impossible, text messages were very painful and the camera hopeless. I did everything. Got rid of all the apps, tried soft resets, hard resets, everything. ATT and HTC were both useless. It was awful. So earlier this month I became eligible for another phone. Yippee!!!!

I had resisted getting an iPhone mainly because I have the this deadly combination of being picky and cheap (I prefer the term “thrifty”). You see the company has a list of phones you could get for free and if you wanted something else you get to pay for it. The free iPhones had the minimum amount of memory and you know I like my apps and the memory wasn’t big enough for them let alone all the photographs I like to take. I had an iPod Touch with 32 gb that i used for apps including my favorite editing apps, Snapseed and I-Colorama. The thing is that the touch camera wasn’t that great. But I put all my photos on Flickr and I would download the pics to the Touch, edit them and post on Instagram or send them back to Flickr. So everywere I went I had my HTC cell phone, my ipod, and my Nikon point and shoot.

So the two year mark came up this month and I got the info on what the free phones are and much to my delight the IPhone SE with 128 gb of memory is included so that is what I got. And I love it. So now I am just carrying my new Iphone (in its tough otterbox case) everywhere I go including running an elsewhere. It takes great photos and I can edit them right there an post them. So I don’t have to carry three items any longer most of the time. I’m so happy.

A lot of tech folks look down there nose at the SE because it is kind of a step back from the newer iPhones and is smaller. True, but it didn’t cost me anything either.

So anyway, Adios Android. Hasta la Pasta!! and good riddance.

The Ape-Ocalpyse Now – War for the Planet of the Apes

The family went to see “War for the Planet of the Apes” and it actually turned out to be a decent flick. I was kind of dreading it because as a child in the 60’s I saw the original movies and they were pretty bad. This movie, a reboot as they say, has great costuming, and a pretty good story line. Basically the apes are the good guys and the humans are pretty much the bad guys. Woody Harrelson does a great job playing the psycho colonel.

The movie has superficial references to the film Apocalypse Now and Joseph Conrad’s novel  “Heart of Darkness.”

The film has some great battle scenes, especially at first, and the costuming for the monkey characters is truly phenomenal. Everybody keeps their clothes on but I think some of the battle scenes and other cruel scenes might be too much for some kids (and almost for this old guy.)

I loved this movie.

Skywatch Friday – Baseball Sky

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One of my favorite things to do is watch baseball games. I don’t give a flip about them on television but I love watching live baseball, everything from little kids playing tball on up to the major leagues. I love it all. Here in Tulsa we have a AA Professional Baseball Team, The Drillers, in honor of Tulsa’s legacy as “Oil Capital of the World.” AA is two levels below the major leagues but the players and the games are still excellent. A lot of the guys we see playing will be in the major leagues in a few years. The Drillers play in a beautiful downtown ballpark, ONEOK Field and the way it is situated, one can see some great skies.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Our World – The USS Batfish, Oklahoma’s WWII Submarine

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Logan and I ventured down to the town of Muskogee, Oklahoma to look at the USS Batfish. A World War II United States Navy Submarine that is on display there. The Batfish has a distinguished war record highlighted by sinking three Japanese submarines in a 76 hour period. You can read about the history of the Batfish and its war record here.

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The thing about submarines is how cramped they are even though they look big on the outside. They are a war machine after all designed to sink other ships and so everything is secondary to that. Above Logan is standing next to the diesel engines that powered the vessel. I know a little bit about those engines. They are Fairbanks Morse engines and they pack a lot of power in a small space. They have two crankshafts and each power cylinder has two pistons. The crankshafts are linked together.

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Above is an illustration of how it works. I know about them because when pollution regulations really started hitting the energy industry in the 1970’s, somebody figured out that you buy these engines  and derated the horsepower , then the the NOx emissions were very low. So a lot of old submarine engines powered natural gas compressors until manufacturers developed the technology to make new engines very low emitters of NOx. The thing I always wondered about was that the Fairbanks Morse engines were notorious for being VERY LOUD. I don’t know how the submariners could stand it.  (Sorry for the digression)

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I don’t think my 6’3″ son should sign up for the submarine service.

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The vessel is packed with dials, gauges, valves, and all sorts of gadgets. The sub is open and there are very few “don’t touch” signs.

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The sleeping areas are very small. These are triple bunks with very little room. They had cots over the torpedoes. They only had enough beds for half the crew. The crew had to share beds. Yuck.

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All the areas had double duty, dining table, game table, conference table.

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Not too many toilets either and they were not that easy to operate.

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The USS Batfish is part of the Muskogee War Memorial Park and they have a nice little museum and other information. Before you visit check out their facebook page to make sure they are open. There is a small admission charge. The place is run by volunteers who really have a passion for the submarine.

How did a submarine come to be placed in Oklahoma The Wikipedia entry for the submarine has the backstory. The submarine was placed on six barges and towed from the Mississippi River to Muskogee on the McLellen Kerr Navigation System, a 445 mile long water way with multiple locks and dams that has made Tulsa’s Port of Catoosa the most inland seaport in the country.

We had a good time and spent a couple of hours and I “found” a virtual geocache placed in the submarine.

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday

Skywatch Friday – Gulf of Mexico Seascape

Orange Beach Sky

A shot from our trip to Orange Beach, Alabama earlier this summer for vacation. I love hanging out at the beach. What you see changes every second.

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A full moon from earlier this week. I’m told it was the Thunder Moon or the Buck Moon. I captured not too long after moonrise so it had some color to it.

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From our trip to Bentonville, Arkansas recently. They have a charming town square. I noticed this confederate monument in the middle of the park. As far as I know there is nobody clamoring to have it removed. It is interesting to me that Oklahoma and Arkansas are right next to each other and you won’t see sights like this in Oklahoma. Arkansas was a state long before Oklahoma  is the reason I am guessing. Just as an aside, Stand Waite was a Cherokee from what was then “Indian Territory” who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Confederate Army and was quite successful fighting Union troops and was responsible for keeping them out of Oklahoma and east Texas during the Civil War. He was the last confederate general to surrender which he did in Doaksville, in what is now Oklahoma on June 29, 1865. I stumbled across the ghost town of Doaksville years ago and wrote this blog post about it.

Well, I got off on a tangent. Sorry about that.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday