Canopyflyer

Galaxy Watch 5

Daily.

I use the timer, alarm, weather, hiking (fitness), and…

One more thing… what is it(snaps fingers in thought)?.. OH! Tell time.

Practical Engineering: Civil engineering projects

Apollo11space: Details regarding the Apollo moon missions that are hard to find elsewhere.

In Deep Geek: Great LOTR content. Also covers GOT and The Witcher.

Illinois EnergyProf: Great place to learn about energy.

Engineer Guy: No longer making videos. Very interesting videos regarding the engineering of everyday items done in a straight forward and easy to understand style.

Project Farm: No nonsense reviews of various products. I have to admit, that I skip most of the video and just look at the results. I find his voice a bit difficult to listen to for long periods.

VASAviation: ATC audio of significant events. Usually has videos out the day of an event.

Blancolirio: If you’re a pilot, or interested in aviation this is the channel to follow. Straight forward assessments of aviation events.

Greg’s Airplanes and Automobiles: Gives a lot of detailed information on WWI and WWII planes. Can be a bit dry, but is always interesting.

HI Sutton: All things submarine warfare.

Animagraffs: 3d engineering renderings that explain how things work.

saVRee: Similar channel to Animagraffs.

Mr Carlson’s Lab: All things electronic.

Technology Connections: If dry, witty delivery about technology subjects is your jam, this is your channel.

Rose Anvil: Great information on boots and footwear. He cuts footwear in half and does a deep dive on how they are constructed.

Clint’s Reptiles: The Utah version of Steve Irwin… Almost.

The Operations Room: Animation of WWII and other battles.

The Car Car Nut: Toyota mechanic located near Chicago, IL. Gives a lot of great information on Toyota/Lexus automobiles. I’ve actually had him do work on my previous car (2014 Camry), even though I’m a couple hour drive from his shop.

Farscape:

The first 4 episodes of the first season get progressively better, but it’s when you hit episode 5 “PK Tech” girl that the show hits its stride. Sure there are weak episodes after 5, but overall the show just gets better the deeper you go.

Bill Booth

If it wasn’t for Bill, modern skydiving would not exist. It’s not just the 3 ring release, but several of his innovations that brought jumping out of an airplane out of the dark ages. His “Vector” line of containers is the best in the business. My student jumps were on rip cord equipped containers, but once of student status I exclusively jumped BOC throw out PC’s. Bottom Of Container Pilot Chute. This is how the main parachute is deployed by the jumper.

Does modern skydiving require his ongoing developments? Probably not, but the very foundation of skydiving was laid down by him. I would not have my 4500 jumps if it were not for him.

Can I talk to you my lord and god… Skydiving?

Nothing you do in the air will ever be cheap, but jumping out of planes is a lot cheaper than flying them.

30 years in IT here, but didn’t get my degree until about 13 years ago.

Certs that I have (obsolete or not).

CCNA/CCNP/ Network +

MCSE

CLP (most certainly obsolete. Who runs Domino any longer?)

LEAN Six Sigma Green belt.

ITIL v1 Foundation, Incident, Problem, Change, Config, Service Delivery.

V4 Foundation and Incident

Of all the certs it has been ITIL that has gotten me employed the most and why I’m currently employed as an Incident Management Process Owner for a very large manufacturer.

It’s 100% WFH and it’s as awesome as it sounds.

I’ve done work like this job for a very long time so I can get things done very quickly, because I’ve done it all many times before. That gives me a lot of free time at home.

My company is a real manufacturer that is one of the few and best in the world at what it builds. The product is something that peoples’ lives depend upon. So much so that profit motive is not the #1 consideration in regards to our products. Safety is absolute and profit takes a distant back seat. Contrast that with my last employer that makes household goods destined for a land fill and there were entire teams dedicated to making products cheaper, but be able to charge more for them. Absolutely hated my last employer.

Corporate culture is an interesting mix of old school, stay with the company till you retire and bringing on new ideas and integrating them. Always keeping an actual eye on the important things, such as the aforementioned product safety.

Needless to say, I love my job.

Some cons: The main one is that I’m not really learning anything new, but I’ve been in this business for 30 years. While I do try to learn, a lot of the things that are being pushed these days are the same as I’ve seen before, just with new labels. That actually has been true for my last two employers, so I think it’s a symptom of my age and experience rather than an issue with the companies.

My boss, who is fantastic, is wanting me to step up and take over his position. Which would raise my importance level in the corporate structure quite a bit. The problem with that is I took this position, which was a major downgrade for me, just to avoid being important. Fortunately, this is not an UP or OUT type of company. I just need to be careful to remain relevant.

Check out: First Robotics

There are programs for elementary to high school aged kids with teams all over the country. There are local, regional, state, and national/international competitions.

1. Oh, that’s sweet

2. Very cool, great choice.

3. WTF!!! DUDE!

Black Magic Woman – Santana. Original by Fleetwood Mac.

Touch and Go – Emerson Lake and… POWELL. Cover of an old folk song called: Lovely Joan

Blinded by the LIght – Manfred Mann original by Bruce Springsteen.

Alone – Heart… Can’t remember the original artist off hand.

The gap in my employment is NONE OF YOUR GOD DAMN BUSINESS.

It’s none of your fucking business that my kid required major neuro surgery at the age of 8 WEEKS and I needed to take a year off form work to care for him.

You and all the other idiot corporations decided to fuck around with the economy and didn’t hire anyone for several years because YOU fucked it up.

To be more flexible I decided to work a series of contracts instead of full time employment and fuckwits like you treat contractors like trash.

Do you really want me to go on? Because I fucking can…

BTW: The kid is OK and today (19 years later) is an accomplished figure skater that competes internationally.

Back in 2000 I lived in Loveland, OH which is just north of Cincinnati, OH. There used to be an old fashioned barber shop on Loveland-Madeira road.

I walked into the barber shop and was greeted by the barber and told to take a seat. There were two other men in the shop. One was in the chair and getting his hair cut and the other was reading a newspaper and I was unable to see his face at all. The barber finished with the guy in the chair and looked over at the man reading the newspaper and said:

“Neil you’re up.”

The man closed his newspaper and laid on the chair next to him…

And I found myself looking at the first man that walked on the moon.

I completely blew every circuit breaker in my brain. Somehow though I managed to keep my composure and didn’t turn into a complete idiot. As he got his hair cut we talked about mundane things, never once talking about space flight, although we did discuss aviation. At the time I was a skydiver and he actually had some questions about it. He told me that he had a ride under a parachute… I replied, yeah I’ve seen that video.

And that is how I met and had a conversation with Neil Armstrong.

Irrespective if the meaning has been reversed over the years.

What most people miss about this saying is… IT GOES BOTH WAYS.

If someone mistreats you and uses their blood relationship to you as an excuse, then that is not a member of your family. Family supports and goes through things together. Friends can become family. At this stage of my life, I have cut off my entire blood relations due to their toxic and stupid behavior. My family is the woman I married, my kids, and a few choice friends.

In the movie “Stripes” the scene where Bill Murray’s character stops the cab in the middle of the bridge and throws the keys into the river was filmed on the 2nd Street bridge in Louisville, Kentucky. My family and I lived on the Sunny Side of Louisville, otherwise known as Hell… errrr I mean Indiana.

One of the cars passing by Bill Murray is my Dad in our family car. He was going over to downtown and the production were by the side of the road asking people if they would be willing to drive by for the scene.

The University of Wisconsin Madison Arboretum has several acres planted with a combination of; magnolias, crab apples, and lilacs.

During April to early May that field smells AMAAAAZING.

After many years, I finally found decent LED lights to replace the incandescent bulbs on my two McIntosh amps (MC7108, MC7100).

Not a huge project, but it was something that I had been wanting to do for many years.

Here is a photo of my MC7108 with the new lights installed.

I have a wicked sense of humor and a penchant for puns and word play. I also have a very large vocabulary from being a voracious reader from an early age which feeds my puns.

I can trace the point in time when my wife and I fell in love with each other was when we spent an entire car trip doing puns and word play. Not just any puns but as the trip went on they got more and more esoteric. We discovered that we could keep up with each other and we’ve been together ever since.

The only time you truly fail is when you give up prematurely.

Every Chess Grandmaster has lost more games than the average person has played.

My oldest has moderate to severe dyslexia. The poor kid finished 1st grade at just a Kindergarten reading level. He was going to fall behind very quickly as he progressed through school. Fortunately in our hometown there is a very good program for Dyslexics, and other learning disabilities. The tutoring program used the Orton-Gillingham method.

Fast forward 13 years and he was just accepted to Northwestern for the next fall quarter. Northwestern uses a quarter system rather than semester. He read the first 3 books of the Stormlight Archive (~630,000 words each book, or longer than Lord of the Rings in its entirety) in the span of about a month. He has turned into a voracious reader and had not had to make use of any of the accommodations afforded to him as being a diagnosed dyslexic.

Stargate

Lost in Space: Season 3 You’ll never guess who composed this one. Go ahead and look it up, I want you to experience the sheer awe I did when I found out.