My pop is now off the ventilator, with a tracheotomy tube, and sitting upright, which is a great sign. He’s writing things we can actually understand and itching to get out of the bed; most of all he wants to EAT.
This is a revisit of the postcard Jen and I bought months ago, and for this one I decided to overlay the old with the new to see the changes 100 years will make. It took a little finagling with depth of field and a bit of Photoshop work to get the postcard light enough to see, but the results are worth the effort.
Today I was at a client site attempting to troubleshoot what could generously be called the worst piece of commercial software I’ve ever looked at. It turned out that I couldn’t do anything to solve the problem, but what made the trip worthwhile was the location: a bombed-out looking collection of stone and brick buildings, decidedly 19th century architecture, surrounded by fields of junk and a mountain of steaming mulch. Many of the structures looked fascinating and practically begged for further exploration, but discretion won out over curiosity and I elected to shoot from a distance (mostly).
My Google-fu reveals the origins of this strange wasteland: it is the remnants of Daniels, MD, a mill town dating back to the 1840s, which was laid waste by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The cupola in the photo above is the bell tower of the St. Albans church, now bricked up to prevent vandalism.
For train nuts, this is a tour of the old B&O Main line, which cuts right through the heart of what used to be Daniels. This site is notable for the excellent aerial photo of the mill in 1956.
This is a shot of some excellent signage in beautiful downtown Columbia, Pennsylvania, an old foundry town on US 30 outside of Lancaster.
Visiting Jen’s father this weekend in the LP City, I played hooky for a few hours and brought the big camera over to the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum to shoot some planes.
The museum is a curious collection of donations, acquisitions and working machinery, and they have a remarkable collection of hardware parked outside spanning fifty years of aviation history. I am always drawn to older designs, so I spent hours skulking around the oldtimers in the group, trying to find good angles and interesting subject matter. Ducking inside for what I thought would be a quick review of the exhibits, I was shanghaied by a friendly, garrulous older guide who showed me every nut, bolt, and rivet of the exhibits inside on an hourlong personal tour.
Back at the house, I pulled the last of the shelving down in the corner, exposing a pencilled note from the original workmen. The room was, as far as I can tell, finished out in 98° heat, on July 12 19(28?)
Then, I pounded all the nails out of the debris on the floor of the exam room and stacked it neatly in the garage for disposal. Tomorrow I’m going to swap filters in my aspirator and start pulling drywall and molding from the walls to see what’s underneath.
It’s been quiet around here lately, so I’m going through the archives to pull out some pictures from years past to share. This is a pretty Ninety-Eight Holiday Jen and I spotted in Oella a few years ago with beautiful chrome styling and a two-tone paint job.
It’s day 4,000 of gray February 2008, so I thought I’d post a picture of some sunshine and blue water to remind myself what “warm” felt like.
The site isn’t quite finished yet, but I’m writing here anyway. MT 3.3 is pretty slick. I’m now only two years behind the technology curve instead of four, which will provide things like better spam filtering, a refined editing space, and better plugins. After this exercise is finished, I’m going to take a long hard look at upgrading to 4.1 now that my puzzle-solving synapses have warmed up.
Other than that, things around Idiot Central are pretty quiet. On Saturday I stopped over to the Beerfather’s house to bottle the result of our efforts: two and a half cases of wheat beer, sitting neatly in the basement fermenting on the shelf where I stored the bin full of Scout parts. He and I are hatching plans to go wrenching on the truck this coming weekend, something that leaves me with a bittersweet taste in my mouth: I’m excited for him. His enthusiasm reminds me of myself ten years ago when I had a lot more money and big plans for my new truck, but it will admittedly be hard not to feel like I failed in my efforts to keep it in shape. So I’ll be bringing a box of tissues along with my socket sets on Sunday, and try to keep the blubbering to a minimum.
I’m also signed up for some photography this weekend—the paying kind, and it will have me dusting off the panoramic rig for the tripod I was testing out last spring. I have to buy some cheap spotlights this week, and I’ll have to spring for a copy of Stitcher to process the photos, but I’m excited to finally start working on this for real, and this time it’s all paid for.
My Mom’s new MacBook showed up last Friday, and I’ve played with it only enough to update the software. It’s a really nice little machine—it feels solid, it’s quick, and she’s going to get a kick out of the built-in camera as well as a fresh battery. I got her old Pismo in the mail yesterday, so I’m going to transfer her data over and set her up with a chat account so I can use screen sharing to troubleshoot any problems with her machine. Meanwhile, I’m helping Jen’s father work through problems with his wireless printer. Troubleshooting Vista over the phone has been like doing this year’s taxes while guiding a non-english speaker through a root canal on a CB radio. He will explain what he sees on his screen, and I will frantically Google whatever he can describe to figure out what to do (I don’t own a copy, and am trying to avoid buying one). Adding to the pain is the fact that his patch cords have all vanished, leaving him with no way to directly connect to his printer. Argh!
Guitar lessons have gone reasonably well; I missed last week’s lesson but got back in the groove this Tuesday. It’s to the point now where I miss playing it if I go too long without it, which I’m taking as a good sign. I also broke down and bought an electric tuner after consistently coming in for lessons out of tune.
Add to all of this the fact that it’s half past February and I’ve only done one illustration this year. I need to clone myself.
On a whim, I went to look at a Scout for sale over in Dundalk this afternoon. While it runs, this particular Scout is worse off than the one I just sold, so no deal. But it did have a great steering wheel and a death’s head shift knob. Bonus!