Note: There are no pictures this week.

TV is light entertainment. Great TV provides light entertainment very well. The really great TV shows never last very long. An example was “The Flash”. It was one of the best shows ever. Visually, it had an intriguing juxtaposition of the latest in technology superimposed over an Art Deco background. It was a perfect genre piece (male hero, not always sure of himself; female scientist, good looking and brainy; really bad villains; a few hero side-kicks and hangers-on). The show was pure shtick, and they played it straight. There was a nice sense of self-depreciation and humor (like when the Flash did his mother’s dishes really fast so he could leave his mother’s house in good graces and go save the world). As good as it was, it didn’t last long.

Neither did Vegas. This show was really great TV. It had an authentic feel of post-war 50’s Vegas. It had bad bad guys and good good guys. Visually, they got every detail right — from the cars, to the desk lamps, to the fire extinguishers, and everything in between. When they made allusions to historical events, they got them right. Sadly, it looks like Vegas is cancelled. Bummer.

Fortunately, there are a couple of decent TV shows still on:

• Blue Bloods: Totally predictable schmaltz, done right.
• Good Wife: Whatever happens, you won’t see it coming and it will be slightly outrageous.
• The Mentalist: a nice off-beat take on cop shows. We haven’t seen any of these episoeds this year. 10 PM is too late for us.

Danita and I had a nice week eating out. We ate every breakfast out until Wednesday, when Danita had to go back to work. We ate every dinner out, including a SOCA party coming up tonight. Yesterday being our anniversary, we went a little upscale to the Candle Light Inn. We did their early dinner special. I had potato-leak soup, truffled meatloaf, and chocolate-peanut butter mouse for desert. It doesn’t get much better than that. The nicest thing about going to restaurants (besides Danita not having to cook and me not having to do dishes) is  that we can disagree on what we like to eat, and both eat something we like a lot.

I’ve gotten a couple of rides in, but not many. It’s been cool and rainy. They are forecasting snow for this evening. I’ve been looking at the possibility of riding the Blue Ridge Highway from Asheville, NC to home. That’s about 500 miles of very tough mountain riding. It turns out the riding is the easy part. Getting myself to Asheville, and finding places to stay that don’t cost $300/night with a 2-night minimum are not as easy. Also, I would have to reserve all the rooms ahead of time. Whatever schedule I decide on, it would be rain or shine riding. I’m not sold on this yet, but I haven’t given up either.

I spent most of today on computer stuff for CASA. They have laptops with detailed information about juveniles. Maryland has really tough juvenile privacy laws. Their laptop data needs to be encrypted. But they don’t have any significant IT support. I wanted to use Microsoft’s Encrypted File System, with everybody sharing one key. This way everybody in CASA could automatically share the encrypted files, but if they lost a laptop, the bad guys wouldn’t be able to get to the sensitive information. I spent hours searching and finding that this wasn’t possible. Microsoft designed the system so everybody has their own individual key, and that’s that. I finally got disgusted reading and just make it work, exactly like I wanted it to. That felt satisfying.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Note: there are no pictures this week.

Last week and this week are all about vacations. Last week we firmed up our plans for Alaska. We’ll be flying to Anchorage Sunday, September 1. We’ll get into Anchorage late and stay overnight. Monday we’ll drive to the Independence Gold Mine, then continue on to Talkeetna, near Denali State Park (the southern part of the park). We’ll spend the better part of a week staying at the Talkeetna Roadhouse Hostel (includes the FREE Talkeetna cultural package!) We’ll spend time soaking up the Talkeetna atmosphere, hiking, and hanging out around Denali Park. We even have a day set aside for the obligatory bus ride in Denali National Park. Saturday, we’ll drive back to Anchorage. We’ll spend a couple of days in Anchorage, staying at the Camai B & B. Then we’ll grab an overnight flight home Sunday evening, Sept 8. All the reservations are completed. We’ve started the outfitting stage by going to REI and getting Danita a good pair of boots. (I already have a good pair of boots.)

We’re doing Denali “on the cheap” by staying 3 hours south of the national park, using modest accommodations  and skipping the expensive “adventures” (such as dog sled ride and airplane fly-over in the fog). Of course, “cheap” is relative. Alaska is expensive. We understand it will be an experience we will never forget. Roughly translated, that means we’ll probably spend a week slogging around in rain and mud, then come back and brag about the wildlife and scenery. “Modest” accommodations is also relative. Like most hostels, the Talkeetna Roadhouse has gone upscale. We will be taking advantage of one of their private rooms, complete with a queen size bed and a sink!

This week is spring break for UMBC. Danita is off Monday – Wednesday. We decided to tale a mini-vacation this week, right here in beautiful suburban Columbia. Between SOCA parties, restaurant coupons,  and our upcoming anniversary, we have an entire week of dinner out planned — except Thursday. I’m confident we’ll find a way to eat dinner out Thursday also. If you have any good coupons for the Baltimore area, please rush them to us! We even have a few breakfast restaurant meals planned.

We started the week out with a bang-up breakfast at Mimi’s. We got a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for our anniversary, plus a second coupon good for two of their huge muffins, absolutely free. That alone covers breakfast for today and tomorrow. Sunday is the toughest day for breakfast coupons. It’s pretty easy to find breakfast coupons for week days. We already have a buy-one-get-one-free at Bob Evans. This afternoon, we are looking forward to hearing Saint-Saëns’ Thundering “Organ Symphony”. The concert is virtually sold out, as it should be. This is an astounding piece of music, and it’s one of those pieces for which a radio broadcast or CD simply can’t come close to duplicating the experience of a live performance. The Baltimore Symphony Hall was built to accommodate a first-class pipe organ. Unfortunately, they never got the funds for said organ. But the reviews indicate that the electronic organ they are bringing in for this concert is an incredible piece of engineering. They might not launch a tsunami, but I expect we’ll be feeling the floor vibrate.

Bike rides are proceeding at a stuttering pace. The weather is better this time of year, but it’s not good enough to be able to take long rides. I got a moderate ride in last week. For me, that’s a 20-mile ride to lunch, then a 20-mile ride home. The ride was quite unusual. Normally, when I ride, I don’t see any emergency vehicles. On this ride, I saw 8. the first 5 were all at different times, were all going to different locations, and all had their emergency sirens on. The next 2 had emergency flashers on. The last one was just tooling down the road. I got a second unusual ride in Friday. I went to my bike shop on a rainy Monday morning to get some things I needed for the upcoming season. They didn’t have the gloves I wanted in stock. They ordered them for me, with the delivery expected for Friday. Come Friday it was down right nice out — 55 degrees and sunny. Of course it wasn’t possible for me to drive to the bike store in weather like that. But I had never ridden my bike to the bike store. I knew I would have to cross 3 Interstates, a major highway, Amtrack tracks, and the Baltimore Light Rail. This would make finding a good bike route a formidable exercise. So I went to Google maps, clicked the “Bike” button, and asked for a route. The route looked pretty good without changes, so I plugged it into my bike GPS and took off. The ride turned out to be all back streets and paved trails. I crossed the Amtrack tracks near BWI airport using one of the paved trails. The trail took me to a building. I entered the building and walked my bike across the tracks on a pedestrian / passenger bridge, then took an elevator down on the other side of the tracks. My hat’s off to Google Maps!

Life is more fun when it includes new toys. We have a cordless phone with three handsets. (Yes, we still have old fashioned telephone jacks in our house. In my defense, they are part of our FIOS service, so they aren’t totally old-fashioned.) The main unit plugs into a phone jack in the living room. This drives all three cordless handsets — one in the living room, one upstairs, and one downstairs.We got these phones way back when we lived in Kingsville. They’ve served us well,  but last week they started dying. The upstairs handset started going wonky, overcharging the battery. Then the display stopped working. We could dial a number, but it was impossible to see the number we punched as we entered it. I went on-line and found that the phone is so old they don’t sell handsets for it any more. It was definitely time for a new toy! The new phones were quite easy to set up, they work great, and they have a cool new feature. In the past, if I wanted to talk with Danita, and I was upstairs and Danita was in the basement, I could use my handset to page Danita in the basement. We almost never used the feature, because the handsets were numbered, and we had to know which number handset we wanted to page. With the new phones, we can give the handsets names. I don’t know how this started, but we started calling the basement the “Garden Level”. (The house is too up-scale to have something so common as a basement. Besides, the basement is finished as nicely as the rest of the house, and is a walk-out with a huge door and window. So it doesn’t at all feel like a basement.) Shortly after that, the upstairs became the “Sky View Level”. I named the handsets “Garden”, “Main Level”, and “Sky View”; making the paging feature useful.

Well, that’s a lot of news for one week. I have to hurry up and finish this so I can get back to mini-vacationing. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Alaska Itinerary (click for larger view)

You may remember Danita and I were planning the ultimate Alaska vacation. We had quite a few difficulties coming up with our itinerary, but we finally did it. We would take the Alaska Ferries from port to port, seeing everything we wanted to see — all the interesting port towns plus Denali Park. The trip would be longer than we wanted (3 weeks instead of 2), but we would have the opportunity to see it all. The only problem is, it’s an impossible trip. We would end up toting suitcases through towns, looking for a way to keep all our stuff together while we await check-in time, or sometimes waiting for our transport to the next city. We took a close look, and we found the problem was the Alaska Ferry system. Not only would we be in a different hotel almost every night, but the ferries mostly traveled during the day. We would spend most of our time looking at water. The coup de grace was the end of the trip — 4 days on a decidedly non-luxuriant ship with almost nothing to do. We gave up.

Alaska Super Cruise

Casting about for alternatives, I accidentally found a dream cruise. It visits just about every port town we are interested in visiting. It was practically perfect. The cruise ship travels at night, giving us the entire day in town. We get to leave our suitcases on board. The only thing we take into town is our credit cards. The only problem was there is no opportunity to visit Denali. We decided to go with the cruise, with the idea that we can always come back to see Denali. That’s when Danita noticed that these cruises are available in 2014. That leaves us with no plan for vacation in 2013.

We are trying to decide what to do. We could do Denali “on the cheap” this year — a 1-week quickie to visit the interior of Alaska. Or we could do something else — for example, go to London. There are several things we won’t do. We won’t go to Mexico. (It’s too dangerous for Gringos these days.) We won’t go to Italy or Greece. (The economic downturn has hit these countries hard, casting a pall on tourism.) Whatever we do, we have to decide pretty soon.

Other than that, my biggest problem is our deck. The squirrels finally ate all our bird food. I decided it’s close enough to spring time. They are responsible for feeding themselves. As soon as I clean the bird droppings, that should be taken care of that for the year. The other issue with the deck is caused by my own error. We were supposed to get snow last week — 4 to 12 inches of it. As it happened, the temperature was a couple of degrees warmer than expected. That was enough to give us an inch of slush, followed by rain. I decided to push the slush off the deck. It was like pushing the world’s largest slushie off the deck. The error was I used a shovel to do it. That was a bad idea because it scraped the stain. I wasn’t planning to repaint the deck until next year.

Other than the deck, I’m having a better time these days. The clubhouse projects are completed. All my work at Habitat is suspended waiting for some kind of a decision meeting. I made some significant progress at CASA. The weather turned beautiful the last few days and I’ve been on the road. It feels good.

Poor Danita isn’t having quite as good a time of it all. UMBC is interviewing for a new VP of Research. This person will be her new boss, so she has a significant input to the selection. Unfortunately, the interviews are in the late afternoon, precluding her attending exercise classes. She’s experiencing a lot of pressure at work. She’s understandably stressed about helping her Dad sort through all of Leona’s stuff. And, of course, we’re trying to figure out what to do about our vacation.

I’m confident we’ll get through it all. I hope this finds you doing well.

Gamera and Hall

This week the Gamera Human Powered Helicopter team flew. They got a beautiful room in the Baltimore Civic Center Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I was there most of the day Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. With a working control system and a major improvement to the propeller mounting, they had high hopes of earning the Sikorsky prize, or at least of setting a new world record.

Propeller Gimbal

One of their challenges has been oscillation in the propellers. One side of the propeller would go up, and the other side down. Then the one side would go down and the other up. Last Monday, somebody on the team had the idea of mounting the propeller on a hinge or gimbal. With the gimbal, if the two blades aren’t perfectly balanced, the propeller simply spins as a slight angle. In just one week, they came up with a practical way to gimbal the propeller, fabricated one hinge and tested with one wing, and then fabricated three more hinges and re-built all four propeller mounts. These guys work hard!

Skinny Pilot

The team was quite pleased with the new gimbals. Not only did they eliminate the propeller oscillation, but it let them save weight. Because the side-forces were reduced, they could use thinner aluminum in the propeller mount. Weight is the thing they are always fighting. The control system added weight. The bicycle generator added weight. Support strings for the arm trusses added weight. They require their pilots to be strong and skinny. This picture of one of the pilots shows how skinny the pilots are. This pilot weighs 118 pounds with his cycling shoes on. The flights Tuesday and Wednesday were going OK but not great. Wednesday evening, the team decided to remove all non-essential weight. They ended up taking a little too much off. One of the arm trusses broke. They literally worked all night repairing it. They got about two hours of sleep early Thursday morning, sleeping on the floor of the flight room.

The Gamera air frame held up better than ever, thanks in large part to the propeller gimbals. They only had one minor incident Wednesday when a pulley broke loose, and another one Thursday when the chain for the hand crank slipped off. The flight controls worked very well. I have a video of a spectacular controlled flight with the helicopter moving left, right, forward, and backward. It might be the first ever controlled flight of a human powered helicopter. Unfortunately, there were no new world records. They already had the record for sustained flight (65 seconds) and altitude (a little over 9 feet). This time their longest flight was about 58 seconds. Their maximum altitude was 5 or 6 feet. You can see videos of Gamera flying at http://www.agrc.umd.edu/gamera/ .

My other projects progressed this week. I finished the clubhouse network. Of course, there’s always something to clean up, but the project is done. The other clubhouse project is new credentials for the front gate. We’ve made good progress on that. Donna stuffed 350 envelopes and recorded the new numbers. I merged this information into the resident database, changed all the reports and screens for the new credentials, and delivered the new residential database. Monday we’ll see if we can merge the list into the database used by the front gate system.

I actually issued a laptop to one person at CASA. The delay isn’t me this time. These people want to do things soon, but not today. I work there Thursday and Friday mornings. Most employees are there Thursday, so I can interact with the staff. Only a few employees are there Friday, so I can work on computers without bothering anybody. This Friday was an amazingly interesting day. I arrived first. One of the volunteer supervisors arrived about half an hour later. Because of our neighborhood, the front door is always locked. Because of our budget, the door bell doesn’t work. The supervisor sits in the back of the office and can’t hear people knocking on the door. She asked me to let Rebecca, a prospective volunteer, in when she arrived, which I did. It wasn’t long before Sue, another volunteer, arrived to go to court with the supervisor. The supervisor hadn’t told me about Sue because she did not expect Sue to arrive. We finally decided Sue could wait in the office. Then Cathy, a third volunteer, arrived and asked for the “Johnson” envelope which should be sitting on the desk. There was plenty of junk on the desk, but no Johnson envelope. I called the executive director on her cell phone, and she said “Oh, F***”. We finally found the Johnson envelope. Two other supervisors finally arrived. One of the supervisors called the court about the mystery court hearing for Sue’s case. She learned that they weren’t letting anybody into the court. It seems a deputy had accidentally discharged his weapon and shot himself. Another one of the supervisors works in my area. Before the day was out, she was talking about the steel plate and screws in her ankle. She was taking her shoe off so I could clearly see where the plate and screws were. All in all, it was one of the more unusual days I’ve ever had at work.

I met my neurologist. I like his approach. He recommends tests. No surprise there. When I had my heart stints, they gave me cardboard stint wallet cards with illegible scribbling on them. After a month or so in my wallet, they looked really crappy. I sat them aside in case I needed them. They didn’t survive the move to Columbia. Now I need an MRI and they won’t give it to me without more information about my stints. I had my heart work done at St. Joseph’s hospital. At the time, it had the reputation of the area’s premier heart hospital. But about a year ago, one of the cardiologists was charged with doing unnecessary procedures. This escalated into a really big deal. The hospital was on the front page of the newspaper a lot. They had so few patients they ended up shutting down half of the facility. At the last minute, a chain of hospitals bought them out and they barely stayed in business. It’s a good thing they are in business, because they are the ones that had that oh-so-necessary information about my stints. I guess I’ll ask for a copy of the report they sent my MRI lab.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Note: No pictures this week.

When I started at CASA, Phyllis had a computer that didn’t work. She was using her personal laptop. Nobody seemed to anxious about it. By Thursday (I work there 4 hours Thursday morning and 4 hours Friday morning), I was still finding my way around the IT stuff. They have two networked printers, and I hadn’t figured out how to install drivers for either one. They use a custom application I didn’t know how to install. And they use Quick Books, which I don’t know much about, but only two people use Quick Books. I figured I would get Phyllis her computer Thursday. But Thursday morning, Sarah’s computer suddenly stopped. She had a court hearing Monday and needed to have some documents prepared. I discussed this with the office manager. We decided to give Sarah the computer. This made Phyllis feel pushed aside, and led to lots of office conversation. Friday, Sarah decided her keyboard needed to be replaced, and somehow managed to get her computer to announce that it needed an administrator password to install the keyboard. It was impossible to type a password, because the keyboard didn’t work. This might be the most bizarre computer failure I had ever seen. I told Sarah she would have to wait until Phyllis got her computer. Unfortunately, Phyllis wanted the custom application, and I still haven’t figured that out yet. when I left Friday there were 5 unhappy people at CASA. Phyllis because she was pushed aside and ended up not having her application. Sarah because her computer doesn’t work. The office manager, because she has to deal with Phyllis and Sarah. The director, because people are unhappy. And me, because I don’t like computers in the first place and why did I take this stupid job? I’m sure it will all work itself out eventually. But 8 hours a week isn’t very much time to work on stuff,  no matter how efficiently the time is used.

The clubhouse office is in good shape. I should finish their document with a few hours of work. That will be the end of that little project.

I suggested changes to the network for Habitat that I think will help them quite a bit. It requires spending a little money. They said they are scheduling a meeting for later on this week, but so far nobody has told me when.

I found the squirrel on the bird feeder again. I started to go after him. He jumped off the bird house onto the ground. I guess it’s a 30 foot drop. I don’t know whether he got hurt in the fall, but I haven’t seen him since then. I read that squirrels can fall 100 feet, using their tails as a parachute.

I had a story from Valentine’s day that I didn’t tell. Danita likes ice cream. A lot. I came across an easy recipe for ice cream that was supposed to be delicious. I didn’t like it because it used exotic (expensive) flavoring ingredients. I quickly found another recipe that was basically the same, but with common ingredients. For both recipes, people had replied stating how good the ice cream tasted. So I made some for Valentine’s day. It was horrid. It was so bad that Danita made a face and said I should do whatever I want with it. But she said I shouldn’t be discouraged, because even a great chef has a disaster once in a while. I replied that was true, but not everybody who has a disaster is a great chef.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

You may recall Gamera, the human powered helicopter project Joe Schmaus works on. They did some test flights in Carroll County this week. I went up for the last day of flight on Thursday. They were flying in the Ag building. It’s very large, but has a low ceiling, so they wouldn’t be able to win the Sikorsky Prize. Their purpose was to test a flight control system. The copter met the sustained 60-seconds of flight requirement and came close to the height requirement of 3 meters. But the craft kept on drifting to one side or the other, so adding a control system was their next step. You can see a video of a flight at the Gamera Web Site.

A control system needs power. Batteries are not allowed (it has to be completely human powered). The system starts with a generator designed for use with bicycles. This unit would normally have a rubber wheel riding against the front tire to power a headlight. It generates 6 or 7 watts.

Of course there has to be a computer. They selected an Arduino computer. They modified it so that it would “boot up” in 3 seconds. The control system becomes active while the pilot is warming up. You can also see the two motors, each controlling a pulley. The Gamera is a quad-copter. It has 4 propellers, each on the outside corner of a box. The pilot pedals, which pulls a string, which rotates the propellers. The pulley changes the length of the string path. A longer path means the blade rotates faster and generates a little more lift. A shorter path means the blade rotates slower and generates a little less lift. One pulley changes the amount of lift in the left / right direction. The other changes the front to back lift ratio. To save power, they don’t run both motors at the same time.

To control the craft, the pilot has switches mounted to his hand cranks. You can see the wires from the left hand switch and the aircraft wires. To connect the two sets of wires, the pilot wears a wiring harness under his shirt. Wires follow the pilot’s arms, go up his shoulders, and come out his back.

Unfortunately, the team only got one short flight on Thursday. One of the propellers broke off and landed upside down. Here’s a picture of the test crew sitting under the broken propeller, exactly as it landed. The failure happened early in the day, but there wasn’t time to repair the craft and try another flight. They have to have time for the epoxy glue to cure, and the cure time was very long because the building was a chilly 45 degrees. Fortunately, Joe warned me. I wore 3 layers of clothes.

They had difficulty getting the crew between College Park and Carroll County. It’s a 1-hour ride and most students don’t have cars. They had a skeleton crew for these tests. I was able to lend a hand by taking some of the team members back so they could attend class. I picked up a souvenir — a piece of truss and a carbon fiber strut that broke off the craft. I think of these as my own personal “Moon  Rock”. A piece of aviation history.

The rest of the week was busy. I went to the audiologist Monday. She said I had moderate loss in my right ear. My left ear is good enough that only one hearing aid would be recommended. The problem in my right ear is the three bones on the inside of the ear drum. I don’t plan to pursue the ear surgery. I decided that since only one ear had hearing loss and that was moderate, I will postpone hearing aids.

The rest of Monday and Tuesday I worked on the clubhouse network. I got everything hooked up except for the copy machine. Copy machines are amazing beasts these days. They can be used as printers, scanners, and fax machines. We had to order a long Ethernet cable before connecting the copy machine to the network. The association needs to mail out new credentials for the front gate. I used the residents data base to generate a list of who will receive the new credentials, then did a mail merge so they can print mailing labels for the 400 units.

I got the urgent clubhouse work done just in time. Habitat for Humanity contacted me because they need to replace a router. I advised them to hold on until next week. I’m going to propose a range of possible improvements. Based on their decisions, they might want to move up to a more advanced router.

Wednesday and Friday I was at CASA. I turned out to be a profit center for them. When I came, I told them their Windows XP computers were at the end of their life and need to be replaced. It’s one of those things that they knew was true, but had been ignoring. They’ve been in a panic looking for computer money. They have $3,000 in a joint account with the University of Maryland School of Social Work. CASA’s Executive Director went over there to see what the restrictions were on the money. She thought they would have to spend it on some kind of joint activity, such as a training session. You may remember I got this placement through an organization called ReServe. ReServe is sponsored by the School of Social Work. They’ve had a tough time getting up and running. When they heard that I was placed at CASA through ReServe, they were delighted. That went a long way towards their decision that the funds can be spent on CASA’s computer needs. I was surprised that CASA decided to buy 6 Dell laptops that run Windows 8 (Microsoft’s brand new and somewhat controversial new operating system). With four computers they had donated from T. Rowe Price that can run Windows 7, we’ll get them out of the hole.

I even found time for a couple of short bike rides. We had some decent weather, with temperature up around 50 and even sunshine one day. Don (who I met at dinner last week) came on one of the rides with me. We were daydreaming out loud about riding the Blue Ridge Parkway. It runs about 450 miles from Front Royal, VA to Ashland, NC. Some of the mountains are absolute killers, and there aren’t a lot of hotels or 7-11s.

Such is the exciting life of retirement these days. I hope everybody is doing well.

Note: There are no pictures this week.

This has been quite a week. For a long time, I felt I would like to have something to do on a part time or voluntary basis. All of a sudden, the dam broke. Monday I visited my doctor for a physical. I did OK, but left with recommendations for physical therapy (for my left shoulder), audiology, and neurology (for a memory check). It’s hard to keep healthy when all the ancillary systems are falling apart.

Tuesday I finished Michner’s book Alaska. I was disappointed. I learned a lot about the Aleutian Islands but only a little about the rest of Alaska.

Wednesday I went to work. I had been talking to Habitat for Humanity to volunteer. Chesapeake Habitat is an affiliate of the international Habitat for Humanity organization. It covers Baltimore County,  Baltimore City, Anne Arundel County, and Howard County; and is one of the largest affiliates in the world. Chesapeake Habitat has two parts. The “Affiliate” is the office that coordinates building or rehabbing houses to create decent affordable housing for the poor. The “ReStores”, act as a kind of a Good Will for building supplies (kitchen cabinets, doors, windows, etc.), furniture, and tools. Chesapeake Habitat has three ReStores — in Halethorpe (southern Baltimore, adjacent to the affiliate offices), Pasadena (Anne Arundel County), and Dundalk. They will open a ReStore in Columbia soon, and have plans for two more after that.

I had a quick tour of the networks Wednesday.From an IT perspective, Habitat has a fairly standard server and computer setup for the Affiliate. They have VOIP phones (phones that run on the computer network). Each ReStore has a small network with a couple of computers and VOIP phones. Somehow, all of the phones work together, but the computer networks do not. They have no IT staff. They have done all this with a hodgepodge of vendors and consultants. Every employee and volunteer has their own idea of what’s best. They have pretty much built a digital tower of babble.I need to go back for a closer look. So far, I haven’t found the router in two locations, so I know for sure I’m missing some big pieces of the puzzle.

About the same time I got into Habitat, I got an opportunity with CASA of Baltimore. This is a short-term opportunity ending on June 30. CASA is an organization that recruits and trains advocates. When social services wants to remove a child from their home, an advocate may be used to help represent a child’s interest. Advocates are also mentors for the children. I don’t know a lot about the CASA organization, but I know there is a state office and that several counties in Maryland have local offices. Each office seems to run as an independent business unit. CASA Baltimore has a dozen very old computers and a network of sorts. They are set up more like somebody’s home than a business network. They have allocated too little money to IT for too long. They have a basic idea of the important IT concepts (like backing up data), but in many ways each person in the office is their own IT manager.

I work at CASA two 4-hour days a week. This week it was Thursday and Friday. CASA is downtown and they have a small budget, so parking is an issue. Street parking is limited to 2 hours. I thought the garages charged $14 a day. I was wrong. They charge a lot more. But they have much lower rates for those who arrive before 9 (Early Bird Special). CASA has $5 discount vouchers if I park in the right garage. Thursday I arrived at 10:00 and parked on one of the wrong garages. Friday I arrived before 9:00 and parked in the correct garage. My parking Friday was $20 less than it was Thursday.

Normally, I could handle CASA and Habitat at the same time, but our club house has gone nuts. I wrote earlier about how we got a new floor in the office, and how as a result none of their computers worked. Nobody could figure out how to put Humpty together again. In fixing things, I found we have two internet providers. One is a personal DSL service from Verizon. The other is a Xfinity (Comcast) cable service set up by WPM (the property management company). In discussing how we want to organize IT for our office, WPM decided they wanted to pull their network out, which they did. I met their IT guy just as he got started working. He asked me to leave him alone until he was done, so he could focus on his task and get it done right. When he left, one office worker had lost her Internet access and also many of her files. A printer/scanner printed but no longer scanned. The video security cameras worked, but weren’t available from the network. When I tried to start hooking things up, I found out that Xfinity uses brain-dead routers that  don’t let us configure a stable office network. I recommended a small business router. It arrived Friday. I spent a good amount of time Saturday learning how to configure services I never had to worry about before. We’ll see how much I learned tomorrow, when I go over to hook it up.

At the same time, my community decided the electronic gate reader doesn’t work and needs to be replaced with a new one. The new one must be twice as good, because it offers two credentials for access, neither of which is anything at all like the credentials used by the old one. There are new databases, old databases, modified databases, and of course a whole pile of data entry. There is the issuance of new credentials which involves envelopes, letters, and maybe signatures. It’s not hard work, but it takes time and it’s the other thing I spent most of my Saturday figuring out.

If all this had to happen at once, this was a good week for it. It’s been too cold for bike riding. I rode indoors one day, but it’s not fun and my heart’s not in it.

This was also a busy week socially. We usually eat dinner out Thursdays. This Thursday one of the women Danita works with invited us to her house. It turns out her husband Don has become interested in riding a bike to Maine. He knows somebody who lives close to Bangor. He wants to get together for a follow-up, but I put him off for a while. Our neighborhood had a Bingo Friday evening. Danita went to that by herself. Saturday we met the Chaprnkas for dinner at an Italian restaurant near Reisterstown. The restaurant has upscale ambitions, offering excellent food and mediocre service. Today we’re going to a World Wide Marriage Day Mass at the cathedral downtown, followed by dinner with our Circle friends.

That was a lot of words for one week. I hope nobody got eye strain and that this finds everybody doing well.

We had some very cold weather last weekend. But by Monday, the weather started to permit cycling. Temperatures were above freezing. It was wet, but there was no rain. I rode around doing chores. Tuesday it was beautiful, sunny with temperatures up in the 60s. I did my first 40-mile ride this year. It felt great. Wednesday temperatures approached 70. It was wet, but there was no rain in the morning. I was able to ride some of my favorite hills around Ellicott City. I’m glad I went out in the morning, because the rain started in the afternoon. By evening, the winds were ferocious and the rain got quite heavy. Several streets in Ellicott City flooded. I never realized before moving here how often that happens. I never heard about it living in Baltimore County, because it happens so frequently it’s not news.

Unfortunately, winter returned by Thursday. It was sunny but 30 degrees colder. In addition, winds down a little to around 20 MPH, with gusts of 40 MPH. I was sitting in the house, reading in “Alaska” about a man who rode from Dawson, Canada to Nome, Alaska on a bicycle in the middle of the winter in 1900. (That’s about the same distance as Baltimore to Bangor.) He rode on the frozen Yukon River, carried his bike over a mountain, and then rode down the frozen bay. He enjoyed “mild” winter temperatures of 20 degrees below. Certainly if he could do that, I could ride 10 miles to Harris Teeter to pick up some groceries. I decided to start with a test trip to Target (1 mile away) to pick up some milk. By the time I got to Target, I knew I could do the 50 minute ride to Harris Teeter, and also the 50 minute ride back. But I chose buy everything I really needed at Target and go home. That was the end of outdoor cycling for the week. It was nice to have those few days.

Gazebo Bird Feeder

I finally got my gazebo! But first I have to back track a little bit. Brian and Elizabeth made pine cone bird feeders and brought them for Christmas. Danita got some string and hung them from our deck railing. By last weekend, birds were getting desperate and found the pine cones. It was terrible. Birds would fly up to a pine cone and take a quick peck. This would make the pine cone rock back and forth. The bird would have to land on the deck and wait for it to stop swinging, and then fly up for another quick peck. This is not a way to be kind to animals. Danita cut the pine cones down and laid them on the deck. Then she added some bread crumbs. That worked well and got the birds through some very cold days. No good turn goes unpunished, as they say. The birds left behind their very special “poopy presents” on our deck floor. I took care of those with a bucket and a brush early Tuesday afternoon. The rain came in handy for washing the residue off.

Cool pic captured a bird in flight. (Click the pic to see a blow-up)

That problem solved, we decided to order a proper bird feeder from Amazon, along with some proper bird food. When I saw the gazebo bird feeder, I couldn’t resist. I know it’s only 6-sided, but it *is* a gazebo! It even has plastic sides to make it a 4-season structure! I found a hanger that I could clamp to the deck railing to hold the bird feeder over the grass behind the deck. Now we can sit in the living room and watch the birds. All is well for the birds. Alas, all is not well for me. Most of the day, birds form themselves into 3 groups. the smallest group is on the bird feeder eating. The second group is in a near by tree waiting to get the the bird feeder. The third group is on the deck porch or railing, pooping away. The feeder is definitely coming down when winter’s over.

The big excitement this weekend is the Super Bowl. You may remember that after the AFC Championship game two weeks ago, I went outside to celebrate and found a completely dead neighborhood. Other neighborhoods had people outside honking their horns and having a good time. Not ours. Today we’re having a neighborhood Super Bowl party. They’re renting a big-screen TV. We will have chicken, chili, pizza, chips, salad, and open bar. Win or lose, I’m pretty sure that after the game everybody will go home and go to bed. Baltimore City has made plans to close streets and have the police out in force after the game. Nobody’s planning to station police in our neighborhood. But it’s hard to turn down a free party. This will be our cheapest Super Bowl ever.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Note: There are no pictures this week.

I got rides in last Saturday and Sunday. Then temperatures plummeted. Highs have been in the 20s. Monday I took advantage of the cold weather and took my bike in for a checkup. I managed to get a couple of days of exercise. Our neighborhood clears the streets if we get 2″ of snow or more. We had two snows of 1″ each. So I got exercise two days by pushing snow around. Baltimore snows tend to be wet and heavy. But the temperatures were so cold, the snows were dry and light, making a push broom the preferred tool. I saw my neighbor across the street out with a snow shovel. I walked across with my broom and did 80% of his drive while he was huffing and puffing with his shovel to do the other 20%.

My retirement is about to change quite a bit. I have been volunteering at the club house. There’s an occasional emergency (we have no Internet!), but mostly I make sure the backups are working. The hardest part of the work is walking over to the club house and back. This week I interviewed at CASA and at Habitat for Humanity. Both said they are interested.

CASA is through Re-Serve. That means they pay Re-Serve $15 an hour. I get $10 of that (less taxes and whatever other withholdings). If Maryland social services feels a juvenile should be removed from their home, they go to court. The judge can ask that an independent advocate for the youth be assigned. CASA is a non-profit that finds and trains volunteers to be youth advocates. Their office is old and very crowded. Because they are downtown, parking is an issue. Their budget is minimal. And they devote approximately $0 a year to IT. They have over a dozen computers, all quite old. They are all running Windows XP because none of them are capable of running a more modern operating system. Many volunteers bring their own laptops in because CASA’s computers are so abysmal. CASA scraped the bottom of the barrel and came up with enough money to pay for 8 hours a week from now until June. Needless to say, they have quite a long list of issues.

Habitat for Humanity is at the opposite end of the non-profit spectrum.They renovate old houses to develop affordable, decent, low-cost housing. You have probably heard of them because President Jimmy Carter is a high-profile supporter. In our area, they have become quite large. They are well-organized, but like everybody else they have plenty of IT issues.

I haven’t actually started at either place. I accepted at CASA Friday afternoon, apparently after the executive director went home to beat the snow. Habitat is supposed to send a consultant’s report for me to review before I start doing anything. We’ll see how these opportunities work out in the real world.

We usually go out to dinner Thursdays. This week, we went upscale to Baldwin Station (a renovated train station in Carol County). It’s one of our favorites. It’s too expensive for us to go to frequently, but the food is great and Danita had a “buy one get one free” coupon. Friday afternoon and evening we had the second snow “storm” this week. I declared a household snow emergency. We broke out a nice red wine and ate junk food while watching TV Friday evening.

We got bamboozled for Sunday breakfast. Last Sunday, we went to Bob Evans for breakfast. Applebee’s is right next door, and we saw a  bunch of people over there for Sunday Breakfast. Without checking, we decided that Applebee’s must have an early Sunday brunch, and decided to go there this morning. When we got there, we found a large crowd in front of us, but there was no food. It turns out that the local Applebee’s allows various groups to do fundraisers by selling breakfast. This group was planning to do a pancake breakfast. But they wouldn’t be starting for half an hour. We were ready to eat right away and ended up at La Madeline’s. This evening we’ll be going over to the clubhouse for a pot-luck dinner.

It’s time to set the itinerary for our Alaska trip. The 2013 ferry schedule has been published.  Danita took a cut at an itinerary, then found a copy of Mitchner’s book “Alaska” at her Dad’s house. I decided it would be a good idea to read the book before working on the itinerary. This story is a real fast mover for Mitchner. He blasted through the first 50,000 years in 50 pages flat. I’m about 1/4 of the way through. So far, I’ve learned quite a bit about the history of the Aleutian Islands. Then one of my library E-books came in. I only get those for 2 weeks (non-renewable), so I put “Alaska” aside while reading my library book. So many things to do … so little time.

I hope everybody is doing well.

There wasn’t a lot of news this week.

The week started out nicely with a Ravens win. We don’t usually watch football, but we watched the game last week. We’re glad we did, because it was a heck of a game; and made nicer with the Ravens moving on to the AFC championship later on today.

Wednesday, I went to the dentist and had the right half of my mouth cleaned. This was the second half of my periodontal cleaning. This one was a little harder for me. The dental appointment was Wednesday morning. Shortly after I got home, I started feeling under the weather. I was OK, but just under the weather. Things were better by late Thursday.

We had Circle last Sunday and a party at the club house Friday.

Mostly, the weather was mild for January. The week stared with several days that were cloudy and in the 40s. Then it got down right nice – sunny and 50. I got a good amount of riding in. I didn’t get much riding in over the holidays. By last week, I was definitely down in my speed and ability to do hills. Early this week I went out looking for bonus hills to build my climbing ability. A couple of streets I usually ride on are closed for construction, so I had to take detours. This caused me to find Oella Rd, which goes to the town of Oella. This is a 19^th century mill town right next to Ellicott City. The mill was re-built into apartments and looks modern. But the houses and streets have the patina of history. Oella Rd is a pretty good hill in its own right. But once in Oella, the narrow back streets are hilly enough to earn respect from any West Virginian. I’ve had some great rides and have my bike legs pretty well tuned up. That’s good because the weather is taking a turn for the colder. I could ride when the high is 28, but I don’t see how it would be considered fun.

Here’s a picture of the entrance to Oella. It’s hard to realize how steep the hills are from a 2-D picture.

Bomb shelter or basement?

This shows a different kind of walk-out basement. You can’t tell too well, but there’s a generously wide sidewalk over the basement doors. It looks like the basement could double as a bomb shelter. It’s hard to get a good persective on this shot, in part because I was standing on the edge of the steep part of the hill, which was behind me and to my right.

Oella Row Houses

Here’s a shot of some Oella row houses. A couple of them had stained glass on the doors, but I couldn’t get a good shot of them because of the angle of the sun.