March 2024

Point of No Return.

Here’s a live performance of Nu Shooz’s “Point of No Return” from 1986. I’ve always loved this song; and the bump up in tempo for the live version is quite enjoyable. Another gem from my senior year of high school. I used to crank this up on 93Q, The Number One Hit Music Station in Syracuse, N.Y.

I think the interwebs has the lyrics wrong… I hear this in verse one:

“I was your friend, and you were mine
You’ve been around for a long, long time,
I’ve known you then, but not like now,
something has changed and I don’t know how… ”

“Genius” on the Google search, whatever that is, has it all wrong. Bandcamp has it right.

Lead singer Valerie Day seems like a lot fun, it’s a shame I never met her during my days in radio. This track is from Nu Shooz’s album “Poolside”. I usually listen to it while out on the Great Plains during storm chasing season.

https://nushoozorchestra.bandcamp.com/track/the-return-of-point-of-no-return

Easter.

We don’t usually do a big deal around Easter dinner. In the past Earl and I have had some sort of picnic regardless of the weather; this weekend in Arizona it’s rainy. We had a couple of friends over and had a very nice Easter celebration today.

Reach out and tell loved ones and friends how important they are and how much they contribute to your existence.

Mic Test.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased a wireless lavalier mic set from Ulanzi from Amazon. After the abundance of wind noise on my recent hiking video, I figured it was time to figure out how to connect them to the GoPro Hero 9 for future endeavors out in the field. I also now have my spare battery ready to go.

Because I’m a ham in my own way, here’s the mic test video, complete with harsh lighting from an LED lighting kit from GoPro. Obviously I still need to play around with the light balancing of my video skills. I’m not really that red in the face.

Caturday.

Truman was very impatient for my arrival from my hiking adventure this morning. Treats were not dispensed during the proper hour and he made sure I knew it.

Monitoring.

Earlier this month I purchased a Raspberry Pi to set up a small computer in my home office, namely for checking the weather and watching storm chaser streams on YouTube. I should have purchased a Raspberry Pi 5 with a bit more punch, as the Raspberry Pi 4 I purchased is very nice and capable, but it was a little slow for my needs.

Last weekend I changed direction a little bit and repurposed the Raspberry Pi 4 into a weather station, showing stats from the weather station we have on the roof. I used the software called WeatherFlow_PiConsole available here on GitHub (yay open source!).

I’m quite happy with the result.

While I can’t provide everyone that stops by the blog with a weather station like this, you can see the stats from our weather station on Weather Underground on their WunderMap.

It’s Friday.

Last night’s sunset.

This week has been busy with meetings at work. My calendar has been quite jammed with all sorts of events, all of it important, I’m sure. As I get older I realize I take more and more after my father. When supper time comes, I don’t want to think about it; I just want someone to tell me what we’re having and if they need assistance assembling supper I’m there to help, otherwise I’m ready to eat at 6:00 PM.

I know June, I sound like I’m right out of the 1950s. I’ll talk to the Beaver.

When you live in a home with four other men and no one wants to cook, you figure things out. I declared to Earl I’d take him to a place down the street that we enjoy. It’s called “Serial Grillers” and they have several locations in the Tucson area.

I snapped this photo from their parking lot. The sunset was gorgeous and it made me smile. It was a good way to bring Thursday to an end and it made me smile. The smile continued through the work day today, where my calendar was clear aside from a semi-weekly touch point with my team. Smiling made me productive and I cleared my to do list for the day.

It’s a great start to the weekend.

To See.

It’s been about five years since I was first told I needed glasses. At that event I was basically told I should wear glasses when working on the computer and the fine local optician on the north side of Chicago helped me find a pair of glasses that fit the bill. A year later I went and got another eye exam, continued the trend of occasionally needing glasses, found myself a snazzy pair of glasses and off we went. A little while later I moved to progressive lenses and tended to wear them only when I felt I needed to wear them.

On Tuesday I had my biannual FAA mandated medical exam. As a private pilot of a certain age, I maintain a “Class 3” Medical Certificate, meaning I need to meet FAA health standards need to prove this every two years. I went to the same doctor I visited back in 2022. He is very nice.

Well, it turns out I should be wearing my progressive lenses more than “when I think I need them”. I’m lucky I had brought them along for the eye exam portion of the ordeal, because I definitely needed them to get through the whole.

It is now documented that I must be wearing my prescription glasses when I’m flying an airplane.

Earl and I went flying last night. While touring the area by airplane I remarked, “wow, I can really see what’s going on up here!”. It’s amazing how well I can fly an airplane when I can see things.

It’s like my vision has gone from standard definition to Ultra 4K.