It's all good

This is what it looked like tonight when I went home after work. It was beautiful along the train tracks. Cold and clear. A little cold crescent moon up in the sky was flirting with a distant star.

It was one of those weeks when I just have to say, good gosh, I'm glad that week is over.. But then if I think about it, it's one less week of my life I have to live, and that sucks.. if I think about it.

The up-side is,..Well, it is after all still ski season, the sun will be out tomorrow (that sounds really corny) and I'll be up on the mountain skiing. Plus my skis have a fresh race tune done by Fred, and in Fred's words, when I left my skis at his shop this week without getting a claim ticket,. "It's all good."

Who invented the automobile?

I never thought I'd be correcting Barack Obama... We (the United States) did not invent the automobile as President Obama said in his speech tonight, and no,.. Al Gore had nothing to do with it either... Karl Benz invented the first car with a gas motor.

Ford was just first to make the automobile a consumer item. We can hang our hat on that.

I was listening to NPR today and there was one thought put out by a caller who said, perhaps the economy would be rebuilt with less of a consumer mentality and that consumerism was a large part of our economic problem in the first place. That resonated with me. People are buying cars and houses they can't afford, and everything else, and they are going in debt over it. (bigger houses than they need and bigger cars) Cars are a great example of people buying more than they need or in many / most cases, can afford. If we continue to beileve in this model of prosperity, the big car, bigh house standard, where will it lead us?

The caller was rebuked by the hosts of the program who said that becoming less of a consumer based society wasn't good for the economy.. (?) I'm thinking,. What the heck? Where does it all end? When people buy more than they need and go in debt doing it then there's bound to be a problem. How can this be good for the economy?

Other than this one criticism I thought Obama gave a very nice talk...

Nikon Coolpix is inside the bubble

My little Nikon Coolpix L16 died, so I'm sending it in for repair as it's still under warranty. I just turned it on and it said "lens error". So far my contact with Nikon has been good. They said the lens motor was stuck and they usually replace those. For now this little Coolpix is inside the bubble wrap. I'll let you know how it comes out and how Nikon deals with the situation.

My favorite pot

Tonight I broke one of my favorite pots that I use for cooking darn it!. A Visions one like THIS. It was a gift from an ex-girlfriend. She bought me a whole set of them. "These are really nice Don." I remember her saying. What did I know? Well they are really nice... You can cook on the stove top with them, oven and even microwave although this one was too big to go in my little microwave. I love them, but I didn't realize this one was $60 nice... I'll have to get another as I used this all of the time and,.. well,.. I'm set in my ways.. My cooking ways anyways.

And this reminds me of a story.

My friend's father was called up for Jury duty. He was being asked questions to see if they wanted to seat him. "What are some of your interests?" one of the attorneys asked. "Well I like to cook." "What's your favorite dish?" "Melmac" he responded.

Ba dump bump.

Wild turkey photo

I was going up the hill today and came across this wild turkey. It's not a great picture as I had to scramble to find the camera. It was a difficult lighting situation and the darn turkey wouldn't stand still. It kept running around and finally it ran off. So this was the best I could do, but it's a very nice turkey as wild turkeys go. I know one guy who would love to shoot this!..

Right America Feeling Wronged

I just watched the HBO documentary by Alexandra Pelosi, Right America Feeling Wronged. SYNOPSIS IS HERE What a trip.

The film showcases staunch republicans and McCain to his credit had to reel them in.

I took some notes of quotes from McCain supporters featured in the film. It's a little hard to take. It would be hard to believe if I didn't know myself that there's more than just a little truth in it.

I can't resist sharing a few quotes. There was no shortage of bad ones. "If you drink beer, if you go to titty bars for some reason you're a bad person."

(wait a minute,..I drink beer..)

And this about Obama; "I think he hates all people, I think he wants to destroy this earth." "Obama's never lived in real America, he's never seen it." "666 crossed my mind." "Oh my gosh this is him." (the anti Christ)

My gosh is right...McCain isn't the real loser in this election.

Going ape

By now most of us have heard the story of the chimp that went ape. From what I heard his owner was sleeping with him. Sharing a bed anyway. Not a good idea. Not for me anyway. When I first got my late cat Spunky, I made it clear that my bedroom was off limits. There has to be some boundries in the pet / owner relationship, and I'm alergic anyway. I'd wake up all stuffed up.

But the thought of sleeping with a big hairy beast in a diaper...

Conversion to DTV

Tonight is the early switch to DTV from analog. Most of the stations here in are changing over now. I went to the coupon website the very day they ran out of funds. So I put my name on a waiting list. I only asked for one coupon as I only need one in Montana. There were many people who got the coupons and didn't use them before they expired. So last week I received my coupon, actually like a gift card, and I went to the store and used it to buy a converter. They only had one converter left at the store where I went.

Over the weekend I listened to a piece on NPR about a woman who started using one of these converters somewhere in Arizona if I think it was. She reported that it worked only when the signal was strong and often pixelated out. So she said she pretty much stopped watching TV. The story went on to report that the testing they did was based on an outdoor antenna 30 feet up in the air, like on a rooftop. What I came away with from that report was that you really need a good antenna and a strong signal for digital over the airwaves to work well. The nice thing about analog was that if the signal was weak the picture might be fuzzy but you could still see what was going on. It's often like that in remote places. I remember watching the World Series one time on a little black and white TV in the bunkhouse of a ranch way out in the middle of Montana miles from the nearest town. The picture was fuzzy and the sound scratchy but we could tell what was going on and that was all that mattered. It sounds to me like rabbit ears inside a house may not work unless there is a very strong signal.

So tomorrow I'm going to hook up my little TV with its little indoor antenna and see what happens. Right now I'm getting all three networks and one public station analog. One network, CBS is weak. The real test will be in Montana when I go to the cabin.

***
Morning of the 18th: The digital converter is working well with the indoor antenna. The channel that had been weak analog is smaller on the screen for some reason, but the rest of the channels are fine and there are more of them actually incuding Universal Sports. (the ski racing channel) So that's a pleasant development. :)

Happy Valentine's Day

Lady with an Ermine

I call this picture, Lady with an Ermine. Or Lady with a Weasel, around her neck. She might have just caught it! Might be weasel season in Idaho for all I know...

Wolves, pickup trucks, and culture

I took one of my friends to the cabin in Montana for some fishing. On the way we picked up a local want ad paper. He was reading the personals,.. "Here's one for you Don.."

SWF,.. I like wolves, pickup trucks, and culture...

Bear painting

These painted bears are here and there thoughout town in Missoula. I think they are kind of cool.

Resi Stiegler is a hit

I've been getting an unusual amount of hits out of Europe on a blog post I wrote about RESI STIEGLER last year. It's kind of wierd and I'm tempted to bring down that post because of it. It might be because of the World Chapionships that are going on right now in France. Stiegler crashed out of a GS race last year in Lienz a year ago and goofed up her knee. Then she screwed it up again playing soccer or something. From what I understand she pre-ran the slalom in Garmisch last week so she must be on the mend.

Lindsey Vonn won that slalom in Germany BTW and I actually got to watch it as Universal Sports just came on my cable system and I just watched her win the Super G at worlds. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to be able to watch these races on TV now. It's actually better coverage than I used to get on the Outdoor Life Network. Sadly OLN morphed into the realm of cage fighting and reality shows. It had been good ski racing coverage and I got to see all of the racers both men and women. But now this Universal Sports Network coveraged has been as good if not way better. Makes me want to contribute to the US Ski Team once again.

You know, this stuff is really interesting to just watch. They don't have to dumb it down for a TV audience. Just show the sport and people will lean and understand it and get into it. That was what used to be so cool about Wide World of Sports. Their ability to race is what makes these people interesting, not a lengthy bio about them. If they couldn't race we wouldn't care about them, we'd just watch reality shows about people who couldn't do anything special, and that's getting really old if you ask me.