Stamping

Hi, long time no post. I just visited my cousin's blog, Live Love, and Stamp . Take a look. She does some really great work stamping.

My Ride In a Duesenberg

March 1959, and I was traveling as a passenger in a Duesenberg on a trip from Kansas City to Omaha to see a Classic Car Club show. A fraternity brother of mine at the University of Kansas invited me, and begged a ride for me with a friend of his who owned the Duesenberg. The car had been built in the mid-1930's and restored by its current owner. We drove on the highways (two lane, before the interstates), and my driver liked to push the speed limit. I remember one empty stretch of road in northeastern Kansas. No traffic and he opened up the car to a little over 70 mph. I asked him if the car could go faster, and his reply was, "Definitely, but these are the original tires so don't go fast anymore." (It had an 8 cylinder supercharged engine that could move.)

The car was a real eye-catcher on the drive up. As we traveled through the small towns, people would stare and follow the car as we passed. The fun part was the noise. If you look at the picture, it car has exhaust pipes coming out the hood, down through the fenders and into the mufflers toward the rear of the car. But the driver had modified his car so he could disconnect the headers below the fenders just prior to the bend to go toward the mufflers. And for this trip, the headers were off and the muffler was totally bypassed. The car was LOUD. The people on the sidewalks would hear what they thought was a large truck, and stare in astonishment when they saw the real source of the rumbling: a classic car they had probably never seen before cruising through their town.

It was an adventure of a lifetime, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Note: photo credit goes to The Nethercutt Collection for their 1933 Duesenberg SJ. Thanks for the use.

Picasa 3 and Photoshop Elements 7

The end of summer has come and gone. Daytime highs are now in the upper 70s and lower 80s. The 100s are past. Thank goodness. This photo was taken during the last of the humid season in early October, as the sun was starting to set.

I put this up here just to try out the new Picasa 3 Beta software. It works similarly to the older Picasa. I will have to dig and find out more of the differences. Apparently Picasa 3 has a viewer that we can use on the files we see in Windows Explorer. I will have to give that a try. Sounds nice.

Photoshop Elements 7 is out. I got my copy from Amazon.com: only $79 with another $20 rebate since I am upgrading from PE6. A pretty good bargin for Adobe software. Haven't used PE7 much. I hate their intro screenshot when you start the program. It is a blatent add for Photoshop.com, which is a hard sell to get you to pay a monthly fee to park your photos online with Adobe. Yes, there is a free service with very limited photo storage. Oh well, the program seems to work ok.

One of the new features I like about PE7 is the ability to change the old dark grey background with white lettering to get to a lighter background with black letters. I liked PE5, which had white background and black lettering on the menus. Then PE6 went to the photogrey background to have the color photos show up better. Well, the photos were nicer, but I teach Photoshop Elements and leading a class of people who can't hardly see the small white letters is tough. Even I have problems, and I know where the menu items are. So I welcome the change to allow the user to regain black lettering. I will have to see how it works in real life.

Summer In Arizona

Summer in Arizona, where I live, is a different phenomena. It is like the inverse of living elsewhere. We hibernate in the summer, unless we can get out of town. We did not leave town for our normal break, and so we spent a lot of time indoors with the air conditioner pumped up running almost full blast. Summer in the desert is a bit warm. A cool day is when the high is under 105 deg. Lately the high has only risen to 97 deg, so Fall is almost upon us.

That's why I have worn long sleeve shirts most of the time. Doesn't make much sense does it? Until you understand that I live with a woman (my wife) who is experiencing the elevated normal temps of a woman later in life. I don't want to say menopause, because we have not bothered to define it medically. I just know that she likes the house at 74 and I get cold under 78. So our "compromise" is that she sets the air conditioner a degree or two above where she would like it, and I wear long sleeve shirts.

I am getting out more now that September is upon us. My computer club has started again, and I am taking two online courses in Photography. I am getting a little behind, but that's ok. At least I am up and going again. ttyl

Check 21

Sometime in 2003, the Federal Government passed a new law which goes by the short name Check 21. It was designed to help banks transition into the 21st Century by allowing for electronic transfer of funds for normal checking, among other things. I ran into this headlong yesterday, and thought I would share this with you.

In the old days, I would write a check and mail it to the recipient to pay a bill. They, in turn, would endorse the check and mail it to their bank, or physically deposit it. Their bank would mail it to my bank and the funds would transfer from bank to bank and into the account of the recipient. The lag time between when I mailed the check and when it cleared my bank was what I called "float". Well, hang on gang, in the 21st Century that "float" time has nearly disappeared, even with a paper check.

I had mailed a check to my homeowners association company on June 4th, the day I wrote the check. They received the check on June 6, and processed it through some kind of electronic scanner which was electrically hooked to my bank and the funds were immediately credited to the homeowners association company account electronically. There was no lag time between when the company received my check and they got credit for the check.

I talked with my bank and they said that many companies now use Check 21 as a part of how they process paper checks. Apparently, as I understand from the info on the Federal Reserve site, checks may now, with the approval of the company and the banks, be processed immediately. All debit and credit transfers happen electronically, and are instantaneous.

Now the reason I ran into this headlong was that I use Quicken to keep up with my finances. And I always download my banks transactions into my Quicken account(s) on my computer. Normally when a check transaction occurs, the data about that transaction that gets downloaded from my bank includes the check number. That makes sense, doesn't it? But with Check 21 transactions, the check number did not get downloaded - just an indication that there had been an electronic transaction for a particular amount on that day to a certain party. No check number. When I saw this the first time, I thought I was going to run into a double payment for my homeowners fees: one for the electronic deduction and one for the check.

It took me 4 phone calls to my bank and the homeowners association company, but I finally figured it out. The homeowners association company had received my check for payment of my HOA fees and had processed it with my bank using the Check 21 capability. My bank showed in their records that my check, with the proper check number, was processed electronically. The fact that Quicken did not receive the check number with the downloaded transaction is a shortcoming of how Quicken communicates with my bank about checks that have undergone the Check 21 process. The bank records, which I was able to verify independently by going to my bank's web site and logging in, showed the right check number had been processed for the payment to my HOA company.

Mystery solved. Welcome to the world of the 21st Century.......

Life After Peanut

Well, it has been a little time since our dog, Peanut, died and life moves onward. I still will glance down to the right on the floor as I sit at my computer in the evening, because that's where Peanut use to sit and stare at me - hoping for some lap time. And sometimes I think I see a quick shadow of movement, but when I look down of course there is nothing there. He is really gone.

We have been busy with doctor's appointments, running errands, and trying out a new Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. (Surprisingly, the food is great.) All the stuff of normal living. The heat has arrived in the Phoenix area for the summer. Daytime temperatures are now regularly climbing above 110 degrees (F). We dash from garage to parking lot with the car's air conditioning blasting full on, and then into the stores or offices where we are greeted by warm, hot or my word it is so cold that I wish I had brought a sweater kind of air. The offices, in particular, vary temperature enormously.

We are planning a trip this weekend to visit my wife's uncle who lives in California. It will be a nice short road trip, and we will spend a few days with him. He recently lost his wife to cancer, so we will support each other as part of our healing processes. He is a great guy, and we are looking forward to the trip.

Life marches on .........

Peanut - Our Connection

Peanut and I had a special bond. There was a connection that he and I had, and I could feel it when he looked at me or when he would totally relax and fall asleep in my lap. Our pets can show us they love us, even at the end. I had a similar experience with Peanut. My wife and I were talking with the surgeon prior to the exploratory surgery. Peanut was lying in my lap along my arm with his head wearily placed in the crook of my elbow. He lifted his head only one time, and turned it almost backward to look me in the eye. Contact. He might have known he was in my arms, but he wanted contact with me through his eyes. That look went through to my soul, and I realized that might be the last time we saw each other. They took him shortly after that for the surgery, and he left buried in the towel they had wrapped him in after the ultrasound. I never saw him again. I was not able to be there when he passed on. He was still on the operating table, cold and hard as it was. It breaks my heart to realize that. But at least we had that one last look, intense, and eye to eye. Our connection to last for eternity.

Peanut: 10/12/2000 - 6/9/2008

I lost my little guy yesterday. He was my best little buddy and friend: Peanut, my 7 pound toy poodle. Peanut was only 7 years old, and was taken away by a fast acting growth inside his abdomen. None of us knew it was there. Not Peanut's vet, my wife, or I knew about it. Peanut knew something was wrong, but could not tell us how badly it hurt. None of us knew until yesterday, after an ultrasound found that there was something lurking inside that was probably preventing him from eating and drinking. The emergency exploratory surgery yesterday afternoon revealed a dark mass, attached to his major organs. The surgeon could not remove it, and thought it was probably pancreatic cancer. It would not have made any difference if we did a biopsy to confirm the cancer. Peanut could not live with it, and could not have survived if they tried to take it out. So my wife and I made the hardest decision we have ever had to make. We asked that Peanut not wake up from his surgery. That the vet allow him to die in peace. Damn, but that was - and is hard.

So this blog today is my tribute to Peanut, my little guy, who adopted me as his master after we brought him home. I will show three pictures of Peanut. The first was taken shortly after we brought him home in December, 2000. He is resting on my arm, a favorite position that we grew to know well over the years.


This next picture was taken three months ago, and shows how he grew into a mature dog who seemed to look to me to answer his questions. I was playing around with a new camera, and took this one of him, sitting on the floor trying to figure out what I was doing with that new black thing. I am so glad I have this photo, one of the last really good shots I have of him.

This third and final photo was taken as I sat on the floor next to him, three days ago. He was lying on his bed, with his eyes almost totally closed. I had a photo class assignment to shoot black and white pictures, and I captured this one of Peanut, never in a thousand years realizing that this would be my last shot of him alive.


He was a brave little guy, and I will miss him terribly. Rest in Peace......