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Week 52: Paying More Than Just Cash
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We needed to purchase several items from Ikea, and we decided to make the drive out to an area store to do it. In the as-is section I found a sign stating that the purchase of certain items required registration. The stated purpose was to send the purchaser information about the dangers of tipping shelves, but I don't see a reason why related literature can't be provided at the time of purchase. I suspect it's just another way to monetize buyer information. I am a big advocate for consumer privacy, and I find this kind of requirement quite disturbing--I actually feel somewhat disinclined to shop at Ikea again.
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This Christmas my wife and I decided to make cookies as gifts for our neighbors. She has an excellent recipe for soft, doughy cookies made with pudding mix, so we set out to make a half dozen for each each neighbor. In total we baked almost 80 cookies--enough to leave us with over two dozen after all the gifts were dropped off.
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My favorite band is a small Finnish outfit called Pepe Deluxé. They first formed in the mid-1990s, but they've only produced five studio albums in that time. In October their latest album was released: The Phantom Cabinet Vol. 1. Their previous album was released in 2012--a whopping nine-year gap between albums!
Week 49: VC-25A "Air Force One"
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I was fortunate to arrange on very short notice to see Air Force One visit KMCI on Wednesday. Despite increased security, I was able to park at a well-known but officially off-limits location to see the aircraft up close. This photo, as Air Force One prepared to depart that evening, turned out particularly well.
Week 48: A Glimpse of a KC-135
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Military traffic rarely comes to the local airport--almost all departures and arrivals are small passenger jets. On Friday I decided to go planespotting over my lunch break, and as one aircraft approached the runway, I suddenly noticed that it had four engines. The aircraft performed a touch-and-go instead of landing, and as it climbed out, I realized it was a USAF KC-135 tanker. This was the best photo I was able to get of the elusive 367-80 derivative.
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This Pump It Up chart, "Cosmical Rhythm" D16, barely qualifies as a 16 by my reckoning. My accuracy in almost all rhythm games is poor, however, so anytime I achieve an "S" rank I'm very happy. There are three levels of "S" rank one can achieve in PIU; since I received one "good" judgment, I achieved the middle rank.
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I find sunsets uniquely beautiful because of the different shades of color they can display. This particular evening was full of purple light due to the angle of the evening sun on high clouds. I normally apply some small color and lighting corrections to my pictures, but beyond resizing and posterization, this photo is untouched.
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When I visit Chicago, one of my favorite places to visit is Stan's Donuts and Coffee. A friend, whose birthday party I attended this weekend, was the one to introduce me to the shop. We live far away from Chicago, but surprisingly, Stan's delivers anywhere in the continental United States by airmail. We ordered two dozen donuts for the party.
Week 44: A Night at the Arcade
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I and many of my friends have slowly been returning to arcades since the worst of the pandemic has tapered off, but we often go on different nights. Wednesdays are usually half-price night for non-redemption games, however, so most people like to go then if they can. This week we had 11 people come to the arcade in one night--the largest group I'd seen there since 2019.
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I own a Múseca arcade machine, which I purchased shortly after the game was discontinued by Konami. A friend is building a reproduction machine for his own use; the top half is complete, but he needed to get some measurements of the bottom half of the cabinet, so this weekend we took a tape measure and protractor to every piece of the base. This picture shows the machine mostly reassembled.
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Usually by late October, the pumpkin patch near us has almost been picked clean, and there are few good pumpkins left. When my wife and I visited on Saturday, however, the fields were still covered in perfect pumpkins for both cooking and carving. We were told by one of the owners that 2021's harvest was the best yield they'd had in 30 years.
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After hovering in the 15 range in Pump It Up for months, I'm starting to clear a few more S17s. Most of those clears are by the skin of my teeth, but as long as I don't stage break, they still count as clears. From here I need to work on lower body flexibility if I'm going to improve much more.
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I am not a practicing Buddhist, but I've found many of the focusing exercises and the general philosophy of the movement to be helpful in my life. I already had some fake plants, a tabletop fountain, and a small figure of Bodai on my desk at work, but I hadn't consolidated them until this week. The result is a very calming space in the frenzy of the workday.
Week 39: His Royal Highness, King Leondidas
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My wife and I went to a Renaissance festival on Sunday. This weekend happened to be dog weekend, so beyond the usual festival fare of attendees clad in pseudo-Medieval garb, we saw many breeds of dogs, some wearing costumes of their own. Our favorite was this royal pug.
Week 38: Too Close for Comfort
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One of our two vehicles has broken down, and until we figure out what to do with it, we keep it in the driveway. We're borrowing a third car in the meantime, but in order to let our second car out of the garage, I have to park the borrowed car behind the inoperative car. A few days ago I discovered that I'd parked far closer than I thought I had--but I still wasn't touching. I estimate the gap to be about a quarter of an inch.
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The local stores have embraced the autumn season and have begun setting up Halloween decorations. I missed such sights last year, when most non-essential businesses were shuttered or sent home to work, and many properties were left undecorated.
Week 36: Garage Arcade Maintenance
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A friend of mine owns several pieces of arcade equipment and lives in a rather small duplex. One of his projects was to build a two-player competitive board, with two monitors and two sets of controls back-to-back. He is seen here configuring MAME on the board.
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It's been quite a struggle to clear new 19 charts in Sound Voltex. In the last three years I've only cleared nine of them. This is my ninth clear: Everlasting Message (GRV). Unfortunately Konami's eAmusement network was undergoing maintenance at the time, so the clear was not saved to my account.
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Even though I work at my office full-time again, in the evenings my wife and I often stay in. Our neighborhood has a lot of trees that block our view of the horizon. These days it's somewhat rare for me to be out at twilight, which makes sights like this a treat.
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A spot in our neighborhood gives a view of a drainage ditch lined by trees and bushes. While the sight of the concrete-lined ditch is not a natural one, I was moved by the greenery surrounding it, giving the impression of a small, forgotten creek in the woods.
Week 32: "Big Boy" in Kansas City
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UP no. 4014 arrived at Kansas City's Union Station on Monday, 2021-08-09. I took a trip up to the city to see the locomotive in person and try out my wife's Nikon DSLR camera.
Week 31: A Confluence of Creeks
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The creeks near my house have banks that are almost entirely overgrown with thick trees and brush, but at a certain spot where two meet, there is a wide path to the edge of the water. I often stop here when I'm cycling.
Week 30: Visiting My Favorite Aircraft
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I took over 700 photos at EAA AirVenture with my SLR camera, but one of my favorite pictures was taken with my phone. I posed in front of my favorite aircraft of all time: the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10.
Week 29: A View of a Local Arcade
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I often visit local arcades to play dance games such as Pump It Up. Every time I go, however, I'm always captivated by a dazzling rainbow of lights. It's quite a treat for the eyes.
Week 28: The Original Automobile CD Player
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We came across an early-1960s Chrysler Imperial Crown Coupe at the car show, a vehicle I had never seen before. Much to our amusement, when we looked in the seat, we discovered a miniature 45 RPM phonograph turntable.
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One of my dreams is to get a private pilot's license and be able to fly my own plane. To help with that goal, I'm learning about the basic principles of flight control using simulators. I have previously owned a joystick (the Logitech stick to the right in this picture), but not a full control set.
Week 26: US Air Force Thunderbirds in Formation
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The maneuver demonstrated is called the "echelon formation", in which four F-16 Fighting Falcons fly in a staggered column, on slightly behind the other. It was stated at the show that the aircraft maintain a distance of about 18 inches from one another, but the leader and the second aircraft appear to be even closer than that.
Week 25: Damage to Our Previous Vehicle
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With the insurance case now closed, our old vehicle has been sent to a salvage yard, where I took this picture. The rear bumper on the passenger side was smashed in during the accident, compromising the frame and jamming the trunk shut. Some of the visible damage, such as the cut around the trunk latch, was intentionally done by a collision center in order to get the trunk open.
Week 24: Don't Get (Aspect) Ratioed
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When I digitize VHS cassettes at home, my capture card records the video stream at 720p resolution. I use Handbrake to convert the video to the SD resolution of 640x480. During one conversion, I mistyped the resolution into Handbrake, and the the tape came out with a resolution of 64x480 instead. I didn't catch the error until after I had deleted the source file and I had to rerecord the entire three-hour tape.
Week 23: Kino Explores the Yard
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We own an African pygmy hedgehog named Kino. As hedgehogs go, he is rather antisocial and doesn't like being touched, but he is still a curious little creature and enjoys exploring. When the weather is nice we'll take him out to the backyard, where he comes across all sorts of interesting plants and bugs.
Week 22: A-7 Corsair II on Display
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This LTV A-7 Corsair II was built in Dallas, TX around 1974 and based at Naval Air Station China Lake, CA for over a decade. It was retired sometime after 1990 and sent to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, FL, from where it was loaned first to the Olathe Naval Air Museum and then to New Century Air Center. It is currently on outdoor display in Navy Park at New Century Air Center, Gardner, KS.
Week 21: The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2
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Though the first Galaxy Fold was released almost two years ago, I'd never seen a folding-screen phone in person until last week. The phone is surprisingly solid in the hand and easy to handle. I would actually consider purchasing the phone if a few key features had been included in it--and, of course, if I hadn't already preordered the F(x)tec Pro1 X.
Week 20: Wildlife of Rob's Backyard
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A nervous-looking wild rabbit crouches on the back patio. We recently put out a bird feeder and a mix of wild bird feed, only to discover that the birds are very picky and only eat a few choice seeds. The rest are knocked onto the ground, where rabbits come by to eat them.
Week 19: FedEx DC-10 Landing at KMCI
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Of the two north/south runways at KMCI, 1L/19R is more condusive to planespotting. Cargo flights at KMCI almost always arrive and depart on 1R/19L, however, because the cargo terminals are adjacent to that runway. On this day 19L was closed, so cargo flights came in on 19R, leading to some excellent photo opportunities.
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