Saturday, October 31, 2020

A computer professional's dream

A couple of opportunities came together today to make a computer professional's dream come true: Jimmy had suggested to Carl that they do some shooting practice while we were here on the farm. Carl had a number of old hard drives that needed to be destroyed. And so... this afternoon, Carl got to fulfill a dream: shooting holes in some computer equipment!

The sentenced disk drives about to meet their fate!

Do you see that tiny damage on the upper white part?

Yeah, that little nick in the case... that's the damage a shot from a .22 did... These disk drives might be a little tougher than first expected!

The drives laid out on the ground after being shot. Carl said it was pretty funny to watch, as they would be hit, and some would fall over quite dramatically, lengthening out their death throes. Some just fell right over though!

Another one showing the small amount of damage from the .22.

On the other hand, the black powder rifle did some major damage...

The black powder turned these two disks into a cup-shape and blew them right out of the case. The black powder rifle is a muzzle loader and higher caliber (I think maybe .45 - Jimmy told Carl but he doesn't remember).

Jimmy setting up for a shot with the black powder rifle.

It not only made a LOT of noise, it also gave quite an impressive show of smoke when being shot!

The hard drives after being destroyed from further use!

The two rifles - black powder on the left, .22 on the right.

So, Carl got to shoot up some computer equipment -- what fun for a former computer professional!! Haven't we all wanted to throw a computer off the roof of a building at some point?!?!?

Friday, October 30, 2020

More scanning

I have been working on scanning in a box of pictures that I got from Aunt Libby (or from Aunt Libby's things, I don't really recall the source). Some are so precious...


My mom, Ollie Hunt Talley

I love this one for the person hiding behind the table... I think the table cloth needed to be a little larger!

 

Mom with my Uncle Carl


Mom was so happy to be a Mama -- and we all know that Jimmy was a perfect child!!!

 

I'm at 230+ photos scanned so far... I'm thinking I should make them available somewhere online that family members can access. My thought right now is someplace that I can share the link with people who need access but not to make it public.

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Scanning

When we picked up boxes from Scott's house in Elgin (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2020/09/stuff.html), there were a few boxes of photos to scan in. This was a task that Carl had planned to accomplish while RVing, but it had not yet come to the top of the to-do list.

With quite a number of pictures to scan, and since the scanning software that we had on our computers only scanned one picture at a time, Carl started doing research on products that might help. He narrowed down the choices to two products (ScanSpeeder and VueScan), each of which allowed you to do a few scans to try out the software. He found that ScanSpeeder seemed to be the easiest to use, automatically recognized multiple photos on the photo bed, and gave great quality for the photos he had to process.

Here is an example showing the original and the scanned result:

The software does a great job of color correcting to take out the yellowing that has come about with age, and allows you to notate with information that may have been on the back of the picture.

It will allow you to scan as many pictures as fit on the scanner bed, recognize each picture separately, and put each picture into a separate file. We've brought in the HP 7310 All-in-One printer that was in Miss Doozie -- it has a larger scanner bed and seems to do brighter scans than the printer/scanner that we will be keeping in Gracie. So, Carl has done some scanning while we've been here at the farm. We are debating whether to take the pictures with us and continue scanning as we travel, or whether to leave the pictures and scanner here in the container to work on at a later time when we are here at the farm. But we're thankful to have software that is helping to make this task a little less onerous!  

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Building a new skill!

Carl had the opportunity to build another new skill on Tuesday:

Jimmy needed to use the crawler for a task Tuesday afternoon,

... so he invited Carl to come and try it out.

"push *this* one?"

After learning some of the basic functions...

 ... it was time to give it some tries!



 


 


 


 


 


 


 

 


 


 


 


 

 


 

Wrapping up his lesson

Some of the results of the crawler's tracks on the ground

It seems that there were a lot of new skills to learn!

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

A visit to a pumpkin patch

Carl had the opportunity to visit a local farm that is growing pumpkins and winter squash. He took a number of pictures at the field while helping with picking and gathering a few for our own use!

The whole pumpkin turns orange as it matures (it does not need to be exposed to sun directly).

There are still blooms on the vines -- they are just continuing to produce! But... the plan is to plow the field under this weekend, so this is the end of the harvest.




some decorative gourds...

... and pumpkins...

... and pie pumpkins



Watermelons were also growing.


Two that had very different colors right near each other.

Carl and Jimmy were helping others who were picking pumpkins 20# or more and putting them at the road between the fields for pick up.

On the way back to the farm, they drove past a field where cotton was growing and Carl snapped a couple of quick pictures.


Pumpkins that Carl brought home...

Squash that Carl brought home.


Monday, October 26, 2020

Cow info from Culver's

We visited Culver's a few times while in the Chicagoland area... one time, I wasn't very hungry, so got a kid's meal and was reading the information they supplied on the bag:





 I thought you might enjoy the Kid's meal info from Culver's!

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Some creatures around the farm

Some pictures from our phones over the past few days:

A juvenile eagle in the snag near our rig

One of the dairy cows on a foggy morning

Mocha #2 waiting for her bottle

Another shot of the dairy cows on a foggy morning

A masked bandit!

Looking around to see if anyone is watching! I guess he is in vogue wearing his mask all the time!

We sure enjoy all the creatures that we see around the farm!