work

Resetting

October 14, 2009

Ten days ago, I had finally had it.

I had been created a photo gallery from the images of our first day in Rocky Mountain National Park. Unfortunately, I was having more difficulties than normal in getting the gallery uploaded to the server.

I had also been having more and more little problems with my computer — nothing serious that kept me from using it, just a bunch of little things that I either found a work-around on or just gave up on.

The computer was working and doing just about everything I needed, but it was 3 years old, and it was time for a change.

A drastic change.

No, I didn’t go out and buy a new computer, though that was a consideration.

Instead, I reset the computer back to the original software configuration. I’ve taken more drastic measures — such as reformatting the hard drive or buying a new one — to resolve problems with previous computers. This was bad enough, since I had to reload the programs I wanted and install all of the updates. That’s still not completely done.

I’ve also also figured out my problem with uploading material to the server. I’m in the process of downloading all of my material from the server and will be changing the way that I publish new stuff to the website. (The problem was in Microsoft FrontPage extensions, which I won’t be using any more.)

With working odd hours and dealing with all this, posting material from our September trip was interrupted. I will be posting more from the trip, hopefully in the next day or so.

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On the road again — in Colorado

August 30, 2009

My anticipated “weekend” away from work is being extended by a planned 3 week vacation.

We are currently camped at a KOA in La Junta, Colorado. Yesterday, we camped at Sandy Cove Corps of Engineers campground on Canton Lake in Oklahoma.

Tomorrow we will be traveling on for a week in the Rocky Mountain National Park area. We’ll be camped in the park for four days. When we reserved our campsite for the park, there was nothing available for the Labor Day weekend, so we made reservations at the Estes Park KOA. We prefer to have spots reserved for holiday weekends rather than trying to find a campsite when there will likely be a lot of other people camping.

After Labor Day, though, we shouldn’t have any trouble finding a place to camp.

We will be traveling on Labor Day, though…, and will probably be traveling I40, which brings back memories of another Labor Day on I40.

In 2001, we were headed from Steamboat Springs to Estes Park and decided to go by way of Golden to see a quilt exhibit. We didn’t even think about the fact that there would be heavy, heavy traffic heading from the mountains back to the cities.

We ended up in a traffic jam backed up for miles.

Fortunately, this time, we’ll be heading away from the cities, going west.

Here are a few photos from yesterday at Canton Lake:

Canton Lake, Oklahoma, from Sandy Cove
sunflower at Canton Lake, Oklahoma - Sandy Cove Core of Engineers campground and beach
The following “drawing” of boys at play in Lake Canton was rendered from a photograph using Corel Paintshop Pro Photo X2.
A drawing rendered from a photo of boys at play in Lake Canton, Oklahoma
jet ski on Lake Canton in glare of setting sun, Oklahoma

While I will be “off-line” and away fro the internet until Friday, there will continue to be daily posts that have been “pre-published.”

I plan to have more photos to share later in the week.

This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

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Work, work, work, rest

August 25, 2009

I’ve been working quite a number of hours in the simulator the last few weeks.

One of the requirements for reactor operators is that they demonstrate the ability to start up the reactor. Each candidate practiced the reactor startup 5 times and then had a startup where he or she is evaluated by someone from Operations management.

So that’s a total of 6 startups for each student. There are 12 students, so, over the last few weeks, there have been 72 startups for training or evaluation — and I was there for every one of them. Total time in the simulator for this was about 84 hours over a 4 week period — about 20 hours a week. And that doesn’t include the several startups that I did to verify the scenario I was using and to establish the conditions for the evaluations.

This week, I am working in the simulator from about 4 PM to midnight every day, providing support and guidance for a crew of students who are shutting the plant down and cooling to “cold iron.” Once that’s done, they’ll be doing a heatup to normal operating condition, with a startup and power escalation to as high in power as we can get before the end of the shift on Friday.

I’ll certainly be ready for a rest when the weekend rolls around.

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Colorado — The round up, “grub pile”

August 22, 2009

Colorado. The round up, grub pile, between 1898 and 1905

published between 1898 and 1905

photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

Library of Congress Photochrom Print Collection

The Photochrom Print Collection has almost 6,000 views of Europe and the Middle East and 500 views of North America. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches.

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Don’t turn there, fool!

August 20, 2009

Most days, my hours at work go from 11:30 AM to 8 PM.

When I first started in the middle of July, the sun was still up when I left in the evening. Each day, though, it’s been darker and darker when I leave the building.

Image originally uploaded to flickr by Polarimetric

Last night, I left the parking lot around 8:20. It was getting pretty dark by that time.

About a half mile after I turned on highway 64, I came up behind a car that was driving about 40 miles an hour — in a 55 mph speed zone. I knew I wouldn’t be behind him long because I would be getting on the interstate at Exit 78, which was just ahead.

He started hitting his brakes and I realized he was probably in an unfamiliar area looking for something.

His turn signal came on and I realized what he was looking for.

I started flashing my high beams on and off at him.

“Don’t turn there, fool! You really don’t want to turn there!”

He started to turn anyway. He probably thought I was some crazy person, flashing my high beams at him like that.

I pushed down on the horn and held it down and continued to flash my lights, while hitting my brakes to allow him to swing back into my lane — if he got my message.

“DON’T TURN THERE, FOOL! THAT’S THE OFF RAMP! YOU’LL BE GOING THE WRONG WAY!

He was almost all the way across the other lane of traffic when he jerked his wheel back to the right and turned away from the east bound exit from the interstate. After getting back into the correct lane of traffic, he drove just a little bit further and turned at the right point to get to the Exit 78 east bound entrance to the freeway.

The interchange at Exit 78 is rather unusual. When it was originally constructed, there was only an east bound exit and a west bound entrance. The east bound exit went right to the highway, while the west bound entrance had a different access point from the highway and had an overpass.

When a west bound exit and an east bound entrance was added a few years back, they were tied in to the old west bound ramp and overpass.

It can be confusing.

The guy I was following last night was obviously unfamiliar with the area. He probably had gotten off on the previous exit and was following the highway, looking for a way to get back on. He thought he had found it when he saw vehicles at the exit waiting for traffic to clear.

He was wrong… and lucky.

I’ve only turned down one way roads a couple of times that I can remember. Last year, I almost turned on to the west bound off ramp of Exit 78. The “new” on ramp is where the old turn was for a road paralleling the interstate that I sometimes use on my way home.

Have you ever made a turn and went the wrong way on a “one-way?”

day 79

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A very long day, publication plans, etc., etc.

August 18, 2009

Yesterday was supposed to be a 12 hour day. I went in a little early to make sure everything was set up right for the evaluations that we would be doing in the simulator. Unfortunately, four of the six evaluations took longer than expected. After getting to work around 6 A.M., I didn’t leave the building until 10:40 P.M.

It made for a very long day — the longest work day I’ve had in a very long while.

However, it’s enough to let me take all of Friday off, so I’ll have a three day weekend.

Blog Posting

While I am working a 40 hour week, I’ve found that publication on a very regular schedule works for me, so long as I keep with the blog tagline, “Sharing some of my photos, vintage images I’ve discovered, and — occasionally — commentary and thoughts from retired life.”

And that’s what I plan to do, much as I’ve done the last couple of weeks — photos from our travels, vintage images of interest that I’ve found, and an occasional commentary, say once a week or so, on various topics.

For the visitors who like my photos, I’m also publishing them on two other blogs, Haw Creek and Haw Creek Out ‘n About.

While those two blogs are intended to have slightly different content, one RV related and the other travel related, right now all I am primarily publishing a random photo from our travels each day.

Photos published here and on the other two blogs are always different from each other and, generally, have not been published in the past. The exceptions to that are that I may republish some images that I post while we are traveling and some images that I posted before I established my current semi-random selection process may reappear. It’s just too difficult to go back through all of the old posts.