Our first camp was at Osage Cove,  a large Corps of Engineers campground situated along the banks of Kaw Lake in north central Oklahoma.  Kaw Lake is one of several lakes in Oklahoma constructed and maintained by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

We were just there for the overnight stop, though we did get in a bit of walking for some exercise.

Leaving Kaw Lake, we were headed to Kansas and a fort.

When I started using AKVIS Sketch to create digitized “sketches” from photos, I was creating change of address cards for sale on print-on-demand company Zazzle.   So far, a few of them have actually sold.  I’ll continue to create similar items and others.

Like a lot of what I am doing on-line, this is something that I enjoy doing and any income it brings in will help pay for our on-line activities.

The images below are some abandoned houses in Arkansas.

Oil Embargo, 1973–1974

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations. Arab OPEC members also extended the embargo to other countries that supported Israel including the Netherlands, Portugal, and South Africa. The embargo both banned petroleum exports to the targeted nations and introduced cuts in oil production. Several years of negotiations between oil-producing nations and oil companies had already destabilized a decades-old pricing system, which exacerbated the embargo’s effects. (U.S. Department of State  – Office of the Historian)

The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973.  Our little family, having recently moved from Idaho to Connecticut, was living in a tiny trailer with a small addition in  Uncasville.  Today, that same “neighborhood” is dominated by the nearby Mohegan Sun casino.  We only lived there a couple of months before we moved into a low-income  apartment in nearby Norwich.

(The trailer has recently been removed with a modern tiny home [pictured] now near where it had sat for decades. I was surprised as the old trailer had still been there on Google street view when I looked a few months ago.)

After the holidays and the beginning of the New Year, I joined the USS Casimir Pulaski, SSBN 633, Blue Crew, which had just returned from Scotland after turning over the boat to the Gold Crew.  About three months later, we would be returning to Scotland to take our turn on patrol.

In the interim, and beginning when we got  to Connecticut, we did a bit of exploring.  Karen and I had been married for just over 2 years, with a daughter who would be 1 in February, and this was our fourth duty station.  We didn’t have a car in Illinois, and weren’t there for very long after we got married, so exploring was limited, though we did make it into Chicago before leaving.  In Vallejo, California, we didn’t have a car at first, so explored a bit on foot.  After we got our first car, a 1973 Vega station wagon, we put a lot of miles on it and saw a lot in a short period of time.  Gas was about 20 to 30 cents a gallon at the time and, sometimes, we literally saved pocket change to buy gas.  Our explorations continued in Idaho, where my schooling was on shift work (since the training reactors operated around the clock, the hands-on training ran around the clock.)  Because of the shift work, we had some long weekends where we were able to see quite a bit.

We did see some long lines at gas (petrol) stations while we were out ‘n about, but it really didn’t inhibit us much.  The price of oil had quadrupled from US $3 a barrel to US $12, but, since a good share of the price of fuel was taxes, the price at the pump didn’t go up the same amount.  The rising prices, though, did have a severe impact on the economy.

By the time the crew – and me –  left to go to Scotland to take the boat, the embargo was over.

The refit period and patrol generally lasted 100 days and  forty years ago today, I had recently returned from my first deterrent patrol on a nuclear submarine.

I can draw simple things, but I’m not really an artist, so, wanting to use “sketches” instead of photos for a project, I went looking for software that could transform photos into sketches.

I’ve used free online software in the past for this, but none seemed very versatile.  My photo-editing software, Paint Shop Pro, can create sketches, but it’s hit and miss getting good results and it’s not very intuitive for tweaking on the image.

I decided to try commercial software and the first one I came across seems to be perfect for what I want to do.

According to the product page for AKVIS Sketch, it “converts photos into pencil sketches and watercolor paintings. Now you do not need to handle a pencil to feel like an artist. All you need to create your original work of art is good taste and AKVIS Sketch.”

AKVIS has a number of artistic photo manipulation software tools.  A 10 day fully functional trial period is available for each.

My 10 day trial of Sketch has expired. I liked it well enough that I’ll be purchasing the AKVIS Sketch software. I would like to include some of the other software, but that’ll have to wait.  In the meantime, here’s some of the images I converted during the trial period.

One of the things that I noticed is that increasing the color saturation – more color –  of the photo resulted in better “sketches.”

After several hours of working with the program, I had saved 4 presets. I processed each photo with each preset and saved the result, with little additional adjustment. Later, I selected my final version from those that had been saved and deleted the rest.

 image by FairbanksMike on Flickr under provisions of a Creative Commons License
 image by Bill Debevc on Flickr under provisions of a Creative Commons License.
 image by cloudchaser32000 on Flickr under provisions of a Creative Commons License
 image by craigfinlay on Flickr under provisions of a Creative Commons License
  image by Nicholas A. Tonelli on Flickr under provisions of a Creative Commons License
  image by Don Graham on Flickr under provisions of a Creative Commons License

Click on image to see larger version.

“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth.”

“What giants?” Asked Sancho Panza.

“The ones you can see over there,” answered his master, “with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long.”

“Now look, your grace,” said Sancho, “what you see over there aren’t giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone.”

“Obviously,” replied Don Quijote, “you don’t know much about adventures.”

― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

It seems like a lot of people don’t realize that they can edit their Facebook comments.

It’s pretty simple.

Here’s a comment I left the other day:

When I hover the mouse cursor over on the right side of my comment, a pencil icon appears.

If I continue to hover there, a screen tip will appear that tells me I can edit or delete the comment.

When I click on the pencil the option menu appears.

Clicking on edit opens up the comment box for me to make changes.

After I make the changes, and hit enter, the changes appear with the comment. As well, the word “edited” appears on the line below the comment.

(Cross-posted from Haw Creek Reflections)

Of them all, Geronimo is the name most recognized today, over 100 years after his death – perhaps appropriate, given that his small band was the last of the independent  Indian¹ warriors who had refused to accept the United States occupation of the American West.

Age 74, ©1June 2, 1903	Photo by Warren Mack Oliver, ©1907	Age 78, ©1906
Photo by H. H. Clark, between 1900 and 1909. Women describe variously as “two nieces” or “a daughter and a niece.”	1907 photo by A.B. Canady, Altoona, Kas.	Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition, Omaha, Nebraska. Photo by Frank A. Rinehart or his assistant Adolph F. Muhr ©1898

With a well-known historical figure such as Geronimo, there is a wealth of information – and misinformation – available online.  Rather recreating any of that here, I will simply offer  Geronimo’s Story of His Life, published posthumously in 1915, opening on page 17, Chapter III, Early Life:

¹According to a 1995 U.S. Census Bureau set of home interviews, most of the respondents with an expressed preference refer to themselves as “American Indians” or simply “Indians”; this term has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups, but does not traditionally include Native Hawaiians or certain Alaskan Natives, such as Aleut, Yup’ik, or Inuit peoples. (Wikipedia)

Haw Creek Reflections provides background information and links for images used for products in our Zazzle store.

Click on image to see related products.

Additional Information

Apache (Just a sample of what’s available on a Google search on “Apache tribe”)

• Indians.org
• Wikipedia
• White Mountain Apache Tribe
• Apache Tribe of Oklahoma
• Yavapai-Apache Nation
• Inter Tribal Council of Arizona
• Lipan Apache tribe of Texas
• Jicarilla Apache Nation
• Texas State Historical Association

American Indians

• National Congress of American Indians
• National Museum of the American Indian
• Indians.org
• American Indian College Fund
• Native Americans in the United States (Wikipedia)
• Indigenous peoples of the Americas (Wikipedia)
• and more from Google search on American Indian

I recently ordered replacement parts for our kitchen stove online from RepairClinic.

The main problem was that one of the large heating elements on the stove top, after intermittent problems, had stopped working.  I ordered the burner, the associated wiring and some other pieces primarily for cosmetic improvement.

The order arrived with the right number of parts.  However, instead of the surface heating element, there was a small cylindrically shaped object, a pressure relief device for a pressure washer.

It turned out that RepairClinic has online chat.

3:54:13 PM – Hi, my name is Erik. How can I assist you today?

3:56:06 PM – We just got our shipment, but it didn’t include Item #: 911361 Description: Coil Surface Element. Instead it included item 1955152 (UPC code), which we didn’t order.

3:56:40 PM – Ok let me take a look at your order and see what happened. One moment please

3:58:09 PM – The part we got is a thermal release valve for a homelite pressure washer, which we don’t have.

4:00:16 PM – Ok I am going to set up a replacement for the surface element. I will make sure that the warehouse grabs the correct part this time. I am not sure if someone back there just grabbed the wrong number or something else happened. I apologize for that regardless. I can upgrade the replacement to fedex ground and that will get to you this Tuesday

4:00:42 PM – Thanks, Erik!!!!!

4:00:58 PM – You’re welcome. We don’t need to get that valve back. You can throw that out.

4:01:15 PM – OKAY.

4:01:45 PM – Can I help you with anything else?

4:02:09 PM – No, that’s it. Thanks much for your fast help.

4:02:18 PM – You’re welcome Mike. Have a great day.

The part arrived as scheduled.

There’s nothing special about this customer service experience other than this is the way that it’s supposed to go – resolution achieved in just a few minutes.

How often do you hear good customer service stories?  How about bad ones?