Thanksgiving 2015 - Bolingbrook Illinois 60440

As usual how to start the dialogue is my roadblock.
So many different thoughts.

The beginning of my new culture on Thanksgiving and the synchronicity of Danny calling as I was on my way to the Greater Chicago I-55 Truck Plaza.



head over to see him at work and give him the Leather and wool coats I had been saving for him, which has me recalling the past week I have been occupied with shedding all the things I had accumulated from my past 7 years another chapter in this lifetime.

Finally got to see where he has been working, and as he was trying on the coats and jackets he got a call for a trip to Milwaukee to deliver a mattress up to the VA Hospital up in Milwaukee, which is what he does. So we Took Off on a road trip. The plan was to then go to the safe house for a burger, that did not work out, we delivered the mattress, got to the restaurant, went through the silly routine to get in, only to find that the kitchen was closed, and all that was going I was bad karaoke, so we hit the road home.

What I find so interesting is this is prelude to my new life is so like what I will be doing in my new vocation. Nothing open at midnight north of the Illinois border to eat so we arrive back at his workplace and say so long for now and I head back to my original place the Greater Chicago Truck Plaza and set up my sleeping area, after a bit of rearranging crawling around in the cramped space of the SUV was able to sleep very well till 8:00 this morning, found it heartwarming that I was able to move around and contort in this small space to get dressed made me feel thankful that I have the health to be doing the things my destiny brings to me and then onto my first truck stop breakfast of this new life style, though I am looking forward to my new diet of mostly smoothies but for now I will enjoy my very tasty Mexican Skillet.

My plan for when I am in the van and on the road is to head south to Metropolis, IL to take my two CDL written exams before I leave Illinois, on to Nashville, Clarksville, Chattanooga, into the Smoky Mountains, over to Carrollton, to visit Robert and Maria then down to Phenix City and meet my new business partner Mark. Just got a text from Robert and Maria and shared my plans with them.

Get Out Those 3D Glasses

Mysterious Star Exploded

In January 2002, a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun, temporarily making it the brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy. The mysterious star, called V838 Monocerotis, has long since faded back to obscurity. But observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of a phenomenon called a "light echo" around the star have uncovered remarkable new features. These details promise to provide astronomers with a CAT-scan-like probe of the three-dimensional structure of shells of dust surrounding an aging star.

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this had never been seen before - supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash.

In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter.

Starry Night", Vincent van Gogh's famous painting, is renowned for its bold whorls of light sweeping across a raging night sky. Although this image of the heavens came only from the artist's restless imagination, a new picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope bears remarkable similarities to the van Gogh work, complete with never-before-seen spirals of dust swirling across trillions of kilometres of interstellar space.

This image, obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys,is Hubble's latest view of an expanding halo of light around a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon). The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a flashbulb-like pulse of light two years ago. V838 Mon is located about 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros, placing the star at the outer edge of our Milky Way galaxy.

Called a light echo, the expanding illumination of a dusty cloud around the star has been revealing remarkable structures ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002. Though Hubble has followed the light echo in several snapshots, this new image shows swirls or eddies in the dusty cloud for the first time. These eddies are probably caused by turbulence in the dust and gas around the star as they slowly expand away. The dust and gas were likely ejected from the star in a previous explosion, similar to the 2002 event, which occurred some tens of thousands of years ago. The surrounding dust remained invisible and unsuspected until suddenly illuminated by the brilliant explosion of the central star two years ago.

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged V838 Mon and its light echo several times since the star's outburst in January 2002, in order to follow the constantly changing appearance of the dust as the pulse of illumination continues to expand away from the star at the speed of light. During the outburst event, the normally faint star suddenly brightened, becoming 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun. It was thus one of the most luminous stars in the entire Milky Way, until it faded away again in April 2002. The star has some similarities to a class of objects called "novae," which suddenly increase in brightness due to thermonuclear explosions at their surfaces; however, the detailed behaviour of V838 Mon, in particular its extremely red colour, has been completely different from any previously known nova.

Nature's own piece of performance art, this structure will continue to change its appearance in coming years as the light from the stellar outburst continues to propagate outward and bounce off more distant black clouds of dust. Astronomers expect the echoes to remain visible for at least the rest of the current decade.

The colour image is composed of 3 different exposures through a blue filter (5250 seconds), a green filter (1050 seconds) and a near-infrared filter (300 seconds).

Image Credit: NASA, ESA

Countries I Have Visited

create your own visited country map

Before 9/11 There Was 7/29

On a Saturday morning in July of 1945, Army Air Corps bomber pilot Lt. Colonel William Smith was trying to fly his B-25 bomber through a steadily increasing fog. He was on his way to Newark airport to pick up his commanding officer when he appeared above New York Municipal airport (now La Guardia airport) about 25 miles to the east of his destination. He was requesting a weather report.

Municipal tower reported extremely poor visibility over New York, and urged him to land, but Lt. Colonel Smith requested and received clearance from the military to continue his flight. "From where I'm sitting," the tower operator warned, "I can't see the top of the Empire State Building." Despite the advice from the Municipal tower, Smith plunged into the soupy fog with his two crewmen, bound for Manhattan.

Partway through their flight, the pilot quickly became disoriented because he was unable to see the ground below, and he lost his way. Despite Manhattan regulations that forbade aircraft from flying below 2,000 feet, Smith made the decision to drop below 1,000 feet in an attempt to untangle his bomber from the densest part of the fog. When his plane emerged from the thick, his visibility indeed improved. All around his aircraft, silhouettes of skyscrapers towered above Smith and his crew… and the New York Central Building was directly ahead.

Smith reacted quickly and banked hard, pushing the lumbering bomber to its stress limits to try to avoid the collision. His plane just missed the New York Central Building, flying past its west side with little room to spare. Dozens of skyscrapers lay beyond the first one, leaving a forest of fog-shrouded towers in the plane's path. Smith tried to gain altitude as he weaved between the ghostly shadows of buildings, forcing the bomber to maneuver at its operational extremes.

B-25 CrashWhen the Empire State Building emerged from the fog right ahead of his craft, Smith banked his plane and pulled back as hard as he was able, but the bomber lacked the maneuverability to dodge the large tower looming over it. At 9:49 a.m, in the middle of a desperate, climbing turn, the ten-ton B-25 slammed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building.

Inside, workers for the War Relief Services of the National Catholic Welfare Conference had already started work when their offices were suddenly engulfed an an explosion of flaming, high-octane fuel. The burning gasoline traveled through hallways, stairwells, and elevator shafts, reaching as far as four floors below the point of impact as the building shook. A publicist working in the offices was propelled out of a window from the explosion, and ten others were caught in the inferno.

Fire and debris rained upon the surrounding area, mostly onto nearby structures. One of the bomber's engines completely penetrated the Empire State Building, and fell from the opposite side. The other engine flew into an elevator shaft and severed the cable of an elevator car carrying two women, sending it into free fall.

Catherine O'Connor, who was working in the offices at the time of the crash, later recounted her experience:

"The plane exploded within the building. There were five or six seconds– I was tottering on my feet trying to keep my balance– and three-quarters of the office was instantaneously consumed in this sheet of flame. One man was standing inside the flame. I could see him. It was a co-worker, Joe Fountain. His whole body was on fire. I kept calling to him, 'Come on, Joe; come on, Joe.'" He walked out of it.

Doris Pope, also in the building at the time, initially suspected that World War 2 had been brought to American soil:

"That day, as we were getting ready to take our coffee break, we heard this terrible noise, and the building started to shake. … As we looked out our third-floor window, we saw debris fall on to the street. We immediately thought New York was being bombed."

Helen J. Hurwitt, who had been working in an office across the street, recounted: "My husband and I were in a building directly opposite the Empire State Building. … Large plate-glass windows looked out onto 34th Street. The floor we were on was pretty high. At some point, we heard a horrendous noise and rushed to the windows. We were horrified to see a B-25 half in and half out of the Empire State Building."

The 4-alarm fire brought every available piece of fire-fighting apparatus to the scene. As the building was evacuated, firemen spent about an hour extinguishing the flames. The two women who had been in the free falling elevator were found alive, owing to the elevator's hydraulic emergency braking system which had slowed the car down slightly, and to the cushion of broken, coiled cables which had piled up at the shaft's bottom. Sadly, one of the women was fatally wounded, and died shortly after she was found. The surviving woman, Betty Lou Oliver, currently holds a world record for surviving the 75-story free fall.

Damage to Empire State BuildingAll told, fourteen men and women were killed in the accident, including Lt. Colonel William Smith and his two crewmen, nine office workers killed from the fire, and the woman who died in the elevator. Joe Fountain, the man who had been caught in the fire but managed to walk out of it, died of his wounds several days later. In addition, twenty-six people were injured.

The impact left a hole in the north face of the Empire State Building eighteen feet wide by twenty feet high. Photographer Ernie Sisto captured this incredible image from the 90th floor, where he had two other newsmen dangle him out the window by his legs so he could get the shot past the ledge. Later in the day, a news broadcast by Mutual Broadcasting Company included interviews with eyewitnesses, as well as an audio recording of the crash which had been accidentally captured by a nearby recording studio.

Investigation showed that the structural integrity of the Empire State Building was not compromised by this accident, but the cost to repair the damage was on the order of a million dollars.

For more information, you might check your local library for old copies of New York daily newspapers on microfilm; this was front page news in New York City on July 29, 1945.

It has always bothered me how easily the World Trade Center buildings fell. It always reminded me of those demolition videos.
I realize the building construction is totally different but this is more how I feel a building should react.

This is from https://www.damninteresting.com/in-heavy-fog/

F**K Internet Explorer

Let me start off with that I have nothing personal against Bill Gates. Why should I? I don't know the man, I've never met him. I like the idea that he is trying to cure the world of Malaria. It's the way he does business.

Microsoft controls the current PC software market and has a de facto monopoly on the desktop. This monopoly has not been achieved or maintained by offering the consumer better products. Microsoft has a well earned reputation for selling unreliable products, thrown together from third-party technology, full of bugs and security holes, and in need of constant maintenance and repair. Windows is a technically inferior operating system with a seriously flawed architecture, a weak security model and sloppy code, while other Microsoft applications are equally kludgey. New Microsoft products are essentially re-wrapped bits of old technology which offer no essential improvements over previous or competing products.

Am I Ranting?

This really pisses me off. Being a MAC guy for the last 20 some years I hardly ever use Microsoft software. I was a Netscape fan, and an Opera user and now a true mozilla.org kinda guy and openoffice.org has a great package that totally replaces Microsoft Office.

Here's is my latest escapade
in the Windows World.

A dear friend of mine is a real estate professional and she has a website for her business. It's one of these sites that give you all these page building tools so you develop your pages on-line. She is a busy MOM with young kids and does not really have time to screw around making the website so I volunteered.

I get into the site and things just are not right. Well it turns out that the site does not like Mozilla Firefox. I have not check out exactly why but it's probably a Windows based server and Microsoft when it recognizes the users browser is not Internet Explorer gives you a bad time.

So, I down loaded Internet Explorer so I could work on the site. As soon as I did and rebooted my computer I start getting these POP-UP windows selling me American Express Credit Cards. Explorer doe not even have to be running but it starts up when this adware spyware files on my computer are activated.

They have just been sitting there dormat waiting for Internet Explorer to show up. Took me 3 hours to find and disable these nasty little files. So far nothing has shown up today.

It seems Microsoft has put some software in their browser just so people can do exactly that. Automatically open a page up whether you want to see it or not. That really pisses me off. I know I am not alone. I just want my MAC Back.

I really give those guys at Oracle, Sun and Mozilla a heartfelt thanks for doing such a great job at giving the Windows platform an alternative. If you are a Microsoft Office user , I highly recommend you go to http://openoffice.org and take a look at their FREE set of productivity tools.

Also checkout http://mozilla.org for Firefox and Thunderbird. Firefox is a superb browser and Thunderbird is a fantastic replacement for Outlook Express.

It could have been so different. Change is coming though. In the future you won't need a huge hard drive. Everything you need will be on a server somewhere. You can see that now with the EMail accounts being all browser based.

Soon, if you need to do word processing you will go to a word processing website. Want to do image manipulation you will go to another site. No worries about upgrading all your software. You will only need one software package, your browser. That is going to be built into your computer. Automatically upgraded as needed.

Computers will cost $100.
There will be no need for Windows**
The future is bright.

Am I Ranting?

I Did It Again

My Hard Disk Crashed.

OH, how I hate these Windows machines.
I want My MAC BACK

Well anyway a total reformat, lost all. Now, I am usually really good about backing up. Especially since this has occurred 2 in the last 2 months. Well the reason is I only have 2GB of total hard drive space under Windows 98 and 128 MB RAM. This hard drive is chattering all day rearranging itself.

I was keeping track of all my EMail and IM account passwords but, alas alak not all those numerous remember me passwords. I know I even had a rant on forgetting my blog accounts. I just got lazy and did not think it would happen again so soon.

I did notice though, how little I was really upset by the total loss of all my data. It was a cleansing process.I have been through this before. It's the pack rat syndrome. I feel I real do need that file. Even though I never use it. In some ways I find it refreshing. Nature does my house cleaning and I get to start from scratch. refining the best of what I can remember.

It gives my desktop a whole new look feel and personality. The folder with all my documents takes on a whole new look. A new theme. I have come to be one with my reformatting. So now instead of a struggling Apache server, I have a brisk MySQL personality. I must say it installed flawlessly. So now I think I will play with relational databases for awhile.

More lessons learned. I also forgot my user name for this new blog. Good thing I had my email address. 3 days and I can't remember my user name. Well, in an average day going around on the Internet, I must have to come up with 3-10 usernames. Everywhere you go, they want a user name and a password. But let us not go there again.

Tomorrow is the last day of the year. 2005 has been a tough year for me. But 2006 is already looking great. It's going to be a very good year.


You know I won't be surprised if an old guy with a robe and carrying a clock asks me for a user name tomorrow night. What shall I be? harry2006. I'm sorry but there is already a user by that name. How about harry487429037

Have a great last day.

During my last entry I realized how many IMHO great TV shows there were during my Wonder Bread years. It set me off on a search for some images. I found a few and thought I would share them with you.
Enjoy.

Man From Uncle

Sea Hunt

Science Fiction Theatre

Outer Limits

Lone Ranger

77 Sunset Strip

Commander Cody

My Little Margie

Our Miss Brooks

Jet Jackson

I LOVE Technology

I LOVE Technology. Especially the ways it allows us to communicate.

As a kid I had my own AM radio station, bought it as a kit at Allied Radio. My neighbors used to call and tell me to cut it out as it was bleeding over into all their stations. Then the transistor radio, the one I used to hide under my pillow at night and listen to WLS and Dick Biondi. Shortwave radio was even more interesting. Radio Moscow, BBC London, Havana Cuba. In one average night I would hear so many different stories about the same story. I learned at an early age that there many sides to any one story. The road to truth was not going to be easy.

Then came TV. I know we must have had one before, but I don't remember TV until coming home from school one day and finding this brand new RCA color TV in the living room. It was big. It was heavy and had this really cool RCA color logo that would change color as you moved around. TV was so different back then. I am not sure if everyone just loves what they experience during puberty but they "Just Don't Make TV Shows Like They Used. To"

I saw the Cuban missile crisis unfold, wondering what breaking off diplomatic relations meant, saw every second of the Apollo Program. My favorites: Commander Cody, Jet Jackson, Garfield Goose, Bonanza, what's My Line, The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Science Fiction Theatre. Superman, Maverick, Sea Hunt, To Tell The Truth, I've Got A Secret, Disney's Wonderful World of Color, Candid Camera, $64,000 Question, The Man From UNCLE, Sky King, The Whirly Birds, The Cisco Kid, Lone Ranger, Have Gun Will Travel, Rin Tin Tin, Zorro, Route 66, 77 Sunset Strip, Combat, Dragnet, Highway patrol, My Little Margie, Our Miss Brooks, I Spy, It Takes A Thief, and all those great great Saturday Morning cartoons.

Then there was FAX. I remember this restaurant we used to go to when I was very young. It had a train running around delivering your food and the waitresses used to place orders by writing on a special pad with a special pen. Every movement of the pen made was duplicated in the kitchen. So cool. I still think FAX is cool. I sometime send a fax to myself just to watch it go in one fax machine and out the other.

that's what also so amazing about today's technology. It's so cheap. And so abundant. Used to be you bought a new car every year. Now you buy a new cell phone. Way back, way back if you had one TV you were doing great. Now I find cell phones in the trash.

Then came EMail. How convenient to have all your letters stored electronically’s not like a letter because your handwriting brings you in front of your reader. It’s not like the telephone where your voice makes you very much present in the other person’s world. EMail offers neither of these powerful representations of you. Love letters just don't come across real well in EMail. I don't think I have ever been more misunderstood than in my Emails.But most of all I thank EMail for giving me a perspectiveive on myself. I now know if I was speaking to this person face to face or over the phone there would not be these misunderstandings. So now whenever I feel unimportant, I think about how powerful my presence is. The look in my eye, the inflection of my voice, and the dynamic of my body language has the power to overcome misunderstanding. With such a powerful tool at our disposal we should never have the feeling of feeling unimportant.

And now Instant Messaging (IM).
IM Breaks down the time delay even further allowing for spontaneous thought to be conveyed.
Free flowing streams of consciouness.

This morning I found this one way exchange waiting for me from my friend Andrea.
I would love to share it with you.

(04:01:33) Andrea_2003: Orientation? I hope you have a great day as well. My CLOSING for today has once again been delayed until next week...damm attorneys and mortgage lenders can not communicate simply to share that the need a closing statement? so now my closing will be on Monday or Tuesday.Which of course delays mypay check. My court date with the landlord is this morning that is why I am up so early. can't sleep have more documents to prepare as I am Pro Se. wanna make sure I have all my ducks in a nice clean line.
(04:02:41) Andrea_2003: I have to tell you...I can not wait to see you.anticipation grows.
(04:14:04) Andrea_2003: was this orientation last night or this morning? where is it? i will be downtown tomorrow. will you be in the city?? send me a text after 7am. let me know if you are nearby.
(04:29:11) Andrea_2003 has gone away.
(04:29:11) Andrea_2003 has become idle.
(04:40:51) Andrea_2003 is no longer away.
(04:40:51) Andrea_2003 is no longer idle.
(04:45:45) Andrea_2003: 4:41 am OH my ..when you come from being organized to having kids and being lucky to find the documents you need, in other words complete disorder to the gently growing toward order again... one is always suprised when they locate something exactly where it should be. however one rarely looks in the place it should be first. one simply makes themselves insane first since this is a pattern, nearly has a panic attack, then thinks. AH perhaps i should look here before i tear the place apart and WALA there it is.
(04:47:12) Andrea_2003: 4:45 back to my paper hell. I believe I am in a paper hell of my own design...really need a fireplace.Ironic that in this vision of hell the fire is what frees the spirit.
(04:51:36) Andrea_2003: What madre you contact me now? How often did you search me? Is this the 1st time this year?
(05:05:25) Andrea_2003: clues there may be an artist in the house...
(05:05:57) Andrea_2003: one finds a paint brush in the toothbrush holder.
(05:09:20) Andrea_2003: do you keep fresh garlic on hand?
(05:11:41) Andrea_2003: money is not everything, I'd rather have my health...but it provides comfort and peace of mind.
(05:11:59) Andrea_2003: My children are depending on me.
(05:18:18) Andrea_2003: my printer is printing pictures since each is worth a thousand words. I will arm myself with fewer words and more images. FOR COURT.
(05:18:44) Andrea_2003: my coffee machine is pumpin' out rich java.
(05:18:55) Andrea_2003: my bath tub is filling.
(05:19:15) Andrea_2003: i am nervous.
(05:19:27) Andrea_2003: the kids are playing with the cat.
(05:23:21) Andrea_2003: even the dihwasher is workin' it's magic.
(06:55:44) Andrea_2003 has gone away.
(06:55:45) Andrea_2003 has become idle.

I LOVE Technology

Blogs

I have started a few of these and they sit on servers somewhere waiting patiently for a new entry. Now if I could only remember where they are. Was it doyouownblog.com or blogdownhere.com, or was it blogplace or blogtown and then just what was my username. Oh gosh what was I thinking about when I made that password up. So many obstacles to reacquainting my self with past thought. MY PASSWORD.

It so impulsive this cyberspace of ours.
Usernames are made up with the mood I am in at the time.
One day I promise to write all those usernames and passwords down.

It's amazing to me to think about how much stuff is sitting throught our world wide web. At any one moment we have a wonderful snapshot of our world's culture.
A global time capsule.

This Christmas "For the web that has everything".
A place to put it. Just what would that be?

Well with that all in mind. Here is another blog with another username.
Let see how far we can get this time.

It's also so hard to concentrate as I listen to Annie Lennox singing about being made love to. She is one very powerful woman. She stirs my mind.

Where is my Annie Lennox?

Restores my quest for that ever-elusive true love.
Do you believe?