My elderly mother in law was telling me about her macular degeneration. About 20 minutes later I checked the weather using my Yahoo weather app in my iphone. Look at the bottom. Frickin creepy! Damn phones!
Another one of my projects. Turns out yachts are just giant robots now. The bridge The engines - two 12-cylinder diesels
1. Ground Beef, mixed with one bag of frozen corn, and one bag of frozen peas, carrots, and onions. several seasonings, including Ms. Dash. 2. And old advertisement, off of the back of one of the pictures I bought at the thrift store. 3. Thanksgiving leftovers, from years back. Sweet tater yams, stuffing, roll, turkey, and had some cranberries out of a can also. 4. Fried Chicken, I shake n baked, and cooked in the over, with buttered bread.
This [photo below] was a special treat from my baby [photo above] - Bacon-wrapped asparagus and stuffed mushrooms. I don't remember much else except the asparagus was marinated and it was all amazing! We took turns making gourmet meals for each other. Sometimes we made dinner together. My specialty was Champaign Shrimp in a white butter-cream sauce. OMG sooooooo good but about 3000 calories a meal LOL! Okay maybe not that bad but we both made ourselves sick one night eating too much, It was sooooooooo rich OMG the pain, the pain... pushing 2500 calories for sure. And so good you can't stop eating.
This is an image that was originally a photograph I took of several raptors flying above my wife and I while we were hiking up to the summit of Sharp Top Mountain, which rewards your effort with one of the most spectacular views in Virginia. On a clear day, you can literally see forever. Sharp Top is part of the Peaks of Otter, which are situated along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Bedford, Virginia. Bedford also happens to be where the National D-Day Memorial is located: https://www.dday.org For kicks I took the picture into Photoshop and ran it through some filters and was pleasantly surprised with the effect they had on trees and the colorization of the image. Originally, the sky was a normal light blue color and the green areas were grayish clouds. My wife is a blonde and ended up with this flaming vermillion hair which contrasts nicely with the cool colors in the sky. It's a fun pic but the best part is the memory of the hike and the wonderful weekend we spent up there. Usually, we camp when we're up in the mountains but since it was my birthday we shacked up at the Peaks of Otter Lodge which is located at the base of the Peaks along the Blue Ridge Parkway. This isn't my picture, but it's the view of the lake and Sharp Top from the lodge: I have a nice painting of this scene hanging in our living room. Needless to say, it's a very popular destination and you have to book reservations well in advance.
This was one of my creations [the prototype] for a major aircraft manufacturing company. We were nominated for and entered in the National Ergo Cup Competition. This is a photo from that competition. We were told we might have won if not for a technical glitch on the part of my customer. We employed the notion of force amplification. Any force applied to the handle by the operator is multiplied by a large factor and is done so intelligently over all types of moves. This allowed for highly precise control with very heavy, large loads, in extremely tight quarters. It was originally designed for a one-ton, 40 foot, titanium landing beam. It reduced the labor cost of moving this through the factory from 6 labor-hours, to less than 15 labor-minutes [seen cited on the green sign].
When I was working on this, it was a highly classified Israeli project for Mossad. It was one of the very first stealth boats. It had many other secret features as well. Even though I spent an entire summer in the cockpit, there were things they never would tell me about the operations. But it was seriously cool! One of the most secret bits of information back then was that it as submersible. And there were two different levels of this information. Firstly, it could submerge down to the ball [float] seen in the photo. I don't know why they had that as it wasn't normally there. But this is the intake for the engine. It is the highest point on the boat. So it can essentially completely submerge with just the top six inches or so being above the water, and still run the engines. That is why it was originally named The Alligator. The bigger secret was that it could also completely submerge and run on batteries for some length of time I was never told. When we did the submersion test, it was a little dicey. The concern was how to get everyone out safely if it sinks. But they had a plan and did the test. And everything went without a hitch. But afterwards, someone noticed that all of the emergency air canisters were empty. My first day onsite I walked up to the man gate where I was told to enter. There was an Israeli commando with an automatic weapon at the gate. As instructed, I told him I was here to work on the boat. He just looked at me, and in a deep voice that reminded me of Henry Kissinger, he said "I Thnow". And opened the gate. He knew who I was on sight. Not surprising but it certainly helped to set the mood. We had two commandos with weapons watching us at all times. Of course we got to know them and things lightened up after a bit. But at first it was pretty intense. Funny thing about the stealth technology, one of the biggest problems was the windshield wipers. They reflected RADAR strongly. So we had to develop a pressurized air system that would keep the glass clear even in heavy seas.
PS. On the top of the boat right about in the middle, you can see a small dome. This was related to my main task - implementing a rapid-deployment RADAR system. They needed to surface just enough to clear the top of the boat. The dome then popped open and a RADAR dish popped up; made a quick spin or two, and then retracted. The dome shut rapidly as the RADAR retracted and the boat could then submerge again. But this provided them with a full RADAR image of anything in the area, with minimum exposure time.
