A busy, snowy day

Posted by Photonstopper on March 8, 2008
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Front Yard March 8
Front Yard March 8

The weather forecasters got this one entirely correct for us: this morning we woke to about a foot of snow on the ground, piled up higher, in places, by moderate winds. Pretty, in some ways, but good motivation to stay indoors and do the things we should be doing. I managed to complete my publishing project Friday and mail it off to the printers before the roads got too bad — bought provisions, too, at a store unusually busy with shoppers doing the same. I was supposed to be at work today, but they did not open today due to the severe weather. That left today for me to create and publish the Web version of the same project. Whew! Done at last. (At least until I take delivery of the finished product.) I took a break during the day to dig us out of the winter wonderland at least temporarily. She Who Must Be Obeyed spent a good part of the day cleaning house –essentially sterilizing the bathrooms– finding herself exhausted by late afternoon. I'll be doing the cooking and, at Her request, it will be baked spaghetti. Add a little Ravenswood Zinfandel and we'll have a nice little dinner. I'll bet we watch The Simpsons Movie tonight. All in all, it'll have been a good Saturday — a busy, snowy day!

UPDATE: Dinner was pretty much as expected except we enjoyed glasses of Rabbit Ridge Bunny Cuvee with our baked spaghetti and broccoli and She insisted I make oatmeal cookies. Very comforting meal, that! At about 8 PM I went out to shovel the sidewalk to "keep up." I was greeted by another eight inches of fresh snow and drifts as high as this afternoons! You mightn't have believed me if I'd said I'd dug that car out earlier! So I dug it out again. The saving grace was the snow, having fallen in 20 to 23 degree temps, was fluffier than before. Still… a three-foot drift is a lot of snow. That's all for tonight!

Honda Freed!
Honda Freed!

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One last look….

Posted by Photonstopper on March 6, 2008
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Parking Lot Tree
Parking Lot Tree

Leaving the office I was treated to one last look at our ice-coated world. A lonely tree in the parking lot was all decked out in diamonds under a nearby overhead light. The color in the photo couldn't be corrected to my satisfaction so I removed it entirely and just as well! I like the resulting photo much better than any color rendition — and it matches my memory of the scene. It reminds me of my "good old days" of black & white film photography.

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Cold hard days

Posted by Photonstopper on March 6, 2008
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These have been harsh days full of hard weather, hard decisions, and plenty of work. An ice storm hit our area of Northeastern Ohio late in the day March 4 and overnight into the morning of March 5. Roads were hazardous and a mess to drive. By late in the day a few breaks in the overcast opened and let sunshine light the scene — trees and plants of every description were coated in diamond-ice — and, for a while, beauty reigned. This sort of thing is hard to record with a camera, especially if you can't devote a lot of time to it. I was supposed to be working so I dedicated a 15-minute break to a very fast photo project. It was refreshing. By tomorrow afternoon it will all be gone and I'll be back to the daily grind, my eternally nearly-complete publishing project, and, potentially, a tough career/life decision.

Icy Queen
Icy Queen

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Saturn and strange smells

Posted by Photonstopper on February 25, 2008
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I spent Saturday night at the observatory… it was our local observance of the Saturn Observation Campaign's Saturn Observation Night. The ringed planet was very near opposition and, after a partly-cloudy day, we were treated to a chilly but clear night. Saturn shown like a yellow diamond in the east and was, as always, a crowd-pleaser in the eyepiece. Seeing was fairly good (not excellent) and we could spot four moons, see the space between the inside of the rings and the limbs of the planet, and got regular glimpses of banding in the planetary atmosphere. In all 33 people of a wide range of ages visited the observatory and looked through the telescope. Most didn't stick around; after seeing Saturn they took off for home — probably because it was a cold 28 degrees in the dome. Many also were treated to views of the Orion Nebula and eight late-comers climbed high on a ladder to see the rising, waning gibbous Moon.

Sweetie and I woke Sunday to a strange smell in the air. I thought it was Her hand, smelly from working with garlic the night before. No, it wasn't that! We searched the house for the source of the acrid, garlic-vinegar stench but to no avail: not the trash bag, not the garbage disposer, not the cat box, not anything we could find. It occurred to me that it might be the solenoid actuator on the heat pump's humidifier overheating and failing. I shut off the humidifier and we opened the house briefly to air the place out. There's still a hint of the odor here but it's tolerable now. This may be a mystery stink for a while… at least until we have the heat pump looked at for routine service.

My Mom has spinal surgery tomorrow. I'll be headed over there to greet her in recovery. It's not a particularly high-risk procedure but that sort of thing is always a worry!

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A very good night of eclipse watching

Posted by Photonstopper on February 21, 2008
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After a day or two of nail-biting, monitoring forecasts of sky conditions, the Clear Sky Clock tipped the scales for me… Wednesday night's sky would be clear and we would be able to see the Feb. 20 total lunar eclipse.

I packed up only one extra eyepiece –the great antique scope has a wonderful low-power ocular that presents the entire lunar disk– and bundled myself up. It was a c-o-l-d night!

As the eclipse was getting underway a freshly-cleared sky began to cloud up. A thin layer of cloudiness obscured all detail from the Moon just as Earth's shadow was taking a good chunk out. And a little snow fell through the dome slit! Gad! Just as I was beginning to give up hope, however, the sky quickly cleared and we had good seeing for the rest of the night!

The view of the Moon through the 9-inch refractor was typically spectacular. Even the full Moon looks great through that scope with its fist-sized eyepiece. During the partial phase of the eclipse, however, there was a time when the lunar limb was relatively bright, the central portion of the disk was bluish, and the dark shadowed region took on a reddish hue. Quite beautiful. During totality the Moon took on a pale coppery color; it was not a particularly colorful eclipse. Impressive and beautiful, nonetheless.

In all more than 44 visitors came into the observatory — there were probably more but people were coming in to look through the telescope and going out to enjoy the sky with their own eyes … they were getting into the event!

The last visitors left at around 11 PM and I was finally free to try some photos. A little too late, however, to get the shot I wanted… looking at the Moon along the telescope and through the dome. The Moon had already brightened to the point that I couldn't balance the exposure. It's a nice photo anyway and I'll use it for some things, it's just not the picture I had imagined. It was getting late and my feet and hands were getting cold –it was 18 degrees F. in the dome– so I closed up and went home.

A very good night of eclipse watching.

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Missy is gone

Posted by Photonstopper on February 19, 2008
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Missy
Missy

Tonight when Sweetie got home she found Missy in desperate condition. I won't go into details but it was obvious Missy was very near death. We called the vet's office and took Missy in for evaluation but we all pretty much knew what had to happen. The choices were: extreme efforts to save her life, natural death at home, euthanasia. No good choices. Missy has been in poor health for some time and "heroic" measures pretty much equated to torture. A natural death promised to be lingering and hard. So we wound up asking Dr. G. to end Missy's life. Missy left us at about 6:30 tonight having lived nearly to the age of 18 (we thought she was a bit older but our records say otherwise). She had been with Sweetie and me through most of our marriage. Missy was a great cat.

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Testing astro camera rig

Posted by Photonstopper on February 17, 2008
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Moon Cam Test
Moon Cam Test

So what do you do in this digital age with the excellent lenses you purchased over the years for your 35mm film camera? Well one thing is you can purchase an adapter from an Australian company that will mate your beautiful Minolta 250mm f/5.6 RF Rokkor-X mirror lens with your trusty Philips ToUcam Pro II Web camera. What you get from that is a very good Web cam with excellent optics for all sorts of uses — especially in getting "live" images from a telescope into a computer and, potentially, on to the Web.

Years ago I used the ToUcam to do a live Webcast of a total lunar eclipse. I'd connected it to my trusty Meade 390 telescope — a 1,000mm focal length scope. The result was nice imagery of only a portion of the lunar disk. I'd wanted the entire disk to show! With shorter focal lengths I can now image the entire face of the Moon or, with proper filtration, the Sun.

I did my first test imaging with the rig tonight  at 7:22 PM with the Moon in its waxing gibbous phase. The image shown here (test imaage #5) was done with the Toshiba Microsoft Vista notebook computer, CoffeeCup Software's Webcam 4.0, the ToUcam and 250mm telephoto lens. Looks good! Not quite as sharp as I remember the Meade images, but not bad for a first try! Mount this rig to a telescope with a clock drive and we'll have something!

Philips ToUcam with Minolta Lens
Philips ToUcam with Minolta Lens

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Are you still awake?

Posted by Photonstopper on February 11, 2008
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Had to work yesterday. Had to work today. That's weekend rotation for you. Still, I sometimes don't mind it much… the pace of the day is different from the weekdays and I can often pursue projects that I can't during the week. This weekend I spent a lot of my time working out the last kinks in our new public computer print management system. We were supposed to be able to offer printing services to visitors who bring their own notebook computers with them. As we finished up the system installation we hit a snag… the visiting notebook module wouldn't print through our system. After a lot of troubleshooting we determined it was some component apparently missing from our server. I spent several hours Saturday working on the problem. Today I discovered the problem and how to resolve it. Years ago, when I originally set up the server for work in the Internet, I had made a number of changes for security's sake. Unfortunately, I hadn't documented them! Today I rediscovered what I had done {geek alert} I had set the hidden device NetBIOS to Disabled which, in turn, shut off Windows File and Printer Sharing — the service critical to success of the notebook project. Yeah… the HIDDEN device! So, after closing and a server reboot, success at last! Visitors will now, with great ease, bring their notebook computers to our facility and, with a lightweight and temporary software download, print to our networked printers! Just a couple of tweaks remain to the network setup so that wired as well as wireless users can access the system and we're all set. Are you still awake?

Newsy Bits: I think my efforts (above) were aided by finally getting a full and restful night's sleep — the first I've had in about a week! She and I braved temperatures in the teens, strong winds, and blowing snow to go out to breakfast and grocery shopping this morning before I had to go to work. She is recovering after a week-long fight with a cold virus. Very nasty. Tonight She's feeling much better and, so far, I'm showing no signs of infection. Tasha has been throwing up which had me worried. I'm hoping the fix is as simple as this: she really dislikes some new litter box filler we've tried to switch to and I suspect she's not been using it. I think she's been holding back (if cats can do that) and it's been making her regurgitate. We'll see. I cooked dinner (pesto pasta and corn) and baked cookies (chocolate chip) tonight. Temperature has fallen to the low single-digits (+3.6 degrees F right now). Good thing the sky is cloudy: keeps it from getting even colder and saves me the guilty feelings of not going out under a clear sky and freezing my stuff off. And it's approaching 11 PM and time, soon, for bed. Still reading this? Hmmm. Are you still awake?

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One heck of a week

Posted by Photonstopper on February 8, 2008
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As expected, this was a very intense week of work. The software installation project went well. Working with the vendor's on-site installation technician we installed the system on 50 client PCs, two staff management PCs, three print release stations, and the server. He was able to write an installation script that removed the old –and lousy– software system and installed the great new stuff. Made the process consistent and quick. Still, I wound up with work days no shorter than 10 hours and extending, on Monday, to 16 hours. Had lunch out twice with our director and the technician and discovered a couple of good places to eat. At the end of four days the system was running excellently well providing users with computer use time management and print management services at a level they were not used to. Only one component did not install and that was due to a Windows Server service that somehow went missing in the past several years. I'll fix that and all will be in good order. Spent today watching a movie on TV (U-verse is great), going out to lunch at Chipotle followed by a walk around the mall, and generally resting and relaxing at home. Tomorrow is my Saturday to work on weekend rotation so the grind starts again. Yeah, one heck of a week.

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Not a bad Saturday night!

Posted by Photonstopper on February 3, 2008
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The speaking engagement went swimmingly! The environmental education center's meeting room was just the right size to comfortably accommodate the 40 men, women, and children who attended. One guy, from the NASA Glenn Visitor's Center, even brought along some color photo handouts illustrating Mars exploration technology. The new Vista notebook computer ran the StarOffice Impress presentation flawlessly and, despite some flubs pressing the wrong remote control button a couple of times, I got through the show in pretty good shape. My program ran a bit long (about 1 hour, 10 minutes) but not uncomfortably so, I think. Unexpectedly, the sky was clear (though seeing was so-so). Only one member from the astronomy club, Bill, showed up with his telescope. I asked and was allowed to take the 8-inch Dobsonian telescope, owned by the center, out and use it to accommodate those interested. First time I'd ever used one of those and I enjoyed it very much. We looked at Mars –a tiny but bright disk in the eyepiece with no markings visible– but wowed 'em with views of the Orion Nebula and, just as it was clearing the trees, Saturn rising in the east. One woman, especially, was thrilled with views of the nebula, coming back again and again to take another look. It seems there's always someone like that and it can make all the effort worth while! So I hope I disabused some people of Mars mis-information and we gave them a look at the heavens above. Sharing truth and beauty with others… not a bad Saturday night at all!

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