Category Archives: General News

Things that don’t have a genuine category, but I don’t like seeing the “UNcategorized” tag.

South of the Border

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Well, here is one reason why I do not even think about getting a car when I travel to Mexico.

It is always a thrilling ride from the Mexico City airport to any where out of town.
POP Quiz: How many -official- lanes of traffic are there in front of the bus?
Since street signs are rare, traffic lanes are clearly ignored, I can never tell who has the right of way, people drive backwards on one way streets in front of the police and the law would throw me in jail if I slightly bumped anyone’s car.

I don’t even think about driving here.

Fortunately the bus’es are actually pretty great. TV, movies, air conditioned so it is way more relaxing to take them and leave the traffic to the professionals. You know the cable cars in San Francisco, and the ringing of the bells which has been elevated to an art form, well the bus drivers have all mastered the “Art of the Horn” here. I have yet to be able to discern the different air horn blasts, whether is it a “get out of my way scum”, from a “Man you are one nice looking woman in front of us”, from a “thanks for letting me cut in front of you”, from a “watch out I am cutting across three lanes RIGHT NOW!”, from anything. This trip I rode with “Mr. Horn” who was a master of the craft. Amazing. Just about gave me a headache, inside the bus.

So where did the bus end up? Why Toluca Mexico, where else?
“Nestled 8,790 feet (2,679 meters) above sea level, Toluca has earned the name “The Altitude Capital” of Mexico. Well connected to the heartland, it is a provincial town updated by industrial progress. Businesses such as Nestle, Dupont and General Motors maintain offices here providing many job and internship opportunities.”

Note the 8,790 feet, much higher than Denver CO. The first day at this altitude is sort of miserable, at least for me it is. I walked up a flight of stairs and felt like I ran… 50 feet. (Okay I admit I am not in marathon trim.) It does leave you gasping though, even at night.

Gosh, other than all this, it has been a heck of a fun trip!

I can hardly wait for the trip back tomorrow!

Until the last horn is tooted,
George

Don’t you just hate it when……

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We went on a field trip. Had a good time. Took lots of pictures. Wrote a fantastic blog entry all about it, created links, added numerous witty comments (?) and all that. Then closed down WordPress editor…. guess who had not bothered to do a save yet.

Another one of those things you should not do late at night.

Some day I may learn.

Last weekend the weather was cooperative, not 90+ degrees, not raining, beautiful clouds. (as was pointed out by the tour guide repeatedly.) Having just gotten back from a week long road trip I didn’t really feel like driving all that far so we decided to take in some local attraction. Two places we have been wanting to go for some time are Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village, and Henry and Clara Ford’s home “Fair Lane”… sorta like the car… a Ford.. get it?

We took off late morning, not knowing which one to go to, but both were in the same direction, so it didn’t matter all that much. Since it was getting late, we stopped for lunch, and afterwards decided that since Greenfield Village closes at 5 pm there was not enough time left fo a leisurly visit. We opted for Henry Ford’s home. It was a good choice. We enjoyed ourselves and did not have to rush. One set of pictures have been posted, and eventually more will follow.

View the album, see if you can get all three of the “mystery” items identified before you get to the last slide.

Ah, you will notice I am back to the old album style, the new one just didn’t seem to work out for me. It has cool features, but was having some technical problems and could not get any support. So enjoy the consistency of the old style, it works, I’m used to it, so guess I will just stay with it… until the next great thing comes along… oh have you ever looked a JAlbum!

Until the last generator turbine spins down,
George

.. and not a single Dunkin Doughnut “Bavarian Cream” doughnut in sight.

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Having a long week end and no special plans the crew needed a “mini vacation” AKA “Road Trip”. The activities chairman found a “Ironjack Lumberjack Competition – As Seen on TV” that was putting on a competition nearby, so Saturday morning the vehicle was loaded with a glass of ice and some cookies and the trip was underway. Frankenmuth Michigan is only about an hour drive from Ann Arbor, so we got there quickly and spent time touring the town. We had been to Frankenmuth a few years back, but it must have been during the off season since the town was quite deserted during that visit. We had carefully reviewed the Ironjack competition schedule and decided with the temperature approaching 90 and crystal clear skies that if we sat through both the afternoon and evening sessions there would be an excellent chance of going home mimicking “crispy critters”. Therefore we did what any sane person would do… went shopping and eating. We toured the shops enjoying specialties such as “chocolate and peanut butter cheese” (actually it was quite good, not sure how good for you though) a variety of sausages (samples abounded in the stores) and spent time reviewing a great variety of imported beers. Some all time favorites are labeled with Elvis Presley… apparently a good percentage of people that visit here are also Elvis fans with James Dean pulling a close second. (Purse’s, postcards, street signs, movies, wine, beer, about anything you can put an Elvis or James picture on…)

Having worked up quite the appetite from walking about town, and not having seen any foot long hot dogs, corn dogs or even an Elephant Ear stand in sight when we checked out the competition area we decided on going to an early supper prior to the competition.

Would you believe over 2 MILLION chicken dinners a year!

The specialty of the town is the chicken dinners with “Over two Million served yearly” according to the literature, so we opted for the veggie burger…. not really, we may have been escorted out of town for such blasphemy, so we stuffed fried chicken into our faces until we couldn’t squeeze in one more small wing. (Family style, all you can eat dinners).

Click on the picture to see a larger image.

Note the bright red medical alert wristband they provide when you order the all you can eat chicken dinner. (Actual uncropped photo taken only minutes into the feeding frenzy.)

We successfully waddled back through town to the competition arena, and found a seat in time to watch the activities. There are a few pictures, and maybe some day I will add a quick movie I took of one of the events. The competition was not huge, but still pretty cool to see up close, and the smell of fresh cut wood added a great atmosphere so we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. World’s largest Christmas oriented store.

We did not have time before the event to visit Bronners, so after leaving the arena we drove down the road to the store. Well, don’t you just know they close at 6 PM until June! So we missed visiting the store, but had time to get a couple great photos around the building before the security team came and tried to taser Paul for feeding the penguins which was strictly prohibited.

Click on the picture to see full size.

Finally we packed up, taking our tired legs and feet, sunburned faces and overly full stomachs back to Ann Arbor.

Until all “the chips that fell where they may” are cleaned up,

George

I’m home and it’s DRY outside.

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Thought I should add a few notes here since I haven’t in quite some time. I am sure all the Kazology fans are hungering for some more fantastic, enlightening words of wisdom leading to health and wealth. Sorry to disappoint. 

But those things will not be found here. 

Let us see, I went to Singapore for work this month. See pictures posted on opening page of Kazology. It is a long trip… about 30 hours start to finish. Not all flying time, but enough of it to produce a very tired seat. Trivia: you don’t have to reset your watch, it is exactly a 12 hour difference in time zones. So the only thing is that the date window (if your watch displays the current date) switches at noon instead of midnight, the noon before the day (they are ahead in time.) 

I was very surprised and in a positive way that upon my return I did not really have serious jet lag. Sometimes I have really felt beat up on returning, but not on this trip. I was in Singapore for a day going and a day coming back, the rest of the time I was on the island of Batam. Batam is across the bay, about a 45 minute ride by “High Speed Ferry”…. I was wondering if it was going to be one of those you hear about once a year or so… 600 people on a ferry designed for 200, capsizing and all that nonsense. Click on the image to see full size.
It was not.
It was quite nice I think I saw a sign that it held about 200, and both ways it was probably only about 60-75% full. I actually got quite a few of my photos from it. I sat on the upper “smokers” deck which was open air so I could walk around and not have to try and get photos through the somewhat smudged windows. It was the longest time I was outside in the “natural” air the entire time. The rest of the week was going from one air conditions hotel room, to the car/taxi/bus, to the office, and reverse. With a temperature in the upper 80’s and humidity over 90% the air conditioning is very much appreciated.

The trip went well, I did what I needed to do, the people were very nice, and took good care of me. I was told Batam is about 20 years behind Singapore in terms of development. It was impossible not to see the difference. Singapore is a beautiful city, modern buildings and not a pot hole was ever felt riding in the car. Because of the limited space they tear things down after 20 years or so, and put up new, taller, more efficient buildings. Batam on the other hand reminds me of some of the places I have been in Mexico. Not a lot of industry (yet) to support people, only a small amount of tourism, and so the people are happy to work cheaply there, which is why manufacturing sites are building on the island.

Even in town the prices are reasonable for some things. 

Well, enough drivel for now. Enjoy the pictures. Until global warming floods the islands, 

George

Notes from the road

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A new year has begun, travel for work begins anew. This week Manchester New Hampshire. Over the weekend I installed the WordPress 2.0 upgrade, seems as though things went well, at least it appears I have not lost all the old posts, not that it would have made a huge difference. Now some time learning what new and wonderful things it can do.

Hopefully in between travel, eating and sleeping occasionally I will get around to posting the EXtreme Kasdorf action photos on the site. I am afraid it may not be all that EXtreme when I get it done, but then I get to define EXtreme so about anything I put in the album will constitue EXtreme. Ah well, it’s just another album of photos found in the old boxes of photos.

Now home again, and I am beginning to dislike air travel. Seems lately every time I get off a plane a cold goes with me. Left Monday afternoon, and by Tuesday evening throat was already scratchy, now it is progressing very nicely into a full blown case of the sniffles/aches/pains and general discomfort. Bah. Maybe it is bad the rhinos are going extinct, but I wouldn’t mind it a bit if the rhinovirus’s disappeared.

Let me go blow my own horn,

George

Oh Boy! It’s Movie Time

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I tried adding all (one) of my movies to a web site before, but it did not work out so well. I did not take the time to edit it to remove some less than interesting parts. (Two portions inexplicably upside down, and one that was apparently taken during the solar eclipse, which I did not even realize was going on at the time!  So now I took the time to fix up a really old 8mm movie filmed at our wedding. A couple of years ago I had it converted to DVD since there are not a lot of ways to view 8mm anymore, and I assume there will be even fewer in the future. I took the DVD and ripped it to an mpeg file then did a few simple edits such as transitions between scenes an intro and then some credits. In the end I came up with something even a really bad producer would be embarrassed by. Guess it was a little easier since there is no sound. I do have another version I made with some interesting sound effects added, but getting it “web ready” will have to come a little later on. In the meantime you can see a few of the festivities starting with leaving the ceremony, getting home, packing the car and taking off for an extended honeymoon (in the Fort Wayne Holiday Inn…. five miles away…. for one night…) Try the dial up version first to see how long it will take to load, then try the next one if you want. Only use the final version if you have a good broadband connection and some time. Until the silver halides in the celluloid turn to black,
George