A charming Couple taking selfie. A white woman with blue eyes, blonde hair, and wearing retro glasses is making a funny face while taking a photo with a white man with shaggy brown hair and a full beard. Long haired blond woman wearing light colored plastic glasses, man with dark hair, beard and moustache, man's mouth open, striped shirt, loose tie A blonde haired woman in light colored glass and a blue eyed young man with a thick manly beard taking a silly picture together. A man with beard is shouting and a girl next to him wearing glasses is making funny faces by squeezing her lips The woman is making a long face and the man has his mouth wide open. He has a beard and it is blonde. The woman is wearing glasses. They both have blue eyes. A White brown hair teen girl wearing a specs and her colleague wearing a stripes shirt watching something and shocked while seeing that a man with beard and a woman with silver black hair and glasses are making fun or looking in happy mood. Surprised couple. Man is bearded.

The Dagley Bush When I was just 14 years old and a freshman in high school I had a friend named Ben Dagley He was two years older than me and thus a junior at the time I played football in high school and consequently was introduced our local version of Fellow Christian Athletes called Student Venture This was a pretty common thing to be exposed to in the Texas high school football system Ben was the student leader of our group While I m the furthest thing from being religious today we had a great group of guys There were about twenty of us in total Ben and I became very close friends albeit this would eventually dissolve by the time I graduated from high school and moved on to my life in college Ben had a dear friend named Brian Williams Brian was similar to Ben in many ways but he and I always had a great time together namely as he enjoyed my general attitude of pranking people hijinks and various shenanigans Incidentally Brian was working on becoming a fire fighter a field that would soon become very important to me In the State of Texas at least in 1994 it was only legal for fireworks to be sold within 2 weeks of New Year s Eve and 2 weeks within the 4th of July It was the summer time school was out the 4th of July was upon us and fireworks were being readily sold Ben s family lived on pretty typical suburban cul de sac The back of his house however was part of a unique system of alley ways Unlike more traditional alley ways there were three of them all next to one another with a large dirt field in between them This made for a large open area that we could play in drive our trucks in and use for parking at his house among other things His was the last house on the alley way before it made a sharp turn So in essence and even though his family didn t own the land they had an enormous side yard Immediately adjacent to this side yard was a detached garage and between the detached garage and their main house but still on the alley itself was a giant bush This bush had probably been growing for a few decades It was an ornamental style bush Perhaps shrub is a better word for it It was truly massive and it was a nice feature to this otherwise unusual part of their house on the alley way Ben Brian another friend of ours named Daniel and I had all just come back from eating Neither Daniel nor I could drive yet and so Ben and Brian drove us around Upon arriving back at the Dagley house we parked in the alley way something that we commonly did Again there was ample parking back there Ben went inside of his house to speak with his parents Brian walked over to his truck to work on something or another which left Daniel and I in the dirt area of the alley way together We had purchased a variety of fireworks and were setting off some of the BlackCats M60s and other similar munitions that don t fire into the air but rather make a large boom upon exploding We had a number of smoke bombs too For whatever reason I thought it would look cool to see thick colored smoke emanating from the Dagley Bush I lit the smoke bomb and to the best of my ability tossed it right into the center of the bush I will remind you it was a good thing that Brian was eager to become a fireman At first the bush smoked as I had hoped it would As bright purple smoke filled the entirety of the bush and leaked out around all of the pointed foliage the core of the smoke bomb was emitting a white hot flame a flame that had no business being in the center of a bush in the middle of a Texas summer Within seconds the bush was fully ablaze Flames shot out from the bush several feet high Neither Daniel nor I could do anything Brian saw the commotion and came running around the corner shouting orders at the two of us Go and grab that shovel Warn the others Turn on the hose while I reel it out were among the phrases he shouted at us By now the flames were high enough that everyone inside of the house could see them and came running out too The bush sat along the Dagley s wooden fence It took caught fire almost as quickly as the bush did We all did our parts to stop the blaze with Brian spraying it down with the hose It felt like hours but was probably only seconds the fire was put out In the end the bush was almost entirely destroyed What remained of it were just some burnt out innards They were probably gasping for their last bit of carbon dioxide as they choked on the less desirable carbon monoxide and simultaneously saw their brethren burned alive The fence was far better but certainly had a number of boards burned to a crisp Mr Dagley Ben s father was less than thrilled But as Ben was our religious leader I can only imagine that he was in a pretty difficult position with me He did have a stern talk with me and made sure I was aware of just how stupid my actions were He noted how quickly the fire spread and how if Brian hadn t been there to help put it out it very well may have burned down their house He was right The truth is that I just didn t know a giant flame would shoot out of the smoke bomb When I d seen them in the past it just seemed like they got hot on the inside and released smoke Since I d run through that smoke before I knew it wasn t especially hot or anything Certainly not to the point that it would catch fire Unfortunately I was just a bit ignorant of how smoke bombs started their initial process with a giant white flame shooting out of them I helped replace the fence and apologized to the entire family for burning down their bush They were extremely forgiving and felt that I had learned a fairly important lesson that day I did It didn t stop me from playing with fireworks but to this day I always know where the hose is first

The Coke Machine photo 252349 253344 0 right Jeff Smith filling up a bag with our prized sodas photo While there were many many tiny acts of vandalism that occurred in my freshman dorm room one of the most exciting ones was that of the Coke machine It was exciting only because we had heard the details of this particular trick through the grapevine and assumed it was just an urban legend and a bad one at that The idea someone explained to us was that if you managed to inject salt water into the internal machinery of a Coke machine then for whatever reason it would provide you with free sodas The idea was that the salt water being highly conductive of course would short out the machine and this was the trigger response for a failure Again I realize this sounds entirely improbable Since my roommates and suite mates knew that I generally didn t consider consequences to most anything they encouraged me to give it a go We got a container of Morton salt and a regular iced tea pitcher with a nice pouring spout For whatever reason the hot water in Dobie was exceedingly hot and this made the experiment all the easier I filled about 1 6th of the pitcher with salt filled the rest with hot water and then stirred them together for a few moments The water being as hot as it was allowed the salt to dissolve very easily and efficiently In fact I distinctly remember how powerful the salt smelled likely due to it supersaturating the water I walked out of my dorm with pitcher in hand and proceeded down the hall to the Coke machine By this time I had a small audience behind me I carefully started to pour the pitcher of hot saltwater into the coin slot of the machine While a lot of it spilled down the front a lot of it also managed to go in I was probably about half way through the pitcher when we started to hear what sounded like an electric motor shorting out It was a sporadic hum at first but eventually started getting louder and more consistent almost like a broken door buzzer Finally when I was about 3 4 of the way through there was a loud sound and the Coke machine literally dropped every single coke in the machine We could hear the sodas fall down the shoot and saw them quickly bottleneck in the dispenser at the bottom Celebrating and somewhat euphoric from such a stupid suggestion actually working we bagged up all of the sodas and brought them back into our dorm I m not positive but I think this became somewhat of an urban legend in the dorm itself as I distinctly remember people asking me if we could really do it Even stranger is that we continued doing it for months to come but somehow or another never got questioned about it Apparently nobody ever took notice of the fact that our dorm room was filled with hundreds of soft drinks and meanwhile the Coke machine right outside of our dorm was often covered with a salt precipitate empty and changeless And so it happens if you pour hot saltwater into the coin slot of a Coke machine you can enjoy the rewards of free sodas

The Super Sperm photo 269708 269893 300 right The MicroFilm machine at the University of Texas PCL I needed this little device to grab all of the old stills photo In the summer of 2000 I was living in a SCUBA diving town in Mexico called Akumal It translates to Place of the Turtle in Mayan I was working as a research dive assistant for a Ph D student at the University of Texas A few months before moving there I had started sketching out a silly comic hero named SuperSperm Much like Superman SuperSperm would try to bring peace and harmony to the world The only difference was that it was a world full of sperm and sperm cities The sperm world had all of the same basic characteristics that our own world had only instead of humans there were sperm There was an outdoor whiteboard at the dive shop in Akumal The instructors would often use it for teaching their day classes One morning before anyone else had showed up I took the whiteboard markers and drew a SuperSperm comic on it I cannot for the life of me remember what the comic was about but a couple of people chuckled at it and I was hooked From that day on any time that I could come up with something relevant to what was going on at the shop I d draw a SuperSperm comic strip representing it This went on for a few weeks until one day I was told to stop Mexico is a pretty conservative Catholic destination and evidently not everyone was amused with the content of my drawings Evidently it was not proper to satirize Superman with a caped sperm I drew a few more on the whiteboard after that but always made sure to erase them before paying customers would arrive I was part of a non paying research team When I returned back to Austin after the summer expedition I decided I would try to have the comic published in our school newspaper a href http en wikipedia org wiki The_Daily_Texan The Daily Texan a I contacted the editor and he said that they were always happy to receive more student content He also said that it would be published if they liked it Of course I immediately jumped on the chance to have my work published Despite having absolutely no artistic talent at least with respect to drawing it didn t take me long to come up with a sperm themed joke and sketch it out I even ran it down to the editor s office that very night And so on Thursday October 5th 2000 my first SuperSperm comic strip was published in The Daily Texan I have no idea how many people actually saw the comic but I know it was in the hands of about 30 000 Over the course of about two weeks there were six published Unfortunately due to some bad luck this would end the comic series em continued below em photo 269919 269893 0 center SuperSperm Thursday October 5th 2000 The EarthQuake br With 200 million missing and feared dead SuperSperm has been dispatched photo photo 269897 269893 0 center SuperSperm Monday October 9th 2000 Washington br SuperSperm addresses the nation photo photo 269898 269893 0 center SuperSperm Tuesday October 10th 2000 Fame br SuperSperm stares at his first endorsement em Sperm Lights Genuine Taste em photo photo 269894 269893 0 center SuperSperm Thursday October 12th 2000 The Museum br SuperSperm admires the Hall of Swimmers photo photo 269896 269893 0 center SuperSperm Friday October 13th 2000 The Natives br Totonka Buffalo photo photo 269895 269893 0 center SuperSperm Monday October 16th 2000 Explorer br SuperSperm finds himself in a mysteriously moist cave photo br style clear both In the fall semester of 2000 I was in between apartments My girlfriend at the time Dayna allowed me to stay with her pretty frequently and so naturally I did It was a great arrangement for me every night I was there except for one the night that my truck got broken into The truck was parked immediately outside of her apartment Presumably anybody who was outside would have witnessed the break in but unfortunately there were no such witnesses Somewhat ironically the burglars used lead SCUBA weights from the bed of the truck to break one of the windows and unlock the doors I found it on the floor in a puddle of glass Those Catholics in Mexico had finally taken their revenge In addition to having my speakers ripped out my CD collection stolen and everything else that comes with a vehicle break in my school backpack containing weeks worth of SuperSperm drawings was also stolen I was definitely pissed about the truck but I was genuinely upset about having lost all of my comic material Since it was never really my dream to become a comic artist I decided that I wouldn t try to overcome losing all of my work It would have taken far too long to recreate everything and my morale was too low to try That was pretty much the end of SuperSperm

The Pinky and the Brain photo 269668 740 250 right The em original em Pinky and the Brain photo During my senior year in high school I had been given the unique opportunity to work on the school s first website I was amongst a very small group of students hand chosen for the task While almost all of us came from the AP computer science class there were a couple of artists and graphic designers too The program required each of us to give up our free periods and to forgo receiving any credit for the time slot In my case it also meant that I was in the computer science lab for almost three straight hours every morning something that was just fine by me One of the few non computer science individuals in the class was a good friend of mine named David Spencer His father was a technical whiz with digital media and video production and David was beginning to follow in his footsteps In fact he was directly responsible for me getting into non linear digital video editing well before Apple made it commonplace He and I would spend hours at his house working in the earliest versions of Adobe Premiere through a dedicated fiber line that ran to his father s office Much like myself David definitely sat on the fringes of our web class While we were both huge contributors to the project and genuinely did a lot of work in many cases working with new media in ways that nobody else could our social circles were a little different than many of our teammates To put it another way we occasionally would sneak a beer into the class and could frequently be found chewing tobacco as we worked on our projects This was not a particularly common attitude of the highly intelligent and gifted people we were working with I bring this point up only to illustrate that the two of us didn t worry about getting caught much less getting into trouble One particular week in the spring of 1997 just two months before graduation our computer science teacher Mr Cunningham had to leave town He was attending some sort of conference from Wednesday through the end of the week Since we had an entire computer science lab at our disposal and no real oversight David and I were inclined to infiltrate the school s computer system The only question was how and to what extent Just a few weeks earlier I had made a very interesting and accidental discovery All of the computers and printers at our high school had recently been networked together In fact it turned out that this was the case for all of the computers and printers in the entire school district While this sort of networking might sound trivial as the years tick on it was an incredibly amazing concept in 1997 The very idea that one could create a file and print it across the entire school district in a matter of seconds was astounding to most people it certainly astounded me It was also not something that most people outside of the computer realm could really conceptualize at the time Almost all of the printers in the school offices were Apple Imagewriters that had been upgraded with network cards When a user would send a file to be printed the computer had to first establish a connection with the printer often called a handshake Once it established the network handshake it would send the data along to be printed Modern printers will store the file in the printer s memory and immediately let the sending computer know that the print job is on its way The file then sits in the printer s print queue until it gets printed It s a simple enough concept But it s also not how our network functioned When a user would print a document on one of our school s networked printers the handshake would occur the file would be sent but the handshake wouldn t conclude until the printer had successfully printed the file On the upside of this methodology you always knew when your document had finished printing However on the downside the print process on the local machine became tied up so long as the file was still in the printer s queue But what would happen if the handshake occurred the file was sent to the queue but the network connection somehow dropped before the handshake was able to conclude We typed up a short non threatening document that read something to the effect of em Pinky and the Brain have seized control of this computer Be afraid Be very afraid em Since the entire district was networked we set the document to print on every printer across the entire Katy Independent School District We waited a few moments for the handshaking process to begin across the board and then pulled the network plug out of the wall The discovery I had accidentally stumbled upon was that when a file was placed in the printer queue but the printer was never able to close the handshake in this case due to the cable being unplugged the file would sit atop the printer queue indefinitely This meant that not only would the printer complete the original task but every time somebody sent another file to the printer whatever was atop the queue would print again So one fine day in March Pinky and the Brain became a cover sheet to every document printed across the school district And oh how the hilarity ensued David and I both had a number of friends that worked as office aides Although we didn t actually tell any of them what we had done all of them pointed fingers at us within an hour From what I was told printers all around the school were alleging they had been compromised by Pinky and the Brain Teachers and office workers were frantic that their computers had somehow been hacked As the day went on so did the printing It continued on each printer until it had been reset or until the print queue had been manually cleared Pinky and the Brain was everywhere When Mr Cunningham came back the next week he was quickly bombarded with teachers and office workers claiming their computers had been hacked they accused his department of somehow orchestrating the attack but had no idea what had happened or how it had happened He calmly asked each of them if anything appeared wrong with their computers other than the cover sheets Of course there was nothing else and so he quietly and easily diffused the harmless situation As I later learned it turns out that he had been aware of this network flaw for quite some time Although we never outright admitted to doing it he definitely knew it was us With a great smile on his face he told David and I about all of the commotion it had caused and said he knew it was just a matter of time before somebody stumbled upon that network flaw Needless to say he found the whole thing in good fun and remained my favorite teacher well beyond high school

Colombian Travel vs American TSA photo 257711 740 200 right photo As I wind down my eight day voyage to Colombia I can t help but dwell upon the non sensible invasive and criminal sham that the United States travel policies have turned into Colombia perceived by Americans as a third world land of drug cartels kidnappings and guerrilla mercenaries none of which is really accurate has absolutely superior air travel service compared to the United States This is true both of the government policies surrounding travel and the actual service provided by at least one private domestic carrier Domestically a group of us flew from Bogot to Cartagena on a href http www avianca com Avianca Airlines a The experience could not have been more positive After quickly checking in with a friendly staff we proceeded to security The line was short We didn t remove our computers from our bag nor take off our shoes nor throw away our bottles of water Nobody intended to make us assume the position of a criminal and examine our naked body Nobody intended to feel our genitals nor to have us remove articles of clothing We put our carry on bags on a conveyor belt and comfortably walked through a metal detector Those of us who tripped it were not harassed but rather quickly wanded down and sent on our ways photo 257763 740 520 left A simple chart comparing the security protocols I experienced between the United States TSA and the Colombian airport security photo br style clear both It was everything a country like America em should em be capable of The only additional though arguably positive layer of security is that they check bag tickets after you pick up your bag on the conveyer Although this does slow the process down by a few minutes I can appreciate wanting to protect against private theft The airline itself was also phenomenal Avianca has a brand new Airbus fleet each seat fully loaded with televisions gaming devices and USB mounts All of the in flight services were completely free of charge despite the flight only being an hour As a strong proponent of allowing foreign carries into the US domestic fleets one of the US many anti competitive laws I would definitely welcome Avianca with open arms and in all likeliness become a frequent flyer Internationally the departure process has been almost as easy albeit with a few more steps After receiving our tax vouchers at one window and then checking in with United we proceeded through to immigration and had our passports stamped Security was almost identical to the domestic flight only they did ask us to remove our computers from carry on and place them in a bucket much like the TSA does There was no removal of shoes no trashing of water and food no groping no naked body scanning Rather just a simple metal detector with a follow up wand The only annoyance came after waiting at the gate for about an hour Evidently a secondary screening process was being setup and we had to leave the room and re enter through the secondary metal detector There was one bit of stupidity here I was allowed to bring my metal water bottle full of water through but I was em not em allowed to bring my half full plastic water through Curiously though I was allowed to pour the contents of the plastic bottle into my metal bottle and continue without further incident Go figure All in all though it was a pretty positive experience I spoke with a couple of Colombians about these processes and they agree that traveling around Colombia is a very pleasant experience They also said that they hated travel procedures of the United States citing that they re treated very badly generally as if they re terrorists I will continue to strongly oppose the TSA and all levels of government that use fear and American ignorance to strip individuals of Constitutional rights I strongly encourage others to do the same strong March 23 2012 5 13pm CST Edit strong After chatting with members of the Reddit community about this post I m told that my experience may have been unique Further discussion seems to suggest that the lighter security I experienced was due to my traveling during the low season Others have reported significantly more invasive scans albeit body scanning technologies are still not present

Interview With Catherine Kitty Ludlow photo 261526 740 200 right Catherine Ludlow during her interview photo On December 27th 2001 I conducted a brief interview with both of my grandparents father s side Catherine Kitty Ludlow and Howard T Ludlow known as Momma and Poppa respectively This is the interview with Catherine The total recorded interview is 7 minutes 49 seconds long I have transcribed the interview below and included applicable links detailing certain events and locations that my grandmother described namely using Wikipedia IMDB and Dictionary com table class BLOGNarration tr td colspan 2 b SETTING UP THE INTERVIEW CATHERINE IS TAKING HER SEAT b td tr tr td valign top Kevin td td Okay you heard all the questions that he got asked td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td Yes I don t remember them though td tr tr td valign top Kevin td td You forgot them all td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td No I didn t forget them all td tr tr td valign top Howard td td She s cheating td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td No td tr tr td valign top Kevin td td So you don t remember any of them td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td Yes I do td tr table br style clear both table class BLOGNarration tr td colspan 2 b CATHERINE BEGINS THE INTERVIEW HERSELF b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px I was born in the a href http en wikipedia org wiki Bronx Bronx a And I lived in the a href http en wikipedia org wiki Bronx Bronx a most of my grown up life as far as that s concerned My father worked in a bakery and my mother was at home And I have or had a sister and two brothers td tr tr td Kevin td td b i See you remember the questions i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px Yes I do td tr tr td Kevin td td b i What year were you born in the Bronx i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px 1925 td tr tr td Kevin td td b i What year was he born in the Bronx i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px 1921 right td tr tr td valign top Howard td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px Yea I was born in 21 td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px And I went to public school because my mother was a href http en wikipedia org wiki Catholic Catholic a but my father was a href http en wikipedia org wiki Protestant Protestant a so he couldn t let us go to any a href http en wikipedia org wiki Catholic_school Catholic school a in fact he was a very anti Catholic person for a long time He changed when he got older And um I went to a href http schools nycenet edu Region3 ps46 default html P S 46 a in the a href http en wikipedia org wiki Bronx Bronx a and I graduated from there And when I was in 8th grade they had a a href http en wikipedia org wiki Hunter_College Hunter College a which was a college in a href http en wikipedia org wiki New_york New York a had also a high school called it a href http en wikipedia org wiki Hunter_College_High_School Hunter College High School a but you had to take a test to get in And so a teacher said to me well you did pretty well take the test And I passed And I went into the highschool And when you graduated from a href http en wikipedia org wiki Hunter_College_High_School Hunter College High School a you automatically were eligible to go to a href http en wikipedia org wiki Hunter_College Hunter College a And uh so I did well and I graduated from a href http en wikipedia org wiki Hunter_College Hunter College a cause otherwise I wouldn t have been able to go my parents didn t have any money really And the tuition at that time I m pretty sure I m right but I might be wrong was like 45 a semester So it was not bad at all So I went there for umm I guess it was two years or so two and a half years and then it was the time around the war 1945 and I decided I would join the a href http en wikipedia org wiki Women 27s_Army_Corps WACs a And I did td tr tr td Kevin td td b i What is the WACs i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px a href http en wikipedia org wiki Women 27s_Army_Corps Woman s Army Corps a And um I was sent to with a group to a href http en wikipedia org wiki Fort_Oglethorpe 2C_Georgia Fort Oglethorpe Georgia a Well I was 20 at the time so that s why I was able to do it My parent s didn t want me to do it but I I was a very disobedient child You know how that is td tr tr td td td LAUGHING td tr tr td Kevin td td b i I ve read about it i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px And so I wanted to go and I did And we went do to a href http en wikipedia org wiki Fort_Oglethorpe 2C_Georgia Fort Oglethorpe Georgia a And that s where we took our training And then when we finished down there uh we were sent to different places and I went to Thomas M England general hospital It was a big hotel and they turned it into a hospital during the war So that s where I was and I worked as a medic a technician You know bringing um refreshments making beds and stuff like that And umm I was in for about almost 2 years when the war ended less than two years because the war then ended So you could stay in but they were going to send you overseas for two more years And uh I didn t want to do that so I got out and I went back to college And then I started to work I had a number of jobs and stuff like that And then um then I met I met Howard Oh we joined the a href http en wikipedia org wiki American_Legion American Legion a I was in the a href http en wikipedia org wiki American_Legion American Legion a And I met him I knew him and he came up to me one evening uh before the meeting started and he said I d like to ask you a question So I said ok go ahead ask He said I was in a post it was all female post it was a Joan of Arc post and our commander was a very cute little blonde her name was Sophie And that s what he came up to ask me if I thought Sophie would go out with him But I said to him I know that she won t because she has a husband who is very jealous and he won t like it td tr tr td td td LAUGHING td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px So he said well thank you very much then he went and sat down That was before the meeting After the meeting was over he came over and he said to me I really shouldn t have asked you that and it really wasn t very nice And he told me the situation He had just broken up with a girl and he had a formal coming up He belonged to this group that um it was um the Naval Cadets that s what it was called It s for like boys and everything to train them Well I had just broken up with somebody too So anyway I said no I d be glad to go with you p p And that s how we started to go out together And um so then we got married in uh June 28th uhh 1950 was it 1952 that we got married td tr tr td valign top Howard td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px Could be td tr tr td td td LAUGHING td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px And um then the next year we had a baby but the baby died I was only 7 months and the baby died So then then we had Maureen and then we had Howard your father and then we had Frank We had three of them And we lived in a href http en wikipedia org wiki New_jersey New Jersey a We had a small house real small but we had never lived in a house before we lived in an apartment And I used to tell everybody we have a big house and of course when people would come to see it they would realize it wasn t a big house But after about half a dozen or so years we moved to a bigger house much bigger house And we stayed there And then of course the kids everybody grew up and got married and left and then we they said it was the three kids that you can t stay here up in the north it s too cold and stuff like that So we Howard retired I retired and so then we moved down where we are right now And that s kind of up to date td tr tr td td td LAUGHING td tr tr td Kevin td td b i That was pretty precise i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px Ok td tr tr td Kevin td td b i That was pretty full Any other good stories for my interview i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px Well I don t know Your father was a wild and wooly one But td tr tr td Kevin td td b i And he had a motorcycle i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px Oh yes he had a motorcycle He had he had a motorcycle which I didn t want him to have td tr tr td Kevin td td b i But he had one anyways i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px He had one anyway yea td tr tr td Kevin td td b i Sounds about right i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px But all three of them turned out really well and they re doing really well and Then once he met your mother he kind of straight straightened out td tr tr td Kevin td td b i That s how the story goes i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px Yea She was um very uh what do you call it td tr tr td Kevin td td b i Proper i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px Proper influence well yea she was a good influence on him And he s really done very well td tr tr td Kevin td td b i Well that s good i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px And I like all three of them I like all of their umm I like Maureen s husband and I like Howie s wife and of course I like your father s wife too far as that s concerned It s been very very happy a very very happy life as far as that s concerned td tr tr td Kevin td td b i That s good i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px Ok td tr tr td Kevin td td b i Good job i b td tr tr td valign top Catherine td td style padding left 20px padding bottom 20px I hope so td tr table

Window Resealing Experiment One of the problems we ve had to deal with are some leaky windows This problem was unfortunately made clear to us about a month ago after a solid week of storms rolled through The coach portion of the bus has 12 square windows 1 large rectangular window in the rear and 2 convex port hole windows towards the front Of those at least 4 of the square windows leak pretty significantly as does the large rectangular one A few of the other ones only let in a little moisture in a torrential downpour But in keeping with the restoration the plan has been to go ahead and reseal all of them We went ahead and completed one of them this evening just to get a feel for how long the process would take Although it took us about an hour to do it I think we could probably do them all at once and spend maybe 20 minutes per window still about a 6 hour project In our case the inside bolts holding the window frame in are about 30 years old so we went ahead and replaced all of them with machine screws from Austin Bolt Company The new screws actually make the interior em much em nicer with their shininess Tools necessary ul li 1 4 Socket and Phillips Screwdriver li li Butyl Tape li li Putty Knife li li Razor Blades li li Rubber Gloves li li Silicon Caulk li li Caulk Gun li li Cloth or Paper Towels excess Caulk li ul photo 269466 258221 0 center The side of the bus with the first window removed photo photo 269469 258221 0 center Caroline using a putty knife to remove all of the old sealant tape from the window frame photo photo 269480 258221 0 center Caroline applying the butyl tape around the perimeter of the window opening The corners were a little trickier to do photo photo 269477 258221 0 center With the window back in place we just had to cut the excess butyl tape off The 2 width I purchased was WAY too much but I didn t know how far in the seal went One inch would have been just fine but fortunately it cuts very easily with a razor blade photo photo 269478 258221 0 center Finally all that was left was to seal the edges with some clear silicon sealant Once it dries this window should be good for another 30 years photo

How to Sell a Vehicle in Texas Having bought and sold a number of vehicles in the state of Texas over the past year a friend of mine recently asked me for some help with the process True to anything state related there s a network of forms and filings required If you screw up any of the process you can wind up being liable for tickets and accidents incurred by the vehicle This has actually happened to me twice now albeit I ve been covered by the paperwork I filed in both cases If you follow these five steps you ll be covered for any case that could arise from the sale and transfer through a private party strong Step 1 strong On the back of your title you as the seller have to sign the title over to the new owner He or she keeps the title and is then responsible for mailing it in to the title department Since I live in Austin I typically take this directly to them but I digress strong Step 2 strong a href http www google com url sa t rct j q esrc s source web cd 1 ved 0CCsQFjAA url http 3A 2F 2Ftxdmv gov 2Freports and data 2Fdoc_download 2F998 130 u application for texas certificate of title ei KXREU6nfJIqwygHk6YCYAg usg AFQjCNGgdTBORn9PxZ6XuXFpvXwz4j9adQ sig2 EeFX_ff4_pKdY8RG8_D8qg bvm bv 64507335 d aWc Download and fill out Form 130U a You as the seller need to fill out and sign the middle section and the buyer can fill out the rest Obviously you re supposed to fill out the actual sale price of the vehicle but since I strongly disagree with any form of taxation even more so when it involves double taxation as this process does I would encourage you to fill out whatever value you feel comfortable with em see the bottom of this post for more information em If you forget to sign this section you ll either have to meet with the buyer a second time or they will have to forge your signature in order to get the title properly transferred strong Step 3 strong It s a good idea to exchange an informal document so that you ve got something between you Just print out two copies and fill it out by hand Each of you should keep one copy At a minimum you ll want the form to include each of your names driver s license numbers and the VIN It s not required but is good for having a record of the sale strong Step 4 strong Once you have completed all of this fill out the a href https www txdmv gov sites default files form_files VTR 346 pdf vehicle transfer notification form online a This is to protect both the seller and buyer but mostly the seller It s easier to complete if you do so with the buyer there but it s certainly not necessary Be sure to print out the response you get from the state strong Step 5 strong Take all of this paperwork and file it away in a manila folder I find that most people are really bad at keeping up with paperwork but I ve twice had to pull out the Vehicle Transfer form to clear my name of tolls the buyer had accrued on my vehicles strong The Standard Presumptive Value strong Finally the SPV Standard Presumptive Value is an utterly bullshit mechanism that the State of Texas came up with for combating people who have set the sales price of the vehicle too low on form 130 U I note that this is utterly bullshit because I conducted a private study of the system about a year ago and discovered some alarming results After running statistics on about 20 000 vehicles I found that inexpensive cars were valued at or above their actual sales price and higher end vehicles were valued em well em under theirs The State of Texas actually has a a href http txdmv gov spv calculator calculator available online a so you can see how they appraise any vehicle As an example when I genuinely paid 900 for a used Camry the state taxed me as if I had paid 1 600 for it So not only was the state double taxing the car actually quadruple taxing since it had 3 previous owners but they weren t even taxing it at the rate I paid for the vehicle I was ignorant of the process when I made this purchase It happened again when I purchased a Toyota Tacoma for 5000 The truck was undervalued due to extensive damage on the back of it but since the state ignores any relevance of condition they deemed it to be worth almost 9000 They wanted to tax me accordingly but I fought against that To prove it was worth much less I had to get an appraisal from a certified dealer for 100 the state minimum that he could charge just to illustrate why I should be taxed less Worse still is that when I compared this with higher end vehicles a Corvette listed at 60 000 say the SPV would actually come in substantially lower than the actual vehicle value Again I m 100 opposed to any kind of taxation but even more so when it s designed to further fuck the poor as this system most clearly is intended to do strong How to Fuck the State of Texas strong In short go to the state s a href http txdmv gov spv calculator SPV Calculator a Type in the VIN and the mileage of your vehicle whether you re the buyer or seller The program will spit out a vehicle appraisal The state will take the greater of this number and whatever you fill out on Form 130 U and tax you at that value Obviously don t put a penny more than what the SPV comes back as

Configuring ImageMagick RAW Delegates with DCRAW and UFRAW Batch It s not very often that I take the time to make technical posts for all of the complexities that go into my personal website but this one was so frustrating and time consuming that I figured I would share my findings with the world I ve also been having to do a lot of ImageMagick work in my professional life lately and so I fully understand the frustration of not having good documentation on some of this strong u The problem u strong I have a bunch of CR2 files in my photo gallery RAW image files shot on a Cannon I am using ImageMagick for a bunch of different processing components including resizing the images for my gallery Unfortunately ImageMagick was failing due to UFRAW batch not being found The error would look something like this pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash convert delegate failed ufraw batch silent wb camera black point auto exposure auto create id also out type png out depth 16 output u png i error delegate c InvokeDelegate 1061 code pre After doing a ton of research and trying to hunt down ways to make ufraw batch work with ImageMagick I finally went down a different path of deciding to configure DCRAW as my RAW file ImageMagick delegate This method wound up working perfectly but it does require some special configuring I ve detailed that process below strong u Assumptions u strong The following installation was done on an Amazon AMI instance essentially a CentOS machine with ImageMagick 6 7 8 9 2015 10 08 Q16 installed It also assumes the user has ROOT access and that all of the steps are performed as ROOT strong u Installing DCRAW u strong ul li If you haven t already sudo to root br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash su root code pre li li Create a directory to work with somewhere in your home br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash mkdir dcraw br cd dcraw code pre li li Download a href http centos packages com 6 package dcraw DCRAW a br pre style width 480px hite space pre wrap code class bash wget http mirror centos org centos 6 os x86_64 Packages dcraw 8 96 1 1 el6 x86_64 rpm code pre li li Install the RPM package br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash rpm Uvh dcraw 8 96 1 1 el6 x86_64 rpm code pre li ul br strong u Installing DCRAW Dependencies if necessary u strong At this point you may find that you need to install the em liblcms em dependency If this has happened then the installation of your RPM package will have failed If DCRAW installed without any problems then skip to the libJpeg section below If there was a dependency problem take a look at the following ul li Download liblcms br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash wget ftp ftp pbone net mirror archive fedoraproject org fedora linux releases 17 Fedora x86_64 os Packages l lcms libs 1 19 5 fc17 x86_64 rpm code pre li li Install liblcms br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash rpm Uvh lcms libs 1 19 5 fc17 x86_64 rpm code pre li li Attempt to install DCRAW again br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash rpm Uvh dcraw 8 96 1 1 el6 x86_64 rpm code pre li ul Please note that there could certainly be other dependencies missing as well This was simply a problem that I ran into with a pretty typical modern Linux installation br strong u Installing libJpeg for cjpeg u strong At this point DCRAW should be installed on your system The best you ll really be able to do is to convert to either a TIFF file or get a raw stream of JPG The problem with the RAW stream assuming you re wanting to export to a jpeg as most people will want to do is that it doesn t help you to actually compress the JPG stream into a usable file If you try to simply pipe the STDOUT to a file xxx jpg for example the image won t load as it won t be properly compressed for jpeg specs You ll need to use em cjpeg em or a similar tool to accomplish this final piece ul li Download cjpeg br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash wget http downloads sourceforge net libjpeg turbo libjpeg turbo 1 4 2 tar gz code pre li li Unzip the gzip file and extract the tarball br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash gunzip libjpeg turbo 1 4 2 tar gz br tar xvf libjpeg turbo 1 4 2 tar code pre li li Go into the newly extracted directory and install libjpeg br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash cd libjpeg turbo 1 4 2 br configure br make br make install code pre li ul br strong u Testing cjpeg u strong At this point you should have DCRAW any necessary dependencies and cjpeg installed on your system Incidentally cjpeg will likely have been installed to em opt libjpeg turbo bin cjpeg em If you can t find it do the following ul li Update the mlocate database and find the jpeg tool br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash updatedb br locate cjpeg code pre li ul From here you ll have the fully qualified path of where the cjpeg executable lives Mine was installed to em opt libjpeg turbo bin cjpeg em which I assume is a standard location for this program br strong u Configuring ImageMagick Delegates u strong So the final part of this process is to configure the RAW delegate for ImageMagick so that instead of trying to use em ufraw batch em it instead uses your newly installed em dcraw em u Be sure to backup your delegates xml file before making any changes to the file You can break your installation of ImageMagick if you re not careful u ul li Find your ImageMagick delegates file br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash locate delegates xml code pre li li Be sure to backup the delegates file first br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash cp etc ImageMagick delegates xml code pre li li Open the file with your favorite editor br pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class bash vim etc ImageMagick delegates xml code pre li li Search the document for em ufraw batch em li ul br strong u Replace the ImageMagick Delegates u strong That untouched line in the delegates xml file should look something like this pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class xml lt delegate decode dng decode command quot ufraw batch quot silent create id also out type png out depth 16 quot output u png quot quot i quot gt code pre You ll want to change it to look like this using your path to cjpeg pre style width 480px white space pre wrap code class xml lt delegate decode dng decode command quot dcraw quot c q 3 H 5 w quot i quot quot opt libjpeg turbo bin cjpeg quot quality 100 quot o quot gt code pre