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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Araquan Skytracer's LiveJournal:
- EMD SD24, Burlington Northern - The old Atlas/Con Cor model. Needs detail upgrades. It's even painted 95% correctly... alas, the redetailings may require repainting anyway. Ah well. Got this for super-cheap, so... Eh, no guilt. Figure this can go into my early BN diesel pool.
- AC&F 36-seat diner, Burlington Northern - Another car for my Empire Builder pool- and the third diner of this type. The other two are in Great Northern blue and Amtrak, Phase I. Video seems to show that there were a disproportionate number of diners in the BN scheme (just like the full dome lounges) so... a BN one for the fleet I now have.
- Pullman 12-1 sleeper, Pullman - Another 12-1 for the 12-1 god... I have too few of these, but everyone keeps snapping them up before I can nab. Not this time.
- Two SD7/9 shell and chassis kits, undecorated - Project fodder from Rail Power Products, long out of production by now. These, once I find a way to add dynamic brake (the kits are for the non-DB version- the original owner was going to do Milwaukee Road units with them) are intended to be converted to Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range SD-M units. Someday. They'll join my SD38, SD38AC, and pair of SD40-3s in that road's colors. It's possible one might be further modified during the conversion to look like a former SD18 rather than an SD9... we'll see.
- H-21A coal hopper - Pennsylvania Railroad - Door prize. They must have gotten some complaints over the number of randomly-awarded prizes given to people that end up being in the wrong scale, so now you get to pick. Had the option to go with a Pennsy N5C waycar, but the color scheme was too new... Have a N5 already anyway. But I need hoppers. Lots of 'em. One more for the fleet... 35 more to go, and all will have to be built/numbered/weathered/etc. Then power acquired for the train. One step at a time...
- Some Kadee couplers... scale head, exact type forgotten - Also door prize. Dad came with, so between the two of us, we had two numbers in the can... and we both won. I'd probably have grabbed the N5C if it was still there.
- Car Names, Numbers, and Consists, a book by Robert J. Wayner - A nice book with information of all sorts about pre-Amtrak streamliner equipment and consists from all sorts of railroads. Some floor plans are even included. Another book from that company is mentioned in the introduction- one that should be referred to for Amtrak information. Naturally, I've had that one for years... :D
- Two vintage Amtrak buttons - Amtrak logos, fun to wear.
| Saturday, November 21st, 2009 | |
| 2:27 pm | Yesterday. There was a new movie out yesterday, one that you may have heard of. I decided to go see it. In spite of the crowds and such that I had to shove my way through in the lobby, I managed to find a good seat. And the film was, to be honest, a lot better than I expected. I recommend it to any fan of the genre. What film was that? Planet 51 of course. Once I got past the lobby, I found I only had to share the screening room with about six other people, which is about par for the course for a matinée at this this theatre. Though I will admit I was amused at the demographic that was crowding the establishment, especially after my film (which ended at about 18:30). It was about 90% girls aged 14-18, with the rest divided between disinterested boyfriends and even more disinterested parents. Is there some other movie coming out this weekend or something? Yes, I know there is. I'm just pretending the whole franchise doesn't exist. So far so good. La la la... Current Mood:  bouncy |
| Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | |
| 8:02 pm | Stupidity. Stupidity: when someone posts configuration file examples as editor screenshots, thus requiring that one actually type all the text in, rather than posting them in a textual format, allowing one to copy/paste it. Current Mood:  perplexed |
| 5:20 am | The only excuse I can offer is that I was bored. Okay, so...  It needed a caption. No, really. It did. If you don't get it, this may help. If you REALLY don't get it, watch this. Current Mood:  amused |
| Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | |
| 1:58 pm | Writer's Block: Book review None. I've long held that trying to ban a book was a mind's natural defensive reaction to try to protect itself from ideas it was too small to contain. I have yet to see conclusive evidence that this view is incorrect. I'm rather happy that my school libraries- even at the elementary and junior high school levels- participated in Banned Books Week. They'd set up a bookshelf near the front entrance or in some other prominent place, and the message basically was, "Hey, kid- someone somewhere wanted to keep you from reading what's inside these... Why don't you check one out today?" I approved then, and I approve now. |
| Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | |
| 11:48 pm | Birthday activities. Had some network problems lately, so I replaced a 50' Cat6 cable and an 8-port gigabit switch... I think the switch was the cause of the problem (even though early tests seemed to indicate the cable) but.. all's well now and I have a spare cable if the original was good. Ate dinner at a neat Mexican restaurant. Will have dinner at a neat Italian restaurant tomorrow. Went to the railroad club. Probably shouldn't have. Oh well- is that going to be a problem much longer? And, as the auction was ending on this auspicious day anyway, I decided to attempt to treat myself to something... Nobody else wanted it so I got it for the minimum bid. What was it? Well, this. No, not a screen grab from a cruddy encode I did a decade ago. The production cel(s) used to make it. It's from one of my favorite episodes of the series (titled Midnight Movie Madness) and as I recall, it was the first one I ever saw back when the show came out in 1992. There's some reason to believe it was the first one made, even ahead of the two-part pilot, come to think of it. The cel is unframed, but I can have that taken care of. Probably early next year when I have more time to mess with things. I still need to finish out the arrangements and get a hold of the thing, but.. for now... I'm happy. :o) Current Mood: good |
| 2:06 pm | |
| 1:55 am | XXXIII Well, it's been my birthday for nearly two hours now. I'm going to find a beer to celebrate. \o/ Also, the cough is nearly gone. Not completely, but nearly. Current Mood: good |
| Monday, November 16th, 2009 | |
| 1:48 am | Also... I just transferred most of my ongoing regular Unix operations to a surplus Pentium 4 I nabbed a couple years ago down in Florida... The P4 has been running Debian GNU/Linux for nearly a year, but a Sun Solaris/SPARC system had remained the primary server until now. It had been filling that role since my last x86 Linux server (Teletran, a system I put together in 1997) was destroyed by lightning in 2002. Sometime early next year, hopefully, the Sun machine will receive some upgrades- including the 40GB IDE hard drive that's presently in the P4. It was supposed to go in the Sun box (doubling its capacity and speeding its disk operations substantially) but the one that came with the P4 died, requiring an emergency spare. The P4 will, at that time, get a much larger SATA drive. Current Mood: accomplished |
| 1:30 am | Updates. I've not said much. Been busy or sick. Last weekend- train show up near Ames and Boone. Acquisitions: Also entered my Hi-Level dining car in the special "Amtrak Equipment" category. I won first place. :) ...I was also the only entrant. Oh well, I consider this the victory the car should have gotten in 2004. No train watching that day though, in spite of the sun and nigh-70F temperatures. We took dad's car, and his battery conked out- we got a jump then drove straight home. Battery replaced the next day. No work on the E8A since it went on hiatus. Haven't wanted to. Poked at a coach I put on hiatus a year ago though. Installed grab irons, painted a few interior bits. But with travel coming up, there may not be time to finish it- insofar as it can be finished with windows still unavailable for it. Going to Minnesota in around a week, if I feel up to it, for the Thanksgiving Ritual. Still have a cough, but it's mostly residual. Hopefully it'll be gone soon. Leaving for Florida on or before December 10th. Need to order oxygen sensor. Current Mood:  NyQuil |
| Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | |
| 10:49 pm | I have a sick. Fluesque symptoms. Well, somewhere between a flu and a cold. Spent most of yesterday and today in or near bed. Fun. Feeling better though, after a fashion. Current Mood:  sick |
| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | |
| 11:36 pm | Hmm. And there's a train show in Tampa on the 19th/20th of December. Here's hoping I get a free day then... Current Mood:  contemplative |
| 8:48 pm | Also... Going to Florida in one month. One month from today. So much to do, so little time. Current Mood:  busy |
| 4:56 pm | Public service announcement. I would appreciate it if a lot of my friends- and I have a dozen or so people in mind by this point- stop being so goddamned uptight. We can have civil discourse, and even lively debate, about a broad range of social and political issues, and it shouldn't end in broken or fracturing friendships. Or at least, I would like to think so. Disagreement is not a sin, least of all an unforgivable one. Grow the fuck up, people. Life is too short for this. Thank you. Current Mood:  angry |
| Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | |
| 5:57 am | |
| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | |
| 5:56 am | |
| Saturday, October 31st, 2009 | |
| 7:29 am | Horses. It is probably good that I am not involved in horse racing. Because, you know, the horses often have odd names. I would probably either give horses names like "Horse No. 6," "Horse No. 14," "Horse 23A," etc... Or I'd go for broke with names like "Ablative Infraction," "Weaseltwist Annihilation," "Chum Bucket Overdrive," and "Transcendental Apostasy." ...yeah. Current Mood: curious |
| Friday, October 30th, 2009 | |
| 7:53 am | Velkomin á Taco Bell... hefurðu prófað Burrito... Seriously. Also, visualize the continental U.S. in terms of distance from the nearest McDonald's. Current Mood: amused |
| 7:26 am | Hmm. The radio is currently playing the cautionary ballad, set to a quite lively sort of music, that advises that one has now frivolously entangled oneself in the affairs of a son of a bitch. Current Mood: calmCurrent Music: Hair of the Dog - Nazareth |
| Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 | |
| 10:53 am | Ares I-X Just watched the prototype for the Ares I system launch, yea though my NASA TV stream kept freezing. Regrettably, I do not get that as an actual TV channel here. But! I still got to watch it. Looks like everything went well, and this will provide much good data for the rest of the development process. Now if only I could have seen it from Jetty Park. True, KSC has closer viewing areas, but the park has a nice beach... You know, I'd really like to be there when the first Ares V goes up... I imagine that will be most impressive indeed. |
| Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 | |
| 11:44 pm | Movin' it, Chicago style A few more photos from my first digicam are presented here, this time shot as I passed through Chicago on the way to New York in 2003. I've done about all I can for these... but I wasn't exactly dealing with the best camera, by today's standards, nor the best conditions, especially in the first one- shooting through a tinted (yet also sunlit) window on a train is always a pain. But either way, ( here they are... ) |
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