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What’s wrong with Caesar’s Palace?
Registration lobby at Caesar's Palace Las Vegas This past week, my wife and I spent four nights in a deluxe room at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. I was attending TheServerSide Java Symposium, and she...
View ArticleWatching the Atlantis STS-125 launch
It’s been several weeks since NASA launched Atlantis to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Watching the launch, I heard several calls that made me sit up in my seat. You probably didn’t hear them....
View ArticleFirst cruise: The Sea Princess, San Francisco to Alaska
Jane and I are in our first port of call on our first-ever vacation cruise. We’re in a coffee shop in Ketchikan, Alaska. Photos from our first three days with Jane’s family are here. The cruise went...
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Prostate Cancer
With Jane’s encouragement, I thought I would write this blog entry. I want to keep my friends and family up to date, and for the most part they are the only ones reading this blog anyway. The short...
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Pathology Report
Here’s the deal: All along, this whole “prostate cancer” thing seemed to me like a gigantic fraud. Well not fraud, but maybe “surreal.” That all changed yesterday. I felt fine, always did. I wasn’t...
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Cutting the cord, life without DirecTV (or cable)
“Thank you for calling DirecTV, and thank you for being a loyal customer since 2004! How may I assist you today?” “I’m calling to close my account.” It took some doing. After being transfered to a...
View ArticleKaiser Low Calorie Diet, Terrible Execution
Like so many of us, I need to lose weight. My doctor at Kaiser referred me to a new in-house weight loss program, a low-calorie “meal replacement” program. The program appears to be a franchisee of...
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Home theater upgrade story (Part 1)
Old system: Rotel RSX-1065 receiver Panasonic TH-50P9UK plasma display Old Pioneer DVD player InFocus ScreenPlay 5700 projector Roku B&W CDM7NT 5.1 system, with broken tweeters on the front mains...
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Home theater upgrade, part 2, fixing HDMI
(Part one found here.) First I’ll mention that the AV preamp I started out with, a Marantz 7005 purchased as B-stock from Outlaw Audio, turned out to be hopeless. It would never successfully handshake...
View ArticleInternet service has no maverick
If you’re like me, you have exactly two places from which to buy high-speed internet service: your phone company (mine is Verizon) or your cable TV provider (mine is Time Warner Cable). That sounds...
View ArticleWhere to go from here …
This is the first new blog post from me in four years, and long overdue. Why blog now? I enjoy writing and reporting about stuff in my life: astronomy, travel, bridge, wine, photography, network...
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Astrophotography from home
In the wee hours of May 15, hunting down Comet C/2020 F8 SWAN Normally I wouldn’t even have considered trying this project. I’m known for hauling my telescopes to a dark sky site in the desert to do...
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Playing with the big guy
Evening twilight with the AP180 at Sawpit Wash, 50 yards from our front door. The previous post mentions how I started trying out photographing Messier objects from my home in Monrovia, using my...
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This story is a bit flat
Last night (Saturday, May 23, 2020) was a beautiful dark clear night in Monrovia. Tonight is forecast to be even better and warmer. I can’t resist! When will I sleep? By the end of evening twilight, I...
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More Spring Messiers
We had several great clear nights in Monrovia. I had a night where everything clicked. If I hadn’t napped a bit, I might have gotten two or three more Messier objects. I think now I know the most...
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Video of comet NEOWISE
I set up the AP180 last night and was able to capture comet NEOWISE as it passed through Ursa Major. This video is fifty frames covering about 27 minutes, from 9:11 p.m. to 9:38 p.m. on July 19, 2020....
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