MSFS 2020 Preview!

I just ran across several Flight Simulator vloggers' posts, positively *raving* about Microsoft's pre-Alpha demo in September, of their new Flight Simulator (MSFS) 2020 software, planned for release next year. After watching their video blog posts, I'm getting tentatively excited about the prospect of a new MSFS release, after the long hiatus following their release of Flight Simulator X, ten years ago. If you're a FlightSim enthusiast, and you were unaware of this new development in the past few weeks, you might want to watch this half-hour video by a knowledgeable and well-spoken vlogger who goes by the handle frooglesim.

Trip to Florence

We visited Jennefer's mom in Florence, Oregon, which is near the coast, about an hour drive from Eugene. We took Mandy with us on the airliner, and as usual she was an awesome traveler. Our rental car turned out to be an Audi Q3 crossover, which delighted me, as a friend at work bought one several years ago, and raved about it, and I've been wanting to try one out.

Sorry I can't get to my photos from the trip, from where I am right now, so I've added some hyperlinks to get you to some pertinent information and pictures on the net.

We went for a few outings to explore the area. The surrounding forests and river give the area a calm and peaceful feeling, and we enjoyed a few walks there. We visited downtown Florence, and the Bay Street restaurants and shops on the Siuslaw River waterfront, and took too many pictures of the Siuslaw River Bridge, which carries Highway 101 across the Siuslaw River, not far from where it meets the ocean. Of course, we also visited the River Roasters coffee shop several times.

We visited the Heceta Head Lighthouse, read some good information posted on the walls, and learned from some local rangers, who were there to talk to visitors about the area. There is a nice trail to get up to the lighthouse from the beach, and we followed it a little farther, as it continues on to the top of the hill and beyond. We enjoyed the lush forest and some awesome views of the beach below.

We enjoyed chatting with Jennefer's mom while having breakfast in the mornings. Jennefer fixed dinner for the three of us, almost every night, so we found ourselves at Fred Meyer grocery store almost every afternoon, on the way home from whatever adventure we'd had that day.

Jennefer's niece brought her family to visit one day. We walked to the nearby North Fork River and hunted for crawdads to catch and release. Then her niece prepared a delicious Paella dinner. I didn't think I liked Paella, but I love it, the way she prepared it.

We got our fair share of overcast and rain, considering that we were on the Oregon coast in the Fall, but we enjoyed that, too. On the really wet days, we relaxed in the living room, with the wood burning stove going.

Boomer / Millenial humor

Heavy sigh... I just ran across this baby boomer self-deprecating humor, on a local Word Of Mouth Facebook page. Maybe it's as true to the mark, as it seems... Which reminds me, I also ran across this basic network tutorial recently, when searching for "how to not be such a newbie on the Internet," and it was well-enough-written, that I thought it might be worth sharing, even though some of my friends and family could have written it themselves. Enjoy!

Dark Web overview

Here’s a fairly understandable rundown on the Surface Web, Deep Web, and Dark Web, in case you’ve been wondering. It’s presented by InfoArmor, which sells info protection services to companies. The existence of the dark web is a driving reason for keeping your login credentials secure, by using a different username and password at every site, and for considering signing up for one or more of the identity protection services out there. Y’all be careful out there!

About USB connections

Here's a pretty good article about the evolution of USB connectors, ending with the USB-C connector that some of the newer phones and laptops have. I wasn’t aware of the bidirectional power feature, which sounds like something cool that will soon be well-exploited. I forgot what the old USB-B connector was - it was nice to be reminded.

Getting to sleep

I can only hope that the suggestions in here for dealing with a racing mind before sleep are helpful, as I tend to have the opposite problem. I hope it‘s helpful for my sleep-challenged friends!

Cool Mars Rover mission video

I’m so glad I found this Mars MER video again! I thought it was gone forever. This was the best and most fun video simulation of a Delta II rocket launch and its associated Mars Exploration Rover (MER) spacecraft mission that I’d ever seen. There‘s no narrative, so you get to figure out the technical details of the launch and trans-Mars injection, and appreciate the clever aerobraking and landing approaches, from what you see, which is quite a lot. Enjoy!

Worst user interface

I feel so fortunate in many ways, to have been in the middle of it, as a software developer, when the first graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were being designed and standardized. I read the documentation! I understood the purpose and idiosyncrasies of modal dialog boxes, checkboxes and radio buttons, and so much more. Then, when the Web came along, a new set of UI standards emerged, and has continued to evolve. Smart phone apps have continued to push the evolution, as they desperately try to support working user interfaces on teeny tiny screens. Those people who care about having their websites and apps easy to use, have worked hard to follow those standards. And then, there are those people, who are determined to “think outside the box“ (often without really knowing what’s *in* the box), and continue to present their clunky, difficult-to-navigate UIs to users around the globe. I just ran across this hilarious website, that explores the idea of doing almost everything wrong, according to established web UI standards. I confess to having dabbled in this dark humorous art, early in my app development years. Enjoy!

Outgoing Introvert

Yeah, this is probably me. I’ve been thinking of myself as a social chameleon, an introvert who has made an effort to survive in social situations, but maybe this is more accurate.

Some work-based humor

Bwahahaha! These work-related humorous tweets are a cut above most of the clickbait I run across out there! I lost so much time reading through them, before I realized they just keep on going, and I was in danger of spending the rest of my life there. My sides hurt from laughing. Some of them had me thinking of you - you know who you are! I’ve gotten really good at skipping over the ads - sorry if they bother anyone.

Cupola Cam back online

Another of my many simple pleasures - the Littleton Courthouse Cupola Cam is back online! This is a little user-controlled web camera that's mounted on the top of the courthouse. They have a predefined location called the "Cupola Cam Greeting Spot" that points the camera toward a spot on the sidewalk just outside the courthouse. Here's a snapshot I took of myself, using my iPhone, while I was out walking today.

Google Maps fake business listings

Here's a good, but really disturbing to me, article about the millions of fake business listings on Google Maps. Y’all be careful out there!

Apollo 11 mission 50th anniversary

Wow. Fifty years since Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Pretty significant anniversary! With the TV running nonstop with Apollo stories on Smithsonian channel, I was motivated to pick up my copy of the book “Apollo: the race to the moon“ and re-read the chapter about the Apollo 6 flight, which had multiple failures, and still satisfied its mission parameters. What a story! The Flight Software on that vehicle was amazingly robust!

Dad's 100th in June!

Jennefer and I visited my Dad in June, for his 100th birthday! He is struggling lately, showing more signs of his age, which is slowing him down quite a bit. We tried to make a few temporary changes to his schedule while we were there - taking him out to some favorite places for breakfast and dinner - but it didn't go well, and we ended up putting almost all of his usual routine back in place, and just tried to be in the places where he would normally be, during his regular day. This photo is from breakfast at Sara's Kitchen, a delightful breakfast restaurant just across the road from where Dad lives.

Things were quite different this visit, since Adele had a bad fall in February, and she's no longer living in the beautiful large house she's been in for years. Instead, she's living in a small room at the La Posada rehab facility. For Dad, it's not so much of a change, since he just has to get a ride to, and home from, a different (closer) location every evening, to visit her. She still feeds him dinner, since their dining room allows her to bring him in as a guest every evening. Their schedule is quite rigid, and we "kids" found the need to get out for walks every day, even in the blazing hot Florida sun, to decompress and recoup.

A wonderfully helpful family friend Anita, who lives near him in North Palm Beach, put together his 100th birthday party at the Chesterfield Hotel in Palm Beach. He wanted to keep his party small, so there were *only* 30 family and friends there. My sister Mikele and her husband Bob came from California, and her daughter Dorothy came from Colorado. My cousin Rebecca came from New Hampshire. Dad's good friend Rick from the 1960s made arrangements to surprise him, by flying out from California with his wife Lynn and his son Corey, who now lives in Portland, Oregon. Dad's Pan Am friend Rich, who flew with him in the 1960-70s, including one very memorable and adventurous flight, has been driving down from northern Florida for years. Dad did a good job standing up and addressing everyone during the party - he seemed very pleased to acknowledge that he had visitors from each corner of the country.

We had a bit of a catastrophe on our last day there. I got a text that morning from Bob, saying he had fallen in the hotel shower, and broken his wrist. He was in a lot of pain, and had a very swollen hand, with his wrist at a very odd angle - clearly a serious break. The paramedics arrived shortly, bundled him up while we packed his things, and transported him to the nearby hospital's Emergency Department. He told the ED people that he still wanted us all to catch our flight home, so they made the extra effort to stabilize his wrist, and pronounced him ready for traveling, within 3 hours. We had to wait 45 minutes for his pain prescription at the local pharmacy, so we grabbed a quick breakfast. Then we were on our way to Ft Lauderdale, supposedly a 1 hour drive, just in time to be delayed by several traffic jams on I-95, which lost us so much time, that after skipping our gas fill-up stop, and turning in our rental car, we only had 5 minutes to spare, before they closed the aircraft door behind us. Bob took advantage of our delays on the highway, to rebook his flight to go straight home that evening, skipping his planned visit with us. What a trip!

April visit with my sis

Mandy and I visited my big sis in Arcata in April. We had a relatively low-key visit, but we did a lot of fun things. I booked an early morning flight, thinking specifically of having a late breakfast at Big Blue Cafe, yum, love that place! We went for lots of long walks in the cool moist beautiful redwood forests. We met her friend for a nice dinner at Plaza Grill. We had a very special dinner at Larrupin Cafe, a really delightful place just a short drive north of Arcata in Trinidad. We watched some DVDs and streaming shows, in front of her wood-burning fireplace. She made toasted bagels with Albacore, cream cheese, and capers, a snack she introduced me to, that has become one of my favorites over the years. Her dogs and Mandy got along well enough, all of them snuggling up with us on her new reclining couch.

Spoofed call (not) from Xcel

While I was walking this morning, I received a phone call, supposedly from the Xcel Energy Outage number I have in my contacts. The person (I think it was a person, but it might have been synthesized) calling tried to inform me (they knew my name) that there was a power disconnection order for my home address. I interrupted them to ask what city they were calling from, and they wouldn’t tell me. When I persisted, they ended the call. I think that they were hoping to rattle me enough, that I would allow them to give me a way to send them money, to avoid having my power disconnected.

It really bothers me, that any jerk with the right technology can fake their caller ID to look like it’s coming from a legitimate source.

I’m glad that some of our legislators are working towards updating the technology, so the phone companies might some day have the tools they need to prevent spoofed calls. BTW, I did call Xcel to verify there is no such disconnection order in place.

I thought my friends might appreciate this idea I had, that if you ask the caller what city they’re calling from, it forces them to come up with an answer that you might be able to easily cross-check.

Y’all be careful out there!

January visit with Dad!

We visited Dad and Adele in Florida, in mid-January. We thought a side benefit would be leaving frigid Colorado weather, and enjoying warm Florida weather, but they were having a cold snap, with temperatures down in the 40s. We had to delay our trip by a week, as we both got sick a few days before we were supposed to leave. I was disappointed to be reminded of just how very expensive it is, to change our flight and rental car reservations. We could've taken three trips, for the escalated price of this one. Heavy sigh...

We had an early morning flight, so we were up at O'Dark-30, catching a ride to the airport. Even with the TSA starting to take sick days because of the government shutdown, the bag-check and security lines weren't too bad at DIA, and it wasn't long before we were having a delicious breakfast at my favorite airport restaurant, Pour La France on Concourse B.


Pretty view of broken clouds, above an airliner getting ready to go. I always get excited before a trip, and the various airport scenes always seem to captivate me.

I've always loved flying over clouds. Although it was especially fun to be doing it myself, when I was flying a lot, I'll take it any way I can get it.


Enjoying the beautiful landscaping in Adele's neighborhood, during an early afternoon walk. We tried to get out for walks as often as we could.


Visiting with Dad and Adele at her house. Her place is so beautiful, and she keeps it so clean.


We took Dad and Adele out for a delicious dinner at the Waterway Cafe, one of my favorite places for dinner in the Palm Beach Gardens area. We wandered out onto the dock, to enjoy the view of the Intracoastal Waterway, and found this beautiful view.


Group picture at our table inside Waterway Cafe.


There were so many beautiful sunset views from Adele's back yard!


Dad is listening intently to some well-intended advice. He's a good sport, and tries hard to understand and allow people to voice their own opinions, no matter how wrong we are.


We took a few walks around Adele's neighborhood. Here's the view from the back of the newly redesigned clubhouse.








I really enjoy the landscaping around Adele's neighborhood, as we walk around. This beautiful fountain with palm trees and other greenery, is right at the entrance to her cul-de-sac. It's also one of my favorite pictures of the two of us :-)







We had coffee and conversation at Adele's house almost every morning. I found a box of Entenmann's Crumb Coffee Cake at the Publix grocery store nearby, and Dad and I snacked on a piece of that with our coffee, every day. Yum!









The Fort Lauderdale airport terminals have been under construction and renovation for the past few years. Our terminal looked nice, and had fairly efficient passenger flow, although we did have to backtrack once, after checking a bag.






Pretty sunset view, as we're descending into Denver.












Some interesting lights on Concourse B, reflecting on the ice on the ground, as we're approaching our gate in Denver.

Christmas with family!

We visited my little sister's family, on the central California coast, for Christmas! It was a fun visit. We only stayed for a week, and it seemed to hurry by so fast, it hardly felt like we'd gotten off the plane, before we were getting back on another one to head home.

We had a late morning flight, but with the holiday fast approaching, we wanted to be at the airport with plenty of time, so we called for an early ride. With Mandy being an in-cabin pet, they wouldn't let us check in online, so we needed to get all three of our boarding passes and check a bag, take Mandy to the pet relief area, go through security, and still have time for breakfast before boarding. It was a good thing we got there extra early, because the line to check a bag was longer than I've ever seen it. It wound all around, using up all of the normally "optional" queue space, then wandered out into the main terminal, and wrapped around two corners with a long corridor between them. United did a great job of keeping it moving, though, and it didn't feel like it took that long. The line for security wasn't so bad, since we both had our TSA Precheck clearances. Once we got to Concourse B, we had breakfast at my favorite restaurant in Denver International Airport - Pour La France!

Mandy was a super good traveler, once again. She put her head down before takeoff, and slept until after we had landed, and people were starting to get off the plane. Then she looked up inquisitively, with one of those "are we there yet?" kind of faces.








I snapped a few pictures while we were flying, but this one was the most interesting to me. The Sierra Nevada mountains had a lot of snow!







We started our visit with another of those delightful walks around Atascadero Lake near my sister's house. My grand-niece is getting to be a real "little person" with a personality of her very own. She's such a sweetie, when she wants to be!





My sister had "no room at the Inn," so I booked us a room at the Carlton Hotel in downtown Atascadero. I've been wanting to try this place. We liked it a lot! The king size bed was super comfortable, with a down quilt, and all the other amenities were very well executed. They also had done a wonderful job of decorating the hotel lobby for Christmas. Did you notice Mandy peeking out from behind the arm of the chair?



My nephew and his wife (they married last summer!) hosted a delicious Christmas Eve dinner, in their cozy basement apartment. They worked so hard to make it an amazing experience for all of us.







We spent Christmas morning opening gifts at my sister's house. Sis didn't want to be cooking breakfast that morning, before preparing her big Christmas dinner all the rest of the day, so I texted everyone before we left the hotel, and offered to bring whatever people wanted to order from the nearby Coffee Shop. Nobody responded, so I figured nobody wanted anything. At the last second, one of them asked for something, and then they started giving me everyone else's order. I think we finally got everyone covered for breakfast. About two hours later, when we were finishing up our gift-opening frenzy, everyone started announcing that Sumner wanted to know everyone's breakfast order. It turns out that it took two hours for my group text to be delivered on Christmas morning! Maybe it got delayed with all the Merry Christmas mobile phone traffic? Good to know for future holiday mornings!

We stopped by Morro Rock, the last of the Nine Sisters peaks in San Luis Obispo county. When I was in college, we used to go to Morro Rock, to try to see the Peregrine Falcons, a protected species that was known to nest there. I don't remember ever seeing them back then, but we sure got to see a lot of them on our visit this time! It was a real treat! My pictures of the falcons showed them very small and unexciting, so I'll just show you this pic of us by the Morro Bay inlet, with the harbor in the background. It's exciting to me, to know that the falcons are flying right over our heads here!

The friendly concierge offered to take this picture of the three of us travelers in the nicely decorated hotel lobby, before we flew back home. We really did enjoy our trip, and especially this place. It didn't feel so bad, having to leave my Sis's house each night, knowing we were coming back to such nice accommodations. The evening concierge took a real interest in Mandy, which made our comings and goings all the more pleasant.







Home safe and sound! Even with as much fun as we had visiting family, we were happy to get back to Littleton, and our cheerily decorated home. There were a bunch of Christmas cards waiting for me when I got home. I am glad for the real-time updates that social media like Facebook provides, but I have to say, I really *love* looking at the delightful pictures that people choose to send at the end of the year, and reading the summary notes about how they've been doing - it's one of the highlights of my year! For many years, I was too emotionally overwhelmed to send out my usual Christmas letters, or even to handle the logistics of getting some cards sent. I'm starting to perk up a little lately, and feeling like I'm able to send out a few cards, but I still get overwhelmed, when I start thinking about what to say in a holiday letter.

Hudson Gardens Lights!

We enjoyed visiting the Hudson Gardens holiday light display tonight! It was quite cold - a little below freezing - and even all bundled up, we were glad to be done, and heading off to a nice hot dinner afterwards. They don't allow dogs, so Mandy had to wait for us in her nice warm bed in the back seat of my car.

We loved this reindeer "pulling" a sleigh, with very cool sparkly stars above. Lots of people were clustered around, waiting to climb into the sleigh for a photo opportunity.

Fun series of conical tree-lights. These lights were driven in coordination with the music that was playing on loudspeakers nearby. I had to wait for awhile, to catch them all on at the same time!

Really impressive lighting on this large tall tree. This was the display farthest into the gardens. They had Santa waiting for the kids to come visit, right near this tree.

Nice perspective provided by these fence-mounted lights along one of the wide paths in the gardens.

Nicely lit rocks at the exit, gave us a cheery attitude, as we headed off to sit by the nice warm fireplace at Panera Bread for dinner.

Cuba! exhibit at DMNS

We enjoyed our visit to the preview of the “¡Cuba!” Exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. I learned a lot, reading about the history of Cuba on the various displays, and seeing the interesting representations of current and past life there. Most people know about the Cuban cigar industry, but I wasn't aware of their reputation for having so many classic old cars. They're taking the lead on urban farming, and are providing guidance to other cities around the world. They have a fantastic underwater park, Gardens of the Queen, on 850 square miles of reef south of Cuba. There were also some fascinating displays of animals that are unique to Cuba. I especially enjoyed the display of the words and works of dozens of Cuban artists. They had some touching quotes from people that migrated here, about what they wish for Cuba in the future.

We moved on to the “MindBender Mansion” exhibit sponsored by Anschutz. Lots of challenging puzzles for the enjoyment of children and adults alike. So many fun puzzles in the MindBender Mansion exhibit! Finally, an excellent series of examples for “thinking outside the box!” I've heard that phrase used inappropriately, by so many people who have no idea. I think we need to understand the box, before we start trying to think outside of it.

New word: Adduce

I learned a new word today - Adduce: To cite as an example or means of proof in an argument. The context was... [the judge rejected the government’s challenge and approved the merger with no conditions imposed, citing the government’s failure to adduce “economic evidence of any kind” and reliance on “bare conjecture” as the basis for its case.] It's fun learning new things, but I suspect I won't think to use this word any time soon.

Estes Park

Kind of a whirlwind visit to Estes Park - in and out in about 24 hours, courtesy of Jennefer’s tricky work schedule. Glad I got to meet her cousin! We went for a short walk down to Lake Estes on Friday afternoon after we got there. It was cold and windy, but we saw some beautiful views.



 

So it’s “bugling season“ in Estes Park, and apparently that means you never know when you’re going to run across a bunch of elk in town. We saw this herd just down the street from our hotel on Saturday morning.





 

We enjoyed a somewhat strenuous hike up to Kruger rock, in Hermit Park, southeast of town. There were still a few Fall colors to be seen.

There's a spectacular view from the top of the hill - of Estes Park, Lake Estes, and the surrounding area!

Visit with Sis

Mandy and I spent a fun week visiting my big sister and her dogs, cat, and chickens on the northern California coast. Such a beautiful area. Mandy was once again a great little traveling companion, taking the voyage in her regulation-size airline pet carrier in stride.

We went on lots of walks and hikes in the lush Arcata forests.

My sister has beautiful redwood forests within walking distance of her house. Such a treat.

Mandy liked exploring the forests at her own pace. I think she really enjoyed getting to explore the forest off-leash.

Three independent dogs, and three possible ways to go. It figures, that each dog would position themself at a different choice.