Steve et. al.;

I am passing through Amarillo on my road trip, likely this coming Sunday around noon to mid-afternoon. I realize that ADB will be closed, but would like the chance to meet up with you (y'all) for lunch.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 10, 2023 - 05:28 pm: Edit

Sunday isn't a good day, generally. Leanna and I have plans with family. I don't know about Jean. In theory you could visit Steve at the retirement hotel half a mile away.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Thursday, August 10, 2023 - 09:39 pm: Edit

Hrm...

Well, I hit STL tonight, and can push things up to Saturday evening if that will work better. I was planning to hit the Robert E Howard museum in Cross Palins, but they didn't get back to me *at all* about my request for days and hours open.

Regardless, I think I can comfortably make Tulsa by tomorrow night.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Friday, August 11, 2023 - 05:34 pm: Edit

Made it to Tulsa.

Amarillo tomorrow, and I'll be getting a hotel room (just don't know which Wyndham property I'll spring for yet).

Even if it doesn't work out that I can come and meet up for dinner, can anyone recommend a good value steak or chop house? I'm craving steak.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Friday, August 11, 2023 - 05:57 pm: Edit

Just booked at the Days Inn by the Medical center on the west side of town.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Saturday, August 12, 2023 - 01:37 pm: Edit

Steve:

You, Leanna, Steve, Jean and Al are cordially invited to dine with me tonight at Longhorn Steakhouse, 8200 I-40, my treat.

-Mike

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, August 13, 2023 - 01:19 am: Edit

I did not see this until after midnight. Sorry to miss you.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, October 25, 2023 - 11:44 pm: Edit

HALLOWEEN "TRUNK OR TREAT"
I had never heard of this but apparently it's been happening for years. My adopted niece Angela invited Leanna and I to her church's "party" for the evening.

A church (several in Amarillo did it tonight) picks a night and time and on the church parking lot various church members park their cars (skipping every other parking place) and then have candy to give out to kids. Some have elaborate games and others just have baskets of candy. Some bring their own candy, but the church also buys lots of it and gives it to cars. Children (not just from the church) are then taken to the site by their parents and walked around in costume to collect treats from the various cars.

It's basically your classic "trick or treat in a neighborhood" but on a parking lot. Cops were present. The children were safe because it wasn't dark, their parents were there, they got to go to about 40 "houses" without being in traffic or being kidnapped by weirdos.

I thought it was going to be pleasantly boring but found myself having a good deal of fun watching the children smile and thank me for the candy. (The stuff Leanna and I grabbed at the grocery store was better stuff than the church was handing out. We were a very popular stop on the tour.)

We are already planning for next year when we'll have costumes and take dog biscuits (there were a lot of well behaved dogs). (We found out that Jean's church is going this Tuesday night and invited ourselves to come along with her and Albert.)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, October 28, 2023 - 02:29 am: Edit

THE WIDOW'S MITE
Call this sort of a blog. The "mite" was a Judean (Israeli) coin minted around 100BC to 100AD. It had half of the value of a Roman lepton (penny, their smallest coin). Jesus praised a widow for donating two mites to the temple collection plate when she was so poor it would mean going without food the next day because she gave the temple her only coins.

Back then, money was coins. There were no checks, letters of credit, credit cards, or paper money. If you had money, it was in coins. A typical worker earned from 5-10 leptons per day depending on what skills he had and what jobs were available. To feed a married couple with four kids (typical of the time) cost between 4 and 6 leptons per day, so "hand workers" like Joseph scrambled to get some work every day and to qualify for the better paying work (carpenter, stonemason). On good days when they made more than 5 leptons the family could afford to bury a couple of them for the inevitable day when there was no work or there was a major expense to be paid. A lepton would pay a weaver for enough cloth to make new clothes or the tanner for leather to make new sandals.

Young boys followed Dad to work from age 8 and did whatever they could, the employer would give the young lad a "mite" for the day if he proved useful. While that seems trivial it might have represented a 5-10% pay raise for Dad and the family. The young boy gave his mite to his mother; there were no comic books to spend it on and eating was a priority. As the boy grew older and more useful he would get a whole lepton for the day, and by the time he was 16 he was getting a few leptons which made the family much better off. Of course, from place to place and time to time food cost more or less, workers made more or less, families came in all sizes, and well paying day labor was sometimes hard to find. Children were born or died (young) and a lad of 14 was already looking for a girl of the marrying sort.

I mention this because I recently had a chance to buy a dozen "old Roman and other coins" supposedly found in Israel or at least around those parts. These were fairly cheap (about $2 each) but well worn and not the sort of things that serious coin collectors would find good enough to collect. (Those good ones with crisp clear images cost $50 for the bronze leptons and hundreds of dollars for silver coins with readable inscriptions.) I don't collect coins; I collect "odd things" like old arrowheads, bullets, buttons, coins, fossils, animal teeth, and other odds and ends. (I have a cave bear jaw and several dino teeth.) It's just kinda neat to have a few coins that are anywhere around 2000 years old. Digging through internet I was able to identify three as Herod-era mites, three more as biblical-era Roman coins, a Constantine coin from around 320 AD with Christian symbols on it, and a Greek coin with an owl (Athena) which is at least 2250 years old. I had so much fun I went back to the dealer and bought another dozen and may buy another dozen or two. I plan to give the ones that I can confirm are bible-era to my seriously religious cousins next Christmas. I already gave Jean a Roman penny that had an image that was vaguely like the "wheat pennies" she collects and my adopted niece (who is also seriously religious) one of the confirmed Herod-era mites.

Like I said, money back then was coins, and coins were the easiest way to store and transport wealth. Coins from outside the region would arrive with travelers or traders and be considered to have a value the same as the nearest equivalent local coin. Every time the Jews revolted, people would bury every coin they could find, and after the Romans got done killing people, lots of those buried coins were not found until modern times. A lepton might change hands five or ten times a day. A given coin would continue to circulate for over a hundred years. It's not impossible to believe that any given Israeli-found coin in a coin shop's junk box (not good enough for collectors) just might have passed within a few miles of Jesus, or might have actually been paid to Joseph or Jesus for a days work, or might have been dropped in the collection bowl when Jesus was preaching to small crowds (and subsequently spent for groceries by Mary Magdalene, who was in charge of that sort of thing).

Like I said, I collect odd things, especially things with fun stories that might even be true.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 01, 2023 - 11:31 am: Edit

I got my final step of new implant-bolted teeth yesterday. After a few hours, my jaws relaxed and they fit nicely. I had a good breakfast and look forward to chewing lunch for the first time in six months.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, November 01, 2023 - 09:42 pm: Edit

Now *that* is some happy news, Steve. There's no pain like dental pain, and I'm glad you finally get to move past it.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 01, 2023 - 10:24 pm: Edit

Chewed a turkey lunch and a chicken fried steak for supper.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, November 02, 2023 - 09:12 am: Edit

Excellent!

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Thursday, November 02, 2023 - 10:46 am: Edit

Having dental problems can be such a huge downer since they interfere with one of life's greater pleasures: eating.

Happy chewing Steve!

--Mike

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 - 09:35 pm: Edit

CROWDHELP REQUEST

I had a problem with my home PC and took it to the shop. They replaced the hard drive with the data on it and now the jpgs and jpegs (which is most of my Shapeways stuff and the art I use for Captain's Log) cannot be read. I click on one and it says "Apparently we don't support this format." Since jpg/jpeg is the most common graphics/photo format in the world, anybody got a clue what I need to reconnect or do I have to haul the whole rig into the shop again tomorrow?

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 - 10:56 pm: Edit

What software application is it trying to open the files with?

It sounds like the default-association was changed to something that can't handle jpg files.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 - 11:01 pm: Edit

I have no idea what software application it is trying to use. How would I find that out? All of the software is on C and the shapeways files are on D. How does replacing D and copying the jpgs to the new D change the default-association?

By Will McCammon (Djdood) on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - 01:06 am: Edit

Replacing a storage-only drive shouldn't have changed that.

I asked, because some application threw that "Apparently we don't support this format." error, trying to start in response to a (I'm assuming) double-click on a file it thinks it is associated to. Usually, the application will be named at the top of the error message dialog window.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - 02:25 am: Edit

The application is not named. It is some kind of generic windows photo-viewer/editor which just sort of came along with windows. I think. I click on a jpg and it opens in a black box which gives me the options to crop, resize, save as, and so forth.

By Ronald Frarck (Kruchev13) on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - 11:33 am: Edit

Right-Click the file and choose "Open With" to choose the appropriate program for the file type. Since you had to replace a hard drive, the possibility that some data corruption may have damaged some of your files. In the future I would recommend keeping a "flash drive" plugged in to make a backup copy of your files

By Nick Blank (Nickgb) on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - 12:52 pm: Edit

The generic windows photo viewer is called Photos.

If you want to see the current file associations you can type "file associations" into the search box at the lower left corner of your screen and hit enter. It should come up with something called "Choose default apps by file type" which you can open.

This might take a little while to finish loading, but it gives you a list of every file type and the associated program used to open it with if you double click that file type.

If you scroll down quite a ways in the file list you can find the entries (alphabetically) for .jpg and .jpeg files. If it doesn't show Photos in the right column next to those file types, you can click on whatever program is there and change it. You can set it to Photos, or Paint, or any other graphics program you might have on your computer. If nothing is currently listed for that file type it will have a "+ Choose a default." button to let you choose something.

EDIT: This is for Windows 10, but I don't think windows 11 is much different.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - 02:07 pm: Edit

I did the "choose default apps by file type" thing and it did nothing.

The JPGs from 28 Jan 2022 through 9 Nov 2023 are "unknown file type" while those before 28 Jan 2022 work fine and the tank pictures I downloaded last night work fine.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - 03:27 pm: Edit

Now and again, when I saved a jpeg from one storage to another, it would make it xxx.jpeg.jpeg....
Nothing would recognize that....
Might have to check the individual files and correct that....
Guess it's a glitch in the system....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - 03:37 pm: Edit

I checked that, didn't happen. (this time)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, November 15, 2023 - 11:37 pm: Edit

The right-click/open-with thing doesn't work here. It does the same thing as it does when you double-left-click, it says we apparently don't support that format.