Month: September 2012

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I Only Borrow the Souls

One of the most rewarding things about doing this blog is the opportunity to connect readers with their pasts. I’ve been asked a lot of times over the years how to take pictures. Most of the times I dismiss the question by saying something like, “I walk in, draw a box around a tiny segment of time, then walk out.”

Or, I might paraphrase Bob Greene, a Chicago columnist, “I make people love me for 28 minutes, then I steal their souls.”

Doing this blog has taught me that I didn’t really ‘steal” the souls. I merely borrowed them for three, four or five decades. Now I’m returning them.

When I started circulating photos I had taken in Smelterville in the mid-60s, one of them made it into the hands of Fay Powders. It was her mother, and it was the only photograph she has of her. Watch the video to hear Fay talk about it.

Cheating death

When I ran the story about Lester Harris, a SW Bell repairman who would cheat death by dangling from a cable chair suspended over the Diversion channel (a cable that had probably been damaged by people shooting at it), family, friends and coworkers all shared stories about the man. He was also featured in a story about stock car racers at Arena Park.

I particularly like this one from Jennifer Adams: Lester Harris is my grandpa. I live next to him and when I came home today he was telling me all about this. He always told me stories of him working for Southwestern Bell but never saw pictures of it until today. Thanks for posting these pictures!!”

Lester’s daughter, Sandy Harris Lyke, sent this update September 24, “My Dad has been very ill this past year. He could use all the prayers people want to send his way.”

“Great operator, greater father”

Judy Finley spotted her dad operating a crane in a story about construction projects at SEMO. I’m using that photo and quote in my Altenburg presentation.

When I shot pictures of the last days before The Palm Beach Post farmed out its award-winning production department, I wrote, “I’ve always believed that every worker should be able to show his or her kids and grandkids what they did for a living.”

 

 

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Cleaning Up the House

Wife Lila and two of her friends are coming back home Saturday night after taking a cruise in Alaska. That means I’m scurrying around like a teenager who threw a keg party while his parents were gone. The place pretty much passes the sniff test (or my sense of smell has gone dead).

This trip left me in unusual circumstances. Normally she takes my level of domestic skills into consideration before she leaves town and makes sure that the laundry is in a U+4 status. (That means four pairs of underwear more than the anticipated days she’ll be on the road).

Abandoned in U-3 status

She had a lot of last-minute tasks to take care of, so she left me in a U-3 status. Faced with either turning the articles of clothing inside out to bridge the gap or going out and buying more, I tackled the washing machine. It didn’t belch suds, my white underwear is the same color as when it went in (I remembered to add the fabric softener, too) and the smoke alarm didn’t go off. An even number of socks came out. That must mean that I either didn’t lose a sock or the sock monster coughed up a spare.

The fridge was pretty barren of leftovers, too. I thawed out a bag of frozen homemade chili for a couple of meals and there was enough cheese and lunch meat around to carry me for a few more. In the end, though, I had to reach for my cookbook: a stack of takeout menus under the kitchen telephone.

Dishes are overrated

Dishes are highly overrated. Food tastes just as good off a paper plate and you don’t have to wash it. OJ tastes a lot better straight from the bottle.

In the end, though, I had to fire up the dishwasher for coffee cups, eating utensils and the like. The experience went much better than the first time I did it when the kids were little. I got everything loaded, put in the detergent and went into the living room where we had the computer set up.

All of a sudden, I heard the kids screaming “Daddy! Daddy!” and turned to see them running from a wall of suds only slightly ahead of a thoroughly traumatized cat. Who KNEW that all soaps weren’t made alike? Well, at least the kitchen cabinets were clean up to about waist level.

It’ll be good to have her back home. I’m just waiting to hear what I did wrong.

[The Missouri Utilities ad came from the 1956 Sesquicentennial book.]

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Rockin’ the Road

Son Matt found this character a few years back. He seemed to be a good illustration for a review I did on my bike blog for a combination handlebar bag / MP3 amplified speaker gizmo. The Audible Rush Jam-Pac Premium handlebar bag is a lot lighter than Craven’s trailer-mounted blasters.

Audible Rush music blaster

Its relevance to Cape is slim, but following the link will give you something to read while I’m focusing on other stuff for awhile.

I spent most of the past 24 hours trying to track down a malware infection that I was afraid was causing bad links to show up on the blog. It turned out that the problem wasn’t with my site: my browsers were infected with a program that would cause phrases in it to be highlighted like they were legitimate links. If you clicked on a question mark at the bottom of the graphic ad they displayed, they’d take you to a site called “text enhance.” So, basically, you couldn’t tell if a link in a story was legit or if it was going to send you off someplace of dubious value or safety.

They came in hidden on a driver I needed to play a video file, but they piggyback on a variety of browser plugins (don’t, for example, install something that claims to give you a “Don’t Like” button in Facebook).

I actually have a Cape story in the works that I think folks will like.

If anybody else is having that problem, shoot me an email and I’ll tell you what to look for to get rid of the varmint.

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Restore, Restore, Restore

The message two days ago was Backup, Backup, Backup. The mission today was Restore, Restore, Restore.

Well, life is good. I replaced two external devices that I used for data storage with one Drobo S that holds five drives and “stripes” the data across all of the drives. I can lose one drive without data loss. I COULD have formatted it so I could lose two drives, but I would have lost storage space. So, my five drive bays are filled with two 2TB drives, 2 1.5TB drives and an oddball 320GB drive I had kicking around. After the overhead the redundancy claims, I have 4.82TB available to me. (I can remember when I was impressed to get 1.4MB on a 3-1/4″ floppy.)

Drobo was easy to install

Most of you won’t need that kind of storage, but if you do, I highly recommend the Drobo. My kid has one like mine at home and an eight-bay at his office. He kept trying to convince me to move in that direction, but I hate to spend money until and unless I have to.

The nice thing is that you can mix and match drives, then put in bigger ones when you need more space. You don’t have to go through any big gyrations to make it work. The thing that took the most time was getting a stripped screw to let go of the side rails in my old device. Drobo installation consisted of loading the Drobo Dashboard software, sliding the drives in the bays (the cover, a nifty translucent plastic that lets you see diodes and flashing lights is held on by magnets), plugging in the power and and data cables and formatting the drives (took five minutes).

Backblaze worked

I touted Backblaze’s cloud backup system in my earlier post, but I have to admit that I wasn’t completely confident that it was going to be able to handle a 228GB zip file, but it unpacked clean as a whistle.

If you’re not backing up your data on a regular and reliable basis, I highly recommend this service. It’s five bucks a month to back up unlimited amounts of data. If you click on this link or the image above, it’ll take you to Backblaze. If you sign up for the service, I get a tiny piece of the action. Since the darned service is so cheap, trust me when I say “tiny.”

Salting the elephants

I used the expression “salting the elephants” when a vendor tried to tell me that he didn’t need to prove that his backup system actually worked. He said the restore was so reliable (and so much trouble to make work) that I should just trust him that it would perform as described. (The elephant photo, by the way, was taken at the Town Plaza.)

“So, basically, if I buy your system,” I said, “I’m going to be salting the elephants and assuming that just by HAVING it, I’ll keep failure at bay. Is that your pitch?”

He looked at me quizzically, so I filled him in.

A guy is sitting on a park bench minding his own business when a stranger in a suit sits down next to him. They nod, but otherwise ignore each other. The stranger opens his coat, extracts a salt shaker and shakes it over his shoulder.

Guy One thinks this is unusual, but shrugs and ignores it. A few minutes later, Guy Two repeats the action. This goes on several times until Guy One just has to ask.

“It’s none of my business, but what’s with the salt shaker?”

“It keeps the elephants away,” was the answer.

“There aren’t any elephants around here.”

“See, it’s working.”

Unlike the vendor, I have actually done a restore with Backblaze, so I feel comfortable recommending it.

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