good bye spring

It's hard to believe it's already the last day of May. Seems like I was plowing snow just a few days ago. Summer has come in with a vengeance. The trees are fully leafed out so we can't see the mountains anymore and the mosquitoes are breeding fiercely. I have 2 mosquito magnet machines sucking in the little critters. You don't realize how well they work until you step into the woods out of their range. Also, as soon as they run out of propane the mosquitoes start moving back in. That was one pleasant surprise this spring. The price of propane is about the same as last year. It costs $20 to refill a 20 pound bottle. I was really afraid with the rise in oil cost that I wouldn't be able to afford the mosquito magnets. So far so good on them. The cost of gas and diesel is outrageous, though. $4.16 a gallon for gas and $4.79 a gallon for diesel. I only have to fill the diesel Golf up every other month now but what worries me is that the diesel price is usually within pennies of heating oil cost and there isn't much left I can cut back on that. I did install new storm doors for the front and back doors so that should help keep the draft out a little. They sure make it nice in the summer because now we can leave the doors open for light and air. This house at least had screens on the windows when we moved in. The house we lived in for 20 years in Eagle River didn't even have window screens. Of course the mosquitoes were no where near as bad down there.

Got to go work in the yard....

It's summer!

Okay, technically it is still spring but up here if you wait for official summer it's almost over when it gets here. I say today is summer because the last pile of snow in our yard has finally vanished. We had our first thunderstorm of the season 2 nights ago. There was one flash of lightning and a clap of thunder and it was over. It did rain for about 30 minutes and there was some pea sized hail in the rain. It made everything smell really good. You couldn't even smell the goat yard for a while.
Today is absolutely beautiful! It's about 60 degrees with just a slight breeze. Mary and I finished raking the front yard, mostly to get the winter's collection of dog poop up, and I did a little painting around the front door. I got 2 storm doors for our front door and downstairs door and after installing I could see how shabby the front door had become. It makes a big difference to be able to leave the doors open. Not only is the light better but the ventilation is much better.
I also got my digital to analog converter boxes yesterday. Since we can't get cable TV up here we only have access to over the air TV. February 17, 2009 is the cut off for analog TV and I only had one TV that was capable of receiving digital signals. I got my 2 government coupons and ordered the boxes from an online outfit. They work really good and were simple to setup.
Time to feed the goats and take the dogs for their afternoon walk.

Old friends.

Occasionally I stick a name from my past into the Google or Yahoo search engines to see if anyone I know is now famous. I get lucky on occasion and get to see a little of the life of people that helped shape my life. Last night I entered Edie Parish, who is the woman who talked me into putting in my application to be an Automation Specialist for the FAA. I talked her into applying for the same job and we both ended up getting selected. She also helped me with my studying at FSDPS school. She took great notes and would share them with me. So as long as I stayed awake in class I could put it all together and learn. She also helped me after I got the job because our manager needed to send someone to TAL programing school and since I had shown the most interest in learning the job in general he decided I should be the one. Trouble was that I had spent all my time actually working on the Tandem computer and messing around with the software and hadn't even started the prerequisite correspondence course. Edie had finished the course but she couldn't fly and also had to take care of her husband who was recovering from a bout of pancreatic cancer. So she tutored me so I could meet the requirements. The course was suppose to take like 3 months to finish and I had less then a month but with Edie's help I made it. I had to go in on a weekend to take the final test and didn't even receive the results until I had already started the class in OKC.
Edie was bound for bigger things than just an automation specialist so she was promoted to supervisor at Juneau AFSS less then 2 years after we opened the FSDPS. She went on to numerous other jobs in the Alaska Region and then moved to Washington D.C. to work at FAA headquarters. She had some mid level management positions at headquarters while I was still working but now she is a director of one of the divisions and acting director of another. That's like just below the FAA Administrator. The picture that accompanied the article about Edie reminded me how funny it is that as men age they go gray and many go bald. With women it seems they all go blond as Edie has.
This morning I put the name of my old FSS chief in Google. I actually was going to do it last night but got distracted after finding the information on Edie. So this morning I put Jack Mitchell Pierre, SD in Google and found this information on not only Jack Mitchell but the doctor, Dr. Lindbloom, that delivered both of our kids in Pierre. Jack and his wife Jo were a big help to Mary and me when we first got to Pierre. Mary had come with me to Flight Service school in Oklahoma City for 4 months. She was pregnant with Maija but wasn't due until the end of November. We got to Pierre on November 2 after driving all the way from Oklahoma City to Bismarck, ND so I could check out of that facility and then drive back down to Pierre. The weather was horrible on the way down to Pierre. Wet sloppy snow that would build up in the wheel wells on the car so I would have to stop and kick it out so I could turn the wheel just to steer. We got into Pierre late in the afternoon and Jack and Jo had us over for dinner which was lucky because we found out that Jo worked for Dr. Lindbloom who was the only doctor in Pierre that did babies. That night we went back to the Holiday Inn that we had just checked in to and went to bed. Around midnight Mary woke me up to tell me her water had broke. I had the hotel desk call the hospital so I could find out what to do. ( this was in the days before 911 service ) The lady on the phone had no idea what to tell me but she finally said to come on down to the hospital and she would call Dr. Lindbloom to check Mary out. Mary was in labor but not very far along. She ended up in the labor room for almost 3 days and Dr. Lindbloom was getting ready to do a cesarean when Maija finally decided to finish what she had started and came out. Jack gave me a lot of breaks that first month so I could get settled in. My mom came and helped me get an old house, that Jack had helped me find, cleaned up for Mary and Maija when they came home from the hospital. The payback came that Christmas Eve when the controller that was suppose to work the mid-shift called in sick. I wasn't even checked out but Jack told me my certification would be done the first business day after Christmas. So that is how I got my first check out.
It was kind of fun to see these 2 guys that played a pretty big role in Mary's and my life when we were first getting started. Jack looks pretty much the same as he did when he showed up at our door in Eagle River in the 90's. And Dr. Lindbloom looks just like I remember him only a little older. Doc Lindbloom not only delivered the kids but he was their doctor, Mary's doctor and since he was the flight surgeon for Pierre, he was my doctor.
So far I haven't found any of my old friends that have really become famous or really rich. But I have found quite a few old friends.

Happy Birthday Susie!

This would have been my sister Susie's sixty second birthday but she checked out early. I'm not sure why but she seemed to do everything she could to cut her life short like smoking like a chimney and drinking like a fish. If anything she had a better shot at having a good life then either my brother Tom or me because she was the first born so had first dibs on things like going to college. She was actually a pretty good student in high school, unlike us 2 boys. She did start at UofM but I don't think she even finished 2 full years. She had a big beautiful wedding and married a really nice guy. Within 3 years she had thrown it all away to be with a guy that had one ambition. To be the worlds oldest hippie. While Tom and I were growing up in the 70s and 80s, Susie stayed just like she was. When I would talk to her about changing her life, and we did have some heated discussions about it, she would say she wasn't hurting anyone so just leave her alone. She may not have physically hurt anyone like her husband did to her, but she really hurt her mother by dieing so young. Hopefully she is in a better place now.
I did some tweaking on the web page this past week. I just uploaded the files this morning so I hope it works. I fixed some formating errors I discovered and added a reference to Alaska time below the webcam picture. I also changed the overnight picture to a goodnight picture instead of leaving the last webcam picture up all night.
Spring is really exploding around here. The birch and poplar trees all have their new baby leafs, and even the grass is greening up. I checked Nancy Lake yesterday and it still is mostly ice but there is a lot of open water around the edge, so it wont be long.
I just discovered a mistake on the web page so I have to go fix it.....Later

Short summer.

A week ago we were warming into the 60s during the day and only cooling to the 40s at night. Since last weekend we are only warming to the low 50s during the day and to just above freezing at night. The lakes are still frozen around here, although they are just covered with slush ice which is to thick to run a boat through but to thin to walk on. The first crop of mosquitoes had just started to hatch. They are the ones that hatch from the puddles caused by snow melting and are easy to swat because they come out when it's so cool out that they have to wear parkas. Anyhow, they even retreated to their little igloos to wait for the real summer. I turned the furnace off the last week of April trying to save some of that liquid gold the furnace burns for next fall when it really starts to get cold. Let me tell you it has been really hard not to turn it back on especially in the evening when we are just sitting watching TV. We have plenty of sweaters though so we've been able to avoid that, so far. It is supposed to warm into the 60s again this weekend. I sure hope so because we still have snow piles in the yard.
Speaking of TV watching. It is really getting sad what is being broadcast now. There are a few shows we both enjoy watching, CSI and Law and Order are 2 that come to mind, but mostly it's just junk. I don't like any of those "reality" shows. We only get NBC, ABC and PBS reliably up here. Some days FOX and a couple independent stations are available and during the winter CBS is clear. We used to watch a lot of PBS but for the last couple years they only broadcast a national feed from Washington since they say they don't have money for any local programming. So we have turned to Netflix for our evening entertainment. One of our favorite selections from Netflix is the BBC series "All Creatures Great and Small" a series about a veterinary practice in England in the late 30s to early 40s. Mary got me the first season DVDs last year for my birthday and I got hooked. Since then we've watched 4 more seasons plus two specials. I probably should have been a veterinary but it requires a lot of schooling and me and schools never hit it off very well because I never learned how to study. Maybe in my next life. Mary has bought me a few other British comedy series that we watch over and over. Like "Good Neighbors" and "Keeping up Appearances". I also have the first 4 years of "M.A.S.H" on DVD and I'll pop one of them in when I'm alone.
We get movies from Netflix also, and have seen some really good movies that didn't make it very well in the US, like "Evening". We have also sat through quite a few dogs. So far there have been only 2 that we could not watch. One was "Clock Work Orange" and I forget the name of the other one but it was supposed to be pretty good and we just could not sit through the whole thing. Now that the weather is getting nicer and the sun is staying up later we will spend less time in the house watching TV and movies and more time outside.
Time to go outside and do something, so more later.....maybe

Smoking

I just finished reading Scott's blog about smoking and realize Mary and I did a really good job teaching our kids just how disgusting a habit smoking is. Being a long time smoker who just happens to not have smoked for almost 18 years now I think I am qualified to comment.
I started smoking in grade school and by the time I graduated 8th grade I always had a pack of cigarettes available and they were usually non-filtered Pall-Mall or Camels. You have to realize that at that time, 1950s and early '60's, the only warnings you heard were that smoking would stunt your growth and turn your fingers yellow. When I graduated 8th grade I was 6'1" tall but only weighed around 90 pounds so I disproved that smoking stunted your growth. I did have yellow fingers though and was proud of it. Neither of my parents smoked cigarettes and they really didn't say much about me smoking. I didn't even have to hide my smoking from them, however I couldn't smoke in the house in front of them. My dad smoked an occasional pipe and cigars so the smell of smoke was already in the house so I didn't have to worry about that. When I got to high school I was on the swim team and decided it might be a good idea to quit for the season. I locked myself in a closet with a carton of Camels for about 6 hours and smoked until I was so sick of cigarettes, almost the whole carton, I couldn't stand the sight or smell of them, for about 6 months. By then swimming season was over and the nice weather of summer was coming and I was outside most of the time, so who was to know I was smoking again. In sophomore year of high school I developed chronic bronchitis and instead of the doctor ordering me to stop smoking he merely suggested I cut back and prescribed some cough syrup made of alcohol and codeine. Anyhow, I didn't try to quit again until I started Army basic training. The first 2 weeks the drill sergeants wouldn't allow us to smoke during duty hours and we were too busy cleaning things during off-duty hours to smoke. After the first 2 weeks they said if we had them we could smoke them and since this was the first privilege we got I had to smoke. As a private I only made $30 a month take home so I had to learn to role my own because I couldn't afford real cigarettes. The cigarettes that came in our C rations were packed before the Korean War. I had one pack with 1948 stamped on it. The cigarettes in C rations were in a little 4 pack and were so dry that if you did try to smoke them they burned so fast you could burn your lips. The thing the Army did to help smokers was give them ration cards for cartons of cigarettes from the PX. With the card a carton of 10 packs cost $.50 and we were allowed 3 cartons a month. I only knew a couple guys that didn't smoke in the Army and they would give me their ration cards so I could use their cigarette ration to help pay my apartment rent. My apartment cost $50.00 a month plus 2 cartons of Marlboro to the land lady. I could also give them as gifts to the Germans because American cigarettes were highly desirable.
When I got out of the Army and started working for the FAA smoking on position was allowed and I can only think of a couple people that I worked with that didn't smoke. This was the early '70s and reports that smoking was linked to heart disease and lung cancer were just starting to be argued. Even when the Surgeon General came out and said there was absolute proof that cigarettes caused cancer I thought of it more like, "Ya, just like they stunted my growth!". (I was now 6'4" and weighed 150 pounds) so Mary and I have 2 kids and she smoked through both pregnancies. We both smoked in the house and car with the kids so there were dirty smelly ash trays all over and lots and lots of second hand smoke for them to breath. We lived in Pierre, South Dakota and Granny and Grandpa were an 8 hour car trip away in Minneapolis. I did quit for around 6 weeks with hypnotism but I couldn't afford the follow-up so I tried one cigarette that someone had left at work and within a couple weeks I was back up to a pack a day. When we moved to Alaska in 1981 we drove 8 hours a day for 10 days in February. It was too cold out to even crack a window. Secondhand smoke was just starting to be an issue but I thought it was just people whining. The kids aversion therapy went on through the '80s. I did try stopping around 1986 using the new nicotine gum that was out by prescription only, but since the doctor that prescribed it didn't realize that it had to be used along with a smoking cessation program I just ended up chewing a lot of gum along with smoking a few cigarettes.
By now the proof that second hand smoke was as bad as first hand was pretty obvious so the FAA wouldn't allow smoking on position anymore. They gave us a little room in the back with big fans on 2 walls and allowed us 1 smoke break an hour. By 1990 I was smoking 21/2 to 3 packs a day. In 1987 I had been diagnosed with the beginnings of emphysema and was even prescribed an inhaler but I didn't really notice anything health wise because the doctor said I had over developed lungs and more lung capacity then most people. I attribute that to when I was a kid I would spend a lot of time under water because I didn't float since I really was just skin and bones. I finally quit smoking in July of 1990 when I was in Oklahoma City going to Automation Specialist school for the FAA. I used to take a walk during my study breaks and one day it was over 100 degrees and during my walk I couldn't get my breath. That was the first time I had noticed any trouble with my health. (the bronchitis had in high school disappeared when an Army medic said I couldn't have my alcohol/codeine cough syrup anymore, but that's another story) I saw an add on TV for a hypnotherapist so I decided to give that a try again. I swore to myself though that even if it didn't work I wouldn't smoke until I had gone the same number of days that her therapy cost that I would have spent if I was still smoking, which I think came out to about a month. The minute I got out of her office and got in my rental car to go home I wanted a cigarette but I stayed true to my vow and didn't smoke. I nearly killed some Mormons that came to my room preaching that weekend, but I didn't smoke. When I had free time I would go for long walks. When I woke up in the middle of the night wanting a cigarette I would get dressed and walk until I didn't want to smoke anymore. I got stopped once at 3am by the Oklahoma highway patrol looking for a white male who had just broke into a liquor store. When they asked what I was doing out at that time I told them I was trying to kick the smoking habit and they let me go. By the time I got back from Oklahoma City I was walking around a lake that was 12 miles around twice a week. I was pretty much over the worst of my withdrawals by the time I got home to Alaska. Mary was considerate enough not to smoke around me even though she still smoked for quite a while after me. I really hate the smell of smoking now and can not stand the smell of stale ash trays. At work they designated the door that was closest to my office as the smoking area so there were nasty ash trays on both sides of the door. It was probably to my benefit though, because I ended up parking about as far away from my office as possible and had to walk the extra distance all the time ato avoid the smell.
I still have not smoked since that day in Oklahoma but I still get an urge every now and then. I now understand though that I am a smoker that just isn't smoking at the present time and if I take even a puff I'll be back to where I left off in no time.
Scott mentioned in his blog that someone needs to come up with a pill for smokers. I don't think that would work. They already have nicotine gum that you can get without prescription and patches that are programed to ween you off nicotine but people keep smoking. Somehow young people have to be taught how bad smoking is for you and how disgusting it is to non-smokers. Young people also need to understand that once you start it is really, really hard to quit for good. If people start and then stop they need to realize no matter how long its been they are still smokers and as soon as they have one puff they will be an active smoker again.
Well this went on much longer then I hd planned. They say blogging is good for you mentally and I do feel better so more later....
UPDATE:
After posting and reading this post I realized I lost my track, again.
What I was getting at was that during World War II and until the 60s smoking was an acceptable social activity. I am pretty sure nobody thought, lets pack cigarettes in the GIs rations so they get hooked on them, get cancer and die young. Then we wont have to pay them Social Security or Veterans Benefits as long. I'm pretty sure they put them in their rations because a lot of people smoked and those that didn't could give theirs to their buddies that did. They also put fruit cocktail packed in high fructose corn syrup, milk chocolate and some kind of bread pudding that I remember using as a hockey puck in the rations we got and those items have been found to be bad for you now too. Except for the bread pudding unless it hit somebody in the head. The Red Cross, Salvation Army and a lot of missions handed out donuts to GIs during WWII, so maybe fat vets should sue them.
I just read that the current 30 something generation has a shorter life expectancy then the Greatest Generation because of increased smoking and stress. I suppose someone will claim the government didn't do enough to keep them from smoking. I suppose we could push for laws to protect us from anything that isn't good for us because we're to stupid be responsible for our own health. But then they would probably want to take my coffee away and probably even ice cream.
FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!

New Web page

Well I've done it. I converted the webpage to international standards using style sheets. This standard has been around for almost 10 years but because of the different browsers that are used it took quite a while for it to take hold. Now there are basically 3 main browsers out there: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari. There are a few others that hold very minor place in the browser world but all of them, except for Microsoft's IE, follow the standards set out by ISO for web pages. I primarily work with Firefox in Linux OS and get everything to work in that. Then I convert it to work in Internet Explorer. The styles and commands I used were documented to work for both IE and Firefox but when I checked out the site using Mary's Windows XP computer with Internet Explorer 7 installed I found that the documentation was wrong. The page looks great in Firefox and Opera but visit it with IE5 or IE6 and the opening page shifts to the left. IE7 holds the positions correctly but one of the slide out menus doesn't display. I checked the scripts to make sure I had them in the correct places and everything seems to be alright. It's just Microsoft trying to force their way on us and I wont have it. I sure don't understand how they are allowed to market a browser that doesn't meet standards this long after the standards were agreed to. Anyhow, it's up and I like it. Maybe the next time I upload a page I'll add a remark to use anything but Internet Explorer.

A third of the year gone.

It is amazing to me how fast time passes. It seems like such a short time ago we were up celebrating Christmas with Maija, Brad and Scott at the cabin. Now it has warmed up and most of the snow is gone. The mosquitoes have returned and the Sandhill Cranes are circling overhead. A lot of waterfowl have returned but they have to settle for puddles right now because the lakes are still frozen. Now that it has warmed up and we can have the windows open during the day the traffic noise is way more noticeable. Motorcycles seem to be making up an awful lot of it so far this year. With gas going for $3.70 just down the road I guess those are the only vehicles people can afford to pleasure ride on. I know Mary anhttp://localhost/test.htmld I were kind of planning a trip to the Lower 48 this summer but have canceled those plans because of the price of gas.
Fishing season is just around the corner. Once the lakes open up the trout will be really hungry. I'll have to get the boat ready to use a little more this year then I did last. At least this year it isn't all full of leaves and stuff from having to leave it outside like I did the winter before last. I made a nice place for it in the shop and it looks like it held air in it all winter. I went out quite often while Mary was gone to Finland but once she got home I hardly went out at all. Nancy Lake is supposed to have a good population of Northern Pike and being a Minnesota boy I would love to find where they live in that lake.
Enough for now. More later.

Let's try again.

I spent the day working with the telephone company, again, trying to fix our telephone line. Since last weekend our internet connection has been so bad we could hardly use the internet. I called last week because there was so much noise on the line we couldn't use the phone to talk on. Today when I called the person on the other end could finally hear the noise and sent a technician out with some test gear. He found and intermittent ground somewhere on the line and decided to run another temporary line to replace the one that had been spliced twice to fix where the goats had chewed through it. I had just walked the most direct route through the woods from the box that the line ties in to the phone network at to the house in anticipation of him having to do that so I knew we could make it. When we ran the first temporary line a little more then a month ago the snow was still over waist deep so we followed my snowmobile trail. Todays route was about half as long as the first time. Hopefully this will keep us on line until they get here this summer to put in the new permanent line.