Friday Check In

We are basking in summer like weather here in DeepinaHearta. 97 degrees on Wed but it will be short lived and expectations are for big storms Easter morning. Still staying out of the way as much as possible except for picking up groceries when we can.

With this being Holy Week, we would normally be spending a lot of time at church. This year we are having to rely on streaming the services live, not the same by any means but better than nothing for sure. We are also Zooming regularly with our friends which is keeping us in touch through this madness.

Hope all are doing well and staying safe.

Don't know about you guys I am glad its Easter weekend as its a holidays and it will be nice to spend some time at home

Why, you, I oughtta...!

My weekend is all about shopping on Amazon. I need to get a pair of black leather pants, to go with my black leather jacket. That way, when I have to go out shopping, I can dress full on Mad Max. My bet is that social distancing won't be an issue if I dress appropriately. I've alredy got the mask.

I must admit Space has the right idea. I may just spend the entire weekend huddled in the basement, as I confess a certain distaste walking into my Little Caesar's with a face mask and muttering, "Gimme your pizza pizza," with visions of SWAT agents forcing me to the ground, guns drawn at the back of my skull.

Maybe if I wore Space's mask I could say, "Gimme a Fast And Furious or a Quick And Reliable or whatever you call it, or I'll touch you and I'll end up with it anyway. Or maybe you'd like to play chess for a take-out?"
Jeff

Greetings all... it's been so strange with the "shelter-in-place" directives but we are at least able to get outside and take advantage of our walkable neighborhood and the "greenway" system of paths that it adjoins. Been catching up with numerous things around the house and various administrative things.

Easter will be strange -- such a joyous day but having challenges of distance. I've been thinking how difficult it is for many, but how this is almost nothing compared to what the golden age of radio era families and service personnel were facing for years in WW2. This past week we streamed the World on Fire episodes on pbs.org and got a glimpse of the 1939 challenges of Europe. So seeing all that in the presentation, not that we weren't already aware of it, reminded us of keeping perspective.

Still working down the pile of Suspense cassettes that nickp57 sent -- almost done! -- and doing some processing of shows that Bruce Frey has sent me from his father's collection. He's been posting them on the OTRR Facebook page and they'll get posted on the Suspense thread soon. His father, Don, had a massive collection of reels and cassettes from the 1980s, with many versions that fell out of circulation. The biggest problems most recordings have had has been speed correction and minor 60mhz hum that are easy to fix, and then a little re-equalization. There was one that needed quite a bit of surgery and transplantation to restore it -- and that will be posted soon.

The biggest news of the week: toilet paper is back on the shelves.

And with the 6ft social distancing, to adjust a line that Ed Wynn had... "I have a 7ft pole for people I need to be more than 6ft from"

Folks if you are a space nut like me you will love this site.

https://apolloinrealtime.org

Its a real time mission dashboard for some of the Apollo missions. You can run the mission from launch to splashdown. The mission console you have is brilliant you see videos and all the capcom between Houston and the spacecraft.

I am now on the moon with Gene and Harrison from Apollo 17. Such detail is brilliant. Cross checks between ground computers and Moon. Them adding updated telemetry and navigation. As you might know the navigation calculations were done on the ground using a IBM mainframe and the updated info spoken to the crew as numbers and nouns that were entered into the CMS and LM flight computers. You hear all of this back and forth. I am geeking out.

Seamus wrote:Folks if you are a space nut like me you will love this site.

https://apolloinrealtime.org

Its a real time mission dashboard for some of the Apollo missions. You can run the mission from launch to splashdown. The mission console you have is brilliant you see videos and all the capcom between Houston and the spacecraft.

I am now on the moon with Gene and Harrison from Apollo 17. Such detail is brilliant. Cross checks between ground computers and Moon. Them adding updated telemetry and navigation. As you might know the navigation calculations were done on the ground using a IBM mainframe and the updated info spoken to the crew as numbers and nouns that were entered into the CMS and LM flight computers. You hear all of this back and forth. I am geeking out.

Oh My... Nerdgasm...

This is real time so anyone needs me I will be on the moon for the next three days.

Amazon Prime has Radar Men from the Moon with Commando Cody. Please say hi to him there. I think his family visits him there for the holidays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_Men_from_the_Moon

Been watching it to the complete befuddlement of the Mrs.
She just doesn't get such high brow dramas like this.

Friday again and for the first time in over a month, Mrs CDM and I ventured out to the park where we have conducted our almost daily early morning walk for many years, only to come right back out after being attacked by swarms of really hungry mosquitos!! Never encountered that before. So, back to the ultra boring neighbourhood trek again.

Very tough to see all the folks now out of work, especially those with small children. It's quite depressing to see the food lines getting longer and longer. The natives are getting restless as states grapple with the calls for opening up for business again. Going to take a long time, methinks.

Hope all are staying safe.

CDM I hear you. Its very hard to reopen business when you have pockets of infected everywhere. People do need to work and economies need to run but Covid does not care. You work you are close to anyone with it you have it. New dispersion graphs show that one cough or exhalation can travel 24 feet. You stress the system during infection cycle and it could take off at break neck speed. Its going to be a fine line balancing act to get business restarted.

I am watching to see how it goes. I see nonsense online about oh its just the flu we are shutting down for flu. One person with the flu usually infects about 3 others. One person with Covid can infect 244 people and they each can infect 244 add it up and you see how infectious this stuff is. I even see comments of oh its nature the weak get to die. Total nonsense we are a civilised society we look after everyone. The people with the big mouths are the ones untouched. I have 3 family getting over this and they feel like they were hit by trucks. One is in ICU on ventilator and a good friend of mine both his parents died of Covid and their neighbours are dead. Over 20 people in their area gone. Talk to them about going to the beach.

I had a walk today with the doggo only 2 kms as thats all we are allowed but Ireland is doing a good job as we isolated early we jumped right on it. But for small country we have 13,980 known cases that could be more as lots of asymptomatic people carrying it. We have lost 530 people. So this sucks pretty bad.

We do what we can to stay positive. But darned if this isn't a case of looking at why 1% of the world has 90% of the worlds wealth. And during this shut down they are getting richer. Ponder that.

Lots of books read here plus loads of music listened to. Two fave books right now Rumi The Big Red Book and Marcus Aurelius Meditations. These are my go to make sense of the world books. Ancient texts but they speak to the traveler's we all are. Like my good friend Jim Morrison once said No one here gets out alive, so  you better enjoy the ride.

I've found that I cannot watch more than ten minutes of the news without blowing up our blood pressure meter. My jaw has dropped at people's idiocy so often that I could get a job with Hoover since my chin is on the floor and I'm picking up dust bunnies when I move from room to room.

Michigan's governor has come under recall fire because a vocal minority have actually said *on the news*--"No, I'm not wearing a mask a'cuz I have lots of antibodies against this 'so-called' virus. And I'm not sick." Here's an idea: with a Stay At Home proclamation, why don't we gather a big mass of people huddled together like vacuum packed sardines and protest--without masks--at the state's capital because we don't want to self-contain?

Sorry. I was combusting there, and Cobalt is a haven against that. Anyway, how about them Tigers? Oh, right, never mind.

The old French statement was right--sometimes the only thing left to do is laugh.
God speed to all you good folk who don't think this is a hoax.
Jeff

Well CDM, as of today I'm officially furloughed. Of course I haven't actually worked for the past six weeks. I have resources on hand to keep going for about three or four months. And I have additional resources for about three more months after that. So we should get through financially, as long as we remain healthy.

For me, this isolation is a case of keeping the mind active. So, I've been practicing guitar, learning Japanese and taking a couple of online personal enrichment courses. A geometry refresher and Astronomy to be precise. I have a bone to pick with the Hubble Constant. As well as a problem with the theories of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. And now is the perfect time to pursue those issues. Of course I'll probably prove that I'm a self deluded crackpot. But it's all about the enjoyment of mental exercise.

The Japanese is so that I can watch undubbed anime without having to read subtitles. Yes, I've become addicted.

Be well my friends.

Space, have you ever watched *Excel Saga*, *Galaxy Angel* or *Gunsmith Cats*? They are very light but fun anime. Or are you more into the dark *Ghost In The Shell* material?
Jeff

Jeff, I'm more like a hound on the hunt right now. Attack on Titan was excellent. I enjoyed Naruto and Naruto Shippuden (though I only got through the first 50 or so episodes (I'll return later)). Bleach was great for the first hundred or so episodes but it started to grind, so that's another I'll return to later. I became totally addicted to an American made anime style series, RWBY. It's a heroic/Sci-Fi series and all seven seasons can be watched for free with ads on Crunchyroll.

Cowboy Bebop? Oh My! High School DxD? I couldn't decide if the nudity was a plot driver, or if the plot was just to justify the nudity. To my shame, I confess to having seen every episode.

The thing about anime, is that I find myself enjoying some things I never would have expected. And disappointed with some I expected to thoroughly enjoy. But the great thing about it, is that there's so much of it available to explore. Literally thousands of movies and series' are available now. And new content is constantly becoming available. The depth of storytelling and character development can be amazing. The stories themselves can range from deep and moving, to slapstick comedy, to why are they all nekkid? And that can be a single episode.

I try to watch an episode or two of something new, just about every day. That's the "Hound on the Hunt" thing. To summarize, I'm pretty eclectic in personal taste and finding lots of quality and variety to enjoy.

Greetings all. The Casey log is done -- now back to Suspense.

Still getting used to teaching karate using the Zoom conference service. Very very strange.

The Mrs has worked up the courage to get behind the wheel and get used to driving again. It's a big step. We just made a 4 mile circle around the neighborhood but no stops yet.

Bosch season 6 is now on Amazon Prime. It was not supposed to be released until today -- but it was out last night! I guess it was April 17 somewhere in the world. One of our favorite streaming series.

We watched season one of Foyle's War -- we're hooked! It was "free" on Amazon Prime -- so we'll be subscribing to AcornTV for a little while to catch the other seasons and fill in the seasons of Vera that BritBox doesn't have.

Weather turning consistently nice here in NC -- getting out relieves the cabin fever, for sure!

When I get caught up on my movie-per-day assignment, I pick up some TV shows. I just power-watched *Kidding* with Jim Carrey and really enjoyed most of it (being a Showtime program of course it had gratuitous sex which was basically disconcerting, but the plot moved from funny to tragic). I'm halfway through *Sharp Objects* from HBO--it's a real slog so far, though Amy Adams is always good. And I just bought the whole series of *Hawaiian Eye* which should be good for shiggles.

Space, like you I was at first really surprised by anime, but my son got me eager to watch *Death Note*, and I have the complete series of *Witchblade* (both the anime series and the TBS version which I put on VHS when it first aired). *Burn Up W* and *Slayers* can be a lot of fun as well, if you're up to quasi-recommendations.

Let the watching commence.
Jeff

greybelt wrote:
We watched season one of Foyle's War -- we're hooked! It was "free" on Amazon Prime -- so we'll be subscribing to AcornTV for a little while to catch the other seasons and fill in the seasons of Vera that BritBox doesn't have.

Where have you been old boy? Mrs. CDM and I were hooked on this a long time ago and have watched the whole series many times. Just loved it. In fact so much so that when our youngest son and I went to the old sod in 2013, we visited Hastings Old Town and I had my piccy taken. Guess where?

Its Foyles House. Another big fan of Foyle and have seen them all a few times over. Michael Kitchens quiet forceful delivery is just brilliant its what makes Foyle so good. He does not suffer fools.

And I love Honeysuckle Weeks as his driver. She is just fab.

Another fave is Bletchley Circle. Love the code breakers working crimes.

We have been a fan of Foyle's War since the first episode aired back in 2002. The writing was such a great blend of the War with everyday life in Britain at the time. It was so well researched that we learned so much material that we never knew about WW2.

The acting was great and when it finally finished, it was voted the best tv detective series of all time in the UK.

If you haven't seen it before, you should watch it. It'w well worth it.

Best regards

Art

It's Friday again. Cabin fever sends you to the calendar more often to double check. Been going through lots of papers and photos, scanning them, and disposing the originals. Lots of memories being rekindled in the process... along with lots of media and cloud backups...

Every time I think I'm ready to get the Suspense posts again, something else comes up. Folks at OTRR have debugged the Broadway is my Beat set I submitted -- helped through some minor glitches I had accidentally created in some cases, and cleaned up a mislabeling of an episode and its repeat that seem to have been wrong for decades. What a marvelous series.

We subscribed to AcornTV and have the first 3 of 4 Vera episodes from season 1 watched. They have seasons 1,2,6,7 which were not in BritBox. After this is done, our deep dive into Foyle's War begins. For levity we've been doing 30 Rock and now in retrospect we see how its foundation started to crumble in season two when it went from funny episodes to funny scenes inside pedestrian episodes. A couple of years ago we watched all of Dick Van Dyke and we began to realize only 2.5 seasons were funny and worthy of the "legendary" name. Then the ideas started to be recycled but instead on doing the ideas better or with a twist, they started to just re-do them. Grrrrrr.

Miss baseball... but the Taiwan league is playing! There's a fun and innocence about it, but it's AA ball at best. We'll take it. At this point I'll watch replays of Little League games from Kurvballistan vs Slidenexttimeavia. The sports radio station in NYC ran the April 22, 1970 game where Tom Seaver struck out 10 in a row, a record still unbroken, and it was great to hear. I did capture it and also put together some historical notes. If anyone has interest, PM me.

Mrs GB drove for some errands two days ago. She finds it exhausting, but another step along the way. Still not ready to venture on her own. Hopefully her delayed post-op from Mar 27 to June 1 is not delayed again.

Weather turning nice so more grilling is in our future. Hooray!

Finally ventured back to the park again this morning, armed with our usual cup of 7-11 coffee and this time wearing a good coat of Deep Woods Off. Did the trick - all the mosies stayed away.

I've been busy this week updating the Chamber Music Society show documentation and working with a Swedish friend on his Big Band discographies. I have a few new transcriptions to work on but I'm going to wait a little while on those.

Greybelt, now you have Acorn and after you've finished Foyle, you need to check out The Brokenwood Mysteries - a NZ cop show that incorporates humour and sleuthing. It's pretty good. And also Line Of Duty, a very intense and sometimes graphic British cop show about a ficticious unit named AC-12 (Anti Corruption). Some brilliant acting and very high watching scores for this one.

Now we're off to Kroger for another grocery pickup - still no fudgesickles!!

Another check in as they begin to run together a bit. I have a lot of work in my own company so I am really sometimes oblivious to what is going on. I have a once a day read of news. I refuse to watch news shows. As per usual I read, walk the doggo. Do my exercises. Work. Eat right and listen to copious amounts of music.

I found nice rule of thumb is don't bring anything into your house that you don't want to eat as you will make up a covid excuse to eat a whole pie by yourself hidden in the closet as thats what you do when indoors.

Weather has been beautiful so I spend time in back yard enjoying this big ol' socially distanced world chunking my way through a book on the finer points of quantum computing.

I do enjoy everyones updates. Agree with CDM Brokenwood was good. I am really enjoying a new show called Miss Scarlet and the Duke about a victorian female sleuth its very well done and filmed in the old section of Dublin much like Ripper Street was. I still enjoy Murdock Mysteries a fine Canadian show.

As time moves on I increasingly find myself channeling The Dude from *The Big Lebowski*: "You don't go out looking for a job dressed like that? On a weekday?". . .The Dude: "Is this a... what day is this?"

I did finish bingeing on the HBO series *Sharp Objects* with Amy Adams, written by Gillian Flynn of *Gone Girl* fame (one of my favorite books). And, Lord A'mighty, would I suggest not watching that eight-part depression pit. Not one sympathetic character, a slow, lengthy whirlpool of man's depravity with predictions of just more soul-sucking at its end. Wow, did I hate it, every minute of it.

Now, on the advice of my son, I'm on to the complete series of *Death Note*, an anime series which is supposed to knock my socks off. After the sock-rotting of *Sharp Objects*, anything will be a step up.

Be safe and sane, all. We'll leave a light on for you.
Jeff