More Iris . . ;

Another late bloomer at the top,  Almost the same as the one we had in Argyle, a Lily Ponds.  I am sure it is not that particular variety.  Pretty none-the-less.

The other one up next to the late bloomer is a volunteer.  I do not recall it .  It is pretty too.  I will nourish it and see if it will make more Rhrizones.  I like it and move it to a more lighted location after it blooms.

They are all just about finished for the year.  I will have to thin them out a bit.  We will give some of them a way.

Panted some Gladiolas in front where the bushes were.  Judie did not like the scrawny bushes and had them ripped out.  She also got some more purple Lantanas, they are extended across that same area.  Lantanas are perennial and will get larger, spread out and take up some of the blank space.

Trying to set up . . .

Trying to set up a family web page for the WC Morrison's. 

I have a domain name ~ wcmorrisonfamily.com.  That little goody costs about $50 a year but I have it.  It is mine exclusively.  Don't go try to open it, there is nothing there yet - as they say under construction.  I used Host Monster to get the domain name.  And it is my general gate way into the morass.  And I pay for that privilege too.  I does not matter who you use, they are all about the same and cost about the same.  So I just picked one and started - three years ago.  I got bogged down and just let it ride.  Now I am at it again.

Every page you get says its simple to do.  I think I have racked five passwords, untold user names, etc. to get the thing going.  Just when you think you have it, you do not.  I need to create a web page.  Simple - about four or five outfits will do it for you for a price.  Not interested in that.  There are several free ones.  But you have to have a FTP.  Whoops no got, got to go get one, simple.

Signed up for Word Press.  That is free.  Went looking for site creation.  Well now I have to get a File Transfer  Protocol.  Well I found it and I now have a FTP account.  Got to remember all that stuff.  I am trying to use the same password over and over.  It is one I can remember.  And it says it is "strong" meaning, I am sure a hacker, might take an hour to break in.  Does not matter right now.

This is a learning process.  Nothing stays still, everything is update here and there.  It all assumes you know what you are doing - simple, right!  Ain't no way it is simple.  Some things certainly are easier as one does not have to use the old html protocols, that is all pre-set now days.  You type it converts just like you are using the word processor.  I even looked in the Junior College about web page building.  Yeah, they got, six weeks and may another $100 to get it, you a couple of hours at night class two times a week.  Not for me.

I go Host Monster every day.  Fire it up and go looking and reading.   I must admit my attention span is limited, so I do it over and over again.  Maybe by rote it will sink in.  At least I am learning a new vocabulary.  I am sure I will eventually get there.  Then I can call myself "Web Master."

Yeah, right!

More Iris . . .

 Some are late bloomers, they are in different spots in the yard and get different lighting, so I suppose that effects their development.  All of them need to be dug up and separated after blooming.

They are wonderful surviving plants.  They tolerate lots of abuse.  I even retrieved one out of a trash pile, planted it and it has begun to grow - I expect it to bloom late.  But it is like the one here in the lower right corner, fancy bloomer.

They do not seem to mind the crappy soil we have around here.  Clay everywhere.  Experts tell us it is a nitrogen deplenished soil, so the only fertilized that should be added is Nitrogen - long term release.  Naturally, I have a bag of 5-5-5 and I keep using it.  Sooner or later it will be used up.

Why . . .

Why do two young men build bombs and attack the Boston Marathon?  Why this evil, this hate.  Why?

We are not Russia.  We do not have a repressive regime, at least not yet, not in my life time. So why us?  Why the evil, the hate.  Why?

It seems like over night these two men became disillusioned and adopted a radical nature.   Why?

They have become successful in generating genuine distrust of Chechnya and Checkens in general while none had existed before.  Why did they do this dastardly act?  Why?

Their father furthers threats if his younger son is killed.  Their uncle called them losers and that he should turn themselves in.  Of course, the older brother is now dead.  Why?

Police and slow and methodical.  They are closing on the remaining young man.  His freedom has already been compromised and he is on the run.  He has catapulted to being the number criminal in the United States.  Why?

We must begin to close our borders.  To many miscreants are getting into the United States.  The liberal drive to grant amnesty, easy citizenship, access to our markets, our schools, our freedoms, has led to this kind of event.

I say close the borders.  Toss out all persons without visas or valid work permits.  Get them out, not just Mexicans or Central Americans or South Americans.  I mean illegal British, yes we have them, illegal Europeans in general and illegal middle eastern people.   All of them, toss them out and let them apply to return.  Clean out the Universities, the ghettos, anywhere they exist.

It is time to act!

Spring Winds . . .

The winds are up again, to much to fly our little airplanes.  The larger ones may do okay but out little ones get bounced all over the place, especially when landing if the wind is gusty and off the center line of the runway.

If the winds are consistent, and they rarely are when they are up a bit, and down the runway, it is not a problem.  It makes flying interesting in that going down wind you really move along, up wind is kinda slow.  So half the time you are whizzing along and half the time you seem like you are dragging an anchor behind the plane. 

The little airplanes tend to climb in the wind as wind over the wings speeds up.  So you reset your elevator trim down, and then you turn the corner and you find the plane is heading to the ground with all that extra elevator change.  So you adjust and adapt to climbing going one way and descending going the other way.  Add that to the tail wind pushing you along faster and it becomes fun.

And sometimes you will even encounter a bit of wind sheer.  The wind is down the runway and you get off and climb to about 30 or 40 feet above ground and the wind is going another direction.

But then that is all in the flying of the machine.  In windy climes such as we have, you get used to it.  Out in Arizona, the winds were consistent, easterly in the AM and westerly in the PM.  Here we  may get south east, east, west and northern winds.  Often changing from south to north during the day when a front comes through, gets cooler too.

It is never a take off factor.  We have so much power to weight ratio that we can get off in 10 or even at worst 50 feet of roll on the runway.  Once in the air a competent pilot can fly.  It is when one wants to land that things get out of hand.  That is when cross winds and gusty winds present problems.

But you gotta handle what you gets.  That's the way it is.

The Convent . . .

When I started school, I tried the public school, Poydras.  The teacher was one Miss Rita.  I do not recall her last name but I lasted one day.  I next went to the Convent, or St. Josephs Academy, the Catholic private school.  I never went back to school at Poydras.

We had two schools in New Roads at that time.  Poydras High School and St Josephs Academy, also a 12 grade institution.  The schools were rivals in sports.  St Josephs went to eleven man football the year I started playing the game for the school.  That would be 1954.  Poydras I do not think ever converted to eleven man football, at least not in the next 10 or so years.

Poydras, Julian Poydras, was a character out of Louisiana history.  He was from France originally.   He was a tinker, a seller of metal ware like pots and pans and coffee pots.  He was a self taught man and rose to prominence.  He owned a couple of plantations on False River and was a prime mover in getting Louisiana state hood.  He left a fund of money for dowries for the young ladies of Pointe Coupee Parish (and I think it is still in existence maintained by the Police Jury - the parish council).

Julian never married.  And he is interred in front of the school building on Main Street in New Roads.  The school has ceased to function, a new public school has been built outside of the town way out in the cane fields half way between New Roads and Morganza.

A rich benefactor left money for restoration of the Poydras building.  It has a fine auditorium  and today it is the site of much local entertainment.  Live musicals, shows, readings, all kinds of public entertainment.  The school building is made into an office building of sorts and there are law offices in the building now.  No more school buses, no children playing on the school grounds, just quite area now days.

New Roads now has two private schools.  One is a non-sectarian institution named False River Academy and the other is St Josephs Academy that has morfed into Catholic High School of Pointe Coupee.  Both schools draw students from a broad spectrum that extends outside the civil parish.  Both a successful educational institutions and rivals in sports.  Both schools are fully integrated though in their past they were not.  But time and reason has prevailed and if you can afford the tuition you can go to either one of the schools.  False River Academy has membership requirements but Catholic High does not and welcomes all students that can afford it.

At one time there was a black public high school and today it is a grade school, the only public school in the City of New Roads.  A burg of 5.000 or more souls.  There was a black Catholic grade school too but it is now part of the Catholic High School system.  There are no more single race educational institutions in Pointe Coupee Parish.

It took a century or more after the Civil War to get things evened out.  Racism is still a fact, still lives but it is a dying breed.  Public education has taken the burnt of integration and the Pointe Coupee High School is in disarray, does not meet the State of Louisiana standards and has been taken over by private company and run by them vice the school board.  Livonia High School is the remaining high school in the public school system.

In my day there was a high schools at Rougon, Livonia, Morganza and Innis.  At later time there was a high school at Batchelor but it is now a grade school such as the former black high school, Rosenwald.  Morganza High School where my father went to school is totally closed.  Innis has literally been torn down and plowed under.  Rougon High School is a grade school.

So education in Pointe Coupee ranges from the elite private schools to the substandard public schools.  Livonia is not substandard and stands out in Pointe Coupee Parish.  But it has had its troubles too.  The local families just would not let it decline like the other schools, good on them.

The Convent, and its heritage can boast of graduates that are Bishops and priests in the Catholic Church.  It has one graduate that was a Congresswoman and later Ambassador to the Vatican, Lindy Boggs.  Rosenwald can boast of at least one Lieutenant General, the savior of New Orleans after Katrina, General Honoree.   Pointe Coupee  has its share of generals like General Lejeune of whom the famous Marine Corps base of Camp Lejeune is so named.  Poydras High School can boast of DeLesseps Story "Chep" Morrison, long time Mayor of New Orleans, Major General in the Army Reserves and late Ambassador to the Organization of American States.

New Roads just keeps plugging along.  And I am sure like my generation the old name, the Convent, will disappear.  Time moves on.

Crawfish Today . . .

Dave and Becky are having their annual crawfish boil.  It is sort of a spring ritual, a get together of friends and bit of cooking.  Everybody brings something and their own drinking materials.

Most are old TI folks from the JSOW (Joint Standoff Weapon) days or earlier.  Some are golfing buddies.  Some are just friends.  The old TI Defense Systems Engineering Group (DSEG) has long been sold to Raytheon and moved to Tucson (we were in that group).  With one fell swoop TI divested itself of defense contracting and sold it all to Raytheon.

So some of the folks moved to Tucson and then back like Judie and I did.  Others went on to work elsewhere.  Some were able to stay with TI.  Some just retired.

A lot of the folks returned to work at the old TI DSEG plant in McKinney.  Raytheon wisely retained that facility and staff.  Today it is almost all old TI DSEG remnants working there.

When I returned to Texas from Tucson, I went to work for Lockheed-Martin.  In truth, I had run the gamut at Raytheon and there was no future for me there.  The boss I had did not like, indeed, he did not like anybody.  Unfortunately, he turned up with a bad case of cancer, I felt sorry for him.  But he is not longer in the employment chain out there.  So I moved on and got a nice pay increase, at last reaching the level I should have been years ago.

But things health wise sort of turned on me.  I had a profile change with VA developing Diabetes Type II.  Looking back, that disease was gradually coming on for a long time.  It is attributed to exposure in Viet Nam to Agent Orange.  Anyway, Social Security and VA compensation were enough income to allow us to retire, and I did.

Now I can go to all the crawfish parties I so desire.  And Becky and Dave are calling today.

Another Beauty . . .

What a beautiful Iris.  A varitel of some sort, again the name has been lost.  It is by the birdbath in the center of the back yard under the trees.

It was acquired from a bulb house by mail.  Planted several years ago in Judie's square bed around the birdbath.  It has done well and we have a bunch of them now days.  They need to be split up and thinned out.

Iris

Our Irises are blooming!

These are the last of the rhizomes I got from Cal-Dixie Gardens in Riverside, CA.  The gardens were owned by our friends from both of out tours at Norton AFB, CA.  They were older than us and I an sure they have passed on and the gardens are no more.

I used to write them and say, "Here's a check, send us something."  They had almost three acres of Irises to choose from.  They have even bred some of their own.  Anyway, at the end of the blooming season when one is suppose to harvest the rhizomes, they would send us four or five different ones.  We got common ones and rare ones.  It was just what they had left over and of course chose to send us.  We got some very pretty flowers from them.

These are remnants.  They have thrived here.  I took this photo on 11 April 2013.  They are in full bloom and we need to thin them out.  If you want some of them contact us and I will mail them to you.  You have to do the planting and whatever to ensure their survival.

I have another set coming up.  It was a pretty bloom but our neighbor down the street ripped them out.  He did not like them for some reason.  I fished the rhizome out of the trash pile and planted it.  It struggled through last year but is busting out of the ground this year.  I am sure it is going to be a keeper.

Spring is sprung.  Gass cutting this afternoon.  Double ugh.

Tomorow . . .

Tomorrow looks like a fly day.  I will go charge things up and get other stuff ready.  Winds will be low thus a good day to fly.

I am sure the others will be out since weather is cooperating.  Winds out of the North today and South tomorrow.  That means tomorrow will be decidedly warmer which makes things even better.

I have the Stik all ready to fly.  So it will be a Stik day tomorrow.

The Stik is an icon model aviation aircraft.  Phil Kraft, one of the fellows that really brought Radio Control in being, designed the airplane to test out his engines and RC equipment.  He sort of put it together without any design idea from stuff he had laying around.  Well it caught on and today is still be kitted and is a popular Almost Ready to Fly (ARF) model sold by different makers.  I hesitate to say manufacturers since most of the ARFs are made either in China or Viet Nam.  There are still a few kits around but no one deals with them to much anymore. 

An ARF can be assembled in a matter of hours, even customized as I do it does not take long.  So we get the assembled and in the air in record time.  Building a kit takes weeks if not months (I takes me years sometimes).  So your ARF becomes air ready and you can fly sooner.

I am afraid that with prices accelerating so fast that kits will come back.  It is not norm but money is money and if things get to pricey, back to building again.

Anyway, I am Stik fan and will stay that way whether it be a kit or ARF.

Balancing . . .

I set about balancing a model airplane.  You must center the weight of the airplane around the center of gravity (CG) or will either be tail heavy or nose heavy.  Either one is bad, the former will usually result in a landing crash and the later will result in controllability issues.   Adept RC pilots that fly on the edge of balance tend to make their airplanes tail heavy and use control surfaces to accommodate the bad CG.

I had set the airplane up with mounting the servos in the aft end of the airplane moving weight aft because the engine is a tab bit heavy.  I also added some weight in the tail too.  Well found out the CG was to far aft and now have had to add weight in the front.  I had to add a couple of ounces of lead way up front.  But it is done now.  Glue the lead in place and reinstalled the fuel tank.  Now I have to add a small block to keep the tank from moving aft.

I will either add a popsicle stick across the rear of the tank or glue a block of balsa wood to hold the tank in place.  The block of balsa is an easier solution.  Probably do that.

Next I have to set up the aircraft.  It has both ailerons and flaps.  Usually one configures those to work together and when flaps are selected to work differently.  Flaps are usually up or down, don't do much in between.  Ailerons on the other hand move all over the place.  It takes a seven channel radio receiver to do this.  And a transmitter that can be programmed accordingly.  I have both.  But one has to sit down and select switches, change sensitivities and so on.  Takes a while to get it right.

Had a Nice Fly Day . . .

Thursday was a nice fly day, started out quite cool but quickly warmed up and little or no wind.  That made conditions ideal.

I had the old Stik out, I had replaced the carb manifold gasket and put in new longer retaining screws.  The others were short by may an 1/8 of inch.  That is about five more threads to hold things in place.

Fuel it up, mixed some old 20/20 fuel in the fuel bottle.  Combo of some 10% Nitro and some 20% Nitro, ideally that would make overall 15% Nitro in the mix but I did not measure anything, just eye balled.  So there is probably a bit more 20% and less 10% in the ratio.  I could tell the engine liked the extra kick, it idled better.  Nitro adds an extra oxygen element to the fuel and enhances the burning of the fuel, sort of like an octane booster for gas.

Getting close to the ideal needle settings.  I had really messed around with the settings, so have redial in the right setting.  There is a high speed needle setting (known as the HSN) and a low speed needle setting (known as the LSN).  The two needles work together to manage the fuel flow into the carb throat.

The HSN is just that.  So you start the engine and then adjust the HSN for the maximum RPM using a Tachometer (aka TACH).  The four stroke engine has a different tone so it is difficult to tell when you have the max RPM by ear.  Ergo you must use a tool, the TACH.  Once you get to the max, using the TACH, you back off about 300 RPM (that is you richen up the mixture a bit.  There are reasons for that).  Once you set the HSN then you tackle the LSN.  The HSN is really a needle valve, the LSN has a couple of different configurations but suffice to say it regulates the fuel flow and mixture at idle and through mid RPM range of the engine.

The carb has a simple time running across the throat.  It is usually split for something less than a 1/4 inch.  One end is HSN that allows all the fuel into the carb.  The other end is LSN and it is usually a plug that controls the size of the split by moving across the split. It is very sensitive to set and there are a couple of tests you make to see if you got it set correctly.

The four stroke engine, when set rarely needs to be reset.  Two stroke engines are sensitive to the atmosphere pressure and can vary a lot, while four strokes can go years without change.

Anyway, I got off three flights.  Had fun kibitzen with the fellows.  Enjoyed being outside.  Like I said, "I had a nice fly day."

Its Magic . . .

As usual after reading the paper and eating breakfast I remand to the computer.  During the boot up process I play a couple of games of solitare waiting for all the programs to load.  Naturally, the Internet/modem is the last one to load up and it takes about two minutes for all things to be "go."

I then tried to log in.  I go through MSN web page as my access to the Internet.  Nothing special about it, just happens to be the way the computer is set up.  Well, no joy.  MSN would not load.

I noticed down in the right hand corner where the signal bars are a small almost indecipherable yellow dot with an exclamation mark in it.  Hummm, thats not good, I thought.  So I clicked on it, and it said trouble shoot the set up for proper connection.  Did that, got a message saying it was repaired and connected.  I then tried to enter MSN.com and in fact got in.  But not all the stuff appeared and it locked up almost immediately.  So when back, checked on the signal bars and sure enough, up they came the trouble shooting window and it went through its routine and said, "Fixed."

Again made the connection and it lasted about 5 seconds.  So I thought - virus!  I ran the virus checker and there was no virus.  Of course not, the virus checker is on all the time, ergo no viruses.  Enough of this, got to go to the source.

So then called by DSL people, AT&T.  They fooled around, couple of different persons on the other end, had a hard time with making their minds up that I was for real or had an account with them.  Finally got a person who knew what she was doing.  Nice person located somewhere up in Indiana (note:  no Indian connection here, good old American service).  She was a nice person, ran her checks, etc and said she found a few nit-noys but nothing that would inhibit connection.  So at her direction I hooked up the old Ethernet cord from the AT&T modem to the computer and wa-la - a good solid connection was achieved.

That indicated to her, not to me, but to her that the AT&T modem was working just fine.  All the lights were green.  We, duh, they had been green all along.  I had checked them.  We chatted, she checked, and finally she asked me to disconnect the Ethernet cord.  I did so.

Well, now the thing is working super.  Her nice but lame explanation was it was my computer (my software whatever) that was the problem, not AT&T's modem or line, though she heard all the noise on the line.  It is a shared connection between the DSL and telephone, one line set up.  There is no real explanation, but the hard wire connection seemed to fix things.  Have you noted, it is never the service providers problem, it is always your problem.  Good old we provide you with reliable service and if not, will make it good, is long gone.  One might incur some kind of legal liability or whatever.  So they pin it on you.  But at least she was nice and she could be understood, not some foreign English (and I mean the King's English, not American English) speaking techie.

I don't care as long as it works.  And now it works.  It is magic.  Or it is my computer's fault, or there was a piece of dust on the hard drive when it was loading the computer's modem.  Who knows?

Again, I resort to "its magic."