Cop Car's Beat

Skinning Cats

Elder Brother was considered the brightest of us three siblings, regardless of the fact that he completed the least amount of formal education - a year of graduate school in Chemical Engineering. Thus, I am always confident in asking advice from him. It is bound to be great - right? Ah, yes. Sometimes we agree on the approach to solving a problem; there are times when we are far apart. A few days ago, during a phone call, EB gave me input that was somewhere in-between. 

Trying to get more junk out of our house, Hunky Husband had allowed me to relieve his den/workout rooms of 8-9 empty cardboard boxes. While I was at it, he threw in a couple of boxes full of junk. Among the junk was an external ZIP drive, about which I was ignorant. I had known he had, some years ago, used an external hard drive: I had not known that it was a ZIP drive, nor would I have known what that was. I'm still not clear on the concept, but it is obvious that the 3.5" floppy disks that the drive uses are slightly different from the standard 3.5" floppy disk (see photo, below.)

Problem? I intend to box up the drive and the unused floppies and take them to the electronic recycle people in Wichita. I wanted to destroy the floppies on which HH had backed up his hard drive. What's the easy way to destroy floppies? It's having been at least 10-15 years since last I destroyed floppies; I don't recall what I did at that time. I do recall that we shredded floppies with an industrial shredder on classified programs, then burned the bits of confetto. HH suggested that I remove the sliding metal closeout of each floppy and put the medium through our cross-cut shredder. Hmmm...I don't know. That leaves the metal disk at the center. I don't wish to put our residential shredder to that task. I'll go with the brute force method of getting at the medium.

First disk: Insert screwdriver through the central hole, pry up at each corner to separate the two plastic halves, and shred the medium.

 

 

 

Second Disk: Insert screwdriver through central hole, pry up, insert long needle-nose plier through the central hole, pull out medium and shred it.

Third Disk: Insert screwdriver through central hole, pry up at the two corners away from the sliding metal to break attachments, insert needle-nose plier into gap in the side, pull out medium and shred it.

I've one more disk to shred* but have yet to come up with another way of brute forcing the medium out of the case. (Perhaps use a hammer?) Mom always assured me that there were multiple ways of skinning cats. Unfortunately, she's not around to see me apply her adage.

The photo, below, shows what will be taken to the e-cycle people.

There was a price for all of the fun I had devising different ways of destroying stuff: my unattended spaghetti sauce made a mess in the kitchen.

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*ADDITION of 1/24/2022 - OMG

One box among those HH gave me for disposal, the innocent looking box in the photo below, contained a surprise: more disks.

These disks are just regular 3.5" floppy disks, rather than ZIP disks. Fortunately, only four of them need to be shredded. Some were blank. Most were used by HH for benign information concerning his volunteer service with an NGO providing disaster response. [HH served on over 50 disasters, including the responses to several hurricanes, among them Hurricane Katrina and to even more tornados, among them EF-5 tornados in Greensburg KS (1.7 miles wide, wiping out 95% of the town of nearly 1600 people - 2007) and Joplin MO (ranked as deadliest tornado in US history at the time - 2011- with 158 direct deaths and 8 more related deaths). HH was supposed to have been the originating director at Greensburg KS but came down with a virus just a couple of hours before he was to leave home - not before he had dispatched me to Topeka KS to provide liaison in the State Emergency Operation Center - my first large disaster. HH did, indeed, work in Joplin directing the operation - just not as the originating director. When the original call came, he was tied up in Reading KS on a small disaster training a new director of operations. OTOH, I was sent to Kansas City MO to provide liaison with FEMA.]

But, wait...there's more! That thin, long, black "thing" is the battery to a laptop. At first, I assumed it was the "lost" spare battery to the Toshiba that I shipped off to Elder Brother a few months ago; but, no, it is to HH's HP Envy laptop. That made me give the box another look. It was the box in which HH's Envy had arrived - back in 2015. The battery is now appropriately bagged in its anti-static sleeve, labeled, and ensconced in a storage compartment above the said laptop.

Guilty Secret - culinary

In seeking a posting that I had made having to do with re-using jam jars, I ran across this posting - not yet published - that I had written on 7/2/2019. Why it didn't get published, I can't say. The only thing that comes to mind is that COVID-19 had just gotten to the point where I wouldn't wish anyone to think that Hunky Husband and I still ate out in restaurants. We still don't, but I'm going to publish, anyway.

As one who was raised on beans and potatoes, I never really learned to appreciate fine culinary arts. It's just not in my DNA. I enjoy food; but, it tends to be low brow. Despite its reputation, low brow doesn't always have to be unhealthful. The low brow food that I put together for Hunky Husband (whose taste in food is even more low brow than is mine even though his sister is a professional chef and his mother and grandmothers were gourmet cooks) and me is, on the whole, balanced and not high in fats and sugars. However, when we go out to eat, it will more than likely end with our having less than healthful foods. Here are some of my favorite meals when we eat out.

Village Inn tilapia dinner shown in the photo with green beans and rice, but which I order with mashed potatoes (no gravy) and steamed broccoli. The dinner also comes with Texas toast (for which I ask to substitute one slice of regular whole wheat toast), and soup or salad (for which I ask to substitute a small dish of fruit which HH will consume for me). This is one of the more healthful meals that I enjoy eating out.

ADDITION of 1/13/2022 - (Toasted) Texas Toast

Jason's Deli Pacifica Salmon Salad with cucumber vinaigrette dressing, another healthful meal, is large enough for two meals; so I take half of it home for dinner that evening. One can tell that this was written some time ago. Jason's no longer offers the salad, or so I'm told.

NuWay crumbly burgers with deep fat fried onion rings and, if my essential tremors are under control and I've not had one for a while, a Diet Dr Pepper fountain drink. Hunky Husband has curly potato fries with his burger, and root beer in a frosted glass mug. The burgers are loose meat served on a bun with finely diced (and slightly cooked) onions, dill pickle slices, and yellow salad mustard. This meal is obviously not at all healthful; but, I do ask them not to add salt to the burger and rings.

Addition of 1/10/2022: Every few weeks, HH's "low crumbly warning light" comes on in which case we are apt to go through the drive-thru window, picking up our meals to bring home. As the nearest NuWay is a 30-minute drive away from our home, I usually warm HH's curly fries in the toaster oven to re-crisp them, but the crumbly burgers stay hot. At some time since 7/2/2019, I have switched from ordering onion rings for myself to ordering garlic salad. It's an acquired taste, but I enjoy this slightly more healthful side dish as much as I enjoyed onion rings. Garlic salad at NuWay is a very finely chopped slaw with much garlic in it. For our take-out meals, we do not order drinks to go, preferring to drink our tap water when at home. I've gotten to the point where I no longer have a Diet Dr Pepper, even occasionally.

This photo of Nu-Way Sandwich Shops is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Freddy's Steakburger and French fries are not healthful; but, we enjoy them on occasion. I order single burgers (their "standard" is a double!) with tomato, onion, and pickle (hold the cheese), and (again, depending upon my tremors and previous drinks) a Diet Dr Pepper fountain drink. HH orders a single cheeseburger with pickles and mustard. Generally, we share an order of French fries.

This posting results from an email conversation with a blog friend. I don't normally photograph a meal before consuming it. You can see that I've relied upon photos that the restaurants (or others) have taken of the above meals.

This one's on me

One should never air their dirty laundry in public...or so I was taught. Despite Mom's & Dad's best efforts, I am breaking the rule. Below are some photos showing our pantry.

 

 

 

The other day, there was a reason that I was delving into our pantry: I needed ingredients for making Seafood salad - and the recipe called for capers. Aha! See the closeup, below, with the cap to the capers circled*. There they were.

Upon opening the little jar, I thought that the capers smelled a bit different, but merrily measured out two tablespoons' worth and chucked them into the bowl. Only when I started to put the remaining capers into the refrigerator did I discover my error. The jar had been in the correct spot in our pantry. The lid was the correct size and the bottle was the correct shape. Why in the world would I have purchased Green Peppercorns?

It tasted dreadful. The result was that I pitched the whole bowl of seafood salad. Fortunately, I had not yet included the shrimp, only the less expensive fish.  

I frequently fail to follow my hand with my eyes, leading me to pick up something that was adjacent to the desired object. I am left-eyed and right-handed. The only time that I remember my hand/eye coordination's being great was after my first cataract surgery. I wore a protective device over my left (surgery site) eye, forcing my right eye to dominate. The right-eye/right-hand combination worked well.

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*    Obviously, the photo is a re-enactment. I was not prescient enough to take the photos beforehand.

Happy New Year!

New Year's Day, 1958 - Hunky Husband & Cop Car's original wedding at CC's parent's home - attendees were immediate family members, only.

Photo by Haney, Kansas City MO

Wayback to 6/19/1992

My photo scanning efforts keep taking me back into the past. One of the sets of photos that I scanned, this morning, reminded me of an event on 6/19/1992: a huge hailstorm. The following entry is from Wikipedia.

19 June 1992

Wichita, Kansas, USA

Two batches of severe thunderstorms, occurring within 6 hours of each other, dumped hailstones up to 4.5 in (11 cm) in diameter across Sedgwick, including the city of Wichita, and surrounding counties in south-central Kansas. Over 10,000 homes were damaged. The hail left wheat fields in a near total loss. Estimated property damage totaled $500 million with crop damage at $100 million. The thunderstorm episode ranks as one of the worst ever to hit Kansas.[7]

Back Story

In early 1990, our son-in-law, WichiDude, contacted me to let me know that Cessna Aircraft (for whom I had worked 1975-1981) was hiring engineers. At the time, although Hunky Husband and I had remarried in 1988, I was still living in Albuquerque, NM (working in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA) while HH was in his 32nd year with Boeing. By late March, I was making the long drive from San Francisco to Albuquerque, pausing a bit in Albuquerque to process out of my job there, and making the long drive from Albuquerque to Derby, KS. I put in my (2nd) first day of work at Cessna on 4/9/1990. Well and good. HH and I were once again stuffed together into the house in the that we had had built in 1968 - which he still owned and had continuously occupied since that time.

Life is not that simple. Came May, 1991, Boeing sent HH to work in Philadelphia, PA. Fine lot of good it had done me, moving back to Kansas! The hailstorm hit while HH was working in Philadelphia.

Although I normally worked on the west side of Wichita, on the day of the storm I was working on the east side. Thus, my brand new 1992 Ford Taurus SHO car did not take the brunt of the hailstorm as did tens of thousands of cars that day. [The SHO required only the replacement of a small strip of weather stripping on one window - a $100 charge.] For years following the hailstorm, cars drove around our area of the country looking as though they had been systematically beaten with a ball pean hammer.

When I drove home from work a few hours after the storm it was a different matter. The streets, sidewalks, and yards of Derby looked as though they had received a few inches of green snow. The hail had shredded and beaten the leaves to a pulp, mixing them in with the ice of the hail. Some of the streets had been plowed and most of the ice had melted by the time I drove home. Below are more photos of our yard from that day.

In the photo, below, my tire tracks were made after the kind, younger couple who lived across the street (their house is shown in the photo) helped me clear the tangle of limbs that had blocked the drive.  (That kind gesture rather injured my feelings since I was a mere 54 years old at the time and felt perfectly capable of clearing the mess, myself. Rest assured, however, that I accepted their help graciously. Now, 29 years later, I would jump for joy at their help.)

The grass was surely green, but the photo (below) does not show it. The green on the ground in the photo is shredded leaves from our big, old trees. Note that our creek, running between our green yard and the house in the background, is high enough for the water to be seen. I take it that the lawn mower belonged to, and was in the yard of, our nextdoor neighbor. Our mower was in our shed.

Many of the trees along the banks of the creek lost limbs. The creek was overflowing, not only from the amount of water that resulted from hail melt, but also from the clogging of the waterway produced by downed limbs and trees and other debris from the storm.

I'll wind up the post by embedding a video shot during one of the storms that day. The video runs about five minutes, but only gets informative at about 50 seconds in. It appears to me that the videographer was fortunate in missing the brunt of the storm. (Street/highway signs make it easier to follow his path - if one is familiar with Wichita.)

"This video is part of the Tornadoes Kick Media stock video collection from Tony Laubach. To license this footage, please contact Tony Laubach at the email below or through YouTube or Facebook."

 

NOTES:

1. At the beginning of the day, all of the trees around our neighborhood were fully leafed out. It was the stripping action of the hail that bared the trees behind our house in the top photo.
2. In the same photo, to the right of the driveway and above the sidewalk one may see a patch of bare dirt. That is where I had a large maple tree removed just a few weeks before the hailstorm. It had suffered major damage in a windstorm.

My mind is blown

In my on-going effort to obtain some semblance of order in our multi-generational collection of photos, I'm still scanning old photos. One of the batches of photos that I scanned, yesterday, was from the summer of 2000, shortly after our landscaping had been completed in our new home. Wow! Did I ever get a comeuppance. It showed things as they looked in those days - not as I "remembered" them. 

In Tree Work by JoJac's, I waxed eloquent (photographically) on the removal of our big old cottonwood tree. Below are two photos: the photo of the tree from 2000 and the photo of the tree in October of this year. The comparison is nothing like what I would have thought it would be. I attempted to present the two photos at about the same scale by comparing the size of the boards in Fred's fence.

While I'm stalking around the back yard, here's another comparison showing the progress in growing new grass to fill in the bare spots caused by army worms' chomping their way through our back lawn. The newly seeded lawn is shown on the left (10/16/2021), and as the grass appeared while I was watering it, yesterday (12/26/2021). We're not supposed to need to water grass in December, here in south central Kansas. It's supposed to be dormant.

 

Merry Christmas, all

 

Reflections

The first thing that hit me, this morning, was the obituary of a woman who had served as my boss's secretary in the 1990s. She was "only" 76, but had had her problems over the years - although, as cheerful a demeanor as she maintained, most did not know. She has no problems, now. The obituary wasn't very informative, giving basic information: name, date of birth, date of death (yesterday), and she'll be missed by family and friends. Perhaps more information will be forthcoming, later. She was a really nice person. RIP, Sheryl.

Sheryl, just breaking a smile at a retirement party for one of "her" engineers.

Then, as if that were not enough to make a person pensive, I got sidetracked into cleaning out some files on this computer. Oh, dear. Clearing out clutter from the early 2000s, I ran across an email from a friend at work that gave me a chuckle. Scott McNay, a technical writer when I knew him at Cessna, had sent me an email in January 2004 - upon hearing of my plans to retire in April.

Of course, you know that your announcement took many of us by surprise. I've never seen one person climb so high on so many "s-lists" so fast! [Although this could be taken otherwise, I choose it to mean "by retiring".] 

I have always said, "envy is a horrible thing, and yet the word is so descriptive."

Unfortunately, in trying to track down a current email address for Scott, I found his obituary. He had died last January at "only" 70 years of age - of dementia related issues. We worked together on a committee (that he chaired) simplifying the English in Cessna service manuals. In his broader life, Scott learned to sign in order to better communicate with one of his friends. RIP, Scott.

Scott, who, if there is an afterlife, will be growing a huge garden, again, and signing his happiness.

Kansas has its own experience of earth, wind, & fire

Yesterday was something else in Kansas! It looked like the dust bowl as the howling winds lifted the dirt from eastern Colorado and western Kansas into the air, mixing it with smoke from numerous range fires, and slamming the particulates across Kansas and on into Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and beyond. We here in Derby were at the southern tip of the narrow band of storms that were basically aligned north-to-south, moving east at speeds faster than the highest legal land-based vehicle speed limit of 75mph. 

The tiny bit of rain that we received (0.14") was mostly dilute mud. Our windows are now grime streaked. (Some of the grimy streaks show in the photo, above - IF one clicks on it to enlarge the above image.) But, hey, we got off really, really easy. Some of the state is still dealing with prairie fires left over from yesterday - mostly caused by downed power lines. Some small power companies turned off the juice for a couple of hours to prevent more fires' being set.

Fires Remain a Concern Across Kansas After Strong Wind Storm

Firefighters and emergency responders are battling fires spreading across parts of central and western Kansas after a powerful storm blew through the state.

By Associated Press Dec. 16, 2021, at 9:17 p.m.

 

A calf grazes in a pasture along [sic] near a fire that burned 365,850 acres and stretched across Ellis, Russell, Osborne and Rooks counties

Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, near Natoma, Kan. The fire was stoked by a storm that passed through the area Wednesday with high winds and gusts up to 90 mph.

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

By MARGARET STAFFORD, Associated Press

Fires that erupted across Kansas continued to burn Thursday as the state responded to a wind-whipped storm that also churned up dust and reduced visibility for drivers, causing three fatalities.

Fires in 11 counties from Russell County west burned just under 400,000 acres, with about 365,850 acres in a fire that stretched across Ellis, Russell, Osborne and Rooks counties, said Shawna Hartman, spokeswoman for the Kansas Forest Service. Smaller fires were also burning in those counties and other areas.

The storm system on Wednesday carried winds that reached up to 90 mph in some areas. The winds combined with low humidity and dry vegetation and grasses to fuel fires in parts of western and central Kansas.

The dust reduced visibility on roads across the state, causing three fatalities, 20 injury accidents and 51 non-injury accidents, the Kansas Highway Patrol said.

While not at all comparable to the spate of tornados experienced by Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois last Friday with the attendant deaths and destruction, this assault hit some of the farmers, hard. After evacuating to evade being trapped in the fires, themselves, some came home to dead and dying animals and destroyed buildings and equipment.

Most of Kansas is in drought conditions. According to my records from our own rain gauge, we received only 0.5" of rain in the first 12 days of November, and nothing after that until the 0.14" last evening.

BTW: The above Associated Press article says that winds reach 90mph. According to the weather service reports, there were spot reports of winds' reaching over 100 mph. I believe that the highest report was 107mph. The 250 miles of I-70 from Salina KS to the Colorado border was closed in both directions for some time to get high profile vehicles off of the Interstate. Too many semis were being blown over.

Ah, yes, the good old days

Since nothing exciting is going on around here - still - I share a photo that I found online. (I don't recall what I was looking for or where I found the photo). It reminds me of the "Good Old Days" when everything, so many people claim, was perfect - except - we were engaged in World War II, we had no indoor plumbing, and I had already lost two siblings, one of whom could possibly have been saved with penicillin. A friend from our small town had been shot down in China, suffering a broken back in parachuting and unable to communicate with the Chinese peasants who came to his aid.

"What" I hear you ask, "...does Fred Emery [the parachutist] have to do with an early-day telephone switchboard?" Well...Fred's mother, Nettie Emery, was "our" switchboard operator. On rare occasion, if I behaved myself, Nettie allowed me to "help" her at the switchboard in her parlor. Ah, yes, the good old days!

ADDITION of 12/20/2021

1954 August or September - Missouri Air National Guard Summer Camp Communications Center - Casper, Wyoming

Equipment from back-to-front: Field Switchboard (hidden), Commercial Switchboard (staffed by Hunky Husband), and Teletype

It isn't apparent to me what the fourth airman, the only one with his airman's stripe showing, is doing. HH had written the date and place on the back of the photo, along with identifying the four airmen. I believe this to have been HH's first deployment for training in the Air National Guard as he would probably not yet have reached the age of 18 when the photo was taken, his birthday being in early September. (His parents would have had to sign a waiver for him to have joined at age 17.) HH no longer recalls much about most of his Air Guard service of 11 or 12 years.