Sunday, August 18, 2013

2013 Rocky Mountain Air Show

Had some spare time at work on Saturday, so I parked near Rocky Mountain Metro Airport and caught some great flybys of WWII planes during the Rocky Mountain Air Show.

Beechcraft C-45 Twin Beech

Boeing B-29 Superfortress

Boeing B-29 Superfortress

Consolidated B-24 Liberator

Consolidated B-24 Liberator

Rocky Mountain Renegades Formation Flying Team

Possibly a Grumman F4F Wildcat in the lead?

North American T-6 Texan

North American T-6 Texan

Peace...

M.D.
@michaeldunkle

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Elysium

So just saw Elysium this afternoon...interesting that I didn't opt to see The Wolverine first, but really it is just a matter of circumstance.  I'll see that too this week... O:-)

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

The 25 Best Nerd Road Trips

Cinder Lake near Flagstaff, Arizona where NASA crated a moon-like landscape to resemble the Sea Of Tranquility for Apollo astronauts to practice a giant leap for mankind.

Get your Call of Duty fix in real life at Fort Irwin National Training Center where the U.S. Military simulate real-life combat scenarios before deploying to the field.



Cute little article here from PopSci about 25 geek-friendly places to take your patient and understanding loved one on vacation.


My favorite of the 25 may be the Koreshan State Historical Site in Estero, Florida.  From the article:

"Estero, Florida
N 26.433601 / W 81.812155
In 1894, a “hollow Earth” cult called the Koreshan Unity Foundation settled on a homestead near what is now Naples, Florida. Cult members believed the Earth was round but hollow and that humans lived on the inside, with the sun at the center. Members took to the wide sandy beaches near Naples to try to measure the planet’s curvature, using their purpose-built “rectilineator.” The site is now a small state park, preserving for curious visitors the Koreshan Unity houses, general store, and other structures.
Open year-round, 8 a.m.–sunset. Adults: $4."
 
If they had been in business in 1894, Fox News would have probably hired Koreshan's to be on-air correspondents.

Not sure I would shell out $59 to tour Spaceport America in New Mexico...

Ok...maybe I would...

Peace...
M.D.
@michaeldunkle
 

I Spoke Too Soon...











Yea as they say...best laid plans...

Suddenly started getting the message "All boot options are tried, press F4 blah blah blah" on the new laptop 'puter (yes, my gorgeous Ferrari yellow Samsung Series 7 Gamer gaming rig).  First time it happened last week I played around a bit in the bios settings and then suddenly got it to boot in safe mode and then restore the system back to its latest restore point (arguably the day before).  But it happened again yesterday morning and this time...no luck.  No combination of bios changes gave me any joy, and the main HDD with the OS on it just wouldn't come up in the boot priority list.  Quickly became apparent that I most likely have a bad hard drive.

Why is my laptop dead? Is it the cord, the battery or the port?
After a couple of hours this particular action, see photo, crossed my mind (we've all been there), but realizing I was well within my warranty period I settled down and contacted Samsung Service using their Facebook page.  Kudos by the way to Samsung using social media to ask support/technical questions!  After a quick description of my problem and what I'd tried, the Samsung rep determined it was a service issue and set me up with a service ticket number and e-mailed me a pre-paid UPS label to ship it to Forth Worth.  The service rep also cleared with me the possibility of a swap to a new comparable system as well as the need to image-copy my current drive contents to a new one.   Turnaround time is 7 to 14 days...which really isn't bad...

Lessons learned so far:  bad drives happen...don't freak out, but be sure to back up your data no matter what computer you are using.  I typically back up my most important stuff to Dropbox and/or to a 1TB NAS I have attached to my home network, so really I didn't have anything irreplaceable on the new laptop.  Next lesson:  make sure if you're buying 'puter gear on places like e-bay or reseller sites that you have warranties for the items you are buying (in this instance I bought an open-box item that had not been registered with the manufacturer yet and still had the full warranty intact - not to mention a reasonable return policy from the e-bay seller).  In this particular example, things have worked exactly as they did if I'd bought this laptop from a big box store, such as Best Buy or Wal-Mart (in fact Samsung even lists e-bay as a store location when I registered the laptop - again, kudos to Samsung).  Third lesson:  try to always have another connection to the internet available - i.e. don't rely on a single computer/tablet/phone for internet service.  When your tech goes bad, you need the 'net to research fixes and, as in this case, to quickly contact service and repair.
 20090825-dead-hard-drive
Interestingly this may also make me more seriously consider moving toward SSD drives vs. HDDs.  My new 'puter came with a 16GB SSD cache which has been pretty awesome to see so far (if anything the laptop boots lightning fast).  SSDs, while being more expensive at the moment, have no moving parts to fry and arguably are more stable and reliable that HDDs...plus the aforementioned speed factor is pretty significant.  So we shall see...

Will update more on the repair process overall as they progress...

Peace...

M.D.
@michaeldunkle