Quack 20
- Thread starter Duck
- Start date
I don't read the travels of a Swift driver. Boring!!!
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
".... and at 6:37 PM I passed the 47 mile marker. Seventeen trucks passed me. Then at 6:39 PM I passed the 48 mile marker. 11 trucks passed me. I've been behind a Werner truck since noon. I think in an hour or two I'll start getting too close & have to pass him."
Holy crap. I fell asleep for another 3 hours after reading this.
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
Well this is just weird the way color film from a certain era decays.
Here's the original picture, straight off the scanner, except reduced to 1/4 size for web display. These are actually the same size on my laptop screen as the original prints but the scans were 400 dpi. I shrank these to 100 dpi.
It was originally a color picture of my uncle, The Geezer, and my aunt when they were kids. But it looks like a black & white that has turned purple.
So I manually tweaked the contrast then used an automatic filter to bring out the colors. 9 times out of 10, it does a good job & an old reddened pic looks like it was taken yesterday.
Not in this case. Here's what it did.
The Geezer has yet to reply to my text/picture message asking what color that chair was in real life. There's no way my grandpa would've ever had purple furniture in his house. He was part of the Greatest Generation, not the hippy generation.
Interesting, but for the "official" family history I simply made it black & white.
Here's a reduced size version of the final revision.
No screw it, I'm going with this one:
Here's the original picture, straight off the scanner, except reduced to 1/4 size for web display. These are actually the same size on my laptop screen as the original prints but the scans were 400 dpi. I shrank these to 100 dpi.
It was originally a color picture of my uncle, The Geezer, and my aunt when they were kids. But it looks like a black & white that has turned purple.
So I manually tweaked the contrast then used an automatic filter to bring out the colors. 9 times out of 10, it does a good job & an old reddened pic looks like it was taken yesterday.
Not in this case. Here's what it did.
The Geezer has yet to reply to my text/picture message asking what color that chair was in real life. There's no way my grandpa would've ever had purple furniture in his house. He was part of the Greatest Generation, not the hippy generation.
Interesting, but for the "official" family history I simply made it black & white.
Here's a reduced size version of the final revision.
No screw it, I'm going with this one:
Road Dust
Takes a little sunshine
Uh... Ok, I really gotta ask the obvious..... when did Geezer first start shaving?
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
I don't think he ever has.Uh... Ok, I really gotta ask the obvious..... when did Geezer first start shaving?
About once a year he trims his beard.
Southern Fried
Well-Known Member
For Christmas???
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
I just added 'em all up.
Since I've been here in TN, I've scanned, aligned, cropped, touched up & restored a grand total of 541 photographs & documents dating from 1855 to 2006.
And I just found another 4 inch thick stack of pictures to scan. Oh, .. and I've only taken maybe 4 or 5 pictures out of frames to scan them. Like any 88 yr old widow's house, the walls are covered with framed pictures. But most of them are copies of pics I've had for years, or ones I've scanned in the last few days.
957 MB is the total file size of the folder all these pics are saved in.
Since I've been here in TN, I've scanned, aligned, cropped, touched up & restored a grand total of 541 photographs & documents dating from 1855 to 2006.
And I just found another 4 inch thick stack of pictures to scan. Oh, .. and I've only taken maybe 4 or 5 pictures out of frames to scan them. Like any 88 yr old widow's house, the walls are covered with framed pictures. But most of them are copies of pics I've had for years, or ones I've scanned in the last few days.
957 MB is the total file size of the folder all these pics are saved in.
When I worked at this one place a long time ago there was a guy named Fingerhut also related to that large company. They some where around $30k to have their genealogy traced since they actually had records going way way way back. The owner of Fingerhut had artifacts dating back hundreds of years and they did DNA tests. NOPE!!!
The people doing the family history had to break the bad news as with many many families today. This person is screwing this person and so on. Like Dean Martin and Woody Allens family. The said the boys are not his but Deans!!!
Pretty soon DNA testing will be a big business with cheap equipment to do the test and worlds will collide for sure.
The people doing the family history had to break the bad news as with many many families today. This person is screwing this person and so on. Like Dean Martin and Woody Allens family. The said the boys are not his but Deans!!!
Pretty soon DNA testing will be a big business with cheap equipment to do the test and worlds will collide for sure.
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
I found a book I'd been looking for for about the past 20 years since I first saw it as a kid. Actually several books, all about my family's genealogy.
They're all by professional genealogists except one of them.
Written by my great aunt Vetrice (my paternal grandpa's sister):
Vetrice is 99 years old and due to celebrate her 100th birthday in January & I plan to be there. She's still on her feet, always running around keeping busy, and still sharp as a tack according to my dad. Yesterday I scanned a picture of her riding on the back of my dad's Honda Goldwing in 2006. Yeah, .. my dad took his (then) 92 year old aunt for a ride on his motorcycle.
It's amazing how my grandma was able to keep all this stuff intact for so many years. Like that journal from 1855, an "autograph" book from 1891, and last night I found a poetry book from 1912 which was kept by my grandma's mom who was a school teacher (just like her own mother who kept the 1891 book).
I scanned one page of the 1912 book. This, was written 101 years ago by one of her students:
If you can't read it, click this thumbnail. I made it black & white & cranked up the contrast to make it easier to read:
They're all by professional genealogists except one of them.
Written by my great aunt Vetrice (my paternal grandpa's sister):
"There may be different branches of our family tree but our branch doesn't go back very far from it's roots. There was a man surnamed Martin, who left Bern, Switzerland, along with his wife, 9 yr old son, and 7 yr old daughter. They came by ship to America. There was a disease among the people aboard the ship & many people died, including these parents.
When the ship landed in New York City, there was no one to meet the children. They were put on a train and sent west, landing in Burlington, Iowa. A man named Bish, from Pulaski, Iowa, heard of their plight & took them home with him. The Bishes had a baby daughter a few days old & the boy immediately grew attached to the baby. The boy, John Randolph Martin, grew up & married the Bish's daughter, Evalina. They had a daughter, Sarah, who is my dad's mother.
Another family took the little blonde haired, blue eyed girl and they never heard from her again. My mother always said they thought she was stolen by Indians."
When the ship landed in New York City, there was no one to meet the children. They were put on a train and sent west, landing in Burlington, Iowa. A man named Bish, from Pulaski, Iowa, heard of their plight & took them home with him. The Bishes had a baby daughter a few days old & the boy immediately grew attached to the baby. The boy, John Randolph Martin, grew up & married the Bish's daughter, Evalina. They had a daughter, Sarah, who is my dad's mother.
Another family took the little blonde haired, blue eyed girl and they never heard from her again. My mother always said they thought she was stolen by Indians."
Vetrice is 99 years old and due to celebrate her 100th birthday in January & I plan to be there. She's still on her feet, always running around keeping busy, and still sharp as a tack according to my dad. Yesterday I scanned a picture of her riding on the back of my dad's Honda Goldwing in 2006. Yeah, .. my dad took his (then) 92 year old aunt for a ride on his motorcycle.
It's amazing how my grandma was able to keep all this stuff intact for so many years. Like that journal from 1855, an "autograph" book from 1891, and last night I found a poetry book from 1912 which was kept by my grandma's mom who was a school teacher (just like her own mother who kept the 1891 book).
I scanned one page of the 1912 book. This, was written 101 years ago by one of her students:
If you can't read it, click this thumbnail. I made it black & white & cranked up the contrast to make it easier to read:
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
Well they moved Granny to a nursing home for a while. Eventually she's going to go live with my aunt.
Her first roommate was a teenage girl who was badly injured in a car accident a month ago. She has a constant stream of visitors. Grandma was freaking out about all these people she didn't know coming in there. She was scared. She said she was afraid that they were going to come in and kill her.
So they moved her to a different room across the hall, with a very sweet elderly woman about the same age, who seems to me to be perfectly ambulant & mentally coherent with VERY good hearing & eyesight. I have no idea why she's in a nursing home.
I went back to the house to get my laptop & show her pictures. She was really sharp at remembering who people were in the "before 1925" and the "1925 - 1947" folders I'd scanned (literally) hundreds of pictures into, but wasn't really good at recognizing newer pictures.
In one picture of my dad, taken in 1998, she said "who is that?" I said "that's your son". She said "Well he never comes to visit me". I said "He was here last week". She said "Well why didn't you introduce me?". So I said "You were originally introduced to him in 1948 right after you gave birth to him". Grandma said "Well that's a good answer!"
So I showed her one of the letters my grandpa mailed her from the Philippines in 1945 when he was in the Navy. She read the whole letter, which is 4 pages long, out loud. But I had to zoom in on the scans & scroll down as she was reading. If I wasn't paying attention and didn't scroll down in time, she'd start pushing buttons on my laptop. The roommate heard every word & was following the letter & her eyes were tearing up & stuff. (The roommate told me that she & her husband burned all of the letters they sent back & forth the day he returned home from the war & she has regretted that ever since.)
I made the mistake of leaving my laptop on the tray thing with wheels that patients eat their meals on when I went outside for a smoke. I came back in & my grandma was holding my laptop sideways like a book & scratching at the side of the screen with her fingernails attempting to turn the page to see the next picture. Right as I was about to grab the laptop she said "oh that's a purty blue". I looked at it and it was the infamous Blue Screen of Death.
I don't know what in the hell she did, but when I got back to the house I had to use System Restore to get it to boot up.
Tomorrow I'm just going to print copies of those WW2 letters so she can read them. Right after reading the first one dated January 23rd, 1945 she had a few minutes of clarity & told me & her roommate stories about how she kept all of those letters in a box in their original envelopes & intended to keep them forever, but they went missing about 30 years ago and she didn't even know they still existed. My aunt had them in a shoe box on a shelf in one of her closets.
Her first roommate was a teenage girl who was badly injured in a car accident a month ago. She has a constant stream of visitors. Grandma was freaking out about all these people she didn't know coming in there. She was scared. She said she was afraid that they were going to come in and kill her.
So they moved her to a different room across the hall, with a very sweet elderly woman about the same age, who seems to me to be perfectly ambulant & mentally coherent with VERY good hearing & eyesight. I have no idea why she's in a nursing home.
I went back to the house to get my laptop & show her pictures. She was really sharp at remembering who people were in the "before 1925" and the "1925 - 1947" folders I'd scanned (literally) hundreds of pictures into, but wasn't really good at recognizing newer pictures.
In one picture of my dad, taken in 1998, she said "who is that?" I said "that's your son". She said "Well he never comes to visit me". I said "He was here last week". She said "Well why didn't you introduce me?". So I said "You were originally introduced to him in 1948 right after you gave birth to him". Grandma said "Well that's a good answer!"
So I showed her one of the letters my grandpa mailed her from the Philippines in 1945 when he was in the Navy. She read the whole letter, which is 4 pages long, out loud. But I had to zoom in on the scans & scroll down as she was reading. If I wasn't paying attention and didn't scroll down in time, she'd start pushing buttons on my laptop. The roommate heard every word & was following the letter & her eyes were tearing up & stuff. (The roommate told me that she & her husband burned all of the letters they sent back & forth the day he returned home from the war & she has regretted that ever since.)
I made the mistake of leaving my laptop on the tray thing with wheels that patients eat their meals on when I went outside for a smoke. I came back in & my grandma was holding my laptop sideways like a book & scratching at the side of the screen with her fingernails attempting to turn the page to see the next picture. Right as I was about to grab the laptop she said "oh that's a purty blue". I looked at it and it was the infamous Blue Screen of Death.
I don't know what in the hell she did, but when I got back to the house I had to use System Restore to get it to boot up.
Tomorrow I'm just going to print copies of those WW2 letters so she can read them. Right after reading the first one dated January 23rd, 1945 she had a few minutes of clarity & told me & her roommate stories about how she kept all of those letters in a box in their original envelopes & intended to keep them forever, but they went missing about 30 years ago and she didn't even know they still existed. My aunt had them in a shoe box on a shelf in one of her closets.
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
Ok my quest for lost history is now one more generation closer to the J.C. Spees who wrote that family history thing & possibly the "Joseph C Spees" who wrote the journal.
According to what is written on the back of this un-dated photo, which I just shrank down from a 600 dpi scan, ....
... the little girl in the white dress, sitting on the broken fence is my great grandmother.
The man on the right by the wagon is her father Lewis Spees. So I know his first name now.
Now I just need to find out what his father's name was...
My plan for tomorrow is to print this picture & it's back side & keep it close to my grandma tomorrow at the nursing home & maybe in one of her more lucid moments she'll remember stuff. Her memory of ANCIENT family history has actually been better than her more recent memories.
The B&W picture above isn't dated, but I'm guessing my great grandma was 2 or 3 years old in the pic, so based on this more recent photo of her grave stone, I'm gonna say 1894 or 1895. (Gravestone last name censored cuz it's my grandma's maiden name & she's still alive & gets credit card offers in the mail & stuff)
According to what is written on the back of this un-dated photo, which I just shrank down from a 600 dpi scan, ....
... the little girl in the white dress, sitting on the broken fence is my great grandmother.
The man on the right by the wagon is her father Lewis Spees. So I know his first name now.
Now I just need to find out what his father's name was...
My plan for tomorrow is to print this picture & it's back side & keep it close to my grandma tomorrow at the nursing home & maybe in one of her more lucid moments she'll remember stuff. Her memory of ANCIENT family history has actually been better than her more recent memories.
The B&W picture above isn't dated, but I'm guessing my great grandma was 2 or 3 years old in the pic, so based on this more recent photo of her grave stone, I'm gonna say 1894 or 1895. (Gravestone last name censored cuz it's my grandma's maiden name & she's still alive & gets credit card offers in the mail & stuff)
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
This is the only known "official" Navy photo of my grandpa that exists. My dad told me he'd never seen it before when I sent him a scan of it while it was still in the photo album. Gramps never talked about his time in the Navy. He did take some "photo booth" pics in his sailor uniform but I think he was drunk at the time.
This was held into an ancient photo album with only the corner holder things. There was no adhesive or anything holding it onto the black felt paper. I'd already scanned it without removing it but I was having trouble trying to figure out how to dress up the pic in Photoshop so I wanted to scan it again without the corner protectors.
This is how small the picture is. It's not even wallet size.
Again, .. it's the only "official" Navy picture we know of that exists. My aunt said my grandpa's parents might've had larger versions but they'd be long gone, lost forever. So I said "oh yeah? It's the only one in existence? Well give me a day or two ...."
I don't think she quite understands what I'm talking about. But I have a feeling some of the readers of this forum might know what I'm talking about.
Anyway, what you're seeing above in my hand is the "before" version. It took me about 7 hours to detox from the massive quantity of coffee I drank this morning until I could trust my hands with a razor blade to carefully remove the top two white paper corner protectors from the felt paper album. I knew that if I f***ed up the photo I could fix it in Photoshop but still, I wasn't going to bend a 69 year old photograph & risk creasing it. Creases across a face are REALLY hard to fix, and if they cross the eyes it's nearly impossible.
I scanned it at 600 dpi because there was good detail in it. I could stop right now & print it as a black & white 8x10 and it would look good enough to impress my 60 yr old aunt & her 88 yr old mother.
That's what most people would probably do.
But most people aren't me.
It's 3:04 AM but that's ok because I just re-toxed on caffeine.
Remember what I said, .. that's the "before" version. There will be an "after"..... coming soon.
This was held into an ancient photo album with only the corner holder things. There was no adhesive or anything holding it onto the black felt paper. I'd already scanned it without removing it but I was having trouble trying to figure out how to dress up the pic in Photoshop so I wanted to scan it again without the corner protectors.
This is how small the picture is. It's not even wallet size.
Again, .. it's the only "official" Navy picture we know of that exists. My aunt said my grandpa's parents might've had larger versions but they'd be long gone, lost forever. So I said "oh yeah? It's the only one in existence? Well give me a day or two ...."
I don't think she quite understands what I'm talking about. But I have a feeling some of the readers of this forum might know what I'm talking about.
Anyway, what you're seeing above in my hand is the "before" version. It took me about 7 hours to detox from the massive quantity of coffee I drank this morning until I could trust my hands with a razor blade to carefully remove the top two white paper corner protectors from the felt paper album. I knew that if I f***ed up the photo I could fix it in Photoshop but still, I wasn't going to bend a 69 year old photograph & risk creasing it. Creases across a face are REALLY hard to fix, and if they cross the eyes it's nearly impossible.
I scanned it at 600 dpi because there was good detail in it. I could stop right now & print it as a black & white 8x10 and it would look good enough to impress my 60 yr old aunt & her 88 yr old mother.
That's what most people would probably do.
But most people aren't me.
It's 3:04 AM but that's ok because I just re-toxed on caffeine.
Remember what I said, .. that's the "before" version. There will be an "after"..... coming soon.
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
I managed to fix my grandma's garage door today. I also had to do that with a severe handicap,... my uncle Carl decided he wanted to help. He's in his 60's & has Parkinsons's pretty bad. Gotta love the guy but he's clumsy & I suspect a tad bit senile. My dad warned me not to allow him to "help" with anything like that.
Here's a picture from earlier today when he was unnecessarily mowing the lawn (which I just cut the day before yesterday & doesn't need it because the grass has stopped growing for the season...) and ran over a landscaping timber & got stuck. He was sitting there spinning the tires in reverse trying to get off. I went & pushed it back but stopped to take a pic first cuz it was funny. I'm surprised he didn't bash up the mower deck.
Anyway here's what the garage door was looking like:
It's a one-piece solid door, not a roll-up, BTW.
The plan was to cut the ends off some bedframe angle-iron I found in the shed & bolt it to the top of the door. But it had to be placed just right or it won't clear the 2x4 on the door header.
While I was looking for bolts, C-clamps, & tools, Carl went ahead & started hack-sawing the ends off the angle-iron. He was cutting crooked & wasn't holding the saw straight & the blade was bending in an "S" & it was getting jammed up so I took over & finished the cuts myself.
Then I wanted to clamp the angle-iron to the door & mark it where I wanted the holes to be. He just grabs a drill & starts drilling away. He didnt' wait for me to fill the oil can & kept binding up the bits & snapped one of them. So the bolt holes are just randomly placed along the piece of steel.
Then he was about to hold the piece up & start drilling into the door before I'd even jacked up the door to hold it straight.
This is what I did to hold the door straight:
Ok that's 5 pictures & I can't attach any more so I'll have to start a new post.
Here's a picture from earlier today when he was unnecessarily mowing the lawn (which I just cut the day before yesterday & doesn't need it because the grass has stopped growing for the season...) and ran over a landscaping timber & got stuck. He was sitting there spinning the tires in reverse trying to get off. I went & pushed it back but stopped to take a pic first cuz it was funny. I'm surprised he didn't bash up the mower deck.
Anyway here's what the garage door was looking like:
It's a one-piece solid door, not a roll-up, BTW.
The plan was to cut the ends off some bedframe angle-iron I found in the shed & bolt it to the top of the door. But it had to be placed just right or it won't clear the 2x4 on the door header.
While I was looking for bolts, C-clamps, & tools, Carl went ahead & started hack-sawing the ends off the angle-iron. He was cutting crooked & wasn't holding the saw straight & the blade was bending in an "S" & it was getting jammed up so I took over & finished the cuts myself.
Then I wanted to clamp the angle-iron to the door & mark it where I wanted the holes to be. He just grabs a drill & starts drilling away. He didnt' wait for me to fill the oil can & kept binding up the bits & snapped one of them. So the bolt holes are just randomly placed along the piece of steel.
Then he was about to hold the piece up & start drilling into the door before I'd even jacked up the door to hold it straight.
This is what I did to hold the door straight:
Ok that's 5 pictures & I can't attach any more so I'll have to start a new post.
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
Before I could get the C-clamps on there, he started drilling into the door. It looked like it was lined up, but it wasn't. The vertical on the angle-iron needs to be RIGHT AT the edge of the door so it can close right.
So it's crooked as hell the way he drilled it & the whole thing ended up crooked & hillbilly-looking. It's not freakin' rocket science bolting a piece of steel to another piece of steel & getting them square & lined up right. But apparently it's too hard for my uncle.
Right then, my dad's cousin & her husband showed up. Turns out her husband IS A FREAKIN' ROCKET SCIENTIST. Well, he's an aerospace engineer. Close enough. An aerospace engineer walks up & sees two of us working on this hillbilly looking project that looks like a drunk teenager did it.
The old folks all went to lunch. Yippee.
While Carl was gone I took it down & drilled new holes in the door but used the same erratic holes in the angle-iron & got it attached nice & straight. And what's even better, is (after backing up through the back yard & around the side of the house & out to the street because Carl was blocking my car with his minivan) I went to Lowe's & got some fuggin' washers to put on the door side to distribute the pressure more evenly on the sheet metal.
I got it perfect, since I was able to re-do it without Clumsy's assistance.
They came back from lunch & the rocket scientist gave his seal of approval (.. I think.... he wasn't laughing so I guess it's how NASA would've done it ... except it cost about a billion dollars less)
So it's crooked as hell the way he drilled it & the whole thing ended up crooked & hillbilly-looking. It's not freakin' rocket science bolting a piece of steel to another piece of steel & getting them square & lined up right. But apparently it's too hard for my uncle.
Right then, my dad's cousin & her husband showed up. Turns out her husband IS A FREAKIN' ROCKET SCIENTIST. Well, he's an aerospace engineer. Close enough. An aerospace engineer walks up & sees two of us working on this hillbilly looking project that looks like a drunk teenager did it.
The old folks all went to lunch. Yippee.
While Carl was gone I took it down & drilled new holes in the door but used the same erratic holes in the angle-iron & got it attached nice & straight. And what's even better, is (after backing up through the back yard & around the side of the house & out to the street because Carl was blocking my car with his minivan) I went to Lowe's & got some fuggin' washers to put on the door side to distribute the pressure more evenly on the sheet metal.
I got it perfect, since I was able to re-do it without Clumsy's assistance.
They came back from lunch & the rocket scientist gave his seal of approval (.. I think.... he wasn't laughing so I guess it's how NASA would've done it ... except it cost about a billion dollars less)
Duck
Sarcastic remark goes here
I just traced my paternal line, straight up from my dad, his dad, his dad, his dad, ....... etc
... to a guy named George who was born in the year 1572 in Austrup Hall, Leeds, Yorkshire, England. The record doesn't go back any further than that. But the last name retains it's same spelling all the way back to him.
I have no kids. I also have no brothers.
And I'm gonna marry a girl who has her tubes tied.
For 441 years the men in my family have had at least one son to pass on the name, but I won't. It ends with me. That's depressing. I need a beer.
... to a guy named George who was born in the year 1572 in Austrup Hall, Leeds, Yorkshire, England. The record doesn't go back any further than that. But the last name retains it's same spelling all the way back to him.
I have no kids. I also have no brothers.
And I'm gonna marry a girl who has her tubes tied.
For 441 years the men in my family have had at least one son to pass on the name, but I won't. It ends with me. That's depressing. I need a beer.
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