Diamonds from the side of the road.

Riding Friday into the weekend and watching the wind report get worse and then just ugly...expecting to sit on the ground again.. heck...not even go to the field to see... well.....  Saturday was a bust and we cancelled everything Friday evening with a possible for Sunday.... Saturday was a squirrelly day and I believe only a few tried it and one or two got up in it.. but it was not a fun day.... I stayed in the house.

Sunday...... Sunday Sunday.... We made the way and got up sooooo early and got coffee and made the field with only a few others making it there before us. Then.... then a LOT of balloons showed up. We were shoulder to shoulder and one crew got right at it while we watched two pibals go off in a strange way. Even two wild men had their hoppers out. ..okay... a hopper and a chariot. Still .. neat!

Both Mo and I had our systems but no way did we have enough crew to get them both up.... so Mo let me fly... and we borrowed Bob and Brian from Fred as he has a massive group. Thanks Fred. Now we had enough but still Mo set me all up and we checked the turtle sensor for the right number and I got that punched into the 6040 instruments while the envelope started inflating.

Just as the envelope started packing in the winds changed and we had the balloon coming back over us. Only two things you can do... turn off the fan and rearrange everything or go full on and blast it up. Heh... Blast away. Cut the fan too early and the envelope came up with a half close throat I could not burn through... with help we hopped the basket and envelope around 180 and that opened the throat and I could get some hot air in it. It rocked. A bad inflation situation saved by very knowledgeable crew and fast action. SAVE! Set up and everything going... Asked Bob and Brian to get in... yeah.. three big guys.. but Patturns In Czech handles weight like no ones business.

Up, out and away.... Followed Fred into an arroyo.. testing my ability to control the descent and not wack the ground... which we didnt.. A nice curve into ground track at one foot up. Landed.. skipped and stopped. Watched Fred and Keith goofing around then went back up again...lofting up around 750 ish feet.. I should check the instruments and I will post that below. Landed again past Paradise and before Unser. Bob took over and did some landings so he could stay safely current then I ground tracked us to Paseo Del Norte to land just over the road ( watching for high trucks as we went over the road ) popped it down into the hands of the crew... Nice.....nice nice nice. Then Fred caught up to us and spiraled around us to land.

Heck of a day.

Here are some shots from the sky and also of the instruments.

The flight time is correct... the altitudes were probably good... Temp was way off since the sensor in the envelope top popped out of its holder and was hanging into the envelope by 10 inches... so probably 180ish on the temp... Up and down speeds are correct but the max speed was not 51 mph... it was 9.8mph. Very strange. Great instruments but it only catches most stuff.

After all that it was home.. get everything put away.. or mostly away... then dump all the pictures and fling things everywhere... Oh.. and put up the 13 foot long shelf behind the chairs in the living room which was a super chore all its own..but it had to be done..... resting after all that when we get a call that Mo is short on crew ( he decided to do an afternoon flight ) and will need help on his pack.... Okay.... Off I go and find him playing around and not landing for a long long time!!!! What!!! Okay..... so they played around for awhile only to land right on a road! Sigh! Always with the roads this kid! The people living in the area all came out to check it out.. they loved it. It's always a cool thing to have a HAB land in your road by your house.

He needs to get back to landing in open areas... sigh...

Some phone camera shots ( since I thought I was just going out to pack ) Hah!


Robert Fear having some burner time. Mo.. ham.

Mountian Vista City.

Mojo's Reverse Gravity Machine on the mountain.

Here we are blocking traffic.. haha.. not really... but in the road again.  Packed and put away quickly and the area cleaned up as if we were never there......... Wooosh.

There was more stuff but ...damn.. I'm tired!

By The Look On My Face

Just to clear the air here a bit... Like pulling the lint out of the catch on the dryer or shaking out an old rolled up blanket in the fresh spring breeze. My phone is for my pleasure, Ill answer if I please to, Ill respond to messages only if you state exactly what you want, Likewise my facebook page of is of use to me to talk to my friends about mutual likes and humor and passing of information. Shove something into my page that is derogatory or rude and you are gone. So very gone. You are also quite welcome to remove me from your view if you care little for my ( few ) posts.

Which can be taken so many different ways. Consider your ( not in a bad way ) ( knee jerk ) first reaction to that statement above. Positive? Negative? Still don't understand what it means?

I remember reading a while ago and great statement I would love to pass along.

Paraphrasing... "Stop trying to think of a reply to my words and listen to them."

I am seriously working on just this problem.

I also have to work on my communication skills when it comes to saying something ( or typing ) and what I am saying in my head comes our poorly on paper ( or the electronics version ).

WOW..a Jean Michael Jarre - Electronica 2 : The heart of noise : 7. Exit. Perfect.

Let me posit this here now. If I type something that seems wrong or not nice or attacking.. I must have written it incorrectly. Apologies. I will try harder.

Onward!

No ballooning again! BOOOOO!

Weather has just sucked though today looked almost doable.

Can I have this please...soon?

Yeah...... I have less than a month to get some flight time or its three takeoffs and three landing alone!

Boooo!

Still working on pin number three. This one is the hardest as it has a different shape and its very personal.. every time I get a proof back and its wrong I get upset and am in a funk for days on how to correct it. Just sent off again hoping that they will understand what I want. ( Trying not to slap my forehead too much ).

Okay.. That's about it for the main section... The week was still a cruise through getting things done while restricted in what could be done and the vagaries of computers and updates and non working programs, backups, data requested over and over for the same thing. Its all rather tedious ( the data part ). The work was fine. I like my job and the people I work with a lot. I hates the commute..but who doesn't.

FALLOUT time. No fly I play with Fallout. No feel like designing pins.. fallout... Do not feel like cleaning.. fallout... I do not watch much television.. though now I can record old television shows I am binge watching Hogans Heroes somewhat. I refuse to watch football until they get their collective heads outs their butts.

So.. On Fallout .. This is with no mods loaded.... Its easy to do a lot of stuff in Fallout if you load mods. I tried it.. and yeah it was kinda fun it was also cheating...even though the game cheats terribly.
By cheating I mean... having three or more settlements attacked at the same time... dropping attackers in the middle of a heavily fortified zone... or randomly destroying stuff.

All of my settlements are heavily fortified. If I was a raider I would just throw down my weapons and anti social ways and join one. But that's me.

So since most everything I can build on is maxed out as far as I can I have been tweaking them. What I have worked on is below.

This is an update of the Jamaica settlement housing. Its restricted in building space. I redid this on with cement walls inside instead of metal. It works but the roofing cant be used. You have to use flooring. I added roofing on top of the flooring to make it work.

I opted for communal housing to save on building materials and space. If space was more open I would do apartments like I did in Sanctuary.

Update to the Spectacle Island zone. Its so hugely open you run into the problem of if its attacked you are running from one end of the island to the other. I added external gun posts and then added this cool tower over a barn and then made a home for my character on the upper floors. Cant wait to see what happens when the area is attacked again. ( I have added brighter versions of the shots due to the darkness of the originals )

Inside the top floors which are two levels. I went with green lights inside and out. I have added more plus on a flip of a switch you can turn regular white lights on.

Auto rocket launches and 2nd level machine gun platforms surround the middle. This area is one of three zones that raiders appear in.

  Looking upward from the bottom of the tower. I like to use the mesh flooring to let light in to the lower levels.

Upper living area. Laid out in the most comfortable way possible. No walls as I hate losing line of sight to the windows.

Elevators were in an update to the game. They are designed for factories or farm buildings and the levels they stop at are not the same as regular buildings and they snap to places you do not want them to but I try and get them to work where I can. This is the level below the upper. Elevator head and pool table. Bathroom is to the back. Large shower dual sinks and sectioned off tub and toilet. Storage cabinets for all the collectibles you pick up. 1,500 plus teddy bears so far.

Water is Life. When I started playing this game over a year ago the rule was farm your settlements for fruit as it sold with the highest return. It was a lot of work to pick all that stuff all the time. I found it easier to put purified water systems down as fast as possible. Better return and less picking. Much faster. Below... I am holding 354203 purified water containers. Over 5 million caps worth. I buy building materiel's and specific junk that can be broken down to create other things I need. This is the Far Harbor seller. I usually farm in the main area, then jump to Far Harbor, Sell there then jump to Nuka Cola and sell at the market then back to the main area and sell at Diamond city then Good Neighbor.. Wood, Metal, Nuclear material, copper..etc.

Always fun to watch my Red Rocket facility reappear as you walk towards it.

At Outpost Zimonja the game pops raiders in right on the antenna roof area. After having them blast everything to junk over and over I built a holding area for them. They pop in. Cant escape and destroy thing.. I shoot them through the window then open the door and remove all their equipment... again and again and again. They deserve it... Drug crazed raiders.

 Interior of the Zimonja bastion. I had to move the crops to the roof to protect them from raiders that appear in the settlement and are not captured by my lock up area. Generators are on the roof too.

Bobblehead collection in Red Rocket. This game is a hoot for all the fun collectibles.

One of the great updates to the game was dummy's to put the sets of clothing you can get and then show them off. This level of the Red Rocket facility is just regular clothes. Raider armor is one floor below.

This had me laughing all the way... I was wandering around as there are so many things shoehorned into every corner you never know what you are going to find.. here is CHEERS! The bar. Norm and Cliff... not much better for the look of it. It is exactly how the show was room for room and piece for piece. Wonderful.

Inside my Red Rocket facility. In the back you can see the stairs going up into the living area and weapons area of the place. So many sets of Armor!

This is usually what happens when a raiding party hits one of my settlements. Multiple rocket, laser and gun emplacements blow you to the next week. Its fun to watch but if you get into it it will hurt you too.

I keep thinking I am wasting too much time on it but I do not sit in front of the television all night and its a good stress reliever...soooo........ I am hoping when Fallout 5 comes out it has the same building ability but with more space to work with. It has been well worth the 65 dollars I paid for it back in Nov 2015

PS I am still wiping drives and processing files at the same time. Also I am thinking of pin designs and other things in my head.

Cathartic.

Details

I have been working on my third and fourth pin design this week. One of the two are for me and the other is for a friend. With all this art work it all comes down to feeling like doing the work. Most of the times when it comes down to it I dont want to do it. Id rather stare are the wall it would seem.

My pin is always a pain in the butt. I want the top ( crown ) to look like it does in reality but every producer of the pins keeps trying to lop off the way it is... I really didn't make a mistake and yes ( dammit ) I want it to look like that. Exasperation is a big thing in this stiff. Just Do What I DREW!

It usually takes a few back and forth's with the company to get it right... they are good and I have loved both of the pins I have done with them immensely. I believe they are taking the designs I give them and pushing them through a vector program and it is not too good at it. I expect I will have to get a vector program myself and go that way. Like I have the time for that... well.. its more the want.

My sons balloon turned out nicely indeed... Mostly yellow with orange and black thunderbolts. Using the orange as the outer bank and black inner gave balance to the flag background. The yellow lettering is perfect on the pins chrome circle without being too "in your face".

I decided way back a while ago that the circle double ring was the best mount for a balloon pin. Reasons are that as a round pin if you attach it to your coat and you are squeezing the envelope it wont snag on the fabric and tear the balloon. It also highlights the balloon instead of cluttering it up. It allows for boost colors or favorite colors to be put in each of the circle bands and the background is clear for the logo or a favorite thought to be displayed in the background without crowding the balloon.

Its a big balancing act to work all that down to a pin. Its never as easy as slapping an envelope onto a circle and be done. There is a massive amount of thought that goes into each of the designs I came up with.

Patturns In Czechs pin is all class with a lot of humor in it. I went with the little straight jackets and since the envelope is very very mellow I loved the while outer ring and soft yellow inner with the same for the names. It was still a lot of work on deciding how to run the little straight jacks out.

Patturns Highperactives first pin I was never happy with...

The two heartbeats that were to represent the excitement and highperactivness of the balloons ability to maneuver never lined up right and the envelope was not correct as it looks far too wide at the top and she is not wide at the top. This was a first off so it had to be redesigned the way I intended and not they way it was interpreted by the pin company. When you see the new pin I will point out what I wanted and how it came to be. hopefully I will have the correct proof soon. 

After this one clears the books I can start working on Mo's second envelope. I have a good picture and already have a wire frame for it. I should be able to run with it but I would rather a strait on version. 

I did also work on a friends envelope I had been trying to do for quite a while. I didn't have a clear enough picture to draw it but last week during a rally I had the chance to capture him. He was somewhat tilted but that was pretty easy to fix. Its done and I have a nice background designed for him as I believe he wants to use my ring design for the backdrop... 

Depends.  Here is the wireframe

It is a multi colored envelope so I thought a nice blue background and a lighter white and then white cloud banks would boost it up... Will wait for a go on it. Working on that as we speak.

Drawing those gore panels is pretty hard to recreate. That is why I would rather have a picture of the balloon in the air as there is life in it and the factory drawing is flat with no life. Envelopes are living things with air in them that creates a fuller vision of the balloon.

If I can get this down I think it could bring in some funds for the time I spend on them. Mostly now I would be paying myself but there are plans in the works I hope to get a little business going.

But that will mean I have to do things when I would rather stare at walls....LOLOL

I have been listening to music I downloaded. The website I buy my music from had some sort of glitch going on so I am having to go back and check each song. I guess it would be easier to redownload each album but what is the fun in that.

Silly me I found out why it was taking so long to transfer files from drive to drive and verify each back up. The stupid cables I bought for the 3.0 usb were not up to the transfer speeds. Using the cables that came with my drives fixed that problem and we zipped through the remainder. 

So MUCH fun!

Off to do things...  I promise not too much wall staring.

Option : Stand Down.

Week after all the holiday time off and still cranking on the back-ups. When it take 17 hours to move one file of files... well.... it does take a while. Since we had an install of new displays and some new computers for forecasting and also administration it was a busy start and then a slow down and also some corrections to the cabling because there are "three different configurations" of setups. Seriously.. why? Made for some irritation and again.. recabling.

So we were looking forward to flying Saturday..... yeah.... We got snow in town which caused some excellent freezing beneath the nice white dusting which made the New Mexican drivers freak the heck out.

If you are driving down an hill and you pass two cars backwards and against the curb ya just have to ask yourself why..... and perhaps go a little slower...naa... lets still go down the hill and then try and stop near the bottom... not really gonna happen.. nope.. slide side ways... yaaaa... block everyone else... we have all the time in the world for your foolishness. YEP!

The last thing I saw before rolling slowly into my office parking lot was a certifiable loon on a mini moped driving.. well.. he was moving forward but with both feet dragging to keep him upright through the snow. Please stop this.... its just stupid and you will become a speed bump for others.

I should have stayed home.... most did.. next time I will.

So.. Saturday because a pass as the wind chill was 5. Not gonna do that. Postponed to Sunday for the AAAA rally in Fiesta Park but it turned out to be a twitchy spinny jiggly airspace... of which I was not going to get into. Some did and that was cool...but I wanted to check out my instruments and test a few things... and this was not going to happen with this going on....

Ah well..... Setting up for next weekend. Westside! Timing... Hoping. Here are some shots......

Lots of clouds so the sun could not get out. Wells Fargo went up and South and landed. Hmmm......

Chain Gang and Unchained nudging each other....

Simulated Pilot. LOL. Nice pop up and wander over and around the field.

Overhead meander. They were going North, South, East and a little West... Silly Squirrels.

The Air Forces Lows Speed Direct Bomber... Hope you don't mind us going for the alternative target or a different target.. or just your back yard... Really... the Civil Air Patrol got a new balloon from Lindstrand and were off to fly it about.. Pretty and white... Don't know how long it will be white out here.

There she is. Integrity.... That's her name.

Wind shifts on the ground.... Oops. Those that laid out and got off fast did fine. Those that dallied had the winds shift and had their crowns pushed back in. Three had problems.. one went up around and back over the wrong way and over a vehicle. Uh Oh.

Christmas morning and Emmers didnt care anything for presents but did want her Uncle Mo to put her mismatched socks back on. This kid is so funny. She has now learned how to crawl with things in her mouth so she can take them with her.

Christmas was fun as Emily was here to enjoy her views of all the stuff. She did like a lot of boxes instead of the toys. New Years eve was as quiet. Hmmm.. getting old.. no... Old already.

Whew!