FIesta, Flying, F(P)otographs, Fallout 4. The four F's

Licence... I have a licence that says I can manipulate the English language and spelling as I see fit. I am letterillys leaning. Dont judge me!

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta Registration started Monday last. Completely different menu and page style and more questions asked that I had to go find answers to to complete... It was not hard but did take a bit of time. Hoping next year that most of the fields will be pre-filled to keep the repeats down.

The new artwork for this years banner............... ..... .....   If you enlarge or really expand the web page Patturns Highperactive pops into view on the left side. I was trying to get a clean clip of the banner and adjusting the size and there she was. Cool. Its a rare shot of PH in a Fiesta shot but as its a one off envelope its very easy to spot.

Debi just posted this. Hilarious!!! Had to share...  I'm waiting 6 months... Hoping those in power would stop this silliness.

So many things happened this week. Some worth recounting..many, well, its better just to put them aside in a dark corner of the room. 

Mainly the office techs set up a rescue training scenario at our Radar site for the Albuquerque Fire Department. This was to see and learn how to remove a person from the top of the dome the quickest and safest if they were unconscious or hurt....or both.. It was... interesting. I'm damaged so I didn't volunteer to be flung over the side.

Seriously high tower. This stairs are at a very steep angle and are made of a heavy unfinished metal. Bang a shin and you will bleed. Been there done that. 

Three teams went through the training. Parts of that were, response, setting up connection points for ropes and what each member did and how to do it. Interesting. Pre-start brief.

Mike gets dropped over the side on this one. Big time safety at all times. Helmets on whenever the hatch is open.

Second day of the last week they brought the heavy rescue truck. Nice!

Tony gets to play for the second evolution and out the hatch instead. More difficult because there are supporting structure beams and the stairs to contend with. From our NWS training... you use your feet to push the "victim" away from the obstacles. Its doable but you have to be able to understand dynamics.

Other than his arms being out instead of tucked away Tony is trussed up nicely.

Pretty much a  fantastic training event. The Albuquerque Fire Department teams are amazing and great people. We learned a lot. 

I spent a bunch of time ( what else can you do while your foot heals and your supposed to stay off the damn thing ) playing fallout 4 modded.... 

Skip over this if you are not interested in Fallout 4...

Some mods work.. some dont.. some do strange things... I am building out Armor between building more settlements... or strongholds... Over killing the weapon emplacements... because I CAN!

Mods allow for many things. The sets I use usually fix building errors where you cant build over a rock in a certain way or there is a bit of trash that cant move and causes the program to refuse to place an item. See..its like this... you have to build in specific areas and in specific zones laid out by the game. Working around this is extremely hard. You have to figure out how pieces of walls will set and how the land grade is and what is the maximum area you can enclose. Not that this stops the game from dropping raiders inside but it helps funnel them if they are outside. 

My favorite mod is a zone expansion but it works some times in some places. I really wanted it to work everywhere but it wont so I went on building this version a little different, learning from the first try. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of fear of falling control to build this stuff. You cant just float off the ground to build a three level wall.. you have to set every one of the wall sections at a time.. every insulator and every light. I've learned how to do it the quickest and I also learned what the optimum housing facility is and the best use of space. 

This is Croup Manor. Its a location full of ghouls. You clear it and the loons in the basement and you can build here. It has a half destroyed manor house on the build zone. I could use a mod to clear the building completely but I dont. I would rather work the best possible way around these things. Plus due to the game dropping raiders inside I usually build everything two levels up so the raiders cant destroy or kill anyone.... mostly. 

I have used this same build style everywhere possible. Two levels at the bottom are open... third is a ring of weapon emplacements to deal with the constant raids... next level is usually living and crops.. next is water production ( piping to wells through the walls ) and the top is power. Using two 500 power generators.. because I CAN!

This is inside of Jamaica Point. Biggest ( almost ) pain in the ass location to build. The area is oddly shaped and nothing wants to sit right. Took a bit to figure out how to deal with it this time... but I did.  This is the second level that is the weapons and entrance and stores area.

Exterior of Jamaica.... Note the back sets.. that's because the build zone is angles in too many places. I took the best straight line and went from there... the straight line is on the back side.

Here we have an error in the program. As soon as you step one foot forward it corrects... I'm always carrying too much.. and am always walking.. Makes battles very interesting.

Egrets the first time I built here there was a fit problem but not too bad. I learned a lot from the first build. This time I built a bit higher... *Mod for building height. Some settlement zones will not let you build very high.. totally wrong....

Aquatic camo.. a new download... I dropped five or six different paint styles......

Starting to populate the armor in the main facility I built on Spectacle Island.

Bunker hill... I really hated this on my first run through the game. The settlement was surrounded by crappy wooden makeshift walls... you couldn't remove them and you were stuck with it. First time I just built above, but it was a hodge podge of space. This time I downloaded a mod that made the location like it really is in RL and also downloaded a mod to allow me to scrap ( within reason it seems ) the walls. I had to be very creative on how to lay the cement walls to fit the settlement zone but it worked and I didn't have to remove too many items to do so... and it came out nicely.

Boston Airport... Limited... You were not allowed to grow food nor process water...aos it was tiny... so you were forced to rely on traders moving from settlement to settlement... WRONG!! Using the mod I used at Bunker hill and another mod to allow water and food processing I built a nice building on this small plot. Its only 80 ft by 130 feet.. so I built up! This is the third level and the entrance is right in front center.

Exterior shot.. the only place I didn't create the same housing style... It worked very nicely.

Yes.. lots of time playing games.. but remember.. I do not watch television.. At all. Most everything on television now is either stupid, ranty or in your face and I'm not interesting in being preached at constantly or have my brain turned to mush. Lots of time to do this and work on other stuff... 

To each his own.

Lastly... Mary and I decided to go to our favorite restaurant for an early dinner... We just rarely get out so....  

Joe's Restaurant in Rio Rancho.   http://joespastahouse.com/

We had some bruschetta (sp?) and fried mozzarella and I had the baked penne and Mary had chicken...

So very tasty and I was only able to eat a fourth of my penne. The sauce was smooth and a hint of wine floated in there. The meat was well processed and not chunky and over all the plate was excellent. Staff is always right there if you need anything and ready to assist with any changes you might want.

From living in Italy for two and a half years I know my pasta and I know what its like to eat in a real Italian restaurant.. and Joe's hits it nicely. If they added Tortellini alla panna with prosciutto Id be there every other day until I died of over eating...

I really hate taking pictures of my food but this time I made an exception.. three times..

Super fresh ingredients... Just like in RI ( Real Italy ). We used to go and get fresh before going out for the night. 

Fried Mozzarella....  Nice because even thought its hot its not just a floating puddle of Mozz...there is texture and a good bite to each piece. The marinara is very nice and holds together.. not watery or sloppy.

First time trying the penne. WOW! A smooth forkful and the slight tang at the back of the portion and when I say smooth.. it was smooth... Not buried under cheese or hidden .. but just there... 

It was a good afternoon and as old people we were home by 430... HAH! 

Guess what I am having for dinner tonight... Leftovers!!!! Going to be very good. 

Much thanks to Joe's for the great dining experience. 

Now its on Sunday.... Foot is trying to be abusive. Much to do today and trying to balance that with keeping this foot up ... something is going to have to shift.....

We also didn't get to do training this Sunday as the winds were forecast to be up in the 40s and it was supposed to rain.... No rain yet.... Winds are gusting on this side of town.

Mo got in a review flight yesterday when it was also supposed to be ugly. He did land in a odd place but I have yet to talk to him about it.. and I always ask about his and other Pilots flights.. I like to understand their thinking in different situations....

Next weekend is the St Pattys Day Rallye in Belen. I did a quick design for their T shirts.. I hope it comes out okay. Not much time to do it and the pictures of the balloons I had to work with were sub par ( just the way it was ) .. and you work with what you have.. Hoping to get better shots for them for next year.

Hoping for good weather next weekend!

Happy new week to you all... 

Hi my name is Patrick and I am a cable hoarder.

Some of the invites to the Balloons Over Angel Fire have gone out. I didn't get mine but my Son did. Yes... M comes before P but..... gosh! I checked all my spam folders and there aint nuttin!

Last year was awesome. We met and had crew for us locals, people from out of state that were just visiting and also folk from Europe. It was a great lot of fun and the flying weather was cool if odd.

This year there are comments that we will do a stand up along the airport runway... if this comes off it will be a total blast. I need to be three people for that day.... if I get an invite.

We shall see wont we.... Until then....

I'm still laid up with this foot. I can feel the break or I should say that where the break is I can feel the pain running along the side of my foot.. or across that edge of my foot. Bizarre. I know when I have been being bad and flexing that foot. It lets me know right away. After last weeks over walking I will try and behave this week.

I missed one good day of flying Saturday and a iffy day on Sunday. Son broke an upright pole when the winds shifted abruptly and spun his basket.. while trying to correct that, one pole snapped. No problem as they are replaced by free by Lindstrand Balloons USA via the local repair station, AERCO. Just gotta go deal with it.

I saw that parts of England got blasted by snow... Fun huh! Used to be the norm in Nevada and Utah... Hope you all are staying warm and stocked up on food so you didn't have to venture out in the car anywhere. It got down to 24ish here and we saw some snow flurries and some big flakes for a tiny bit but it said no way to landing and collecting and rushed off to the mountains.  Beside the high winds and chances of fires everywhere East of us its a normal sunny Sunday.

I have wasted a bunch of time on Fallout 4 on the PC and aside from the mod that I wanted off the XBOX which seems to be unavailable on the PC version I have run into another problem. It seems the creators didn't foresee the need for massive expansion in settlements that I am wanting to do. I learned this when I kept crashing the game while trying to build more items in the area. Bummer.. big bummer. I am trying to remove a bunch of storage stuff from the area and see if that affects the crashing. If so I know what to do to deal with it but it will take ages to correct.

I did a quick photo-shoot for framily. I really need to buy some reflectors. Also the foliage is all brown... Sucks to shoot against. Very stark... bold, bright....brown! I have looked them over quickly and a few are very nice. I will dig into them this week and clean up the shots I feel are the best. I am looking for about five to seven that are standouts.

Sadly, I have this huge bin full of cables and connectors and what not.... We are talking...Hoarder city.

I had it brought into the computer room/office and I pulled out each damned cable and every damned connector and many misbegotten items and wrapped and piled up all of it.

It was very sad... I could just see myself saying to myself in the past that I needed such and such cable but could not bear touching the cable bin so just ordered a new cable... wow... and I could also see where I moved from VGA to DVI to HDMI to DPort and all the adapters that that entailed. Seriously depressing bit of clutter.

Positives... I bagged all the VGA cables, co-ax cable, and bits and pieces I will never need again ( I hope ) in a trash bag... and then sat there...... I didnt just want to dump all the keeper cables and such back in the box because I would be back to not opening the scary bin and back to the hoarder process... scratched my head.... flexed my foot ( ouch! ) wrong thing to do.....Then I devised a plan... steal all the gallon plastic bags from the pantry and put each item set in each bag.... It worked and it is organized. The only items not in bags are all the DP ( long or large ) cables, the Lan cables because they are huuuge loops... and lastly the Monitor arms hardware. All that went in neat piles in the bottom of the bin.

See....

It was so much worse when all the cables were out...

Bagged and tagged!

Super neat and clean. I feel cleansed. A good hard bristle brush was all that was needed...

Now to get it moved back out to the garage.

I did find that I had dumped all my travel items into this bin somehow. Trackball, usb hub and power blocks were all dropped in.. I must have had a bad day.  But its all to rights now. They have their own bag. I accomplished something today!!!

I did get some nice chairs. They are higher than the old club chairs I have so its a bit strange.

I've moved my computer side table into the room and have my main monitor on a swing arm... an Ergotron LX arm with an extender on it. Its strong enough to hold the weight on the monitor fully extended. Its nice to be able to draw it right in front of my if I ever felt it necessary. Mostly it sits off to my left and is easily usable. I had to drill a hole to set the monitor arm clamp. The side clamp had nowhere to purchase on the table... and looking for the alternate clamp was novel. Could not find the plate.. and decided the best thing to do was go to their website and look at the manual... LOL. They multi used the plate and I was able to unscrew it and use it in a different configuration.

So that was easier than I thought it would be after being miffed they didn't give me the plate.

That was the weekend...

The week saw me watch my granddaughter try to lick the frosting from the top of a pop tart... what the heck!!! So I sent a picture of how to easily eat a pop tart to my daughter with instructions on not teasing my granddaughter anymore and that I would get even if she didn't.. so something like that.. Mostly in gif format.

I do not like my pop tarts toasted. I like them cold. Preferable with hot coffee to go along with them.

Now you know something ... yeah.. dont matter much huh.

I did get to pull my Sony RX10V4 out and shoot a few things during the week... not much worth showing but I will show you a bit..LOL

Inversion across Northern Albuquerque.... from slightly off La Orilla.

A confusion of signs.

Rio Grande at Rio Bravo.

Irrigation beside the Rio Grande at Montano. Very brown. Very dangerous for fire.

Ya! About all I got up to with the Sony. I need to get it out more but I am always rushing here or there and never want to stop for all the novel things I see everyday. I might never get home if I stopped for everything I see. So much is oddly novel.

This upcoming weekend is pretty laid back.. just chasing tails on some projects.

Next weekend I will be joining the AAAA and also giving instruction on balloon crewing to some new to ballooning people. Should be fun. If the foot is okay I might take a little jump down the field.

I hope to be able to teach the full build and pack away as well as explain about not getting in front of a balloon basket while it is coming in for landing unless you understand "english".. and setting yourself.  Rory knows what I mean and a lot of others do but a vast amount of people have no clue.. so I hope to do that... Along with the easy way to dismount a full basket from a trailer, layout and throat holding to ease connecting up at the burner frame and pulling out and tabbing Velcro and fan position and function and safety in everything.

Should be a hoot!

See ya out there!

Bloody Hell.. and other assorted descriptors

It just took me ten minutes of &*(%$*^&$  to get logged into this blog site.. oh.. I have a mind to go to my own damn site....

Its still buggering up here and there.

Yeah... and yeah.. no TP anywhere to clean up this Google mess. ARGH... well lets see if I can add this blog for today... before it blows up again... ( Im logged in and it keeps asking me to log in ).

Not like there is a lot to it.

Down and dirty for today....

Broke my foot two weeks ago and took that long and pain to go see a doc about it. Yeah.. Its really broke. After seeing a Podiatrist I am in a boot for 6 weeks. It was a perfect Dancers break as they tell me. No surgery or casts or splints or anything... just the boot of shame... somewhat like the cone of shame for dogs. I need to get people to sign my boot... It was expensive. I have good blood flow in the area so they are happy to make me miserable with this thing. Pain...I refuse to feel it.

So the week was full of stuff.. mostly hospitals and distant parking lots to traverse... I would bore you.

I did get asked to come up with a logo for T shirts for the VFRS St Pats balloon Rallye... which I did. Hard because the photo files for the balloons were very low resolution...but I came up with a nice little thing. I have to adjust it a bit still..but it will be done tomorrow for sure.

The Rally ( Rallye ) is in Belen NM. It used to be in Los Lunas but it was squeezed out. Belen has more space and such. I flew it last year and had a good time. I did have Ted with me so that is usually fun or funny. Expecting to do that next month. Between that I will be taking part in a training ( hands on ) session for new people interested in ballooning. Have all these new people learn how to remove, assemble, assist in inflation.. maybe bobble down the field, catch, lay down, secure the whole thing. Requested the Kennedy so that will be extra fun.

Also going to take a trip up to Colorado somewhere in there and I will take pictures of that. I am hoping the next couple of weeks to have lots of shots to show you.

For today you get some interesting stuff I've come across or made or such.. Its also the waiting point for the Fiesta Registration... so lots of waiting...

And web surfing...

This got my attention. Migration.. you never used to think about it but the US is so huge its novel to think about.

Based on a Hotel in Riverside Cali...
 Super funny to listen to the song now.

Love the capture from the 360 camera.  Since no one is interested in the two 4k versions I am going to break them out and start using them... Should be very novel.

Ted has a great eye for photographs but a teeny tiny iPhone to take pictures. I love his shots but I have to force a Nikon on him if or when we fly next to each other again.

A long throw back at 2nd Kiss. A very beautiful balloon that was not taken care of by the previous owner and a quick loss to our family of balloons.

My favorite rabbit shot. When I am lost in thought and wandering about this will pop in my head. One rabbit.. maybe not impressed with you..  or what your up to... or perhaps just a good raspberry at you just because...

When asked who my primary care Doctor is... And lately that has been a lot.. I show them this...
My Doctor..

For long road trips do not use a balloon... not gonna stay on the road and not gonna get very far down it.... unless you are long jumping.

I am not impressed with most bumper stickers.. and I just had to make this to show my complete withering deep sighing level of feels for your silly bumper stickers.. hahaha...  Just had another thought for a different sticker.. wow.

Almost that time... do I have all my ducks in a row.. or moose in a peck or numbers adjusted by my best mob accountant... cant wait..

A true statement I need to remember....

Loved this pictograph.... I really love New Mexico.

A never before seen shot from the archives. A fun day of flying friends. Landed in what looked to be a beautiful green park only to "splash down". Swapped passengers and back up in the air for more fun.

So what more fun can you have.....

See how green it looked on the right... wow nice place to lay out the envelope... Uh nope!

Last for looking at the past this weekend is a glow we did for our good friends at their wedding rehearsal dinner. A complete surprise for the people in the houses and apartments that bordered this field.. a lot of fun for us.

I have so many pictures stuffed in files everywhere that I forget what I have added and whats never been viewed. I need a system but it takes too long to process...

Oh well... Off to do some more resting of the foot....

PS.. Someone bought me a pair of nice new chairs for my computer room.. probably just before the ones I have now fall completely apart.... there is leather bits all over the house on the floor.. perhaps that was the impulse to get something quickly.... I cant wait..  I think the old chairs will go directly to the dump along with some others we have not flung to the curb but seriously need to be removed... Why hold onto the stuff when its past its usefulness..  I feel I will need to live up to the new chairs... not sure Im up for that... but Thank You!

Life.....Its so strange lately....