Why Southwest Airlines Rocks

Counterculture?

From the time I started planning to move into an RV, I have been amazed at the number of people who have lived in RVs for years. Over a million Americans lived in RVs 70 years ago! It is an entire segment of the U.S. population that virtually no one knows about.

A Yahoo discussion group -- Families On the Road -- exists to allow families who live in RVs to share information peculiar to the lifestyle. These families seem to be some of the happiest, best-adjusted on the planet. Snippets of posts from just the past 24 hours:

• We [use Verizon MiFi] cuz we have college age kids taking on line classes and a band to promote. We need more than one computer able to go on line at a time.


• We fulltime with 8! My kids are 21,19,16,14,12 and7. We have a family folk/bluegrass Gospel band. We bought a large class C. We can put 2 in the cabover bed, it has 2 bunks on the side for the 2 oldest and then the 2 littlest on the couch. We liked the class C option cuz it gave us the cabover area for another bed.


• My husband and I full-timed about 6 years ago for a year and will be returning to fulltiming this fall/winter. We have 4 kids: Hannah 9, Ethan 7, Libby 5, and Eli 1. We are excited to hit the road again. This time we will be traveling and working on permaculture sites and working on initiatives for community gardens and edible school yards. We are very excited. Hopefully we will have the opportunity to meet some of you in our travels.


• We have been RVing with Ross since he was 2yo (now 8 1/2 yo).


• You can learn more about us and our 5-year adventure traveling at http://www.roadschool.com. We pulled the boys out of public school the second week of 2nd and 4th grade. We did our own thing, never testing or following package curriculums, but selected our own text. Traditional learning was sporadic, but learning as a way of life was constant. At the age of 16 our younger son started collage after attending high school for 6 months with a 4.3 GPA and by passing the California High School Proficiency Exam. It's a test that is more rigorous than a GED or high school exit exam. Our older son is focusing his energy on home remodeling and master craftsman skills. The younger is heavy into programming. He has left me in the dust.

Terrence Howard on Jehovah's Witnesses

This NPR story and audio clip are two years old, but I hadn't read and heard them until now. Very interesting and encouraging.

Mostly Disconnected for a Week

Yesterday we picked up two of the grandkids, Brianna and Mackenzie, and pulled the house to Dan Nicholas Park. (The picture is from our visit here last summer; I may update it after I take pictures this visit.)

Brianna and I used to watch the animals (from home) via the park's live webcams. I just tried to look at one, and IE is telling me that AXIS Media Control can't be registered on my computer. (???) Anyway, if you can view the cams, you might catch a glimpse of us.

There is no cellular service (or wi-fi) in the campground, although we can hit a cell tower near the entrance to the park. For that reason, it will be pretty difficult to reach us while we are here. I'll probably take the laptop to the entrance to check email and voicemail each day.

Tickled Pink!!

We had a very cool 1965 Shasta parked next to us for a couple of days. More pics here.

Some Days are Diamonds

Sometimes things just fall into place. And some days seem to be more prone to that than others. Like Dick Feller wrote, "some days are diamonds, some days are stone".

Today a decision about my home movies started to gel. My 8mm films have to be sent out to be digitized. (I no longer own a film projector.) The video tapes (VHS and Video8) were getting to be a problem, though...and not just because I no longer own a VCR.

Twenty-seven years ago when I was paying $15 for blank VHS tapes (more than it cost to fill my Lincoln Continental with gas), I didn't buy separate tapes for home movies and recorded TV. So...I have several tapes that are full of TV programs and movies, with home movie snippets sandwiched in between. I also have several unlabeled tapes (glue got old and label fell off?), and I have no idea what is on them. How do I decide what to send out? And, how many tapes will I pay to have digitized that only yield a couple of minutes of home video?

I came to the conclusion to buy a VCR/DVD recorder combination. The local Walmart has one for $158 (much less than Home Movie Depot would charge me to digitize my VHS tapes). I'll try it out this evening, and if it doesn't do a great job, I will return it tomorrow morning.

Once I made that decision, I went through my DVD spindles to find out how many blanks I have. I found a spindle that contains DVD-Rs of the Video8 tapes! I had forgotten that I already digitized them a few years ago.

It gets better.

On that same spindle was a DVD-R that contains files of three movies, one TV show, six Gloria Estefan videos, and 4 short (under a minute) miscellaneous video clips. One of those clips I had totally forgotten about. Another I thought was lost forever when the external hard drive lost my home movie folder. (Yes...that is Brenda and me on national TV.)

I love it when a plan comes together!

Leopold Engleitner Is Back!

Three years ago you may have seen TV coverage of Leopold Engleitner, one of Jehovah's Witnesses, who is the world's oldest male Holocaust survivor. (He'll be 104 next month.) He is on a speaking tour that has taken him 64,000 miles in 10 years. Here's a great TV news report of his visit to Los Angeles just last month:

http://www.cbs2.com/video/?id=102822@kcbs.dayport.com

My Nephew Mike

Thanks, Mike, for the email compliment on my blog. Sorry to disconcert you by not mentioning you. ;-)

To make it up to you, I present to you Mike Harleman: This Is Your Prepubescent Life from home movies that I have digital copies of. You are in every clip. (Near the end, when your dad is swinging Anne in the hammock, you are not visible in the video, but your monkey sounds can be heard plainly.)

Click on the picture and enjoy!

Home Movie Example

Here's an example of the kind of stuff that I can glean from my hours and hours of home movies. (This clip is from one of the videos that I successfully digitized myself a few years ago.)

Unclear on the Concept

I just received an email from someone who sends a monthly newsletter. It says (I am not making this up):

"Several of you have told me that you have been receiving the same email multiple times. If this is the case, please forward the extra emails."

Digitized Home Movie Archive Update

Great news! Brenda read my blog! Woo-hoo! My blog rocks!!!

Even better news: She told me where my external hard drive is! (I've been sitting on it all afternoon.)

Bad news: The movies of our wedding are not on it. (They evidently weren't among the recoverable files.)

Good news: I found a VCD copy of our wedding movies that I made years ago, and I was able to cut the clip of Angie out of one of the VCD .dat files. (Am I a geek, or what?)

Potentially great news: While searching for the external hard drive I hit the motherlode...about 3,200 feet of 8mm film. The three 50-foot reels from our wedding appear to be there.

An interesting twist: Several years ago I had Home Movie Depot digitize a few of my 8mm films. They did a great job! I just checked their website and found that they are running a special until midnight CST Thursday: For $199 they will digitize whatever you can fit into a UPS / FedEx / USPS Express box (up to 18x13x3), limit of 20 video tapes, limit of 500 images (photos, negatives, slides), no limit on movie film.

They digitize video (tapes and film) into DVDs. I'd rather have digital files that I can work with (mpg, wmv). I need to find out what other options they will provide.

I'm going to try to get an idea how many express boxes it would take to send them all the VHS tapes, pictures, and 8mm movie film that I want digitized. If what I have would fill many boxes (and I'm afraid it will), I plan to ask them if I can get a real volume discount. I'd like to do that tomorrow (Wednesday).

Does anyone else want in?

I Hadn't Thought of That

Over a year ago I was telling Dave Reedy how I wanted to get all my old photos, 8mm movie films, and VHS tapes digitized. The conversation went something like this:

Dave: Why do you feel that it's so important to digitize everything?

Scott: Because each picture, and each frame of each movie, represents a preserved moment in time. When a photo or movie gets lost or destroyed, that moment is gone forever. It cannot be re-captured.

Dave: Well, then...based on that reasoning, you should always carry a camera with you and take pictures of everything.

Gee. I guess so. I hadn't thought of that.

(I have obsessive compulsive personality disorder. It took me a few minutes to decide not to start carrying a camera everywhere.)

Most of the photos, movie reels, and tapes are still deteriorating in boxes. And here I am today...just like Calvin in the last frame of the comic.

How do you eat a digital elephant? One byte at a time!
I did start organizing things about a year ago. I bought a half-terabyte external hard drive and had everything from every old hard drive that I owned copied to it. When I got the external hard drive back, I noticed that virtually none of my 2,000+ mp3 files were there. (Where did they go??? I know they were on at least one of the old drives!) Well...at least I had the few VHS home movies I had managed to digitize. (Most of my mp3 files could be replaced. The digitized home movies could never be replaced at the same level of quality; magnetic tape deteriorates over time.)

Then one evening last summer as I was copying VHS movie files to my PC and working on them, the external drive stopped working. No warning...just stopped. I turned it back on, and the entire VHS movie file folder was missing! I spent the next 24 hours downloading recovery software, finding the files, and "restoring" them. Except...the audio and video aren't in synch on any of the "restored" files. Oh well...at least I still have the VHS tapes. They are all now 15 to 27 years old, but I have them.

Where do you hide a digital elephant?
Here is what made me think about my half-terabyte external drive: As I was typing the beginning of this blog, I thought of a nice "moment in time" that would illustrate why I want to digitize everything. It is a short 8mm film clip of Brenda (on our wedding day) holding my baby niece, Angie. (The same niece who kindly encouraged me to start blogging.) Great idea! I'll include that video clip in this blog!

About twenty years ago I put most of my 8mm movie films onto VHS tape by projecting the movies onto a screen and videotaping them. (There are much better ways of doing it today.) About five years ago I digitized the VHS copy. The digital version of the 8mm films is on that external drive. (The "synch" problem isn't an issue with the digital versions of my 8mm films, since they don't have sound.)

Brenda -- who is in a constant state of lovingly organizing my things so that I'll always be able to find them if I ask her -- told me just the other day where that external drive presently resides. However, I don't waste precious brain resources trying to retain information that is subject to change every few days. And Brenda is at Julie's house (90 miles away) for the next day or so.

I looked for the drive, but I cannot find it. I know...that seems ludicrous, since we live in an 8-foot by 29-foot RV. Brenda is that good at what she does.

Music Festivals

We have attended MerleFest every year since 2002. We've never attended any other music festivals, but here are some we are interested in:

Beaufort County Traditional Music Association - Through October 2009
http://www.myspace.com/bctma
The Beaufort County Traditional Music Association had their annual festival April 4, 2009, so we've already missed it. But, through October they host a 10:00 am Saturday Morning Jam on the Washington Waterfront. We met guitarist Sid during our stay at Honey Bear Campground.

Eagle Creek Folk Festival - June 20, 2009
http://www.indianafolkmusic.org/
My brother, Tom, will be performing (at 4:15 pm) and conducting a workshop (at 6:00 pm). I don't plan to be in Indiana in the next week-and-a-half...but ya never know!

An Appalachian Summer Festival - June 27 through July 25, 2009
http://www.appsummer.org/
Melissa Manchester, Sophie B. Hawkins, Buckwheat Zydeco, Mike Cross, Joan Baez, and Kenny Loggins will be performing...and I'm sure I'd enjoy every one of them. But the show I'd really love to see is Leahy. This past winter, while we were wintered in southeast Florida, we pulled the house all the way across the state to Tampa for our 4th Leahy concert. Hearing their music is great, but seeing them perform is awesome! Unfortunately for us, they're scheduled at An Appalachian Summer Festival during our district convention.

MusicFest 'n Sugar Grove - July 10-11, 2009
http://www.musicfestnsugargrove.org/
http://www.myspace.com/musicfestnsugargrove
http://www.covecreek.net/sgmfest.htm
In particular, we'd like to see Doc Watson (we've seen him at every MerleFest) and the Carolina Chocolate Drops (we've seen them 3 times).

FloydFest - July 23-26, 2009
http://www.atwproductions.com/index.php?pr=ffhome
http://www.myspace.com/floydfest
We've talked about running up to Floyd, Virginia for this world music festival for years, but we've never been. Maybe we'll make it this year.

Old Fiddler's Convention - August 3-8, 2009
http://www.oldfiddlersconvention.com/
I've heard about this festival for over 30 years (I think the Bannister Twins used to go there), and we've lived within a two-hour drive for the past 15 years.

First Blog

Until now, I haven't been interested in blogs. However, a niece recently sent me URLs to blogs by her, her sister, and her dad. From those blogs I learned a lot about each of them. (And I was quite impressed!)

In the past, when I wanted to share an email, comic, joke, or random thought, I created a new email and bcc'd everyone that I thought might be interested. It has finally dawned on me that a blog is much simpler. (It also prevents me from annoying people with emails that they don't want, and from omitting people who might have been interested.)

Thank you, Angie (directly) and Stef and Steve (indirectly). I hope my blog helps me to stay better-connected with family and friends.

Yesterday I created a Picasa Web Album, and uploaded snapshots of the places we have lived since moving into our RV. (I even mapped each album and many of the photos!) In order for my web album to be interesting to visitors, I need to eliminate many/most of the snapshots. But, I'd also like for my album to eventually serve as a backup of all my digital photos. Any suggestions?