Running Bear’s April 2026 Coffee Shop

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Orion performed the first OTC burn. The first two were cancelled as not being required. Watching the burn from the RCS thrusters was pretty cool.

Now toilet maintenance is getting ready to start. Even with four people that seems like a lot of waste water dumps. They must be drinking a lot of fluids. The humidity level last reported was around 27%. I wouldn't think that was super dry.

Orion will enter the moon's sphere of gravitational influence at 41,072 miles, or in about an hour. Speed is really low right now at 1,380 MPH.
 
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I have been eye-balling a Tomix MO-510 tram (first photo) in HO scale since it was announced. All videos of it were of a previous run and it sounded like cr@p. I saw that RG Rokko had it on sale for cheaper than anyone else, so I sent an email to see if they had run it and how it sounded. Well, they responded with an attached video and another email of a different Tomix HO model, comparing both and saying that it's probably the mechanism that Tomix uses and both made a similar sound. They use the M-13 motor which has proven to me, to be a 3 pole and very coggy, leading to vibration and noise through a chassis. They use this motor in their n-gauge stuff and I've replaced them in the past with coreless.

So, I ended up ordering the brown one as it is more down my lane. They sent me a video of it running as well.

Above and beyond!!
TOMIX HO-618 TEST.jpg

TOMIX HO-611 TEST.jpg
 


Good morning gang!!

41° under sunny skies, heading to a high of 57°.

Got lots of yard work Saturday, and wiring work on the layout yesterday, but last night I hit a wall!
All that activity caused my lower back and hip to go into revolt last night. Normally I'm a back sleeper, but the only way I could get comfortable was with my legs bent a little, so on my side I want. If its not better by tonight, I may grab a pillow to try under my knees.

Dad always said growing old was not for sissies, now I'm telling my kids!!!
 
Well, howdy there internet peeps and those with avatars of questionable nature

It's troy again.

The Fort is a cool 45 F degrees heading toward mid-50s under fair skies. It's Pollen Season, however.

In addition to the ham (leftovers filled a gallon sized freezer bag), we had cornbread and a bag of veggies. Then I had some Three Floyd's whiskey.

Got stuff glued down on the layout yesterday. I picked up new tubes of Loctite PL 300 (foam adhesive). It's got a new color for the label. More of a baby blue, instead of the dark blue. Seems to take longer to come to grips with the foam. Like an hour or so longer than the older stuff.

658958689_18567634654035711_2853176101289592354_n.jpg


I'll post an update on the layout thread later today.

In the meantime, I'm setting up my next book in the Plottr Story bible and plot tracker. This will take a while since my previous entries in this piece of software went POOF when my hard drive bricked a couple of years ago.

Fortunately, the AI tools I use have pulled much better character entries for me than I had previously. It takes the NotebookLM about a minute to research through seven books and pull together a profile that is several paragraphs long. Very accurate at well.

Probably do a steak on the grill for dinner, and toss my italian sausages on for a smoke. I'll freeze those for a few days, but make a crock of Sausage and Peppers with Rotini later in the week.
 
Good morning. Growingnold is so much better, but painful than the alternative!

Austin, Texas weather is 50f degrees now going to 74 with 1% chance of rain. Home in Verona, Wi it’s 30f degrees going to 45 with a 2% chance of snow. Our March/April trips are designed to seek warmth, so far so good.

We went to the son’s g/f house yesterday but instead of eating there since her place is a couple blocks walk from Leroy and Lewis Barbecue. We headed over there and only wanted 25 minutes (normal is 2 hours). Excellent as it has been. This is our favorite BBQ place in Austin. The son has a new one for us to try this week

The trip out to Wimberly to see the son’s new place was good. The house will be very nice overlooking the Blanco River. It’s a mix of Texas ranch meets Wisconsin casual with lots of north facing glass overlooking the river. He’s worked hard to attain this and we are happy for him.

Today we will head down to New Braunfels. We always visit Neaglins Bakery the oldest bakery in Texas. They have kolaches made the way Terry’s German born grandmothers made them. Even better than the I35 kolaches in the city of West, Texas we usually stop at on the way home. But we flew here this time. Also, we’ve been told to have breakfast at a German place there though I forget the name but Terry has it. I have a tee time with my brother’s group at 3pm at Fazio Canyons in Austin today and 11am tomorrow.

New Braunfels has a good model railroad club but they are never open when we get here. I’ve been to one of their sponsored shows but it’s later this month. Finally I’m still doodling with logos. Gave my doodles to Google Gemini Ai and I now have 3 choices I’m working on. These are for the new paper mill the River Pulp and Paper Company
D3C5D410-8EF8-40BE-BB6B-53AFBE9149BB.png


The 2 above are new
0630DAE4-4549-4D8A-855E-88A3EB6E58EB.png


I posted the one above yesterday

I like bits of all 3
 


Morning all,

What a weekend.

After getting the new sink installed, 3 hours later, there's water under it. Turns out the expandable piece from the sink to the trap has a small hole in it I can't find. It's between the tailpiece of the sink to the drain trap. No water from either compression fitting. So I'm rethinking that part of the drain. A pail is currently under it to catch the small amount that leaks. Wondering how the aerosol version of that rubberized paint they advertise on TV might work. I have most of the trim installed, just need the quarter round put in around the sink cabinet.

Saturday we went to SE Kansas to be sponsors for the brother-in-law's family as his wife and stepdaughter, along with 3 granddaughters were becoming Catholics. Got home a little before 2:00am Sunday morning. I then woke up at 7:00a to start the day. We had the local kids over for a modified Easter with Ham, generic Easter eggs, baked beans, potato salad, then desert. Not a lot of prep other than the ham. Then later got the front yard mowed. I didn't know it was possible to stop the motor on an electric mower. We then had a sandwich and went to bed early as we were both whipped.

Can't do that again...

As far as pain meds go, meloxicam does nothing for me, ibuprofen or naproxen work, but I have to very them. Current the Ibuprofen is keeping up.

Hope all had a great weekend.
 
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Good morning all!

Currently a bright sunny 41F. Not going to get a whole lot warmer today with an expected high of 48F. The next couple of day
are supposed to be cool. I see we must of gotten some rain last night. The driveway and streets were wet when I looked out this
morning.

Not much on the agenda today. I have to run to the post office and grab the mail that's been held while we were away. The dog also
has a grooming appointment at 10:30. Since she was at the boarders for 8 days, she's a stinky puppy! I was smart this year and made
the appointment weeks ago since they are the only ones in town and they are always booked solid.

Daughter has one more day off school and my wife went back to work today. She is opting ro skip the office this week and work from
home.

have a safe day everyone!
 
Morning all, mid 40s here in S NH and not going to get much warmer today. The bot attach seems to be really slowing the site down. I saw over 25000 "guests" a few minutes ago. They're keeping photos from completely loading, at least for me.

Got some airbrushing done over the weekend and also built a Hazzard Fraught static grass applicator since I will only have a small area to do when I get to that point on the diorama.
 
Good morning. 54°F this morning topping out about 61°F today. Warming trend as the week moves along. I was shopping on-line for my groceries this morning and found out I forgot to activate my new debit card, so I have to make a trip to the bank ATM for a balance check to activate it. Wish I remembered that earlier.

Nothing going on around here today, but the grass needs cutting. Likely get that done tomorrow when it's a bit warmer. Not that I mind cutting when it's cool, but 60°F is a little too cool. I don't need a cold.

Integrity is now traveling at 1,159 MPH and still has not started to accelerate at 19,800 miles from the moon. Integrity is traveling at nearly a right angle to the moon's path and I guess that would explain the delayed reaction to the moon's gravity well.

Integrity should be passing around the backside starting 1744 CDT when LOS will occur for 40 minutes.

I hope everyone has a good week. Servus!
 
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Good Morning All. Clear and 45° this morning, going up to the low-70's today, kind of a repeat of the past few days. And a prelude for the rest of the week.

Made the trip to Dallas yesterday for the family's annual Easter get-together, so I got my usual dose of highway construction, confused drivers and just poor driving across the Metroplex. It is somewhat amusing though, to look next to me and see a rider decked out in full Harley gear riding a 3-wheeler! Just not the right image of a Harley rider to me!

Looks like a short trip to the nearby convenience store to fill up the gas cans this morning. Both are empty and the mower has less than 1/2 tank...only good for about a single acre. I need to also check the garden after the recent rain. Need to see if the surface dried out enough for a light hoeing to get them Sunflowers before they get unmanageable.

No train shed time yesterday as family festivities filled the day. Second time in less than a week.

Tom O - I like the latest logo, the one posted yesterday. It definitely has that paper mill feel to it. Enjoy your time here in Texas and ignore the political fray in Austin.
Not to be picky, but it is spelled Naegelin's, not Neaglins as posted!
David (Marlin) - I miss my Asparagus plants. I planted them in 1983 and they lasted for me until 2018 or so. Things happened and I never replanted. At the height of harvesting, I was getting 2 dozen every other day in their prime. I still don't think that my kids have eaten any since they left home in the early 2000's!

Everyone have a great Easter Monday.
 
Just had a chuckle with the AI tools I'm using.

These LLMs are just very, very sophisticated predictive text. Sometimes they seem very human.

This morning I'm creating character sheets. I've already got the written bits and bobs for each, but I'm asking "Claude" to create a prompt I can feed into the Image Generator and get a decent representation of the various recurring characters in the series.

Here's the main character:

Twiz'.jpg



And the long-running antagonist that everyone loves to hate:

Star.png



And then there's this guy. Dick Gates. The main character's former boss. The one who got wealthy because he made ONE good hire (the main character)... and when she told him to stuff it! He had quite the fall... He's trying to claw his way back into the country club crowd, but the best jobs he's landed since losing everything was driving an ice cream truck, and now cleaning the weight machines in a gym and selling smoothies to the patrons.

When I fed this one back into Claude for it to file with the character description, the AI offered the following assessment:

"The overcast sky behind him is an inspired touch — even the weather is underwhelmed by Dick Gates"
Dick G.png
 
santafewillie said:
Good Morning All. Clear and 45° this morning, going up to the low-70's today, kind of a repeat of the past few days. And a prelude for the rest of the week.

Made the trip to Dallas yesterday for the family's annual Easter get-together, so I got my usual dose of highway construction, confused drivers and just poor driving across the Metroplex. It is somewhat amusing though, to look next to me and see a rider decked out in full Harley gear riding a 3-wheeler! Just not the right image of a Harley rider to me!

Looks like a short trip to the nearby convenience store to fill up the gas cans this morning. Both are empty and the mower has less than 1/2 tank...only good for about a single acre. I need to also check the garden after the recent rain. Need to see if the surface dried out enough for a light hoeing to get them Sunflowers before they get unmanageable.

No train shed time yesterday as family festivities filled the day. Second time in less than a week.

Tom O - I like the latest logo, the one posted yesterday. It definitely has that paper mill feel to it. Enjoy your time here in Texas and ignore the political fray in Austin.
Not to be picky, but it is spelled Naegelin's, not Neaglins as posted!
David (Marlin) - I miss my Asparagus plants. I planted them in 1983 and they lasted for me until 2018 or so. Things happened and I never replanted. At the height of harvesting, I was getting 2 dozen every other day in their prime. I still don't think that my kids have eaten any since they left home in the early 2000's!

Everyone have a great Easter Monday.
Click to expand...
Yep ur right, just my typical mistake. As long as Maps has it we’ll be fine
 


troyphoto said:
Just had a chuckle with the AI tools I'm using.

These LLMs are just very, very sophisticated predictive text. Sometimes they seem very human.

This morning I'm creating character sheets. I've already got the written bits and bobs for each, but I'm asking "Claude" to create a prompt I can feed into the Image Generator and get a decent representation of the various recurring characters in the series.

Here's the main character:

View attachment 262208


And the long-running antagonist that everyone loves to hate:

View attachment 262209


And then there's this guy. Dick Gates. The main character's former boss. The one who got wealthy because he made ONE good hire (the main character)... and when she told him to stuff it! He had quite the fall... He's trying to claw his way back into the country club crowd, but the best jobs he's landed since losing everything was driving an ice cream truck, and now cleaning the weight machines in a gym and selling smoothies to the patrons.

When I fed this one back into Claude for it to file with the character description, the AI offered the following assessment:

"The overcast sky behind him is an inspired touch — even the weather is underwhelmed by Dick Gates"
View attachment 262210
Click to expand...
Your antagonist's face has a strikingly odd resemblance to H.R. Clinton.🤔
 
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