Running Bear's August 2022 Coffee Shop


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As requested: Two different sunrises in the middle of nowhere in France. That's where we live.

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TLOC said:
Suggestion on the pain! My doctor suggested I pre-load the pain killer before I exercised to get the pain handled ahead of time. Better to be a head then catch up was the way he put it. That was the suggestion for my blue pill headaches and my walking and treadmill hip pain. 3-200Grams (?) of Ibprofuen 15 minutes before the blue pill or the exercise.
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My morning routine:
After some stretching and massage, light walking to get breakfast, coffee, and a shower, then I apply the generic Voltaren gel to the affected area. After that dries, I'll apply the KT tape. Prevention and getting ahead of pain. Unfortunately, pain means the tendon is stressed.

The percussion massager is helping with midday pain, and keeping the scar tissue down.

Christian from France! Welcome back.
 
Good Morning All. Mostly cloudy and 74°. Rainfall total from Monday night through noon yesterday was 2.2", combined with the previous weeks rain has made it a rather wet August although not a record. Sudden change to the ten day forecast now has a thunderstorm chance for every one of the next ten days! And no high temperatures above 89° and all of the lows above 69°. The cloud cover will allow the pool to cool off early this season, unfortunately. It was a nice comfortable 85° yesterday afternoon.
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This will probably change in another day or two.

I didn't do any outdoor activities yesterday apart from an abbreviated walk due to the rain. I still have some mowing to do on the north side, and the front yard that I just mowed last Wednesday. Still haven't filled the gas cans yet, so I won't get too far!

I still use Target for some select shopping, but I will not go into the local Walmart unless absolutely necessary. There's two in Denton, one is an absolute dump with some quite bizarre customers. The other one is in a better part of town, but is always too crowded because it's a cleaner place. Still filled with bizarre customers after 12:00 noon. I'll pay extra not to have to walk a half mile through the hazardous parking lot at either place. The Sam's Club next door to the upscale one is a world above either WM. I have used their online shopping for a few good bargains.

Thanks for the comments and likes for the printed backdrop structures; Chad, Chet, Guy, James, Dave B, Karl, Tom O, Sherrel, Hughie, Smudge, Curt, Louis, Joe, Patrick, Tom, OB Ken.

Despite the rain, I didn't spend a lot of time in the train shed yesterday. I did though, complete the ground cover between the freight spur and the backdrop.
Before.
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After.
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Detail near bumper.
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Troy - I use Optivisors when painting figures. I've used them for over 25 years now. I don't consider it cheating. I should get a newer pair though, this pair was a hand-me-down from a die corrector at work. Don't really know how long he used them before that.
Chet - A few years ago, we remodeled the master bathroom and my wife insisted on a high-rise toilet because of her knee problems. This was before her replacements. I never realized how much I would appreciate it. I have since remodeled the other one and changed that toilet as well. I can't imagine who made the older models to begin with!
Terry - I haven't gotten the calls yet, but I never had a student loan either. Wife's aunt paid for her college degree and I paid mostly cash for my three kids degrees.

Everybody have a great day.
 
I'm inclined to think there are millions of people who prefer to stay home and collect unemployment for as long as possible. That will have a significant impact on their work ethic if they should ever find another job. The experience in the work force will suffer a significant gap but that shouldn't matter for the base employee who are used for menial tasks. Just bring the ability to pick up a box and carry it somewhere else. As for other skilled employees, you're gonna get knocked down the ladder a few notches.
My daughter has taken advantage of the lack of integrity in her co-workers and has made a few promotions in the past year in her cyber security work. Co-workers who signed on are gone, having taken advantage of the unsupervised work, proved themselves untrustworthy. She could have just stayed home and claimed no jobs are available, but she was offered an entry level job with no experience. She has been able to work from home over the past year.
My free running non-op session is a go for Monday afternoon. The invite went out this morning for those who will be in town. Bring your own motive power, consists, general freight or anything else except for MOW stuff that will tear up my track and close the mainline.
Gotta cut the grass today and finish clearing tree branches off my lawn. Neighbor took a tree down yesterday and dropped in onto my yard, which I gave him permission to do. He gave me the wood from the oak tree as well. I'll stack it up then move it to my daughter's house later this fall.
If I have any energy left, I might go up to the church cemetery and do some more chopping on that stump this afternoon.
 
Good morning Crew from a beautiful looking but a crisp start to a Wisconsin day. 60 at 6AM also as Todd said Sun Prairie, Wi. was, 20 miles away, for his posting this morning. Walked anyway, started with a hoodie, did 3 miles in 51 minutes. The hoodie was off less then 10 minutes into the walk.

Yesterday hit the very nice, dry mid80’s but with some high winds in the teens and that occasional gust 25-30mph. Today the winds are mild at 4mph but again mid80’s. Today I will mount the tractor and do some grass cutting. Terry says we need to get out and go somewhere today, but had no suggestions! I told her I was out already, that didn’t go over very well.

Spending time in the train room working the last few days has been the transload facility build, the concrete panel tilt up building, started the weathering of 9 covered hopper 2-bays and some sales of personally weathered rolling that are excess. I found and purchased 6 reasonably priced pulp wood cars at $18.00 each. I found 12 not reasonably but market bearing BLMA before the Atlas purchase of reefers yesterday morning. Purchased 6 but 2 hours later changed my mind and told the seller I’d take all 12, he had already sold the other 6. The final decisions for this morning. Do I want 2 more new coil cars from the Walthers Proto line at my LHS for my discounted price of $41 each or buy the Exactrail coil cars that are even better but at $52? These hobby decisions I know are tough but I am fortunate enough to be able to make them, I know that.

Terry just interrupted my typing! Our realtor says we have an offer on the house! She will be here around 9AM to deliver it. Great, another housing nightmare for me. Terry loves this crap!

enjoy the day
 
Model Railroader's second editor Linn Wescott credited the well known Frank Ellison as the creator of the staging concept, and think that idea actually dates all the way back to the 1940's*. Someone once gifted me a (somewhat waterlogged) collection of MR dating that far back, and I actually do have (I think) that article by Ellison: "The Art of Model Railroading," in which he wrote "watching model trains is like watching a play," hence the name staging. Whether or not Ellison ever researched staging as practiced by Gypsy Rose Lee (who certainly staged her act, using removable pins), I don't know. I would have. :D

[*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ellison]

I think Whit Towers made limited use of the idea. No idea whether John Allen did or not, but his G&D certainly was a freelance railroad, to the extent that he lettered his locomotives and rolling stock for his own road. He DID also have his own herald--a white diamond laid sideways, with GD writ in the middle. A lot of us will have seen that.

That was the first time I ever saw private lettering/heralds, and IIRC, they would have been silkscreen prints on decal paper, or custom dry transfers. I know you can do the latter yourself, but it's more involved than using modern printers. On the other hand, it's easier to print in white with transfers....

Back to staging: David Barrow's Cat Mountain and Santa Fe (all Santa Fe) used it at both ends, point-to-point stubbed yards, and I think he might have run a couple dozen trains during each session. That would require swapping ends with both locos and cabeese manually after each session, which could get tedious. It would require re-straightening of a lot of handrails too...

When asked about staging on the NEB&W layout, John Nehrich did say "tracks underneath other tracks are pretty much unusable, at least in our experience, and we're going to try and go back to make changes (to fix that)". Dunno if they ever did.

I DO know their south end staging yard was only some 15" below the modeled sections, and was unlit--it was the sort of yard where the operators had to bend over and stage through a couple or four horizontal "windows," and doing that would have blocked out a lot of the room light too, so it was almost done in the dark. Barrow did it much better with fully lit layout height yards, missing only return loops to make staging the next session easier. A return loop takes more space, of course, but not having them would drive me mad, or drive me away from much in the way of operations at least. That might just be me though.
 
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Snowman said:
Model Railroader's second editor Linn Wescott credited the well known Frank Ellison as the creator of the staging concept, and think that idea actually dates all the way back to the 1940's*. Someone once gifted me a (somewhat waterlogged) collection of MR dating that far back, and I actually do have (I think) that article by Ellison: "The Art of Model Railroading," in which he wrote "watching model trains is like watching a play," hence the name staging. Whether or not Ellison ever researched staging as practiced by Gypsy Rose Lee (who certainly staged her act, using removable pins), I don't know. I would have. :D

[*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ellison]

I think Whit Towers made limited use of the idea. No idea whether John Allen did or not, but his G&D certainly was a freelance railroad, to the extent that he lettered his locomotives and rolling stock for his own road. He DID also have his own herald--a white diamond laid sideways, with GD writ in the middle. A lot of us will have seen that.

That was the first time I ever saw private lettering/heralds, and IIRC, they would have been silkscreen prints on decal paper, or custom dry transfers. I know you can do the latter yourself, but it's more involved than using modern printers. On the other hand, it's easier to print in white with transfers....

Back to staging: David Barrow's Cat Mountain and Santa Fe (all Santa Fe) used it at both ends, point-to-point stubbed yards, and I think he might have run a couple dozen trains during each session. That would require swapping ends with both locos and cabeese manually after each session, which could get tedious. It would require re-straightening of a lot of handrails too...

When asked about staging on the NEB&W layout, John Nehrich did say "tracks underneath other tracks are pretty much unusable, at least in our experience, and we're going to try and go back to make changes (to fix that)". Dunno if they ever did.

I DO know their south end staging yard was only some 15" below the modeled sections, and was unlit--it was the sort of yard where the operators had to bend over and stage through a couple or four horizontal "windows," and doing that would have blocked out a lot of the room light too, so it was almost done in the dark. Barrow did it much better with fully lit layout height yards, missing only return loops to make staging the next session easier. A return loop takes more space, of course, but not having them would drive me mad, or drive me away from much in the way of operations at least. That might just be me though.

NOt sure what happened here with the crossed out font, but I can't fix it.
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Click the three little dots in the toolbar, underneath it appears another line of characters, the "S" is what turns the line through function on and off.
 
I think I turned it on when I tried to bracket a "s" (loop and loops). Linux box, this one, and I stumble over things like this regularly. Meh!
I'm running Linux off a USB stick, so even though I have a big 4K monitor in front of me, I reconfigure that to 1920X1080 with each startup--Old eyes. Have to reconfigure my email account each time too. Also tedious.

"Meh" once again....
 
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TLOC said:
I have always thought the job reports open and filled were political propaganda!

Remember that when unemployment runs out for out of work folks those numbers drop off any reporting mechanism. We have many more unemployed folks in the USA then the official numbers tell us. We also have the undocumented (not saying illegals) worker who barters for his/her services or gets paid cash. I am personally am aware of 2 Veterinarians who officially retired but now work for cash only and come to where they are needed. Terry will no longer use them in the stables. There are Combine Operators in our County who only work for a percentage of the harvest, no paperwork, no cash, no checks. Say they harvest 10,000 bushels, a portion of that is taken by the combine folks with no records. Lots of that happens and is therefore skewing our “OFFICAL” numbers. Artists are notorious for off the book stuff. Unknowingly years ago I had a trio of 🦕 dinosaurs fabricated for off the entrance to the driveway. I like whimsical and when he delivered and installed them he said I only take cash! I knew he didn’t take credit cards but also no checks, no invoices, nothing just cash!

Some States have also adjusted the hours that qualify a worker as full time or part time.

I truly do not believe any government reported numbers.
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I truly believe the employment reporting is completely inaccurate. Then number of off the books workers is much larger than we imagine, for many reasons. Lets face it, when you work for a company as an employee, all of your earnings are reported. A substantial portion of your wages are skimmed off for Income Taxes, Payroll Taxes, Local Taxes, Health and Welfare Cost Sharing etc. Many employee tax deductions no longer apply. It's really not worth it to work on the books if you can get away with it... One can actually make out better, undercutting contract workers but keeping all of what they earned. I don't know just how common this is, but I imagine it would be an eye opener.
 
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