Running Bear's December 2025 Coffee Shop

[Kusojiji]

Hermey Skywalker on Rudolph the red nosed tauntaun. Nice!

 

[traiNscale]

howdi all

- home office today

but airport is busy and running. christmas season is always busy as hell.
tomorrow i will be back at the airport.

got something in the mail today

looking forward to read and getting inspired
if we dont hear us again before christmas.
wish you all a great happy christmas, and will read you all next week.

cheers
Marco

 

[santafewillie]

Good Morning All. Mostly cloudy and a warmish 64°, still heading into the upper-70's and mid-80's for the next few days.
Today is Festivus, for all who do not celebrate any other holiday this time of year.

Nothing special about yesterday, just a ho-hum life right now. I did stack a little bit of firewood that I had already cut. No big logs yet, although I think that I am sufficiently healed to start resuming a bit more strenuous stuff. Made Turkey Pot pie last night with some of the leftover sliced Turkey from Saturday.
Today starts with the dishwasher; I think that we're almost done with gift wrapping. I'm not supposed to get in the way of that although I still do some.

Out in the train shed yesterday, I celebrated the "Ninth Day of Christmas" by unveiling another Athearn RTR freight car. This one is a flatcar lettered for Trailer Train.

It traces it's lineage back to a MDC Roundhouse car which Athearn/Horizon acquired the tooling for in 2004.

I have several of these cars from the original manufacturer that I bought in the 90's.
Excuse the messy workbench...it's always that way!

Terry/Todd - Thanks for the info on the bookmarks. You know, I can't tell that there is any difference between Firefox and Chrome. On my machine, they both look and act the same, although Chrome seems to be less of a memory-hog.
Troy - Thanks for the tribute to Chris Rhea. I have some of his music. He would have been a bigger name in the music business if he would have toured the US or Canada.

Pearl Jam singer/guitarist Eddie Vedder, is 61 today; a mere youngster.

Everyone have a great Tuesday.

 

[TLOC]

 

[TLOC]

Good morning. It's partly cloudy and 60.
I'm feeling under the weather this morning. It started yesterday with a scratchy throat, and has progressed to a sore throat, cough, sneezing, etc. I'm off tomorrow and Christmas, then supposed to work Friday, then off Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.
There was some pretty serious pushback about having to use our 5 PTO days for Christmas, New Year, Memorial Day July 4th, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. For anybody that can count, that's one more day than we have PTO for. They're renegotiating that, but for now, Christmas is a company paid day off. We'll see about the others.

Sounds to me they are trying to run off the remaining Crew working so they don’t need to pay severance or unemployment by laying off. Old big boss trick, make it so tough to work that you leave

Best to you

 

[ctclibby]

Good Morning All. Mostly cloudy and a warmish 64°, still heading into the upper-70's and mid-80's for the next few days.
Today is Festivus, for all who do not celebrate any other holiday this time of year.

Nothing special about yesterday, just a ho-hum life right now. I did stack a little bit of firewood that I had already cut. No big logs yet, although I think that I am sufficiently healed to start resuming a bit more strenuous stuff. Made Turkey Pot pie last night with some of the leftover sliced Turkey from Saturday.
Today starts with the dishwasher; I think that we're almost done with gift wrapping. I'm not supposed to get in the way of that although I still do some.

Out in the train shed yesterday, I celebrated the "Ninth Day of Christmas" by unveiling another Athearn RTR freight car. This one is a flatcar lettered for Trailer Train.
View attachment 252314
View attachment 252315
View attachment 252316
It traces it's lineage back to a MDC Roundhouse car which Athearn/Horizon acquired the tooling for in 2004.
View attachment 252317
I have several of these cars from the original manufacturer that I bought in the 90's.
Excuse the messy workbench...it's always that way!

Terry/Todd - Thanks for the info on the bookmarks. You know, I can't tell that there is any difference between Firefox and Chrome. On my machine, they both look and act the same, although Chrome seems to be less of a memory-hog.
Troy - Thanks for the tribute to Chris Rhea. I have some of his music. He would have been a bigger name in the music business if he would have toured the US or Canada.

Pearl Jam singer/guitarist Eddie Vedder, is 61 today; a mere youngster.

Everyone have a great Tuesday.

Willie: There are subtle differences between Chrome and Firefox if you look close. Edge on the other hand is a different animal.
You are also correct on the memory usage. Might not matter to you or if you even care, the below is what 'task manager' reports. Both with one tab opened, FF has 7 more ( additional ) processes to get stuff to your screen and uses ~5.5 times the memory. The entry line for both tell us the cpu and memory used. On my system it does not matter that much as I have 48G of memory and dual 3.6G multi-threading CPU's. For reasons unknown, FF has been my goto for many years; guess that ima just used to it.

L8r

 

[michaeljoe]

She works at the local dinner. So I think I'll ask her out on a date.
I can tell she's not married,.....because she's not wearing a wedding band.
What do you think?

 

[Bruette]

I can tell she's not married,

Are you married?

 

[michaeljoe]

Are you married?

Yes, already asked her, but no worries she put her foot down.... all four of them, and said no.

 

[TLOC]

Good morning crew. It’s 34f degrees now heading to 45. Except for snow piles from plowing we may not have a white Christmas in So. Central Wisconsin. There’s not much snow left hanging around. The daily highs will be in the 40’s with great traveling weather till Sunday.

I need to decide on what gift I’m not supposed to buy for Terry this year and go get it! I fell for that once years ago that we weren’t exchanging gifts and was given one anyway.

Today I am buying a lottery ticket for Wednesday. The dream assuring me I was going to win was wrong! I asked Gemini Ai to pick 5 lines of numbers for me. Heck, why not nothing else is working! $1.7 billion is generational life changing and you gotta to have dreams and hopes.

I read about Jim Beam shutting down production. It seems that not only is the export business down because of government annoyance but the younger generation has found different spirits to drink. That to me says Jim Beam was not paying attention to its markets.

The slot track heading to Austin is standing in the daughter’s workshop. Screwed and glued it needs 36 to 48 hours to dry and more to cure. Today the grandson will help me draw the lanes. The test pieces will be routed at noon Wednesday, if dry enough we will route the slots, if not we will route them after dinner on Thursday. I have enough router bits if the glue hasn’t cured enough to keep switching them out and cleaning them but that’s a mess. The daughter and the son will be handling the 2 routers, me the grandson and his neighbor friend and her granddad will be the helpers. We have a plan if the glue cooperates or not.

Enjoy the day

 

[Marlin39]

A little bit of useless trivia concerning one of our distilleries.

Jack Daniels is also the majority owner of Glen Morangie, a fine highland single malet distillery across the pond. Prior to taking that ownership they were supplying GM with their used whiskey casks, for aging their single malt.

 

[troyphoto]

The slot track heading to Austin is standing in the daughter’s workshop. Screwed and glued it needs 36 to 48 hours to dry and more to cure. Today the grandson will help me draw the lanes. The test pieces will be routed at noon Wednesday, if dry enough we will route the slots, if not we will route them after dinner on Thursday. I have enough router bits if the glue hasn’t cured enough to keep switching them out and cleaning them but that’s a mess. The daughter and the son will be handling the 2 routers, me the grandson and his neighbor friend and her granddad will be the helpers. We have a plan if the glue cooperates or not.

Enjoy the day

I remember the days of plastic track with the power embedded. Are yours the same idea with wood? plastic? I never heard of do it yourself routing on the track.

 

[migalyto]

She works at the local dinner. So I think I'll ask her out on a date.
I can tell she's not married,.....because she's not wearing a wedding band.
What do you think?

Sometimes that's not always the case. She may take the ring off to curry bigger tips.

 

[migalyto]

Good morning all!

Another nice above average Northern Illinois day in store. Right now its a bright sunny 37F. The high is supposed to hit maybe 50F.
As Tom eluded to in his post, the snow has all but vanished around here except for a few piles and drifts. Not looking good for us
to have a white Christmas.

Another busy day of prep for Christmas eve which will be held here this year. Tonight we have her side immediate family get together.
That's not here, its at her sisters who also lives in town. Its been so hectic getting things ready I don't know whether I'm coming or
going at this point.

My replacement trucks from ScaleTrains are supposed to be delivered today. These are replacements for the previous 2 runs of Trinity
82' BNSF reefers that roll so poorly. Hopefully this will fix that. I have 8 affected cars. 5 from the first run and 3 from the second and I
held off getting any from the 3rd run to see if the problem was resolved. I wont be able to mess with them till after the first of the year.

Have a safe day everyone!

 

[ctclibby]

I remember the days of plastic track with the power embedded. Are yours the same idea with wood? plastic? I never heard of do it yourself routing on the track.

Troy back in the late '60s we would go to a slotcar track that was huge. I remember 6/8 lanes wide, multiple loops inside a 30 by 100 building. There was no such thing as ...um... snap track for that and was routed. Cost $0.50 an hour to play ifn I remember. Learned a bunch about 4 wheels attached to some frame and keeping all of the wheels on the ground ..er.. raceway. Some guys had some real scooters. Probably nothing like what TLOC is building though.

L8r

 

[chadbag]

Not looking good for us
to have a white Christmas.

It’s overrated anyway.

 

[RhB Michael]

Good morning folks. 60°F here at 1000, heading for 68°F. Their Magic 8-Ball has failed them once again. Christmas temp forecast has gone from75°F down to 67°F. That's quite a contrast. Not complaining about the temperature, just their competence.

Nothing planned for this lazy day. I might visit the backyard and pick up limbs and branches blown out of the trees from the last big wind we had.

Merry Christmas! Servus!

 

[migalyto]

It’s overrated anyway.

I totally agree!

I don't need it,, and would rather not have it due to all the people traveling.

 

[migalyto]

Their Magic 8-Ball has failed them once again. Christmas temp forecast has gone from75°F down to 67°F. That's quite a contrast. Not complaining about the temperature, just their competence.

I know right!

They have lowered our temps for Christmas day into the low 40s now from the forecasted upper 50s.

Its still above average, so I will take it!

 

[RhB Michael]

One of my little buddies that comes around for a walnut or two: