Running Bear's January 2026 Coffee Shop

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Good morning all!

A brisk Northern Illinois morning. Currently 12F but with the wind it feels like -7F. High is expected to reach 24F.

Not much else going on at the moment. Usual stuff around the house this morning.

Basketball game tonight is at home so no travel involved.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
chadbag said:
Yeah you won’t see graffiti on Japanese trains.

That is an E7 (or W7) Shinkansen. Designed for the Hokiriku Shinkansen that will end up going from Tokyo to Osaka through a roundabout way along the Hokiriku area of Kaplan along the north coast and the Sea of Japan (big loop). It’s partially built now. I have both an E7 and a W7 train by KATO. We road an E7 when they first went into service. We didn’t go far. It’s quite built out now so you can go far.

One special thing about the E7/W7 is that it’s made to be multi frequency in its electricity. It runs on 25kV at both 50hz and 60hz. The electrical system of Japan is split between 50hz (roughly Tokyo north) and 60hz (roughly south of Tokyo). For historical reasons. So the major bullet train Shinkansen lines that run from the south to Tokyo run at 25kV 60hz and those that run work Tokyo north run at 25kV 50hz. There are two separate sets if Shinkansen platforms at Gonyobstation because of this and if you’re traveling from say Osaka to Sendai and passing through Tokyo you have to get off in Tokyo and get on a new train to Sendai. Totally different models of trains run south and north. South you get N700A and N700S and 500 and 700 and similar and north you get E3 and E5 and E8.

The E7/W7 however can run on both as it runs north of Tokyo on 50hz but as it loops around eventually it reaches the trackage of JR West which is 60hz so they made it dual frequency compatible to be able to span systems.

The E7 are the version bought by JR East and the W7 are the version bought by JR West. Same basic train but both companies will run the service so each bought some.

The Shinkansen leaving Tokyo and going south are run by JR Central, another company but. Out one involved in the Hokiriku service. The JR Central ones go into JR West territory at Osaka where they take in a JR West crew but the trains themselves run all the way to the end of the main island. JR West also runs N700 series of their own starting at Osaka and going south.

Your train useless fact lesson of the day.
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useful to me. I was online late looking for info. I appreciate the info. thank you.
 
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chadbag said:
It looks like they are in Gran Class? JR East runs three classes of service. Gran, Green, and Ordinary. Every other JR company runs two classes. Green and Ordinary.

JR East’s Gran is like international Business class on an airplane, while Green is like domestic first class and ordinary is economy. Only JR East has Gran so the most popular Shinkansen lines on the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen going from Tokyo and south don’t have it.
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He texted that they were both dealing with some travel flu and wanted to know they had access to a restroom. So they upgraded their ticket. Says there were a stops the train made but were told after a few stops the train would pick up speed. They were going a cozy 160mph when he texted.
 
Good morning Crew from the cheese state! It is +1f degree feels like -9 and only heading to +10 this afternoon. The howling winds have slowed down from yesterday’s regular breeze at 25mph but occasional 40mph gusts. Winds now are running 10 to 15mph. So, it’s still not nice outside.

More time at the bench yesterday and some time will be spent there today.

At 6 we are heading to the Kohl Center on campus as the #2 University of Wisconsin’s Men’s Hockey plays #4 Michigan State at 8pm. We go see a Men’s game every couple of years, this is one of those times. The #1 Women’s team is in St. Paul Friday and Saturday and we were going. However with the ICE disruptions we cancelled the trip.

Enjoy the day
 
TLOC said:
Good morning Crew from the cheese state! It is +1f degree feels like -9 and only heading to +10 this afternoon. The howling winds have slowed down from yesterday’s regular breeze at 25mph but occasional 40mph gusts. Winds now are running 10 to 15mph. So, it’s still not nice outside.

More time at the bench yesterday and some time will be spent there today.

At 6 we are heading to the Kohl Center on campus as the #2 University of Wisconsin’s Men’s Hockey plays #4 Michigan State at 8pm. We go see a Men’s game every couple of years, this is one of those times. The #1 Women’s team is in St. Paul Friday and Saturday and we were going. However with the ICE disruptions we cancelled the trip.

Enjoy the day
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At least it will be warmer in the hockey arena!
 
Wow! The weather guessers got it right this morning.
It is 28 degrees and as the sun rises, the wind is starting to pick up. Predicted gusts to 25 mph through the day and only 38 for a high.

This kind of weather means I need to make another pot of garbage stew. I'll clean out the leftovers in the fridge and drag out the ham bone from the Christmas ham. I'll add a big can of diced tomatoes and a cup of brown rice to the slow cooker. The big question is whether to add italian seasoning or creole seasoning. Uhm, uhm, uhm good!
 
Morning all,

Currently 19° with a high of 52° later. Supposed to get colder and windier overnight. Wind advisories for the western part of the state through tomorrow.

Swal: I've been using Windows Defender on the 2 home machines since Windows 7. Never had a problem. I have used the freeware version of AVG in the past as well. In my opinion, both McAfee and Norton have become bloatware, meaning there's a lot of stuff loaded and running on your machine that you really don't need. Be sure to uninstall everything McAfee or it will still be using computer cycles. You may even notice the computer gets faster.

BBL
 
Good morning gang and members of the circus!

43° and we have reached our daytime high at about 2 a.m., by this time tomorrow 15° is predicated. Brrrrr
troyphoto said:
I wondered why I don't care about sports. This video sums it up quite well.

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Very interesting, but confusing for me. Baseball and Football I can watch but I feel no personal loss if I miss a game. If I do watch a game I really don't care who wins, as long as it is a good game. It doesn't affect me. Soccer, tennis, golf, and hockey are meh. My Kryptonite is Nascar. The wife understands and leaves me alone on a Saturday night or Sunday. At dinner time she will bring me a tray table with my dinner on it. Team Chevy all the way! I actually cried when Earnhardt was killed,, and when Kevin Harvick won his championship, cheered when Matt Kenseth put Joey Logano into the wall, and yelled go, go, go at the TV countless times. This leads to my confusion. On some sports, I don't care, but on one sport, I do. Does this mean I am psycho? (don't answer that!).

One of my favorite quotes,
Ernest Hemingway — "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games."

This might explain my mindset, since I really can watch most any kind of racing except drag racing. (too boring between races) I even enjoy lawn mower racing at the county fair! (Wife wants me to build her a race mower)

But I DO NOT race trains, no Louie Lionel here!

BBL
 
kbkchooch said:
Good morning gang and members of the circus!

43° and we have reached our daytime high at about 2 a.m., by this time tomorrow 15° is predicated. Brrrrr

Very interesting, but confusing for me. Baseball and Football I can watch but I feel no personal loss if I miss a game. If I do watch a game I really don't care who wins, as long as it is a good game. It doesn't affect me. Soccer, tennis, golf, and hockey are meh. My Kryptonite is Nascar. The wife understands and leaves me alone on a Saturday night or Sunday. At dinner time she will bring me a tray table with my dinner on it. Team Chevy all the way! I actually cried when Earnhardt was killed,, and when Kevin Harvick won his championship, cheered when Matt Kenseth put Joey Logano into the wall, and yelled go, go, go at the TV countless times. This leads to my confusion. On some sports, I don't care, but on one sport, I do. Does this mean I am psycho? (don't answer that!).

One of my favorite quotes,
Ernest Hemingway — "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games."

This might explain my mindset, since I really can watch most any kind of racing except drag racing. (too boring between races) I even enjoy lawn mower racing at the county fair! (Wife wants me to build her a race mower)

But I DO NOT race trains, no Louie Lionel here!

BBL
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Good Morning All!
36F @ 89% can see stars. To be 40F later, still below 30F at night. Middle of Jan? Wow.

@NYC_George - Easiest way to defend yourself ... get a Linux box and run stuff as a normal user; not root. Linux has a permission based security model which prevents access to critical files. I guess that some nefarious bot could trash your account; easy-peasy, delete the account and directory and create new. PCMatic even tried supporting Linux with their software a few years back - no need for it on Linux; so that is now gone. If I had kids in the house, PCMatic might come in handy as kids will click on anything - that is $50 year and covers 5 devices. In the Windoz case, just let defender handle the virus stuff. McAfee and others try to put a scare tactic in all of the ads: money trolls. Just look at any advertising these days - everybody puts stuff in to get you to 'click', TV now has QR codes to get more information. What a waste of time and money; like ima gonna get my phone and use one of those. I suspect that if you do grab the QR, they now have your # and you will get swamped with txt's/calls. I do hate it when there is actually something that I might be interested in - no address/city/state/email/website so that QR is the only way. Nope. Google is my friend.

L8r
 
Good Morning All. Clear and 30° here, headed up to 60° later today. Crazy forecast for the next few days, high tomorrow is also forecast to be 60°, Saturday just 47°, 63° for Sunday, 48° for Monday and then a return to the 50's & 60's for the rest of the week! The colder days will be cloudy with north winds and the warmer days will be sunny with south winds. Might rain toward the end of the month!

Today is set up to be a busy day. Ran the dishwasher last night so that awaits. I've got the list ready for the weekly grocery trek, don't think we will make but one additional stop at the pharmacy. We keep them in business. Other small chores as needed.

Out in the train shed yesterday, I mostly ran trains since it has been a few days. Cleaned up the last of the plastic structures in this month's clean up project section and refreshed some more ground cover. I'll start next on dusting off vehicles and moving many around to avoid the same repetitive scenes. Here are some more items from Tuesday's shopping trip to Discount Model Trains.
1768485198728.jpeg

1768485238730.jpeg

I also got some paints, KD #142 couplers and other supplies.

Tom O - Yep, the trade shows sometimes got a little crazy down here in the 80's. Our company did builder's shows and the hot tub and pool displays got a bit risque at times. Things tempered down by the mid-90's. I wasn't required to attend, but I went occasionally when the shows were in Dallas.
Patrick - Paying the property taxes in person doesn't really work for us, as it's a 50 mile round trip to their only office. The postage or credit card fee is a whole lot cheaper.
Michael - Like you, the county south of me pays much higher property taxes than I do. The county line is 1 mile south of me and a comparable place pays slightly over twice what I pay without any of the services either. My trash bill is greater than my property taxes, but like I posted, I charge two neighbors to use the dumpster as well.

Everyone have a great Thursday.
 
kbkchooch said:
Good morning gang and members of the circus!

43° and we have reached our daytime high at about 2 a.m., by this time tomorrow 15° is predicated. Brrrrr

Very interesting, but confusing for me. Baseball and Football I can watch but I feel no personal loss if I miss a game. If I do watch a game I really don't care who wins, as long as it is a good game. It doesn't affect me. Soccer, tennis, golf, and hockey are meh. My Kryptonite is Nascar. The wife understands and leaves me alone on a Saturday night or Sunday. At dinner time she will bring me a tray table with my dinner on it. Team Chevy all the way! I actually cried when Earnhardt was killed,, and when Kevin Harvick won his championship, cheered when Matt Kenseth put Joey Logano into the wall, and yelled go, go, go at the TV countless times. This leads to my confusion. On some sports, I don't care, but on one sport, I do. Does this mean I am psycho? (don't answer that!).

One of my favorite quotes,
Ernest Hemingway — "There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games."

This might explain my mindset, since I really can watch most any kind of racing except drag racing. (too boring between races) I even enjoy lawn mower racing at the county fair! (Wife wants me to build her a race mower)

But I DO NOT race trains, no Louie Lionel here!

BBL
Click to expand...
The video generalizes "sports" without a strong Sport X or Sport Y may appeal. Everyone has their favorites.

Like reading fiction. I LOVE to read and get lost in a story. I Love most genres of Fantasy. But don't a give a whit about Science Fiction. Most SciFi is either a lot of hard science, or just a fantasy set in space.

In fact, most stories are one of only a handful of story arcs. (Hero's Journey, Rags to Riches, The Journey, Rebirth) - It's the setting that's important, then the plot type. I don't care for Romance, but don't mind a romance subplot if it moves the character forward.

You're just picking the setting of the sport you prefer. Autos. It's still a competition. You have heros and villians. There's a tension to watching the teams, and the drivers within the teams compete.

Think of Pro Wrestling. The Heels vs the Faces. It is debatable about how "real" it is, but they do understand the story telling within their genre of sports.
 
well

its the days before WEF in Davos Switzerland. That means, a lot of special aircrafts entering our Airport (ZRH).At the beginning of the week there was a special aircraft from i guess Rammstein here. And today i saw it leaving:

americanos.jpeg


wish you all a great day.

And as you can see, the snow from the start of the week, is already gone. yes thats what winter looks now in switzerland (if your not high up in the mountains).

cheers
Marco
 


Morning folks, currently 37 and not a cloud in the sky. It was around freezing when I woke up.

Yesterday after work I took a trip to TSC to help an ex-neighbor haul some cattle panels for a fence she's having built. Pulling a trailer on the highway through rush-hour traffic is no fun, with road construction on top of that. As a thank you we went to a local joint for supper, Wednesdays are steak nights there but I had a chiliburger instead.
 
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