My Favorite Ding-Dong

This last weekend I was fortunate enough to hear NAU's Harter Memorial Handbell Choir at a beautiful church in Gold Canyon, AZ. Gold Canyon is the furthest east you can go on the 60 highway and still be in Phoenix.

The music was beautiful, and the handbells NAU has is amazing since they go to such a deep low bell. It was really something to watch since every person plays multiple bells and sometimes have to share the bells to make the music flow. The lowest notes can only be played by the strong guys in the choir.

It was fun to watch Krystle play, she had a very important role in one of the songs she played, and did real well at it.

Catalina Island

Ben, Patsy, Krystle and I all loaded into N6014R and took off to Catalina Island from Gillespie Airport in San Diego. We did a careful weight and balance during our preflight and found that we had 30 LBS to spare. 14R did pretty well, we took off and got 300-500 feet per minute climb rate.

14R is a 1964 C-172 with 140HP Continental Motor. She starts up easily and runs smooth. We took with us life preservers just in-case of a water landing and flew pretty direct to the island.

We took the shuttle down to Avalon, and ate burgers on the Avalon Bay. We walked the town, lost track of time and ended up running nearly a mile to catch the last shuttle back. Luckily it was running late as well. In all, it was a great trip!

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• Video of Ben Cartwright's Landing on the numbers (1.5 MB)
  

Insomnia. Gadgets. Pet-Peeve. Love Google.

Working the night shift has turned me into way too much of a night owl. 5 AM and I am not tired enough to fall asleep. But I don't like going to bed right after work, I've got to wind down and cool my jets before falling asleep.

My laptop charger died yesterday in a plume of smoke. The darn thing cost me $107 to replace! The only one I could get on short notice was a universal laptop charger that weighs almost double of the original charger and is a little smaller than a brick. The only advantage is it comes with the ability to be used with the car charger and the new airline charge ports. Nifty.

A note about my camera. I got a Canon SD200 Elph 3.2 MP Digital Camera that I'm pretty happy with. It about $230, and is ultra compact which means I carry it everywhere as you can tell with this blog. For the price, it's a real good value camera and has enough features to keep a gadget guy like me happy for a few months. I still want a nice digital SLR camera, but I think I'll have to wait a couple more years until the price becomes reasonable enough for me.

If you want one, here's the link for the best price - PriceGrabber

Pet-Peeve: I don't like beggars at fast food drive through windows.

I Love Google products! The new G-Mail is awesome, with 2000 mb of space and linking subject headers together as conversations. And under development, Google Maps, with a real clean interface and the ability to switch between regular map mode and satellite image mode. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet. Google is awesome because all this is free! They've got some real smart folks working for them.

Well... Good night world.

Montezuma's Castle

After Visiting Jerome we drove east to Montezuma's Castle and Well. The castle is an old indian ruin and housed the Sinagua indians over 600 years ago. There were 20 rooms built and access to the Castle was by wooden ladders. It overlooks beaver creek, and made for a wonderful afternoon.

Jerome, Arizona

Krystle and I enjoyed the company of our friend Andy Hendrickson this past weekend. He flew on out to Flagstaff in his Cessna 206 on a whim late Saturday Night, and spent the night with us.

We woke up early and started on a mini-adventure to Jerome, AZ an old Coppermining town which is now soley in business for tourism these days. We stopped off at the town museum, had lunch at haunted hamburger, and walked all around the town up and down the staircases and into the various shops including the red-light district gift shop...

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