So I received my first shipment of my new drumset. I’m going to finish the shells myself. These are the raw drums, and a couple teasers of how it will look when I’m done… (note to all you drummers that the Pearl pedal/hat stand are a temp solution from craigslist)
Gallery here.
Last weekend, Heather and I joined the Pipeline group from our church (18-30 ministry) and headed down to Virginia beach. Overall we had a great time, but the traffic down there and back was a nightmare. I put about 530 miles on my truck the whole weekend, and was on the road for approximately 15hrs total. Not fun!
We hung out, grilled, swam, played games on the beach, etc. The most interesting story that came out of the weekend happened around 5:30am sat morning. I woke up to a strange sound outside my tent, so I grabbed my flashlight and looked around. About 10-15ft from the tent is a red fox chewing on my right shoe! He was obviously used to raiding campsites, as I had to get out of the tent, make a decent amount of noise, and run at him to scare him off. He still stayed in the area, but I put my shoes in a tree and went back to sleep. Thankfully, he was doing most of his chewing on the rubber sole and toe of my shoe, so there’s hardly any damage.
Lots of fun, but I’ll think twice about driving down south during waking hours again…
Pics here.
Last weekend, Lisa Wischkaemper, Heather and I went downtown to attempt a little night photography of a few of the monuments. We weren’t very efficient with our time and spent all our time at the WWII memorial, which is very well done. When we arrived, we met this little fellow (almost 90 years old) that was handing out information on how to register veterans for the memorial and spoke with him for awhile. We heard a few stories of his time in the war, saw a picture of the ship he was deployed on, and discovered he was an inventor. Being the curious guy I am, I asked what he had invented and he replied: “Ever heard of the DC Brushless Motor?” I don’t know the complete history behind the development of the Brushless DC motor, but I did find the patent he was referring to, which was granted in 1965. He also said he had two patents in the works; One was a method to safely dispose of radioactive waste, the other was a method to efficiently desalinate salt water. He told me with a smile that it wouldn’t be long before we were irrigating deserts.
This is Mr. Wesley O. Niccolls, WWII vet, inventor, US Patent 3210631:
Rest of Gallery here.
This is the Fabled SR-71 Blackbird, a plane that set an absolute speed record of 2,242 mph. (Mach 3.2+) This particular plane was the last operational SR-71 and sits in the new National Air & Space Museum that is close to my house. It was retired in 1990 and was flown from Palmdale California to Sterling Virginia (basically DC) in 68 minutes and 17 seconds, with an average speed of 2,124 mph.
