Fun stuff – Imablog

November 1, 2018November 1, 2018

Two and a half days at Disney World

Got to spend two and a half days wandering around parts of Disney World over the weekend.

Drove down to the Orlando area Saturday, stopping at IKEA in Jacksonville on the way to check out cabinets that we’re planning on putting in the laundry room at some point. Of all the IKEAs we’ve been to, the one in Jacksonville is a bit of an oddball, since it’s only a single level.

Stopped at Skycraft Parts & Surplus in Orlando to browse. Really wish there was a store like that here in Charleston. I’d probably end up spending a lot of time there.

After checking in to the hotel and getting unpacked, we headed off to Disney Springs to pick up my Epcot ticket and trade in Connie’s old 4-day Park Hopper pass with one day left from back when they didn’t expire for a new ticket. Spent most of the evening wandering around Disney Springs and had a good time.

Tasty tip: Stop at Cooke’s of Dublin and get the Hog in a Box.

The next day (Sunday) we went to Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort. We had tickets for the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue later in the afternoon so they let us in to park early. We spent our time before the show resort hopping to check out and wander around some of the nearby resorts. Took a boat to the Wilderness Lodge, and then to the Contemporary Resort. From there we hopped on the monorail to the Polynesian Resort where we had lunch, and then the Grand Floridian Resort (very fancy place). Finally, we got back on the monorail to go to the Magic Kingdom where we walked around the entrance a bit (didn’t go in) and then caught the boat back to Fort Wilderness to meet up with friends.

The Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue show is an entertaining hour and a half or so of music, song, and dance accompanied by an all-you-can-eat dinner of fried chicken buckets, pails of ribs, bowls of baked beans, corn, and mashed potatoes, and topped off with strawberry shortcake.

Hoop-Dee-Doo Revue at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort
Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue
Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue menu
Bucket of fried chicken
Pail o’ ribs
Cowboy beans and corn

We all quite enjoyed the show and the food.

The next day, Monday, was Epcot Day! Epcot is our favourite Disney park.

Epcot Day started off bright and early with us arriving at the parking lot gate at 7:30 AM, right when the parking lot opens. The parking lot Cast Member asked us how we were doing, and Connie responded with an enthusiastic “We’re awesome! We’re at Epcot!” I guess Connie’s enthusiasm was contagious, because she waved us on by and we didn’t have to pay the $25 for parking.

After parking close enough that we could walk to the entrance, we waited for the security lines to open, then hopped on the monorail to the Transportation and Ticket Center and back. The ride offers a nice view of parts of Disney World and on the way back makes a loop through Epcot’s Future World.

About 10 or 15 minutes before the rope drops, the gathered crowd is entertained by the JAMMitors, a percussion trio playing on trash can lids and pails. Then, at 9AM the rope drops and the crowd rushes into the park.

Any way you do things, spending the day at Epcot is tiring. We took it easy, weren’t rushing anywhere, took breaks, enjoyed rides, and were still exhausted by the end of the day.

The Epcot International Food & Wine Festival was happening while we were there, so we got to sample a few dishes while we wandered around.

Roasted Irish Sausage with Colcannon Potatoes and Onion Gravy
Short Rib Tostada: Corn Tortilla topped with Short Ribs, Black Beans, Salsa Verde and Spring Onion
Coconut Rice Pudding served with Mango Coulis

Pro tip: If you’re buying stuff at Epcot, you can have them delivered to Package Pickup (located at The Gift Stop by the park entrance) and pick up your goods on the way out. That way you don’t need to lug things around while you’re exploring the park. The cut-off time for getting purchases sent to Package Pickup is 6PM but if you’re going to do it, have your last purchase sent to Package Pickup well before that. If you’re staying at one of the Disney resorts, you can have your purchases sent to your resort which makes things even easier.

Wrapping up the evening was the IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth show. Last month there was an announcement that the IllumiNations show was going to be retired in 2019 and replaced with something else. It was important enough to Connie that we see the show together that we cancelled the cruise we had planned for May 2019 to make the trip to Epcot instead. The show was a fantastic spectacle of music, fireworks, lasers, video, water, and fire. Really big fire. It’s a pretty awesome show and definitely worth waiting around for.

July 26, 2018July 26, 2018

Spruce Goose and other planes

About an hour away from Portland, in McMinnville, OR is the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum, home of Howard Hughes’ famous H-4 Flying Boat (aka the Spruce Goose) as well as many other planes, rockets, and aviation related artifacts.

The Spruce Goose (made mostly of birch) is enormous. It’s probably one of the largest planes you’ll ever see in person.

H-4 cockpit high above — Spruce Goose cockpit high above

Its 8 propeller engines are puny compared to the wings they’re mounted on, and the plane’s fuselage. It’s hard to imagine that even 8 engines would have provided enough power to move the H-4, but fly it did.

Four of the H-4's 8 engines — Four of the Spruce Goose’s 8 engines

There are plenty of other planes to see in the museum, both military and civilian.

Biplanes under the wing of the Spruce Goose

There’s a 21 seat DC-3A (originally belonging to United Air Lines) that you can walk through to get a look at what commercial passenger flight would have been like in the 40s and 50s.

When you need a break from wandering around, airplane seats scattered about the museum provide nice, reasonably comfortable places to sit (and with a good deal more leg room than in an airplane).

The Space Museum takes you through the history of rockets and space exploration, starting with a replica of Goddard’s first liquid fueled rocket, a V-2, a Titan II (used for the Mercury Redstone launches), the Apollo space program, and others. There’s also an IMAX theater (a full-sized one) that shows some pretty good movies.

There’s a lot to see at the museum, and you can easily spend an entire day and then some exploring all the exhibits both inside and outside. If that’s not enough for you, go hit the waterpark and slide out of a Boeing 747.

Worth a visit if you’re in the area. Plan on spending at least a half day. Take your time and spend the whole day if you can. Make sure to catch one of the IMAX movies.

July 26, 2018July 26, 2018

Visiting the VintageTEK Museum

During my vacation to Beaverton, OR, I got to visit the VintageTEK Museum with a local friend. The museum relocated recently to the Tektronix campus, which seems to a fitting place for it to be.

The VintageTEK museum is a pretty cool place with a fair bit of space to show off their collection of old Tek scopes, test equipment, tubes, CRTs and other equipment beginning with an original Tektronix 511 CRT oscilloscope.

Many of the scopes and gear on display are static, but quite a few of them are operational and interactive. In a side room you’ll also find a Tektronix electron microscope and a Digital PDP8.

CRT collection
Scopes
Scope probes
Equipment collection
Circuit computers
Spectrum analyzer

A new offering by the museum is an instrument lending program for students. If you’re working on a project and need some test equipment, you can borrow it from the museum. Available equipment includes scopes, DMMs, function generators, counters, and power supplies.

We also got to see the back area where they have a huge collection of equipment and parts, and where they work on restoring equipment.

Racks of equipment
Racks of equipment
Racks of equipment
CRTs
CRTs
Restoration workbench

Definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area. The museum volunteers are friendly and know a great deal about the equipment in the collection. Their regular hours are on 10AM-6PM Thursday and 10AM-4PM Saturday, but they’ll also open upon request.

June 13, 2018September 13, 2019

Southeast Linuxfest 2018 wrapped up

Another great Southeast Linuxfest has come and gone. Had a great time seeing friends and learned about a few more things I want to learn more about.

This year, being the 10th Southeast Linuxfest, I thought it would be cool to show off all of the pictures I’ve taken from previous Southeast Linuxfests. Jeremy let me have a table which I set up just outside the registration area and I set the laptop to run a slide show of 8 years worth of photos (I missed SELF 2015).

Jeremy’s dog, Fred (a Cane Corso puppy), was one of the more popular attendees at SELF this year. If he was roaming the conference, you could be sure that Jeremy wasn’t very far away.

New this year was a feedback box in each of the rooms (powered by RPis). At the end of each session, attendees could give their feedback by pressing one of the three buttons on their way out the door.

Also new this year were food trucks for lunch. No more hotel boxed lunches! Hopefully next year there will be more food trucks to help spread the lines out some.

The Hog 'n Dog food truck — The Hog ‘n Dog food truck

Attendance seemed to be about the same as previous years, although there didn’t seem to be quite as many vendor tables this year. Notably absent were the FALE people and their table of locks that people could learn to pick.

Back this year was the Fiber track, which proved to be pretty popular again.

Two of the more interesting talks I made it to were by Paul Jones on the Action-Domain-Responder pattern and Dave Stokes‘ talk on Common Table Expressions and Windowing Functions in MySQL. Enjoyed finding out about both of these, and look forward to learning more about them.

Another great time at SELF, and looking forward to next year’s event.

Check out my Google Photos album for all of my Southeast Linuxfest 2018 photos

April 7, 2018April 8, 2018

Visiting Space Center Houston

Last weekend we were in Houston and paid a visit to Space Center Houston, the visitors center for NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC).

Like Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Space Center Houston (SCH) is a pretty fun place to visit. It’s not quite as large as KSC, but it’s got some pretty sweet exhibits including Independence Plaza that features the Boeing 747 that ferried the space shuttles across the country.

Independence Plaza at Space Center Houston

I highly recommend the 90 minute tram tour that will take you into NASA JSC. If you go early and catch the first or second tour (SCH opens at 9 or 10 AM. See the calendar for hours), you’ll avoid the long line. The tram tour takes you into JSC where you’ll get to go into the Christopher C Craft Mission Control building, the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility, and Rocket Park.

ISS at the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility

Robotics area at the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility

At Rocket Park, you’ll see some of the rocket engines that powered the Saturn V, rockets used for the Mercury and early Apollo programs, and the king of rockets, the Saturn V.

The Saturn V at SCH is one of three remaining Saturn V rockets and was restored fairly recently.

From the SCH website:

There are only three Saturn V rockets on display in the world. The rocket at NASA Johnson Space Center is the only one comprised of all flight-certified hardware. The other two rockets are made of flight hardware, mock-ups and test components. The three segments, called stages, contain the powerful engines needed to lift off, entering orbit to reach the moon. In total, 13 Saturn V rockets launched into space.

Saturn V plaque — National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark: Saturn V Rocket

When you’re back from the tour, head over to Independence Plaza where you can wander through the NASA 905 SCA (Shuttle Carrier Aircraft) and the Shuttle Independence, a replica space shuttle. This is another one you probably want to get to early in the day so that it’s not too crowded. We went first thing in the morning on our second day visiting SCH, and had the shuttle and 747 pretty much all to ourselves.

Model airplane and shuttle used for testing

Make sure to stop in the food court where you can have lunch sitting next to the Galileo shuttlecraft (NCC-1701/7) used in the Star Trek episode Galileo Seven. This is the actual set prop that was used in the episode and fully restored. You can read about the Galileo’s history and the restoration at startrek.com.

Shuttlecraft Galileo at the Space Center Houston food court

Before leaving SCH (or before the doors open if you got there too early), make sure to walk the scale model of Solar System. It starts over on the left side of the parking lot near the SCH building and goes around the perimeter of the parking lot toward the main entrance.

Of course, the rest of the exhibits at SCH are pretty cool too. Lots of great shows, interactive displays and an impressive collection of space and space program artifacts. It’s a great place to spend a couple of days exploring while you’re in Houston.