Julie beat me at optics! Nicely done lady❣️

This was in our competitive shooting league.

In my defense, the one time I managed to run it correctly, I placed second in ALL the handguns.  That was with my IRONS.  I would have even come in 4th in the rifle (PCC) class using my handgun irons.  Maybe I should stick to that for everything! 🤪

I remember the days when…

…household Internet jumped up to 1Mbps up and down.  Now you get 3-5x that on your watch!

Some west coast wheeling

Some day I'd like to make it out to the Sierra Nevada mountain range to try this kind of off-roading.  Looks like great vistas and my level of crazy, yet not too crazy.

Really? A satellite connection to my watch!

The creators of both Star Trek and Dick Tracy would be impressed! 🤪

Itty Bitty has such a cute little face!

Baby knife and a baby block

All ready for fishing

Johnny and I are planning a day of fishing at Cowan lake.  I found my tackle box, and my poles, got it organized, and working, and packed up for the day. Looking forward to it, reliving some old memories with my dad, and making new ones with my son❣️

People ask me how I get good pics from my mobile devices…

It starts with understanding how to optimize the information from the sensor.  I did some test at all the different options for zoom and resolution on my phone and came up with this little table. In the end I figured out you get the most info/detail, etc. If you use the 0.5, 1.0, and 4.0 settings (true with both the 24 and 48MP resolutions.  Good to know.  Also painfully nerdy and maybe even makes my head hurt 🤪 Apple does of good job of using the lighting conditions to pick the best shot under the conditions, but this might help you maximize your chances.

Guess who this guy lost to?

Andy won❣️ 

You can see Andy hoisting the crates with "the stick" in this pic.  19 or 20 becomes self limiting because they have to start tossing the crates up at that point.  Imagine trying to catch them while balancing on top of a swaying tower and having but the crate handles to stand in…

I kind of like the new AirPlay capabilities.

iOs26 lets you fit more apps on the screen and even has some cool clock, weather, etc. widgets. 

The eyes have it!

Andy and Sophie messing around with phones and cameras 🤪

All the wrinkles everywhere.

I say homely, Julie says cute hahaha.

Some of Andy’s handiwork!

Twenty five feet of copper and joints in a two foot square space!

These $4 comb pockets make great knife pouches!

I even had to cut one down and reinforce the stitching for one of my mini-balisongs.

This makes a good product photo?

To me a watch should have hands!

Another pretty day on a walk with the pups!

Julie and I both really love the fall weather.  I especially like the late weeks of September and early October.  Leaves on the ground, color starting in the trees, but still lots of green too.  And festivals! :)

A guy can dream, right…?!

Cause everybody needs to spend $3000 on a crossbow to get a deer…! Totally cool DESIGN, but that's crazy. I think I may have $350 total in mine. Nutty technology with those limbs though🤪

Julie challenged me to a workout competition…

One day in and I think I'm in trouble…!

Chloe’s got such a good basset hound howl.

 

Julie’s granddaddy in his chair

He had his corner of the room where he sat to enjoy some TV, reading, or chatting.  Here, Shorty's learning that she's supposed to stay there with him.  He had her trained to "get on your rug" on command and her rug eventually say beside or behind his chair.  We inherited her as a really nice, well-trained dog.  I guess it was a good example, we've trained our dogs the same way ever since.  

We miss those that have gone before us❣️ Thankfully, we get to see them again in heaven after the coming of our Lord!  

Julie’s Grandaddy and their puppy Shorty.

This was probably about 1985.  So cute, and also great memories.  We still miss Shorty.  It takes our two current dogs, one basset and one beagle to approach filling the gap left by our one, favorite basset beagle

Sophie and I were talking about photo edits

Andy took this pic of her at Lakeside. With a little expertise, she pulled the details of her jacket and hair out of the shadows from this backlit seen.  Nicely done.  It's a cool sunset pic with a nice human element to it❣️

I see thy they call it fall!

Friday I didn't notice any leaves. Monday it looked like this!

Come by our little town to see it

Just sitting pretty in the parking lot 🤪

Just another pretty face

I think we might have some rain coming…? Also, the watch has started giving you hints.  When I got my phone near, it popped up that suggestion in the lower center.  It's trying to let me know I could open the camera app on the watch and take a remote shot with my phone.

The good ole days

It was fun to find this stuff curled up at the bottom of the bag for Julie's dad's shotgun.  The warranty card dates back to around 1970.  It's fun to see the branding and stuff from back then, even the Shooting Sports Foundation which is still alive and strong.  The round tag matches the bag that came with the gun, that red plaid pattern.

Even better, this was the first gun Julie ever shot.  We'd been dating a few months and her dad and I took this gun down to her grandparents over thanksgiving.  I loaded a shell, she shouldered it and pulled the trigger.  After taking half a step back, she turned to me and said, "You got any more of those?!" 🤪 I knew she was the girl for me❣️

Julie’s all coordinated!

Speaking of color matching and complimenting.  Her hair, shirt, phone, case, and popsocket all go together perfectly.  She's such a girl! 🤪

My funky, new, hinged, magnetic Popsocket almost matches my phone.

I liked the contrast of the blue in the phone and the red in the dish.

Playing around with non-macro mode

This is the end of the handle on one of my balisong knives.  I like the texture and shape this photo shows off well.  While I like the convenience of macro mode on the iPhones, they are a relatively low res pic normally.  I took this with one of the higher optical zoom lenses.  I was further away, 14" or so, but I got great detail in the handle and even the rug behind it.  More depth of field too.  

This will be interesting…

Julie gets in a decent walking and strength workout most days.  I might be in trouble…?!

A new pin to add to my collection

One of my team gave me this for helping out with the vans while we were all at HQ.  

A cute little EDC balisong

With a cool glad design too.  I always come back to Jimmy's stuff.  Solid design, fun to flip, useful too.

Playing around with night pics and zoom

I was standing on the opposite side of the living room and got this pic of Julie's jumper spider.  The colors and lighting were cool.  

Dual capture on my iPhone…

This is an interesting new feature.  I can capture a video with both the front facing and rear facing cameras at the same time.  It will be fun to find uses for that.

Cats love laundry day…

I'm surprised Pepper didn't cause the stack to fall over?

Like having a 200mm lens in your pocket.

Check out how much detail you can see in the fire extinguisher label.  Like the date code on the lower left of the right pic.  That one was taken with the 8x "optical quality" option on my phone.  Nice!  

The pic on the left is with the wide angle to give you a feel for how far the 8x zooms.  I can go to 40x, but the quality drops off too much after about 20x.

“Come on dad, save me?!”

It was time to wash the dogs this past week. They tolerate it pretty well as long as you can lift Chloe's fifty pounds in to the tub!

Tent kitty!

Pepper's a pretty, and spoiled, kitty hahaha!

Pond pump maintenance time…

The pond pump stopped working.  I wasn't getting power to the outlet so I opened it up. I found an any colony and it seems like they decided the outlet box was the place to stash their babies!  Of course the ants weren't happy about it and crawled all over me to let me know.  I came back a few hours later and they'd moved them all somewhere else! Crazy.  Good news is that I got the pump running again after replacing the switch, outlet and fan.  Bad news is there's probably a ground fault somewhere along the line and I'm probably due to rebuild the compressor again soon, but it's running again for now.

Savannah’s mascot fits well with our family

 BuzzBee is the mascot for the bank where she does the graphic design, web, and marketing work.  Cute

“Keep rolling until there’s a symptom”!

My mechanic just summed up Jeep life pretty well, haha!

Why do I like these kind of watches so much…? 🤪

Julie and I saw Hamilton this past week

I grabbed this cool reflection pic while strolling during intermission :)

Julie was rooting for the plant in this case…

This will be interesting…

Matt started a new channel.

Proving I was “in” Chicago for lunch this past Monday 🤪

That was the view of the city from an office I was visiting.

It’s good to track sleep and health with my devices

It's pretty cool how far they've come since the early days of just step tracking.  I can currently get a pretty good picture of many vitals and what affects them positively or negatively.  I recently correlated sleep quality to how close to bedtime I was snacking.  So reduced the amount and moved it a little earlier and am waking up more refreshed. :)

Julie and I relaxed after Jeep Jam

We enjoyed watching the Grand Finale of Downton Abbey.  

Waynesville is…

You might wonder what 45º looks and feels like?

Top picture, I am watching the guy in front of me go through this extreme rut.  Bottom view, I am parked in it for a bit.  Noticed the angle of the tree beyond the top right of my display.  It's sticking out at quite the angle…!🤪

Reason number 17 to volunteer at Jeep Jam!

Free food!  I had a splurge of roasted corn.  I looked forward to it all year after having one last year!