My youngest boy is standing now, which gives him the opportunity to get out of the stroller and look in certain places. This is one. He stood forever looking at the prairie dogs, until they finally started staring back! The Dakota Zoo has a lot more in store for him, and as soon as he starts walking, his zoo experience will get even more exciting.
Proverbs 31 is my favorite because it describes my wife, pictured above with little Sparky. The latter portion describes the virtuous woman, whose price “is far above rubies.” Here are some of my favorite verses:
11 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.
12 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
…
27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
29 Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
30 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised.
I have a sweet, beautiful, hard working wife…a woman of integrity and character. She’s such an amazing mommy for our two little guys, and makes our house a home. She brought the little fellas to the shop to visit me today, so I got to run around with them for a few minutes before tucking them back into the truck.
I like to tell her on the 31st of the month, “I read about you today.” After posting this, I’ll read ahead a chapter, since tomorrow brings chapter one. She stepped out for a bit so I got the dishes done, house tidied up, and little boys tucked snugly into bed. This isn’t the only day I try to show my appreciation, but it is somewhat special I suppose. Next month, when most people are celebrating Halloween, I’ll be celebrating my wife again!
We were a little bummed that the fall colors hadn’t fully arrived, and many of the trees whose leaves had turned were already barren. We did our best to have fun and hunted around for whatever we could find. One weird thing about this Byway is that it’s quite lovely…but I didn’t really find a whole lot of interesting photo opportunities! We found a few, but they were far between.
I ended up with some weird sort of infection Friday night that started in my lower sinuses and the roof of my mouth. By mid-day Saturday I was in such pain that I couldn’t swallow, even though my throat was fine. It was bizarre. We cut the trip short and I headed off to the clinic. I was prescribed some antibiotics and other nasty drugs and crawled back home for a couple day’s bed rest. Yuck.
I was videotaping at a mining operation (not local) and one of the guys mentioned that they had placed a huge equipment order. When the time came for delivery, the manufacturer called to say that the equipment was ready to ship, but that there were no tires. No tires? Yes, the industrialization of other parts of the world had put a strain on the supply of tires for heavy equipment.
To my recollection, they had to cancel the order; you can’t have millions of dollars of big equipment show up and not be able to put it into service; at that point it’s costing money, not making money. I talked to another fella at a different mining operation who said that they have to try to stretch the tires on their big haulers a little further, and try to buy in advance, because they’re hard to come by. If they can’t operate their equipment, they can’t produce their product.
I don’t know if that’s the case with this loader. I don’t think they ship them without tires normally, but perhaps that’s the case. I used to have a desk facing the dock where Caterpillar equipment would come off the train cars, and I don’t recall seeing any without tires; of course, this is a truck, and it has to fit under the overpasses.
Whether this loader being hauled without tires is an illustration or not, I’m told the problem exists. I found out more anecdotal evidence when I replaced the tires on my truck. The model of truck I drive came stock with oversized tires, so that’s the kind of replacements I have to buy. Tires that cost $400 a few years ago cost $700 now. Ouch!
Race tires for the motorcycle were around $350-400 when I last raced, ($300 EACH if you order from the catalog) and they’re good for a couple of days if ridden hard. When it comes to the cost of tires and fuel, that’s the only reason I am glad haven’t gone racing lately!
Case in point: we just got our first fancy new high-definition video camera last week. I opened up the operations manual from Sony and…yep! Typo! I guess it’s a good thing that my spelling and grammatical “spider sense” still works.
I experimented with giving this photo the faded look of an old print by desaturating it and giving it a slightly different gamma curve. I love playing in Photoshop and haven’t really had much to do with it lately. Time to step it up, I think…those skills can get rusty when not used!
I’ve referred to these guys previously as JPL, but they took on the Tucker’d Out moniker when they started playing some serious gigs. The band is comprised of brothers John and Lynn, and bass player Jeff (“Petey” ). Thus the “JPL” origins. Petey, Lynn, and I have worked together since…well, almost 20 years, technically…since the start of my NBC days. They’re part of the KVLY crew, and we’ve worked together on freelance jobs all over from ESPN to FOX Sports Net. I got to meet John for the first time this weekend as well.
Thanks to the guys for playing two of my all-time favorite songs, and calling me out by my TV nickname (which I am not giving away, sorry!):
“The Dutchman” is a song I can’t listen to with a dry eye. It’s a sweet song about an old man whose grip on reality is fading due to dementia, and his loving wife Margaret who is ever by his side. It’s just a plain lovely song. Lyrics are copyrighted material, so I’ll post a link to the writer’s page here.
I’m no Bob Dylan fan, but the song Lay Down Your Weary Tune is another truly beautiful song that pops into my head whenever I behold a broad landscape and the beauty of God’s creation. Please click on the link above and read the lyrics; you’ll see what I’m talking about.
As with many of the songs I hear them play, I’ve never heard the original versions of these two favorites. I don’t want to. With a simple guitar, acoustic bass, and mandolin, these guys give such a warm treatment to every song they play that I don’t ever want to hear these songs by anyone else. It’s simply not necessary. Songs like “If I Had a Boat” (one of my other favorites) seem to be written for these guys, anyway.
One side note: their albums are recorded, mixed, and mastered by KVLY farm news anchor and meteorologist Mick Kjar. They sound as well as any studio recording I’ve ever heard. What is it about those farm news guys? Al Gustin is another one who’s multi-talented, with woodworking and other skills to go with his award-winning journalism. I guess it takes a certain type of fella to fill those morning ag news shoes!
For any of you who find themselves in the Fargo-Moorhead area, look ahead on that page to see if Tucker’d Out is playing while you’re there. Check out the songs on their MySpace page, and score a copy of their CD if you’re able. Say hi from me, and ignore any stories they might tell about me!
What’s that, you say? MORE evidence? Yeah, funny…I took pictures to prove it! Check out the nice, smooth arc of the new Memorial Bridge in the photo above. Pretty sweet, eh?
Don’t let me build your bridge, folks. It might look a little saggy in between columns if I did…unless I learned my lesson in this case and remember why those beams need to look “wavy” at the start.
If you never got to play with a Van_de_Graff_generator in science class as a kid, just go down the slide somewhere! Make sure it’s one of the newer plastic ones, though.
Little PJ never seems daunted by the static charge he gets from going down the slide. Since I often catch him at the bottom, I appreciate those old metal slides from my youth! I might have to take a can of Static Guard with him next time we hit the playground.
First the leaves along River Road start to yellow, and now this! I’ll cling tenaciously to the summer/fall blend as long as I can, but when I sense it’s gone, I’ll charge full bore toward Christmas! And I won’t have far to drive to get my Dilly Bars!
KBMY is owned by WDAY TV in Fargo. When they went on the air in Bismarck and Minot in the 80’s, there was even a news staff in Bismarck. Sadly, the news department was short lived. While there are benefits to not having to babysit a bunch of journalism majors (that’s an inside joke aimed at a couple of friends who’ll find it funny – NOT at the KBMY news staff), I’d have to say that it’s far better for a TV station to have local news. I don’t know what those days were like for “the Beemer” because I joined just after the news staff was let go.
KBMY was located atop the Kirkwood Office Tower when I worked there. What a cool building! If you’ve never been in there, give it a try. The circular hallways are fun, especially on a minibike. Whoops…forget I said that.
Having the head honchos and bean counters of WDAY residing 200 miles away did make for a relaxed atmosphere for a control room monkey at the Beemer, but it was frustrating trying to get any upgrades (or even working equipment sometimes). Much of the control room gear was older than me, and some of it looked pretty familiar the last time I saw it in 2007.
I left KBMY to live at a ski resort in 1989 and 1990, getting paid to snowboard three days a week and, well, snowboarding on my four days off too. At that point I was already sending job applications to my future home at KFYR-TV.
A few years ago, KBMY moved in with a new roommate: KNDX, the local FOX affiliate. They were both operated out of the same building, with separate control rooms. It’s not an uncommon arrangement in television these days; KVLY runs KXJB the same way in Fargo. But the scuttlebutt among us “rehabilitated television” type fellas is that the arrangement with FOX recently changed as well. Actually, it went the way of KBMY’s news department.
I was reminded by this KXMB article that KBMY is now run out of Fargo by WDAY. It’s interesting how the arrangement developed: Prairie Public Television (KBME) was first with a digital transmitter as well as a digital microwave transmission line to deliver programming between Bismarck and Fargo. Why wouldn’t they? Our tax dollars pay for it. Just ask Conrad, Pomeroy, and Dorgan, who just brought Prairie Public another three hundred grand in pork.
KXMB combined resources with Prairie Public for digital transmission. I suppose it works out pretty well with them being across the street for each other; KXMB just has to get their DTV signal to Prairie Public, who can then send it out to the transmitter site to be broadcast. Digital transmission IS cool, you can broadcast multiple channels and multiple streams!
Anyway, that arrangement sets KXMB up to be the perfect folks to manage the Beemer. WDAY can hop onto Prairie Public’s microwave link to Bismarck, it can be handed over to KXMB by KBME, then sent by analog link out to KBMY’s old liquid-cooled UHF transmitter. All WDAY’s bean counters need is someone to sell local ads and maintain the few remaining electronic items. And that’s my theory on how it goes. At the next Friday A&B Pizza lunch where we TV guys gather, I’ll have to ask if I’m correct in my technical assumptions.
It’s too bad that KBMY never really got off the ground. I will admit that the Bismarck-Mandan of the 1980s was probably too small for three competing news departments, and TV viewers are creatures of habit anyway. But I will always cherish my fond memories of my time at the Beemer. It was my gateway into television, which led me to the career in multimedia that I enjoy now. Two of my lifelong best friends are guys I met at KBMY. They actually followed me over to KFYR before we all split off into the non-broadcast world. The Beemer, however, lives on…it just electronically commutes 200 miles to work each day.
(this post was edited to point out that my “journalism majors” comment was a specific inside joke.)