Audio (MP3): 20210111 - Steam Locomotive Musical

Video (MP4): 20210111 - Steam Locomotive Musical

Here we have a 1930s steam locomotive with drums, an upright bass, a couple of pianos, and a string section. The original video was over 18 minutes long so I chopped and rearranged to fit the music I put together. I guess this is the kinda thing I do in a pandemic.

I had originally planned for the music to go with some winter driving footage but that didn’t pan out. When I came across New York Central Railroad clip I knew that was it. I’ve always had a love for trains, might have something to do with my dad being an engineer when I was growing up.

The original black and white train footage came from The Mighty Hudson Steam Locomotive.

🚂 🎹 🎻

#HeavyMachina #diariespodcast #diariesvideo

Machine Pix (@MachinePix) on Twitter

Amazing feats of engineering. Tweeted by @kane and https://root.vc

A few personal faves:

• Driving over salt water ice with a @canadasherp ATV, via Ostacruiser.
• Losing control of a concrete buffer.
• It’s Friday! Hitting a block of jello with a tennis racquet.

#HeavyMachina

#photos #sunsets #HeavyMachina

Audio (MP3): 20180612 - It forever influences the present

I was talking with one of my friends several months ago and I brought up something that sounded an alarm in her. What I’d just touched on triggered an unhappiness almost like ripping someone’s blanket off on a chilly night when they’re sound asleep.

I don’t know who first used the blanket analogy but I love it so much that it works its way into the things I write.

But anyways, you fuck people up and you won’t be able to take that shit back.

It’s unfortunate that I can’t be my best self with certain people because of the torrid history between us. Even though I can forgive people, there can be so much damage in the past that it forever influences the present. And then also, the future will be permanently stained.

Okay, maybe that’s not entirely true, that relationships can “never recover” but both people really have to want it. They have to fill the present with astounding moments and create a backlog that more than rivals the historical damage of the past.

What I’ve seen, more often than not, is that people can never get there. At least not both of them.

And sometimes it seems like you just run out of time.

#relationships #photos #HeavyMachina #diariespodcast

Meanwhile, out behind my dad’s house in Ottumwa the bulldozers are clearing the way for the new Pickwick Early Childhood Center.

Well, they’re much farther along than just “clearing the way” but I liked the sound of that.

#photos #HeavyMachina

New sub Navy’s ‘most lethal warship’ USS John Warner

Remember those old war movies with a captain looking through a periscope and calling out coordinates for a torpedo attack? Well, this ain’t that sub.

For one, it doesn’t even have a periscope. Instead, the John Warner will go about its business using a photonic mast, a piece of electronic wizardry that includes high-definition and infrared video to enable the Warner, the 12th in the Virginia class of attack submarines, to see and to not been seen like nothing else under the seas.

The video information is displayed on large screens in the command center. A joystick, much like the kind you might use to play video games, controls the whole show.

In front of that is where two sailors drive the sub, like a pilot and co-pilot seated before a curved wall of video screens. Driving a sub used to take a crew of four, Caldwell said, but technology has cut that number in half.

More complicated than the Space Shuttle.

#HeavyMachina

The RU 800 S shows you how it’s done.

#HeavyMachina #trains

Source: keamoose on facebook.

My dad was a Burlington Northern engineer for most of my childhood so with me being a kid and him doing that, we always had a little bond with trains. Trains in particular were one of the few things we talked about. I had more hats with the white and green BN than I can count and for many years I thought it was the number three with teeth.

Many a time I rode Amtrak while he was at the helm…

Anyways, he stayed pretty much around the mid-west but would sometimes talk about the locomotives out in Colorado, needing to plow through the winter snow.

When I was out in Oregon, before the Microsoft gig, Union Pacific advertised for a mass public hiring so I went to the gathering. There were maybe 50 people there and after they jerked us around for a couple of hours, they told us that they would only be hiring applicants with heavy machinery experience. Of course I just left.

Before I went though, I told my dad about it and he was pretty excited, probably for himself as much for me, and probably even more than when I told him about getting hired by Microsoft about six months later.

I didn’t need a job with the railroad anyway — long hours away from home and that whole industry wants to move to unmanned trains whether they say so or not.

Funny/not funny related news: the first month I was at Microsoft, this happened: Switching yard accident sends 17 cars rumbling through Portland.

#confessional #trains #videos #HeavyMachina

Video appears to show CTA train crashing into platform

A video that appears to capture the moment a CTA Blue Line train jumped the platform and landed on an escalator at O’Hare International Airport has become an overnight YouTube sensation.

The video — which seems to be from a security camera — shows two men talking atop the escalator as the train pulls into the station. Both flee when they see the train catapult up the escalator.

The Chicago Transit Authority would not confirm the video’s authenticity. The National Transportation Safety Board did not respond to requests for comment, but plans to hold a news conference later today.

Interesting choice of the words “appear” and “seems to” when describing what is obviously happening.

I was crossing my fingers, hoping Keanu would jump out Matrix cartwheel style.

#videos #HeavyMachina

List of sunken nuclear submarines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eight nuclear submarines have sunk as a consequence of either accident or extensive damage: two from the United States Navy, four from the Soviet Navy, and two from the Russian Navy. Only three were lost with all hands: two from the United States Navy and one from the Russian Navy. All sank as a result of accident with the exception of K-27, which was scuttled in the Kara Sea when repair was deemed impossible and decommissioning too expensive. All of the Soviet/Russian submarines belonged to the Northern Fleet. Although the Soviet submarine K-129 (Golf II) carried nuclear ballistic missiles when it sank, it was a diesel-electric submarine and is not in the list below.

Something to help you sleep.

#HeavyMachina