General news about life, in general.
Just a few days away from being in Moscow. This is just a note, if you’re interested, I hope to post pictures every now and then while in Russia. The gallery will be located here: http://www.rsbauer.com/wpg2?g2_itemId=9494 Any pictues Continue reading Russia 2009
It has been so hectic, I almost forgot to mention this. Olessia threw a surprise birthday party for me! It was quite a surprise! She had about 30 people over, tons of food, gifts, and fun to be had. On top of it all, my friend John was in on it. He suckered me out of the house to fly with him. You ask me if I want to go flying and the answer almost always will be, “yes!” So I figured the flight itself would be a treat (it was! we had 3 60 degree banked turns, 3 stalls, … Continue reading Surprise birthday party
Olessia’s green card was successfully renewed! This one should be good for 10 years. She hasn’t received the card yet but has received a notice letter. I received my visa for our Russia trip. With this, we are just about set to go. I joined the Cleveland Photographic Society and have been busy snapping pictures. Check out the gallery at pathfinder.rsbauer.com/gallery2. Olessia got an A+ in her accounting class. She is starting her MBA at BW. I got kicked out of U. Akron for taking a calculus at Tri-C without Akron’s permission. Thanks Akron! I took the spring semester off … Continue reading Some Updates
It took a year to do it. But i did it. I passed calc 2. I scored an A in the class. No more calc classes for me! Now I need to transfer the credit to U. Akron and I am done with this flavor of math. I still have a stats class to deal with. Continue reading Whoo! I passed calculus 2!
Awesome. My cable company doubled the Internet bandwidth at the cable modem. They sent a mailer, which I have an instinctive response to throw the mailer out. This time I looked it over and they weren’t selling anything. I read it again and they provided instructions on how to reset the cable modem to get the faster bandwidth. I had to put in a tech support call since the bandwidth testing I did didn’t show any change. A big “doh!” on my part, the connection worked fine when plugged into the cable modem. For a moment, I thought my router … Continue reading Broadband Speed Increase
I’m going to tackle all of these, although not necessarily in order… Nothing too new with photography. I did attend the Cleveland Photographic Society club meeting and it was quite interesting. I plan to attend more meetings when I’m feeling better (I missed the last meeting due to sinuses). Olessia and I headed over to Lake View Cemetery to check out the James Garfield monument. The balcony has a nice view of Cleveland and we grabbed some shots. I wasn’t feeling too good so I didn’t shoot much. Calculus 2 is chugging along. So far, it appears I am minus … Continue reading Photography, Software, School
Whoa! Community Center The middle school is now a community center. I remember putting in my 3 years in that gym (as seen in the pic).
Bedford Police Uncover 300 Car Radios In Theft Ring Bust. For some reason I bet those F#!$@# had taken my radio! Warrensville is the next town north of Bedford.
I hope they have a TON of fun in jail. Arg!
John, Adam, Olessia and I watched
title=”Primer”>Primer last night. Its only showing in Cleveland is
at Cedar Lee Theatre. It was just us in the threatre and right as the
movie started, 2 additional people came in. So we ALMOST had the
threatre to ourselves. We caught the 9pm show which worked out great
for everyone. The added plus was we were able to watch the eclipse of
the moon before and after the movie.
This movie was AWESOME. If you haven’t seen it yet and you plan to see
it, you might wish to skip over this. The Primer web site doesn’t go
into a lot of details about what the “box” is and does. So I’m sitting
in the movie and for some time I’m trying to figure out what this “box”
does. It was fun. Then it becomes clear and the movie explores the
paradox that is time travel. Like, what do you do if you go back? What
happens if you take your cell phone back and it rings? What do you do
with your double that’s living in another time? Does the universe fork
when the machine is started or stopped? The science was awesome.
Olessia identified and verified the fungus and bacteria discussions in
the movie were very accurate (its what she does at work!).
This was definitely a “thinking” movie. You’re left thinking during the
movie and then after the moving you’re thinking “what if?” which is
always a lot of fun. And to know this movie was produced with a budget
of $7000 is really amazing too!
You don’t often hear of Civil Air Patrol (CAP) in the news. When you do, its
usually because something in the avaiation industry went lost (aka:
crashed). Here’s a story that’s a bit more up beat:
href=”http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/18/odd.television.reut/index.html”
title=”Flat-screen TV emits international distress signal”>Flat-screen
TV emits international distress signal
On a side note, I thought “civil air patrol” would be capitalized in the
article since it is an official auxiliary of the US Air Force (note here
US Air Force is capitalized). I mean, “civil air patrol” IS the
organization’s name and the last time I checked, organizational names
are capitalized. Although I’m not an English major…
A supper busy and supper fun weekend!
Friday night: not fun or exciting. I was busy trying to figure out
rates of change in various calculus word problems.
Saturday was crazy fun. I was way over due to update my clothes.
Olessia joined me this time and we turned it into an adventure. I
needed EVERYTHING. I needed everything because everything was literally
falling apart, torn, dirty, or didn’t fit right anymore. I think we
managed to get just about everything within the first half hour. It was
rather amazing and we were both quite pleased with the results. So we
went to one of Olessia’s favorite restaurants and enjoyed lunch. Note,
this was all done in Parma. After lunch, we sprinted to a little town
that is a few blocks away from Perry nuclear power plant. We stopped at
a farm and picked off the vine and bought some pumpkins. We then
sprinted back home and took care of some minor house chores before Poker
Night.
Poker Night was a blast. Lots of people came over and they brought all
sorts of goodies. We ordered pizza and mingled about. Then we got the
game started. We don’t play for money, just bragging rights and having
the most chips. We played 3 games (up till 2am!) and had various
winners. It was a great time.
Sunday was a recoup from Saturday day. I worked on more calculus. Then
removed the tags on all the new clothes from Saturday. Then we went
over to Olessia’s friend’s house to help her with zooming in and out of
her documents. Then went home and cooked dinner. This was sort of
cool: We ran out of milk and our Stove Top box said we needed milk. So
I walked (yup, walked!) down to the corner to Gabor’s and picked up a
gallon. It was cold out, but it wasn’t a big deal. I got back in no
time and we were back to cooking. Then we crashed in front of the TV.
And yes, the resting paid off. I’m feeling really rested right now.
Wacky!
SBC is usually good about being on time when you need them. Usually.
Because its SBC (formally Ameritech), its hard to get them to do
anything when you want them to. So I needed SBC to evaulate a phone
line that got wrapped around my tree (the trunk is in the process of
falling down). The operator said they’ll be out on Monday, August 16th,
from 3-7pm and I should be home for it. Its Friday, August 13th, at 2pm
and I get a call from the SBC tech saying they’re there and they have no
problem re-wiring the line away from the tree. Cool, I guess. I was
told I was to be home for this. Oh well. I asked the tech, “weren’t
you supposed to be out on Monday?” The response was, “no, the work
order right here says today.” This is the first time I’ve seen them
error in my advantage.
Went to the University of Akron and gave them a lot of money for class
and books (which reminds me I have to save the receipts!).
The Integra rolled over 110,000 miles on the way back from Akron. I
think its now broken in.
Saturday we went and got furniture and supplies from our grandmother’s
house. There’s some pics at the end of this gallery:
href=”/gallery/moving”>House Moving.
Went to a two year-old’s birthday party on Sunday. It was festive and
loud and the two year-old was worn out before the party got started.
But it looks like everyone had a good time.
I’ve been scanning in pictures from my Tanzania trip. I have 14 rolls
of film and 7 of them have been scanned in. I’m scanning them from the
negatives. Although Gallery hiccuped this morning and I get to
re-upload them all. It also appears the galleries all got shuffled
around. Ugh. You know what that means! Time to upgrade gallery.
The certificate rating is not official yet. It has to bounce around a
bit more in the White House Office of Management and Budget for
approval. But this certificate looks pretty cool. The recreational
pilot’s license was too close to a private pilot’s license without any
real benefits. The Sport Pilot license has a lowered amount of training
needed to get started and doesn’t require a medical exam. You just need
a valid driver’s license which gets applied as your medical certificate
(if I read it correctly). Of course, the aircraft and airspace you fly
in is regulated, but it also keeps things affordable.
Specs and details can be found here:
href=”http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/regulatory/regsport.html” title=”AOPA
Online – Regulatory Brief — FAA Proposes Sport Pilot/Light Sport
Aircraft Rule”>FAA Proposes Sport Pilot/Light Sport Aircraft Rule
We went to the Improv (in the Flats) on Friday and enjoyed some live
standup comedy. We were going to go dancing afterwards, but day had us
pretty worn out (uh oh – I think we’re old!).
Then we went to a photo studio on Saturday. Nice place and a they do
some great work. Then we went shopping and got some good cooking
ingrediants.
src=”/albums/grilling/P1010012.thumb.jpg” style=”padding-right: 10px”
border=”0″ align=”left” />Saturday night we went to West Side Story at the Lorain Palace Theatre.
They put on a good show. My mom was in it so we had fun hanging out at
the pit. Almost as soon as the show ended, the fireworks across the
street started. They opened the doors and instructed everyone to check
it out. Wow were we close! The firework remains were falling on our
heads!
src=”/albums/grilling/P1010013.thumb.jpg” style=”padding-right: 10px”
border=”0″ align=”left” />Sunday started as a lazy day. But I finally
got motivated to get some shopping done. I mowed the lawn. Then
sprayed for weeds. Then I fired up the grill. Mmm. Made
stuffed baked potatoes and chicken (BBQ and
grill rub flavor). We didn’t know if it would compliment the meal or
not, but we had a nice Russian wine (it tasted great!).
Tuesday of this week we tried out
title=”Fournos Cafe”>Fournos Cafe. Olessia had just finished up two
days of working full time and her second job on both Monday and
Tuesday. This was her first week back from vacation. And Tuesday her
paperwork for INS was all set.
I’ve been to Fournos for lunch and it was good. A little pricey, but
the food was good and filling and the service was great. Since Olessia
typically gets home from her long day around 9:30pm, I wasn’t sure we’d
be able to make it there before the kitchen closes at 10pm. But she
ended up getting home a lot earlier and we were able to enjoy a great
dinner.
Earlier last week I had researched local Russian restaurants. There
really isn’t too many in Cleveland except for one called The Globe. But
on Tuesday evening, I was reminded of The Globe and was told they had
great food. Olessia has had a taste for a really good soup for some
time and has always been disappointed when we go to a restaurant and
they only have one soup: the soup of the day. And its usually a very
unexciting soup.
So we stopped at The Globe for dinner not knowing what to expect (that’s
part of the fun!). She was immediately happy. She found borsch soup,
several Russian salads, and a lot of traditional Russian home style
dishes. I went with the Keiv with porojak (not sure of the spelling on
that). The porojak is awesome. It has a sturdy, yet flakey, pastry
which is about an eighth of an inch in thickness. And its folded over
like you would see for pastry. And inside is a meat filling. Mmm!
Olessia said they are very difficult to make. Olessia had the borsch
soup which also came with a porojak. She also had a dish called “From
Russia with Love” which was 4 Russian style pancakes each with a mound
of black caviar. The pancakes look like pita bread, but actually have a
smooth consistancy (almost similar to a regular pancake, but very thin
and dense and not as dry or fluffy). These are folded over about 4
times to make a triangle shape. And then a generous spoon full of
caviar was placed at the corner of the traingle. You then can spread
the caviar all over the pancake and eat (and they serve 4 of these on a
plate). It sounded like this is more of a breakfast meal, but it does
get served as dinner very often too. I had tried some. Both her soup
and caviar dish were awesome. I opted for dessert. It was hard to
pick. But ended up with this chocolate cake that vanilla waffer-like
layers to it between chocolate cake. Before beginning, Olessia told me
Russians use spoons to eat cake. The server brought out two forks, but
we opted for the spoons anyways. Oh the cake was good! Olessia said
she doesn’t like “cake” as we Americans know it as. But this cake was
definitely a traditional Russian cake and she loved it.
Fournos can be found in Independence on Rockside Road. Check their
website for directions. I haven’t been able to find a website for The
Globe. Its located in Akron on Portage Trails.
Try watching
href=”http://www.funnyville.com/fv/pictures/dengdeng.shtml”>this for
a minute without laughing…
Continue reading “This still makes me laugh”
“The global security agenda promoted by the U.S. administration is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle. Violating rights at home,
turning a blind eye to abuses abroad and using pre-emptive military force where and when it chooses has damaged justice and freedom, and made the world a more dangerous place.” – Amnesty head Irene Khan
(quoted from CNN.com)
My gut feeling was as a country, we’ve botched up. This report confirms
it. You can find the
href=”http://web.amnesty.org/report2004/index-eng”>2004 report at
Amnesty’s web site.
Its finally toasty outside. Now if it would just stop raining. Noticed the canal area flooded and closed the area down.
Continue reading “mobile e-mail”