Archive 16 - 8/12/2016 to 6/24/2017
6/24/2017 - Jury Duty, Corinne's New Car! , Oak Leaf Trail, Misc Stuff:, Archiving
I wanted to keep this page a little more up-to-date since I don't have the full time job excuse anymore so here are a few updates on things that have been going on lately. I don't post every little thing on Facebook for various reasons but I'll post a sound byte there once in a while with a link back here for the more in depth stories.
Anyway, since I got back from my Wisconsin trip (the next article down) here's a few things that have been going on.
I postponed Jury Duty when I was working at DHL and told them I could not do it until after June. Well, they did not forget! They got me right away at the beginning of June. That was really a pain in the ass cause it was Downtown Chicago. I set my alarm for 5:30am to make the 7:00 train to get there by 8:30. The dog woke me up at 3:30 and I never got back to sleep so actually I was up since then. Fortunately, I did not get picked for a jury so it was just the one day.
The whole scene was interesting (even though it wasted a few days for me). The last time I commuted on the train was before cell phones were really popular. These days EVERYONE is staring at their smart phones (or in some cases their tablets or laptops). Most of the regular commuters used their smart phones for their train passes also. Then in the Jury bull pen it was also a smart phone orgy.
Like I say, the commute and jury thing was interesting but I just don't see how people can handle commuting downtown everyday. My old 25 minute commute does not seem so bad after that!
Another thing that was going on that started out as a hassle but then turned into something kind of cool is that Corinne's A/C in her car went out (the compressor). It was going to be an expensive repair and she also needed new tires and other maintenance on her high mileage car so Corinne Got a New Car!
The photo on the right is Corinne and her new 2017 Civic! (click on it to enlarge)
She was a "big girl" and bought it all on her own too. Well I had to go to the dealer to be on the title and sign some papers so she could stay on our insurance policy for a lower rate.
Just before my birthday, Dale and I road another section of the Oak Leaf Trail in Milwaukee for my BDRide®! We rode the northeast branch of this trail this time. We did not go all that far (21 miles) but it was a really nice ride. I just finished my Oak Leaf Trail Updates HERE. The top part of the page is the Southeast section that Dara and I rode last year and the bottom part is the Northeast part that we just rode.
Misc Stuff: Here's a couple of things that I considered posting on Facebook but then spared everyone.
I saw something on my usual bike trail last week that I have never seen before on any bike trail. There was this guy walkin on the trail and playing violin (< That's a photo link) at the same time. I tried to get a photo as I rode by but then he stopped so the photo is not great.
Then yesterday I had to pickup a Rx at Walgreens and I went through the Drive-Thru on my bike! The pharmacist said that I was the first person that he has seen doing that and he was smiling and joking about it so that was fun and I think I made his day a little less boring. :-)
And finally, I was noticing that this page was taking quite a while to load so I finally Archived a lot of the posts on this page to my Archival area. I used to do that more often but got way behind lately.
So I have now archived from 1/5/2012 to 11/21/2015 (in Archive #15). This should speed up the load times for this page quite a bit. I still left all of 2016 and 2017 for now...
6/9/2017 - Back from Wisconsin with Photos
As many of you already know, I did my 2nd annual Tunnel Ride and Wisconsin visit this week. The ride and the visit were great! It seemed like I was always really busy doing things and visiting with everyone (so much work for a retired person :-)).
I really did not get a lot of photos (cause I was not really "focused" on that) but I did get some. I took some pics with my phone on our Sparta Trail tunnel ride and later took some camera pictures of some of my visit.
So to get right to it, here are the Wisconsin Trip photos:
And if your interested, here is the map of our ride from my bike GPS on the Garmin site.
5/21/2017 - Getting ready for the Long Workend!
Yep, you read that right! It's not a typo. After this week we have a Long Weekend for Memorial Day, then I'm going to have a very short week (2 days) followed by a very Long Workend (hopefully). Yea, I got tired once, then I got tired again so I guess now I'm gonna be Retired!
Well, sometimes I call it semi-retired because I still plan to work on my website sales but I'm not really depending on that so you could use various descriptions for this next phase of my life but I am just over joyed to leave the full time working grind behind. 43 years was plenty for me!
When I was in my 40s I was hoping to retire at age 55. I thought that was a little aggressive and a long shot but I thought that would be great if I could do it. Then after that age came and went I hoped for age 59 (you can take out IRA money at age 59 1/2 with no penalties). Well that didn't work out either and there were times that I thought I might actually never retire. Well I am finally going to do it at age 63! OK, technically I will be 63 but since my birthday will be less than 2 weeks later, it's really like I'll be 64 (take your pick).
So will we be off to Europe, Africa, the Far East, and Australia? Sell our house and move to Florida? Naah, I think I'll mostly stay put and chill out with my new freedom. I'll be taking some road trips soon and hope to hit a lot of the National Parks again or for the first time for many of them (I gots my senior pass ya know). I would also like to go back to Hawaii at some point but I'll have to see how that fits in once I settle in a little.
I have a lot of things that I plan to do but I don't want to get that deeply into that at this point. As many of you know I was never the kind of person that took a few days off (like a staycation) and started complaining about getting bored because I was not at work having someone else tell me what to do. I still can not relate to that and I'm sure I never will. Or maybe I will get bored (lol) and start working again when I am 70 or something? :-)
OK, Well I also cheated a little and updated my Robiography page (one of the link buttons above) already to include my retirement... Not that I am anxious or anything... :-)
Later,
3/26/2017 - Our DNA Results are in!
For those of you who don't know this, Casey and Corinne got Dara and me DNA kits from Ancestry.com for Christmas this year. I thought (and still do think) that this was really cool! I did some Family Tree, genealogy work in the past (also included in my last post below) but I always wanted to verify the results and fill in a lot of the unknown information.
Well, we sent our spit in to Ancestry.com in early January and just now got the results (it took forever but they said that up front). The results verified some of what I knew but also had a lot of other things that were complete surprises.
Like Dara knows that some of her relatives are from Germany and France and her highest percentage on Ancestry.com shows as Scandinavian (see notes below). I know that I have ancestors from England and Scotland, and and fairly sure about Ireland and possibly Holland and Ancestry does show that but not in the proportions that I expected plus I also got Scandinavian which I did not expect.
So I ended up doing a bunch of research this weekend and ultimately found some reviews on the 5 major DNA website/companies online. Each place has their pros and cons but Ancestry.com is by far the largest (most members) and 23andMe is number 2 but their European DNA results are rated higher.
So, if you want to find lost relatives, Ancestry.com may be the better choice but if you have European heritage 23andMe might be the way to go. I am considering doing another test now at 23andMe. One of the sites that I thought was reliable also said the Ancestry.com had very good DNA results for Africa so each site is different in that way also.
OK, so for the moment you have all been waiting for (or just skipped down to) here are our DNA results!:
Here's Dara's DNA Results at Ancestry.com
Here's Rob's DNA Results at Ancestry.com
Click on the PLUS next to Trace Regions to see the additional results...
... and just in case they change things on that website here are the summaries of our DNA results as JPGs:
Here's Dara's DNA Results Summary as a JPG
Here's Rob's DNA Results Summary as a JPG
Here is a NOTE on the Ancestry.com European Results (from International Society of Genetic Genealogy Wiki) that I thought was very relevant in our case (especially related to the British and Scandinavian results):
AncestryDNA:
Overall rating: 3
The Genetic Ethnicity Summary consistently overestimates the Central European and Scandinavian ancestral components for people whose ancestors were from the British Isles.
The ancestral component from the British Isles is overestimated for people whose ancestors were from continental Europe. Overall, the European ancestry predictions tend to be inaccurate.
FYI, The ratings are from 1-10 with 10 being the highest. This site rates 23andMe at an Overall rating of 7.
OK, is that enough fer now... :-)
3/5/2017 - Ellie, DHL and Retirement, Ancestry, DNA and Family Trees
Wow, it's been a while since I've done an update here. I'm a bad boy! :-)
I see by my last update that it was in December. Well the end of December was hard for us since Dara's mom and my friend Ellie died 3 days before Christmas. Things have been difficult since then although time always helps. Her memorial service was quite a while later and was way bigger than I thought it was going to be. The memorial service was really nice and I am going to leave it at that for now.
There are a couple of other things that have been going on that I wanted to mention. First, my time at DHL is coming to an end at the end of May. I have been planning retirement (or more accurately semi-retirement since I'll still be working on my websites) for quite a while now (actually for about 30 years! OK, well more seriously for the last year or so).
I was expecting my contracts to end and have them kick me out the door. Well, that hasn't happened (yet) so I finally decided that age 64 is it for me. I tried to plan for an early retirement for many years now and I guess I am only going to be about a year or so before the "normal" retirement age. So I will be out of the office permanently by June 1, 2017!
OK so enough of that for now, what I had really planned to write about was our Ancestry DNA and family tree stuff.Many of you may already know that Casey and Corinne got Dara and I DNA kits from Ancestry.com for Christmas. I thought that this was really cool from the beginning. I did some family research quite a few years ago and got a lot of information from Irene Stearns on my dads side of the family (she did most of that work) and I documented a little of my moms side.
Then Casey and Corinne had an assignment in school related to family trees so I got a bunch of information on Dara's side of the family and put that together with mine for a pretty good family tree (direct blood lines only) from Casey and Corinne up.
I did the limited free enrollment in Ancestry.com (which is in addition to the DNA part of the site (I'll get to that more later) and I found a couple of additional relatives and made some corrections to my original tree but I could only get so far with that.
Anyway, I decided that it might be interesting and helpful to some of the people in the family to post my version of our family tree here. I also have a similar thing on Ancestry.com but then you have to have a login with them to see it. I tried to keep things in a common format so I just used Excel rather than some special software. So there are a few things that could be a little neater but I think this version is fine.
In Excel, you have the options to save the spreadsheets as web pages (HTMLs) or PDFs. Both cam out well but since there is a lot of information you either need to zoom in and out (with the PDF version) or use the scroll bars on the HTML version. So for now, I am just going to post the PDF version and here it is:
This version ONLY includes parents and their kids (direct blood lines). I did not include the entire families with all the brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and Uncles, etc. Maybe after I semi-retire I'll have a little time for that (actually I have a pretty big list of things to do already but I'll add it to the list!)
I was hoping to post some different versions of the family trees but for now I am just doing this one. I may also make this a link button at the top or bottom of the pages eventually.
OK, I am really getting anxious to get our DNA ancestry results back (they say 6 to 8 weeks and it has been a little over 6 weeks now). When I get our DNA results I'm sure I will post them here but until then I wanted to mention one more thing...
I did a little research (not much really) and found that siblings do not necessarily have the exact same Ancestry DNA. At first, I thought that my ancestry DNA would be the same for my brother and Dara's would be the same for her brother and sister. It turns out that that is not correct.
I have already rambled on quite enough for now so I am not going to try to explain this here in my own words. What I will do though is post a link to one of the many web pages that describe this. I think this page was very clear and easy to understand with their graphic examples.
So here is the page on Siblings with Same Parents and Different Ancestry DNA.
OK and here is just a FUNNY video. I don't usually post this kind of stuff but I thought this was really funny. Check out: John Wayne and Cyclists!
Well I guess I made up for all that time that I didn't post anything.
12/11/2016 - When You Can't See - SLOW DOWN appropriately or pull over and STOP!
Well it has happened again (and will continue to happen) and this really bothers me. Once again the news had multiple stories about multiple-car pileups on the expressways again. I don't think this happened nearly as often or nearly as badly when I was young. I think that there is now a real false sense of security with expressway driving these days.
I can't stay silent about this because it is really hurting and killing people and is not necessary.Also the news reporters and even highway officials do not seem to be getting the message out.
I think part of it has to do with cruise control. This is not the only problem, of course, but I think we all get used to just kicking on the cruise and just deal with steering (and passing and stuff). Then when visability gets a little bad (if it happens gradually) we might kick the cruise down a little (at least some of us do). But sometimes the visibility drops to near zero very quickly and people are slow to react or never even get to the appropriate speed.
I have seen this happen on the expressway at least a few times myself. Visability is only a few feet, I slow down (gradually) so I can stop if something appears in from of me and I see cars and trucks whizzing by at maybe 50 MPH (or more) when viability is only a few feet!!!! Often they make it through and just think this is normal but it is really just LUCK in some cases that the highway was clear.
I do understand that most of are also afraid of getting rear-ended if we slow down too much. This can be an major issue too but we all need to use common sense and good judgment and ~ this is the hard part for me ~ Trust that the people behind us will also have some common sense and slow down too. If I have a choice I would rather pull off the road or off the expressway if at all possible,
So in summary... Please SLOW DOWN appropriately (50,40,30,20,10... Whatever is necessary) or pull over and STOP when you can't see on the expressway.
OK well, like Forest Gumps says "and that's all I have to say about that".
12/03/2016 - Thanksgiving 2016 Photos and Video at Last!
OK, well it's only been a week and 2 days since Thanksgiving. I have been a lot later for things :-).
We had a great time at Thanksgiving at my brother's house in Sparta Wisco with our small gathering of 27 I believe. Special thanks to Jasson, Val and everyone else that helped with the food and to make this so nice (which was really everyone!)
I didn't really take a huge number of photos since I was actually trying to spend more time on the other side of the camera just enjoying family, friends and the feast. So anyway, here are the photos that I did manage to get which were just various people, kids and groups of people. So without further yakin, here are the:
2016 Thanksgiving Photos from Sparta Wisconsin!
11/13/2016 - Fall Break - Favorite Movies
I thought about calling this post "My Fall Vacation" but it was really a workcation, stacation, breakcation or something like that. Anyway. I did get a lot of work done, mostly on my websites but I just took a break one day and put together a Favorite Movies List.
Originally, Dara asked what my favorite movie was. Well, I can never answer that because there are so many and there are favorites in different categories. I made an attempt at naming my favorites but kept forgetting which ones I just said! (what a surprise!) So, as I usually do when this happens I wrote it down (in a TXT file of course). I broke my favorite movies list down into Levels 1-3 (non-comedies) and comedies since they are often just way different.
This was kind of a difficult task and I am sure that the list will change and need to be tweaked over time. I started by just thinking of my favorites (like in my brain...). After I had my first draft I went on line and looked at Top ## movie lists to jog my memory about some that I may have forgotten or missed.
So after I had my TXT file list I decided to post it here so I could reference it anytime or anywhere and anyone else that had a goofy interest in seeing it could check it out too just for fun.
OK, so anyway here is :
10/29/2016 - 1,000K Ride, The Deeper-Than-Facebook Story! 
Yep, as most of you know from my Facebook post, I made my 2016 Bike Riding Season goal, of 1,000 miles last weekend. I got 25 Likes and 12 Comments on my Facebook post which, for me, is like totally trending! :-)
Dara and I rode the Paul Douglas Trail for my 1,000 mile ride and the place that I hit 1,000 miles exactly was a nice little wooded section which even had a deer there to help me celebrate!
The deere was right next to the trail and not far away. This one did not seem too afraid of us (like most are in these woods). Maybe people were feeding it or something.
I took a short video of the deer and posted it on my YouTube channel which is shown below. A little while later her boyfriend (with a pretty good rack) stopped by and they took off together.
Yea, those deer girls always go for the Big Bucks!
I always take some photos when I hit my goal and this one ~ on the left ~ was my original idea. Yep, I stole this idea from Corinnes Bahamas photo (a little further down). Well this pose just did not work as well for me as it did for Corinne.
So I ended up just doing the usual selfie of myself (redundant I guess) with my GPS bike computer, with the mileage displayed.
It was nice that it was a beautiful fall day and I stopped in a cool location so I got some tree color in the background too.
One more thing that I wanted to mention is that Dara was with me on this ride also, like she has been on most of my rides this year. So Dara probably was pretty close to 1,000 bike miles this year also although she does not have an odometer on her bike and isn't as obsessive as I am about the miles and goals.
I would guess that Dara might have about 900+ Miles for this year. (of course she is 6 years younger than me so that should be easier for her :-))
Still... Congrats Dara on your riding miles this year too!
You can click on these photos for the larger versions of course... and below is my 1,000 mile Deer video..
10/2/2016 - Bahama Vacataramma!
Yep, Corinne and Lexus just had a nice vacation in the Bahamas! Corinne texted me some photos and I thought they were great. She says that she has a lot of good ones so she might post them on FB also (like I just did with the one).
They are probably on their way back as I am writing this so they will miss the hurricane that is supposed to hit there next week (Whew!)
So here are a few of the Bahama photos that Corinne just texted to us ~ and you can blow these up to the larger sizes (unlike on FB). I really loved the first one, that I posted on FB with:
That's my daughter, ♪ Near the Water ♪ ~ Some of the things she knows I taughter ♪
In the middle is Lexus and Corinne...
9/1/2016 - Just Made it!
It was close but I just made my Intermediate bike miles goal ~ 800 miles by September ~ just after sunset on 8/31! No Time to Spare!!!
The rest of the season should be pretty easy now... It's a little harder with less daylight now though.
8/29/2016 - Love My New Phone Holder!
I was just enjoying my new phone holder in my car and had to post a couple of photos of it. It is so convenient and easy to use in its new location.
It took me a look time to decide where to put it and I think I found the right place. It's magnetic so easy to attach and detach.
Here's a photo with the phone on it and the phone off of it.
Click on the pics to enlarge, of course...
Thanks Corinne! 
8/12/2016 - New iPhone 6S (selfie) 
Yep, I finally got my iPhone 6S upgrade yesterday! It's kinda hard to get a photo of your phone with your phone but you can do it with a mirror. So here's the photo of my new phone. The mirror and reflections make it more interesting anyway, otherwise it just looks like a small black box.
I actually needed the upgrade since my old iPhone 4S ~ from December 2012 ~ was in pretty bad shape (but still working). The biggest problem was that the battery did not hold a charge for very long anymore. It would last all day if you didn't use it a lot but one problem was if you used the camera it would die after a few photos (so that sucked). It also had an almost broken power button.
So anyway, a new battery (with replacement costs) was about $80 and the new iPhone 6S was $150 (over 24 months with a 24 month Verizon contract extension). So it was time.
So here's what I really like the most ~ so far anyway:
The Fingerprint Recognition to unlock the phone. This is a lot cooler than I thought it would be!!! I like to keep my phone locked when I am not using it but it was kind of a pain to key in the 4 digit code everytime that I used it. Now I just touch the power button and I get in (but only me (or someone with my thumb :-().
The 64GB of storage space! My old phone had 12GB and I used over 8GB for my music (and could not load all the music that I wanted to have). Plus you have to be careful not to run out for photos and messages and everything else. Now, I should be good for a long time I think. 64GB in a box in your pocket... That is just crazy!!!
The Better Camera. I believe that the cameras in the newer phones are much better and the photos that I've seen from people with newer phones are usually better than my old phone photos. I haven't really taken many yet but I think that will be nice.
The Larger Screen - I could have gotten the model with the even larger screen but I like a little balance between keeping it compact and having the better display. This one is nicer than my old one but does not look as good as the bigger ones. But then I didn't want to carry around a small TV screen with me everywhere.
A Battery that Holds a Charge! - And of course, a battery that will hold a charge longer is always nice. They say the newer batteries are better now too. I'll see after I use it a little longer.
The switch was pretty easy too. They restored most of my stuff from iCloud at the Verizon store and I noticed that even the texts that I sent before going into the store were back. I got $100 for my old phone so I turned that one in and it covered the costs of my new case, screen protector and extra car charger (since they changed the charger cords). I made sure that I saw them re-initialize my old phone when they took it.
Unfortunately, the iCloud restore did not restore my 8GB of music so when I got home I decided to sacrifice the last weeks worth of info that I had on my phone (just call history and texts really) so I didn't have to manually select and update my music and I restored the phone from last weekends backup. (iPhone restores are All or Nothing. You can't select specific stuff. But it works well and is easy).
So anyway, the new phone is not quite as exciting as Your First Time (getting your first smartphone, of course, which is almost as exciting as your other first time (if you know what I mean)) but it is nice :-)