HERE I am on my first day of retirement up before the sun has risen. I have spoken to older folk than myself many who said they were bored to death with retirement. My parting words to the youngsters yesterday (most half my age) were that you have to be excited about the day, have goals both big and small and spread the happiness to those around you. I have always been one to spring out of bed every morning, though my springing is a bit slower than it used to be, I still have plans and dreams. Happiness is contagious especially mixed with kindness.
The weather isn’t my only hobby, I have an electronics lab and a woodshop to keep me busy. I have built solar lighting systems and stereo amps from scratch – my next project is to build a stereo tube amp. The amps I build are high powered systems to make audiophiles proud to listen to music as it was meant to be heard. High powered tube amps were once a thing of the past. I had a 1000 watt Heathkit tube amp in the 70s and 80s with just a turntable before 8 track tapes, CDs and cassettes – the clarity and power were amazing.
Today’s MP3s are sorely lacking as the file sizes are so condensed they are robbed of the full clarity of the song. Digital circuitry hasn’t been able to produce the same sounds as the old tube amps of yesterday. If you want a tube amp built it will set you back hundreds even thousands of dollars – I saw one the other day for over 60 grand! The speakers to go with that amp were 40 grand. To rich for me – so as with other things I want to have and can’t afford I build my own. Most of the parts I already have including the tubes which I purchased from an estate sale for next to nothing. The estate belonged to an electronics engineer – I got a lot of his stuff for a few dollars because no one wanted them or didn’t know what to do with them.
So I will keep busy in retirement creating things with my hands, which is something I wish our younger folk would learn to do in this throw away society.
We received an 1.09 inches of rain yesterday in Otsego. Still waiting for all the rest of the reports to come in. Most of the area picked up a quarter to and inch and a quarter. We have some fog around with the air being saturated with moisture. An active pattern will continue across the Great Lakes. Today, mostly dry conditions are expected but an afternoon shower or thunderstorm is possible. More widespread activity is possible overnight with locally heavy rainfall. After a brief lull in activity on Wednesday, showers and thunderstorms are possible every afternoon starting Thursday and lasting through the weekend. The largest rainfall totals should be south of Grand Rapids. Seasonable temperatures will prevail.
Hillarious…Rain Proof
My bro-in-law is an engineer. He made a sweet-sounding bluetooth speaker. He gave it to me for Christmas for use in my garage. It sounds great.
Bring on Football and cold temps .. INDY is ready . INDY!!
Yesterday was the first day of the second half of Summer. 45 days down, 45 more to go!
The average H/L today at Grand Rapids is 82/62 by the end of August it is 79/58 by September 21 it it down to 71/51. While many people use the calendar seasons for the start end of the seasons I much rather use the meteorological seasons with fall starting on September 1
Slom
I used to think that way back when I was in school because it seemed like Summer ended when we went back, but I don’t view it that way anymore. Many years September yields the best weather of the year. Of course then there’s years like last year when it was the hottest stretch of the year during the final week of September.
The total amount of rain yesterday here at my house was 0.38″ not a whole lot but today I see some of the grass and the weeds for sure are showing some life. I have not had to cut the grass for over a month now but might have to give it a trim later this week.
Slim
In looking ahead the weather sure looks great for the next 6 to 8 days with highs in the lower 80’s and lows in the low to mid 60’s that is what I call great summer time weather. Pure Michigan at its best,
Slim
My dad was an electrician at Defoe Shipbuilding in Bay City.
The work had many up and downs so he also had several “side” jobs and one of them was repairing radios and then TVs the radios were done at our house but the TV’s he had to go the peoples homes to fix them. One of my first jobs (very little pay) was as a tube tester. There were several stores around town that had tube testing machines in their stores and my job was to take the suspected bad tubes and have them tested. Of course after a while many times you could guess the bad tube just by the symptoms in that case my dad had a supply of the common tubes that would go bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defoe_Shipbuilding_Company
Slim
More of a wet pattern setting in will keep the temps down some I can remember last week wood 8 saying 90’s for this week how things change In the weather Dept….not really seeing any hot weather on the horizon just nice comfortable summer what’s left of it..INDY!
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/610temp.new.gif
What planet are you on . Lol