A Garage Sale in Barbados

As of June 1 Oklahoma has officially reopened, and for the second weekend in a row Susan and I have ventured out on Saturday morning to visit garage sales. The weekend before last, the state was still opening up. Being close to strangers (even outside) still felt a little awkward and strange; that weekend, we only found two open garage sales. This past weekend, you would have been hard pressed to find any signs of the recent pandemic. For starters, we found four neighborhood-wide garage sales nearby. We must have stopped at ten garage sales and drive by twenty more,… (read more)

RobOHara

Tiptoeing Back into the Real World

Last weekend, Susan and I went out for breakfast. I don’t mean we picked up breakfast from a drive-thru and ate together in our car at a local park. I mean, we went inside an honest-to-goodness restaurant, sat down at a table, ate breakfast, and lived to tell the tale. With our regular haunt still closed, we visited one of our backups (Sunnyside Diner) and decided to give it a try. Oklahoma is deep in Phase 2 of its reopening plan, with Phase 3 (reopening of schools and most everything else) set to occur this weekend on June 1. Restaurants… (read more)

RobOHara

Congratulations to Mason, Yukon 2020 Graduate!

On Tuesday, our family (along with a couple of Mason’s friends) gathered around a television to watch the Yukon class of 2020 graduation ceremony. The online ceremony (streamed on Facebook) was the last of a series of events designed to celebrate this year’s graduating seniors, in a world where celebrations as we knew them have been put on hold. Celebrations began on Saturday with a parade of seniors. About half of this year’s graduating class took to their cars and did a lap around Yukon. Parents and friends lined the streets to wave, cheer, and support this year’s high school… (read more)

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A Different May the Fourth

They say April showers bring May flowers, and May the Fourth (followed by Revenge of the Fifth) brings Star Wars week. I love May the 4th, aka Star Wars Day. I love seeing Star Wars fans new and old celebrating my favorite films of all time. Some long time fans of the franchise look down on people who celebrate May the 4th, preferring to wait until May 25th (the day the film was released in theaters) to celebrate. Some refer to people who dress up on May the 4th as fair weather fans. Star Wars fans are a funny lot… (read more)

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PosterPi (Raspberry Pi-based Digital Poster/Picture Display)

PosterPi is a solution I created for turning a flat screen television into a virtual poster display. The script was written in Bash for Linux and designed to run on a Raspberry Pi. Although I designed PosterPi to display pictures of movie posters, it could easily be modified to display digital pictures, digital signage, or just about anything else. Once PosterPi is set up, it should automatically boot up, launch the script, read a list of posters (digital pictures) from a predetermined location, and begin displaying them in random order. My intention was for the entire process to begin without… (read more)

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Ray, a Drop of Golden Sun

I had such a good weekend. On Saturday, we celebrated my dad’s birthday by grilling steaks out on the back porch. That evening, Susan, the kids, and I met some friends to watch a local car cruise. On Sunday, my buddy Jeff came over and we hung out for a few hours in my new workshop and on the back porch. Each one of these activities brought a much needed break from the weeks of social distancing and “shelter in place” we’ve been practicing. It felt good to see friends again, to go outside and socialize a bit. But with… (read more)

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Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs…

Each evening after work I work on the workshop a little bit. Last night’s project involved hanging some of the metal signs I’ve collected over the years. While many people adorn their buildings with signs from old gas stations and businesses, most of mine are old road signs. Some of them were purchased legally. Some of them came from abandoned buildings. Most of them were originally, uh, city property. The only sign I was ever questioned about was my “bridge out” sign (I didn’t acquire it until the bridge had been repaired). At least one sign was the result of… (read more)

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Our New (Temporary) Normal

Every Saturday for the past several years, Susan and I have gone out for breakfast. Our first choice is always the Runway Cafe, a small diner located right off the runway at Wiley Post airport. We’ve gone to the Runway Cafe so many times that the waitresses stopped bringing us menus because they know what we order. When we walk through the door, someone races mugs of hot coffee to our regular table before we can sit. Every now and then we’ll change things up by visiting one of a few other local diners we enjoy, but we always seem… (read more)

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The Joys of Arcade Ownership

So the lobby leading to my movie room is done, and by “done” I mean it’s an empty 10×20 room with carpet, waiting for me to fill it. The outside door is slightly off center, leaving about 7′ of space to the left and 10′ to the right. To the left, I plan to put a couple of arcade machines, a small snack bar, and a monitor that streams cartoons, music videos, and movie trailers. The vibe I’m going for is “80’s skating rink,” more or less. On Sunday, Susan and I picked up one of my two remaining arcade… (read more)

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CoronaEaster

I don’t usually associate sports with Easter, although the void left by their absence over the past several weeks has been impossible to ignore. Sunday, ESPN aired a HORSE tournament where NBA players, each in his own city, played HORSE on his own court. This was only slightly less embarrassing than the streaming video game tournaments ESPN has been airing, in which professional athletes play video games against one another. ESPN, along with other channels, have resorted to showing games from the past. Over the weekend I saw game seven from the 2016 NBA finals, followed by football bowl game… (read more)

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