My lifelong friend Jeff Weigant passed away. He was a people person and was much loved by everyone who knew him. Jeff had artistic talent. One of his later endeavors was woodturning.
This splendid sample, a gift to me, I proudly display. A narrative, in Jeff’s words, follows:
Back Story Box Elder, part of the Maple Family. Red indicates insect damage, which most likely killed the tree. This is common in this tree, to a point. If you buy it in a retail environment, it’s expensive, in the top 10%. This wood is the first Diseased Box Elder I have found in the 4 years I have been turning.
I always tell people, “Find me wood I can use, and I will make you a bowl for free.” At the Green Farmers Market, there was this gal who had a farm. She and her husband split; he took the farm. She took over the organic Soap Tent as the owners headed off to military duty in Texas. Later, I heard she bought a piece of land in Cobb County—two acres along a railroad track, reasonably flat, with a basic house in need of repair. She can make the house her office and soap factory, and if she cuts down some trees, she has enough ground to farm as well.
She called me near Christmas. She had closed on the house and had a bunch of Bradford Pear trees to take down. She said they were big—dang. I’m a bit tired of Pear, but it’s cool wood after you sand it for what seems like two or three decades. The tree removal guy had her call me to tell me about this Elder find—not just Pear, so much the better! I promised my neighbor a Mexican lunch at the most traditional Mexican place in town to take his truck to Marietta and load up wood. Being a foodie, he had no problem with the plan.
So we got there, and it’s not all what we thought. The Bradford Pear had been dying for a while, and I’ve never seen pear with character, so OK, good. There were a few rotted, well-past-their-use-by-date chunks of Elder. Where was the rest of the tree? Turns out, the Tree Dude also knew what this was, took the best for himself, and forgot to tell Soap Girl. I’m not complaining… much.
Soap Girl got a free, better-than-average bowl of Box Elder with knot holes and bark inclusions. I did right by her, took the wood given to me, and did good by it too. And all of it found a very good home.
There are many similar of Jeff’s creations to admire at this archive. All of his works have since been dispersed to far flung places but the archive collection provides insight into his skillful ability, understanding of trees and way with people.
Film cameras weren’t dead yet but in 1998 digital cameras were a thing.
Quick Access FD Drive 2X
Part of the smart design was integration with the Floppy Disc as storage media. Although limited in capacity (~30 pictures), they were mainstream an cheap common place. On the downside, the smallish image sensor state of the art at 1/4″ translated to a photo image resolution of 640 × 480 pixels. To try to adjust for that weakness the camera came with a 10x optical zoom lens, so points there for shot framing.
The meager 0.4-megapixel resolution was quickly outpaced by competitors (Nikon, Canon, Olympus) offering 1–2 megapixels by 1999. Floppy disks, while convenient, had limited capacity (1.44 MB), and slow write times were drawbacks.
The image was captured to system flash memory. The 3.5 inch disc would spin up for the write (save) or read (playback) After saving to the FD the memory would then be available for the next click of the shutter button. Wait time was ~4–5 seconds per photo (0.5–1s for capture/processing plus 3–4s for writing). You would need to press the shutter button for each photo, and the camera would lock out further captures until the floppy disk write was complete.
The digital camera gave instant gratification like a Polaroid vs 24 hr. film processing at the Fotomat. Images could be shared easily. Once you absorbed the cost of ownership, the picture taking was free!
640 X 480 – best used for thumbnail duty
Any photo collection from this this camera is grainy — primitive to the 4k standard. Click for full size glory. But this was a time before high speed bandwidth so… good enough.
The camera’s bulk (1.5 lbs) was balanced by ease of use but soon this model was passé. The quite novel Mavica is in my legacy ‘can not bear to throw it away‘ bin.
From my shoebox museum of relics, this gizmo was a demonstration of tech wonder. The Personal Digital Assistant in 2002 (5 years before the iPhone splash) was in its infancy and more novelty than necessity.
The Axim was predated (10 yrs.) by Apple’s early PDA attempt and failure; Newton Message Pad. The claim to fame for these early devices was hand written character recognition. Using a stylus pen on the 240 x 320 TFT screen display you could take notes. Built in was a microphone for memos. The Windows Mobile OS had an appointment calendar, To-Do list, address book, and calculator. Microsoft had a protocol called ActiveSync for file transfer and outlook email. The X5 did not have WiFi or Bluetooth. Connectivity was by serial cable — early days.
Advancing design iterations from Dell and Palm established a market but then in 2007 Apple brought it all together with the first smartphone. These traditional PDAs were finished off with the advent of iPad and touch screen tablets.
My Pocket PC is a paperweight now. The charging stand accessory is nowhere to be found. I did find and remove its SD Card (capacity 8MB). Surprisingly the old (20 yrs.) card had valid data on it but it was nothing; just some picture files from another relic from the shoebox museum — a Canon PowerShot SD 30 Digital ELPH 5.0 MEGA PIXELS.
Found in the obsoleted box, a Panasonic SL–SW860 Portable CD Player SHOCK WAVE METAL S-XBS with 40 Seconds ANTI-SHOCK MEMORY 4.0 ! Nomenclature contrasts with Apple’s minimalist and elegant iPod that would debut a year after this short lived unit.
The clamshell lid was unlocked to reveal a CD rip of Lila Downs – Una Sangre (2004). You could supposedly exercise to the tunes.
The device was designed to be clutched in hand with steadying wrist strap –awkwardly. The weight specification is 3/4 lbs. but that is understated. It feels rugged but is only water resistant (splash proof). There is an O-ring on the door so it might survive a rain shower but in fairness nothing was designed for underwater immersion. Hard to imagine jogging with this thing.
Also in the junk drawer, this iRiver iFP MP3. Using flash memory this was a popular digital audio player. Too large to slip into one’s pant pocket, it was intended to dangle from a lanyard. Still, this was an advance from the weighty CD player. The iRiver was well received despite its still unusual form factor.
These two devices, along with plenty of cassette tape players unmentioned, were exciting in concept and served needs for the moment; then came the first generation Apple. Using a a mini hard drive and at 1/2 lb. was about the size of a deck of cards — but at $399. The iPod got leaner/cheaper and we all know who won the digital player battle. Predecessors are only memories now.
Atlantic Coast Airlines(DH) has split from its original holding company in Fresno and from the route map archived below you can see that the fleet still wears the first generation UEX livery. New is the De Havilland Dash 8 and BAe Jetstream 41 to fulfill expansion opportunities afforded by marketing partner United Airlines.
Atlantic Coast Airlines Route Map – in full resolution here
In a reluctant concession the Dash-8 aircraft (and pilots) were transferred from United’s storied Air Wisconsin Airlines (DX) affiliate and with them came baggage.
Air Wisconsin another United code-share, as the story goes, had used precious CASH to acquire its fleet of British Aerospace ATPs and with an economic downturn had become strapped for operating capital. United stepped in and acquired the company. Far from being a rescue United was most keen on retaining [DX] Chicago O’Hare gates, the crown jewel. Air Wisconsin’s BAe 146-300 jet fleet was promptly spun off and the other half of that group (Dash 8 fleet) in divestiture, came to ACA.
Welcome to ACA. Disgruntled and militant flight crews having felt that they’d been hosed by United were not happy to have involuntarily landed at Atlantic Coast. Nor were they well received by the original pilots at ACA as their respective seniority would be diluted. Expense to operate the Dash-8 was not a complimentary fit for the company. It could only sub a redundant mission bracket with the EMB-120 currently on property.
Seniority is everything for an airline pilot. Those higher on the list benefit from better pay and quality of life. A seniority number determines which aircraft and routes you choose to fly and whether you are a Captain or a co-pilot. This list is set in stone with a simple ranking by date of hire — unless there’s a merger/acquisition. Imagine the ensuing fairness battle that takes place when administering the combination of two lists. Hint: ain’t nobody happy
In short order ACA was upon shaky ground and was about to miss payroll. British Aerospace plc with deep pockets appeared in the hour of need. By shotgun, BAe would take both the De Havilland and Brasilia fleets in disposal trade while ACA would submit to becoming the USA launch customer for their new BAe Jetstream 4100 aircraft. The leasing and capital infusion setup was a lifeline.
The flight crews were not pleased. Blithely ignorant as to the why (it came out eventually) they considered the fleet consolidation to be a rational decision I suppose. The transition from Dash-8 and Brasilia to J41 was not perceived in best case a lateral move but rather an equipment downgrade.
Mid-Life
In 1997, a crisis of sorts: Atlantic Airlines wanted to rid itself of the unloved obsolete prop-planes to fly the latest in the new to the industry 50 passenger seat jets.
Costs spread across 19 and 29 seat aircraft were increasingly disadvantageous. Regional Jets from Bombardier and Embraer where coming online and code-share managements were convinced that passengers would adopt them and readily buy flight tickets. One problem; the pilots at United Airlines were deadest against and union contracts gave them leverage to put the brakes on. Regional pilots had zero say. The UAL pilots were (rightfully) concerned about agency and they saw these smaller jets as the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. Eventually concessions would take place but even so it wasn’t cart blanche for the regional partners.
Eager with anticipation and perhaps to pressure United, ACA jumped the gun went forward anyway and placed an order for 12 jets. A green light from United was not immediate. Nevertheless delivered aircraft arrived with the early ones painted in an ACA color scheme – not United’s — in a statement that ACA was determined to operate the planes regardless.
The original White fuselages had dk. blue underbelly. Clever really, all they had to do was respray the top half.
The new jets were not sidelined for long. With alleviated discord, these aircraft were repainted with the United Express logo and everyone carried on. Everybody was upbeat. At the end of the day Atlantic Coast Airlines would operate 87 RJs, an all jet fleet system wide.
But in hindsight; Oh the passengers… These small jets too were seen as cramped and uncomfortable. Like the propeller driven craft that they replaced they were only tolerated, just. Most preferred flying the mainline jets.
Final Hours
Following the September 11 attack and economic downturn UAL was facing financial struggles. All of ACA income was dependent upon the health and welfare of its parent but there wasn’t much hand-wringing circa 2002 about United’s fate. Everyone understood the bankruptcy process to be requisite formality from which United would emerge whole. In fact, when the ACA team confidently went forth to renegotiate their revenue agreement they fully anticipated to be handed a better deal i.e. with more mainline flying route discards.
Regional carriers operate under capacity purchase agreements, where United paid fixed and performance-based fees and covered costs like fuel and landing fees, while managing sales pricing, revenue, and loyalty programs.
This did not happen. United bluntly dashed their high hopes and sent them home for reflection. United wasn’t doing direct negotiations. It was turned over to a faceless 3rd party hired solely to cut costs to the bone. Fees being paid to regional feeders would be severely curtailed.
With diligence ACA leadership came to the realization (they said) that United’s new deal would bleed out company profits and lead to ruin. There was an alternative — Divorce. Management’s thinly disguised ambitions eluded to in the 1997 deployment of the CRJ program was a clue. With bravado and audacity they believed they could go it alone. ACA amassed their multi year profits into a war chest which they would deploy against their former partner. They believed that as a discount airline they could compete on United’s turf.
Such a plan would be a risky venture. Privately, the rank and file felt such a dissolution to be a suicide move. But on many high hopes a plan was hatched. Atlantic Coast Airline dba United Express bet the farm gave notice. The 15 year partnership legacy and logo would be cast away and the company re-invented and rebranded, fittingly, as Independence Air.
Disclaimer
The content of this blog post reflects my personal opinions, recollections, or information gathered from publicly available sources. It is not intended to be construed as factual or definitive. Any references to historical events, individuals, or companies are presented as my own perspective and should not be taken as verified fact. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and form their own conclusions. The author is not responsible for any misinterpretations or consequences arising from the use of this information.
WestAir Commuter Airlines (1979) expanded rapidly to provide connecting passenger feed to United Airlines on both coasts as of the year 1991. By then WestAir Airlines dba United Express was part of parent company, WestAir Holdings, Inc.
The IAD domicile on the East coast was spun off to a newly formed company, Ed Acker‘s Atlantic Coast Airlines dba United Express. At dissolution. Employee Associates who had been domiciled on East duty were offered a one time opportunity to come home.
Those who elected to return to West Coast would be out of luck for WestAir was to become part of the ambitious Mesa Air Group before then losing their United Express contract all together. Atlantic Coast continued to prosper in the subsequent years, offering stable employment but that’s another story.
full resolution scan is here
Load factors were not sustainable, reference the ASMs in the chart. This was a good thing for the relative comfort of those onboard but unfortunate for the company’s bottom line which contrasts with the always packed flights of today.
Those were exciting times. From humble beginnings in Cessna 402’s and Britten-Norman Trislander’s primarily in California only to 37 cities in six western states and 28 cities in eleven eastern states, WestAir operated a national route system (their words).
I managed to revisit a fun game for the PC that I had managed to hang on to for all of these years called MYST. Released in 1993, my original copy was dated 1994. Today, 30 years later I unboxed this classic puzzle solver.
The first puzzle was in physically installing the dusted off software. This was one of the first games to be released on CD ROM; cutting edge tech back then. Like so many formats now obsolete one might be hard pressed to find a PC that comes with an optical drive.
Hint: 5 1/4″ floppy, 3.5″ disk, CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, 8-track, compact cassette, BetaMax, VHS -mostly gone. External (portable USB) drives are still out there (for now)
With a USB optical drive on hand for such an eventuality; the 2nd puzzle: Windows 11 OS won’t read the media. Windows Explorer allowed me to view directory structure but these folders were seemingly empty. No files listed. How to load the game? It’s locked. Trapped in the Modern Age.
Hint – The game was created for Windows 3.1. Spoiler – software of the era was coded for 16- bit processors. This requires and emulator to run or a VM such as Scumm.
Barely into the gameplay and next puzzle; the graphics are pixelated. This was one of the first pre cinematic artful immersion experiences. At least the audio was working and true to form.
Cheat: Modern 4k display screen are overkill. CRT monitors (obsolete) used resolutions of 640×480 and 256 colors. For the impatient, the solution is to download the latest MYST release from Steam for no waiting. The game play is largely the same and the graphics are enhanced but $$. Spoiler: the latest and greatest has been re-coded to use the Unreal Engine which was well suited for first person shooters however you may find it off-putting. Motion sickness sets in after 30 minutes if you are susceptible.
Gosh, all of these puzzles and I haven’t gotten into the game yet! Thank goodness for hints, spoilers, and walkthroughs. Wanting the original experience (and because $$) I stuck it out with the 1993 puzzle. Obstacles and hurdles solved it was an authentic trip to the linking books of MYST Ages — and like going back home again.
I was up until 0000 hrs. Friday night with a serious challenge. I was tinkering with my spreadsheet/database program Quattro Pro, which I use to keep track of jogging stats, IRAs, 401Ks, as well as pilot log book, when the system locked-up (crashed) and a little message appeared with the generic warning that “systems resources were low” or some such non-sense, and to “save your work to another file.”
These things happen infrequently but can be routinely handled, and are considered more of a nuisance then a disaster. Usually the remedy is to exit the offending program by rebooting the PC. You have to re-enter the data that you were working with since you last saved, which isn’t fun, so good practice is to save often. In my situation, and this was unusual, the error had erased the entire file! This would be disaster time. My running records lost; there is no hard copy. Trying to reconstruct 24 months of my pilot log book, for example, would have been… Oh! I don’t want to even think about it!
Okay. Don’t panic. Re-start Quattro Pro. Re-load the file. Nope. It’s empty allright. Lots of empty spaces and squares in blank columns. Not a pretty sight. Okay. No problem. I have backups. First though, let me try the Microsoft Undelete utility. This comes with windows and sometimes allows you to recover files that have been deleted but not yet overwritten. Ah! There it is. The erased file. But there’s a note. “File is destroyed” “Cannot be rebuilt” I had exhausted all of the simple possibilities. Go to Microsoft Backup. Select the recover function and insert the floppy into drive “A”. OOPS. Another message. “Backup file was created with Microsoft DOS 6.0 or 6.2 see the readme.txt in the MS-DOS 6.22 step-up disc.” Swell. It was true. The original full backup was made in January and I had since upgraded my operating system. Hey. It was free. Why not? This added complication I hadn’t figured on and I was now grumbling to myself. It was just further confirmation that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it… Okay. Dig out the backup diskettes of the MSDOS 6.22 step-up that I had made. All of these files are archived in a compressed state. There are two on a 5 1/2″ floppy and two more on a 3 1/2″. The first file is designed to run so as to expand automatically the other three. When I ran this the one file extracted just fine but it then prompted me to insert the other disc to work on the remaining two files. Another snag. The other floppy (3 1/2″) was on drive “B” and wouldn’t read as it was expecting to see it on “A”. This was getting comical. All I wanted to see was the &#$*!?% readme file so that I could root out my problem with the old backup. I would have to manually re-install the entire OS just to see the help message? My efforts were continually thwarted as the problem twisted and convoluted. I had a pile of floppy discs, 14 full backup plus 6 incremental backups, the two OS discs, in addition to the usual natural clutter on my desktop and on the floor. I half expected to see a message appear on the monitor which said, “Abandon all hope, Give up, Just forget it!”
Well, after some additional frowning and cursing, I got the idea to try and run MS backup from the DOS command line instead of from Windows. The reluctant machine bought it. The file was restored. The January version, that is. I still had a slew of incremental backups (the changes made since then to restore and bring the errant file completely up to date and back to life), to do. After a few dozen more mouse clicks and another 40 minutes I had merely succeeded in returning to the point were I was before I had turned on the machine in the first place. I love computers…
A letter to my best friend – Mel. This was before social media. This was before email. This would have been printed and sent by, gasp, snail mail. Personal computing in 1995.
I haven’t been NET surfing or CorelDRAW!ing much lately. I’ve been absorbed in DOOM. I’m getting pretty good with a shotgun. Dede puts on the headphones and sits next to me and watches while I blast away. “Tell me if you hear any bad guys sneaking up on me, honey.” The beauty of this game is that it is so widely supported on the net. Kinda like a VW beetle. You will always be able to find parts for it. When I finish the episodes included with the original from ID, I can download more levels, sound fx, and music. These wads are made by hackers and are really quite good. Some are designed to run on fast 486s so they get a little jerky at times on my machine. Here are some that I played. Hurt me plenty. They must have taken some serious work. I have to replay some of the sections many times. Seems like I’m out numbered and low on ammo! Save often. You can run them from the DOS command line like so: Change to your DOOM directory and at the prompt exactly type–
doom -file serenity.wad sersound.wad -warp e3m1
Cool! I found a utility on-line to convert .au to .wav so you can listen to those sound files.
Really COOL! Using Window’s Object Packager, I embedded sound into those graphics you sent me. I hope this works on your PC. Open the .cdr in Corel and then double click on the little icon I put there. Multimedia!!!
I just got your Greetings From LaLa Land. I liked the font! What’s it called? How do I get it? Ah, Painter.zip, I was most curious as to what it was. Man. That sucker was huge, man. How do you get that whole file into Corel. Mine balks with insufficient memory dialog boxes. I’ll bet the pics from Greetings… used up some RAM. Can you set your scanner for lower resolution or definition to save bytes? Can you control the dithering? My impact printer got a new ribbon. It had more ink then any of the others; a quality control problem of sorts. I think it should be okay now. I use 360 x 360 dpi, its maximum, otherwise the graphics look like s___. I need colour. I was reading about the comparisons between the 560C, Epson Color, and the Cannon. It’ll be tough to decide when the time comes…
Wow! Glad to hear about your new office computer. How are you ever going to get any work done? That’s what I paid for my Zeos only a 18 months ago and it’s only a 25Mhz. Hah! I notice now in their advertisements that they don’t even offer a 25 or even a 33 anymore! I’m following the prices for the Intel Overdrive upgrade chip. Perhaps a 75DX4? Also I see hard drive prices are way down. Mine is 3/4 full. I’m having to be real selective now with what stays and what gets dumped. I have only 50 mb left.
On the floppy is a new release from 3d Realm. Terminal Velocity. Should play pretty well on a 486/66.
Boy! The web is changing. You may not recognize it when you go back on-line. Using the latest NETSCAPE browser you can see some pretty creative home pages. BTW here’s a URL for ya: http://www.corelnet.com/index.htm (this is a new CorelDRAW site worth checking out)
Dede was complaining that her Taurus wasn’t blowing cold air. I dug out some of my old hoses and gauges for A/C diagnostic purposes and the repair manual. None of the fittings work on the newer cars. (Not to mention you can’t pick up a $2 can of R-12 at the Pep Boys anymore) So I left the car with the technician at Western(?) Auto for the afternoon. Can’t be fixed. Numerous leaks at “O” rings and the evaporator. Needs new accumulator/receiver/dryer while your at it. $800 estimate. Geez. I would hate to see what it costs to fix a MBZ or BMW these days. This is for a generic Ford here. All I wanted was a little bit of freon added. (I think what they wanted to do was change over to the new environmentally friendly refrigerant which basically implies converting the entire system for the higher pressures.) No thanks. I’ll help the environment. I’ll roll down the windows! This doesn’t fly with Dede. Okay. You can drive the Pontiac, (now age 17) that has functional AC, during the summer. Do I sound like my Dad?
You might guess who won out– the conversion was undertaken so happy wife happy life.
