Ha! He is the starving college student.

My first car was a station wagon and have always gravitated towards having an SUV of some kind. Even in the early 80's when they weren't so popular. Tried a couple of mini vans and sedans, but went back to the SUV. Optimal for me has been what I have now. An SUV and a two door sports car.

Since the loss of heel and toe ability may trim down to just the SUV.

When I was in college went from having 3 vehicles, a Plymouth 2 door muscle car, Audi sedan, and Ford van to riding a 10 speed. Even road tripped my 10 speed the 75 miles each way back and forth to school a couple of times.

The first 2 months right out of college at my current job I rode my 10 speed the 7 miles to work. Worked night shift in the machine shop so it wasn't too bad. Must have been a dry start of the summer because I don't remember it raining. Then bought a car from a guy at work. It was a 77 Cutlass Salon 2 door. After only a couple more months stumbled on a full size 81 GMC Jimmy and sold the Cutlass. Seem to remember planning to get into hang gliding and needed something to carry a kite.

We have access to a high dollar GPS data collector that is accurate to under .10 foot (1.2 inches). It is a Trimble RT 10 and a cool unit. Of course it cost more than I paid for my 911 so it ain't cheap. We are not surveyors, and we don't even play one on TV. We have flown my house in the past and we were shooting in points like corners of sidewalks and things that are easy to see that are on the ground. We can punch in that data and make the project more accurate, but it does not matter except to learn how to do it.

A real for true surveyor charges $150 to $250 per point depending on where the project is, and how many points you need. It is real easy, and it really makes me wonder how they trained certified genuine surveyors can have so much trouble sending us a simple text file with X,Y, and X. It is like they want to struggle with it to make it look difficult. We shot 24 points at my house in 30 minutes. Easy peazy.

I am certain that trudging through some field in 100+ degree heat is a lot more work that what we did, but it can't be that hard. Of course all we can do in make data points we don't even mention the word survey or allude that we do them.

Do they have to put their coffee down and get out of their vehicle?

Yea, and walk through swamps, plowed fields, scale steep ridges and avoid mad bulls and irate property owners with shotguns.

That must be why they get away with charging so much.

It is officially THE WEEKEND.

Well except for Jim. It's just another day.

To watch or record F1 practices and qualifying this year you gotta have a service with ESPN2 and ESPN3. Otherwise just the Race is on ABC.
Looks like the cheapo legal way to get ESPN3 is Sling Orange, $20/mo.

Good Morning.

It is Saturday for those of us that still keep track. Beautiful sun shiny spring day, birds chirping, etc.

Tryin to decide what to do about watching F1 LIVE has got me rethinking my current cordcutting. Shut off cableTV. Basically didn't watch F1 all last year. This year F1 coverage is only available thru SkySports. In the USA ESPN digital ie ESPN2 and ESPN3 will be showing commentary, all the practices, qualifying, and races with ABC broadcasting just the races.

Option 1
Plug in the Antenna to TV and watch local broadcast.
Pro: Free, includes local TV.
Con: Races only, commercials, broadcast networks has history of iffy F1 coverage, would have to change sources and use 2nd remote to watch thru TV's tuner.

Option 2
Get a HomeRun box. Connects Antenna to my Wifi so can watch local broadcasts on AppleTV, computer, iPhone, iPad, etc.
Pro: Any device including AppleTV, includes local TV.
Cons: Costs $125, races only, commercials, iffy network F1 coverage.

Option 3
Setup a VPN and watch SkySports directly. My routers don't do VPN so would have to watch thru my laptop.
Pro: Full F1 coverage.
Con: Cost of reliable VPN $20/yr, Use Laptop as tuner and mirror to TV, No local TV.

Option 4
Subscribe to Sling Orange. $20/month. Stream basic channels including ESPN2/3 to any device.
Pro: Full F1 coverage, some extra channels, can use AppleTV or any other device.
Con: Cost is $20/month, no local TV.

To get ESPN2/3 thru cox cable is $125/mo. Their web site said $70/mo for 1st year. Seems I can't get that deal because I was a previous customer, What? Had to keep telling them all I want is to watch ESPN2/3 on my AppleTV. Also their sales person tried to tell me Sling Orange did not have ESPN2/3 and Sling says orange does. Heck even ESPN.COM lists Sling Orange as the cheapest subscription option. That is one of the reasons I became a cord cutter. These providers say they have 165 channels, but a lot of them are HD versions of SD channels or freakin Spanish. They sure need to rethink their "packages."

For levity, ET Bob does not understand why I don't get the same local over-the-air stations he gets in Tulsa.

ESPN sucks (insert many anatomical body parts and then a long string of profanities) for F1 coverage.

They are big on having talking heads sit around and TALK about other people playing games. No actual game coverage, just talk about other people playing a stupid game!

The coverage of F1 is pitiful. They cut int the broadcast in the middle of the sentence and the action is already in progress. There was almost one full second of the post commentary by the F1 announces before ESPN cuts back to a group of people sitting around just talking about other people playing a silly game with a ball.

Why did ESPN bid a lot of money to get the F1 races, and then not show it?

I did get the yard mowed for the first time this year. Once again my 26 year old mower fought me. I think it is worn out. The magneto is a pain to get to, and takes a hour to get it apart enough to adjust it. I may have to break down and buy the second new lawn mower in my life.

When I bought my first house back in 1980 I paid the previous owner $25 for his nearly worn out mower. After 25 years I got married, and sold that mower for $30 and it was really really worn out. I bought a new mower and that is the one that is pretty much worn out now. It only lasted 26 years. Dang it.

Sorry to hear that Glen. Hearing a lot of complaints about ESPN clipping the broadcast at the beginning and end and listing the qualifying at the wrong time. Guessing they are limited to their microwave feed window instead of actual programming. Sounds like the actual SkySports coverage is the way to go instead of the ESPN mirror. Next year F1 is supposed to have it's own live streaming. Hope they are smart enough to support devices other than a computer or we browser so can easily watch it on a TV.

Guess I will just hook up my antenna and watch just the race on the commercial filled ABC version of the clipped ESPN mirror of SkySports. $20 sounds like too much to get clipped coverage.

Or there is the opton to buy a new wifi router that I can do VPN with and tune into SkySports itself.

Would be really cool if there was an AppleTV app that would do VPN. Way cool if you could switch to it only accessing certain content. Don't think there is much of a market for anything like that though. Also bet connection settings like that are sandboxed. Tried to make an app for one click to switch between 2G and 3G for data. 2G battery lasted a lot longer, but was too slow for surfing. You had to go thru 4 system settings windows to switch one way or the other. Would have sold millions at $0.99 ea. Apple Developer Support told me the liked the idea, but those settings were sandboxed and could not be changed from anywhere or by anything except the Settings app. Someone at Apple had decided it was a security risk. The next version of the iPhone had enough battery it wasn't an issue, but could have sold the app for a year and a half while it was still an issue.

I have no choice...no cable, no sucky ESPN. :)

Do you watch F1 on network TV?

I don’t watch it at all. I pretty much gave up on F1 when it was still the Bernie and Max show.

Don't follow nearly as close as when it was the Schumacher exhibition. The latest is family continues saying appreciate fans, but his health is private.

The car evolution is amazing though. Smaller motors, less fuel, regenerative braking, more protective cars. Yet just as fast if not faster (though I know the speeds are somewhat limited by tires.) I'm surprised they didn't go with the jet cockpit cowl instead of that hoop in the driver's face, driver cooling?

Saw some Sky Sports pricing. Holy crap, $500 to $800 for the F1 season depending on SD, HD, or UHD. They offer more than Practices and races with pre/post driver and paddock interviews etc. The current best price for LIVE F1 is Sling TV and internet connection using the ESPN App. For All practices and races the channels needed is $25/month. It does give you some other channels as well. Sure beats the $125/mo Cox Cable wants.

Good grief, what an amateur 5hit show the F1 coverage is. They took 18 minutes to get the sound and video to work together. Just starting to watch the race. It has to get better. I have seen high school videos better than this.

Wow, sure glad I didn't pay a bunch to watch it.

It is like the broadcasting profession is like everyone else. Nobody knows what they are doing anymore.

There is a reason NBC had their own commontators. NBC did not have control of the video feed or even camera shots. This was obvious from comments made about incidents and waiting for the video. Their own commontators did let them update viewer's on what happened during commercials.

Does ESPN actually cover ANY sort of auto racing themselves or just push feeds?

When I first started watching F1 I was recovering from surgery and on pain killers that made my attention span very short. At times I would fall asleep just waiting for the guide to scroll from channel 4 down to 58 so I could see what was on 58. Would wake up still holding the button down and the guide just scrolling away. There were very few shows I could watch, F1, WWF. and Jerry Springer. It was because they had very short commercial breaks. Everything else I would forget what I was watching during the commercial breaks and change channels or fall asleep.

Nowadays can't watch much on network TV, over-the-air or wired. End up falling asleep during the 10 to 14 commercials in a row. Even if very interested and enjoying the program. That is why Kodi, Hulu (no commercials subscription), cord cutting etc is so popular. It''s not so much the cost of the services, it's that you pay for the privilege of watching as much commercial content as programming.

Don't understand why they haven't figured out they can run sponsors logos in the corner like they do network identification and get rid of the commercial breaks altogether. When you pause, after a few seconds it goes to running commercials until you resume, call it an intermission pause. Run ads on the guide and program info screens. You could even team up with Google AdSense and have the ads focused by topics you are interested in. Maybe I should start a streaming service? Think it would be wildly popular compared to today's offerings.

Monday is back!

The Honda mower is ready to go. It is pretty easy to get it set up. No tools required.

Morning. The quality of which shall be determined after it has passed.