This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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Another Donaghy highlight, this time Brandy’s mom’s dad Leonard S Donaghy. I frankly think this is even cooler that the pictures. The article is in the Summer 2005 Rumble Seat (pdf) the newsletter of the Antique Auto Museum in Hershey, PA.
Jacks, Jacks and More Jacks
(Dottie Shultz, AACA)
The AACA Museum was still just a dream in 1992, when Leonard S. Donaghy of Pennsylvania donated his collection of over 200 pre-WWII jacks to the future Museum. The collection was brought back to the AACA Headquarters and stored for the next seven years in a small room in the basement. During the past year the collection was moved to the AACA Museum’s archival storage room.
Starting in 2001, Robert Krouch of Mechanicsburg, PA sorted, photographed and identified the collection as his Senior High School Project (as a requirement for graduation he needed to spend a minimum of 100 hours on a project over a 3 year period). In addition to identifying the jacks, he created a website to share the collection with the world. The site is:
Jack Search
This is probably one of the most extensive collection of pre-WWII automotive jacks in any museum and will be a wonderful addition to the AACA Museum displays. A location and design for the display cases has been selected. The weight of the collection requires special cases to be constructed of steel and glass. At the present time there aren’t sufficient funds in the budget to move this project forward. If you’d like to see this display come to life more quickly you can consider earmarking a portion of your 2005 Museum donation to the “Jack Display Fund.” Thank you for your continued support!
As soon as we’re done selling the house, I want to donate some for the display of jacks!
 Author: Ben Forta
Started: 21 Jun 2006
Finished: 1 Jul 2006
242p / 11d
22 p/d
Another one for work. I’d played with SQL various times before, but played was really the operative keyword. I could use things other people had done. Maybe change them slightly. Didn’t feel confident enough to do new things of my own. So I needed to get comfortable. Thus the book. I decided to get a basic level teach yourself book, and this was the bestselling at the time I ordered it.
After reading though, I think I might have gotten one that was TOO basic. There really wasn’t all that much there that couldn’t be found at dozens of online reference sites. But… having it all in a narrative provided the context I needed to go through and systematically read what I needed to read in a way I would probably not have done just looking at reference sites. Not that I could not have, but that I *would* not have. But the book made me go through it.
In any case, it was a good overview. I feel much more comfortable that I did. It still only covered basic stuff, so if I need more complex things I’ll still need need to look it up or get another book, but for the basics, it did what it was supposed to do.
Oh, and of course the “in 10 minutes” part is how long it is supposed to take for each chapter, not for the whole book. They are so tricky!
Brandy forwarded me info that her Uncle Don Donaghy (along with Brandy’s mother) attended an opening Wednesday in Washington, DC at the Hemphill Gallery including a bunch of her Uncle’s work from the 1960s. Apparently there were a lot of VIPs at the opening.
The exhibition including his work will be up until August 19th. Those of you in the DC area should drop by. A sampling of his work (in thumbnail form) is available on the gallery’s website. Just click on the picture above. Actual prints apparently start at around $3000 if you want one for yourself.
I’m not really awake yet as I only went to sleep about four hours ago and am about to go lie down again, but as I was up I checked on the shuttle status and saw this:
Spaceflight Now STS 121 Mission Status
1453 GMT (10:53 a.m. EDT)
The countdown is still holding at the T-minus 3 hour mark. Clocks are slated to resume ticking in 60 minutes.
The analysis and debate about the faulty heater on one of Discovery’s vernier steering thrusters continues. That heater is not working, which makes the maneuvering jet considered failed for the mission. Although there are other thrusters that can compensate for the loss of the L5L jet, managers must decide if they want to launch knowing some of the redundancy is gone.
Now given that they already are launching over the objections of a bunch of safety people (see here)…
Now, I know, I know… this kind of thing will never be “safe” and they are only estimating a 1% chance of a catastrophic failure that would lose the orbiter and the crew. And that is considered an acceptable level of risk at this point.
But if that 1% hit, or even if there was enough damage that they need to leave the astronauts on ISS then you’ll be hearing the “I told you so”s so loudly we’ll all go deaf. Oh well, at least this time around the objections were clearly heard then decided upon, whereas in previous cases they either have been so discouraged that people never made the objections even though they were worried, or they were made and were squelched by middle management and never made it to the top. This time everybody clearly knows the risks that have been warned about, and are choosing to go anyway.
The Astronauts are loading into the vehicle as I type. Also as I type some scary clouds have moved into the area which will scrub the launch for today if they don’t move soon. So we shall see.
My alarm is set to make sure I’ll be up to watch, and NASA TV has been up on my computer with the sound up for hours now, so it will wake me up if anything significant happens too.
Of course, I’m out west, so unlike home, I can’t just step out the back door of the house and look up to see the launch. Oh well.
My mother’s father’s father. As I post these going through the tree breadth first, this is the first ancestor I do not have a picture for. At least not yet. (I didn’t post pictures for the first few I posted, but there were pictures on the corresponding wiki pages, I was just negligent.)
I don’t know a whole lot about him either. Born 1875 in Darke County, Ohio. Moved to Indiana, then Arkansas, then back to Darke County, Ohio, where he died in 1956.
The first of his three children was my mother’s father. The last of his three children was my Uncle Ed… actually Great Uncle Ed. I visited Uncle Ed’s house a few times as a child. I remember swapping Commodore 64 software with one of his grandkids.
But back to David Clement. The main other thing I know is that he was a Justice of the Peace for 36 years.
For more, see his wiki page.
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Whiteboard full of equations. Love it.
I am actually very very tempted to spend the next few hours reading all 185 pages of the full opinion (pdf), but I am at work and that would be bad. Suffice it to say that I am happy and feel like for once the court is making the clearly correct decision. I am disappointed somewhat (although not surprised) that most of the “conservative” justices dissented. (Or in the case of the Cheif Justice were recused because they had been involved in the lower court opinion that was being appealed.) After all, the notion of strict limits on governmental (and executive) authority have long been a fundamental “Conservative” idea. Not to mention a strict reading of the constitution. No more it seems.
But, 5-3 will do, and things move in the right direction for the moment.
(Although there are dozens of other executive excesses that desperately need to get shot down… if the congress won’t do it like they should, perhaps SCOTUS will get to at least some of them over the next couple of years. Maybe.)
I’ve been meaning to post something about this for awhile. But never got around to it. But now is a good time as the old job has ended and the new is about to begin. My mother has ended her 9 or so year time as a pastor in Westfield, Massachusetts and is starting a new position as Acting Association Minister for the Southwest Ohio Northern Kentucky Association of the Ohio Conference of the United Church of Christ. (Wow, that’s a mouthful. Here is their website.)
The official announcement was in their April 18th Newsletter (pdf):
At its most recent meeting, SONKA’s Association Covenant Team (ACT) voted unanimously to call Rev. Ruth Brandon to be our Acting Association Minister.
Ruth currently lives in Massachusetts, where she has been pastoring a church since 1997. Prior experiences include two interim pastorates, Professor of Ethics at Ricatla United Seminary and pastor of Cidade Congregational Church in Mozambique, Africa, and Associate Conf erence Minister of the Central Atlantic Conference. Ruth will be assuming her ministry with SONKA July 1, 2006.
She bought a house in Ohio a few weeks ago, and she and Sara (her dog) arrived in Ohio a little over 24 hours ago. The moving truck arrives later today. So she’s getting settled.
Congratulations to my mother on her new spot!
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I killed it.
 My father’s mother’s mother. Most of what I know about her is what one of her nephews, Charles Rayburn, wrote quite a few years later. I quote it completely here:
Many uncles, aunts, neighbors and teachers influenced who we were and who we are. Aunt Maude, one of Dad’s two sisters deserves special recognition.
She and her husband, Uncle Bill Wootton, met in college. Uncle Bill has an amazing “rags to riches” career, finally owning the Lockyears Business College in Evansville, Indiana. His resources gave aid to all of her nieces and nephews.
She made our Christmas each year. Each year we received a box of candy, toys and clothes. This was very important. Without this our Christmases would have been bleak. Aunt Maude made Christmas joyful and exciting.
Each summer Aunt Maude and her two daughters came to visit Grandpa and Grandma Rayburn for a summer vacation. It was great to visit with and listen to these city cousins. Aunt Maude brought fireworks for celebrating July 4th. She usually brought marshmellows for roasting and oranges as a special treat.
Aunt Maude opened our minds to life outside the hills. She excited us with the vast opportunities which lay ahead.
She purchases the old farm from Mom just before I went away to school. This would allow Mom to continue to live there and have funds to send William and me to school. She had no need for the pitiful farm and no desire to own it. It had no value to her butit provided Mom a method of maintaining her pride without seeking welfare.
Aunt Maude taught us altruistic giving by her remarkable examples. This was deeply engraved in our spirits.
As usual, more by clicking the picture.
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