Random thoughts on middle age...

I'm in my middle 40's and thinking about aging more than ever...
At this age mortality is no longer an abstract concept.  I miss the feeling of endless possibility that came with youth, even as I recall the uncertainty and anxiety of those years.

Am I "over the hill"?  I'd rather think of life as a plateau than a hill.  The initial upslope is youth (growing up/establishing a career/starting a family).  The big middle chunk is mostly flat, with gentle ups and downs (raising a family, working, retiring, grandchildren).  The end will hopefully be a steep drop in my sleep, with little warning or time spent dealing with sickness.   That's a better mental picture than being on the "over the hill" downslope from age 40 onward...

Life has been good.  Although I've seen my share of tragedy, things have gone mostly according to plan.  Freedom from regret is a big deal at this point in life, and I'm thankful for that.  Even small doses of regret can be crushing.  It's hard enough to accept life sweeping you along at an ever increasing and unstoppable pace when you're on the right track...it must be horrible to feel that acceleration along the wrong track.

I feel for people dealing with major regrets during middle age.

Apple TV.....impressed

Apple TV was obviously not designed by anybody remotely connected with Apple Time Capsule.  I set up Apple TV today with ZERO snags.  Simply connected the ethernet cable, digital audio cable, HDMI cable, and plugged it in.  It found the internet, found the iMac, and worked immediately.

That's more like it...

Apple Time Capsule...not impressed

I finally got around to setting up our new wired home network, using an Apple Time Capsule router/network drive (Gen4 2TB).  Cat6 ethernet cables are already in place connecting the bedrooms, den iMac, AppleTV, and PS3, etc.  All that was left to do was connect the cables to an ethernet switch, get a USB hub to connect a few USB hard drives and a printer,  and then hook it all up to the TC.  Simple, right?

Unfortunately, the process turned out to be very "un-Apple-like".  Mimicking a Microsoft product, the TC froze on initial start up and wouldn't unfreeze until I called Apple Support and learned how to do a "hard reset".  After some initial success, the TC continued to suffer one error after another in network connectivity.  It froze again while it tried to update it's firmware.  The internet connection kept disconnecting.  And then the TC drive just disappeared from Finder.  Great.

Reconnecting the old wireless router, I got online and spent a few hours searching for solutions.  I learned how to do a bunch of unnecessarily complex repair work (rolling back the firmware, etc) that reminded me of the worst days in PC/Microsoft land. Finally got the thing working today after probably 8 hours of messing with it...

Civil War connections

Online genealogy research has been getting easier and easier lately, especially with the introduction of the LDS sponsored familysearch.org site.  I like the non-commercial aspect of familysearch.org.  It always irritated me to see commercial sites sell the research products of genealogists who were simply trying to share what they had learned.

Surprisingly, I found familysearch.org to be the main resource in use in the lobby of the actual LDS family history library in Salt Lake City.  Now that resource sits in on my home computer!

Armed with a few notes, family oral history, and names on photographs, I've been finding plenty of interesting facts.  (Interesting to me, anyway, conceding that there's nothing quite so boring as somebody else's genealogy...)   I'm intrigued to learn the type of lives my ancestors lived, and more specifically, where they fit into the greater historical picture of our nation.  I love history, so discovering personal connections seems a natural extension.

Most of my ancestors were Confederates.  Dr. Thomas J. Bennett served as an assistant surgeon for the Army of Northern Virginia, freshly out of medical school at Vanderbilt.  After the war he married a girl half his age and served as a country doctor south of Nashville.  One 3rd great grandfather, Levi D. Jarratt, was a sergeant in the 45th Tennessee and was killed at the battle of Shiloh in 1862.  Another 3rd great grandfather, Winston R. Graham, was a private in the 16th Alabama Regiment.  Winston also fought at Shiloh, but survived the war, fortunately, as the son he had in 1874 is my 2nd great grandfather.

The sole Union soldier I've found lurking in my family history is Byard Hickman.  Byard was from West Virginia but enlisted in the 151st Illinois regiment, too late in the war to see combat.  He went on to an interesting life as a Colorado pioneer and cattle rancher, however.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit I've found is from a Walker family that I'm not certain about my relation, but the story is worth repeating.  The Walkers, from Nashville, lost two sons in the Civil War.  One to each side.  I can't imagine how that must have felt.

Here's the flag Winston Graham fought under at Shiloh, the regimental colors of the 16th Alabama.

Regimental colors, 16th Alabama infantry

A Brabham BT-23 race car next door...

My next door neighbor in the early 1970's was Randy Hancock, a full time auto mechanic and part time race driver.  He drove a VW microbus, had hippie friends, and a really hot girlfriend.  I remember hearing alot of CCR, America, and Neil Young music coming over the fence, along with some funny smelling smoke.

Randy had this 1967 Brabham BT-23 in his garage up until about 1975 or so.

I have no idea what happened to it, but to me as a five year old kid, this car was the coolest thing in the universe.  I lost touch with Randy in the late 70's, but not before he gave me the picture below of his car in the driveway on Wekiva Ave in Campbell, CA.

Randy, if you're out there, drop me an email!

1967 Brabham BT-23, driver Randy Hancock

Old gas stations

N599B

Here's a shot of my late friend Rob Wood's Pitts Special. It's a homebuilt S-1S with Sparcraft wings, built from plans in 1974 by James Killough. Rob bought it in 1994 and competed with it in IAC competitions. Rob was killed in a Navy helicopter crash in 1996. I've owned the airplane since then, and flew it extensively in 1997-1998. It went into storage while we lived overseas from 1998-2001. I planned to get the Pitts flying again in 2001, but after being laid off post 9-11 the money wasn't there to get the airplane flight worthy. It remains in storage today, but when the money and time come together, it will return to the air.