Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

[Paul B]

I was looking at my Hippo tang just now and I don't think I ever saw a better looking or healthier fish. His skin looks like velvet.
(No, he doesn't have velvet. Thats something only quarantined fish would get) My fish can't even spell "velvit".

This picture is right out of my camera, no fooling around with colors or anything like that even if I knew how to do that. Those "spots" are bubbles. He has also never seen Nori. I am running my new small diatom filter just because I think it is so cool and I am trying to clog it so I can see how easy it is to clean. This one uses no powder.

 

[MadReefer]

I was looking at my Hippo tang just now and I don't think I ever saw a better looking or healthier fish. His skin looks like velvet.
(No, he doesn't have velvet. Thats something only quarantined fish would get) My fish can't even spell "velvit".

This picture is right out of my camera, no fooling around with colors or anything like that even if I knew how to do that. Those "spots" are bubbles. He has also never seen Nori. I am running my new small diatom filter just because I think it is so cool and I am trying to clog it so I can see how easy it is to clean. This one uses no powder.

View attachment 54023

Looks photoshop to me.....LOL

 

[Paul B]

I don't think I even know how to do that. If I did, he would be candle apple red.

 

[Paul B]

This is going to be a useless post about nothing but being it is my thread and very few people read It, I put it here.

About getting Old-er. I looked into the mirror this morning and thought to myself, Wow, I got old. I don't remember getting old, but I am there. My Mom died at 99 and never even took an aspirin or shot of Prizapro. She didn't need glasses or a cane. I can only hope to stay in that state of health for that long. My fish seem to be able to manage it and I smell better than them.

I don't remember going from this. (I am the good looking one on the back with the hair)



To this


I know a lot of things happened in between those pictures (Including a war) but I can't remember the vast majority of them. My wife may ask me to go downstairs to get paper towels and I will go there and try to remember what I came for. I may bring up, toilet paper, news papers, paper mache, paper clips, carbon paper, (google it) paper cups, paper plates etc. and If I think to much I may gather things that sound like paper. Things like black pepper, white pepper, red pepper lemon pepper etc.

Upstairs my wife will see me with a box full of these things and will ask, Wheres the paper towels?

It's weird because my mind seems clearer about things like fish keeping, which I see as a no brainer, building things or fixing things. I walk by myself every morning for an hour long before the sun comes up with a flashlight just so I don't get hit by a farm tractor or deer looking for love in all the wrong places.

As I walk, if I see a piece of farm machinery, airplane, car or almost anything mechanical, my mind will turn to images all sorts of gears, chains and pulleys.

I will get visions of the pistons going up and down in those engines, how the fuel swirls around the combustion chamber, how the transmission works or how the thing is cooled and I can't get these images out of my mind so I will start envisioning how I would build them better, nicer looking, cheaper, more economical or make a Steam Punk Sculpture thing similar to it. My mind wants to build so If I see a bare wall, I go crazy thinking of what I should build to make it really cool. Not a painting but something that actually moves and works. I often go to antique stores looking for anything interesting that I can turn into something useless but more interesting.

This is one of the useless things I built just because I feel it is cool.

Sleeping eludes me and if I don't take something to make me sleep I am wasting my time closing my eyes because I will go into "inventing mode". I get ideas at night and can't wait to get up to draw it and go get the parts. Of course these things hit me in the middle of the night so no stores are open.

I use these linear actuators now all the time. This was a simple thing I installed the day before my shoulder surgery to open the front of my tank

Since then I built a few other things using these actuators including a huge cabinet that disappears into the wall. I am now building another one just because I can. I need to stop.

In the last 4 years I lost 4 of my closest friends. We are all in our 70s and I can't think of one of us (and I have many close friends some from high school) who doesn't have some sort of ailment, many life threatening.

I am one of the only ones who is still pretty healthy except for ligament and bone things. (I can't find a piece of wood to knock on so I am hitting a tooth pick)

When the phone used to ring I was excited to answer up because it was usually about a party, boating trip, vacation, SCUBA diving or something fun. Now I dread when the phone rings because it is invariably someone is sick, hurt or dying.

All my doctors are much younger than me and some are my Grand Daughters age.



I just went to the dentist and as we were talking I mentioned a Disco. As she was using that sucky thing to eliminate the gunk in my mouth from all the drilling she looked at me like I had two heads and had to Google it.

Many things bother me now, especially traffic that I have no patience for, waiting in lines, so I never return anything and I can't think about politics or like Elvis Presley, (Google him) I would shoot my TV and I can't afford a new TV every time I turn it on. Sometimes I scream so loud my wife gets scared and has to calm me down.

When I drive to our Daughters house in Manhattan, I am so stressed by the traffic that when I get there she greets me at the door with a big glass of Vodka and some chocolate to calm me down.

The VA tells me this is all from PTSD even though I haven't fought in a war in 55 years.

I am married for 50 years and our marriage, although always great gets better with time. Now my wife has MS so I have to do many things for her. Things you wouldn't dream of doing for your girlfriend but thats what people who care for each other do.

It's all about helping other people now as I have everything I want and went to every place I wanted to go and did everything I wanted to do. (Kind of.)

We had a full life and I think we did more than our share of fun things. I look at our Daughter and wonder what they do for fun because it seems fun things are lost on the younger generation as it seems to us that they do nothing we would call fun. They do travel a lot but that isn't what I mean. Having lifelong friends at our age who we grew up with and are still better friends than family means everything.. That seems lost on many Millenniums as texting is their "fun" thing. Normally they text how bored they are even though there is an entire world out there.

As we get older, many things that used to seem important seem trivial now. Now it's all about health but it used to be about money, working, paying for a car, house, vacation, copperband butterfly etc.
Raising kids, fretting about the Prom helping them pick a college, get their drivers license, watching them get married then have kids and more kids. Eventually their kids will have kids and we wonder where the time went.

All in all I had a great life and still have a great wife. We have to many friends to spend the time with all of them as we would like. Our social calendar is booked up for many months which is a good thing.

So, so far, I think I did pretty good.

 

[Paul B]

I like walking early in the morning when it's pitch dark. My wife thinks I am nuts and is scared for me.



Not to many things scare me in the dark. OK a couple of things scare me a little such as maybe Nancy Pelosi's big sister "Helga-Bro" Thats her given name.



But the thing that frightens me the most are "Vampire Deer". Of course there is such a thing, Google them.

Being "Vampires" they only come out at night and only on Tuesdays. (Except during Lent, Good Friday or in a Leap Year.)

Vampire Deer subsist on a diet of Bullhead Catfish but I often see them eating those Wardleys sinking Goldfish pellets. If a deer accidently eats a bullfrog, it (the deer, not the fish) would go into severe convulsions where you would think it is possessed or is just learning how to do the "Freddie" Google it. Then it would violently spit out the frog where it (the frog, not the deer) would abandon it's tadpole Progeny and go on to give Jehovah's Witnesses warts.

Besides those things, I am perfectly capable and robust enough to handle any situation that may occur at night even those frightening grey squirrels or Carpenter ants.

I got back from my walk safe and sound, but that's because it's not Tuesday.

 

[Paul B]

I replied to a guy on another forum with this

Hey @Paul B you should see my threads! I spend more time talking about 3D printing than fish. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

Tbrown, I also have a 3D printer but it takes me so long to design something on it that I rarely use it.
My printer is a Resin printer and it makes beautiful and useful things (I don't make stupid dragons, Vikings or little Chinese guys carrying ducks) But I do make things I need like pot handles, knife handles or SteamPunk useless stuff.

I can draw what I want but making the CAD program do what I want eludes me. My computer is made of wood and is a Windows 7. I love the thing and won't get a new one because I am already 75 and it would take me 10 years to figure out how to turn it on so I would most likely throw it through my sliding glass door and those are rather expensive so my wife would divorce me and I would have to pay alimony and fish support.

I am not willing to go through that. Also my computer doesn't want to work with the Elego 3D printer because it doesn't have the memory and neither do I. I did add a "Memory or RAM" card. I don't know what it was but I added something. The computer company tells me I can't boost the thing up any more and need a new computer.

My wife has a new er computer and both of us can't hardly figure it out so we use it as a typewriter. I don't even know how to store a picture on it or print from it so I get frustrated and start yelling at it forcing my wife to stand in front of the sliding glass door so I don't throw the thing through it.

If I were to design a computer it would be very user friendly. When I walked near it it would say "Hello Paul, what would you like to do?"

I would say I would like to post on Reef2Reef and it would automatically bring up this forum without me doing anything. Then It would bring up this thread where the cursor would be blinking at the start of a sentence.

I would type something and I would say "POST" and the thing would automatically appear on the forum.

If I wanted to print something I would say "Print" and it would just print. It wouldn't ask me to input the password, or ask what is my Wi-Fi name or the "WPS" or WIPS, or whatever it is printed in miniscule letters along with 79 other numbers on my router.

It also wouldn't ask if I wanted it printed in landscape, or color, or if I wanted to save it in Google, Facebook , Twitter or Instagram because I have no idea what those things are.

I also want it printed on whatever paper I loaded into the thing so if I loaded a piece of cardboard from the back of a box of Cheeze Whizzes from Amazon, I want it printed on that.

If I say PRINT, I want to see exactly what I wrote in the same color and orientation I wrote it in and I want to see it on the printer in my house and I don't care about Facebook and all those stupid things. Just PRINT the thing I wrote as I wrote it.

 

[Paul B]

I just found this. I always built my Daughter Halloween costumes and she normally won whatever contest she was in. Virtually all her costumes were weird and most were mechanized or at least lit up.

Once right after she was married she wanted to walk in the Halloween Day Parade in Manhattan and she wanted something unusual.

I built her and her husband a Brooklyn Bridge since they live near it.
It was all lit up, about 12' long and had cars and trucks. There was also an accident that was smoking and a helicopter hovering above. Road flares surrounded the wreck.

I would have built it larger but it had to be able to be folded up to fit in their elevator.

They were interviewed on the news a few times. It was very cool.

 

[MadReefer]

You crashed the purple Hot Wheel!!! I had a similar one and was one of my favorites.

 

[Paul B]

I posted this in 2016.

Why so many problem threads

I can't believe that there are so many problems in this rewarding
hobby. If you read through these forums you will read almost nothing
but problems and this is supposed to be a hobby.

A hobby is supposed to be fun. If you have been in this for 4 years and for 3 years and 6
months you see nothing but problems, perhaps this is not for you.
I hear stamp collecting is fun and there is absolutely no stress. I
feel bad for some members here.

Many posts go something like this:

NEED HELP FAST
Please help.
I came home yesterday and I knew something was wrong, The cleaning
lady, who I later found out is not really a cleaning lady, or even a
lady for that matter, was sprawled out on the couch next to my dog, who
was in a coma, the dog, not the lady.

OMG I quickly ran to my reef tank but
tripped over something, it was my cat, also comotose.
When I finally got to the tank the lights were on, but very dim. I
realized the tank was dim because my new ORP controller that was behind
the tank, was on fire.

I quickly put out the fire and pulled the chain to put on the tank
lights. At first all seemed well but then I smelled something. I
sniffed around the tank but could not find the problem, then I noticed
the cleaning "lady" was standing behind me, with the cat.

The cleaning lady doesn't speak English, or any language that I could
tell, but in sign language she explained to me that my wife ran away
with Sam. Sam is our butcher, but my wife is a vegetarian.

Now it seemed that the only good thing was my reef tank so I got
comfortable in front of the tank and called for my other dog, "Lucky".

Lucky took a long time coming to me because lucky was born with only
one leg. And for some reason that leg always points north, no matter
which way Lucky is facing, that leg points north. As Lucky ran towards
me I heard that satisfying sound of his paw on the hardwood floor, "Ker
plunk" "Ker plunk" "Ker plunk".

He has a few other, not so serious health problems but he is a loving
pet. Lucky sat with me watching the tank. He sits with his back to
the tank because Lucky only has one eye, and it faces backward.

As me and Lucky were watching the tank, I noticed that my mandarin
seemed to be eating more pods than usual. I found this odd because
there are no pods in my tank. On closer inspection I noticed that they
were not pods, but lice. I then realized that the cleaning lady, who
has hair down to her knees which it is always wet, must have washed her
hair in the tank.

This cleaning lady came to us about 6 weeks ago, at first I thought she
was an environmentalist because she had three shopping carts with her,
filled to the brim with plastic bottles and cans. When I opened the
door the first thing I noticed was that she had on her right foot this
really beautiful Yves St Laurent high heel shoe. On her left foot was
a timberland boot. The Timberland boot had this sticky substance
oozing from the underside but I won't go into that right now.

I asked her if she knew anything about reef tanks, calcium reactors,
oxygenators, protein skimmers etc.

She nodded to all my questions so I invited her in. I quickly learned
she had this crick in her neck and nods constantly. As a matter of
fact, that is the only movement she can make above her waist. She
doesn't really have a waist but you get the idea.

Anyway I don't want to stray from my tank problem. As I said, the
mandarin was eating, lice, but he seemed to enjoy them. I searched for
the other tank inhabitants and noticed my two hermit crabs. One was
laying on his side, obviously in distress. I put on my reading
glasses and took a closer look.

He has varicose veins and probably a
little osteoporosis. The other crab seems fine and was sitting on a
roll of pennies. I wondered where the pennies came from until I saw a
wad of rolled up twenty dollar bills under the anemone, (who was dead)

The bills had a pink rubber band around them and I realized they were
from my dresser. The cleaning lady was probably stealing money from me
and hiding it in the tank. I was born at night, but not last night. I
put two and two together and figured that this cleaning lady might have
a problem.

Anyway, this is how many posts go on these fish forums. Can't we get
some happy posts like:
Yesterday Angelina Jolie came to my door, she heard I have a reef
tank and just loves reef tanks, she also loves to clean and cook and
she owns a yacht.
Thats the type of posts I want to hear about.

 

[Paul B]

3 of these in the same shot.

 

[MadReefer]

Love the Red Wasp fish and want it.

 

[Paul B]

They are my favorites.

 

[MadReefer]

They are my favorites.

Never see them in stores by me. You may need to ship them to me....haha

 

[reefsandrotts]

Red wasps I've seen in my lfs are usually $125 or more

 

[Paul B]

They are fairly common here. I think they are about $35.00 but one guy charges $90.00. I don't buy fish from him

 

[MadReefer]

Road trip....LOL

 

[Paul B]

Cold walk this morning. 22 degrees and windy.



People here now feel this is cold, especially the young people. In the 70s it never got warmer than 25 degrees in January. I used to walk to school, up hill both ways in 3' snow drifts. (My school was on the side of a volcano so the ground used to shift every few hours so it was always uphill whichever way I walked. )

Anyway, like I said, I met my friend yesterday morning and he had the day off because it was raining and snowing. And he is an "ICE" Agent! Really! My taxes are paying Federal Agents to stay home because it is cold and raining.

He was waiting for the school bus with his 12 year old Son. After my walk I noticed that he was still waiting so I asked him what happened to the bus. He said he just found out the school opening is 2 hours late because it's "cold".

We are now really raising a generation of "Girly Snowflakes". People get off from work because it's raining and kids don't have to go to school because it's cold. Really!!. This drives me crazy. Do the people living in Alaska have all the days off because it's below freezing? No, they don't. Then jump on their dog sled, go 15 or 20 miles through the tundra while evading Polar Bears and maybe harpoon a walrus on the way for lunch.

I worked as a construction electrician in Manhattan for almost 50 years and much of that was outside because "Construction" means you are "Constructing" something because the building someone wants isn't there yet so you have to build it. Most of the skyscrapers in Manhattan were not built inside a heated building so you had to build them outside, yes in the cold.
We could legally work outside if it was above 4 degrees or (I think) up to 96 degrees.



The top picture I am hanging off the roof of the Plaza Hotel and it was 17 degrees that day. That is frozen Central Park below me.

The bottom picture I am the foreman CAD welding (in the white hat) on a New York City garbage incinerator.

In the decades I worked I never I ever took off for weather, even 2' of snow and I can count on one hand how many times I took a day off sick and those times I was in the hospital for a broken bone or to have a cro bar removed from sticking out of some place on my body.

Now in the Army, the drill Sargent's are not allowed to curse at you or hit you and if it is raining, to hot or cold, they train you indoors.
Are we training people for combat or "Dancing With the Stars"?

When I was in the Army in 1969 the Drill Sargent's could probably run you over with a tank if they wanted to and hitting or punching you was considered mandatory. I was scared to death of Drill Sargent's while I was in basic . But after that, while I lived in the jungle for a year covered in mud, especially in Monsoon season, I was very grateful for that training and "toughening up. A Man really should get punched in the face a few times so he knows what it feels like. It makes you tougher and if the scariest thing that ever happened to you was a big accountant texted you a mean looking Emoji, then you are probably not that tough and may need some street smarts.
Just my opinion of course and I am very opinionated.

 

[MadReefer]

Was 11 degrees here with wind chill was -1.

 

[Paul B]

Thats Man weather. It's 22 degrees here now, windy and pitch dark. Perfect for my morning walk. I walk an hour and make a little more than 2 miles. I can't walk as fast as I used to. Unless of course a Polar Bear is chasing me.

 

[Paul B]

Beautiful walk.