I (Kinda) Saw An Eclipse

On 08/21/2017 at 10:44 PM by goaztecs

Ok so I really wanted to get a blog out on Monday just so I could say I still wrote a blog on Eclipse Day and not use a title revolving around Bonnie Tyler or Pink Floyd. Since I was nowhere near the path I only got maybe 60% of the eclipse, which is still really cool but not as swanky as the folks who made their way to Oregon. Well I got a late start to looking for eclipse glasses, like I started on Friday. Yeah it was already a lost cause especially at Lowe's where apparently customer service is not one of their strong suits. After making some calls and roaming around including checking on Amazon (congrats to you resellers who are now stuck with tons of glasses that you were selling for $100) I went the old school method and cut up a box

I camped out in the backyard from 9-11ish waiting for the events to begin. It actually started at 9:30 SoCal time so every 10 minutes or so I would get up, step out from under the awning and see what the big fuss was all about. In the down time I was on Twitter, and listening to some tunes. An hour into this fine event I see this

I called it Pac Man so its now game related (you're welcome Pixlbit) and spent the rest of the time doing the same. I had my GoPro sitting on a plastic chair in the middle of the yard hoping I could get something but the footage was just too bright. I did a time lapse so it wasn't a total loss because you could see the see move. I also brought out my camera but I wanted to do a time lapse of the yard but I never got around to it.

It was a good time and I can say I was outside during the eclipse even if I didn't really see much more than the moon cover maybe 50% of the sun and the sky had a weird tint that I called “sunglasses look”

Since there really isn't much to this blog I would like to update you folks about my travel laptop. After a week of delays and a trip to Walmart for some velcro I got the gear portion of the travel laptop all situated.

The travel laptop is 11 inches, my former WWE/Netflix streaming machine, and really isn't super powerful but it can run Photoshop (just really slow compared to my everyday machine) and other programs. I bought a USB hub where you can turn on and off the individual ports so when I'm not using the external hard drive it won't take any power. Speaking of external hard drives I might need a bigger one than the 1 TB I have on it because it looks like my FLAC project is going to take up more space than the laptop has.

My desktop isn't sorted out yet but I do like the wallpaper. The Lilo & Stitch “She's Touching Me” scene is freaking hilarious!

Here is my travel laptop running Musicbee. After I rip my CDs I might try other music players just to see which ones are able to talk to my Music Player especially with syncing play counts but that's for another time. I still need to get some programs running, and I should be good.

Alright Pixlpeeps I am off. I've been playing some NBA 2K and I'm one game away from the NBA Finals. I need to start jumping into the games I've been buying recently so I can knock them off Mount Backlog.

Alright Pixlpeeps I am off. It's 7:30 and Jeopardy is on. Have a good week!

That's all for now, more later!

-Chris

KnightDriver

08/21/2017 at 10:59 PM

It was kind of cloudy in Philly today but I caught a few glimpses of the eclipse and then saw it on a telescope at my local library. I wrangled some glasses last minute to watch the last few minutes of it. Not a total one from where I am in the country, but fun anyway.

goaztecs

08/22/2017 at 12:06 PM

You got lucky with the glasses. They were like gold here. My friend who was working in Vegas said it was cloudy there too. I should have visited the local library.

08/22/2017 at 09:28 PM

I totally went out to look at the last possible minute. I had no preparation and missed out on all the glasses. Then, on the way back from the park, we decided to stop by the library just for the heck of it and there was a guy with a telescope there and some extra glasses after most of the people had left. So I never did see it completely covered, but it was still cool.

Cary Woodham

08/22/2017 at 02:01 AM

I didn't watch the eclipse. I missed out on getting any of the special glasses. But after thinking about it, I didn't feel too bad. I've been reading reports of some glasses being faulty, and my vision is bad enough as it is, I didn't want to chance making it worse. Plus I had to get ready for work when it was happening.

Speaking of which, i work at a hardware store and we sell welding equipment, including helmets and glasses. Over the past couple of days, I've been getting TONS of customers asking for welding goggles. None of the ones we sell are strong enough to view the eclipse with. The next day I went to work, all the welding glasses were gone. I sure hope the customers did their research and took caution since I wasn't there to warn them!

08/22/2017 at 12:11 PM

It's crazy how some folks would people's health in danger to make a quick buck. Yeah after reading about what to look for I thought about getting the replacement lenses for Welder's Masks but those were out as well. The local Harbor Freight was the only store that had goggles but they were no where near as powerful enough to use.

Hopefully the people who bought those goggles were using them for actual welding. Good to read that when you are working you warn folks. Stores need more people like you who take the extra couple of minutes.

Halochief90

08/22/2017 at 03:54 PM

I missed out on the eclipse. which is weird because I was big into astronomy early in college. oh well. I wouldn't have had a good view where I live anyway.

09/07/2017 at 01:10 PM

In California a little more than half the sun was covered. It was still interesting but it was fun to see the images from areas where there was 100% coverage.

PixlBit