Posts Made By: Edd Weninger

Before I put my AP 155 on a used AP900, I had it mounted on a Celestron CGE with good results.

I know a lot of you are digging out from snow, but I thought when you're done, you might enjoy some pictures of a SoCal Saturday morning ;-) Cars & Coffee is an un-official, un-sponsered get together every Saturday morning from 6:00 am to ~9:00 am. If you're a car guy or gal bring whatever you like and mingle with a wide variety of others. This week they had the British Invasion, but there were a lot of bad-to-the-bone there also.

http://cncpics.com/v/mar08/080308/?g2_page=9

Race one mile out, turn around and return to start/finish.

Which one is quicker?

http://www.snotr.com/video/568

On the only day I have been able to use my SolarMax 90 I got a reasonable sunburn. Obviously not thinking whilst looking at the roiling ball of energy.

I think I'll make a sun shield from 1/2" foam board. Any opinions as to whether it should be flat black on the side facing the eyepiece?

Thanks,

Edd Weninger

I thought you guys might like my coffee tables.

Not many guys would consider this bad.........

Central Arizona 17,500 feet just east of Prescott.

From AERO-NET Tue, 06 Jul '10

Bolden: NASA's Primary Mission Should Be To Foster Better Muslim Relations

Comments Made During Interview With Al Jazeera Television.

In a recent interview with Al Jazeera television, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said his, and by extension NASA's "foremost" mission is to improve U.S./Muslim relations. And he said President Obama has given him that task.

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he (Obama) charged me with three things," Bolden told the interviewer. "One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering,"

Fox News reports that Bolden was in the Middle East last month to mark the anniversary of the President's speech to Muslim nations in Cairo. During the interview, he described space exploration as an international effort, and that the Muslim world must be a part of that effort.

Bolden insisted his mission was not diplomatic. He said the U.S. is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit without international help, and that no country could make it to Mars on its own. He held up international partnerships with the Russians, Japan, and Europe in ISS as examples of they type of international cooperation that continued space exploration will require. He told Al Jazeera that the Moon, Mars, and asteroids are all potential destinations for manned space flight, but a lunar colony was unlikely because "you don't have to."

Actually, the Meade Ha scopes are now made in Mexico. I have the SolarMax 90 and it works well. Pre-Meade were certainly not better, at least in the PST scopes. Meade inherited the "rust" problem from the original Coronado.

Insulted? Yes I am.

President Obama's recent comments alluding to the federal government's role in building companies is way off base.

My career has been the field of life-support medical devices, begun in 1965. I joined an existing company in 1965 that was started in 1961 and grew of it's own accord.

After 10 years, I left to start my own company which was built from the ground up. Starting with 2 people, we grew to over 100 employees by 2008 when the company was sold.

We used no local, state or federal loans. We did borrow from private banks.

We leased a building built by a private developer in an area zoned as industrial. Our lease payments covered the considerable property taxes levied by local and state government that increased year-by-year.

The developer built and paid for the roads.

The privately built roads linked to city and county roads paid for with local tax revenues collected on gasoline sales. Those roads linked to the interstate highways paid for with the federal tax revenues on gasoline sales.

We consumed electricity from a privately owned power company fortunate enough to be "permitted" by various government agencies to build power plants and connect through the privately owned electrical grid. The cost of our electricity had a considerable amount of local, state and federal "fees" and taxes.

We bought parts and materials from the U.S.A. and all over the world from private companies. Various items were subject to "duties" and custom processing fees paid to the federal government.

We bought machining and other equipment needed to manufacture our products. These added to the net worth of the company, hence, increased our property tax. We also had an annual inventory tax on the value of stock we had on hand end-of-year.

We paid our employees appropriate wages, provided health care and 401(k) contributions. In addition, we paid for unemployment insurance, FICA, etc.

Most of the employees were there for a long time when the company was sold.

I'm proud of the fact that a few of the machinists we hired and trained on CNC equipment founded their own business to provide machined parts we needed at a lower cost than we could make them. They borrowed private funds as a start-up and bought newer, more productive CNCs.

Where is everything today? The ACA has put a dampener on the medical industry. Hospitals, our primary customer, do not know what the Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement rates will be in the future. They have essentially frozen investments in new care facilities.

My old company is down to ~50 employees.

I'm sorry, but government did not help us build a company, we paid our way as we went along, but now, it has almost destroyed it.


As an addendum, the FDA began to oversee the medical device industry in 1976. Prior to that, we built what doctors and clinicians told us they needed. After 1976, to introduce a new device required it to be "substantially equivalent" to previously marketed devices.

This month, the FDA is having a conference (I was invited) to discuss why there hasn't been more innovation in the development of new devices.