My Other Interests

My Other Interests

I worked for the Elgin Joliet & Eastern railway company in gary indiana from july 1965 to 1-86.I started out on the maintaince of way in gary my dad got me on and i went to south chicago for a year or so as a roadway machine operator and in may 1968 i became a switchman in kirk yard gary indiana.Above is a slideshow with many ``J`` photographs for you to enjoy.From my links page there are links to YouTube and my family video`s where you can watch several movies i made about the E.J.& E.On Veoh i have a 1 hour & 49 minute movie of the 8:30am #2 misc transfer from 1988.

On this page i will tell you about some of the things i like to do and show you some pictures also.I have been a machanic since i was 12 or so and have learned about and worked on/repaired many things over these years.Below are many pictures in an embeded flash slideshow.You can control the player with the icons/buttons on the bottom to remove the text captions,stop,go back,etc and clicking the picture will open it in another window full size.I hope you have time to view them and i hope you enjoy the slideshow.Norman.

Here Is a Photo Of The Garage Wall By The Service Entrance where I have Worked On Things For The Past 32 Years.I Have Many Tools And Other Items To Make A Hard Job Very Easy.I Have Lived Here For Almost 33 years Now & Have Been Upgrading My Garage & Tools & My General Work Area For The Whole Time.Im Of The Opinion That If You Decide To Do Some Work On Something 1st Of All You Need The Proper Work Area & The Proper Tools To Do The Work So I have Seen To It that I Am Well Equiped.When I Have A Car In Here Its Where The Tools Are & Just Above This Is A Retractable Air Hose Reel & Droplight Reel.This All Makes for A Very Comfortable Working Experence.Below is a short 15 minute video of my shop & tools I made today 9-9-2008.

Here Is A Shot Looking At The Small Compressor & Drillpress Next To The Service Entrance.Notice The Large Yellow Object,Well This Is What Keeps Me Warm On Those Cold Winter Nights When Im Out Here Working On A Piece Of Equipment,Etc.

Here Is The Work Bench by The ``Big Door`` Where I Have Spent Countless Hours Working On Things.This Is The area I Do My Electronic & Radio Work,Repair,Etc.The Green Thing Between The Benches Is my Emergency Generator.

Here is a shot of the desk in the garage where i do electronics work,study manuals or even sit and watch the tv...

More Of My Work Area

Here is a picture of the stand with the bench drill press and parts washer and some more tool boxes.I have seperate boxes for lets say air conditioning tools,plumbing tools,etc.

My dear mother loved flowers and my dear dad loved vegetable gardening and mom taught me how to plant and care for flowers.Below are some of my favorite photos of the yard,roses and other flowers.

Here is a picture of the roses on the yard side of the fence in the summer of 2004 and below is a video of my yard & flowers made on july 8th 2008.

Roses outside gate

Here are some flowers in the front yard in the summer of 2005 and as you can see i love flowers and to have a very serene quite place that is back to nature and beautifull,a place that is my own to sit and see things that most people simply cant because they are so caught up in working, raising kids or worse...My life belongs to me and i can watch the birds in the feeders and the squirrels and just enjoy the subtle things in life that so many people dont even miss because they have yet to experience them...Somewhat like eyes wide open and totally BLIND!

Picnic table summer 2004

My 1995 Geo Metro

This picture is of me playing one of my guitars in the living room at home in 1986.The guitar i am playing is my Kay ``Old Craftsman``.I have played guitar now for 50 years

jan 2005

Me in the big snow!

My HP Pavillion Notebook

The above picture`s are of my dell XPS-450 and XPS- 400 & GX-260 & my HP Pavillion notebook which are next to my radio console in my home office/radio room.The XPS-450 is a pentium 3, 450 mhz with 256mb of ram an external usb hp cd writer and 20 gb hd with webcam..My flatbed scanner is a 1999 model plustek.The XPS-400 is new a pentium d 2.8 ghz w/dual core technology with 2.80g (16k primary memory cache,1024 secondary memory cache 2048mb total) DDR2 SDRM ram & 833 f/s bus & 80 gb hd,The GX-260 is a pentium 4,1.7 gig,80g hd,512mb ram it has a ieee1394/firewire card and is the one i use for video editing.My notebook has has an intel core 2 duo cpu 1.83 ghz,,3 gb ram 358 video ram & 250 GB HD and is also networked using wireless 802.11 g & wpa2 encription with builtin webcam and dual smart microphones it also has a firewire (ieee-1394) port,hdmi,s-video & modem.They are networked via ethernet cards with a linksys WRT54GS 802.11g 4 port wireless broadband router with a linksys wireless ethernet print server which makes this a very comfortable work enivironment.The router has the new WPA2 encriyption standard & an SPI hardware firewall.To the left of the above left picture is my amateur radio equipment console which can be viewed on my amatuer radio page,it is fully intergrated with the computer so as to operate digital,echolink,etc from the computer keyboard & screen and i have the equipment configured (cat control) so it sends the radio data,frequency,etc to the computer.For instance if i click on the waterfall at lets say 7.071 it tunes my radio to this frequency and all i have to do to log it is double click the highlighted callsign.I also have both computers configured to work both Hf/Vhf Packet & Aprs.I have an adjustable pneumatic ``Throne`` when i am seated here working on something and these are the tools one must have if they want to do a job and get it done correctly although it helps if one knows what they are doing...

Above is my RCA CC4352 Camcorder and the below picture is of my Canon Elura 100.As you may or may not know i like photography and working with analog & digital photo`s and video editing.My RCA is a top of the line full size machine with many features and the Canon is fully digital with a 1gb sd memory and minDV tape & also allows me to copy analog tapes to the miniDV format and/or convert them from analog to digital format.I also have a Sony Mavica FD-73 digital camera and several regular film camera`s as well.

click here for a lager view of this picture

My Canon Elura 100

Website Designed By Norman P. Triantafilos 3-15-04

Music On This Website By Vera Lynn ``We`ll Meet Again`` 1942