Post a picture of your most recent purchase....(not poker chips) (3 Viewers)

A super random, "I really don't need this" item, but with a teeny, tiny personal connection:


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Yes, that's a piece of that Wright Flyer.

(apologies in advance for the Ben Book here. I'm not 100% sober and currently feel a little nostalgic and wordy)

I've always been fascinated with aviation and spaceflight. I distinctly remember the first time I went to the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. when we lived in a suburb of the District while my Dad was there for his job. Not long after coming through the main entrance, one would cross a lobby area and come to a railing looking down and across the "Milestones of Flight" gallery. Long before you made it to that railing, there was the Bell X-1 that first broke the sound barrier to the left, an X-15 to the right (my second favorite airplane) and front and center, the Wright Brothers "Wright Flyer", the first heavier than air craft to attain controlled flight. Peering over the edge, John Glenn's "Friendship 7" and the Apollo 11 Command Module waiting for closer inspection once you went down the stairs.

RIght in the center of your eye-line, essentially the first thing you saw when you came through the door, and holding station overhead while in the gallery below, was the Wright Flyer. They clearly understood what it was and what it represented, and it was there... hard to ignore. Simple and elegant, that alone made it stand out among the more technologically advanced craft around it. What it stood for and it's place in the things that surrounded it made it more poignant.

It's like it was saying "if it weren't for this one thing, nothing else in this space would likely be present."

I was probably ten, maybe a little younger, definitely not much older, my Dad and I went on a "father-son" trip. Just the two of us. Get in the car and off we go. We drove south. We explored parts of southern Virginia and northern North Carolina, just to the two of us. We talked about things I don't remember. It doesn't matter, father-son stuff. Things that were inconsequnetial at the time, and were almost certainly trivial in the big picture of things, but are part of the "growing up" process. I do remember stopping at a roadside carnival and racing a couple woefuly underpowered go-carts with him.

One of the stops at the far end of the drive, before turning back for the trip back home, was at Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, specifically to see the famous lightouse there (I remember it had been featured in an issue of National Geographic along with several others around the area). As part of that excursion along the cape, we stopped at Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills to see the location of the first flight.

A reproduction of the Wright's launch rail was there (that I did my worst balance beam on!) as well as the preserved shed they kept their experimental craft safe in when not in use. I rember finding a dime on the beach and stuffing it in my pocket thinking it could be the coin the Wright Brothers flipped to decide who would pilot the Flyer on the first flight. It was warm and windy, probably the very winds the Wright's were looking to take advantage of in their testing and eventual successful first flight.

Fast foreward more than three decades, I'm busy scrolling though a site with estate items. I was directed there looking for some older animation art, the obsession other than chips that I spend too much time and money on. I came up empty, but my eye lit on this little morsel and it drove me down a little bit of a historical rabbit hole. The Wright's made four flights on that first day, with the fourth ending in a landing that damaged the craft. Before it could be safely recovered and returned for minor repairs, it was caught in a gust of wind that irreparably damaged it.

From here, a long tale of the craft, from nearly being burnt as trash to disputes of what museum would take stewardship of it entailed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Flyer#After_Kitty_Hawk

As part of the early storage of the craft, she was damaged in storage and when the Wright's turned her over for display, the canvas was removed and replaced. The original canvas for the wings passed from their family through a couple different owners, and has subsequently been cut up and dispersed. Most famously, pieces went to the moon on Apollo 11, Space Shuttle Challenger and most recently, onboard Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter that arrived with Perserverence in 2021.

This particular piece wound up in the hands of an art dealer and historian and eventually cut and dispersed as part of his estate.


As warned, many, many words for a really cool piece of history, but also a bit of personal history to go with it, and why this was such a cool find for myself.

I found a high-resoluton scan of the photograph of the first flight in the National Archives that I'm thinking of having printed and framed along with this fragment. Either that, or I'll use the thing as a very fancy card cap! :ROFL: :ROFLMAO:
 
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My son is finishing up the 5th grade and progressing from Elementary school to middle school. He's never had his own computer or laptop before. Just the Chromebook the school district in our town has given to the kids to use in school. A few of his friends have their own PCs. So as a present for him graduating to Middle School we decided it is time for his own computer. We were not trying to break the bank as he only plays Minecraft and Roblox on his Nintendo Switch and it's his first computer. This laptop I was looking at earlier in the week somehow was $130 cheaper last night on the Dell site than earlier so I jumped on it and ordered it. The monitor I got from New Egg. I think he'll enjoy and be surprised when we give it to him.

Laptop - Dell G15 Gaming Laptop AMD RYZEN I5, Windows 11 Home, 16 GB Memory, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA 3050 Graphics Card.
Monitor - ASUS 24" FHD Gaming Monitor with 144 Hz Refresh Rate which if you overclock it can go to 165 Hz refresh rate.

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My son’s laptop came in today and I set up the Laptop and monitor. I also added a mini Vizio soundbar which fit right under the monitor stand. I got the soundbar from Goodwill at a pretty good price and it came with the power cable and remote which. I had a new version of the same soundbar which I use on my home laptop and it’s worked well for me.
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Looks like prime real estate for a meetup.
The building in the background of that rendering is Phase II. Hopefully breaking ground on that soon after the pool is completed. 1000 sq ft shop/man cave/poker club. A Houston meetup is definitely in the plans after everything is completed.

You couldn't post the other dream?? :cautious:

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Edit: I forgot to check if it’s allowed to post guns on here. Please correct me if this post should be deleted.

Not poker chips but poker related.
This isn‘t part of my hobbies, but when I saw them my bank account experienced an impulse-buy.

Especially considering that my home game & venue is called Daniel‘s Saloon. And I‘m a fan of Westerns. Man I love these!

I‘ll build a nice wooden case to display them, probably including black AA88 from an old Deck and some cartridges.

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Big day today. Finally signed the contract to start digging our new pool next Tuesday.

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Technically, when I posted this, it wasn't quite a purchase yet. But it is now after writing the first two checks!

Last Tuesday they dug the hole, and today is gunite day! Starting to shape up!!!

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Never updated to show the final. Super happy how it turned out.

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But my latest purchase was unfortunately a not so enjoyable new roof.

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Looks fantastic! I should have a pic like that in about a month.

Did you get those ridiculously expensive in water chairs? I forget what the brand is. I was pricing them several months ago while looking for a less expensive alternative. Love to hear your opinion.
 
Looks fantastic! I should have a pic like that in about a month.

Did you get those ridiculously expensive in water chairs? I forget what the brand is. I was pricing them several months ago while looking for a less expensive alternative. Love to hear your opinion.
Thanks! We love it.

And yes, I got the Ledge Loungers. They were like $750/chair for basically molded hollow plastic that you fill with water every season. But they are sexy, durable and comfortable. I looked at the cheaper alternatives and yeah, could have save some $$$ but 1.) the reviews all indicated that the Ledge Loungers are by far the best and 2.) and more important, the wife said we were getting the Ledge Loungers, period, so that is what we got. In the end I'm quite happy with them.
 
Meetup at this place in a month! Woohoo! :cool
Add a couple years and we can talk. I still don't have my poker space built out yet. That's phase 2, hopefully underway before the end of the year. So the best I can do now is host a game when the wifey goes out of town.

Wait, she is going to her mother's after the pool is finished. EFF IT! Meetup in a month or so!!! (limited to two tables though... )

JUST KIDDING!
 
Add a couple years and we can talk. I still don't have my poker space built out yet. That's phase 2, hopefully underway before the end of the year. So the best I can do now is host a game when the wifey goes out of town.

Wait, she is going to her mother's after the pool is finished. EFF IT! Meetup in a month or so!!! (limited to two tables though... )

JUST KIDDING!
What a fuckin roller coaster of emotion this post was..
 

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