Kodak Slide Scanner Works!!

Warning: Lots of photos and story telling involved.

If you remember last week I received my missing Kodak Slide Scanner but there were two issues that made it inoperable. The SD card would not lock in the slot which is needed to save the photos to that are converted from slides or negatives. Photos from that SD card are then transferred to your computer or TV screen, your choice. It also would not work once plugged into three different computers. I took it back for a refund, then ordered another one. I did not want to ship it to my house but to ship to the Best Buy store where I could pick it up. They texted two days earlier than planned for me to pick it up.

Of course there was no problems getting it shipped from another Best Buy facility to my local store. It showed up in brand new condition. My SD card was delivered by Amazon Prime early Friday night. I couldn't wait, so I plugged it in and thought I would do four or five slides to figure out how this worked. Well I couldn't stop and ended up scanning 483 slides and/or 35mm negatives. Some of the slides were those small 110 that were taken with those popular thin Kodak cameras back in the 1970s.

But before I can go into the scanning story with some photos from that work, I have to back up and talk about my trip to Barnes&Nobles bookstore, when I thought they had gone out of business nationwide. It was great to find one on the other side of town and was the biggest B&N store I had ever been in.

I am not a builder but my friend in Phoenix is. She has a nice collection of Lego's cars and trucks, including a VW Bus. I couldn't resist and sent her a photo of this from the bookstore. Of course like any bookstore, hours are spent browsing and that still isn't enough time, so I will be going back to look around.

My plant seems to be doing much better by not rotating the pot at times. I don't know how to prevent those leaves from falling off after they dry out. What makes them dry out if there is soft moist soil.?

This plant is growing wild and I cannot figure out where to put it besides on one end of the kitchen table that I rarely use to eat meals on. Suggestions?

It is raining tonight but that makes no difference in the weather we have had the past week. It might get cool at night but by mid-afternoon it's been in the high 50's every day this week. It was so nice that even Walter has been barking at the door when he wants to go out. That is something new. Friday afternoon the skies were full of planes and contrails.

While I sat on the patio enjoying the weather ... the hounds relaxed too.

The past few months, maybe five to six months I have been eating a low carb high fat high protein diet. I am always reading about nutrition. I was never successful at Keto but I was doing Paleo years ago. A lot of the changes in my diet were due to my indigestion. Oatmeal would give me indigestion but not this one pound prime rib steak I had today at brunch before the IU basketball game on tv. 

Where I use to stuff myself with those pregame meals of omelets, and as many waffles or pancakes as I could eat, I now eat bacon and eggs. I also eat a lot of beef and salmon for dinners without anything else. Occasionally some steamed broccoli or asparagus with melting Kerrygold Butter, but nothing else. The Mediterranean Diet was tried and made me feel lethargic, bloated, as did a Plant Based Diet. But the diets that leaned toward LCHF work. I eat the fat and gristle that comes with it. Plus my indigestion is gone unless I go back to eating carbs. 

All of the photos now are from scanned 35mm slides or 35mm negatives ... but this one and those of my bike trip in 1976 are from a Kodak 110 camera that had slides so small I never could see them without a slide machine which is long lost. I met a rider at a campground just north of Los Angeles on my cross country bike trip that started in Indiana, with a stop in Carlsbad California. From Carlsbad I started up the coast highway to Seattle. So any photos of me were taken by him. Ironic to think that an old VW bus is passing me as I almost finished my trip across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Before I could ride cross country I had to train. My friend who lives up the street from me now took this photo while he was riding his bike behind me, sorry for the blurriness. Actually my longest training ride before that 3,500 mile summer, was 40 miles from Bloomington Indiana to my parents house. This is heading for Lake Monroe on Hwy 446 in the spring of 1976.

It might have been July but along the coast getting close to the Bay Area, it was cold. Cold enough to ride in a down jacket because that wind blowing into me from the NW was cold, winter cold. Yes, that black hair is real ... LOL ... where did it all go???

This is looking south on the coast highway. Not a lot of room between that white line and the bank on the side.

By this time heading into Vancouver Washington area I was starting to feel some slight knee pain in my left knee. Right below my kneecap. In colder weather now in 2023 I feel that same pain sometimes. All my camping equipment and clothes were in those two bags, nothing on the front wheel like they have now. That is my sleeping bag in that horizontal roll and that blue down jacket I was wearing is in that blue stuff sack. 

I am guessing Northern California coast, maybe Oregon. Remember these photos are what was scanned from a 110 slide. Blurry but not really bad considering the size of the slide film and the age, 47 years.

In 1981 I bought my first 35mm camera, a Canon (can't remember the model), that had manual focus, nothing automatic. I did not know how to operate it. My brother at the time was going to Indiana University and a friend on the team got the tickets for him and I. That photo is taken from my seat, right behind the basket. IU won the NCAA Championship that year, they ended up having 7 players on that team that played later in the NBA.

Sitting on the beach in Hawaii in 1981 when I took this photo with a "doubler" making my zoom lens a 800mm. I was able to catch this boat in three sequence photos as it moved in front of the setting sun. I later got all three photos blown up and framed ... I don't have them now so they were given to friends over the years.

I will admit I was pretty wild in my 20's. Alcohol was usually involved and sometimes there were some interesting results the next morning after drinking all night, as I would pry my eyelids open. Well in 1981 my friend and I found this VW bus for sale in the Oceanside Blade Tribune, $1,100 dollars cash brought it to his driveway. I think it actually ran and I drove it home with my friend following me. 

His wife was about as straight as you could be and never could figure out what her husband and I had in common but we covered a lot of territory with a lot of stories that she still reminds me with 40 some years later. All we heard the next morning eating her fine breakfast with no Bloody Mary's offered ... "How long is that going to be in my driveway??? ..... well it was there until he and I finished what we had planned for it.

This was taken about three years later up in Whidbey Island but it is the only photo I can find of the finished product. In the 80's you didn't keep VWs buses or VW bugs stock, the thing to do was modify them. So we ripped out the front seats, some 3/4" plywood bolted in for a bench platform and then two seats from a Porsche 914 were installed. I saw the idea in VW Magazine. There was a strap on the back edge of that plywood for those times a Mini Keg of beer went with us. You never wanted those to tip over.

It did not have a middle seat to it was perfect for more 3/4" wood installed, carpet pad and carpet for the floor, up and over the engine compartment and over the footlocker we made to store my clothes. Of course no VW bus could survive without the latest 100 watts per channel stereo and two 6x9 JBL speakers mounted on the angle where the carpet went from the floor up to the top of the engine compartment.

Curtains were also installed and held on with four Velcro squares on each window. Believe it or not my friends wife sewed and made curtains for the bus. She later wanted to rid in it. I knew she could be converted to a VW bus lover. LOL. 

I drove that bus all over the USA and later sold it to a young kid begging me to sell it to him up in Oak Harbor Washington.

Before moving to Whidbey Island I was able to take my Canon with the zoom lens to a few games in Jack Murphy Stadium to watch the Padres and Reds play. The Reds were still my favorite team that year as they set an all time team record for total losses in a season. That name above might be familiar to a few readers.

Steve Garvey had moved from the LA Dodgers to San Diego that year. They later played in the 1984 World Series. That stadium no longer stands. 

The beach and water all changed once I moved to Oak Harbor Washington. The water was always cold and the winds could be brutal. That actually wasn't the Pacific Ocean but the sound between Vancouver Island and Whidbey Island.

The cold winds and cold water never bothered Sadie and Harry when we went for our walks in 1987. The sounds and view of Vancouver Island was just down the street and would have the halfway point of hound walks.

Sadie on the left was bought from the Oak Harbor Animal Shelter. She was "a runner" as they said and her claim to fame before being caught and impounded before I bought her ... she got away one Friday night and was running down the center of the field during the high school football game. I'm told no one could catch her. I named her Sadie after the Beatles song lyrics on the white album ... "Sexy Sadie where have you gone" in honor of all of her escapes.

Harry was my very first basset hound puppy ... of course don't dogs need real military dog tags with their name and phone number on them??? Photo taken in Coupeville Washington around 1987.

Harry and I were the only ones that made it to Breckenridge Colorado in 1991. It was snowing the day we moved in, October 1st. Harry was addicted to that heated waterbed ... remember how popular those were? LOL .... a story about Harry and the waterbed years later.

I had a dog sitter that would come to the house three times per day to let him out, walk him and feed him whenever I was away on trips. She was the best I've ever had for a dog sitter. Well one time she came in for her 2nd visit and cannot find Harry anywhere in the house !!!! She was in a panic ... yelling his name and no response. She went from room to room, looked under beds and told me she would even open closet doors to see if he had gotten in them some way.

About to die from fear that Harry was gone and had some how got out the house ... she hears a snore ... a basset hound snoring ... but she didn't see him on this bed ... no, he had slipped down at the foot of the bed between the warm waterbed mattress and footboard of the bed, submerged in a deep sleep.

Harry made it all the way to the house "up north" ... not quite 14 years old when I had to put him down after bladder stone surgery.

So those are the photos that came from scanned slides or negatives that were over 40 years old and some of them as far back as 1976. No editing of any kind, although I am going through them now to clean them up.

Hard to believe it is 9 days from Christmas and I am walking around town in a heavy Carhartt flannel shirt with no jacket. Waterloo flavored sparkling water is good ... but I would love a Coke or Pepsi right now.

I hear Walter snoring in the bedroom next door at 9:16pm, Henry and Watson are in deep sleeps. Another successful day here in "the tropics" of Southern Indiana.