A friend of mine approached me and asked about cleaning up a WWII era photo of his Father (Holtmeier) and other B-24 crew members taken in England in 1944. Unfortunately the photo was missing emulsion (the part of the print paper that actually contains the ‘image’) but I think the historical significance and character of the men (and the note on the back) more then make up for this.

As you can see from the finished photo (low-res here, for web display) I took the notes from the back of the photo and placed them to the right ((Willie Bardwell (Ala.), Joe Kinney (NY), Holtmeier (PA), Dick Kennedy (My radio oper., NY), Dave Fulton (VHF Relay oper., PA))).

Though I am happy with the results, that’s not the reason for this post. I did a quick search for the 489th (just curious) and found, amongst other things, the following information:

• Constituted as 489th Bombardment Group (Heavy) on 14 September 1943.
• Activated on 1 October 1943. Trained with B-24’s.
• Moved to England, April~May 1944, and assigned to Eighth AF.
• Entered combat on 30 May 1944, and during the next few days concentrated on targets in France in preparation for the Normandy invasion.
• In an attack against coastal defenses near Wimereaux on 5 June 1944, the group’s lead plane was seriously crippled by enemy fire, its pilot was killed, and the deputy group commander, Lt Col Leon R Vance Jr, who was commanding the formation, was severely wounded; although his right foot was practically severed, Vance took control of the plane, led the group to a successful bombing of the target, and managed to fly the damaged aircraft to the coast of England, where he ordered the crew to bail out; believing a wounded man had been unable to jump, he ditched the plane in the Channel and was rescued. For his action during this mission, Vance was awarded the Medal of Honor.
• The group supported the landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944, and afterward bombed coastal defenses, airfields, bridges, railroads, and V-weapon sites in the campaign for France. The 489th began flying missions into Germany in July, and engaged primarily in bombing strategic targets such as factories, oil refineries and storage plants, marshaling yards, and airfields in Ludwigshafen, Magdeburg, Brunswick, Saarbrucken, and other cities until November 1944.
• Other operations included participating in the saturation bombing of German lines just before the breakthrough at St. Lo in July, dropping food to the liberated French and to Allied forces in France during August and September, and carrying food and ammunition to Holland later in September.
• Returned to the US, November~December 1944, to prepare for redeployment to the Pacific theater. Re-designated 489th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy) in March 1945. Equipped with B-29’s. Alerted for movement overseas in the summer of 1945, but war with Japan ended before the group left the US. Inactivated on 17 October 1945.

It occurred to me that this was more then just an old photo needing re-touching, that there was a historical significance, if for no one else then the families and friends of these men.

If you are related to any of these men, or have any interest in access to the original hi-res digital photo, feel free to contact me.

More info (wikipedia) can be found here.

This began as a casual note, a reminder, if you will, to techsupport (at) text-link-ads.com. It escalated to where I wondered just how Text-Link-Ads (a MediaWhiz Holdings, Inc. Company) developed it’s hiring practices…

Having signed up I was directed to download a plugin for WordPress. I noticed it was a raw PHP file (rarely done because of character filtering/translating going between file systems), but I figured they must know what they’re doing (isn’t there a Murphy’s Law about that?). But once activated, their plugin spewed an error and deactivated (thank you WordPress, several months ago it would have killed my blog as their wasn’t any such ’safety’ feature then). I took a look and realized they were making the common mistake of calling upgrade-functions.php (which has been on it’s way out since the 2.0 branch started and has only been included for backward compatibility).

I’m running 2.3b3 but I thought I should drop a note to Text-Link-Ads support and remind them. Shortly after I emailed them, I received this one-line response from Jonathan Dingman (Product Manager):

InLinks only works on Wordpress 2.0 or higher.

Obviously I mis-communicated. So I wrote back that 2.3 > 2.0 and “If you’re not even going to check this, please pass it on to someone who will?” I got another quick response with two lines this time:

2.3 is not officially out and we do not support it yet.

It’s still in beta until the 24th of September.

Now, that last email from Jonathan Dingman was dated Sep 13, 2007, at 2:04 PM, 11 days before the ETA for 2.3. So I gather Text-Link-Ads has no concern over people already using their plugin who will upgrade to 2.3, but only those who may download the plugin after Sep 13, 2007.

Like Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg said in The Fifth Element: “I know this music…”

PS: Received this from Jonathan Dingman about a half hour later:”After speaking to the lead developer, we are going to work on a fix for this and we will have it available before 2.3 is released.” Glad to hear somebody over there is on the ball. Or willing to play the ball. Or accept the ball.

I received an email from site5.com’s tech support this morning, titled: Scheduled Maintenance Notification.

Fighting back tears of joy and relief, I opened it and noted it warned of IMAP irregularities to be expected due to server upgrades. It contained a list of specific servers and their dates of upgrade with a detailed description of exactly what might be effected from a customer’s point of view.

I felt as if a long lost friend has finally awakened from a coma (see other posts re: Network Solutions here and here). My friend, buddy and co-conspirator, tech support, had finally awakened! How I missed the days of openly communicating problems, solutions and ideas…

Ok, big group hug now…  *sniff*

I know some very creative women, one of which even makes a living writing, yet 'blogging' seems such a foreign concept to them. 

I should note that these friends are all 39-ish *grin* and I do believe that the lack of access to personal computers in the formative years has a big impact. 

But I see another issue, one that has interested me all of my life, and that is the differences, or similarities of art and technology. My Mother was an artist, primarily painted in oils (portraits, still life) and the Father I grew up with was an engineer. I learned quickly that art was about creativity, imagination without borders. While engineering/technology was about fixed dimensions and laws of physics. Continue reading this post…

After my site went down (for over 24 hours) I discovered that Network Solutions had done a"Major Upgrade" over the weekend of May 13th. Interesting how a company on the cutting-edge of internet services couldn't manage to somehow communicate this BEFORE it took place. However, to further pound this cork in the asshole of progress even deeper, they decided to not communicate it AFTER, either.  So, basically everyone that had an issue had to call tech support… Continue reading this post…

I think the definition of Incorporated is 'self-centered'. Isn't a corporation really just an attempt to remove any personal responsibility by creating an entity unto itself? bleh.

I watched with disgust as Ron Zarrella , CEO of B&L displayed confidence (denial) and purpose (minimizing, denial) on B&L's recent TV commercial (PR rescue attempt).

Continue reading this post…

Big fat drops of rain, lubricating the flora, enhancing reproduction and even the natural decay of life…

Washing away the dust and grime of work and wind and allowing the basking, the idling of observation and thought. mmm.

 I'm reminded of moments stolen with a girlfriend, finding privacy was always easier in the rain when most retreated inside.

 wubba-wubba.

Technorati Tags: rain, life, sensual

Bubba (the beagle) is convinced squirrel's are evil. I remember at one park they literally seemed to be throwing nuts down at him from the trees (probably just dropping them in excitement). The chances of him actual catching one are astronomical, but that doesn't seem to intrude on his convictions.

Tux (Lab-mix) is his buddy. I suspect Tux is much smarter, but all that goes down the drain when they are together. Together their collective intelligence drops (like when men gather) and thoughts go to:

Look at me pee! Hah! Look at ME pee!

Or so it seemed in this picture:

Little worried about my recent like for Starbux Frappuccino’s (the ones that come in the little bottles). The ladies where I buy them all know me. I’m thinking I may need to start cycling through other dealers stores. Also worried about the recycling. Recycling is required in my neighborhood (Go Pennsylvania!) and they won’t pick up trash with a lot of recyclables in it. So, the bottles stack up some alot and make noise, especially when being transported to recycle bin, walked to curb, etc. So I’m thinking about some late night runs to dumpsters elsewhere, but haven’t figured out quite how to do it en masse without all that tink-tink noise.
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