AVATARs & USERNAMES - What are they&do they mean?

Thats great..We had what was known as Ratt Rigs in the artillery. Little radio boxes on the back of small trucks that had a radio teletype..I used to be amazed at the dudes who could read the tapes of nothing but dots

but some I couldn't figure out like tealplanes and Havoc.

Sorry about that but I'm of that age that remembering more than one thing becomes difficult

As for my German, as long as you don't expect me to write it I can have enough conversation to order a beer and something to eat with it. More than enough to spend a holiday there. Might go back there this year, Bremen looks nice.

I have forgotten more than I ever knew:woohoo:

At my last job, our passwords had to be changed on a quarterly basis. I always tried to think of word combinations that would be hard to guess but meaningful to me. Later, I needed a screen name for a forum for Railroad Tycoon III. I decided to use Radialman. Now it is my online screen name in all forums I am in.

So - what does it mean? Well, I fancy myself a woodworker. Back in high school shop, my favorite tool was the radial arm saw. I just took "radial" and added "man" to it. It sounds like a superhero of sorts. I have thought about making an avatar of someone like Mr. Incredible (from "The Incredibles") out of his prime with a picture of a tire as his symbol, stretched out over his spare tire (radial is a type of tire for those that don't know).

The avatar that I need to resurrect that I used in the Olde Z Central was something I made up in Google Sketchup. I was trying to make a railroad type logo that was a curved shield like would be on the front of a steam engine boiler (a la PRR).

More than you probably wanted to know,
Jeremy

Jeremy, I can picture your avatar now... a guy with a "spare tire" gut with a radial tire over his shoulder, running a radial saw. Wonder what OSHA would think of that picture

This one?

Brad:

Yep. That's it. I have it on my laptop. I just haven't uploaded it to the new system yet. I was deciding on keeping it or doing something different.

Karin:

Yes, something like that. Chest and gut proudly pushed forward (more the gut) with a white wall tire logo on the chest/gut. You forgot the cape - definitely gotta have cape (in spite of the lady in The Incredibles, "NO CAPES!"

Jeremy

Animek stands for ANImation MECanique, (mechanical animation in English). Back in 1992 I started a small service company doing small animation for industrial companies using 3D studio ver 2; in 1995 I registered my own domain name, which was animec.com
I kept it 2 years but I had to quit the internet (no job status). When I came back to the web, I found that my animec.com was bought by a Japanese individual for a manga cartoon site (sigh!). So then, I change the C with a K to have at least a user for my emails, thus having animek instead of animec. The sounding was equivalent. And yes animek.com was also taken a few month later in 1997, yep for manga's again.

Ben

Geez Ben, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Cheers, Jim CCRR

Name was a quickie I needed one day and is just a variation of something that would make sense only to me. The AVATAR is just a sunset shot out my trainroom window. ...don

Socalz44 wrote:

Geez Ben, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Cheers, Jim CCRR

I choose laughing.

A pretty face always gets second looks!
Unfortunately I've never found a looking glass that does me justice.
Now that's some bull!

Fred, I think you are starting to scare us! Cheers, Jim CCRR

Gee how did I miss this blog, humm and it had been on the site for over 4 weeks, maybe I'm going blind.

Well, anyway, the picture is of the USAF C-5 of which I was an aircrew member for over 25 years both active duty and reserves. My position was a Loadmaster which supervises the up load and down load of the aircraft. I also caculate the weight and balance of the aircraft so that we fly level. I've since retired, but I certainly miss flying even though USAF airlines doesn't give frequent flier miles. I had completed over 10k hours flying time in my career.

My user name is my real name. My avatar is a photo of me being a "budgie-whisperer" some thirty years ago. This photo is one of the nicest photos of me, plus that budgie was a really sweet little friend and it brings back very fond memories of my youth

My avatar is a picture of Marklin's GG1 and as for the user name, its me (not very creative).

My username is only my first name (not very creative neither... ), and my avatar is the shot of a GP38-2 I took in a very remote area of Yucatan, Mexico.

I was pleased to take this shot and many others along a railroad line running from Merida to Valladolid, Yucatan, MX, that appears to be the very southeastern line from all Canada-USA-Mexico railroad network. Thus Valladolid is the very terminus...

That line is what should be called a 100-mile spur as it serves nothing between both cities. It remains active only because there are a concrete factory in Valladolid needing hoppers and boxcars, and a powerplant needing gasoil loaded tankcars.

There are only ~ 2 trains a week each way, and as I'm lucky enough to speak a few words of spanish and to have the railroad dispatcher's phone number, every time my employer sends me a few days in Cancun I rent a car if there's a train running and I drive the 120 miles or so between Cancun and Valladolid area, a little more than 2 hours driving.

The loco on my avatar wears Genesee & Wyoming paintscheme as the former company running that line, Ferrocarril Chiapas Mayab, was a G&W subsidiary. G&W gave up its commitment with FCCM in 2007 and now the railroad is run by a state company whose name is Ferrocarril del Istmo de Tehuantepec. However all locos and rolling stock kept their previous owner's marking and paintscheme.

What I consider really appealing with this railroad is that track is mostly completely embedded within vegetation, somewhere you aren't even aware at all there's a railroad under this dense grass and vegetation, until you see the train coming!

I found this so appealing that I decided my future Z scale empire will finally be a sample of this railroad. It will allow more interresting operations than my previous goal (Tehachapi Pass), because it will feature more various caracteristics:
-street running (such as in the prototype Merida city)
-switching operations (there's a fair number of industries in Merida as well)
-"Grass" running (everywhere outside Merida) - I think it will be an interresting challenge in Z scale with a Grassmaster or this kind of stuff. For my MTL Geeps I've already the idea to cover the trucks' underside with a thin styrene shield I'll glue in order to protect gearing windows...

To give you an idea of this amazing railroad, a small video I took in may 2008.



In 2008-2009, there are still railroads operating cabooses and locomotives with no ditch lights!

The train and scenery seem to lean because I put my camera on the car's roof and I didn't notice it was not level! Maximum track speed on all the 100-mile line is 10 mph.

Dom