I’m visiting my mother in Richmond, Virginia — actually, I’m also visiting my brother and his family, but I haven’t seen them yet, since they were out of town when we got here on Saturday. But that should change later today when we go over to their house and stay for a few days.

At any rate, we’re being greeted with fairly typical summer weather for Richmond — humid and hot, with the odd bit of rain (though no thunder or lightning yet, at least not that I’ve noticed). It’s probably cooler here than in San Jose, but it’s far less comfortable because of the humidity.

Today, I took my mom to the doctor’s for a regular checkup; just like at home, they ran late. Then we made three more stops in the same medical center — I guess she got wholesale rates today!

I did some checking on Google last night and found an update to the eMap’s firmware, which I’ll load as soon as I get offline; it should add a few useful features, such as the ability to set a waypoint somewhere other than where I am right this instant. I am getting very tempted to pick up the Garmin Metro Guide software so I can get detailed maps into the eMap, and DeLorme’s Street Atlas to do routing, since it talks directly to the eMap. I’m sure that if I think about it enough, I can find a reason other than “because I want it” to get the software, but that’s probably a good enough reason all by itself.

Jeffrey had a great day yesterday, visiting his favorite comics shop, Dave’s Comics. The owner, David Luebke, grew up with my brother and me, so it’s nice to see him occasionally — and Jeffrey sure appreciates the selection and the chance to get some comics his allowance won’t cover. Diane bought a toy, too, a set of Zuni Poi Swings. I was good and didn’t buy anything there for myself, so I must deserve the Street Atlas and Metro Guide!

Virginia Aviation Museum

We made a quick visit to the Virginia Aviation Museum, located at Byrd Field (oops, I’m showing my age! I should have said Richmond International Airport). We took advantage of the reciprocal membership program of the Association of Science-Technology Centers, which gave us free admission because we are members of The Tech Museum in San Jose; that makes us much more likely to make short visits to museums instead of skipping them because the admission fee seems expensive for the time we have available.

I’m glad we didn’t skip this one — they have a nice collection of pre-WWII planes as well as a good exhibit of WWII as seen from Richmond. Jeffrey also found an interesting blackbird there.

The GPS I bought last night seems to work — I had a window seat on the flight from Dallas to Richmond, and I was able to maintain a fix almost the entire way. So now, if I ever want to fly myself on that route, I’ll be able to figure out where to turn; it definitely wasn’t a straight shot.

And I enjoyed being able to look out the window and when I saw something, looking at the GPS and finding out what it was (rivers, for example, or towns).

I wanted to play with connecting the GPS to the PC so I could get a better display, but I never bothered to take out the PC. I could tell that this was not a “regular” business-type flight — I walked through all of coach, and there were only two computers out, and they were both playing games instead of doing spreadsheets or presentations. I think that’s a much healthier use of the PC, anyway.

I also cheated a little bit and kept the GPS on through the landing (they never asked for stuff to be turned off), and so I was able to figure out where I was on the way in to Richmond. I’ve never flown in to Richmond enough to figure out the approach route, unlike San Jose, where I know it well enough that on a recent flight, I knew we were going to have a wave-off about three minutes out, just based on our height.

A fun toy!