Least Significant Bits

Picture Post, Sunday October 2, 2011

2011-10-02T16:43:00.002-04:00

Been a long time since I've had a Sunday Picture Post.

I used to do this every Sunday, with no shortage of photos. I was always shooting new photos and had the time and energy to re-size the images for the blog, so, no problem having new photos to show every Sunday.

Shows just how much chronic pain can take from a person. I've barely posted on this blog in two years.

That's two hobbies down the drain because of my ruined back and always being in pain.

A person just doesn't feel up to doing much of anything. I know I sound like a whiner here, but if I didn't mention the pain and the problems that result, I would have nothing to say. It has pretty much been my life the past few years. So bear with me.

This pain pump has helped the pain some, but right now I'm just at a point where the pain pump's pain relief is about equal to all the oral pain medicine I used to take's effects. Pain Doc and I have a ways to go yet in getting the dosage adjustments ideal for me and my life. You have to walk the edge between how much pain you can deal with and how much you can function with morphine in you.

There's a good thing though. A pain pump literally puts into my spine on the order of 1/100th the amount of pain medicine I once took orally. Same pain relief, less pills to take, easier on my liver and kidneys.

Lovely Wife and I went yesterday, October 1st, for an afternoon drive.

Visited a beautiful local park, the Atlantic Ocean, and walked for a little way along 5th Avenue in Indialantic, Florida.

I had my camera, and had the first photography excursion I've had in at least a year.

I enjoyed it so much, being with my wife and seeing this beautiful area up close for the first time in way too long. Yeah, it made my back hurt like crazy and my left leg was hurting and ended up numb, and I could barely get out of the car on my own when we got home after only a couple of hours of mostly riding. But then I kicked back in my recliner for a while and slowly the pain lessened somewhat.

Such is a life in pain. Gotta get up and struggle like crazy just to have a short walk and a car ride with my wife and my camera.

It was worth it though. I was going stir crazy in the house.

I've seen many, many AMAZING sunsets in fifteen years in Florida; yesterday's was certainly one of the most beautiful.

These photos are fresh! Less than 24 hours old as of posting time.

A Gold Rolex Oyster (Thinking about my Dad)

2011-09-16T18:15:00.006-04:00

(I've copied here, my most recent post from my photography blog. The photos are of my Dad's Rolex that I took this week. I was thinking about him a lot.)

My father worked on off-shore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico in his career.

He was born in 1934, growing up during difficult times in America, and in a poor part of Louisiana.

He was of what I consider to be the last generation that a man or woman would work for one company most of their lives.

Working off-shore, seven days on the drilling rig, and then seven days off, he ended up missing a lot of holidays and birthdays. He was there for a lot of them, but not for a lot of others too.

There were times, like working for any company, when he had to swallow his pride and keep his mouth shut to keep his job when the company would try to take advantage of him or others.

Then, when he had twenty-something years with this company, they called all the twenty-plus-year employees to a big banquet in New Orleans.

The company presented to him and all the other long-timers, a gold Rolex watch.

I don't know if it still is, but for decades, the official United States time was determined by an atomic clock at the US Naval Observatory.

So after he was given this watch, and I'd talk to him on the phone (from Dallas or Atlanta or wherever we were living during those years) I'd ask if the Naval Observatory has called yet that day to get the official time from him and his Rolex.

It wasn't something he left in a box, he wore the watch daily up until he died in 1994.

I took a few photos this week with my new/used macro lens.

You can see a few nicks and marks here and there.

Those nicks and marks are from him wearing one of the only tangible representations of all the years of hard work he put in, as well as not being with his family on some important days.

Some people would think he was being pretentious wearing a Gold Rolex, and sometimes complete strangers would say something like, "I wish I could afford to buy and wear a gold Rolex!"

He would always tell them, "I didn't have the money to buy one either. This was given to me by the company I worked so hard for, for so many years. I wear it because I EARNED IT."

That never failed to shut them up.

I don't wear it as much as I'd like to, mainly because my wrist is way bigger than his was, and even at the last notch, the watch is too tight to wear for more than just a few minutes.

One day I'll go ahead and plunk down the money to have an extra gold link or two put on the watch so I can wear it more.

But I look at this watch a lot, and suffer wearing it on important days for me and my family.

It helps me remember that he's with me in spirit on those important days to me and my family.

Guitar String Vibration

2011-06-13T22:14:00.009-04:00

When I was in college, we had to do a couple of experiments in Physics lab class to study string vibrations.

Frequency, nodes, etc.

When a guitar string is pressed against a fret and that string is plucked, it sets off a pretty complex set of vibrations.

Since they are not plucked in the exact center of each string, guitar strings vibrate both at the fundamental note's frequency and also there are a whole host of harmonic vibrations at frequencies mathematically related to the frequency of the fundamental note.

The physical construction of the guitar influences the vibrations of the strings in response to the string's vibrations making the various pieces of the guitar vibrate. Even a solid body electric guitar can have it's tone greatly enhanced by being crafted of as few solid pieces of good wood as possible, and these tone woods will impart some harmonic influence back to the strings and out through the amplifier.

This is why guitars can be SO EXPENSIVE. The highest quality, large pieces of tone woods are as expensive to buy as they are resonant and beautiful to look at.

Yeah, there are a lot of cheap guitars in the world, and a surprising number of them sound good and play good too, but when a guitar is constructed from high quality pieces of properly dried woods, this wood can impart back to the strings even richer harmonic content resulting in a great sounding guitar whose tone is thick with harmonic content that is pleasing to the human ear.

For me this following very short video is mind blowing. I love this kind of stuff.

Although I knew the principles of string vibrations, I've never seen them in real-time action.

This video was simply shot with a camera with a high speed shutter, so that when the video is watched at the normal speed of the song, you can hear AND see the dramatic ways in which the strings vibrate.

Notice that the fingering and plucking of the strings are in time to the sound of the music. Although it almost looks like slow motion, it's not.

I wish we had been shown a video similar to this in Physics lab, studying string vibrations would have made a lot more sense, a picture (video) painting a thousand words and all that.

I Have A New Hard Drive, Sort Of

2011-05-24T09:47:00.001-04:00

WARNING: Boring computer geek post ahead...

With all the photos that I have on my computer, I was really nervous about a hard drive failure robbing me of all my digital images.

So a couple of years ago I bought an external hard drive, a 500GB one. That was massively huge two or three years ago, but now you can get 2TB (TeraBytes) hard drives for a reasonable price.

Then, about six months ago, I became worried as my external hard drive was filling up with 35mm slide scans, digital photos, and print scans from the flatbed scanner.

I bought a second external hard drive, this time a 1TB one. Pretty huge.

Then about two months after getting the 1TB hard drive, the original 500GB external drive I had bought stopped working.

I was so glad that I had bought that second external drive. I lost no photos.

When we got some tax money earlier this year, I got a subscription to Carbonite, an online backup company that claims to have unlimited backup for a certain price per year.

They truly have unlimited backup, but if you are like me and want to back up a pretty massive amount of data somewhere other than your own home for the ultimate backup, then the backup takes a LONG time.

See, Carbonite works in the background on your computer and only can upload about 4 GibaBytes per 24 hours. But I let it do it's thing and haven't heard any complaints from Carbonite about me having too much stuff to back up.

Lately, as I have felt better after my surgery, I've been spending time at the computer here and there as pain levels permit, and have organized and thrown away a bunch of computer files so that my Carbonite backup will be as small and convenient as possible for both them and me.

But that 500GB hard drive dying on me bothered me a lot, so I began looking for web sites where folks mentioned the problem I had with this particular hard drive and it turns out that one major problem was a recent firmware upgrade release that I, and others apparently, put on our external hard drives.

This latest firmware (similar to software but used to program a particular chip on the circuit board that controls things, in my case how the hard drive operates) killed mine, and anyone else's who upgraded to the latest revision.

But I had noticed that even though I couldn't use that external hard drive any more, I COULD hear it spinning when power was applied to it.

I began to think that the hard drive itself wasn't dead, but just the control interface within the cover of the external hard drive case.

Now you know engineers LOVE taking things apart, so I broke out my tools and went to town and freed the hard drive from the enclosure. I have to say that Western Digital makes a first-class, rugged hard drive enclosure for their external drives.

I turned off and unplugged my desktop computer, opened the case, stole the SATA cable from my CD/DVD reader-writer (which I don't use much) and installed the "broken" 500GB hard drive into my desktop computer.

I turned the computer on and what do you know, I had a 500GB internal drive show up with all my old files still sitting there pretty as you please.

Now I have the original 250GB internal drive, another internal drive which used to be an external 500GB drive, and also a 1TB external drive.

I have all my files backed up at home, and many of them backed up on Carbonite too, in case something drastic disaster happens to my home computer.

I'm still sending stuff to Carbonite as it finishes each batch I sent it previously.

But I won't be through worrying until I have all of my digital images uploaded to them as well.

Since I have a copy of every file I have on that one external 1TB drive, if something happens while I'm at home, I can just grab that one external hard drive that's the same size as a hardback book, and skee-daddle.

P.S. I bought another SATA cable that allowed me to reattach my CD/DVD drive and now have my complete computer again. I know you were worried about that temporarily unconnected CD/DVD drive.

I Dodge Vicious Angry Killer Bird to Get Egg Photo!

2011-05-23T12:20:00.008-04:00

Lovely Wife was out on our back patio yesterday evening reading a book on her much-loved Kindle.

We have a mockingbird out there that yells and squawks at us whenever anyone goes out in the back yard.

She noticed that the bird kept flying to our crepe myrtle bush, and realized that there's a nest in there.

She and Number One Daughter are too short to see into the nest to look for eggs. They called me out, and I could barely see over the edge and saw at least two eggs.

Lovely Wife's camera battery was dead so I got my camera and did a paparazzi style hold-the-camera-up-high-and-point-and-shoot-and-hope-you-get-a-good-shot impression.

The resulting egg pic came out OK, and as you can see, there are four of them.

Pretty cool. I hadn't seen real, wild bird eggs in many years. Probably since I was a kid.

Here's a pic of the Mom/Dad (don't know which) up on a wire right above and behind the crepe myrtle and nest.

I can hardly believe it's beak is closed in the photo, this rascal yammers on incessantly.

Don't Buy Expensive HDMI cables for Your TV

2011-05-21T09:18:00.002-04:00

...or, Let Me Save Y'all Some Money

OK, there's lots of hyperbole out there about cables for computers, for TVs and whatnot.

But as a digital engineer, let me tell you a little secret that Best Buy, Target, or even Walmart won't tell you.

It's a fact, if you buy a TV at Best Buy or similar place, they'll try hard to sell you on buying a high dollar, high quality HDMI cable.

If you have bought or are about to buy a new television set, you will actually need to purchase a HDMI cable iffen you want to see high-definition programs and movies on your new TV.

H-D-M-I means high definition multimedia interface.

Here's the secret: Just buy a cheap HDMI cable that has the correct length for your needs. A cheap HDMI cable works EVERY BIT as good as a $100 Monster brand HDMI cable.

Why? How?

Glad you asked.

Here's a couple of simple truths about electronic signals traveling on a cable:
1. Digital signals, or pulses on an electric cable such as an HDMI one are either on, or off, there's no almost in digital. So, if the cable, no matter how cheap, actually carries the digital signal from the cable box to your TV, it will be presenting to your TV a signal every bit as good as a $100 Monster brand cable. One digital cable either works AS GOOD AS the next digital cable, or it isn't working at all. Period.
2. This wasn't necessarily true with analog cables. A better-built, nicely shielded from interference analog cable could possibly give your TV a clearer signal than a cheap cable, resulting in a better, less fuzzy picture on the screen.

The rationale they will throw at you at Best Buy is that you don't want to buy a cheap cable to go with your new $700 TV. But in the digital world, in which all new TV's firmly sit, if the cable works at all, it will give your TV as good a signal, and therefore screen picture, as any other cable, regardless of price.

When you buy that next TV, and you will need an HDMI cable to actually see programs in high definition, just buy that $14.99 cable and don't worry your pretty little head about it.

If your new HDMI cable happens to be faulty and not work, just exchange it for a working one just like you would with a new shirt you brought home and then found it was torn somewhere. (We do live in an imperfect world where you sometimes buy something that doesn't work, from the git-go.)

Now, go forth and buy a cheap HDMI cable of the correct length. Use the money you saved to buy a Blu-Ray DVD or three.

Color Photos of America's Depression Era

2011-05-20T08:59:00.001-04:00

Kodak's Kodachrome 35mm slide film still is, in my opinion, one of the great inventions of man. (Photo is copyright Library of Congress)

The UK's Daily Mail has published a page of stunning color images from America's depression era (just after Kodachrome was invented). Please go see these photo's.

They offer a totally different perspective than the harsh-but-compelling black and white depression photos we've seen all our lives.

Kodachrome images look so "thick" and dense with color.

Lord I miss the look of Kodachrome, but I love and have totally embraced digital photography. (I spent many hours in Photoshop Elements one weekend to come up with my own process for making digital images have the look of Kodachrome.)

Note: I hate linking stuff from online newspapers, the link may be dead fairly quick. So take a minute to go look at these images.

Goodbye Mr. Surgeon

2011-05-19T00:15:00.008-04:00

Had my second and last post operation visit with the surgeon who installed my pain pump.

Said my incisions (all three!) were looking healthy and that unless they somehow get infected or I start having some of the bad side effects some pain pump recipients get, that, well, it was nice knowing me.

I see Pain Doctor next week for my first visit with him since the surgery.

Pain Doctor will use a remote control device that communicates through my skin to the pain pump to adjust the dose. (That's a photo to the right, of the same pain pump and catheter I now have, and the gizmo Pain Doctor will use to program the rate of medicine release.)

Ready to crank this puppy up a bit.

I received a medic alert type card with my pain pump info on it in the mail a couple of weeks ago, but yesterday finally read all the material that came with it.

I had carefully inspected the card to ensure all was correct, but after reading the associated letter, I needed to change the doctor's name and number on the card from the surgeon's name to Pain Doctor's name and number.

The card needs to have the doctor's info for the doctor filling and adjusting the pain pump instead of the surgeon.

I got an email today telling me my new implant ID card is on the way.

I thought it might be a good idea to get a medic alert ID bracelet or necklace and put the fact that I'm diabetic and that I now have this pain pump on the necklace or bracelet.

On several sites they mentioned that most paramedics are trained to look for a medic alert necklace or bracelet, and don't look in people's wallets.

That's good to know. I guess I'll have to buy me some BLING in the near future.

So much for my spiffy medic alert card I put in my wallet, eh?

New Body Parts Installed or Been a Long Time Since I Posted

2011-05-14T15:41:00.000-04:00

I can summarize my life pretty quickly since my last post in September of 2010.

Lots of back pain. Trying to work, sleep, live with lots of pain. I pretty much stunk at everything, work, relationships, life in general.

Last summer (2010) I did the trial for a "neurostimulator" or more simply, spinal cord stimulator, or what is basically a TENS unit where the electrodes that zap you are inserted in your back close to the spinal cord. This device is effective for some, but in me, they could never get the device to "buzz" in the areas where I hurt, lower back and outside left leg/butt. There are electrodes for the final two inches or so, and it's this section of the electrical cord which is implanted along the inside of the vertebrae close to the spinal cord. The Here's a brief run-down of these devices on Spine-Health.com, one of my most frequently visited sites (http://www.spine-health.com/treatment/back-surgery/spinal-cord-stimulation-chronic-pain).

So for me, the spinal cord stimulator trial was a failure, and my Pain Management Doctor and I started talking about one of the final tricks he had up his sleeve.

Intrathecal Pain Pump. Or just Pain Pump to many. Similar idea to the spinal cord stimulator, but with a pain pump, a catheter is inserted into the intrathecal space of the spine. This is the same protective sack where the spinal cord lies and in which our spinal fluid flows slowly from lower back, up to and around the brain, and back down the spine.

The idea is to deliver minute amounts of pain medication directly into the spinal fluid, allowing it to flow up and down with the spinal fluid and delivering some of the most powerful pain relief that can be given these days.

All along this path, work really sucked. I just hurt too much to be a great engineer, and I couldn't really take high enough doses of pain medicine to really cut the pain without drastically cutting my brain power, which is essential in the engineering world.

I've been on disability since earlier this year, and I have slowly gone through the process with my Pain Doctor to have a pain pump trial (it was deemed successful in me), visit a neurosurgeon he referred me to, get all the pre-surgery health checks done, and to have surgery to have the pain pump and catheter installed permanently.

First, the pain pump trial. in February, I went into a day-surgery center and Pain Doctor and crew sedated me a bit, and then using a fluoroscope, which is basically a live-action x-ray machine, gave me a tiny shot of morphine straight into the intrathecal space in my spine.

I've had so many shots and surgeries in my back that from the middle of my back down to almost my rear end is mostly scar tissue. But one of the beauties of the pain pump and the flow of spinal fluid up and down is that they can inject the medicine in any place along the spine and the medicine will flow with the spinal fluid, hopefully delivering sweet pain relief along the way.

I stayed at the surgery center for several hours for them to make sure that I wasn't having serious side effects from the bolus of morphine in my spine and during that time felt my pain levels really decrease. They sent me home and I was to keep a journal of sorts and to stay off oral pain meds as long as I could.

I lasted about 36 hours, but I left it too long before starting my oral medications again.

I got a good bit of pain relief for the first 24 hours and then the pain slowly started increasing again. When I took my first oral meds at the 36 hour mark I didn't know it, but the pain pendulum was swinging back to serious pain really, really fast.

It took me a couple of days to carefully dole out to myself doses of oral pain meds until the pain was back to where I could even sleep.

But the initial pain relief of the directly applied morphine was what they wanted to see, and after weeks of doctors visits and pre-surgery checks had my pain pump installed in late April at Sebastian River Medical Center in Sebastian, Florida. That's near the neurosurgeon's office and about 15-20 miles south of where we live in Palm Bay.

I had an incision along my spine for the surgeon to put the catheter tip into the intrathecal space push it up in there a couple of inches along my spinal cord.

Then they "tunneled" around my side to create a path for the flexible catheter to reach around to my front left side where another incision was made to implant the actual pain pump filled with morphine.

They also had to make a small incision on my left side to help continue the tunneling for the catheter to reach around from my back to my front.

Total, 3 incisions to heal from. Though I was able to get up easier than after my previous surgeries since they hadn't actually worked on or ground away bone, I've had a heckuva time with three incisions healing.

I'm still a week away from my first visit with Pain Doctor since my surgery, but the surgery incisions have healed enough that I can feel the pain pump having a little bit of positive effect on my pain level.

The surgeon filled the pain pump, but only set it at a super-low release rate, enough to make the pump work until Pain Doctor could see me and I had healed enough to start ramping up the the delivery rate of the pain pump.

As of today, I'm slow moving, but doing pretty well. The incisions have been slow to heal and are still pretty sore, even three weeks on.

I'm basically still in the same pain situation as before the surgery, but the fact that I can now feel the light effects of the pain pump helping gives me hope that in the coming months we can get the device adjusted to where I don't have to take much oral meds.

The initial goal is to stop taking my long acting pain meds and then only have to occasionally take a quick acting pain medicine for "breakthrough" pain as needed. Getting off the long acting stuff will be a big relief to my liver and kidneys from the years of daily oral pain medications.

The pain pump can possibly give as good relief as long acting oral pain medications, but at the rate of only 1/200 or so of what I would take orally.

In other words, you have to take a pretty big dose of oral pain medicine to help lower serious pain levels, but with the pain pump's direct delivery to the spinal fluid, many patients get the same pain relief with 1/200th of what they were taking orally.

Just tiny, tiny amounts are delivered by the pain pump in a 24 hour period but with the same effect as hefty doses of oral pain medications.

Anyway, if anyone is still out there, and you've read this far, I'll throw you a bone and stop here.

I'm still not out of the woods yet, but the pain pump system is successfully implanted in me. It seems to be giving a bit of help to my pain levels, and should help more and more as I resume visits with Pain Doctor who will fill the pump and adjust the release rate of it's medicines from here on out.

If you are interested, follow this link for a short video on the pain pump (http://www.spine-health.com/video/intrathecal-pump-implant-video). Just click on the "Play animation without narration" link in the frame, and then start clicking the "Next Step" button to continue the very short animated views of how the pain pump system is installed. It's only about a minute long. A picture will make all that I wrote here come clear with just a glance as to how the pieces are placed.

I seriously hope to resume blogging, I miss it very much. It's a great release valve for me.

Until next time...God bless you.

Picture Post, Sunday September 26, 2010

2010-09-26T00:01:00.004-04:00

My Big Sis and her Number Two Son came to Florida and visited us in June. A HUGE blessing to us.

Here are a few photos from when they were here.

We took Big Sis and Nephew Number Two to a restaurant in Sebastian, Florida, that is called Squid Lips. We'd always wanted to eat there, but finally took the chance. Wow, the food was good! How could you not want to eat at a restaurant called Squid Lips?

Here's the fambly at our table in Squid Lips. It's open to the Indian River Lagoon. It was a hot day, but surprisingly comfortable in the restaurant.

Then we went to the beach. Here's a photo of Big Sis and Nephew Number Two.

This is looking north along the beach...

...and this is looking south along the beach.

As you can tell, the water was all turquoise like it is in photos of the Bahamas, and the beach had almost no one on there, except that one couple with their blue umbrella. We were so disgusted at this turn of events that we didn't stay long, and left in a huff.

You know I'm kidding, right? These photos were taken the second week of June, and this beach was deserted. IT WAS PERFECT!

Count Your Blessings Every Day

2010-09-21T22:46:00.004-04:00

Seriously.

Count them every day.

I haven't posted much here over the past two years, coinciding with an increase in pain in my lower back and left leg. I didn't want to always be talking about it, because it seemed so selfish.

Even with back pain at a level that I've tried many strange (to me) but accepted medical procedures and untold numbers of pain shots directly into my back, and even with the stress of a demanding job, I KNOW that I am very blessed.

Lovely Wife of 26 years, two lovely daughters, family on both sides that love us and we love them.

A nice house, a job at a great company, dogs, a cat, a fish.

I keep waking up every day so far, and that in itself is the greatest blessing.

Counting my blessings, ie. thanking God every day for them in prayer, is one way that helps me keep from descending into a deep, dark pit of despair because of the grinding pain that never, ever lets up.

Counting my blessings reminds me that I have a good life and keeps both of my feet on the ground.

But today, I have to admit that things were getting to me a bit. Trying to perform my best at work. A training class and test, and the struggle of merely walking. (As I've said before, I literally have a finite number of steps I can take in a day before the pain in my left leg and back say, No More.)

My training class ended at lunchtime, so I came home to eat, and was just thankful for the nearly horizontal relief of my recliner for a few minutes with three dogs draped on me. (They're my Buds)

And on TV I saw a man who had been burned so bad when he was two in a gasoline can explosion that doctors didn't think he'd live. He has no real hands or feet, but he's grown now, a college graduate, thankful of his many gifts.

Oh, and he's an amazing drummer. He can grab one drum stick with the pincher-like claw that is his left hand, and uses a wrist sweat band with rubber bands to attach a stick to his right hand. Played an amazing drum solo.

I was sitting there, crying like I haven't in a long, long time, watching this man's joy, and you could truly see he was joyful, and begged God for forgiveness for allowing myself to have gotten down, hurting and tired by lunchtime.

The afternoon at work went OK, I made some progress on a self-guided training project at work, and I came home completely spent and really hurting, but I was not letting the pain get to me.

Then Lovely Wife gets an instant message from her first cousin's daughter, that the wife of another first cousin had died last night, Monday night.

Lovely Wife and I met while young and both living with our families in Monroe, Louisiana. A year or two after we had begun dating, her family took in one of Lovely Wife's first cousins, whose father had kicked him out.

Lovely Wife and I both were in college and working for a regional pizza chain when her cousin moved in with them in Monroe.

He later worked with me at the particular restaurant that I worked at, and eventually began dating a girl that worked there with us, a girl I had know from school in the Monroe area for five years or so.

They fell in love, and eventually moved back to J's hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.

The instant message that Lovely Wife received tonight (Tuesday) was that J's wife D had died on Monday night. She had a shortness of breath and died, they believe it was a heart attack at this point.

D was a pretty, sweet, and musically talented woman. As a teen she won two national singer/songwriter first place honors that I know of. Could sing and play guitar and sing as good as anyone I've ever heard.

I hadn't talked to D or J in years, time, distance and life in general took care of that.

But although I grieve for a lost friend who has passed, she was a year behind me in school, so that puts her at about age 45 or 46, I'm so glad that the last time I talked with her, she was beaming with happiness. She's become a Christian and tonight I praise God for touching her years ago, as no one could know she'd die so young.

My heart goes out to J, who is apparently crushed and despondent, from the sketchy news we got over the internet. I pray that he has found the comfort that becoming a Christian can provide, but last I saw him, he was not.

So I know that D is eating at the King's table in a place with no pain or sorrow.

I hope that if J hasn't found Jesus, that he might turn his heart over now.

And I've had two amazing reminders in this single day, that life is precious, it's short, and no matter what kind of pain, physical or mental, that we may be going through, every day of life is a gift, even in the middle of difficult times.

My older brother died at the age of 41, and with D's passing last night, I am reminded, yet again, that we are not guaranteed tomorrow, only the moment we're living in, so we must make the best of it, and choose to count our blessings every day and thank God for them.

We don't get a second chance at life, Every Day Is The Superbowl for all of us. We must try to make our lives count. To mean something every day.

Sarah Palin vs. Barack Obama - Holy Cow!

2010-09-21T06:17:00.000-04:00

Fifty-two percent (52%) of Likely U.S. Voters say their own views are closer to Sarah Palin’s than they are to President Obama’s, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

The whole result was 52% with Sarah Palin and 40% identify more with President Obama's views.

This would be a pretty dramatic set of polling data if it were just taken from a random selection of Americans, but this poll is taken from LIKELY VOTERS, which is much more potentially damaging to the Democrats in near future elections.

Here's the whole article from Hot Air...

I personally don't think that Sarah Palin would win in a presidential election (she's just too polarizing), but there's no denying that she's a force to be reckoned with.

Her being gorgeous doesn't hurt either.

United States Politics - September 2010

2010-09-20T06:44:00.000-04:00

Holy smokes, this is one screwed up country right now!

I follow what is going on in the world, and would even like to talk about some things on this blog, but it's like trying to eat a watermelon in one bite.

So I won't even really try.

I just want to say that the Obama administration is, in my opinion, ten times the disaster that George W. Bush's administration was. Bush spent ridiculous sums like a drunken sailor, but Obama makes W. Bush seem like a model of restraint and propriety.

Obama has already increased the US deficit more than all the US Presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan put together, according the the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office. And this in only eighteen months!

That alone is simply unsustainable.

These are scary times.

And that's about all I can manage to say about politics right now without having to throw up.

Tears For Fears - Orlando - August 28, 2010

2010-09-19T08:31:00.001-04:00

I seriously do very little in the way of getting out and doing anything fun because of my back.

I have to work, so I do that as best I can, though even the average day of an electrical engineer can elevate my pain levels to "Need to lay down, NOW" levels.

But a few weeks ago, one of my two all-time favorite musical groups, Tears For Fears, performed at a free concert in downtown Orlando, Florida. (That's Roland Orzabal, one of the two founders of Tears For Fears to the left.)

You just have NO IDEA how much their music has meant to me over the years (since 1983! How time flies).

In one instance, one of their songs quite literally helped to change my life. I would truly be living in a different state, doing a different job if not for them. (That's Curt Smith, the other founding band member on the right)

I have missed opportunities to see them in concert since the summer of 1990, and as late as 2005.

But this free concert, put on by WMMO 98.9 in Orlando, was on an off-Saturday and my daughters and I planned to go.

As the concert date arrived, I was getting scared that I would be unable to deal with attending an outside (HOT and HUMID) concert with my back pain and not knowing if we should/could bring chairs, etc.

But the night before the concert, I found on the radio station's web site that one could purchase a V.I.P ticket and be allowed to sit close into the stage in chairs they would set up. So I purchased three V.I.P. tickets for me and the girls, and rested a little easier that night.

Number One daughter drove us all over there; I don't drive when I'm taking my pain meds, and we were able to park a mere block from the concert site.

We got there before the opening bands even started, and stuck it out in the heat and the sun because I was determined to see TFF perform, or die trying.

No telling how much I spent on $1.25 bottled water.

Tears For Fears came out at 8pm, and performed an absolutely amazing concert. They played all of their hit songs, and other songs from all their CDs.

I had taken my D90 with the 18-200mm lens and set the camera to ISO 3200 when the sun went down, Shutter priority, and 1/200sec to stop most of their movements while performing.

So these four concert shots were taken at ISO3200! Do you see any distracting digital noise from using such a high ISO setting? No. You do not.

FINALLY seeing Tears For Fears in concert, and seeing them with my daughters was priceless. The TFF concert was Awesome. My D90 performed way beyond my expectations and we got lots of great concert pics.

Just the block walk from the car to the concert site and sitting through the three bands totally took my back beyond any pain level I've felt in months. I walked part of the way back to where the car was parked, and waited for the girls to get it and come pick me up.

But it was worth it in the end, even if I was bed ridden for a day or two afterward.

This final photo is of the Orlando city skyline as seen by standing and turning around at my chair shortly before TFF came on the stage.

About The Lack Of Posting...

2010-09-18T14:42:00.007-04:00

I am alive, but still dealing with my lower back and left leg pain issues from an injury in 2003.

The lumbar fusion I had in my lower back in Oct, 2004 has given my back good stability; my back no longer feels as if it's precariously balanced on worn ball bearings.

That's a good thing, and made my two surgeries of 2004 worthwhile, but I have had chronic pain in an increasingly intense way in my lumbar back and left leg that has gotten almost unbearable since late 2009. This has basically put an end to my hobbies of bicycle riding and going for long walks with my camera. I quite literally have only a finite number of steps I can take in any given day before I MUST stop. So hardly any walks and no bike riding in a long time now.

My life, for the most part, consists of getting up way before I have to be at work, just to be able to get ready and get there. There is much pain involved and it takes me a long time. Then I work, and where I work has about 100 buildings, about the size of a small college, and I end up walking a lot and that uses up the aforementioned finite number of steps in any given day.

All of that is to say this, I give my all to simply making it through a work day and trying to make a living for me and Lovely Wife. My photography habit/walks are very few and very far between. Haven't ridden my bike in a couple of years now. Yeah, even the blogging suffers when it hurts to sit up and type.

But I really want to keep my blogs going, so I'm going to add posts and photos here as I can, and hope you'll be patient with me and check in from time to time to see if I have something new.

Thanks, John M. (Saturday, September 18, 2010)

New Guitar, Agile AL-3100 (Les Paul clone)

2010-03-31T07:34:00.015-04:00

I don't talk much here about playing guitar, mainly because I'm not very good.

I'm a competent strummer, and can get nifty sounding licks down OK if I practice them a billion times.

There's just no substitution for talent, no matter how many hours I practice. Maybe Santa will bring me some talent this coming Christmas.

I had a real Gibson Les Paul for a number of years, but, well, I'd rather not talk about having to sell it. Imagine having to sell a beloved pet.

While I love my cheap clone guitars that are like Fender Stratocasters and Fender Telecasters, I really missed playing that Les Paul.

I finally, after much searching found a guitar brand that makes less expensive versions of Gibson Les Pauls.

The guitar brand is Agile, and they are made in Korea and imported and sold in America by Rondo Music in New Hampshire. (Rondo music and their people are AWESOME to deal with, and all of their guitar brands are amazing, amazing values.)

So about three weeks ago, I ordered an Agile AL-3100. I can say with all honesty, that this guitar is absolutely every bit as well made as the "real" Les Paul that I used to own. I just cannot put this guitar down. I play it unplugged while we watch TV!

Anyway, here are some photos...
The top photo has the most accurate color of the front of the guitar, the others have too much of an orange look, but they were taken with flash and not natural light.

Oh, and the price? Literally one-sixth the cost of a Les Paul Standard ($400 vs. $2400). So even a no-talent hack like me can own a really fine guitar without selling a kidney.

Large Hadron Collider Finally Smashes Some Atoms!

2010-03-30T10:41:00.011-04:00

You might not care about CERN's Large Hadron Collider that has been under construction on the Swiss/French border for over ten years, but as a dye-in-the-wool science geek, I'm excited that this collider, by far now the largest in the world smashed some hydrogen protons together this morning.

The collider is an elliptical tunnel of 17 miles in length in which atom protons are whizzed around the circuit by superconducting magnets until they are at 99.9% of the speed of light and then their paths are crossed at certain points to where the protons collide.

They then fly apart like cars in a head-on collision.

These collisions are carefully controlled to happen inside what are essentially many-layered digital cameras about the size of a three storey house and then the images are examined to see exactly what the constituent parts of these protons are.

This collider, the largest ever built, was designed to be able to hopefully see some sub-atomic parts that have long been theorized but that scientists had never had the right tools powerful enough to actually capture one's image.

For example, one sub-atomic particle, the Higgs Boson, is perfectly provable with mathematics, but in science, theory must be followed up with an actual test that allows the theories to be proven empirically, or with the five human senses.

Theoretical physicists believe the Higgs Boson to be the sub-atomic particle that causes material to have mass, and is the only particle in the present standard model of particle physics that has yet to actually be measured/seen with scientific instruments.

The initial collisions of the Large Hadron Collider that were successful today will hopefully be the first experiments that allow the physicists to make some long sought after observations.

Rock on LHC!

Yeah, I understand that probably no one reading here gives a hoot, but hey, it's my blog.

Lee Majors, the Bionic Man

2010-03-29T10:00:00.001-04:00

or, How My Life Has Come Full Circle

My back is in pretty poor shape, hence the conspicuous lack of posts over the past few months.

One of the current issues I deal with, and have for many months now, is that my back pain will wake me up at 2-4am most nights. And with the kind of pain I have, there's no going back to sleep.

So I have consequently been getting to see all the eye candy offered for sale on late night infomercials.

But the other morning, I saw a commercial - a regular one, not a 30min infomercial - that had Lee Majors on it.

When I was a boy, in about 6th or 7th grade, around 1974 or so, the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man came on.

I totally dug the whole NASA/Space Program stuff as a kid, so a show about a former astronaut that is nearly killed in a crash, who is rebuilt with "bionic" parts that make him able to run along with cars at highway speeds, and an artificial eye that allowed him to zoom in on distant bad guys sans binoculars was pretty much tailor made for this guy when he was young.

Later, there was a "Bionic Woman" who was similarly pieced back together with a few different but complementary bionic parts than was Steve Austin.

He had the bionic eye, she had the bionic ear; get my drift?

So the other late, late night, or early, early morning, take your pick, what did my eyes see but a commercial starring none other than Lee Majors. The Bionic Man hero of my youth.

What was Steve Austin, astronaut, on a commercial for?

Well, ol' Lee Majors has gotten kinda old.

Now I'm no longer a spry young lad either, I'm 48 with a really bad back, so me and Mr. Majors could sit and compare ailments I'm sure.

So I was sitting there waiting for my pain medicine to kick in and ol' Lee starts to tell me about...

The Lee Majors Bionic Hearing Aid!

The Lee Majors Rechargeable Bionic Hearing Aid combines digital hearing aid technology with the ultra convenience of a rechargeable battery, so you can enjoy noticeable, digital quality hearing improvement without the hassles of traditional battery-operated hearing aids.

Which is basically a rechargeable, non-prescription hearing aid for us no-longer-faster-than-a-corvette type broken-down humans.

Now I've had tinnitus all of my life. As a kid I remember at quiet moments sitting and listening to the high-pitched whistle in my ears. Then working for years around jet airplanes at DFW and ATL airports only added to the problem. Now, at middle age, I'm getting the normal hearing loss on top of the tinnitus.

But even at the age of 48, there's ol' Lee Majors, still trying to be my hero by offering to sell me a bionic ear to help me better hear his commercial with.

And I thought, man, life has come full circle for me.

Lee Majors gets to be a hero to me in my youth, and then many years late to be my loss-of-hearing savior in my steadily less well heard middle age.

What's next, over the counter Bionic Knee Replacements for when my knees give out?

It's hard to grow old enough to find out your heroes have gotten old and sad enough to hawk hearing aids on late-night TV.

And also, since the Bionic Woman was the one with the bionic ear, shouldn't it have been the aged, but still lovely, Lindsay Wagner who was trying to sell me on a hearing aid at 3am?

How Drunk Do You Have To Be...

2010-03-28T10:03:00.008-04:00

...to try to resuscitate a dead opossum?

You just can't make this stuff up, folks.

PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. – Police say they charged a Pennsylvania man with public drunkenness after he was seen trying to resuscitate a long-dead opossum along a highway. (Opossum photo taken by Rex Lisman)

I know the old song line, "the girls get prettier at closing time" but man, this is some kinda drunk to do this.

I'd love to see the cop car's video of the man and opossum, if there is one.

To Me, This Is Just Plain Funny...

2010-01-05T15:46:00.001-05:00

I keep pulling this up and I laugh at it every time.

Michael Crichton on Global Warming

2009-12-16T12:16:00.005-05:00

A great quote by the M.D./Author

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Does this quote remind you of someone?

Maybe Al Gore? He's big on claiming scientific "consensus" in defending the man-made religion of global warming.

Here's more of Michael Crichton's quote on the anthropogenic global warming hoax. (anthropogenic = man-made):

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

Just thought I'd share that.

If you want to read the whole speech, just Google: "Aliens Cause Global Warming" A lecture by Michael Crichton

Copenhagen Climate Summit: Gathering of Hypocrites

2009-12-07T07:06:00.002-05:00

The headline of the following article pretty much says it all for me:

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges
Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

These self-important jerks don't even realize how pathetic they seem to the average person.

They say we must change the way we live and then proceed to live in such an extravagant way as to make us look like the greenest of the green in the way we live.

Scumbags and fakes on the make for more power and money.

These people don't care for the planet, they cynically live the high-life and expect us normal folk to follow what they say.

I remember when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in the early 1990's.

The reports, describing the immensity of the eruption, said that this one eruption alone injected more greenhouse gasses into the earth's atmosphere than man had in totality since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

And that was just one of many volcanoes that have blasted in my lifetime of 47 years.

Then the Al Gore's of the world expect me to believe that man is causing global warming?

I went to Louisiana public schools, but even I'm not THAT stupid.

Al Gore and the man-caused global warming believers and promoters are simply liars out to make money and increase their power in this world.

The many massive volcanic eruptions, and the sun itself have done enough to make man's efforts look tiny in comparison.

Don't get me wrong, the wanton dumping of chemicals in rivers and other harmful pollution shouldn't happen, but that man is causing any global warming?

Nonsense.

If these men and women at this conference really and truly believed their own lies, they'd live much different lives than the ridiculous extravagance of carbon production that they actually live in.

Liars and hypocrites, all.

Something's definitely rotten in Denmark.

How Engineer's Think

2009-12-05T15:28:00.004-05:00

Someone at work has a sign on his office door:

Dear Santa,

Define good.

Pretty much sums up the mentality of engineers.

We always want more data.

Veterans Day 2009

2009-11-11T12:46:00.005-05:00

I know it has been a ridiculously long time since I last posted, but I wanted to today.

To all American veterans, those who have served and those still serving, THANK YOU!

I think America is in real trouble right now, huge deficits and an administration bent on borrowing more and more money from China, putting us even deeper in the hole.

But our women and men in the various armed forces are out there doing what they can for this country, and I love them for it.

Plus, lovely wife reminded me that we were in Hawaii a long time ago on this day. Veterans Day also reminds she and I of that all-too-brief time on Oahu. The beauty of Hawaii still looms large in my memory.

This has always been my favorite photo from the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Punchbowl Crater above Honolulu on that Hawaii trip.

Thomas Sowell, Amazing Random Thoughts

2009-10-08T11:19:00.007-04:00

I read this editorial by Thomas Sowell and was blown away.

He's my kind of guy, plain-spoken and to-the-point.

Here's a quote from the editorial:

Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Moammar Qaddafi, and Vladimir Putin have all praised Barack Obama. When enemies of freedom and democracy praise your president, what are you to think? When you add to this Barack Obama’s many previous years of associations and alliances with people who hate America — Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, and so on — at what point do you stop denying the obvious and start to connect the dots?

The whole editorial is well worth your time.

Former Confederate Soldier's Grave

2009-10-05T20:36:00.006-04:00

This gentleman survived the Civil War, and is buried in Powder Springs, Georgia where we lived for a few years. (We LOVED it there.)

I've always kind-of liked this shot, but decided to see how it would look in B&W.

I like it, and since I haven't written or posted in over a week, I thought I'd share it with y'all.

Picture Post, Sunday, September 27, 2009

2009-09-27T00:04:00.002-04:00

Lilly, one of our poodles. She's afraid of thunder and has several favorite closed-in places she likes to get. This one is under our bed.

I was photographing the Indian River Lagoon that ended up as the black and white shots from a few posts back, and looked across to another part of this vacant lot and saw little blurry spots of intense red-orange. (I wasn't wearing my glasses, hence the blurry spots of color.)

So, I moseyed on over there, it being WAY too hot a day for anything more strenuous than a mosey. When I got these on my computer, I actually dialed down the color saturation in this photo because the original colors were so intense that it looked fake.

These are the kinds of colors seen around here with all the rain we've had this year.

Our piano. It serves now only as a picture holder. I liked the light in there, but the room is small and I had to zoom out to a wide angle to get even this cropped view, hence the distorted (bent) picture frame and the bottom edge of the piano. My new version of Photoshop Elements has a feature where I can correct some of that type of lens distortion, but haven't gotten around to playing with it yet. I liked the warmth of this one anyway.

One of Lovely Wife's flower pots out back beside the pool. I looked out our back door the other day and the late evening sun made this pot glow, so I grabbed my camera.

Have a great Sunday!

Up To Speed (Bought Some New Stuff)

2009-09-22T21:00:00.016-04:00

We've had Roadrunner broadband internet service in our home for years now, with an older 802.11 -B wireless system.

We've always avoided watching most videos on our computers, the link was too slow and the stopping and jerking of the videos drove me crazy.

But over time, Roadrunner has gotten faster and we upgraded to their fastest home service.

But our older wireless system wasn't capable of using all of that new speed.

So this past week we've bought a few new electronic gadgets for our computers.

I bought a new Linksys wireless router that is 802.11 -N, which is the latest, fastest system available.

Lovely Wife's laptop already had a -N wireless adapter in it, so as soon as I hooked up the new router to the cable modem, she was instantly super fast. She could watch streaming movies from Netflix and so forth on her computer for the first time without all the skipping and jumping.

I bought a -N wireless adapter for the desktop computer I use, and it's now super fast with internet videos now as well.

This just totally changes the whole internet experience, we're finally fast enough for all kinds of videos now and pages load almost instantly; no more waiting for images on pages to slowly trickle in.

We also bought a blu-ray DVD player (LG brand, BD390 model) that has built-in wireless capability and since were subscribers to Netflix, our new wireless router sends us streaming movies across the house to our DVD player.

In other words, our DVD player plays hi-definition DVDs as well as connecting to Netflix so that we can watch movies via it's wireless connection to the internet.

It's all a neat setup and it was super easy to get it all hooked up and working.

I can therefore highly recommend the following gadgets:

- Linksys by Cisco WRT400N Dual-Band Wireless-N Router
- LG BD 390 Network Blu-ray Disc Player
- Linksys WUSB600N Dual-Band Wireless-N USB Network Adapter

I also bought the latest version of Adobe Photoshop Elements, version 7.0. I have used version 4.0 for three years and needed to upgrade to have the ability to work with Nikon RAW files from my D90 digital camera.

I have loved Elements, it's a really great program, and the upgrade from version 4 to 7 is a big difference and the program has many new features when compared to my older version. Well worth the upgrade for me.

So I can highly recommend Photoshop Elements 7 and The Photoshop Elements 7 Book for Digital Photographers book by Scott Kelby.

If you have fooled with image processing programs a little, like Elements, Photoshop, or GIMP, then this book by Scott Kelby is the perfect companion to Elements 7. The book assumes some basic experience with imaging programs, but he explains each topic step-by-step, and is simply the best Elements book you could buy.

Picture Post, Sunday, September 13, 2009

2009-09-13T00:53:00.008-04:00

A look at Florida in Black and White.

I took these photos on Friday afternoon. It was such a beautiful day, and I knew that the light and the clouds would end up making photos that were more interesting in black and white as opposed to color.

Have a great Sunday!

Expensive Hobbies

2009-09-09T16:38:00.007-04:00

My Brother in Law has a real dry sense of humor.

When Big Sis comes home from shopping, he looks at her and asks "How much money did you save us?"

The net effect of shopping for ANYTHING is that money leaves your bank account, never to be seen again.

For me, both photography and guitars tends to be pretty expensive hobbies, but, I must say, the guitars I have are nice but really inexpensive as guitars go.

At a guitar show in Tampa a few years ago a representative for Paul Reed Smith guitars tried to hand me a Carlos Santana model electric guitar to try out. (I got to meet guitar designer/builder Paul Smith himself and talk with him, which was really cool, but another story.)

It truly scared me and I quickly backed away. Too timid for that kind of outrageously expensive guitar.

I was still very much a beginner at guitar at the time and was not prepared to try out guitars in public, a very crowded guitar show, and on an amp. But what scared the heck out of me was the price tag on the Santana guitar.

The list price of a PRS guitar made exactly like the ones Carlos Santana plays was $10,000 at the time. Even if the "street price" was a mere $8,000, I backed away from the man while holding up my hands in denial. I couldn't even get myself to hold the guitar, much less try to play it.

Really, really expensive things has that effect on me.

In the world of photography, today, Leica, the super-expensive but absolutely fantastically built/made German camera maker, released a new digital rangefinder camera called the M9.

The street price of the M9 is estimated to be around $8,000 to $10,000.

That's for the camera body only. No lens included.

Add one of the equally precious new Leica lenses to the M9 and you'll be paying out around $13,000 to $15,000.

One camera body with one lens or pay cash for a new car?

Rich people have such tough choices. Though I realize that if one can easily afford a $15,000 camera/lens, then they won't be driving a $15k car, but you get my meaning.

A couple of months ago, I bought a new Nikon camera body, and once I was satisfied that it worked well in all respects, I sold my older camera body on ebay.

Total price for the new camera body after subtracting what I got for the sale of the old one, about $450.

I still feel guilty about that too.

Then Leica comes along and releases a new $8,000 camera body.

And I suddenly don't feel so bad about spending the $450-$500 on my own new camera.

Thanks Leica!

Like when we were kids. If one of us said, "My arm hurts." one of the other kids might stomp your foot and say, "There, that takes your mind off of your hurting arm doesn't it?"

Same principle.

Texting and Driving

2009-08-30T17:16:00.007-04:00

I NEVER text while driving.

Not because I'm all that safety conscious, it's mainly because even sitting in a quiet room with no distractions it takes me about 15 minutes to poke in a basic text message and send it on my cell phone.

For me, texting while driving is pretty much an impossibility.

I am, however, guilty of photographing while driving.

But at least I don't put the camera to my eye. I just hold it out over the dash and shoot through the windshield.

Not real dangerous, unless the leaning photos make you dizzy or something.

Amazing Miracle Flying Earthworms!

2009-08-16T01:33:00.018-04:00

We might be getting some unwanted visitors later this week. (Tropical storms Ana and Bill, though they're still way out there.)

So on Saturday I got my dual-titanium-rod-reinforced and fused spine out there on a ladder, assisted by Lovely Wife, and cleaned out our home's gutters.

Well, precisely because of the dual-titanium-rod-reinforced, fused spine, I haven't cleaned the gutters in a LONG time.

How long, you ask?

Long enough that the bottom layer of leaves in the gutters had turned to something almost like soil, and these layers were home to an impressive population of EARTHWORMS.

Not kidding here, big, fat, juicy, perfect-for-fishing earthworms. Living 8 feet off the ground in our home's rain gutters.

How long has it been since you cleaned YOUR gutters?

Y'all might have some critters living up there like us and not even know it.

It was quite a job, and by the time we were almost through, I finally got weak from the work and climbing up and down the ladder 400 times. Plus my back was screaming at me by then, so Lovely Wife took over the dirty duty.

Much to our delight, the last section we were to clean, the gutter above our screened front porch, was devoid of leaves (and worms) and we joyfully washed the ladder and put everything away.

Then I had a nice shower and a couple of Lortab, the screwed-up back's best friend.

But really, how in the heck did earthworms get up in our gutters? Fly? Gotta be a miracle, right?

SOME SUNDAY PHOTOS:
Since it's Sunday and I used to faithfully post photos on Sunday's here's a couple to hold you. (But I just couldn't wait with the miracle earthworms story.)

Some of y'all might want to take off your shoes and wiggle the warm white beach sand between your toes...

Or maybe take a stroll by Crane Creek and, on the way, admire one of the local city beautification projects. (I actually like this one.)

Lester Polfus (1915-2009)

2009-08-13T15:24:00.010-04:00

You may know him as Les Paul.

Even if you don't know about the man Les Paul, chances are you would know one of the most immediately recognizable guitar shapes in the world, the Gibson Les Paul solid-body guitar.

Les gained some fame as a radio performer with his guitar while still in his teens at the tail end of the 1920s. His stage name then was Rhubarb Red according to an interview in a book on electric guitars that I have.

All throughout his life he tried to perfect a good sounding solid body electric guitar.

He loved Gibson guitars, and went to the company head in the 1940s with a 4x4 inch plank of wood that formed the neck and center of the body of a self-made solid body electric guitar, but was turned away. The Gibson executive called his guitar a "broomstick." (That's a picture of "the Log" there, along with some sides he made to make the log look more like a real guitar.)

But a couple of years later, Leo Fender, another imaginative tinkerer and maker of amplifiers and lap steel guitars for the 1940s hawaiian guitar craze, set the music instrument making world on its ear with his solid body "Broadcaster" and "Esquire" guitars. Fender was sued because the Broadcaster name was too close to the "Broadkaster" set of drums that Gretsch was making at the time. Fender changed the Broadcaster name to Telecaster, and made a killing.

Gibson got the message that people were willing to buy solid body electric guitars and they went looking for "that kid with the broomstick," Les Paul.

Les Paul claimed he was involved in every detail of the design of the guitar that has born his name on and off since 1952, while Gibson people from that time said they basically designed it and would let him nit pick the design in a few details, but the end result was a guitar every bit as iconic as the Fender Telecaster and the Fender Stratocaster which appeared in 1954.

In 1957, Gibson put a new invention by one of their electrical engineers, Seth Lover, into the Les Pauls. This new invention was the "humbucker" pickup that contains twin coils of wire that resisted electrical noise from entering the guitar signal that plagued (and still plagues) Teles, Strats, and Les Pauls with "single coil" pickups.

It then took Eric Clapton and the British-made Marshall amplifiers in the 1960s to generate the classic rock guitar tone that has sold many thousands of Les Paul guitars and Marshall amplifiers.

The sound of a Les Paul guitar with humbucker pickups played through a Marshall amplifier with closed-back cabinets is my favorite musical sound.

I love the sound of guitars of all types, but the Les Paul/Marshall sound is by far my favorite.

Les Paul and his then wife, Mary Ford, another wonderful guitar player herself, topped the music charts with their lush guitar songs in the 1940s and 1950s.

Les Paul is responsible for creating multi-tracking still used in every music studio in the world, even home studios, to allow a guitar player, or singer, or drummer, to play track after track on top of themselves to create complex musical arrangements.

He was one of the first, if not THE first to use flanging, echo, and other effects to give extra dimensions to his guitar sounds. To this day, a HUGE market in the guitar world is in guitar effects electronics, most of which replicate Les Paul's early basic guitar effects.

As a young man, Les Paul had a arm crushed in a car accident, and he had the doctors set his arm bent in such a way as to allow him to play guitar when the cast came off. That arm never worked quite as well afterward, but since it was set for comfortable guitar playing, he was able to play guitar the rest of his life.

94 years is a good long life, and Les Paul was a very outgoing person who loved life.

Thanks Les, for some killer guitar tunes and for helping release the Gibson Les Paul into the world; my favorite guitar.

If you care to, you can learn a little more about Les Paul at Wikipedia.

Phew! I'm Relieved That Those Headlines Were Wrong

2009-08-06T15:57:00.003-04:00

I had read that the new Dallas Cowboy's stadium was going to sell single-topping pizzas for $90 each (20 inch pizza).

And I thought, "$90! For a pizza!"

As you can tell I was some-kinda upset.

Then I read a correction today.

The pizzas aren't $90 each.

They're only $60 each.

I am SO relieved to know that.

Peeing in the Shower Helps the Environment

2009-08-05T11:15:00.005-04:00

Boy, oh Boy. Ya gotta love this headline:

Brazilian environmentalists: If you've got to go, go green - by going in the shower

Um, maybe I just can't deal with the idea of stepping around in my own urine. To me, the shower is my best shot each day of GETTING CLEAN.

No thanks, I'll just keep using my toilet for that and "waste" that 1.5 gallons.

If a cat can use the toilet, so can I.

Which reminds me, I wonder how Cheryl Crow's "one-square-of-toiler-paper-per-number-two" idea is working out for her.

A Thousand Words...

2009-08-04T13:13:00.004-04:00

Sgt. James Crowley has consistently out-classed the rest of the players in this ridiculous affair.

And Now, Something Completely Different

2009-07-30T12:50:00.005-04:00

Need a laugh after all the dirtiness of Washington, D.C.?

I've got two great links for you, both at Cute Overload:

Check out Look-a-Like: Kitten Crowe.

And after that, check out this hilarious set of wet cat photos. Perfectly titled Drama In The Tub.

I know.

I'm a wimp.

But I love that site.

A Very Basic Problem In Washington D.C.

2009-07-29T12:17:00.010-04:00

Want to know just how horribly our representative republic is being represented?

The Obama administration and the Democrats are trying to jam government-run healthcare down our throats.

Obama's campain promise to put all bills online for American's to read and to allow 5 days for everyone to read and understand each bill has already become yet another Obama lie, though it's hardly surpising that this is the case.

The onerous "healthcare reform" that our government is quickly trying ot foist on the American people is still largely an unknown quantity to us, because again, Obama lied when he said we could read the bills online for us to know what's being done in our name.

But one would hope that our representatives in Washington at least, would read the healthcare reform bill from end to end.

Alas, what a fool am I, this is aparently way too much to expect from the current crop of corruptocrats we have as our "leaders."

Check out this quote from long-time Michigan representative John Conyers when he was simply asked if he had read the healthcare reform bill:

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.
“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

Isn't that rich?

This quote reveals many problems.

First, why should a bunch of lawyers need lawyers to read and understand ANY bill?

Two days to read a thousand pages, well, that's your job you moron! It shouldn't be a hardship on you to DO YOUR JOB! To just read the darn thing.

As an engineer, I might have to read a thousand pages of the manual for a new programmable integrated circuit chip, because it's part of my job. If I'm going to use this chip in a circuit design, then I pretty much HAVE to read every detail about it, and believe me, it's thousand page manual is much more complex and difficult to read than a government bill.

Yet I and other engineers do it, because we need to to do our job. It's that simple.

Mr. Conyers proves what a lazy, good-for-nothing, worthless waste of skin he is if he won't even try to read one of the most important and potentially damaging pieces of legislation to come down the pike in my lifetime.

I am sometimes in despair about America, how great it once was, and how the current administration and his hacks in Congress and Senate are determined to crush the life out of our economy, and by extension, our way of life.

Our country is being run by a bunch of fools.

I need to go find me a "Don't Blame Me, I Voted McCain/Palin" bumper sticker.

Just In Time! (They Were Almost Out of Missiles)

2009-07-27T11:52:00.003-04:00

Our illustrious Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, announced that we (the American taxpayers) are sending $200 Million to the Palestinians.

RAMALLAH, West Bank – The United States has transferred $200 million to the Palestinian government to help ease a growing budget deficit, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday.

Of course, the Palestinians voted for, and are now governed by, Hamas, a terrorist organization committed to the destruction of the nation of Israel and to the death of all Jews.

So, in an amazing feat of mental logic, I see that I'm now helping to fund the Palestinian's (Hamas') future abilites to lob more mortars and shoot off more armed missiles into Israel, our only true friend in the middle east.

Yay, Hillary! You go girl!

That's the way to reverse the evil foreign policy of the great satan George Bush!

Help the Palestinians finish what Hilter started, and kill God's chosen people.

Gotta love that Obama foreign policy, eh?

And now Obama wants us to trust him on the government takeover of the US healthcare system, and is truly mystified at why we don't swallow his plan whole.

Health Care Reform

2009-07-21T14:17:00.015-04:00

To me, it's pretty simple.

America is under catastrophic debt; we owe China so much money that I literally get a wave of nausea through my body when I think about it.

George Bush had a "stimulus plan" go into effect just before leaving office.

Obama had yet another "stimulus plan" go into effect just after taking office.

Both were done with borrowed money, primarily from China. Neither helped one little bit, and in fact hurt the economy.

What kind of idiots do we have running the country?

If I'm on the verge of bankruptcy in my personal finances, I CANNOT borrow enough money to spend my way out of debt.

Now Obama is pushing hard for a socialist, government run, single payer (working tax payers!) health care system like Canada, the UK and other European countries.

The internet is full of web pages of horror stories of people who die before they can even see a doctor in other countries.

It's all about putting the power of 2.5 TRILLION dollars a year into the hands of Washington bureaucrats. Once they have that power, they'll never let go of it.

President Obama and the pushers of socailized medicine in the US couldn't care less about the health of individual Americans, they care only in their thirst for more power.

Their lamentation is that there are 50 million uninsured Americans and that this isn't fair.

Yet they admit that the health care plan they are pushing will still leave 30 million uninsured. How is this better?

Every country that has socialized medicine is crippled with the debt of trying to prop up such a system.

In Canada and the UK, one of the fastest growing segments of their economies is private health insurance and private medical clinics where people already being taxed into oblivion pay even more to provide for themselves the benefit of health care on demand.

If you want to know what kind of health care you will have under the (non) "universal" health care plan put forth by Obama, and to be run by Washington bureaucrats, simply go online and start investigating the level of health care enjoyed by veterans at veteran's hospitals in America.

It will be a glimpse of your future health care under Obama's plan.

Raising taxes has been proven time and again to depress the economy, not help it, yet that is the proposed way of paying for all these new programs, health care and others.

Obama is on a course to absolutely drive the US economy into the dirt.

I pray that the boondoggle of government run health care fails to even get off the ground.

I'm getting nauseous, so I'll stop here.

And how is your day going?!

Picture Post, Sunday July 19, 2009

2009-07-19T02:09:00.015-04:00

Sunday again folks, and I actually have a few photos this time.

I photographed a wedding Saturday evening, and I posted one photo on my photography blog for today if y'all want to go see it.

Sometimes color can be the subject. This is a new medical complex in Melbourne, Florida with highway US1 on one side, and Crane Creek on the other. This was the first time I had been to Manatee Park on Crane Creek since the building was completed. The lovely light of the late evening sun and the dramatic colors of the building and it's reflection, not to mention the incredible greenery from all the rain we've been getting, and I end up with a photo I like. Don't care much about the subject matter, but sometimes color itself is enough to please the eye.

We had gone to the beach twice last week to watch the Space Shuttle lift off, only to have it "scrubbed" each of those two days. But, while at the beach in the gorgeous late afternoon sunlight, might as well take some beach photos, right? This worn foot path to the beach just looked so inviting to me. Plus you can see a glimpse of the beautiful blue-green Atlantic out there teasing you to come on out.

Photographing primarily to get the amazing sky, the proper exposure for the sky left the sea oats too dark to really see. So, I popped up the on-board flash and ended up really liking this shot. It's obviously a flash photo, but all that green detail is very pleasing, at least to my eye.

When the clouds are placed such that the beams of light come out in such a dramatic fashion, I've learned just to point and shoot. By the time I can get to a more esthetically pleasing place (with no power/telephone lines in the photo) the chance is invariably gone. In the past I've tried to photoshop out lines like this, but it is mind-numbingly tedious, even too much so for a patient person like me.

Shuttle Endeavour Finally Lifts Off (no photos though)

2009-07-15T18:19:00.001-04:00

Lovely Wife and I went to the beach a couple of times to watch the latest attempt to launch the Space Shuttle, but it kept being cancelled.

Just a few minutes ago, at 6:03pm EDT, Endeavour finally was able to lift off successfully.

I'm working late, and went on top of one of the buildings and watched it.

Sadly, I cannot bring in a camera of any type where I work, so I just had to eyeball it. My camera is in my car, but I couldn't get off early enough to go to a better location and try to take photos.

I'm about 30-40 miles south of Kennedy Space Center, and it took the rumble (sound) of the boosters over 4 minutes to reach me as I watched. But that gives you an indication of the noise when I can hear it 30 - 40 miles away.

If Congress will fund it to the end, the US Space Shuttle program that is, there are only 7 shuttle missions left planned.

I would be totally surprised if they get to launch all 7 of them.

Picture Post, Sunday, July 12, 2009

2009-07-12T14:55:00.015-04:00

Still haven't been out as much as I hoped with my new camera, but I have a smattering of photos here that I liked enough to show y'all today.

Here's the obligatory beach photo for you land-locked folks. Pretty generic beach photo, but I liked two things that I saw that day: how calm the Atlantic was, this is pretty unusual for us, and also how you could see the blueish-green of the water that gave it a Caribbean feel, even though it was a bit overcast.

This one is not a great photo, but as I drove through a neighborhood in Floridana Beach, Florida that Lovely Wife and I would love to live in, I got behind this couple out for a slow ride in their golf cart. More than a few folks down here own one and use it like this, for slow afternoon or morning rides to enjoy the weather. I loved the lab sitting there on the cart with them.

This neighborhood is so quiet, that we roll down our windows when we creep through here and all we can hear are bugs and the light hiss of our car tires. It smells great too, a combination of the ocean and the flowers in folk's yards. The photo looks bad because I took it through my windshield as I drove up behind them. I just held up the camera without looking through it and fired off about 6 shots, and in this one, the cart was centered in the frame. I had to crank up the contrast to counteract the glare of the windshield. The dog looked just like Big Sis's lab Baxter riding there.

For many years, this house in the right part of the photo was a run-down old house just across A1A from the beach. The property was worth way more than the house, but it appears someone finally plunked down the money and bought the place AND refurbished it completely. In fact, they did the same with the home right next to it, out the the picture to the right, and opened the two homes as a bed and breakfast. So whoever stays there is about a 45 second walk from the beach in the first photo above. They did a beautiful job on the homes too. The bed and breakfast is named "Port D'Hiver" however you would pronounce that.

In the distance to the left is actually one big building that had stood empty since the two hurricanes, Frances and Jeanne that nailed us in 2004. This was a popular restaurant/bar, but it looks almost finished and ready to become whatever it will be. Nice colors though.

Rain

2009-07-10T21:57:00.011-04:00

We've been getting lots and lots of rain for the past couple of months.

We had been in drought conditions up until May, but boy howdy, we've way more than made up for our lack of rain.

It has rained almost every day for two months, at least a little bit, with lots of fast-moving thunderstorms all across Central Florida.

It's hard to believe how much lightning we get here.

Having lived in Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia, I've seen some impressive storms, but the lightning here is completely bizarre.

When the weather is on, and they are giving you the moving radar image across this part of Florida, they put a lightning strike counter up in the corner of the TV screen and it rolls up in number as fast as the price of you filling up your car with high octane gasoline.

On Monday evening, a man on vacation with his family was struck by lightning and killed on the beach shown in the photo of my previous post. The lifeguard had told everyone to clear the beach just in case, but this family didn't and the father was killed.

But, on a happier note, everything that was brown, sickly green, and crunchy three months ago is green, lush, and blooming.

Even the grass in the area is almost unreal in it's green intensity.

The Beach Yesterday (Sunday) Evening

2009-07-06T20:54:00.005-04:00

It's a sad reality that although I live 20 minutes from the beach (on a heavy traffic day) I can sometimes go months without seeing the ocean.

Life tends to intervene, even to someone like me who LOVES the beach.

Yesterday was the first time in several months that I had been to the beach.

It's usually pretty wavy here, but yesterday the Atlantic was more like the Gulf of Mexico.

Smooth and beautiful.

I sat and just listened for a long while, lulled into peace by the gentle lapping of the water.

I love the salty smell too.

As always, I promised myself that I wouldn't go that long ever again without going out there.

It's too beautiful an experience to take for granted. Who knows where I'll be in a year?

Sunday July 5, 2009

2009-07-05T00:18:00.005-04:00

I wouldn't really call this a picture post like in the past, because I only have one photo.

I put a guitar next to my recliner so that I am reminded to pick it up and play some every day.

I long ago realized I'll never be Eddie Van Halen, but I do like to play, and practice is the only way to get better.

At a certain time of each morning the light comes through one of our skylights to "my" area.

The new camera body I bought, a Nikon D90, has a CMOS technology image sensor, and they just flat-out handle low light situations with much better ability than the CCD image sensors in 99 percent of digital cameras, including my older Nikon D70s.

This photo was taken at the equivalent of having used a film rated at ISO 1600. Any film made that has that rating would be very grainy.

To get this kind of smooth image quality in a digital camera set at ISO 1600 is miraculous to me.

I'm definitely going to be loving this camera.

Once I digest the humongous user manual for this thing, I'll get out and take some photos and start posting again like I've been wanting to.

God bless you all, and have a great Sunday.

What IS That Sound?

2009-07-03T23:06:00.002-04:00

It sounds like, like, like, a choir of ANGELS!

But no, it's just the doorbell ringing.

Who could it be?

Why it's the United Parcel Service man bringing me a box!

Whatever could it be?

Oh my, it looks exactly like a brand-spankin'-new Nikon D90 camera body!

I guess that sound REALLY WAS a choir of Angels singing.

Angels always sing when John gets a new camera.

Angels are cool like that.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!

Save Me From Myself

2009-06-23T13:48:00.007-04:00

You like the music you like.

I like the music I like.

I might hate what you like, and quite likely, you'd hate what I like. But it's all good. Musical taste is such an individual thing. That's why I despise music critics, don't sit there and pontificate on why I shouldn't like what I darn well know that I enjoy hearing.

I've talked about music on this blog from time to time, but not a whole lot, simply because I know that, chances are, you couldn't care less about the music I might rave about.

But every once in a while, something comes along and shocks my socks off, and I feel compelled to write here about it.

I've loved music dearly, all my life.

Some of my earliest memories were from around the time I was 4, and my mother would play Brahm's lullabys on their stereo, and the melodies would make me cry. Strange but true, I remember this clearly.

Music has always had the power to move me deeply.

As a boy, I identified that what especially pleased my ear was to hear guitar. I could listen to my parent's 45rpm record of Mason Williams' guitar performance called "Classical Gas" over and over.

With an older sister who loved the Beatles, if I heard her in her room playing records, and I heard the Beatles' opening vocal harmony at the beginning of the song "Paperback Writer" I would dash out of my room to stand outside her door to hear the niftly little George Harrison guitar riff that he did just after that opening vocal harmony.

Over the years, I've developed a full-blown love of rock 'n roll guitar. It's like a love for pepperoni pizza. You just like it, and that's all there is to it. No real intellectual reason for liking a certain thing so much, it's just there, an integral part of you.

And just as most people remember where they where when they first heard of dramatic world events like the Space Shuttle blowing up in 1986, I can remember where I was when I first heard certain rock songs because the guitar playing made such an impression on me, that it imprinted the whole sensory memory in my brain.

Randy Rhodes' signature guitar lick to the Ozzy Osbourne classic song "Crazy Train" always takes me to a certain stretch of Louisiana highway 165 just north of Monroe, Louisiana, and I'm riding in the blue 1975 Ford F-100 Custom pickup truck that was passed down to me from my father. I was going to Bastrop to visit my paternal grandparents and was listening to a AM radio show that played harder rock songs. (Way before talk radio dominated the AM radio band) They played this "new" song from Ozzy Osbourne, and the guitar work of Randy Rhodes in it just knocked me out. It still does, even after all these years.

The other day, Lovely Wife asked me to write down the names of some music CDs that I wanted, and she was going to look for them as a Father's Day gift to me.

As I looked up the names of the CDs of several bands that I like, that had CDs out that I knew I didn't have, I came across a reference to a musician named Brian Welch's CD.

Brian Welch, who has the nickname of "Head" was one of the founding members on the massively popular rock band named Korn.

I remembered hearing how, two or three years ago, he had quit this multi-platinum selling band because he had had a religious conversion to Christianity.

It's not the kind of thing you hear about every day, so the story intrigued me back then, but I hadn't known that he had, over the past few years, written a book about his becoming a Christian and leaving the drugs and alcohol of his old life behind.

He also had put together a band and put out a new CD in the fall of 2008.

I went to his MySpace page to listen to audio clips to see if maybe this was a CD I might like to add to my Father's Day list.

Wow.

Heavy guitars, great melodies.

To those who dislike hard rock or heavy metal, the thought of catchy melodies in this music might sound funny, but much of the music in heavy metal and hard rock has great melodies.

After listening to the title song from the CD, "Save Me From Myself" by Head (Brian Welch), on MySpace, I added it to my list.

Now, after listening to the CD now from end to end, I love every song on it.

If you like heavy rock, especially fans of his ex-band Korn, you'll love this CD.

The lyrics to the CD basically cover the past few years of his life, from the despair and depression of a multi-millionaire who has everything but is a miserable drug addict, to getting clean and becoming a Christian and trying to be a good father to his daughter.

He doesn't preach in the lyrics, he basically just tells his story, so even non-Christians could easily like this CD because he's not telling you what to do, only telling you what he chose to do.

I still don't know about the details of this man's life, I just know that the most profound kind of turnaround that a person could possibly make has been made by Mr. Welch.

As a Christian, the lyrics move me deeply, much like the beautiful Brahm's melodies of my childhood moved me, only I now understand why this particular music affects me. They lyrics are sometimes raw, not pretty, but then the truth is often disturbing and more like a punch in the gut than a feather landing on your shoulder.

Even someone who has been a Christian a long time can understand hitting bottom and looking for some anchor their life, and hearing Head sing about (and he does his own singing as well as guitar) his bottoming out and being given a new lease on life is monumentally moving to me. The lyrics of his despair and then his redemption bring to the forefront of my mind my own conversion and it's dramatic changes.

As a Christian who loves hard rock and heavy metal, I walk a tightrope; a thin line where there are few musical CDs for me to buy and totally devour. Either the music is awesome and the lyrics too dark and depressing, with a total lack of hope, or the other end of the spectrum, what the Christian music industry puts out that seems as hollow as an Easter chocolate bunny, full of the "right" lyrics but completely devoid of any real feeling or heart, contrived.

So now and then I find a band, like my favorite, Disciple, who are incredible musicians who are also committed Christians, and who put out hard and heavy rock with a heart-felt lyrics that are both honest and human, and that honor their faith in God.

Finding a new source of music that I like is always a pleasing thing.

To find one that is as well-played, and well-produced as Head's CD "Save Me From Myself" is a huge treat that is altogether too rare in my life. This is a great production, made by top notch musicians.

My prayers go out to Mr. Brian "Head" Welch on his new life, and I wish him great success. Both in his personal and professional life.

If Head's successful in his new musical endeavours, then I get the benefit of more great heavy music in the years to come.

P.S.
I really racked up on CDs this Father's Day, and all of them are excellent:
Disciple - Southern Hospitality
Stryper - Reborn (Yes, the old 80s Metal band Stryper. They put out a new CD a year or two ago and it's really good. I finally got around to obtaining it.)
Red - Innocence and Instinct
Head - Save Me From Myself
All That Remains - Overcome

'Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed' inventor dies at 92

2009-06-19T18:48:00.011-04:00

MIAMI – The inventor of the "Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed," which brought weary travelers 15 minutes of "tingling relaxation and ease" for a quarter in hotel rooms across America during its heyday as a pop culture icon in the 1960s and '70s, has died. He was 92. John Joseph Houghtaling died Wednesday at his home in Fort Pierce...

Seeing this headline reminded me of something Big Brother once did to me.

I was in my late teens (so this would have been around 1979 or 1980), still living with my parents in Monroe, La., and Big Brother had been living in Lafayette, La., about a four hour drive into south Louisiana from Monroe.

He had moved back to Monroe, but still had some items in Lafayette that he needed to get, and bring to Monroe.

So he conned me into going with him on this boring trip, there was no easy, direct way to Lafayette, it was mostly two lane country Louisiana roads. For those who have never driven in rural Louisiana, the phrase "two lane country Louisiana roads" means mind-numbing boring scenery and horribly bad road conditions.

For some reason, much of that trip there and back is a blank to me, I'm usually great at remembering nauseating amounts of detail about the most innocuous things that have happened in my life, but for this trip, two things stood out, and still stand out in my mind.

One was the god-awful smell from a Godchaux sugar refinery (pronounced GOD-shaw) we passed, and to this day I cannot fathom how something so tasty as sugar can be produced from such a foul-smelling place. I grew up around paper mills, and this sugar refinery smell made the paper mills of north Louisiana smell like Chanel No. 5 in comparison. At least to my admittedly untrained nose.

Anyway, I don't remember one detail of the apartment we took his final possessions from, but I just remember looking like the Clampetts on their way to Beverly Hills, only we were in a 1970 Buick Electra 225, also known as "A Deuce and a quarter." But we had that puppy packed to the gills, with just enough room for Big Brother and I to fit our large frames in there too, for the drive back.

By the time we had loaded the car and were ready to go, it was late at night, so we got a cheap hotel room in Lafayette to sleep a few hours before getting up and hitting the road back to Monroe the next morning.

We walk into the hotel room, it had two double beds, and Big Brother called the bed by the door. (It was the closest one to the air conditioner, which we immediately set to full-blast.)

We were so tired, that we just pulled off our shoes and flopped on the two beds.

I noticed that next to the head of my bed, there was some contraption with a slot in it for feeding quarters.

I sat up and read the front of this metal box and learned for the first time about Magic Fingers Vibrating Beds.

I do remember thinking it was a pretty goofy idea, and lay back down and was getting drowsy within seconds.

Then I heard the tell-tale clunking sound of coins being fed into a machine's coin slot, and looked over to see Big Brother cramming quarters in the machine as fast as he could, and when he saw me notice him, just let out an evil laugh.

I rolled over to stop him, but before I could, the bed started vibrating.

Big Brother laughed himself to sleep while I laid there for an hour and 15 minutes until the bed stopped vibrating.

I guess he had gotten five quarters in the vibrator on my bed before I could react.

Of course his bed didn't have a Magic Fingers, so I was powerless to return the favor.

I remember laying there so sleepy, but this stupid bed vibrated too much to allow me to go to sleep until it stopped.

Of course this was one of the things we recalled and laughed about for years.

Rest in peace, Mr. Houghtaling, your invention cost me some sleep when I sorely needed it, but then again, was a great memory to laugh about in the years that came after.

Letting Your Guard Down

2009-06-07T13:45:00.007-04:00

Oh my gosh, I just saw this photo for the first time on a news site.

I keep looking at it and just laughing.

Note to self, if I ever get famous, remember to take care about what my face is telling the world.

Mrs. Obama's facial expression just speaks VOLUMES here.

I needed a good laugh.

(Photo credit: REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer)

Green Day Are Idiots

2009-05-23T19:19:00.012-04:00

At the company I work for, if I were to cuss all the time, peppering each sentence with expletives, I would get warned, then fired.

End of story.

There are certain standards that places of business have, that, like it or not, they stick by.

It's easy for me not to cuss at work, because I don't cuss anyway. Not to say that I haven't, but it's not part of my vocabulary any more. My choice.

But this week, Green Day, a band I must say I don't like in the first place, are bad-mouthing Walmart for refusing to sell their cuss-word laden newest CD, 21st Century Breakdown.

Turns out that Walmart is the country's largest music seller, and Green Day refused to offer an edited version of their latest CD, something that's been done by other artists for decades now.

I think it is fine, even good that Green Day refuses to offer an edited version. Nobody can make them, but what galls me is that they turn around and state that Walmart should be made to carry "their art."

Uh, uh, there Bill Joe and Mike, you little pencil-necked, pip-squeaks, can't have that both ways.

If you can't be bothered to offer a cuss-word free version of your CD, then certainly Walmart doesn't have to bother to sell your original version if it falls below their standards.

When you guys play concerts, can you shoot off huge columns of fire in small venues? Nope.

Can you perform sex acts in your concerts in any American venue and not expect to be arrested? Nope.

Likewise, Walmart has, for decades, had a standard of musical content that they sell. Simply cussing on your CD is over the mark, as far as Walmart is concerned.

You knew that when you made the recording, and now you're whining about it.

Boo, hoo, hoo. Go home and cry in your piles of money.

You know, and I know, that your real fans will buy it at Best Buy or on Amazon, so your complaining about Walmart sounds pretty darn pathetic.

I don't get upset when I hear folks cuss, but gee whiz, to expect a company to sell my product when it goes against their long-standing practice?

Please, this is America.

If Walmart won't sell it, you know others will.

"Wal-Mart's become the biggest retail outlet in the country, but they won't carry our record because they wanted us to censor it," frontman Billie Joe Armstrong griped to the press. "They want artists to censor their records in order to be carried in there. We just said no. We've never done it before. You feel like you're in 1953 or something."

Billie Joe continued: "If you think about bands that are struggling or smaller than Green Day...to think that to get your record out in places like that, but they won't carry it because of the content and you have to censor yourself. I mean, what does that say to a young kid who's trying to speak his mind making a record for the first time? It's like a game that you have to play. You have to refuse to play it." Added bassist Mike Dirnt, more succinctly but just as effectively: "As the biggest record store in the America, [Wal-Mart] should probably have an obligation to sell people the correct art."

Walmart HAS NO obligation to sell anything they don't want to.

Confessions of an Ebay Junkie

2009-05-05T11:08:00.019-04:00

WARNING: Another Boring Ramble on an Unimportant Subject.

(Everybody's good at something, right? I have elevated boring rambles on unimportant things to an art form.)

I'll get to the Ebay part of the story in a minute. First some background.

I play some seriously mediocre guitar, and truly cannot justify paying top dollar for name brand guitars and parts. Now, I could buy top dollar, name brand guitars if I wanted, but with me it's kind of like what folks used to say when you got a new haircut, "That's a $20 haircut on a $2 head!" Buying a $3000 Gibson Les Paul at my level of playing ability is pretty much the same idea. Heck, even Fender guitars made in their Mexico factory can cost up to $900 (Like this sweet Robert Cray Strat I'd be proud to own), and their American made guitars start at about that much, so I find it hard to justify spending that kind of money on basically no talent.

I have found that I much prefer playing guitar on fat, chunky guitar necks, while most folks like the slim ones on most guitars.

Buying a specific Fender guitar neck to put on one of my cheap Fender-like imitation guitars is too expensive for me too. A real Fender neck with the fatter, hand-filling feel can cost $300 - $500 just for the neck!

There is a brand of guitars, SX, that are manufactured in China, but are of unbelievable quality for the price. Like a friend of mine says when he buys another inexpensive tool from Harbor Freight that was made in China, "John, Chinese prisoners work cheap!" (I know, that's mean, but it is funny.)

The fact is, that the largest guitar maker in the world is in Korea. Many famous guitar brands that you might have heard of are actually made in the Samick factory in Korea, and they put Epiphone, and whoever else's label on them and ship them out.

These Pacific Rim factories have been making guitars for decades now, and they truly make guitars equal to, and sometimes superior to American made ones.

Back to the Chinese made SX guitars.

The only importer of SX guitars and basses that I know of is Rondo Music in Connecticut. They are made of good quality woods, usually three pieces of alder or ash (same wood types as Fender uses on their US made guitars) and the hardware and electronics are of decent, but inexpensive manufacture.

These guitars are perfect for folks like me who like to eventually upgrade the electronics and otherwise modify their guitars to make them exactly like they want them to sound and look.

And that's one thing that's really fun for me, is to take a decent, basic guitar, and over time, upgrade the hardware, and electronics to where you have a first class guitar, exactly like you want it. Just buy the basic guitar in the color you like, then you can replace everthing from the neck to all the hardware and pickups.

Buying a cheap guitar that has decent quality wood as a base, you can slowly turn your guitar into an exact, custom tone monster just like you want it to be.

This is where Ebay comes in.

If I own a $110 guitar, then someone who has taken apart a similar guitar and sells the parts on Ebay, will necessarily only be able to get prices for the parts totaling maybe just a little more than the guitar as a whole.

That, believe it or not, is a HUGE way people operate on Ebay.

Take a $1200 American-made Fender Telecaster, take it completely apart, and then sell the individual parts for a little less than you would normally have to pay for the parts, and the Ebay guru might end up getting $1500 for all the parts to a $1200 guitar. Do that many, many times and you are making some nice money on the side.

Same holds for a $110 guitar. Take it apart, and instead of getting $500 for the guitar neck by itself as you would for an American Stratocaster neck, you only get, say, $40. A little less than half the price of the guitar originally.

But the beauty of it for people like me is that I can get the fat, chunky guitar necks that I prefer to play on for a totally reasonable price, and these might be dirt cheap compared to a "real" Fender guitar and parts, they are of good quality despite the cheapness.

I have a guitar neck like I wanted that I received from an Ebay seller two weeks ago, that I will soon put on my $50 Guitar. The neck that is on the guitar now is nice, but it's really slim, and the used one I bought is nice and chunky, so I'll swap them out and my $50 guitar will be much more to my liking. I'll flat-out play it more because I don't like the slim neck that came on it.

So I'll end up with a guitar customized for my own preferences for not much moo-lah.

At this moment, I have bids on one other guitar neck, and another guitar part on Ebay too.

Buying one inexpensive piece at a time, I end up with quaility instruments customized by me, for me.

So a couple of times per day, I cruise through Ebay, searching for particular items, and often am the only bidder, and get good stuff for a great price. If you know what you want, what the market says these items are worth, and watch for your items to show up, you can get great deals.

Who knows, maybe one day I'll actually plunk down the money for a real Gibson Les Paul Standard like I dream of, just because I want it. I'll probably get it on Ebay too.

One weirdness that I have seen over an over on Ebay that always makes me question people's sanity, is when people will bid and buy a used item on Ebay for more than they could have bought that item brand new.

The SX guitars that I talk about here, cost anywhere from $100 to $175, but I have seen people pay $175 for a used guitar on Ebay, when they could have contacted Rondo Music and bought that exact guitar, brand new, for $100.

I see this over and over. It's not as if they are rare items, or items no longer made; just a click over to another page and they could be buying the exact guitar, brand new, for $50 or so less than the used one they are buying on Ebay.

I just don't get that. I guess some people just don't think to look to see what the price of a new item is before bidding on an Ebay item. Pretty dumb though.

Anyway, I'm often looking for deals on Ebay for things I want from people who have proved themselves to be reputable sellers. It's a lot of fun, and when a guitar is finally modified to be exactly what I would have wished for in a custom-made guitar, it's even more rewarding.

And, as mid-life crises go, buying cheap guitar parts is way easier on the wallet than buying a Corvette.

What do you find yourself looking for on Ebay? Anything?

Here's a photo of all my SX guitars:

Waterboarding, Torture?

2009-04-29T14:01:00.013-04:00

America's most imminent threat for the past 20 years or so has been terrorist attacks.

The New York World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and the attacks of 9/11 come to mind as the most notable attacks on the US.

But there were attacks on the Beiruit US Embassy in 1983, and other US embassies in Africa for example, killing many US citizens working overseas.

Terrorists set up mortars and missle launchers next to schools and family dwellings, shoot their weapons, and wait for the US or whoever they attack to rain bombs on the area, knowing that they have basically targeted US weapons on innocent women and children by doing so. Then they get on the news and talk about how the US is killing innocents, when they themselves drew the target on these areas just for publicity's sake.

Terrorists have been caught dressed as women and clerics trying to hide or infiltrate their target areas.

Terrorists wear no uniform of an entity, they intentionally hide and do their killing, hoping to have local innocents killed in retaliation so they can whine on TV about how evil the US is.

These are the people we are fighting. Cowards who use innocents as their shield and as propaganda pieces. These innocents are killed by the terrorists intentionally having them targeted.

That's who America's main enemy is in the world today.

Now there is a so-called "scandal" happening in America based on heavily redacted documents released by the criminally wimpy Obama administration, saying that America, via the Bush administration, approved the waterboarding of terrorist's caught by the US.

The same Huffington Post-type folks who hated Bush for merely breathing, are now trying to create a non existent torture scandal over the US waterboarding known terrorists to glean information about possible imminent terrorist attacks on the US.

Since when did waterboarding become torture?

The US armed forces have used waterboarding as part of training for OUR military for decades!

Many, many thousands of US service men and women, officers and snake-eaters have been waterboarded as part of their training.

No torture law suits against the US by our service men or women over this supposed "torture" they received as part of their normal training.

Now, all of a sudden, the US approves this same waterboarding procedure that is a normal part of US military training to be done on a hand-full of known terrorists that we had captured, and these idiots are all up in arms about the evil Bush administration approving waterboarding on the poor, defenseless terrorists.

Big Boo Hoo. I just don't get it.

Decades of waterboarding many thousands of US servicemen is no big deal, but now that we do it to half a dozen stone cold killers it's suddenly a torture technique?

Putting a known murdering terrorist in a dark cell and telling him they are loosing caterpillars in the room with him to let his own mind freak him out is torture?

Putting a known murdering terrorist man in a dark cell and telling him they will release stinging bugs in there with him is torture?

Give me a break people.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was waterboarded and revealed a far-eastern based al Kaeda plot to fly planes into buildings in Los Angeles, and this knowledge was used to capture more terrorists and to PREVENT a 9/11 level attack on Los Angeles, and this murderous thug gets sympathy from the morons who all of a sudden consider waterboarding to be torture?

I just don't understand the thinking of millions of my fellow Americans.

If waterboarding our own people was training, not torture, for decades, then waterboarding CANNOT be torture for known enemies we have captured, who refuse to wear a recocgizable uniform according to Geneva Convention dictates, who dress as women, hide behind the innocent, and murder many thousands of US citizens around the world.

I do NOT see our waterboarding a half-dozen terrorists as a dark stain in America's recent past.

I see the waterboarding as something American servicemen and women went through as training, that proved useful with captured terrorists, and was certainly worthwhile in doing because it save untold thousands of lives in Los Angeles alone.

As far as I'm concerned, the waterboarding of captured terrorists by the US was not torture.

CNSNews.comCIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief

Khalid Sheik Mohammad, a top al Qaeda leader who divulged information -- after being waterboarded -- that allowed the U.S. government to stop a planned terrorist attack on Los Angeles.
(CNSNews.com) - The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the “Second Wave”-- planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”

KSM was the mastermind of the first “hijacked-airliner” attacks on the United States, which struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia on Sept. 11, 2001.

(this article continues here)

Fatties Cause Global Warming

2009-04-22T06:07:00.001-04:00

Scientists warned that the increase in big-eaters means more food production — a major cause of CO2 gas emissions warming the planet.

Overweight people are also more likely to drive, adding to environmental damage.

I'm proud to say I'm doing my part in this important issue of pissing off people who believe in the "global warming" nonsense.

Even the UN's IPCC, who badly want people to believe in global warming, have admitted that the earth's average temperature for the past five years have been plateaued, while looking back to 1998, the average earth temperature has GONE DOWN.

So, in actuality, the earth has been cooling for the past 11 years.

But, the whole global warming hoax has been entirely based on computer models!

Morons.

Computer models can't predict local weather anywhere on earth within a certain level of probability, how can they expect us to believe in computer model projections on the earth's mean temperature 100 years from now?

Hmmm. What's for lunch? I'm feeling like a double helping of something, just to help out.

Two Peas In A Pod

2009-04-21T06:31:00.000-04:00

(AP Photo/Mariamma Kambon, Summit of the Americas, Pool)

You'll have to excuse me, I think I'm going to throw up.

Picture Post, Sunday April 19, 2009

2009-04-19T19:19:00.000-04:00

Abbreviated Version

I have taken very few pictures lately, but I did like these that I took of Lovely Wife's Easter flowers.

Guilty Pleasures - Music

2009-04-18T07:04:00.011-04:00

A Rather Long, Aimless Ramble On Musical Likes, Dislikes, and Critics

Just looking at the title, you can see where I'm going, and indeed, I could probably write a list as long as my arm of songs that we're supposed to hate, songs that music critics hate, but that I actually like. I can never think of them all at one time.

Songs that I love to hear despite how others hate these songs.

While driving to work the other morning, I had my usual struggle to find some music on the radio. Most radio stations have folks on there talking and I was not in the mood for listening to people yakking. I simply wanted to hear some music.

Finally found a station out of Vero Beach that was actually playing music and they played Come On Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners from the 1980s, and I turned it up.

I'll wait a minute while you roll your eyes, or finish throwing up…

The music to that song sounds "happy" to me. They could take out the lyrics as far as I'm concerned, and I'd still like the song. The tune is really upbeat in a pleasing way that never fails to improve my mood. Driving in Palm Bay, Florida, in morning traffic is a life-or-death roller coaster ride on the best of days, and a little upbeat music is helpful to me.

But who can top the great lyrics in this song?

Come on eileen too-loo rye-aye
Come on eileen too-loo rye-aye
Toora toora-too-loora

Just kidding on the lyrics, to me, the music to the song has an uplifting quality to it that never fails to improve my mood. The lyrics are kind of dumb if you listen to them.

Plus, this song has one of those elements to it that, in my book, helps make it a classic.

Yes, you guessed it already…

The Banjo!

How can you hate a song with banjo in it?

I don't like country music, so hearing banjo on rock or pop stations is darn rare, but there it is, all through Come on Eileen.

Then, after Come on Eileen was over, they played Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard, yet another guilty pleasure of mine.

As a confirmed guitar nut, I have to say that I think Phil Collen, lead guitarist for Def Leppard is a really good player. For me that means, I really like both his guitar tone and the style in which he plays.

Def Leppards music is filled with neat guitar riffs by Phil Collen, and most are the kind of little guitar melody pieces that stick in my mind. I don't mind having a great guitar riff stuck in my head, unlike the lyrics or tune to any song that annoys me.

Anyway, Pour Some Sugar on Me is song that has great catchy guitar in it, and though the lyrics are pretty much from the mind-set of a 14 year old, I love the song because of the huge sound of Mr. Collen's guitar in there.

So, going to work the other day was quite pleasant because I heard these two classics that I happen to like.

A person's taste in music is as unique to them as their personality.

There's no imagining how many gallons of print ink has been used over the years to discuss music, but for the most part, these writings are done by music critics, one of the lowest forms of life on earth in my opinion. You can like anything you want, I'll have no problem with that, but I dislike a person pontificating on what they think is good or bad as if I MUST agree with them.

That being the case, I tend to disagree with most music critics (and movie critics for that matter). My main problem with critics is that they usually discuss music with the intent that I am wrong if I disagree with them. I really hate that.

Professional critics are a form of life I think we could do without. I find it hard to believe that a person can make a living listening to music and then trying to create a written opinion that will sway the public in one way or another, just because they say so.

For me it all comes down to a gut feeling, to like, dislike, love, or hate individual songs. Come on Eileen and Pour Some Sugar on Me just happen to be a couple of songs that I have always liked, one for the uplifting tune, and the other for the great guitar.

I would suspect that 99% of music critics hate these songs, but that has no effect on me. That's why I have never liked reading Rolling Stone, one, I could not care less about their music critics' opinions, and two, the only other articles in Rolling Stone tends to be politically way-far left stories.

I am not way-far left in my political beliefs. I'm pretty much way-far right, so that pretty much kills my desire to read anthing that Rolling Stone has ever printed.

Yeah, I'll sit and discuss musical opinion differences with you, but in the end, nothing you can say will make me like or dislike a song on your say-so because music is such a gut-level thing in my life. I would be surprised if my musical opinions swayed you even a tiny bit.

Aside from the song itself, for me, music is a time machine.

Hearing Come on Eileen and Pour Some Sugar on Me takes me back to the early and late 1980s in a way that just recalling the times cannot match. Something about music immerses me in feelings about the times that the songs were a backdrop for.

This can be good or bad, many songs were the backdrop for good times, but some of those good times are so beautiful to me, that hearing some old favorite songs brings up a bittersweet feeling in me; the times they recall are so sweet that thinking on them can actually hurt.

Consequently, over time, I had created my own mix CDs on our computer of songs that would take me, in mind and spirit, to certain times in my life. Such as the first year of mine and Lovely Wife's marriage. You get the idea.

I've translated these song groupings into several playlists on my iPod, so that I can dial up a set of songs to match my mood.

For example, I have been repeatedly playing my playlist of favorite songs by King's X, one of the best rock bands ever, that you've probably never heard of. Ty Tabor's guitar is always great, and Doug Pinnick's 12-string bass is massive. But, in the way of things, they've never had a great amount of commercial success.

Anyway, I started this to simply talk about one morning's drive to work when I was pleasantly surprised to hear a couple of old favorites. But as I thought about writing a blog post about them, I realized that many people probably absolutely hate one or both of these songs that had put me in a great mood the other morning.

This led to thoughts on differing musical opinions, music critics, and musical likes and dislikes in general, so the post ended up being this behemoth about nothing much.

I just know that I have always loved music.

I like what I like, especially great guitar, whether it's in rock, heavy metal, jazz, or whatever.

Music critics annoy me, so I avoid their opinions where possible.

And that's enough for today.

Bye.

I'm an Embarrassment to Obama

2009-04-17T06:53:00.000-04:00

I'm an embarrassment to Barack!

I only scored 17 on the Obama Test

I would be excited, but I'm actually kinda bummin'.

Don C. (my Dad) didn't live to see me graduate from engineering school, and I also won't be able to show him my new test score.

Actually, I'm wondering how I managed to score as high as 17.

Fishing

2009-04-16T07:11:00.006-04:00

Back in my high school days, some of my friends and I went bass fishing a lot.

I like bass fishing, and the friendship too.

But marriage, children, work and other things fill up your life and the result is that I haven't been fishing in many years.

Here in Florida, I am always staggered by the number of boats I see.

Living by the Atlantic, and in a state with thousands of lakes, and quite a few rivers, you see sailboats, fishing boats, air boats (a la Gentle Ben), canoes, kayaks, you name it.

Folks are down-right serious about their fishing here.

One of the custom Florida vehicle license plates you can get down here has a big snook pictured on it.

I'm not really one to pay extra for a fancy license plate on our cars, but to pay extra to have a painting of a fish on your license plate tends to be the domain of serious fishermen (or fisher persons).

Lots and lots of cars and trucks here with that old fish on there, lots of serious fishermen.

But I'd almost be willing to take the time and money expense of taking up fishing again just so I could get me one of these bumper stickers I've seen around here.

I love that. Always good for a laugh from me when I see one of them on a truck.

April 15th, Tax Day - Losing Exemtions

2009-04-15T07:02:00.002-04:00

Well, both Number One and Number Two daughters are no longer tax exemptions for us.

Last year, we had to pay $29 in additional Federal Income Tax.

This year, it's somewhat more than that, but not too bad.

Time to resubmit my W-4 at work with them taking out additional tax with every payday.

I'd rather have a little coming back to me than to have to pay, because in my life, it seems like there's always something, a car needing repair, home repairs, or other expense that needs doing around April 15th.

Makes it tough to pay taxes.

I have our taxes all filled out, and a check for what we owe in the envelope with the tax forms, and one of them already-been-licked stamps from the US Postal Service on the front, all ready to mail.

I'll drop it off at the Post Office sometime tonight.

Can't let the government have my money one more day than necessary.

Did you know that, if the Obama administration confiscated ALL income from those taxpayers making $75,000 per year or more, it still wouldn't be enough to cover the budget his administration submitted to Congress this year?

All income, from all tax payers who make $75,000 a year or more, isn't enough money to finance Obama's first budget.

The over $10,000 we paid in Federal Taxes this year isn't even a drop in the bucket for Obama, but it sure puts a hurt on us.

As a family, we have to live within what Lovely Wife and I net in our paychecks.

There's a dark day coming for America because of how all US presidents and Congresses have overspent.

Sword Fight! And Also Something Really Rare

2009-04-14T12:01:00.002-04:00

Two men and a woman died as a result of two men fighting with swords in Indianapolis.

Rondeau and Adolf Stegbauer got into an argument at a home in the 5200 block of Raceway Road that escalated when one of the men grabbed a sword, prompting the other man to also brandish a sword.

Sword fighting is pretty rare these days.

Even more rare is the use of the word "brandish" in a sentence.

This reporter got a two-fer.

Cool.

Kudos to President Obama

2009-04-13T10:13:00.006-04:00

I know that it would not be easy to give someone authority to kill another person, but when Somalian pirates took an American ship captain, Richard Phillips, captive, President Obama allowed the US Navy people on site make the decision to use force to rescue the American prisoner if they deemed the prisoner to be in imminent danger.

During tense negotiations, the Somali pirates were seen to have their AK-47s pointed at the kidnapped American ship captain.

From the nearby US Navy ship, snipers shot three pirates with guns pointed at their captive.

The captain was rescued by US Navy Seals.

Hats off to a gutsy call by President Obama to allow the Seals to do what they are trained to do.

Of course, now critics are whining and moaning and predicting a rise in violence, and indeed, the pirates still alive have promised to hurt American or French captives in the future, but they should understand that when you point a gun at someone, you have opened the door to having one used on yourself.

Can you imagine the skill of a person with a rifle who could pick off bad guys bobbing around on a boat, while themselves on a ship in the ocean?

There's no glory in killing someone, but when a terrorist kidnaps an innocent person and points a gun at this person, it's serious. In my opinion, by kidnapping and holding a gun on the kidnapped person, that man has opened the door to be killed himself.

I'm proud of our Navy, and I'm proud President Obama was able to make such a tough call.

Our Special Forces are heroes.

I think Obama and the US Navy did the right thing.

A Cool Place To Kill Some Time

2009-04-09T11:51:00.001-04:00

Bored?

Tired of looking at the same old web sites?

Nothing good for sale on Ebay?

Like good photography?

Go over and see the archives at Life Magazine.

Their archive is searchable and there are millions of images there. You can look at everything from classic life photos up to present day images.

I personally tend to get a bigger emotional impact from the older stuff for some reason. (I have always loved National Geographic's photography too, except for articles on bugs and spiders.)

The site won't let you download anything, but you can link to photos.

Here are a few samples from WWII.

An Excellent Find

2009-04-07T21:11:00.001-04:00

In the early 1980s, around 1983, I read a book called Long Voyage Back by Luke Rhinehart.

When I was growing up, my parents would go to the local paperback book exchange and take in at least two paper sacks of books they had read, and come home with a couple of sacks of books that needed reading.

It was pretty much a genetic given, that I would love to read.

I didn't read much for pleasure until after I got out of high school though. I began to read more and more around the first time I was in college.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction for pleasure. I have to read so much technical stuff for work, and I buy engineering texts to help keep current with technology changes for work, so when I read for pleasure, I tend to read fiction novels. (I do like to read non-fiction about physics and mathematics, however.)

In one of my parent's sacks of paperbacks, I found and read Long Voyage Back.

It was my first post-apocalyptic novel.

Something about the story just struck me, probably because I had always been intrigued by "marooned on desert island" or "last man on earth" type stories and movies.

The book has as it's background, and all-out nuclear conflict between America and the USSR, but never gets very close to the actual bomb sites.

The main character is a US Naval Academy graduate, Navy veteran, and current captain for hire on rich folk's sailboats.

As the story begins, he's coming into Chesapeake Bay to bring a man his sailboat, when a flash occurs to the north. Washington has been nuked.

The story follows this man, the boat's owner and son, and others as they flee fallout to the ocean and for months as they try to survive.

The book has a good, hopeful ending, which I'm a sucker for, and it just really stuck with me.

Over the years I've read many other post-apocalyptic novels, and some were more intricate and complex than Long Voyage Back, but that one always stayed in the back of my mind.

Several years ago, I thought about the book, but couldn't remember the name or author, but since Al Gore was nice enough to invent this here internet thingy, I did a search and found that folks have whole web sites on post-apocalyptic novels.

One site I found had a list of one man's favorite books in this genre, as well as a brief synopsis of each book. I read through his list, and sure enough, he mentioned this book and I was able to relearn the title and author.

I always wanted a copy of this book, but it's out of print, and paperback copies of it that I had seen, can be $15-$20, so I never bought one.

But a couple of weeks ago, I found a web store called Alibris, which has a huge network of book stores and I was able to locate a very good condition hardback version of Long Voyage Back, with dust jacket, for a mere $10.

I couldn't resist. So for less than $15 with shipping, I finally got a good copy of this old favorite of mine. (I'm one of those people who likes to reread books I really like every few years.)

So for me, this was a fun, inexpensive score.

It was great to reread the book.

Some good post apocalyptic novels that I've read:
Long Voyage Back by Luke Rhinehart
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
The Stand by Steven King
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

I Needed A Laugh

2009-04-06T10:39:00.012-04:00

Frank J., founder and fount of incredibly funny wisdom, at IMAO, had a blog post about dubious things that Europeans do and say, and had this final remark:

I’m just glad there is an ocean between us and Europe. We should fill it with sea monsters (like Predator X) to be on the safe side, though.

That just cracked me up for some reason. I got a mental picture of old drawings of sea monsters and stuff, keeping us from being contaminated by European ways.

Picture Post, Sunday April 5, 2009

2009-04-05T19:30:00.011-04:00

Cars And Guitars

Kowabunga, Dude!

Several shots of a custom Dodge in front of Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida. I'm no surfer (too old, too fat, don't care), but I'd be proud to drive this ride around.

This inexpensive copy of a Telecaster Thinline was my present from Santa this past Christmas. I suck too much as a player to plunk down $900 for a "real" one with the Fender logo, but this SX brand copy is easily as good as Fender's Squier range of guitars. And at a mere $150, easy on the wallet.

The bridge area of an SX brand Stratocaster copy that I've had for several years. I guarantee this is the best $100 guitar you will ever find. (Yes, literally, $99.99) And the pickups are surprisingly good; this thing has great tone.

Been A While / Venting About Obama

2009-04-03T16:52:00.015-04:00

Just working and not much else.

Last week I went in and had a procedure done on my back where they cauterize nerves on each side of my lower spine. This burning of the nerves can lessen pain. Though the procedure and the soreness from the procedure are no fun, if the pain reduction works, it can last a year. It's worth the gamble. Two weeks of soreness from the procedure, and then, hopefully, a year or so of relief.

Well, a week into this, I have to say that I am having some relief of the pain in my lower back. I hurt in my lower back, much as if I was having a migraine in my back. I also have pain in and down my left leg, though that is not affected by this procedure.

The migraine in my lower back feeling, has been lessened. So at this point, I'm glad I had the procedure done.

I wish I had some amazing stories to tell, humor to share, SOMETHING, but I don't. I have just felt so bad that I had no desire to be witty, erudite, or even just plain spoken.

The whole Obama as president thing is a bummer of incredible magnitude. (If you love Obama and what he's doing, then do not read any further.)

We have gone mad and elected a MadMan as our president, and he's surrounded himself with other madmen.

For someone who was supposed to be a great orator, Obama says "uh" and "um" more than any other human I've ever seen. Bush couldn't open his mouth without people calling him stupid, but Obama makes Bush sound like a genius by comparison when Obama isn't on a teleprompter or if they haven't set up a large TV in the back of the room for him to speak from. I went to Louisiana public schools and Louisiana and Georgia public universities, but even I know that you are not supposed to say "uh" and "um" in public speaking. Listening to Obama answer press questions is painful for me. Obama says "uh" so often that it makes Bush's occasional use of "NOO-kyoo-ler" sound quaint and sweet.

Obama gives the Prime Minister of Great Britain a set of DVDs as a gift, and if that isn't the perfect example of the MOST LAME GIFT, EVER, GIVEN BY ONE HEAD OF STATE TO ANOTHER, then I don't know what is. But it gets better; the DVDs are coded for use in North America. Gordon Brown cannot even watch his lame gift if he wants to. Stupid idiot.

Then, for the G20 summit, Obama gives the Queen of England an ipod. Yep, an ipod. But it gets better as well. The Queen already has an ipod, well publicized, so there was no excuse. It gets better still, Obama has already loaded the ipod with things he, in his infinite conceit, thought the Queen should be listening to. But it gets ever more better, Obama has also loaded audio of his own speeches on there too. He's so frickin' egotistical that he actually believes the lies that people love his campaign speeches. Whoop-tee-doo. The man can read from a teleprompter. He hasn't had an original thought in his life, certainly never voiced anything new in any of his campaign speeches, but because he's not Bush, he's loved.

Now while these gift items aren't really important in the scheme of things, it's a telling look at what a low-class schmuck Obama is. Even a nobody like me knows those were two mega-lame gifts.

All I can say is, as much fault as I found with many of Bush's policies, I miss him, because Obama is plain scary. Dangerous, unbelievably egotistical, and nowhere near as intelligent as his fawning followers believe.

Mr. Obama promised the most ethical administration ever, and he just nominated his fifth income tax cheat as his choice for high office. What a liar.

Mr. Obama promised there would be no lobbyists in his administration, but he's appointed several to important positions. Liar again.

Overall, Mr. Obama's promises of change and high standards have fallen under the onslaught of his penchant for putting corrupt cronies in high position.

And through it all, a fawning national media give him a free pass on everything.

It's all pretty sickening.

Don't get me started on his 3.5 trillion dollar budget that Obama submitted. We cried foul and thought the Bush administration and the Republican held Congress spent like drunken sailors; Obama and the Democrat held Congress' spending make Bush and the Republicans look like penny-pinching misers.

I'll try to come up with some more stories from my youth, and more positive things.

Getting back into the habit and thought process of remembering things that I'd like to write for posterity, and creating the mood to write by sitting my rear end in a chair and starting typing, is difficult.

There's a lot of inertia to overcome.

Hope I can do it and start posting here again on a daily basis.

God Bless America.

Over and out.

The Cause of Gray Hair, or, Scientists Is Stoopid!

2009-03-01T20:29:00.006-05:00

This proves that researchers and scientists can be dumb as rocks.

Read:

Why Hair Goes Gray
Study Blames a Chain Reaction That Makes Hair Bleach Itself From the Inside Out
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Feb. 25, 2009 -- Scientists may have figured out why hair turns gray, and their finding may open the door to new anti-graying strategies.

New research shows that hair turns gray as a result of a chemical chain reaction that causes hair to bleach itself from the inside out.

The process starts when there is a dip in levels of an enzyme called catalase. That catalase shortfall means that the hydrogen peroxide that naturally occurs in hair can't be broken down. So hydrogen peroxide builds up in the hair, and because other enzymes that would repair hydrogen peroxide's damage are also in short supply, the hair goes gray.

Putting the brakes on that chemical chain reaction "could have great implications in the hair graying scenario in humans," write the researchers, who included Karin Schallreuter, a professor clinical and experimental dermatology at England's University of Bradford.

The study appears online in The FASEB Journal; the FASEB is the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

That's just silly.

EVERYONE knows that children are the cause of gray hair.

Buncha dummies.

So much for me thinking that scientists and researchers are smart.

I'm glad there were no engineers mentioned, I'd hate to have been lumped in with this know-nothing bunch.

The Biggest Orange I Ever Did See

2009-02-14T00:10:00.006-05:00

One of those really cool, cheesy, but fun roadside pieces of Americana that is along US1 in Melbourne, Florida.

Although this one is well taken care of, so many things like this have disappeared over the years.

I love stuff like this.

When I was a kid in the sixties and seventies, it seemed like we saw all manner of goofy stuff along highways.

You don't see this kind of thing near as much now, and to me, it's sad.

National Groundhog Abuse Day!

2009-02-02T12:40:00.007-05:00

Well, chalk up another win for the animal abusers of the world.

That animal travesty known as "Groundhog Day" is today, and as has happened since the 1800's a bunch of schmucks in black coats and Abe Lincoln style top hats ripped a poor, hibernating beast from his peaceful winter's hibernation and woke him with the cheers of 13, 000 mentally deficient animal haters.

According to the perpetrators of this ancient pagan rite, there will be six more weeks of winter because the poor little fella saw his shadow this morning.

Let me get this straight.

They pull this hibernating wonder of God's creation from his toasty warm hole and loft him up above the cheers of thousands of idiots who should have still been in their warm beds if they had a lick of sense, and because it was sunny enough for the groundhog to have seen his shadow, this somehow means that there will be six more weeks of winter?

I think next year I'm gonna round up a bunch of my PETA friends and take a trip to Pennsylvania to throw red paint on all these vicious animal haters.

Morons.

Do groundhogs not have teeth?

I really did like the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray though.

(Just kidding, people. I don't have any PETA friends, since I'm a life-long omnivore.)

It's Freezing in Palm Bay!

2009-01-22T07:39:00.006-05:00

This has happened only 4 or 5 times in the twelve years we've lived here.

I actually wore my denim jacket yesterday. I haven't worn that since we went to Louisiana in December of 2006.

Though of course I wore a short sleeved shirt under it, because when it gets below 60 degrees in Florida, the masses overreact and crank up the building's heaters.

I spent part of my work day yesterday fanning myself because they had the heat up so high inside.

On a separate note, I went yesterday and had my second of three shots in my back.

They don't help with the back pain, but it almost totally knocks out the leg pain for a while, so I'm happy with that.

If the procedure itself wasn't so uncomfortable, even with the anesthetic, it would be a wonderful thing.

It's just a mental challenge to walk in there knowing that they will hurt you, but that in a day or so you will feel much better and that it will last a couple of weeks.

In all, not a bad trade-off; a day of pain for two weeks of pain relief.

A Mini Van Adventure

2009-01-06T12:01:00.001-05:00

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday morning, Monday, in Merritt Island, Florida.

Interstate 95 is a pretty potent death trap. I have driven the 10 miles or so of it between home and work many times, and have seen the aftermath of several auto accidents.

Yesterday morning, there was an accident in the northbound lane right where I needed to exit.

You can ask Lovely Wife, taking alternate routes to anywhere is not my strong suit.

My modus operandi is to learn the shortest/easiest/fastest path to any destination and then I DO NOT DEVIATE FROM THE KNOWN PATHWAY.

But, with the wreck there slowing the off-ramp traffic to a standstill, I thought I'd go north one more exit, just a couple of miles, and circle back through town to US 1 from which I could get back on my original road.

Alas, there was a wreck blocking the southbound exit onto US 1 where I needed to go! The cops were waving people past, and I had no choice.

(By the way, the paramedics were working on a man laying spread eagle on the road next to his motorcycle. I've never seen a fresh motorcycle accident like that, it was quite disturbing.)

The added horror was that I was now on my own in a strange location far from known roads. both of my know pathways to this doctor's office were blocked.

What's a guy to do?

After submitting myself to the fear of the unknown for a few seconds, I called the doctor's office to tell them I'd probably be a few minutes late.

Then I thought I'd just find the biggest road that would take me back south from my present location, and after a while, actually found my way to the doctor's office, but it was definitely touch and go there for a little while. Way out of my comfort zone as they say.

That's one good thing about totally flat terrain like here in Florida, most roads run pretty much north and south, east and west, because there are no hills to necessitate winding roads.

I saw the doctor and got some prescriptions.

They made three upcoming appointments for some shots in my lower back to hopefully lessen the pain in my left leg, starting Wednesday. That's "tomorrow" Wednesday, for the first shot. I've got scar tissue from four back surgeries down there so they usually end up having to work the needles around a bit to get them into the location they want to release the injection. Yes. That feels just about as bad as it sounds too.

But. If the overall effect is pain relief, then it will be worth it. I don't sleep well much any more, mostly because of leg pain.

And I keep picturing the guy from the motorcycle laying on the side of the road, and was glad I was driving a mini van.

Then I went to work.

Well, I didn't say it was an EXCITING mini van adventure now did I?

A Late Happy New Year to All

2009-01-02T16:34:00.013-05:00

First, Happy New Year to all of you. God bless you all and give you a wonderful 2009!

Several years ago, Number Two Daughter decided she'd like to learn to play the guitar.

But if you're left-handed and want to learn guitar, your options are limited. You can either learn to play guitar right-handed, or pay a lot extra for a left-handed guitar (it's absurd how much more a left-handed guitar costs than the equivalent right-handed guitar), or you can convert a right-handed guitar to be playable by a left-handed person.

Number Two Daughter is very left-handed, so I searched for a reasonably priced left-handed guitar, and in the meantime, I looked for an inexpensive electric that I could convert to being left-handed (I remembered that Jimi Hendrix seemed to do pretty well on a right-handed guitar that had been converted for left-handed use).

Turns out that a guy I knew at work had a nice Samick brand electric guitar that he only wanted $50 for. But when I went to his condo to look at it to see if it was a guitar I thought I could work with, I was blown away by this lovely cherry sunburst, stratocaster-styled guitar. Of course I bought it.

I took it home and played it a bit, and looked it over again and fell in love with the grain and color of the mahogany body of the guitar.

But, the guitar wasn't for me, so that night, I took off the strings, removed and reversed the nut, put on new strings and intonated the guitar so that it would play in tune for a left-handed person.

I left it sitting out in her room that night where she could see it when she woke up in the morning.

Later that year, for her birthday, we bought her a nice, true left-handed guitar from an online store called Rondo Music. (They have a great selection of good quality left-handed guitars for incredibly low prices. I own several of their electric guitars and an electric bass from there.)

After she got the new, left-handed guitar, I took the Samick and re-converted it to right-handed playing, and I've played it since then.

With my back being so screwed up the past few years, I'd almost completely stopped playing guitar, and a few weeks ago, I started leaving one of my electrics beside my recliner in the living room. So now when I watch TV, I can practice chords and scales and whatnot on an unplugged electric which is quiet enough that I don't bother others in the room.

Many mornings my back wakes me up pretty early and I go sit in my chair, leaning on a heating pad to help relive the pain. Right now, the early morning sunlight comes into the room and shines for a few minutes right where I stand the guitar.

One morning I went and grabbed my camera because I loved how the warm morning sunlight enhanced the grain and beautiful colors of this $50 guitar.

Merry Christmas (Eve) to All

2008-12-24T09:10:00.013-05:00

It's hard to believe that it is Christmas Eve, even harder to fathom that it's Christmas Eve of 2008! (Dig our Yukon Cornelius ornament. I always loved his shopping list "Cornmeal, gunpowder, ham hocks and guitar strings!")

My blogging has been really spotty this year. A heavy work load over the summer and fall, and health issues pretty much robbed me of my desire to write.

I've really missed it, because, the way my mind works is that I'm always trying to frame even my passing thoughts into words and phrases that would be good writing. I'm ALWAYS thinking of stuff, but this has turned out to be a year in which it has been more effective to just keep my nose to the grindstone where work is concerned, try to deal with my chronic back pain and other body problems as best I can, and to sleep as much as possible, because that's the best way I've found to deal with stressful times, simply making sure I sleep as normal a night as possible. Lack of sleep is the number one thing, for me at least, that will push me over the edge and lose my ability to just deal with things.

By far the hardest thing for me was losing Rosie, one of our poodles who got ill and died within a period of 12 hours. This was in early November, and she was such a part of our every day lives that it has been very difficult for us to even think about her. Almost every move we make around the house reminds us of something she used to do that would either make us laugh or say Awww. Every night when I would sit in my recliner, and all four of our small poodles would jump up there with me, Rosie would climb up and lay curled up on my chest for as long as I sat there. I miss that.

I'm not really one to be affected much by certain dates going by; New Year's Day and my birthday are just regular days to me. But the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons tend to make me recall times past, loved ones that are gone and still badly missed, so I definitely do take the time to reflect on the year that has passed and to try to envision how I'd like to do things a bit different in the coming year that may help improve my life.

But today being Christmas Eve, I just remember being so excited as a kid as to what I might be getting on Christmas morning. And especially trying to figure out which "one present" I'd like to open on Christmas Eve night.

As a kid, it was important to strike a balance in my Christmas Eve One Present opening. I didn't want to open something lame, like socks, that I KNEW would be under the tree, but I also wanted to save the really good stuff for Christmas morning, you know?

Now Lovely Wife's and mine's kids are 20 years old and above, so there's no more worrying about having to wait until like 1am to be sure they are asleep before I begin to assemble the "some assembly required" toys they invariably wanted as kids.

Also, with money tight, we look for the best deals we can get, and since those we buy for mostly want books, music CDs, and DVDs of movies, we usually end up buying almost everything from Amazon.com, so going out and shopping for all kinds of different items is almost nil. I miss going out for a big day or two of shopping, but when you're in pain, it's just a relief to shop online and get hard to find stuff easily and for great prices.

But all in all, I'm thankful that we made it through the year. I truly am thankful because as soon as I even begin to think I have it tough, or to feel sorry for myself, I begin to remember the billions on this earth who literally have nothing. On days when my back is hurting particularly bad and I stumble into work anyway, I usually soon stumble upon someone who is limping with an artificial leg from a Vietnam wound, or see the lady with the heart problems getting out of her car in the handicapped spot and realizing she works on the second floor of a two story building here, and that building has no elevator. So I know she climbs those stairs every day with a bad ticker and also with zero complaints. In fact she is one of those people who brightens the days of those around her with her good cheer.

It has been a tough year for me mentally and physically, but overall, I'm very, very blessed, and am in generally good health, and so is my family. Who am I to complain? So I won't.

But I hope to be able to blog some more in the coming year, it does help clarify things when I take the time to put thoughts down on the computer or on paper.

And I hope that all of you out there who occasionally drop by to see if I've written anything new will have a merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year. I appreciate all of your comments, even the harsh ones by the gutless person known as Anonymous.

God bless all of you with good health for you and those you love.

John

Lovely Wife Was Threatened!

2008-12-17T13:17:00.001-05:00

Lovely Wife had a birthday a few days ago, and is now the next best thing to being 50. (Yes, I married an older woman)

Number Two Daughter told Lovely Wife that she couldn't wait until Lovely Wife turns 50.

"Why?" Lovely Wife asked.

"So I can get you a Jitterbug!"

For those of you who don't know, or are otherwise totally out of touch, a Jitterbug is a huge cell phone with massive numbers on the buttons, targeted at older folks who might appreciate having a cell phone they can see the buttons and numbers on rather than a "cool" cell phone.

The young whipper-snapper generation all think the TV commercial for the Jitterbug is a hoot, and that it's for OLD people.

So, apparrently Lovely Wife has only one more year to indulge in her Blackberry addiction with it's full QWERTY keyboard.

I guess it's mandatory for those 50 and up to switch to a Jitterbug.

I personally think it would be more difficult to get someone off of heroin addiction than to wean someone off of their precious Blackberry.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph Attacked By Wild Dogs

2008-12-15T09:17:00.002-05:00

(Note: This post is a repeat of a post I wrote during the Christmas season of 2007. I haven't written in a while, and thought reposting something I liked was better than nothing at all.)

Yesterday when Lovely Wife got home from the grocery store and I went out to help her get the stuff from the car, all four poodles made a mad dash past me out into The Forbidden Zone, otherwise known as the front yard.

For the first few seconds they were just running and jumping in the nirvana of just being out there instead of the back yard, but then Rosie and Lilly noticed intruders in our front yard that were not there the last time they got to run around the front yard.

The only thing that separates us from Ebeneezer Scrooge is the fact that we have a three piece plastic nativity scene in the front yard.

Rosie and Lilly, after the first taste of freedom had died down, noticed the unsuspecting Joseph, Mary, and the Jesus/manger module just sitting there like STRANGERS.

Of course, we don't have normal poodles, ours are vicious attack miniatures. Don't let the curly hair and otherwise cutie-pie looks fool you, they mean business Buster!

Rosie and Lilly ran over and while Rosie barked, growled and snapped at Joseph, Lilly did the same on the other side to Mary.

It was a classic pincer maneuver that General George S. Patton would have been proud of.

Thankfully the Jesus/manger module was left alone, and Joseph and Mary wisely stood perfectly still, probably from extreme fright, but still, it was the right thing to do.

Since the three intruders just sat there like bumps on a pickle, our ~~lap dogs~~ highly trained attack/guard dogs finally realized that this family was no threat and came running quickly inside due to the promise of a bite of cheese.

But for a minute or so there, the Holy Family was in dire straights, but tragedy was finally averted.

For this year anyway.

This is Rosie;

and this is Lilly.

Is it any wonder that those poor people were scared stiff when these two brutes went after them?

Have a Merry Christmas everyone! And watch out for marauding poodles.

Mannheim Steamroller Christmas Concert

2008-11-21T15:53:00.009-05:00

Number Two Daughter bought tickets for her and me to go out this past Wednesday (Nov. 19) to see Mannheim Steamroller in concert.

They have provided some of my absolute favorite Christmas Music for twenty years now, and they were coming to do a concert in Melbourne, Florida.

The concert was nothing short of amazing.

14 people, many of whom played various instruments throughout the night. Super, super talented people.

I've always thought that great music gets taken to an altogether new level when heard live, and Mannheim Steamroller was no exception.

They played all of my favorites, especially their version of Silent Night, called Stille Nacht on their first Christmas album from the 1980s.

The concert program didn't list Silent Night as one to be played, but I hoped that they would play some extra songs at the end, and they did. Silent Night was one of the two extra songs they played.

Not only that, but we've had a cold front here all week and it's been chilly by Florida standards and was about 50F and windy as we walked from the car to the concert hall.

So it even felt really Christmassy. Perfect for attending a Christmas concert.

In the late 1980s we were living in the Dallas, Texas area.

I was working two jobs and was coming home one evening from one job and my old Ford pickup truck was having problems.

The heater didn't work, it was brutally cold and windy with a stinging sleet trying to stick to the windshield of the truck. The defroster wasn't hot because it's part of the heater system, and poor "Old Blue" was losing the fight to allow me to see well enough to drive home. At least the wipers were working and eventually allowed me to get home.

Heck, at the time, the alternator was even going out on it, and the battery kept getting tired from not getting enough nourishment from the alternator.

I was really worried about getting home in a working vehicle.

Old Blue only had the stock Philco AM radio with one speaker mounted in the dash, and I was listening to Christmas music on an AM Christian station in Dallas.

So I'm tired, cold, stressed, worried, and then this gentle song comes on the radio.

It starts out quietly so I turned it up.

And I hear this version of Silent Night for the first time ever.

When it ended I was crying like a baby. (I'm one of those guys who isn't afraid to cry, especially when I'm alone.)

I was absolutely in love with the song, and I tried to describe it to everyone I knew, but they all looked at me like I was crazy. Before the internet, it was much more difficult to find out about such things as who sang what and other trivia the world wide web is so good for.

It was a year later when I heard the song again, and the announcer on the radio thankfully mentioned that it was Mannheim Steamroller who had done the song. I thought I misheard him; that was such a goofy name for a musical group.

Anyway, Mannheim Steamroller's Stille Nacht is still my all-time favorite Christmas song by anyone.

In a thoughtful mood, I can still cry when hearing it.

At the time of that first hearing, our daughters were babies, both mine and Lovely Wife's parents, all siblings, and most grandparents even, were still alive. At the time, it's beauty just touched something deep within my heart like some pieces of music can. I was young, with a young family and a head and heart filled with dreams.

Now, after that song being heard so many times over the years, it brings back good memories of lost loved ones, my Dad, my Big Brother, all of my Grandparents, my In-Laws, etc.

Hearing it is still a joy, but bittersweet. It's beauty is now mixed with sadness too, at the thought of people I miss terribly.

But this concert the other night was simply mesmerizing as only a great group of musician's can do.

Mannheim Steamroller playing Stille Nacht as an encore was just icing on the cake to an already beautiful concert.

And now I have new memories of a great night spent with Number Two Daughter to add to the list of great memories this song brings to mind at each hearing.

The whole evening with my daughter, and all of my associated memories made this evening a wonderful gift.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

2008-11-06T21:35:00.019-05:00

It has just flat-out been a busy past few months.

Work has been intense, and I just come home and eat, then sleep.

It's not really a problem, but days like today get me a bit upset.

(I just deleted a whole story about what happened at work today.)

In the end, if someone were to read it, I might get in trouble.

We're in a mode at work where everyone is supposed to be so grateful to have a good job in these tough economic times that we're expected to be willing to be trod upon.

I was trod upon some today, and was basically forced to find someone willing to be trod upon with me.

I can't be any more detailed than that.

I love my company and I especially love the people there, but sometimes, some days, I'm required to not only go above and beyond, myself, which is no problem, but also required/expected to find some others who will go above and beyond with me.

That's really hard for me to do.

Richard Pryor used to joke about how his dad would yell at him and tell him to "go get a stick for me to beat you with."

My work day was kinda like that today.

Zoom, Normal, and Wide Angle

2008-10-30T09:47:00.003-04:00

I really liked how these shots turned out. I took them only seconds apart, of the sailboat against the beautiful evening sky.

It's hard to capture a single image that gives you the feel of a time or place, but when I saw these three viewed on my computer, one after another, I thought the sum was much greater than the parts. Viewed one after another, they give a good impression of how it felt to stand there looking at the scene.

Of course, these were taken on the Indian River Lagoon in Melbourne, Florida.

Bush Derangement Syndrome in Science Fiction

2008-10-28T00:04:00.003-04:00

I’ve still been reading some science fiction, but now that I’ve read through our library’s collection of what books look interesting to me in the genre, I think I’m coming to the end.

Maybe some of my mainstream favorite authors will have written a couple of books each in the last year or two that I’ve been reading mostly science fiction, and will rescue me.

What I wanted to talk about was something that always annoys me with reading, no matter who the author is that does it.

An analogy: Watch any Sylvester Stallone movie and you WILL see some prominent-to-the-point-of-annoying product placement. Watch “Demolition Man” and “Cop Land” and you will see and hear Marlboro ads built into the movie.

Annoying.

In books, the equivalent of this is when an author uses specific names of real people in a derogatory way in a work of fiction.

I recently finished reading "Coyote Frontier" by Allen Steele. It's set about 30-40 years after the landing of escapees from earth first land on the distant planet called Coyote.

The reason they took a space ship and slept cryogenically for over 200 years while traveling to Coyote is because in the mid-21st century, America is taken over completely by the religious conservatives and create an authoritarian state hostile to "dissident intellectuals."

In the book, Johnson Space Center outside of Houston has been re-named the George W. Bush Space Center, with people having forgotten it was once named something else. Those evil, Constitution-killing conservatives have just taken control and changed EVERYTHING.

Also, under this future, evil fictional totalitarian regime, the Kennedy Space Center is re-named after Newt Gingrich.

There is a "reeducation camp" in rural Georgia, that is called Camp Buchanan, after Pat Buchanan.

Then later in the book, a woman on Coyote who is middle-aged, and thinking back to her youth on earth, recalls having been sent to a place for teens who were going astray from the government's official doctrine, and this camp is Camp Schafly, after famous conservative woman Phyllis Schlafly. Mr. Steele didn't even spell the name right in his book.

The book was decently written, very readable, and an interesting story, but the references to this fictional future totalitarian America and pointing out people like that, were so obviously the author's opinions that he couldn't resist putting in the book that I almost didn't finish reading it.

Allen Steele has received various awards in the science fiction genre for his novels, so I was wanting to try reading some, looking forward to a potential author to watch for in the future, but I finished the book feeling that it was worth reading, but that the jabs at the "vast right wing conspiracy" stood out like a hard shadow against a white wall.

Naming the author's most hated conservatives in the text of a fictional novel brought the reader (me, at least) to the conclusion that he wanted to preach instead of writing a story.

He never got to preaching his viewpoint in other places, which allowed me to finish the book.

It just annoys me when a fiction writer adds his own personal viewpoint to a book in such a way as to make sure you know this is the author talking to you, and that it definitely wasn't one of the books characters talking to you.

The book cover says that Mr. Steele is a journalism graduate, and a former reporter, so it definitely fit with the way most of today's journalists lean in their politics, but it almost ruined the book for me in the way it jerked me from being in a character's head, then suddenly in the author's opinionated head for a minute because he couldn't resist an egotistical jab at the political right, and then suddenly back into the character's head.

I would expect such things from a beginning writer, not one with numerous award-winning published novels.

Bush derangement syndrome is rampant, and in some ways it's funny to watch otherwise sane adults turn insane over their hatred of President Bush, but it's another level of the syndrome altogether to allow it to make it all the way to publication in a fiction novel.

I know next to nothing about Mr. Steele, but he's definitely got Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Funny thing is, I personally think that a totalitarian state coming about in America is much more likely to happen under liberal control of the government. Just look at the unearned adoration given to Barack Obama in this presidential campaign. The man is given a pass on so many questionable areas of his past, while his complicit media take apart the life of Joe the plumber. Barack Obama is the epitome of the "empty suit," and he's not allowed to be confronted or asked difficult, penetrating questions.

We now know more about some poor schmuck who dared to point out Obama's socialist agenda of huge redistribution of wealth, than we know about the man who could very well be our next president. Obama's followers are much more likely to willingly submit to a heavy-handed government.

OK. I'm climbing off the soap box now.

Thanks Everyone

2008-10-23T11:20:00.009-04:00

Losing Rosie so suddenly just shocked us to the core.

I appreciate everyone's kind comments.

I can think about her and talk about her without crying now, but we all miss her terribly.

To use a popular psychology term, the "dynamic" of the house has totally changed.

The other dogs act differently now, and of course, we just flat-out miss having Rosie around.

She was one of those dogs that just made us laugh without playing or her trying to be funny. Just the way she did things was funny.

For example, whenever one of the family came into the house, while the other dogs got excited and barked, Rosie would express her excitement to see you by turning in about 10 circles. The circles were ALWAYS left-handed, or counter-clockwise.

It was funny to see; it was as if instead of going on a run like some dogs do, she would spin in place, to the left.

She was the mother to two of the poodles we have, and when they got upset or felt insecure, they'd come to her and slowly roll over in front of Rosie in submission, and have their face right in front of her's. Then she would lay there and lick their closed eyes, and it would soothe and calm them down.

They've seemed out of sorts without her there to give her what we came to call "eyeball sugar."

Just a couple of the many things we miss about Rosie.

Anyway, thanks againg for the kind comments.

Goodbye Sweet Rosie

2008-10-15T05:44:00.012-04:00

I took the above photo this past weekend, two days before her death, because I thought she looked cute in her "Everyone Loves A Redhead" t-shirt.

Rosie: July 1999 - October 2008

Monday night, when I got home from work, I found that one of our poodles, Rosie was very sick.

I won't go into detail, but will just say that in a matter of a few hours, she went from normal to dying as I held her for her final breath.

We are all stunned and heartbroken still.

Rosie was a true lap dog. She loved nothing more than being in one of our's lap.

In December of 1999, Lovely Wife found an add for her on the internet. A person in Dothan, Alabama had a red poodle for sale.

I had just sold some camera equipment and bought an acoustic guitar for playing at church, and with the money left, we went to Dothan and bought Rosie.

So when she wanted to be held, I would sweet talk her with the story of how Mama found her on the internet, and we took a trip to Dothan, Alabama to get her.

She was four months old when we got her, and had been in a crate so much that she had no idea how to play like other dogs. She never did learn to like and want to play with squeaky toys and balls like our other dogs do. But if we got on the floor to play with the dogs, she would sometimes get worked up and play tug-o-war with a toy.

But most of the time, as we tried to play with the dogs, she'd come and get right up against you just wanting to be petted instead of playing. So we'd have to love on her with one hand and tug or throw toys with the other and the other dogs.

This hurt is still way too raw to write much right now; her sudden sickness and death has us all still in shock.

The reality is that, when you have a pet, you will most likely outlive them. But nine years is not that old for a miniature poodle. She should have had at least five or six more years and her passing has left a gaping hole in my heart.

I love you Rosie. I always will. And I'll always remember you, to my own dying day. From now on, one of my great desires will be to see you again someday in heaven.

I'll sit and hold you as long as you want, and I'll have little bites of cheese to feed you, I promise.

I miss you so much.

Poor Leonardo

2008-10-13T09:29:00.004-04:00

I know; I'm pathetic.

Lots of work, and I've just completely lost it on the blogs. It's hard to get back into the groove.

So…

Now that I decided to write something, what should it be?

McCain vs Obama? Obama scares me a lot, and McCain scares me somewhat less than Obama. I think McCain is going to win in a squeaker, but then it will be the 2000 election all over again with the law suits to have the judiciary decide the election. (Gore had a 10 point lead at this point in 2000 and then lost, Obama's only a few points ahead, which I think will disappear on election day.) I don't feel like writing about that, it's too depressing.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Nah. I hate rap music and I refuse to talk about rap "stars."

Britney Spears? She's looking better these days, and even was quoted as saying she didn't know where here head was last year when she went through her bald phase, and attacked people with umbrellas. So I'll leave her alone too.

I already poked Lindsay Lohan in the eye with a sharp stick a few weeks ago, so not that.

But this week, some really big news happened.

Remember Leonardo DiCaprio? He used to be an actor? Was in that Titanic movie?

After the success of Titanic, it was believed that Mr. DiCaprio could do no wrong.

But this weekend, he had a new movie open at theatres, and his movie was beaten by a movie about a Chihuahua called "Beverly Hills Chihuahua."

Now, new movies always have their best week on opening weekend, and although Mr. DiCaprio's "Body of Lies" was in a distant third place on it's opening, and theoretically, best, weekend, "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" was number one at the box office for a second weekend.

Man. That's GOTTA hurt. Beaten by a pretend talking chihuahua.

Picture Post, Sunday, September 28, 2007

2008-09-27T23:00:00.008-04:00

I love it when the skies here are showing off with deep, rich colors, but softer, pastel skies like in this photo make my spirit soar for some reason. The wild colors are impressive, but the gentle, pastel ones tend to move me. That big mountain of a cloud back there is pretty cool too.

One thing that I miss with digital cameras is "the look" of Kodachrome slides. I've shot many thousands of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides over the years. As much as I love digital photography, I sometimes see a scene that I've photographed and wish it were in Kodachrome. I played with this one a while in Photoshop Elements and was able to come pretty close to the contrasty, slightly magenta look of Kodachrome. It's a subtle thing, but when I finished, I thought "that's exactly what I wanted."

This heron was on a side thingamajig to the pier and when I went to photography him, he jumped up to fly away. Or so I thought. He actually landed on the rail of the pier itself, much closer to me than he was before. Since he was so obviously feeling like having his picture taken, I obliged him. This must be his good side.

Nothin' special. I just liked the texture of the barnacles there and the reflection on the gently moving blue-green water.

This turned out to be almost like an abstract or impressionist painting, but it's simply the water swirling around a big piece of coquina in the water.

Have a great Sunday, folks.

I've still been really busy at work. Health issues demand that I go to bed early just to be able to deal with the increased hours and stress, so I haven't had time left to visit y'all. Never fear, I'll get around to see you soon.

Picture Post, Sunday September 21, 2008

2008-09-21T00:00:00.001-04:00

Yesterday evening, right before sunset, Lovely Wife and I went to a local park to enjoy the views of the Indian River Lagoon.

As the sun went down, the sunlight lit and colored the upper portion of this cloud above this sailboat. Beautiful. Scenes like this can really lower your blood pressure as you soak in the beauty and the warm sea breeze.

Toward the west, there were various types of clouds at different levels in the sky. I love it when that happens. They contrasted nicely with one another and add a nice touch to an already pretty scene.

The sunset was reflecting in the water and the water lapped at the rocks at my feet. A nice peaceful place, but there were a lot of people at the park fishing.

This was the scene in front of our car as we pulled into a parking place. I just got out and walked around the front of the car. An amazing water scene one step from our car's front bumper. The drooping pine needles in the trees there are in Australian pine trees. They were planted all over the coasts of Florida several generations ago, and I love the trees. They have a lazy look and feel about them that really fits in Florida. Sadly, they are now considered politically incorrect by today's standards, and when one dies, they are never replaced with another. They are only replaced with officially approved native Florida plants. Literally hundreds of the trees were blown down in hurricanes Jeanne and Francis in 2004, and were not replaced. I love them, but then I have never ever been politically correct in any way. I miss the long rows of Australian pines that used to line the roadways in certain areas here. I really appreciate the ones that are left.

This photo was taken a month or so ago in the ginormous Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach. This was a really old longboard they had on display. I made a B&W version of this image that is on my photography blog today.

Have a great Sunday, folks.

Lindsay Lohan Gets All, Like, Political, You Know?

2008-09-16T12:10:00.000-04:00

I know that like me, all y'all have been waiting with baited breath on what Hollywood's deep thinkers think of Republican Vice Presidential Candidate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

We've already heard from Matt Damon, and boy did he lower the boom on Mrs. Palin. I'm sure she's quaking in her Gore-Tex ™ boots after Matt revealed just how much he disliked her. I mean, seriously, he played a mathematical genius in a movie, right? So the actor's opinion must be much more rationally thought out than say, a Louisiana public school product like myself.

I even heard that Margaret Cho said something bad about Governor Palin, but I didn't bother to find out what it was, because, Margaret Cho is pretty much the least funny commedian I've ever tried to listen to. But since she's a "Hollywood Liberal" I guess her sheer famousness must make her opinion much more truthful than all you red-necks and bigots in flyover country, right?

But now, the brainiac herself, Lindsay Lohan (that's pronounced LOW-en, NOT LOW-HAN, you idiots!) has weighed in. And boy, was it worth the wait.

Now this bad actress and even worse singer has furiously rubbed both of her brain cells together, and the slowly gathering heat therefrom produced these timeless pearls of wisdom:

"I really cannot bite my tongue anymore when it comes to Sarah Palin." (OOO, this is gonna be deep!)

"I couldn't be more supportive of a woman in office, but let's face it, it comes down to the person, and their beliefs, male or female." (She's winding up, folks, watch out!)

"I would have liked to have remained impartial, however I am afraid that the 'lipstick on a pig' comments will overshadow the issues and the fact that I believe BARACK OBAMA is the best choice for president." (See that? She says she's worried that the "lipstick on a pig" comments will overshadow the fact that she believes Barack Obama is the best choice for president, among other things.)

"I find it quite interesting that a woman who now is running to be second in command of the United States, only 4 years ago had aspirations to be a television anchor, which is probably all she is qualified to be."

"Is it a sin to be gay?"

"Should it be a sin to be straight? Or to use birth control? Or to have sex before marriage? Or even to have a child out of wedlock?"

"Is our country so divided that the Republicans' best hope is a narrow minded, media obsessed homophobe?"

I told y'all it was going to be deep.

She's not only a deep thinker, but now that she's a newly minted lesbian, she learned a new word: homophobe.

All that, from the girl voted most likely to have slept with every male in California, and who now, in an amazing display of effortless switch-hitting, has started in on bedding the women of California (starting with a Canadian, 'cause they're, like, exotic and all).

Man, Sarah Palin must really be hurtin'. Matt Damon, Margaret Cho, and think-tank giant Lindsay Lohan (Remember, that's pronounced LOW-en, NOT LOW-HAN) have all vented their massive intellects through their idiotic mouths, and the consensus is this, Obama good, Palin bad.

Lindsay Lohan has single handedly justified the creation of MySpace.

Now I'm going to have to sit down an rethink this whole election thing.

Lindsay is such a good MySpace writer that she needs to quit trying to act and sing and become a ~~jer~~ ~~jurr~~ ~~jrr~~ , newspaper reporter.

Eating Veggies Shrinks the Brain

2008-09-15T14:22:00.005-04:00

If eating vegetables shrinks the brain, I wonder if, conversely, not eating your vegetables makes your brain bigger.

I come from a family that, when they do occasionally eat vegetables, they are "simmered to aych-ee-double-hockey-sticks." And a half a cup of bacon grease cooking in there to give 'em some flavor.

I have to actually think, "I NEED to eat some vegetables." That is, unless we have some fresh, home grown 'maters around the house. I love me some 'maters.

But I read this story and wondered, if, my not eating much vegetables is the reason I have such a massive cranium.

Could be.

Ped Egg

2008-09-12T16:12:00.005-04:00

Have y'all seen them Ped Egg things on TV?

It looks like a little egg-shaped cheese grater, but you're supposed to use it on the callouses on your feet. (With 138 MicroFiles!)

Then they open it up and show them emptying the gratings into the garbage on the TV commercial.

Number One Daughter bought herself one.

Now, if you're eating pizza at our house, and we run out of parmesian cheese, we can tap into Number One Daughter's Ped Egg scrapings and fix your pizza right up.

Cause the grated callouses in the Ped Egg look just like parmesian cheese.

Yeah. I'm sick. But that's the way my mind works sometimes.

You MUST go see this.

2008-08-29T15:33:00.004-04:00

This little animated photo will crack you up.

I'm quite sure of this because it cracked me up.

And we all know, that I know, funny.

Breakin'! Obama pic taken after leaving the convention.

Picture Post, Sunday August 24, 2008

2008-08-24T00:01:00.002-04:00

Well, we got plenty of rain this past week.

Tropical Storm Fay made it's way across Florida from the Gulf of Mexico and the center stayed over Brevard County for two full days.

That meant that the southern part of the storm below the eye was right over where we live and work.

The company I work for ended up staying closed for three days, T,W, and Thu. Of course they're making us work weekend days in September to make up for them, but on the whole, I'm glad I didn't have to get out in the storm.

Lovely wife's company is based in Connecticut or somewhere up there and they were open every day, but they kept letting everyone go early, and finally so much of the county was flooded, that they gave up trying to make people come in.

It was a bad storm for three full days, but still wasn't as scary as the hurricanes we've sat through, so although the power kept going off, it would soon come back on, so that we really weren't roughing it. We had air conditioning and cable, and no damage, so we really made out fine.

I believe we ended up getting 15-20 inches of rain at our house, while about ten miles north of us, some got 20-25 inches. Lost of homes got flooded, but thankfully ours wasn't one of them.

A few weeks ago, we went to a part in Titusville, Florida, on the mainland directly across from Kennedy Space Center and visited Space View Park and the U. S. Space Walk of Fame there.

They have monuments to the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions and the astronauts and the people who worked on the space program that ended up putting Americans on the moon.

Here are a few pics from the different areas of the park. (I had already posted some photos of the Mercury monument last November.)

This first photo turned out better than it looked in the viewfinder. It's looking through Space View Park and across the Indian River Lagoon to NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building where the Apollo rockets and the shuttles were and are built, housed, and repaired until being driven out onto one of the launch pads. The VAB is the fourth largest building in the world.

Here, we're about to enter the Apollo memorial part of the park. You can see the "A" shape of part of the memorial in the right side of this next photo.

Here's a closer shot of the Apollo Symbol, that's the moon on the left side of the bar crossing the "A" and the earth on the right side of the cross bar.

Here's Neil Armstrong's hand prints and photograph. The first man on the moon and one of my childhood heroes and a total class act. A great and humble man. They had most of the other Apollo astronaut's hand print with the exception of those like Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White who were killed in Apollo 1 training, and also missing others who had died before the monuments and hand prints were made.

This is the memorial to the Gemini program which was just before the Apollo program. You can see the VAB in the background of this photo too.

Have a great Sunday folks!

(I posted a couple of photos of a neat customized Chrysler PT Cruiser on my photography blog today. If you don't get over there much, go check it out. The PT Cruiser is owned by, and in front of, Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida.)

Snow Tropical Storm Day

2008-08-19T01:01:00.004-04:00

We don't get snow days in Florida, but sometimes we get storm days.

I was working late last night and a company email showed up in my inbox and said the company will be closed Tuesday because Tropical Storm Fay was supposed to whiz by to the west of us Tuesday evening.

That's cool. Although they'll have us make it up later by working a Saturday or something, I sure look forward to sleeping late before the storm gets bad.

I just hope we don't lose power for nine days again in this heat and humidity.

Hiatus

2008-08-15T16:36:00.001-04:00

Sorry folks.

Lots going on at work. Life is eat, sleep, work right now.

Be back when I can.

Picture Post, Sunday August 3, 2008

2008-08-03T00:01:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, Lovely Wife, Number Two Daughter and I took our niece to the Orlando airport for her to go home to Utah.

She'd stayed with us for two weeks, and gee whiz, that was a fast two weeks. We were bummed to see her go.

I took my camera (of course) and on the way home we stopped a couple of places and I took a bunch of photos, something I haven't done in a while.

This first photo is of a Disney Store in the Orlando airport. Orlando and all of it's attractions are designed by experts to separate you from as much cash as possible. Turns out that the Orlando airport is like a shopping mall, with the intent of separating you from the last few dollars you may have after an Orlando vacation.

This one isn't special, but I liked this small view of part of the Orlando Airport. It was a beautiful day, though really hot.

It had been a couple of years (at least) since I had been to Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, so we stopped by there on the way home. It wasn't too big of a detour out of our way. I love going to the place because it is truly a store that is a tourist destination in it's own right. We didn't spend but a few dollars there, but it's always worth walking around and looking at this amazing store and it's STUFF.

This is a view of the outside of Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach.

And this is a view on the inside of Ron Jon's, and this photo only takes in about on third of the store. I like this place and I've never even tried to surf before, and probably never will.

Here's another shot inside the Ron Jon store.

Have a great Sunday folks!

Obama Plays The Race Card Early

2008-07-31T12:27:00.008-04:00

Wednesday, The Barack of Obama threw down the race card in the US presidential contest.

He's told America that he was a different kind of politician, but it looks like he's just more of the same Democratic tradition.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) - Democrat Barack Obama, the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House, says John McCain and his Republican allies will try to scare them by saying Obama "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

Stumping in an economically challenged battleground state, Obama argued Wednesday that President Bush and McCain will resort to scare tactics to maintain their hold on the White House because they have little else to offer voters.

"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," Obama said. "You know, he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name, you know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

Do you notice there what Obama is saying?

Notice the "will try to say...", and "they're going to do...", McCain "will resort to..."?

No facts at all, just conjecture.

He doesn't have one instance of ANY Republican saying that Obama doesn't look like the Presidents on dollar bills. Not one instance.

Instead, Mr. Different Kind of Politician is trying to create non-existent Republican racism by making racist statements himself. He has NO examples of racism said about him other than the racism shown toward him my his fellow Democrats from the heatied primaries with Mrs. Clinton, so Obama puts racist words into the mouths of non-existent racist opponents.

The Barack of Obama tries to make enemies of fictional racist Republicans, but the only thing he's succeeded in is showing that he WANTS a racist enemy on order to gain more sympathy for himself.

Sorry Barack, it ain't working. I grew up in Louisiana public schools, but even I'm not dumb enough to fall for your lying about what you think Republicans "might" say some day in the future.

Obama is trying to create a racist "problem" where there is none.

Obviously, Obama is playing the race card himself in the absence of any real racism, and by doing this shows that he himself is guilty of racism.

I once heard a co-worker say that black people could not be racist. That only white people could be racist. Mr. Obama proves today the falsehood of this former co-worder of mine's claim.

I sure have disagreed with the policies Barack Obama has built his campaign on, and I disagree with many of the lame generic pronouncements in his speeches, but I've tried to carefully consider him ONLY on his policy stances.

But he sure has proved today that he isn't beyond a lame attempt himself to create racist scandals where there are none.

He's living proof that having a Harvard law degree doesn't mean you're smart.

Please go read the article and pay close attention to Obama's quotes. You'll notice that he has no actual examples of the racism he's talking about, he is, time after time, putting words into mythical racist Republican's mouths, with no actual quotes other than his own falsehoods.

The Democrats have proven so far that they are the party filled with racists:

Democratic Senator Joe Biden on Barack Obama - "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

David Ehrenstein in the Los Angeles Times - 'But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."'

Harry Belafonte - "In the days of slavery, there were those slaves who lived on the plantation and [there] were those slaves that lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master ... exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture."

I'm not stupid enough to believe that there are no racist Republicans, but I do absolutely believe that there is at least one racist Democrat for every racist Republican.

Mr. Obama strikes a low blow here today by projecting on Republicans the racist things he thinks they might say about him in the future.

To quote the great philosopher Gomer Pyle, "For shame, for shame, for shame," Mr. Obama.

Sorry to bring up politics again, but this just got under my skin.

The Atlanic Ocean Last Night (Mon. July 28)

2008-07-26T13:33:00.012-04:00

We went out to eat last night after I got off of work, and then went over to the ocean to take in the view.

It was almost dark, but the Atlantic was as green and as calm I have ever seen it.

The wind was very light but it sure was pretty.

Here's the western view toward the sunset over the Lagoon.

Move Over Jesus, Mary, and Elvis

2008-07-25T13:18:00.001-04:00

Allah Meat is here!

We all know by now that Our Lord And Savior, His mom, and even Elvis, can appear as a beacon of hope to us in mold stains on damp walls, burned miraculously into pieces of toast, or even the shape of a Kellog's Corn Flake, but now Gool Ole Allah is getting into the miraculous appearance game.

As a restaurant goer in Birnin Kebbi, Nigeria was digging into a meal of beef, he luckily glanced at the piece of food he was about to put into his mouth and saw the word "Allah" written there.

Of course, the man was a good Muslim and didn't eat the bite but brought it to the attention of the others in the restaurant:

"He was about to eat it, when he suddenly noticed the words in the gristle, the restaurant owner said."

And not only the name of Allah, but the name Muhammad was found in meat in the kitchen when the rest of the beef was searched.

A total of three pieces of the "miracle beef" were found to have writing on them.

I'm not sure if they found Allah written twice, and Muhammad once, or if they found Muhammad written twice and Allah once. I was curious about this, but since the article didn't reveal this, I guess it's not really as important as the fact that Allah chose to bless the Muslim faithful in this way.

"When the writings were discovered there were some Islamic scholars who come and eat here and they all commented that it was a sign to show that Islam is the only true religion for mankind," he said.

This amazing news totally eclipses The Barak Of Obama's holy presidential campaign in raising the hopes of mankind for world peace in the near future.

Now I personally have had similar life changing messages sent from the great beyond to me when I was younger and partaking of the occasional bowl of Alpha-Bits, or noshing on some Campbell's Alphabet Soup (though I cannot recall the exact messages now, but I'm SURE they were important), but nothing as public as Allah writing a message to me in a piece of gristle in a restaurant.

Heck, I would most likely have missed this myself, since there's few things on earth I hate more than getting a piece of gristle in my mouth. Yuck! And would have just glanced and discarded it.

This is WAY better than that bogus Shroud of Turin thingy.

Why Is This Guy Always Yelling At Me?

2008-07-24T13:06:00.001-04:00

Since I wrote yesterday on the subject of men on TV assuming on my trust, why is this guy yelling at me about something different every time I watch TV?

Billy Mays, you need to tone it down a bit, OK? You do seem like a pretty nice guy, but is all that yelling necessary?

I think not.

Do you yell like that at home? When you come in the door after a hard day of filming OxyClean and Kaboom commercials, do yell at your family?

(Mentally picturing Billy Mays walking in at home...wife and kids frantically trying to stuff those yellow foam ear plugs in their ears...)

Door slams open:

"HI HONEY! I'M HOME!

GEE, SOMETHING SURE SMELLS GOOD!

YOU LOOK GREAT BY THE WAY! HOW'S ABOUT A KISS! SMOOTCH! WOW, IS THAT STRAWBERRY FLAVORED LIP GLOSS?! YUM! THAT IS SO SEXY, AND SO 1970S! BUT I LIKE IT!

HI, BILLY JUNIOR! HOW WAS YOUR DAY!....

Speaking of Kaboom, it's now a cleaning product, but does any one out there that is my age, around 45, remember a cereal in the early 1970's called Kaboom! with a clown on the box and in the commercials?

Oh, well. I guess I'm the only one.

Oh. My. Gosh. I looked for an image of a box of Kaboom, and General Mills still makes this cereal!

That kinda reassures my faith in humanity just a wee little bit.

Who The Heck Is T. Boone Pickens?

2008-07-23T14:55:00.011-04:00

Seems like every time I turn on the radio or that newfangled contraption, the TV, some older gentleman says, "Hi. I'm T. Boone Pickens…" and proceeds to tell me how wind energy is gonna save America.

First of all, I'm no genius, but I know that wind energy will only be part of the answer to our energy dependence on foreign oil.

I'm one of the great unwashed masses that firmly believes that America can, and should, pursue Each And Every proven energy source that we know of and quit paying billions of dollars per year to people who hate us and if they had half a chance would kill us all, for oil.

So while I think we should be drilling for oil every place in America and off our shores that we can, I also believe we should be building nuclear power plants out the wazoo, wind farms, solar, EVERYTHING, including oil.

When I hear politicians talk about "alternative" energy as if it is there, we're just not using it, I want to scream. The truth is that wind and solar energy and hydrogen powered and battery technology for electric cars are ALL in their infancy. They aren't nearly ready to be our prime sources of energy for power and locomotion yet. It will be years.

Oil infrastructure and nuclear power are well understood, and if the politicians, both democrat and republican would "fast track," or reduce the legislative red tape on using them more, we could meet our own energy needs in a matter of years.

But I'm way off subject now, back to T. Boone Pickens.

Who is this guy, and why should I listen to him?

Because, silly or not, I have an instinctive mistrust of men or women who use their first initial AND their middle name, like lots of lawyers do. Maybe I just answered my own self as to why I have an innate mistrust of people who use their first initial and their middle name, because lawyers do that a lot.

Then this guy whom I've never seen nor heard of comes on TV and says he's T. Boone Pickens like some personal injury lawyer that assumes I surely know who he is, when I don't. And there's that "T. Boone" initial and middle name thing that sounds so stinkin' self important, and that I have a natural born distrust of and it makes me immediately want to not believe what he says.

But I truly believe that wind energy is only a part of any long term energy solution, simply because the wind doesn't blow all the time. Same with solar power, there are lots of cloudy days, and heck, we have this thing in Florida, The Sunshine State, that is called night, where the sun doesn't shine AT ALL for many hours every day, so solar energy can't be but part of a long term energy solution for us.

Like it or not environmentalists, and normal folks like me who care about the planet but aren't stark ravin' crazy thinking that plants mean more than people and their livelihoods, plain old crude oil is THE major source of our energy all over the world, and it won't cease to be number one for years yet.

I believe that by the time the oil runs out, we'll be able to have the mature forms of nuclear, hydrogen cars, solar and wind energy to fill in the void. But we're nowhere near that point yet, SO LET'S JUST DRILL FOR AND GET OUR OWN DANG OIL, OK?!

And as for YOU, T. Boone, I'm not at all sure yet that I trust you.

Sarcastically yours,

J. Alden Masters

Rain

2008-07-22T16:34:00.006-04:00

We picked up Big Brother's Daughter Sunday night at the Orlando airport.

She's 20 and down from Utah to visit with us a while. We plan to grind her down to nothing with just how boring life can be in Florida. It seems that the rain will be an integral part of our nefarious plan.

Almost every day for several weeks now it has been raining. Florida rains are a bit different from what the rest of America gets.

The thunder storms mostly happen in the afternoons, when the winds shift between westerly to easterly. The warm ocean air hits the drier air of the morning and Poof!, instant rain showers.

Then, when it's all over, since most of the ground here is sandy, the water is gone pretty quick, so you can get back out and do stuff.

The land is so flat and low here, that anywhere buildings are put up, they are required to dig retention ponds next to them to provide adequate drainage until the water can be absorbed.

These retention ponds around businesses are often made into an attractive part of the landscape. The one for the set of buildings where I work is really full and pretty now. It has a nice sidewalk all the way around it and is a great place for walking...when it isn't raining. (And if we're really lucky, an alligator wanders into a pond at work, prompting our Security to interrupt their endless games of spades and send out a warning email to us all to neither approach or feed the alligators. Duh.)

The buildings where I work are mostly without any windows, and are pretty well sound proof, so when I can hear thunder inside at work, I know it's really bad outside.

So Niece and Number One Daughter went to the beach this morning and hopefully got their fill of the incredibly hot sun and humidity before this afternoon's storms started.

If you have ever been near here to Orlando's attractions, you've probably experienced the afternoon showers, only ours here on the coast tend to be more stormy than the one's in-state.

The worst part of the storms is that one of our dogs, Lilly, is scared of thunder, and when I hear it thunder during the day at work, I picture her cowering under something at home, trembling. She's really emotional and thunder truly scares her, while the other dogs look at her like, "What's wrong with you?"

Here's a pic of Lilly in Alpha Dog Mode, barking at us, demanding whatever food we were so foolish as to leave on the counter where she can smell it.

That's about all I have to say for today. In fact, I'll probably be entering this post in the "Most Boring Blog Post Ever" contest, if there is such a thing.

I think I have a real winner here.

Unless You Are Deaf, Dumb, and Blind...

2008-07-21T11:44:00.007-04:00

...you are aware that The Barak Of Obama is in the middle east and Europe on a whirlwind campaign tour to people who cannot vote in our election this fall.

Michelle Malkin's site was showing photoshopped examples of what Obama's world tour t-shirts should look like.

Here's a couple of my favorites:

The three main news anchors from the three major networks are over there following The Barak Of Obama's every move with love and adoration. If you were suspicious that the main stream news workers in America where totally in the tank for Obama, you no longer have room for any doubt, do you?

On Glenn Beck's radio program this morning, they had a fake news story that Obama had taken a tumble at one of the events for him in Europe today. Apparently Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and Charlie Gibson were kissing the ground that Obama was about to walk on instead of the ground that he had walked on , and Obama tripped over them. The way they did it was perfect, as if the reporter was breathless in worry over Obama having "fallen."