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2009.09.14
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Rudyard Kipling
2009.07.27
This entry crought to you by Vim!!
2009.07.24
Habitat 67, Expo 67, Montreal, Canada. I was there with my Grandfather all those may years ago. I toured one of these apartments and my question is why is why has no one ever built any others?
The were unique in may ways but I dearly loved the look of them and you will notice that many units don't have a unit on top of them. When I lived in an apartment a few years ago, that was my biggest concern. People don't seem to have the required consideration for others to live that close together.
2009.07.22
So yesterday I sat though an all day pre retirement seminar. All city employees must attend the seminar within five years of their retirement date. Yes, I'm that old. I will be retiring early and will have to use savings to bridge the gap until social security starts. Now the only question is do I take the benefits at 62 or wait for full benefits at 66? I have a CPA that will help me with that. I'm inclined to take it as early as I can. What if I wait and due to net worth, they reduce it anyway? Let's go with what the CPA says.
2009.07.18
“Seats in Congress, seats in the state legislature, that big seat in the White House itself, can be purchased by those who have the greatest campaign resources … That, I submit to you, is no democracy. It is an oligarchy of the already powerful.” - Walter Cronkite 1916 - 2009
2009.07.17
So things here seem to be getting along fine now that I found a splendid service Feedage. What they do is scrape HTML and create RSS feeds. One of the only reasons I was fooling around with moving to a different software package for the journal was I had to code the RSS feeds by hand. This service does it for free. It will get me by until I can write something myself which produces RSS feeds automatically. I looked long and hard for Feedage. Everything I could find did it the other way RSS > HTML. I'm looking at a couple of ways and when I figure it out, I'll share it for posterity :-)
2009.07.05
On the way home tonight, minding my own business, I hear on the radio about the proposed new healthcare system. The guy says "everyone will be required to participate" or something to that effect. How 'bout we go into that just a little further? Exactly how are they going to go about finding everybody and then how do they propose to enforce that everyone participates? To the first question. How are they going to find all the "undocumented workers"(illegal aliens)? If they could find al of then, why are they still here? How about all the people who live "off the grid" so to speak? The folks who work for cash, sublet their living arrangements if they have any at all. Pay cash and don't have a driver's license. I know at lest one and I don't know that many people. To the second question. What, are they going to lock them all up? What will be the charge? Living without insurance? I say fooey!!!
2990.06.25
So the astronomers figure June 21 is the first day of summer. I figure the first day of summer is the first day over ninety degres. That was last Saturday the 20th. Ninety three to be exact. Smokin' smolderin' or whatever. I holed up in the house with my new AC which preformed flawlessly.
2009.06.05
Yesterday the cruise to Bermuda came to an end. I managed to finish two books, murder mysteries of course, and gain five pounds in six days! There will be penance in the form of strict calorie intake until I return to my pre cruise weight.
But enough of that, Bermuda is a beautiful place and I intend to return often. Lovely climate, surroundings and people.
2009.05.28
Mortality. As much as we don't want to admit it, someday something bad will happen to all of us. Today I am off to me attorney's to execute a will, living will (medical power of attorney), and power of attorney. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in a hurry to leave this earth but that's not what worries me. What worries me is what has happened to several folks I know. Either they lost their mind through dementia or had a stroke. I don't want to linger or be kept alive by artificial means. I don't care what you want, you need to make your wishes known or those you leave behind will be in the dark.
2009.05.05
Backfire! So I just picked up this over at WikiLeaks. So you think it has anything to do with Virginia outsourcing their IT? I do. WikiLeak's servers were blasted this mourning so you might have to wait a while or try back later. It all has to do with a hacker stealing a health and perscription database and holding it for ransom. SQL injection? What are to odds we'll ever find out?
Now the Richmond paper has it.
2009.04.27
Finally, Summer's here. Saturday and Sunday night I walked home from a neighbor's house in a tee shirt. Warm at nine o'clock.
2009.03.15
Is it Spring or just a tease? When I get to this part of the drive home, I know I'm almost there. The shame of it is all is that these flowering pear trees tend to break apart in storms. Almost every year we lose one or two, and they aren't replanted. One day they will all be gone and the drive will be much more ordinary.
2009.03.11
And the answer is...
No. I don't like X-Plane any better than I used to. Too much fiddling with the control settings and even the plane included in the demo didn't fly correctly.
2009.03.06
Going, going, Gone
So the virtual airline I have flown for over the last few years has closed up shop. I guess there is no longer any reason to keep the boot camp partition on my Mac. The flying was the only thing I couldn't do on the Mac. I know about X-Plane and it's nowhere near the same but I may download the trial and see if it's any better than the last time I tried it.
2009.03.01
34 Months
But who's counting. I am, until my retirement. Folks at the office always ask "what are you going to do if you retire". Well, I've got 34 months to figure it out!
2009.02.28
Turn of the wheel
Over the last couple of weeks, I've received several letters from my state Senator Ken Stolle in response to the several emails I've sent him about various gun related issues. At the top of each letter is the coat of arms at left. It struck me as a bit odd Virginia's Senate would have a coat of arms considering we fought a revolution against the English nobility system, it's class system and all that. So lets go off to Wikipedia. In the article about the "Senate of Virginia" after they tell you who's in it comes the part about the seal. The seal was adopted on January 22nd 1981 and designed by the College of Arms in England. Our revolutionary forefathers would roll over in their graves. But think about it, who, for the most part, is in the Senate? You got it, lawyers. What title of lesser nobility do they have? Esquire. We're right back where we started before the revolution. But who worries about history other than old farts. For the rest it's "Dancing with the Stars" and the latest fashions.
2009.02.20
So I seem to have found the editor for Os X that I really fancy. It's called SEEdit and they give you a liberal trial period. The documentation leaves a bit to be desired as the author is Swedish. I still think you might want to give it a try and if you figure out the whole sites thing drop me a line.
2009.02.15
Virginian Pilot November 30, 2008...
In the hinterlands of Chesapeake, in what is now Northwest River Park , “Moonshine Meadow” hid a constellation of stills. Buffalo City and East Lake whiskeys from the swamps of inland North Carolina flowed up the rivers and into speakeasies. The “Dam Neck Brand” of whisky trickled from stills near the Dam Neck Naval Installation ...
I grew up at Dam Neck with and old man next door who was part of it.
2009.02.05
Just in from my yearly physical and for the most part, good news. The not so good news is my thyroid is slowing down and I'm borderline anemic. Checked the trusty internet and now I know why I'm off to bed early and don't seem to get much done after noon. Good news is my cholesterol, both good and bad is stellar. That fish pill she told me to take every evening must be working. Also the Doc says to begin a daily multivitamin to increase my iron levels which is supposed to help with the anemia. In a few minutes it's off to the dentist. And oh yea, the water heater was leaking when I got up this morning. What a day!
2009.01.20
Well today is Inauguration Day and the old Geezer's birthday. Do you feel the "Change" yet? I guess we'll have to give it awhile and our new President the benefit of the doubt. I hate to sound so cynical but I've heard promises before and they turned out to be just that, promises. I wish our new Commander and Chief good luck. Only a megalomaniac would want that job.
2009.01.10
This post is coming to you courtesy of Windows 7 running on a Mac in VMware Fusion.The setup was dead simple and it looks very good. Quite responsive and unless they muck it up horribly, I will most likely buy it for my Toshiba laptop. Don't get me wrong, I still like my Macs better but this release is to Vista what Xp was to Millennium.
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