Rational thought has gone to the dogs!
From the category archives:
This morning, Charlie and Sallie were in a singing mood, so I grabbed my harmonica and Flip camera and recorded them singing Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” It is a little off-key, the harmonica isn’t as great as it could be as I was playing with one hand and trying really hard not to laugh. I [...]
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For years I have reluctantly taken bags and bushels of over-produced tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, corn, gourds, and various melons and assorted garden by-products from my neighbors and friends who happily planted a garden in the early Spring — albeit without a plan — all giddy with the thoughts of fresh vegetables at their table. [...]
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A couple days ago, I was listening to some cable news show, I think it might have been MSNBC, ranting on about Dr. Laura’s use of the n-word. The content of the show is not important. What is important is that we have reduced our discourse of fairly substation discussions of our culture into “baby-babble” [...]
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When my son was just shy of his fifth year, we found ourselves in an Old Country Buffet on a Saturday afternoon. For those of you not familiar with the format of the all-you-can-eat-for-one-low-price buffet, these places usually have a lower price afternoon service that did not include carved meats and a higher price evening [...]
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I went to a #140conf Meet Up with Jeff Pulver in Dayton this afternoon (more stuff about that later) and afterwards, we headed out to dinner at the Olive Garden to celebrate my son’s birthday. He ordered a plate of something that was on the menu, but had no price. “How much is that,” I [...]
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A Verizon service truck parked at one of my neighbors yesterday and I snapped a photo of it on our walk. Notice the sticker stuck on the side, crooked and added as an afterthought. When I see that, I see Verizon treating Internet access as an afterthought, an add-on feature, like the sticker they slapped [...]
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How much does it cost you to exist for one hour? Have you ever asked? Just for a rough guess, add up all the expenses of replacing the stuff that breaks, the cost of going to your job, your mortgage, taxes, tuition bills, gifts for relatives and friends, etc. Then divide by 8,904 (the number [...]
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I was watching The Rachel Maddow Show tonight and the segment about Blago came on. I could not believe what I was seeing! The horror, the carnage of typography on my screen. Here is what was shown: Notice that they used a single quote when it should have been an apostrophe to indicate a contraction [...]
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Today is Bastille Day. I realized this morning that I have a ton of short stories from my childhood just collecting dust. So, I thought I’d share one a year until I run out or die, whichever comes first. For those of you who know me, I am half French, descended from the mighty Pelletiers [...]
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I am going out a ledge with this post, but there are some thought cloud trending happening in the news, in blogs and in our culture generally that looks like it is going to take hold of the way we view gender in the next several years. I need to get this off my chest [...]
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While listening to John Boehner’s interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on his description of the Tea Party protests, the following occurs to me. Even if not entirely true, it is the perception that is most prevalent. The RIGHT shows up with guns and signs, backed by the Second Amendment and attempts to force others to [...]
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Bongo Jessen was a great Dane, but that was his nationality, not his breed. He passed away today of cancer. He will be missed terribly by all of us on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. He was only six years old. I remember when Bongo and I first met in the summer of 2007 [...]
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A challenge to define “successful design” was lobbed by @Modenus to several of us rather cantankerous voices in response to her post on “bad design.” Not ones to back away from a challenge, we all agreed to write a blog post on each of our sites defining successful design. Mine is here; please read the [...]
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A friend of a close relative just got himself hired on as a firefighter with a department right up the road. They gave him a really cool light bar for his truck, a pager, a bunch of gear and most importantly, a paycheck. And now they are paying him to advance his training and certificates [...]
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During the week of the start of Desert Storm, I was attending a week-long “Train the Trainer” workshop in Oldtown, Alexandria just down the road from Washington DC. There was a small sub group of us that sorta bonded together a bit and we spent the few evenings we had eating dinner together, talking. I [...]
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