Monthly Archives: December 2007

When Conversation Lost became Just Thinkin’

Posted on by
4

In preparation for the new year I’ve been torturing myself by reading my own blog from the first post (well, almost) to now and when I arrived at a small post dated April 2nd, 2006, I knew I just had to republish the thing.

It’s called:

After many recent frustrating experiences with Blogger where my blog “Conversation Lost” is located I have decided to move the whole thing over to my new WordPress.com Blog “Just Thinkin”. It just plain works better and since a lot of bloggers are defecting to WordPress it just seemed to follow suit.

All the posts previous to this one were originally posted to Blogger for “Conversation Lost” hence the occasional reference to Blogger.com.

Sorry Blogger…too many problems and absolutely no feedback from you as to what’s going on to fix it.

Meanwhile…time for supper.

 

Yup, that sounds like me alright. Back when this was all new and I was finding out that I could still learn a thing or two or three which is why I decided to read this thing called a blog from start to present. I need to see where I was so I can decide where it’s going.

Basically things aren’t much different at all and I certainly haven’t gained anything in the way of monetization and probably never will. It was never one of my talents to sell myself to anyone or anything. My posts these days have generally gone downhill in my opinion but that’s partially due to my current "unemployment due to disabilities" situation and the understandable mood changes thereof. Suffice it to say that my enthusiasm of late has been waning a bit.

What I have gained though is a small group of online friends that I didn’t have before and this parallels my "real" life pretty much as far as the fact that they’re good, honest people that don’t ask for the shirt off my back every time I turn around and I appreciate that to no end. I’ve also gained a good amount of knowledge of WordPress and it’s working and have tried to pass this onto others or at least help them out when things go wrong.

Be that as it may, I shall continue this journey into the past with hopes that it may help me to decide what the future of my small portion of the Blogoshpere might be.

In the meantime…Someone tagged me again.

I’m not a bad speller-I just forget what word I’m typing

Posted on by
Reply

It’s true enough. I used to be a great speller and still am as a matter of fact. Unfortunately it seems that I’ve come to that time in life where I find myself spelling a word like constitut… and completely forgetting what the word was that I was trying to type halfway through the middle of typing it. If I was one of those (censored) touch typists (just jealous here) my old(er) age wouldn’t be so apparent as I would be able to see what it was that I was typing ergo no forgetting.

Perhaps I need to eat more fresh fish. Fish is supposed to be brain food isn’t it? Okay, according to the list at , it tells me that the number one brain food is wild salmon. Not farm bred salmon but wild salmon. Oh…well…just fine then.

My fishing trawler has been in the shop since 1977, the last time I looked there wasn’t much of an ocean shoreline bordering the State of Vermont and there hasn’t been a wild salmon in the upper part of the Connecticut river now for probably close to 100 years or so. Maybe if I bought some farm bred salmon from some wild looking seafood guy it might count for something at least.

The cacao bean is in there for all you dark chocolate fans (milk chocolate doesn’t count…sorry) so that seems a lot easier than catching a wild salmon or being chased around by some wild looking fish guy with a filleting knife when I tried to buy some farm bred salmon. The coffee bean is in there too so that’s a plus. I don’t know if high quality instant is included in this but I’ll tell you right now, I’m not going to rush right out and buy an Espresso machine just because that’s the preferred form of the black stuff.

Blueberries, green tea (just a special kind of course for the best effect) and a few other sundries seem to round things out. Looks like this isn’t going to be as impossible as I thought it would be. Once I round up a bar of dark chocolate, several cups of coffee, a quart of blueberries and some wild looking fish guy that will sell me some salmon without wanting to slit my throat, I’ll let you know if I see an improvement.

Or maybe I should just learn to touch type without chucking my keyboard and whatever it’s attached to out the bloody window from pure frustration. :P

Temporarily Waylaid

Posted on by
4

Many apologizes for the lack of any real content of late. My mind has apparently wandered off on some sort of vacation to oblivion and I’m hoping for it’s return any time now. Also I’ve had to spend a lot of time out of doors attempting to find what used to be our driveway that’s now turned into a blunderland of white and since our old snow blower has been at the shop for the last three days I’ve had to do things the old fashioned way–with shovel and damaged backside (and front side for that matter). Takes awhile that way especially with a day of being laid out in between each day spent outdoors. My lady and her son have also been on this great archeological expedition to find the long lost tarmac that used to be our driveway (we struck "black" today!).

And the snow blower finally came back this afternoon. Figures.

Forms for the VA, forms for the State and phone calls to both etc etc has taken up what little brain power I have left so mind and body have been pretty much wasted for the last week or so but at least things are getting done.

So hopefully, when things come to a stopping point for any reasonable length of time, I just might be able to pay more attention to all things "Just Thinkin" than I’ve been able to for the last couple of weeks or more. Like maybe the first of the year. :P

Until such time, I’ll post as I can. Just don’t expect any sort of thoroughly researched, well thought out, mind boggling, thought provoking piece of amazingly potent, award winning material that I…

oh wait…

Hmmm. I don’t turn out stuff like that anyway.

Okay…never mind. :D

Mother of ISS crew member dies and memories come rushing back

Posted on by
Reply

Daniel Tani, an astronaut currently working as a crew member of the International Space Station, recently received news of the . I suggest you read the article if you haven’t already and there’s plenty more news items about this as you might belive so there was really no reason to post this here, except for one…

Things are still status quo at the station and Daniel is continuing to perform his duties with no break in schedule.

In my way of thinking and from my past experience all I can say is–of course he is. What else would he do?

The above statement may seem a bit cold and harsh but the fact is when I first read that article my whole being suddenly cried out to him for a moment as memories came flooding back in startling clarity which I quickly pushed back where they belonged as soon as I regained some modicum of control. It was one of those moments where a few seconds seem more an hour as I saw every look on every shipmates face that I had ever known as they received a "FamilyGram" telling them that one of their loved ones had had an accident, been hospitalized, passed way or simply to state that the poor bastard no longer had a family to come home to at all. And here they were, a 1000 miles from nowhere and fathoms beneath the surface of the ocean and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

And so they kept going. No choice in the matter. In the end it took it’s toll but you have to admire the man (or woman) who could receive news like that, keep his head on straight and truck right along without a break. And by the way…we had the same option that the crew members of the ISS currently have–whether or not to be informed of events like this while in space (at sea). I don’t know about the astronauts up there but I do know it would amaze some folks these days on how many of us chose to be informed regardless of the type of personal news we might have received.

And most of us did. And all of us kept on going.

Carry on, Daniel…Carry on.

Long Live The Queen!

Posted on by
2

I may be a tried and true native of the ol’ US of A but that doesn’t mean I can’t see the greatness that resides in other countries and today marks the day that becomes England’s longest living Monarch in the history of her nation.

queen_elizabethLong live the Queen, indeed. Just past teatime in London today (or about 10 a.m. Eastern time), Elizabeth II will become the oldest monarch in Britain’s history, surpassing Victoria, who was 81 years, 7 months and 29 days old when she died in 1901.
Source:

The Queen has quite a long and interesting history behind her that you can read about via the Wikipedia article I linked to in the first paragraph. It’s quite in-depth and a good read for those interested in the past doings of Her Majesty the Queen.

Now I don’t know how the folks in the UK feel but I say "Long may she reign!"

 

Our DSL Has Ice in it’s Works

Posted on by
Reply

Just a quick post here to let everyone know that I haven’t disappeared at all but rather due to this incessant snow we’ve been having, our DSL apparently formed ice in it’s innards making it cut out all the time.

So until we regain a bit more reliability in our Internet connection I have been reduced to such things as…reading. And I’ve been catching up on the household chores and phone calls needed to further my case in the VA end of things.

I’ll be back. (A threat if I ever saw one)

Animusic’s Pipe Dreams

Posted on by
5

The first time I saw this I actually had to watch it three times just to make sure it wasn’t real. As a lover of music and spending many years in the field (before I lost my hearing), I absolutely fell in love with this. It’s been out for quite awhile now, in fact this was Animusic’s first effort. It definitely deserves a replay.

Update: I had originally posted this in March of this year but it became the victim of a long forgotten video type plugin I had originally used to insert it in the post and thus it was gone. Since the video is so good I thought it was worth the repost using built in "Insert Video" tool. Enjoy!

The Vermont Weather Shield

Posted on by
2

I’ve always known that Vermont is one of those rare places on this planet where there’s still a bit of magic left. Ireland’s another place but most of the elves disguise themselves as pub goers these days and by what I hear most of ‘em haven’t been out of the pubs for century or more.

Anyway it appears the "powers that be" that reside in the hills and mountains have seen fit to give it’s natives a bit of a break and thus turned on the "Weather Shield Of Vermont" keeping the snow off of us a for a moment or two so we can dig out and get to where we need to go before it starts back up again. They must be feeling generous this time since they seem to have included the neighbors as well or at least a portion of them. Obviously the "shield" can only stay in place for so long otherwise the magic that powers it would become exhausted and it would take days to renew itself. Everything in moderation ya’ know.

Now many of you might not believe what I’m saying here so I’ve included this radar image of the current weather situation here in the Green Mountain State so you can see for yourself. Just click to enlarge of course.

VT weather shield

This happens all the time even if you don’t believe it. Not always the whole State but almost always around the Newport area but that makes perfect sense of you think about it. Creeping "civilization" coming up from the south end of Vermont keeps chasing the magic northwards and Burlington, Montpelier, St. Albans and that hell hole of a city called Barre chase the magic away from the western side of things so the greatest concentration is obviously up here in the Northeast Kingdom.

Until the magic gets chased away across the Canadian border entirely, I and the rest of us "snow balls" up here will enjoy our "Weather Shield" as long as it cares to stick around.

Technorati Tags: