Writing something about writing something.

I’ve had the strange feeling all day that I should write something. Very similar to that nagging urge you get about the time the plane leaves the ground on a vacation trip that keeps telling you that you forgot something important–like the youngest child. All day long that creature in my head, the owner of that blasted “little voice” everyone keeps talking about, has been kicking the back of my brain with a hobnail boot stating rather loudly that I should connect my fingers to something that resembles a keyboard and WRITE SOMETHING!.

I just  hate it when he yells.

It’s not like there isn’t anything to write about. There’s that never ending Malice in Blunderland called politics that provides endless subjects to place on virtual paper.

Big business and all their lying, cheating, stealing, money grubbing ways that brought the economy to it’s collective knees.

And the government that let them do it–again.

And there’s all sorts of new gadgets that I can’t afford that I could make up stories about as if I really owned one.

I could mindlessly rant on about the administration, congress, health care reform, the President, et al making all sorts of ridiculous, unfounded inferences, claims, attacks, innuendos and…

No, wait a minute…Fox News does that already.

And people! People (of which I’m one, I assure you) and their endless antics! There’s always something to write about people as they scurry about their lives, running into all sorts of trouble–or causing it.

Or perhaps I could bitch about the economy and how much I’ve lost in the past several months. I could except for the minor fact that I haven’t lost anything–I was poor before the economy went kablooey.

I know, I could write about getting older or about being a disabled vet who feels like he has to dismantle himself every night before he goes to bed and reassemble himself in the morning before breakfast. I could write about pills and hearing aids and partials and pills and doctors and pills and such. I could blather on about pain and methods of controlling it…

Bleh…

I’ve got it! Stories about the neighbors! That’s it! Stories about the neighbors! Stories about my nice boring neighbors who always have a smile handy, wave or say hello every time they see me and pretty much stay out of my hair for the rest of the time.

Or maybe the cats with all their ridiculous clownish ways chasing each other all over the house, hanging upside down from the ceiling, acting cute and loving one minute and clawing the flesh off my hand the next. Or how the litter box is a solid no man’s land of feline waste product  five minutes after it’s been thoroughly cleaned out.

Then there’s the automobile. There’s always something to write about those things isn’t there?

Well, I'm not a man appointed judge
To bear ill-will and hold a grudge
But I think it's time I said me a few choice words
All about that demon automobile
A metal box with the polyglass wheel
The end result to the dream of Henry Ford

(Name that tune why don’t ya’?)

Especially during the winter. Now, there’s a good old standby–the weather. I could write all sorts of sh…things about the weather and how cold it is and how much snow there is and how much I’m beginning to detest it and how long to Spring  and…and…and…

I could write about all this stuff!!

Oh…

…wait…

It seems I already did.

Never mind then.

Edit: Or I could possibly write about hitting the damn “Publish” button before I had finished making all my edits thus publishing a post “feed” full of typos…

Well, I'm not a man appointed judge
To bear ill-will and hold a grudge
But I think it's time I said me a few choice words
All about that demon automobile
A metal box with the polyglass wheel
The end result to the dream of Henry Ford

This blog isn’t always what it themes

Not being one to stick with one theme or another for any length of time (much to the constant dismay of my regular readers I’m sure) I have a bad habit of changing themes like a politician changes allegiances albeit without the money, power and brownie points involved.

Considering that I’m the type of guy whose wardrobe consists of a few pairs of dungarees, several T-shirts and sweatshirts plus a couple pair of sneakers (one comfortable pair and one “dress pair”) I find this rather ironic. Can’t get me to change my clothing style any but I can’t seem to be able to keep the same theme on this blog for more than a month or two.

Perhaps this is indicative of a latent personality trait attempting to manifest itself in other ways? Perhaps I’m really a closet clothes hog and I’m taking it out on my poor old blog?

Well…whatever.

Usually, during my bouts of theme-mania, I don’t bother with explaining my ridiculous self as to why I’ve changed the theme yet again but this time is a bit different. It has to do with the up and coming WordPress 3.0 that’s scheduled to be released sometime in the latter portion of 2010.

What type of changes will be going into WP 3.0 is still in the beginning process but one thing for sure, the next WordPress milestone is going to include a new “Default” theme and the one that’s sitting before your eyes is Ian Stewarts’ concept of what it could turn out to be. In fact, if the task of coming up with a new Default theme for WordPress 3.0 is cast out  among the many WordPress theme developers in a sort of “best of” type competition, than his new Kirby theme could very well be in the running.

So since the venerable old “Kubrick”, foundation for just about every 2 column WordPress theme since 2004, is having it’s last run in the 2.9 series of WordPress I decided to try out what could turn out to be it’s successor.

Sounds like a good reason anyway.

Looks a bit like Kubrick, looks a bit like the old K2 as well now that I think of it and yet it’s neither one nor the other and both at the same time–sort of. And I’ve always preferred the minimalistic look myself probably due to not having any talent for designing to speak of.

I really like the theme and it’s functions overall but having my smiling face next to each post title was a bit much so I changed the Gravatar back to Marvin the Martian so I wouldn’t put readers “off their lunch”. It wouldn’t be conducive to gaining repeat customers. And having a rather large “About the author” blurb at the end of each single post was also a bit much for a personal type, single author blog but that was easy enough to get rid of so I’m good to go there as well. And amazingly enough it’s very stable despite the fact it’s still early in the development stage of things.

One more plus in my favor is that the text in the content area has this nice big font setting. Keeps me from squinting while I’m checking for those mistakes that always seem to slip through.

Finally, I’ve always enjoyed having the ability to change the header image built into the theme options and I’m rather proud of this one as I did it myself. By including the photos of some of the more intelligent members of my family…er…members of the human race…er…

…I believe the header image reflects the the title of this blog quite well don’t you?

Cats, LCD Displays, Reading Glasses, Winter and Blogging Don’t Mix

Sheds on cue I found that there’s a problem with computer technology these days or at least with the type that adorns the various horizontal services of a computer desk.

It’s all made of plastic.

Okay, so a lot of home type computer equipment has always been made of plastic but there used to be a bit of glass thrown in for good measure especially in the case of monitors. Easily cleaned, highly resistant to scratches.

Now all the monitors except for a very few (now called “displays” for some reason, not monitors) are made of plastic, including the screen. So enter the LCD display

Now hold that thought…

Used to be reading glasses were made out of…well…glass. Easily cleaned, highly resistant to scratches. Now all the reading glasses have lenses made out of plastic.

Hold that thought as well. Now you have two  thoughts. And you thought you wouldn’t come away with anything.

Now take all your plastic and put it into an old house with wall to wall carpeting located 8 miles from the border of Canada where the winters are known to be 6 months long.

Now make it the dead of winter.

Note: Those that haven’t had the dubious honor of living in a place that had long hard winters such as Hawaii or Suriname probably wouldn’t have a clue as to what my point could possibly be here. That’s quite alright as right now I’d much rather be in one of those two nice warm places sipping a long cool drink and being as clueless as you are.

catstatic So now let’s bring in the bane of winter ( besides freezing temperatures, massive wind chills, driving snow, hazardous driving, endless shoveling and all that)—static electricity! That’s right, static electricity.

Winter in these parts just suck the moisture right out of the air and replace it with about 150,000 volts of static electricity (it keeps the dust down at least).

And to make everything complete, let’s add a cat. Better yet, let’s add four cats. Two of which who love to camp out on my computer desk next to my display and two more that insist on laying on my lap while I sit at my computer desk (occasionally they fight over the privilege in which case I usually end up with a pierced lap as well).

So guess how long it takes to have my display and glasses covered with cat hair.

I can’t keep these boneheads away from my desk no matter how hard I try. And did you ever try to remove cat hair that was stuck to plastic with around 50,000 volts or so of static electricity surrounding it? Do you know how scratch prone LCD displays are? Reading glasses aren’t that much better.

I spend 20% of my time writing a post and 80% of the time attempting to remove cat hair from pieces of plastic that sit either on my face or in front of it. If I don’t keep a constant vigilance then my glasses and display become so inundated with fur that I can’t make anything out.

Things got so bad that I went out and bought a large economy size of canned air that was suppose to be anti-static figuring I could blow the stuff off but to no avail. The cat hair flew off alright but immediately reversed it’s direction and ended up right back where it started from. Sort of like a yo-yo effect.

It wasn’t a total loss though. I found it was much more effective if I just blew the cat off my desk instead.

I wonder if they make such a thing as a combination LCD display, reading glasses and humidifier?

Wait a minute. It’s 2010?

I seem to have missed writing up a New Years post. Considering everything that’s been going on lately I’m not surprised, most of it involving snow, the removal of and the recovering after. Something like, “Oh good, another snow storm” and then finding it very difficult to get up before noon the next day.

And then there is this friend of ours who has decided to open up a sports bar/restaurant in the Spring in our ever popular downtown district (all one street and two blocks of it) who needed to install into his new office a desktop computer system. Easy yes?

Well, the obtaining and installation of said desktop was easy enough but trying to get my friend’s head screwed around in such a way so that he actually understood how to turn the thing on without blowing it up was not so easy. If a man and computer were so mutually exclusive as they shouldn’t be allowed in the same building with each other lest horrendous tragedy occur, my friend and his new office computer are the ones.

And  now I have to teach him how to use it. I think I’ll charge him…a lot. Just for the aggravation.

So between the snow and future sports bar follies I’ve been rather busy of late. I finally came to the realization that I had completely missed the passing of the new decade when I sat down to write up the checks for our monthly bills and my computer told me it was January 3rd, 2010.

2010??!! Already? When did this occur for heavens sake?

Oh well, nothing for it then but to wish a belated Happy New Year to all the usual folks, the slightly unusual folks and the definitely unusual folks who have graced this blog with their presence over the past year. I would like to say over the past decade as it sounds more inline with a post concerning 2010 but unfortunately, the site hasn’t been around that long.

So here’s to another very interesting year in this helter skelter world of ours. May we all survive it intact.

happy-new-year