It's been raining here. I walked outside a few minutes ago and was greeted by a beautiful full rainbow. You know the ones, they are a perfect full arc that isn't missing any parts. It was a nice sight to see. There is something about a rainbow that just brightens the spirit a bit. A beautiful flower in the sky. Unlike a lot of things, knowing the scientific reasons behind a rainbow doesn't lessen the enjoyment of it in any way.They're one of those little joys that nature tosses your way ev...

When I called to have my phone and DSL service transferred from my old place to the new one the CSR was kind enough to inform me that they had a new package deal that bundled both services as well as long distance, voice mail, caller ID, and call waiting and would save me about ten bucks a month. As I had only had local service and DSL before it sounded like a good deal to me. As I hadn't previously had caller ID service I didn't have a caller ID unit. I figured I would pick one up eventua...

Ok, now I know there have been a lot of goofy gadgets and gimmicks sold over the years, but I have just seen a television ad for one that is definitely among the top contenders for the A Sucker Is Born Every Minute Award. It's called, of all things, the FishPen. Yup, that's right, the FIshPen. I just had to look this one up to make sure it wasn't some sort of joke. Sadly it's a real product and more sadly I am sure there are people out there spending their hard earned money on this thing. ...

It never ceases to amaze me what forums one can find on the web. As I recently purchased a new GPS unit I was doing a bit of googling for information about it and sure enough I actually found an entire website, complete with forum, dedicated to GPS. It's called GPSPassion. Just for kicks I decided to just start doing searches for various forums to see what I could find. There are forums about: Pigs Chickens Horses Dogs Cats Incest (I kid you not) Rape Porn (no surprise there)...

OK, a lot of people claim to follow the teachings of Jesus. That's cool, I agree with them myself. In almost every truck stop I visit there is some scribling or other on the bathroom stall from a supposed Christian quoting some bible verse or a catchy Christian phrase or other. What kind of message does this really send? "Jesus saves" might well seem to be an important message to communicate, but when it's written on a bathroom stall what message does it really send? So, Christians feel...

Here's a pic of the Irish Hiking Scarf I am working on. It's a long way from finished but here's where it is now.

I finally finished the knitted clock for Mom. What do ya think?

I wanted to make something different for dinner tonight. When I'm home off the road I usually prepare a lot of the same old stuff. It's usually something relatively quick and easy. I picked up some boneless chicken breasts at the grocery and decided to make baked chicken tonight. It's something I haven't made in a long time and just sounds good. I prepared the chicken with a bit of butter and some herbs and popped it into the oven to bake. It already smells really good. I'll start some ve...

When I rode down to the C-store earlier today to pick up some brews there was a kid of about 8 or 9 standing in front of the store when I rode up on my bent. The look on his face told me that he had never seen a bent before. He walked toward me and said "Hey mister, that's a nice bike!" I got off and set it on it's kickstand and said "Thanks", The kid asked me all kinds of questions about the bike. It was obvious he was just itching to get on it. I finally asked him if he would like to sit...

Get your act together. This was the advice from someone on a "support" forum after reading that I was dealing with depression. WTF? Is this good advice for someone with heart disease? How about kidney failure? Diabetes? Ok, this wasn't a depression support forum, it was actually a stop smoking forum where I just happened to mention the depression thing in the context of quitting smoking, but still... is this the kind of advice people think is actually helpful? Kinda makes me want to...

When I got home I did the usual. I turned on the water and power, aired up the tires on my bent, and rode down to the store to get some brewskies while the ac was cooling the place down. I've been drinking beer most of my life and it takes a few for me to get a buzz. Well, at least until I started on Wellbutrin. After polishing off two brews I had a pretty good buzz going. I have never, ever had a buzz off of two beers. It seems the Wellbutrin makes one a lightweight. Naturally having an e...

I've been ripping CDs to load onto my new MP3 player. I wonder if MP3 player is the right term as it also does video and pictures? Ah well, anyway, it works great and sounds really good. The ear buds are silicon tipped so they fit nicely into the ear and have no slippage at all. I only have 66 songs loaded into it so far, but I still have a number of CDs yet to rip. I'm storing all of the tunes on my laptop as well as into the player, that way I can either listen to them on my computer or ...

When I stopped in at a fuel stop today to use the restroom and grab a Gatorade I saw (while using the restroom) a sale flier advertising a 256MB MP3 player they had on sale for $40. Hey, that's plenty big enough for me as I don't plan on using it for videos or anything. 256MB is a lot of music. I bought one. It's a knock off of an iPod (but really tiny), and I'm sure it's not the highest quality, but it seems to work ok. It took me a while to figure out how the thing works. I tried to read...

I've only seen the Trick My Truck television show a couple of times. Of the shows I've watched I am now seeing a truck they did on one of them. It has on impressive paint job with "Fort Stockton" on the back. You couldn't miss that truck anywhere. It just pulled into the truck stop and parked. Must be nice. I remember how they did the interior of that one. That guy has a very nice ride. I managed to snap a couple of quick pics.

A lot of bands, especially new bands looking for exposure, are licensing their music under the Creative Commons license which allows one to legally download it for free. I've been downloading music from a site that hosts a lot of CC music for listening or download called soundclick.com While some of the stuff is crap, a lot of it is very good and I've downloaded some very good music from there. It's divided into genre which makes search/browsing much easier. I have a number of tunes from a...