I made a couple of hats as Christmas gifts. They turned out ok I guess.

For those who observe the Christmas holiday with gift exchanges, what is that one thing that you are really hoping to get? Maybe it's more than one thing. Maybe it's something you haven't even mentioned to a potential gift giver but secretly would like to get. So, JU, let's have it. What do you want for Christmas? I'll start it off. Some really nice yarn. A knitting book by Elsebeth Lavold titled Viking Patterns For Knitting

Wow, some folks got some cheap gas in WI. Link

As I will probably be leaving out on the road again tomorrow I am basically using up the groceries I have on hand. I was looking through the fridge and cupboards trying to decide what to make for dinner. I had the ingredients for baked beans and some ground chuck. Hmmmmm. Ok, I whipped up the makings for the baked beans, browned the chuck in some green and red bell peppers, onion, and red pepper. I then mixed it into the prepped beans and popped the whole mess into the oven. I really didn'...

I just saw a news story on the idiot box about a truck driver that was involved in four separate accidents in Tampa yesterday resulting in the death of one person. They named the intersection where the fatality occurred and something just hit me as wrong about the story. A bit of quick Googling for the news story both cleared it up as well as angered me a bit. The 'truck driver' wasn't a trucker at all but was a guy driving a pickup. The way the story was given on the newscast gave the dis...

We had a cold front pass through sunny Florida. The temps, which had been running above average, are now down in the low 60s with very low humidity. It's quite nice. Where I had been running the air conditioning yesterday to knock down the humidity I have now shut that down and opened the windows to allow the nice fresh air to circulate through the house. It's quite comfortable if just a tad chilly. The high for today is predicted to be in the upper 60s or low 70s and the humidity is suppo...

Just in case you're really bored. Link

Dinner is cooking and it smells great. I tend to experiment with different improv recipes when I am home. Tonight I am working on a sort of goulash kinda thing that I threw together and if it tastes half as good as it smells it's going to be a treat. I browned some lean ground beef, combined that with some elbow macaroni, tomato sauce, petite cut Roma tomatoes, finely diced white onion, finely diced red and green peppers, finely diced half clove of garlic, a dash of red pepper, a dash of ...

Ok, now I think I have seen it all when it comes to the press media. I just sat here and watched a local news station story describing how bad it is that Florida hasn't been hit by a hurricane in the past two years. WTF? Are you kidding me? They talked about everything from how citizens become complacent due to the lack of storms to how the local building supply companies suffer. Give me a break! It simply amazes me how they can take a good thing like no hurricanes and turn it into a negat...

Oh good grief! Amnesty International and the UN are now calling the use of tasers torture and are calling for a ban on them. Yes, a handful of people have died as a result, either directly or indirectly, from being tasered, but hundreds more are subdued by police without any real physical harm being done to them. Before police started using tasers the only options they had to subdue the violent and uncooperative suspects was to use pepper spray or physical abuse including clubbing them wit...

One of the knitting forums I frequent, and where I've been a member for a year, has a lot of people joining on a daily basis. It's quite popular because it's a very friendly community. Usually. Like any other online community you get your share of asshats there. I had to deal with one of those tonight. On one thread a person had posted a full cut and paste of something they had posted in their own thread, basically some sort of religious charity related stuff. I pointed out how rude it was...

Over the past several days I've received numerous emails from some of the folks at Linux Questions inquiring about my health and expressing concern that I hadn't been posting there for a while. The truth is that I have been busy with other things and simply hadn't spent much time there. It is rather touching that my fellow Linux geeks were concerned about my health and well being. After the 10th or 12th email I posted there letting everyone know that I am indeed still darkening this world'...

I just called and ordered a pizza to be delivered to my hotel room. The young lady who took my order seemed to have the IQ of your average turnip. I had to repeat damn near everything I told her, she didn't seem to even be listening at all. Um, you're on the fucking telephone, listening is pretty much all that's involved! She even had one of those stereotypical Valley Girl voices that I find amazingly annoying. If I could have reached through the phone I would have done the world a favor a...

Just posting a couple of update photos on my current beard, started about a week after Labor Day.

I decided to go ahead and just frog the black scarf back to a pile of yarn and start it over from scratch. I only had about a foot of it done anyway and it just seemed easier to frog it all as to try and frog back to a good point, pick up the stitches again (I'm not very good at that yet) and figure out exactly where in the pattern I was picking up from. So now I'll just have to start it all over again, hopefully sans mistakes this time around. I may go ahead and do the hat for the bartend...