I honestly thought that the conspiracy theory loons who were advocating the NASA movie studio conspiracy had long ago faded away, but it seems they are indeed still out there. In the General category of a Linux forum I frequent just such a thread is currently alive and well. These people are truly nuts. I suppose some people just love a good conspiracy theory and will cling to them no matter what. I really should invest in the tinfoil hat industry as there doesn't seem to be any decline in...

My small television sits on a shelf above the fridge. This shelf is basically the top of a cabinet the fridge sits inside of. It is kind of my catch all shelf and holds a lot of miscellaneous crap that I toss up there. I was digging around on the shelf looking for my nail clippers and accidently knocked the tv off the shelf. Murphy's Law being what it is, the tv landed on my head and I was laid out on the kitchen floor. Ouch. Now I'm nursing a small gash on my scalp and a bit of a lump ...

What is it that makes some people think they are going to live forever if they just do all of the right things? Yes, it's good to eat sensibly, drink in moderation, and exercise enough to keep the body in reasonable condition. But some people have some unrealistic ideas about these things and wind up spending so much time focused on these sorts of things that they fail to enjoy their life. What could be more sad? As Samuel Clemmons remarked, I always smoke in moderation. One cigar at a tim...

Ok, I admit it. I'm a pizza snob. I despise frozen pizza and turn up my nose at Dominos. But while grocery shopping today I decided to give a DiGiorno pizza a try. Why would a pizza snob do such a deplorable thing? Beats me. Call it an experiment. I baked the frozen imitation pizza according to the directions and sliced it up while fully expecting a typical frozen pizza flavor disaster. I have to admit that for a frozen pizza it was better than any I had tried in the past. Frozen pizza usu...

I love cigars but often I don't have the time to smoke a full sized one. I've always kept a stash of small, very dark Rumrunner cigars . They're a very tasty rum flavored cigar from Indonesia and are a pretty nice quick smoke. Today I stopped by my local cigar shop to pick up another small black wooden box of Rumrunners (the box is cool, skull and crossbones on the lid). They had a box of the larger ones but no small ones. I asked if they were expecting to get more in to the store in the ...

I've been considering buying a usb thumb drive a.k.a flash drive for some time. At first they were more expensive than I thought they should be and passed on them. I've been watching the prices come down as storage capacity has come up. Just a few months ago a 1GB thumb drive was about $100. I just bought one today for $44. I have to say that I really like it. Travfer speeds are super quick. I was able to sync the personal files between my laptop and desktop very quickly using the thumb dr...

There's one beer left in the fridge. I'm tired and probably should go to bed. It's after midnight after all. But there is one beer left in the fridge. The thing is, as tired as I am, I am also still unwinding. I'm not sure I'm ready to submit to slumber. And there's one beer left in the fridge. What will I do? It's such a dilema. ... ... There's no beer left in the fridge.

recently my dsl provider announced that they were going to be adding a small surcharge to our bill. It was only something like $1.29 or something. According to the email I received it wasn't any sort of government tax or anything, they just felt like bilking us for a little extra money. When I received this email I shot off a rather scathing email back to them. I guess I wasn't the only one because I have now received an email from them saying that "due to customer concerns" they have decided...

After being left alone all day Socrates is attention starved I think. He's finally settled down from a fit of insanity, running around, attacking, biting, and generally playing. Now he's switched to "love on me" mode. He wants to be right on me, in my face, purring and wanting to be petted. While this isn't abnormal for him, his persistence is. I'll pet him a bit and then lay him down on the couch beside me and he'll immediately jump right back up on me. I put him down and he jumps right b...

I got up early this morning because I wanted to get a nice early start down to Port Everglades and get back home at a reasonable time. Yeah, right. I got to the truck early enough, no problems there. As I was pulling out of the lot in which I park my rig when I'm home my drive wheels dropped into a shiny new pothole that was not visible due to a water puddle. The drive out of the lot slopes sharply to the road but I have pulled out there many times before pulling a double drop (low boy) tr...

I just got home Saturday and have to leave back out in the morning to go deliver this load at the port near Ft Lauderdale. I don't wanna. I've gotten used to being home for a week at a time and it just feels like it's too soon to have to think about going back out there. I know I'll be coming right back home when I get finished tomorrow, but still it just doesn't feel right. I guess I've gotten spoiled. It's too soon to be having to think about getting up early in the morning, or having to...

I've always liked the show Frasier (Daphne is hot), but as I don't usually watch a lot of tv there are a number of episodes I have never seen. I was just watching one such episode. In this episode Frasier and Niles get involved with black market caviar dealers which is amusing but even funnier is their father's dealing with the bank over a simple ATM mistake. He went to an ATM to withdraw $20 and the machine mistakenly gave him $60. At Daphne's insistence he tried to return the extra $40 t...

Ok, a boring domestic entry. Dinner is on the stove simmering. New orleans style red beans and rice. A favorite of mine since childhood. The smell is wafting through the house and is starving me out. I'm really going to enjoy this when it's ready. If you've never had the pleasure of authentic red beans and rice you don't know what you're missing. It's traditionally made with smoked sausage in it and is a wonderful dish. Zatarans makes a pretty good quick and easy version that's quite go...

While cooking lunch my little place got really hot. The sun is blazing down on the roof and it's a typical Florida muggy day, and it was getting really uncomfortable in here. The little air conditioner unit in the bedroom just isn't up to the job of cooling the whole place. I said enough is enough already. After lunch I got a ride down to Lowes and purchased a small 8,000 BTU window unit for the living room. It took me about 30 minutes to remove the window panels, install the brace and the...

Maybe living in a retirement community is rubbing off on me. We don't have trash pick up here and all of our trash goes to the dumpster to be picked up. The dumpster is on A Street and I live on D Street so it's a little bit of a walk to carry the trash to it. Until now I would either hop on my bike and carry the trash bag in one hand while I rode to the dumpster or simply walk it to the dumpster depending on how much there was to carry. Many of the elderly folks living here use these whee...