One of the most frustrating things for me, and apparently also for my daughter, is when an advertisement comes up for something that just can be found in stores.  I've seen it before and hate it.  I experience it with movies that are advertised weeks before they'll ever be released to theatres (by which time I've grown bored with the trailers and advertisements and decided that because I had to wait so long after the ads started airing that I absolutely will not let the studio have my ...

The Most Brilliant Minds I Have Ever Met / By Pranay Gupte   During the course of a long journalistic and writing career, I have had the privilege to meet some of the smartest men and women of my time. They have had an impact on me because their staggering intellects, their ability to synthesize ideas, their modesty, and their natural inclination to find solutions to societal problems. I learned a lot from each one of them – most of all the humbling reality that I could never ma...

I've been working on a dry run of an upgrade of one of the web apps we use regularly at work and have run into a snag that I just can't seem to get past.  Hopefully I'll get past it tomorrow, thanks to a call that I plan to make to the software author's technical support department, but then again the problem I'm having is so "weird" that I'm not all that certain that it's going to be an easy fix.  What I'm stuck with, for now, is a "Service not found" when I attempt to access the...

It's 3:20 or so in the morning, nearly an hour after hearing knocking/banging and somewhat unfamiliar voices alarming my daughter and myself to get out of our house, grab our pets and get to the safety of either of our vehicles in our driveway, even though its plenty cold outside. Thankfully we did just that, and everyone in *our* home is fine. Hopefully everyone in the home immediately behind ours is fine as well, though there's not much of that home left. For those that don't know this p...

My mother just got back from visiting my aunt.  The same aunt that is fighting off a second round of breast cancer.  The same aunt that I went with my mother to visit back in the summer. Sadly, mom is reporting that she doesn't think my aunt is doing all that well and that my uncle has a huge burden on him as he does everything he can for my aunt. Since maturing into adulthood I've not said this very often, but I really hope mom is wrong.  I hope my aunt is winning her fight...

Gone: The lions and the lionesses   By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, November 2, 2010)   In life, as in parables, there are lions and lionesses, and there are snakes. There are the good, and there are the greedy. There are those who smile, and there are those who stab. There are friends who limn one’s life with the joy of learning and laughter – but, like lions and lionesses, they are few and far between. Rarer still are friends who double as m...

Hi Friends. It's been almost two years since I've posted anything on here.  I don't really care too much, and you probably don't either, and that's okay. Nothing ever really happens in my world.  I go to work, and I come home.  And that's about it.  We don't go anywhere.  In the past two years, here is what has happened: 1.  I lost my beloved grandmother in April. 2.  Ryan started a new job last week that allows him to be home in the evenings. ...

I've written before, long ago it seems, about how I enjoy the fall season and seeing the autumn colors in the leaves on the trees.  This year the fall colors are out in full force and thankfully the windy weather seems to be holding back for a little while to give everyone in my area a chance to enjoy the foliage before everything is shaken from the trees. I know that eventually those leaves will drop and I'll be unhappy having to rake up a big pile of leaves in my yard, but for now I'm ...

I finally remembered that second item that I had listed in an early article... the second item on my "to-do" list. Get a hair-cut.  Yay!  Glad I finally remembered.  I actually jogged my memory while walking through the mall near the place I had to go to pick-up the package that I was going off to pick-up today.  Walking past one of the Hair Cuttery type places jogged my memory and reminded me of what I had been trying to remember earlier.  I'm glad that did, as nothi...

I do remember one of the things I had slated to get done tomorrow... go pick up a package at FedEx store that I wasn't home to sign for on Friday when the first delivery attempt occured.  That's one of two things I think I was planning on doing, but I've completely forgotten what the second thing I was going to do was Gah! getting old and forgetful stinks.  Seriously, I wish I could think of what I was trying to get done tomorrow, but it completely escapes me right now.  I ma...

„Wie konnte das denn nur passieren?!“, fragte Franca der Verzweiflung nahe. In einigen Stunden erwarteten sie im Hotel eine zwanzigköpfige Gesellschaft und in der hoteleigenen Küche konnte nicht gekocht werden. Was sollten sie denn ihren Kunden anbieten? Ganz zu schweigen von den Gästen im Hotel. „Ich verstehe auch nicht was mit der Gasleitung los ist. Wie gesagt, die Handwerker sind dabei, aber es wird mindestens noch bis heute Abend dauern.“, sagte der ...

While I admit that talking about an adult sex toy can be a taboo for some, I can’t help but discuss this on this blog. The thing is I had always wanted to try out the cyberskin perfect ass but was actually too embarrassed to actually order it online or worse, have to go to the store and buy it from them. This is because I know that people always put some weird connotations for guys who would admit to purchasing an adult sex toy . They would say that you are a pervert, ...

Actually not really work days as I am scheduled for some training over the next two days so I shouldn't really have that much "work" to get done.  Yet again, I find myself looking at one of those relative rarities in my life, a weekend when I don't have plans that will keep me overly busy.  Yay me! Seriously, we'll be taking the puppy to get "fixed" this weekend.  No puppies for this puppy.  Sorry little girl, but really we don't want to put her through having a litter of ...

The system at work that was driving me so crazy is getting back to normal, slowly but surely.  I'm still bummed, accepting, but bummed, over the loss of data that I'm in any way responsible for.  I strive to keep that sort of stuff from happening, plan for the eventuality and hope like crazy that my planning was good and that I have things covered and can handle anything that might get tossed at my systems, but the gremlins always find the holes.  Ugh. We have since improved pr...

Still recovering slowly from the dataloss at work.  I wish I could just click my fingers and have it all done, but it's not that easy and even if it was, I'd probably screw it up somehow by not being slow and methodical and actually thinking it through completely.  As it turns out, I've already cost myself a part of a day by restoring more data than I needed to/should have and that has caused me to go back and restart my restore so I get only the part of the data that I'm supposed to u...