David's Tangled Thoughts

It's almost 2030 and I'm about to go to bed. Lately, I haven't been feeling like blogging at all. I've got lots I want to share but getting it on to screen would take too much effort. Be prepared for some blogarrhea when I finally do feel the need.

I heard on the news that the Coast Guard was abandoning the light house in St. Joe. In all my time living here, I have never visited it. Oh sure, I’ve been close to it whenever I went to Silver Beach, but I never crossed the river to set foot up on the north pier. It’s highly unlikely that the light house is going to be torn down simply because the Coast Guard no longer wants it. Hopefully some preservationist organization or the city itself will take it. Before it was handed off, however, I wanted to visit it and so that became my Memorial Day trip.

My favorite internet comment for today follows a "conversation" regarding the contributions the British Empire made to the world. Fuck Europe, especially Spain. Spain is nothing more than a filty, dry, country full of homosexuals. The UK is seperate from Europe, the UK has more in common with the English speaking world than it does with Europe. On that last part--geeze, I wonder why.[/sarcasm]

For a little over a month now, I have been doing my laundry at a laundromat because the “new” washer leaves stains. The water where I live comes from a well and we don’t live on a great site. When we moved here from the city, I literally spat out the water the first time I took a drink from the tap. Over the years we have gotten used to having to double filter our water to drink, and we have also learned that white cloth has a limited life span. Our whites, over time, would tint orange. No big deal. However, the washer that was installed a couple months ago started to leave blotches of stains on our clothes. That was unacceptable. I am vain enough that I will not go out in public with stains on my clothes. Oh, I still use the crappy washer but only for my towels and bed sheets. [Laughs] It’s not like anyone else is going to see them. Okay well, except y’all. No smart ass comments from the peanut gallery. Those are water stains! Stacey said that Kraig had suggestion that I tr

In this week's episode: No Luck with the Choco Taco, Job Training, and Just a Bit of Television. Crap. I forgot that BSG isn't on this week.

I'm really in a funk or a quasi-depressive mood. Today almost sent me over the edge. I got a call from one of the clients who demanded to speak to me. Basically, he was giving me a kick in the pants because his stuff is not being done on time. I suppose he is justified since we haven't been been upholding our end of the contract. If I was in his position, I'd be a little ticked as well. I've brought this issue up before and virtually nothing is being done to solve the various problems that we are having. My boss seems content to deal with issues as they come up but is not interested in the long term fix. We've got old programs that are crashing all the time and quite frankly, I'm getting sick of going into work wondering what will break because no matter how hard I try to get stuff done...there never seems to be enough time. Essentially, I feel like I am trying to do the best with the limited resources that I have amongst the multiple demands for my att

One of the costs that I had in mind when I bought my computer was how much it was going to cost to get Microsoft Office . I don’t know about all of you out there, but for me, Office is a must have. I have been using it since moving off the Commodore 64 and onto one of those PC clones. Word and later Power Point, Outlook, and Excel became the only programs that I really needed in school and work. As much as I hate feeling like I am being chained to Microsoft, whether through their OS or through their Office suite, I still have a hard time getting by if I don’t have at least Word or Outlook available. When I bought my computer, I made a few mistakes that I regret. One of them was having Office Home and Student preinstalled on my system. In the past, Office had Word, Excel, Power Point and Outlook bundled together in the student/home/educational editions. Office 2007 replaced Outlook with OneNote. I thought that I could get along fine without Outlook and after about a month of t

Across the street lived one of my old classmates, K. Before going on, it may help to read this post . Anyways, a couple of weeks ago they moved out of the house. Considering the housing situation in the country and in this area in particular, I thought it might be a while before anyone bought the house. K. was able to sell the house before she even left. Today, the new neighbors arrived but I haven’t seen them. I saw the U-Haul when I left this morning. When I came back, the U-haul was gone and two cars were there. One was from Illinois and the other one looked like it had Alaska plates but I wasn’t too sure. I only know was that it was yellowish. I don’t believe the move is complete. It’s 2100 as I write this and the house is dark and the cars are now gone. Perhaps they are making a trip back to Illinois for more of their shtuff.

I replaced my lamp as well because I don't trust it any more.

In today's episode: the hunt for the Choco Taco ends, I get a promotion, and California's Supreme Court declares the state's same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional.

A guy down in Florida got ticketed for wearing a speedo . While it may be a fashion crime, is wearing a speedo truly criminal? According to Local6.com’s article , Bob Hezzlewood was ticketed by a county deputy for trespassing at Bonita Beach . Apparently he tried to fight the ticket but the judge tossed out the case. Now he is thinking about suing the sheriff’s department over a violation of his civil rights. Have you seen some of the skimpy outfits that women wear to the beach? Let me tell you, not all those women have bodies that can handle those strips of fabric. Or rather, those strips of fabric can’t handle those bodies. *shudders*. I say let this and any other guy wear their speedos if they want to. As long as their junk isn’t falling out, I don’t have a problem with it. Personally, I think it’s something to have a chuckle over.

I came late to the Podcasting party and it has only been in the last few months that I’ve regularly downloaded and listened/watched. I’ve got seven subscriptions but I don’t listen to them all. Of the seven, five of them are news related. There’s ABC , CBS , and BBC World which are regular news feeds. The fourth, CBC ’s At Issue also comes with “ Rex POV ” which I always look forward to. Check it out. h/t to gypseas for uploading this.

A couple of weeks ago, the Doc had a link on his blog about an article. I couldn't access it because the site requires a subscription. University students have access as long as they go through the university. I was able to access the article through MSU using their updated proxy server. A few minutes ago, I discovered that my access has been cut off. I've managed for almost four years now, to hang on to my access even though it was supposed to have been cut off when I graduated. Four years of loving ties to LexisNexis and JSTOR have now been cut and I suddenly feel dirty because I'm going to have to use Google to sift through crap to find academic articles. You may think that I'm being a little over dramatic, but really--this upsets me. Oh sure, I could register and take a credit, but there's no way in hell that I'm gonna pay that much. The current price per credit is $277.50! I started school paying $152.25. Craziness. I think that nearly fifty

For breakfast I had nothing. For lunch I had a bowl of mu shoo pork and rice. For dinner, I had: Chips ‘n Salsa Black Bean and Beef Burrito Rubbed BBQ Ribs Jumbo Shrimp Grilled Mahi-Mahi Corn on the Cob Grilled corn Lima beans Sweet Potatoes Garlic String Beans General Tso Chicken Sautéed Mushrooms Pork Fried Rice Shrimp Dim Sum Fish in Bean Sauce Egg Drop Soup Bananas Foster Raspberry Tort Chocolate Covered Strawberries By the end of it, I thought I was going to spew from the smells coming from my sister’s pile of crab legs.

Conspiracy, I tell you. Conspiracy! The government is sending out checks in hopes of stimulating the economy. In a nation whose citizens spend more than they make, it seems like reckless advice. My stimulus check hasn’t arrived but this past Saturday, my refund came in and wouldn’t you know it, my car breaks down the very next day. My check was for $364. My bill for the car-- $360. What a shakedown! Now I barely have enough left over to treat my mother to McDonalds for Mother’s Day much less take her to Chicago. Nuts.

The Grand Floral Parade for the Blossomtime Festival was held yesterday. I both appreciate and hate Blossomtime. The fact that it is an event that brings together the local communities is what I appreciate most. The pageantry and the politics that go into it, is what I hate. The Parade is perhaps the most visible and is where the various schools come together and show off in front of the public. Mostly that means bands, floats, and ladies freezing in the cold—a nasty trade off for a crown. The pictures are going to make this a rather long post so I’ll keep the commentary to a minimum. Here we have the Court. The way the pageant crap works is that each community holds a contest for Miss [insert community name] and her court. Then all those winners go on to compete for Miss Blossomtime. Dowagiac’s float had an Olympic theme. My sister suggested that I go out and take the torch screaming, “Free Tibet!” This float is for The Apple Festival which Niles holds in the fall. I think it

I did make it to the premier of “Whispers,” that movie that I mentioned in a previous post that stars one of my previous co-workers, Michelle. I got my sister to come with me. Out of all the others that I invited, one couldn’t spare $3.50 and the other one said that horror films weren’t her thing. Wusses. You’re not gonna find much of a review of the film here. I have the knee-jerk reaction to trash the movie for all its faults but I think that would take away from this: the movie was well done. It seems mean spirited to give the movie a handicap and then rip on it so I won’t. There is a South Bend Tribune article on the movie in case you are interested. In the article picture, Michelle is the skinny one at the top with short brown hair. I think my sister got a kick out of it. Much of the movie was filmed in Buchanan and its high school. So we both saw familiar sights but she saw familiar people. For the $3.50, I don’t think that is asking too much at all for locals to get ov