I hope you all have a very
Merry Christmas!
My father, who has had some major health problems
this past year, is coming over to spend the weekend
with me. I'm happy he's still here and that he is
well enough to come and spend Christmas with me.
Christmas was always his favorite holiday so I hope
to make this a good one.
Things are quiet now but I expect it to get busy
around here later with me preparing a roast (hey I
don't cook!), relatives stopping by to visit and me
picking up some sugar free pies from the bakery. Yum.
I hope to do a little more blogging this weekend but
if I don't, once again, have a Merry Christmas.
Listening to ''Peace On Earth/Silent Night'', by Dean
Martin (Play Count: 20)
So I'm in the middle of
moving into a new house and three people have told me
that this is a good time to get rid of old furniture
and start new. All stated that they had hung on to
old stuff before when moving and regretted it later.
Hmm. This makes me think maybe it is a good time to
ditch my old couch and get something new. The old
couch is still serviceable but starting to look lived
in and ratty. Heh. Maybe I will price out a new couch
after Christmas. It's something worth thinking about.
Update:
Okay I thought
about it and ended up ordering a new couch. The old
one goes. Gosh I hate doing this stuff.
I am not flying low enough
under the radar ...
I got tagged by both Michael Martinez
and
Diane Vigil to write 5 things you
don't know about me.
1. I live in a New Urbanist or Traditional Neighborhood
Development.
2. I once met former British Prime Minister, Lord (at
that time just 'Sir') Harold Wilson, who stayed overnight
in my father's house along with his Scotland Yard
bodyguards and his personal secretary, when he
came to speak at my university.
3. Music. I like Classical music, Rock, and
increasingly as I grow older, I like jazz. I also
take a secret guilty pleasure in both punk rock and
ABBA (go figure).
4. I do not dance - ever - full stop (and the world
is a much better place for that).
5. I used to sell computers back in the early 1980's
before the IBM PC and MS DOS became popular. The
first operating system I learned was CP/M.
Now I'll tag:
Gurtie
Chris Ridings
UKGimp (hope he doesn't hate
me for this)
Heather Windsor
(grnidone)
Roger Wehbe (TheFounder)
Are you a urban person who
suddenly finds themselves living in a rural setting?
Do the sounds of cud chewing ruminants keep you up at
night? Are the cattle lowing and crapping all around
your garden? Then here is a test to see if you are
loosing your city ways and becoming a true country
rustic.
Just answer this question: How many pairs of green
rubber (or any color rubber) wellies do you own?
Answer: I own ...
0 Wellies: You are safe and do not need to be
deprogramed. You are free to travel even to known
rustic hotspots such as Scotland, Yorkshire, Canada
and the American Mid-West for short periods without
any great risk.
1 Pair of Wellies: Caution is required as this is the
top of a slippery slope into rustic behavior. Best to
start visiting nearby provincial capitals regularly
for shopping, drinking and the arts. However, avoid
extended travel to Scotland, Ireland or the middle
bit of the USA where they raise crops or cattle, talk
slow, are polite and have funny accents. Go to a
coffee house at least three times a week.
2 Pairs of Wellies: Go to London Right Now! It's not
too late. If you are a man buy a business suit (no
tweed) if you are a woman buy shoes with high heels
that are impossible to wear along country lanes.
3 Pairs of Wellies: Full rustic aversion therapy is
needed. Eliminate oats from both your diet and your
thoughts. You must spend a month in New York City
dealing with rude New Yorkers or, if time is of the
essence you can spend two weeks in Paris being
insulted by sneering beret wearing, Gauluoise
smoking, Derrida or Sarte quoting, intellectuals who
hate you because you are a bourgeois Anglo-Saxon.
If you actually wear a pair of rubber wellies in
Paris you have already gone completely rustic and
there is no hope. Just buy some gardening tools and
plant 'taters and chew your cud with your
neighbors.
Well, in case you have been waiting breathlessly for the verdict the Rapidweaver software upgrade is complete. On this site at least things seem to be okay. I use this CMS client to not only manage websites but also to blog so it is important to me. I now have Permalinks, and although they are a bit long they do work so I'm happy because it makes it easier for me and others to link directly to individual posts. Also all parts of the blog, permalink and archive pages now have a more consistent template and sidebar. Hopefully this will all follow through on my other sites.
I manage this blog
with RapidWeaver web builder CMS client.
The software has started nagging me that an
upgrade to RapidWeaver 3.5.1 is available.
Upgrading would add permalinks to the blog entries
so it is probably worth doing. That and there are
some bug issues with my current version.
I do hate upgrading, the last time I did it several
key templates that I was using just disappeared
because Rapidweaver decided not to include them. I
can tell you I was upset: if you are going to
discontinue an old template warn people but do not
arbitrarily delete it without warning! We are
building whole sites around a certain color and look
and I'm not going to change that every time the
bloody software gets updated. I did get those
templates back but the whole experience put me off
upgrading so I have been avoiding it.
So be warned - this weekend I intend to upgrade so if
the whole site goes down you will know
why.
There are two huge signs that a couple is getting old, if you ask me....the other one is putting a ceramic Christmas tree on a table and calling it a day.
I am soo busted.
Link
Obviously, despite their disastrous attempt to rebrand themselves as "Brown", UPS has better service. Hands down. Just saying.
Another factor is, the local dealer cares about your business. They want to make you happy so you will refer others to them. The big national retail chains, particularly the big box stores, don't really care about you the individual customer. You are just a demographic to them, a trend, part of a numbers game, because they have no emotional investment in the business. What you get from big corporation is bureaucracy not good service and the more layers you are away from the decision makers the worse the service.
I will still buy some things from the big boxes - electronics mostly since that stuff becomes obsolete or after a few years disposable rather than repairable. Electronics all seem the same to me no matter were you buy so I might as well buy on the basis of best price not service.
What do you prefer, big box or local?
Test sentence: I really like the movie Patton
it is one of the best biographical and war
movies of all time.
Okay here we go.
Anyway being back means I can use my desktop computer again so I guess I better start blogging more often. But for now I better go to the store and buy some food and coffee for the morning.
Brad's Everything Else Away Blog
And let us at this time remember in his name the poor and the helpless, the cold, the hungry and the oppressed; the sick in body and in mind and them that mourn; the lonely and the unloved; the aged and the little children; and all who know not the loving kindness of God.Lastly let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom we for evermore are one.
I cannot sum it up better than that.
