I got a late night text from my son this weekend. He told me he'd really like to get together soon and asked if I'd consider a trip to Austin, TX where he lives. When Wonder Woman woke up the next morning, I told her my thoughts on dates and it turns out she can't make the trip w … | Continue reading
One thing I carried into adulthood from my developing years was that I was never exposed to anyone who viewed shopping as entertainment. My mom went to the grocery store, and clothes were preferably obtained from older cousins or, in my sister's case, from my grandmother's sewing … | Continue reading
I was running low on inspiration tonight so I went to R. Scott Jones new blogging prompt website -https://bloggingprompts.fyi to see what fate would give me. I got "Write a blog post about any tattoos you have, and the story around why you got them and what they mean to you." The … | Continue reading
When I was growing up, my folks had a book of Norman Rockwell paintings that had been featured on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. You've seen many of them. I looked at the book many times and the paintings had a special familiarity to me. In 2010, a traveling exhibition o … | Continue reading
Amateur Guide to Some BearBlog Extra Features I'm in no way a web designer, but i am curious about how folks get certain features to work on BearBlog, so I've done some reading and experimenting. Someone asked me to share what I've learned and I am always willing to do that. Head … | Continue reading
I think there is a very fine line between guilt and motivation. When I am motivated to do something, it's because I am looking forward to some sort of reward for doing it, whether it be an internal or external reward. I am motivated to blog every day because I like the sense of a … | Continue reading
I Am From by Mitzi Plummer Johnson I am from beach chairs. From Coppertone and El’s shrimpburgers. I am from the Crystal Coast salty, sticky, the squawk of seagulls with French fries in view. I am from sand spurs, no match for bare soles toughened by summer sand. I'm from Scrabbl … | Continue reading
A discussion about books yesterday on Mastodon led into some of us talking about our learning styles and educational backgrounds. One fellow, a successful business owner in the UK who makes educational materials for digital and blended learning told us he left school at 16 and th … | Continue reading
1968 Olympic Games, Mexico City The ongoing Olympic Games have me thinking about sports. I really like the spirit of the games, where there is a good mix of internationalism and national solidarity. I've been really happy during these games to see tiny little Ireland winning meda … | Continue reading
Are you familiar with the caricature of the IT worker who is a rude know it all, who talks down to the people who need his help, who orders people to MOVE from behind their keyboard and tries to make them feel stupid for needing help? Are you so familiar with that stereotype that … | Continue reading
I started school in 1970, before North Carolina had mandated kindergarten. In the United States, then and now, public education consists of additional 12 grades. During those 12 years, I attended 13 public schools, even though I was very fortunate to be able to attend the same hi … | Continue reading
One upside to writing as much as I do is that I don't have time to fiddle with the design of my blogs very often. I'm so busy putting out copy that I seldom stop and think about colors or fonts or any of the other design features available to me. Part of that is prompted by the b … | Continue reading
I'm not a mechanic. I don't ever want to be a mechanic. I'm not at all interested in the way cars work. I gladly pay someone to do maintenance on my vehicles and when they break, I know a guy that I trust to fix them. It's always expensive and I hate it, but it is what it is. Wha … | Continue reading
For someone who has had an uninterrupted fascination with technology for over 30 years, I have never been able to make the commitment of time and energy to get into computer games in any meaningful way. Back in the 90s I downloaded Wolfenstein and spent a small amount of time pla … | Continue reading
I'm participating in Blaugust, a ten-year-old blogging challenge this month. The organizer's asked the participants to write an introductory post on Day One, so if this post reaches more people than my Mom and my small group of online friends, you are about to read a mini bloggin … | Continue reading
I wrote a post today on my links blog about German POW camps in the US during World War Two. My paternal grandmother, who worked on Ft. Bragg, the large Army base in southeastern North Carolina, during the war, told me stories of trading with the Germans prisoners for the chocola … | Continue reading
I'm not one of those people who apologizes for everything even it isn't my fault, although if you tell me you feel bad, I may answer with "I'm sorry", meaning that I feel sorrow over your discomfort, not that I take the blame for it. On the other hand, if I do something on purpos … | Continue reading
Cause the technology is just gonna get better and better and it's gonna get easier and easier and more and more convenient and more and more pleasurable to sit alone with images on a screen given to us by people who do not love us but want our money and that's fine in low doses b … | Continue reading
Colbert asked the questions, and I'm giving the answers. My friend in Canada, Alexandra, was the first person I saw give her answers to these. I'm pretty sure that neither of us are using any of these as security questions at our banks. Best sandwich? -- I think the over-the-top … | Continue reading
In the early days of the Internet's slow invasion into education, I often dealt with teachers frustrated by the ever increasing technological requirements of the job. Faced with a new student information system or using a network instead of a local printer I often heard the refra … | Continue reading
I'm old enough to remember when people of faith could justify their affiliation with the Republican Party. That party as it exists today is far removed from the Christianity I was raised around. Lately for some reason, I've just felt like pointing that out every chance I get. I t … | Continue reading
Life has been pretty good lately. Despite having COVID last week and missing a couple of days of work, I've managed to keep up with all my personal projects. I'm currently on an unbroken streak of posting to at least one blog a day going back all the way to April 1 when the Micro … | Continue reading
I'll get a hammer and you get a sickle Together we'll ride our red bicycle Singing all the way Down to Bolivia to die with Che we think we are white knights with snow driven hearts but our eyes are as black as armbands we war with ourselves we want peace of you We do We don't We … | Continue reading
This post was written in 1997 shortly after I moved into the home where I still live. It was an examination of my tendency to accumulate things, an area of my life that has seen some modest, not drastic improvement in the last three decades. I know George Carlin has beaten me to … | Continue reading
If someone were to hold a gun to my head and make me identify the class I belong to, you'd better believe I'd come up with something quickly, probably claiming my place in the working class and hoping that didn't get me shot. My bona fides for identifying that way include my lack … | Continue reading
Ted Williams, The Splendid Splinter Before the steroid's era in baseball, I was a huge fan, starting in the mid-70s and lasting until the early 90s when people like Mark McGwire and Roger Clemmons went from heroic, hardworking athletes to drug abusing cheaters. Don't even get me … | Continue reading
I got an email from someone who'd just started a blog at BearBlog. He asked for some advice on how to become an active member of the IndyWeb community. All I could honestly do was list the tools I've used and can personally vouch for. Feel free to adapt and share this as you see … | Continue reading
Endeavour (BBC) - the prequel to the much loved Morse, taking place in Oxford, England from the mid-60s through the early 70s. Hill Street Blues (NBC) - a ground breaking and gritty show for its time. It held up to a rewatching for me in 2022. Scott and Bailey (BBC) - taking plac … | Continue reading
One of the words that gets used a lot on the Indy Web is community, in a good way. Whether it be people from your Mastodon instance, fellow customers of your particular blogging platform or just an ad hoc group of friendly Internet strangers bound together through a blogging chal … | Continue reading
I was born in 1965 on the same Sunday afternoon in February that Malcolm X was being gunned down in Harlem for being too Muslim and not black enough for Elijah Muhammad. When I started school a few years later, I did so in one of the first cohorts in my area of North Carolina to … | Continue reading
I don't cry often, but my eyes water a lot. I mean, I guess that is a kind of quiet crying. All it takes is a well-done, emotionally connecting TV show, and I'm all set to reach for the Kleenex. I don't usually make any audible sounds, but it is sometimes hard to talk. I wrote so … | Continue reading
I think I'm pretty lucky to be an optimist these days about my own life. I'm lucky because having feelings of optimism is rooted deeply in having decent mental health, which through the miracles of modern pharmacology and years and years of practice I have managed to get to. Havi … | Continue reading
Growing up in the South, the beverage my family always served at meals was iced tea, always sweetened and usually offered with slices of fresh lemon. It was made by adding four standard-sized tea bags to a couple of quarts of boiling water, allowing it to steep for five minutes, … | Continue reading
My oldest daughter is a nurse. When she graduated from nursing school, she went to work in the neonatal intensive care unit at her hospital as a fresh-faced 22-year-old, faced with drawing blood and running IVs in tiny bodies weighing only a few pounds. She referred to infants wi … | Continue reading
As I understand it, one of the central tenants of indy web blogging is POSSE, Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. As a micro.blog user, I take advantage of its powerful cross posting abilities to send links to: Mastodon Blue Sky Threads PixelFed (for images) Tumblr I … | Continue reading
During the couple of years that I tried to be retired, I had more free time than I'd ever had before. With no job to go to and a wife who was still heading to work each day, I had hours to do what I wanted, except I didn't know what I wanted. I read some books from the library, w … | Continue reading
In 1998, I went on a three-day trip by bus with my grandfather from our home in NC to Atlanta Georgia to see his beloved Braves play in their new stadium, Turner Field. After returning home, I wrote a report on my trip. it was the first time I'd ever been on an overnight trip to … | Continue reading
I elected to take half a mental health day today, and it was well-received. I have missed less than a handful of days from work since starting at my current job in 2022. Summers are typically low-key in my environment, higher education. I believe in workers taking care of themsel … | Continue reading
Those of us whose online life began with 2400 bps modems or slower remember what life was like when viewing an image online meant downloading it line by line over a 10- or 15-minute period. One image. The early editions of CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL were all text-based, as were … | Continue reading
First 50 Prompts Are you a minimalist in any area of your life? Why or why not. Who would you describe as your favorite man? Write about him. Tell a story about a time when you had to pretend to be something or someone you're not. How do you use the Internet? Is it just a tool, e … | Continue reading
I think you can figure out a lot about a person if you know what books have had the most impact on them. At one point or another, each of these books was my current favorite. They all had a lasting impact on me. I'd love to see your list. It doesn't have to be 15 books and you do … | Continue reading
A road trip you've taken that was memorable On what subjects are you outspoken and on what subjects are you mostly mute? Why do you like your favorite restaurant? What woman in your family do you most admire and why? What is the most memorable job you've held? What is or was your … | Continue reading
The Installer from the Verge by David Pearce Installer is a weekly newsletter by David Pierce designed to tell you everything you need to download, watch, read, listen to, and explore that fits in The Verge’s universe. Subscribe Here Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richar … | Continue reading
I would classify myself an animal lover. I haven't always had pets for various reasons, but the ones I did have were dear to me, live in my memory and are still talked about to this day. Freckles Freckles was my grandparent's Dalmatian, a patient a well-trained dog who subsisted … | Continue reading
My employment history according to the Social Security Administration dates back to 1980 when I paid taxes for the first time on a landscaping job I had as a high-school freshman. In the intervening 44 years, I've been continuously employed and although I've had several side hust … | Continue reading
I've engaged in physically demanding tasks in my life, ranging from a 25-mile forced march carrying my gear during Infantry Basic Training to biking over 100 miles, backpacking through mountains, and staying awake for 48 hours while hunting for escaped prison inmates. However, th … | Continue reading
I already wrote a long blog post today on the subject of Tools for the July IndyWeb Carnival. Please take a look. I wrote about how one particular piece of free software lifted me out of a long depression and started the rebirth of my blogging career. Since for once, I am about t … | Continue reading
I gave folks a chuckle yesterday when I commented that I, an almost 60-year-old man with multiple grandchildren can't cuss on my blog anymore because my mama reads it now. I mean, I can sort of cuss, maybe a damn or a hell, but f-bombs are definitely off the table. There were dam … | Continue reading