A Few of My Favorite Things…

Nicole pointed to this, and I thought to myself, “Self, why not?” So here:

#1– Favorite candy: Chocolate. Almost any old chocolate. Preferable chocolate-covered coffee beans, though.

#2– Favorite movie: Bean. Any of the Mr. Bean movies, really. Fewer problems with suspension of disbelief than with most Hollyweird crap.

#3– Favorite drink: a wheat beer I brew every now and then. If not that, then coffee, which, though second on my fav list, is essential to life.

#4– Favorite dessert: blueberries or blueberry ice cream. but plain blueberries, preferably frozen, are just fine by themselves.

#5– Favorite city: KCMO. Lotsa reasons.

#6– Favorite pastime: Reading. Heck, I can even do my fav passtime while doing my second-fav, listening to music, or combine them by reading (and playing/singing–if even just in my head) music. *heh*

#7– Favorite clothing: Jeans and a cotton henley, short or long sleeve, depending on weather. Yeh, I wear shoes, too. Whadda you think I am? *sheesh*

#8– Favorite animal: Horse. (My second gig in “hi skool” was exercising, feeding horses, cleaning up after ’em, etc. Even the worst-tempered ones were better “people” than 90% of humans, especially those who are less appealing than the south end of a north-bound horse who inhabit Washington D.C. and all it spawns.) Can’t have horses, though. Love dogs. Like cats. Rabbits are both cuddly and yummy. Fried, preferably. I probably ought to move them up on my list…

#9– Favorite flower: dandelion. Beautiful and edible–all the parts of the plant, except for the seeds (and they make a decent “down” substitute). What’s not to like?

#10 Favorite music: classical– mostly Classic and Romantic periods. Some 20th Cenury and Baroque. A little even older stuff. I could move on down the list, cos there are a lot more styles I love listening to/playing/singing, but tops: Beethoven. I can–and have–spent days listening to nothing but his stuff. (OK, I’ve done the same with Sibelius, Mahler and Brahms, but Beethoven tops the list).

Expiration Dates *heh*

Yeh, I really ought to check ’em. Bought some cream, but before I could use it, it’d soured.

Oh, well. Made butter. Yum. Better than lemonade from lemons.

I Just Loves Me Some Free Stuffs

(Yeh, well, you’ll have to just take the fractured English, cos I say so. So there. *heh*)

A couple of months ago, a very generous Lovely Daughter and Husband gave this to me:

OK, so it’s an eight-year-old semi-mini-system they had already scheduled to be donated somewhere. I’m not belittling their generosity, though. Quite the contrary. It’s still more than enough sound for the 18.5’X12′ room I put it in, and produces a little better sound than the 17-year-old Pioneer tuner and KLH speakers I had been using there. And it even plays DVDs very nicely. No remote (at the time), but there was a solution for that. A couple of weeks ago, Lovely Daughter even brought up the remote they’d found.

Bonus: while I’ve been getting some work done here, I’ve been playing this:

Also free, sent to me for listening/commenting on an Internet “radio” site six or seven years ago. The set I have isn’t exactly like the one linked. It has just disk one and disk two (both in the Samsung CD/DVD changer now) but also includes a booklet with the text of Bush’s September 20, 2001 address to Congress. While that’s nice to have on hand I would probably prefer to have disk 3, and will have to locate and purchase that. Amazon, I suppose.

See the list of pieces performed for the recordings below the break. Some aren’t actually American in origin (the “Colonel Bogey March” stands out there) but have been adopted into the American experience so thoroughly as to be “American” for the typically expansive values that characterize the melting pot America*. 🙂

Enjoying (and enjoying this break as well :-)) the music and the sound system. Thanks, generous folks, all!

Continue reading “I Just Loves Me Some Free Stuffs”

Great Scene

Just saw the end of an episode of a show that I sometimes watch with my Wonder Woman. It tends to give me a rash *heh* but it’s not as bad as some. The greatness of this scene was the fruity lawyer going around a room telling folks that if a case ever came to trial, no matter what, “I win.” *heh*

I kept expecting him to say, “Even if I have to hit [the other lawyer] with my purse, I win.”

Great scene, even if the best part was in my imagination. *heh*

Jimmy Hoffa & Obama Declare War on… America

That’s what it sounds like to me.

Gallup: TEA Party demographics represent mainstream America

Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. (with The Zero egging him on):

“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war.”

Yep. Declaring war on mainstream Americans sounds pretty much like declaring war on America to me. Not that it makes much difference, as The Zero and his partners in crime have been at war with America from the inception of this administration. After all, he has admitted–though he’d lie about having done so–that his own policies are against the interests of the American people, destructive of our economy and detrimental to the republic. Don’t believe me? Remember the number $4Trillion (and change) and think… eight years vs 2.5 years. Hmmm, what is he telling us?

Déjà Moo

/PSA

If you plan to inflict The Zero’s herky-jerky reading of The TOTUS’ latest utterings on Thursday, be prepared to be assaulted with just more of the same bullshit.

/30

Sometimes, I Just Have to Say, “No”

A while back, I decided to give a Windows “news and tips” site a whirl and submitted a secondary email address in order to receive notices of site updates. Since then, it’s yielded a few interesting tidbits, but sometimes, “a few interesting tidbits” just doesn’t cut it.

Recently, a portion of a topic line stood out, as at least 2/3 of the topic lines received in updates from the site have. Again, not in a positive light. The portion–this time–that made me wince: “The reason behind its name revealed !”

WTF is with the (usual and customary, from this source) space between the last word and the punctuation? It’s stupid. And, as I said, usual from this source. But that’s just the normal quality of punctuation usage from this source. What about word usage and grammar?

In the same email update: “Not why it a browser.”

?!? Yes, that’s the entire sentence fragment posing as a sentence. Where’s the verb?

And then, “…to make it running as fast and stable as new.” No, dumbasses, “to make it RUN as fast and stable as new” would at least be marginally acceptable, although “fast and stable” in this context is problematic.

“Since the last couple of days I’m seeing… ” Obviously English is a second language for the writer. Either that or the writer is a recent American college graduate.

I’ve only scratched the surface of the ear-grinding English constructions in just this one email. I can’t take it anymore. Unsubscribing, with prejudice. *heh*

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together…

I’ve been in an email/phone dialog with someone who wants to make over an older P-4 computer as a Media Center PC. He wants to use Plex running in a Linux environment.

Well, I may be close to doing just that for him. In fact, it may even be easier using the distro I would prefer to use than using the distro he has suggested and the procedure he found. Using Ubuntu, as the Pex site suggests, requires editing a system file. OK, that’s actually quite easy to do, and in fact can be done entirely from within the package manager itself, but still, using Linux Mint 11 (which is Ubuntu-based) is easier still, since the code line suggested by the Plex site fails and the package manager in Mint already has the source for Plex listed… Just one or two steps easier, not a biggie, really.

But… what I’d really like to do is take the Puppy Linux 5.2.8 distro I have installed to run off a USB flash drive and install Plex to it. Looks like it’ll have to be compiled from a Slackware versions, though, since Puppy just doesn’t seem to want to use the Ubuntu/Minty sources. *sigh* A couple more steps. I may just be too lazy for that. *heh* But… the OS and media server both running off a flash drive? That would be cool.