Month: December 2010

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I Hate to Say “I Told You So” But…

I did. A couple of years ago (and again, three years ago), I said the economy would be getting worse and that getting out of debt, curtailing unnecessary expenditures (especially credit card “purchases”), doing all essential maintenance on properties–and person–and other such sensible things made, urm, sense in light of what we were facing at the time.

Makes even more sense nowadays, what with unemployment still growing, the Fed deliberately increasing costs to citizens for ALL goods and services by continuing to devalue the dollar, and a debt load increase in the last year on every man, woman and child in these (dis)United States of $10,000 ladled on by a spendthrift Congress that’s wasted every (borrowed–stolen from future generations!) “stimulus” dollar it’s thrown down the toilet–in just the last year alone.

Hold on folks, because the ride’s just going to keep getting bumpier before things turn around (said hopefully).

Again: get out of debt, make sure your “stuff” is in good shape (so you don’t have to buy new “stuff” or fix a hole in your roof or whatever when things are even worse off), buy what you need and stockpile essentials–paying cash.

Heck, if worse comes to even worse, that (well-guarded) stockpile of toilet paper could be worth far more than its weight in gold… *heh*

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“I’ll Either Get Better or… “

Or I’ll not. Tired, a cold. I may live, but if not… It’s a win-win. *heh*

Worked on Son&Heir’s car Sunday afternoon, when it never broke freezing, then the next day, took a quick (~-500 mile round trip) jaunt to visit with my parents. Good visit. In their late eighties. They have a full life–filled with friends and lots of service activities centered around their church (and tripe to various doctors, of course). Mother’s a Reader (just try to keep her from the library! Try it… *heh*). Daddy’s still making music and “directing”–though it’s his Sunday School department he directs nowadays. Interesting people.

While my dad and I spent most of the time “visiting” around his computer, integrating more techie toys into his life, for the most part, my Wonder Woman and Mother spent just visiting or sharing some quiet time with their noses in their respective books.

Some good time spent at the breakfast and dinner table (and in the kitchen). Back home in America’s Third World County, now. We may not be able to share many more days like that, so it was good to share these. A nice Christmas-time interlude.

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Christmas Presence

Son&Heir gave me a great present last night. We sat together working on assembling his new computer. He researched and bought all the components (save for Win7 Ultimate, since I had a couple of spare copies to use around twc central–and before anyone goes off on me for providing the evil M$ OS, he’s a gamer with well-developed tastes in gaming, so Windows was just about it, apart from his XBoxes, Wii, and whatever else *heh*).

Lian Li case (watch me drool), really, really nice Core i7 processor, bangup nVidia video with scads of DDR5 memory, 2.5 TB of storage, bunches and bunches of DDR3 system memory, killer power supply, etc. A nice rig. Amusing to check Device Manager and see it reporting 8 processors running at ~3Ghz each. No, it’s not an “Octacore” *heh*. Of course that’s just four hyper-threaded cores looking like eight cores to Windows.

He’s quite a guy, and he really deserves this really, really nice box. After he racked out (his day began around 3:00 a.m., so he was pretty tuckered out by 8:30 or so), I installed Win7, performed all the updates, installed and configured the necessary security software, tweaked the system a bit and then hit the sack myself.

Fun working on it with him and drooling over parts (the case is just about perfect for a mid-tower case; just screams yummy goodness :-)), anticipating the pleasure he’ll have using it, and enjoying… his presence.

One of the nicest Christmas Eves in a few years.

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The Gift

[audio:Midnight_Clear_clip.mp3]



The Gift

Trees and lights and bells and carols;
Bright-wrapped packages, piled high;
Winter’s sharp blow joins the heralds:
“Christmas-time is nigh!”

Mailmen hurry; shoppers scurry;
Time is fleeing – Oh! So fast!
Parties gather, loud and merry,
Grander than in Christmas’ past.

Pause a moment to remember
That a Savior’s simple birth
Still stirs angel wings in susur’ –
“Peace to men; good will on earth!”

Now the Father’s hands that molded
The first Adam in the clay,
Gently ’round a manger folded,
Cradle a Baby in the hay.

So the Greatest Gift extended,
Gift of love and peace to all,
“God’s great love to man descended”
Calls us to a manger stall.

©1990 David Needham

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Candlelight

[audio:http://thirdworldcounty.us/audio/John_Rutter_Candlelight_Carol.mp3]

(Once again, semi-sincere *heh* apology for the rough embedding; you’ll need a media player plugin to view/listen)

Deleted the video I’d embedded and converted it to an mp3. Wait for it. There’s an almost 8-second lag before it starts that I didn’t edit out.

Slightly “less good” musically (the first performance is helped by having the composer conduct *heh* For one thing, Rutter just happened to get the tempos right ;-)), but an cleaner embedding of a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eME_gxZRDxo

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Angels

I like John Rutter’s music. There. I’ve admitted it. 😉 (Apologies for the sloppy embedding, but the YouTube uploader of the piece disabled embedding the YT video and I’m too lazy to put a lot of effort into embedding it slickly. The music’s the same, in any case.)

Oh, heck, here’s a version from Slovenia while I’m at it:

And another performance by a younger choir than either of the two above (and, really, better despite a few pitch problems–more forgivable in such a young group–and their director? For the cognoscenti, two words: Elizabeth Green *heh*):