FOR THE HAMPSTERS AND GERBLES

 A picture entry today..  Featuring for the first time EVER a picture of me.. That's right, I added a picture of me to this run just to see if that would break the internet.. Check and see if you can spot it.. I'll hep you look for it.. Ready..

 Not this one, is a doggy..

 Not this one, is some pretty kitties..

 Not this one, is an airborne kitty, who knew they could fly??

 Sorry Charlie, a bummed cat, can't fly..

 Not this, is a rabbit in mass transit on a speedster turtle.. Who hasn't hitched a ride on a turtle before..

Here it is, the last picture of course.. I had this as my Myspace picture for a while..  The bloodshot eyes are the giveaway here..

BH

SOMETIMES YOU ARE THE YO-YO

 Yesterday's entry was started on Monday afternoon after everybody left and completed yesterday evening around supper time.. It's the first time I spent over  a day getting ideas together and some of them collided as they do even when I write as they hit me.. Sometimes I will write a line or two to start the idea and then go back and expand on the idea.. Sometimes I will write the whole of the idea down, then edit it by adding to or deleting from or reading and not thinking about it at all.. What I should do is write it, then save it, then come back a few hours later and then ....   maybe that is a good idea.. But most of the time (actually all the time) I write it check everything for near completeness then push publish.. Check the entry in the blog structure rather than preview which I could then make certain pictures bigger, rearrange the pictures.. put the videos in the right place, make sure the videos/pictures are the right ones.. Then when I am relatively sure everything is right .. then push publish...  Seems obvious to do that this way, but..  That might be too simple..

 Why Lucy likes this kind of music I figure her brothers like it so.. Lucy, a few years ago asked me what I was listening to and at the time I was listening to MSP  pretty heavy (Manic Street Preachers) and she said she hadn't ever heard of them.. They are a band from   ... well not America of course, sorry.. And at that time I think she was after someone to give her an idea of what was good music.. If I knew the direction she was going to dive into the deep end I would have said here load your i-pod with rock music, stay away from dead ideals.. Oh well, I don't get that "music" and I have tried and even have some songs by artists who do that type of music in ATB  and Kaskade.. Kaskade is from Salt Lake City Utah of all places.. ATB is from New York somewhere I think..  ATB has some downbeat or chill that I like.. Speaking of which I have always been into the opposite of the dub step or whatever that is called, I have always been into a chill type of music movement with groups like Tangerine Dream and Mars Lasar..  Just a cool music form to me.. Dubstep sounds too much like industrial machinery.. Drills and equipment like that and songs that last ten minutes as a short piece and it isn't unheard of for a song to just drag out for a half an hour.. Maybe they don't but it seems like they do.. Lucy brought her i-pod out to the deck Monday and was playing one of those songs and the i-pod speakers leave a lot to be desired like high fidelity .. These are so low-fi and that music is the next thing to barf for me.. Maybe in twenty years I will get into it, like a lot of the music I have gotten into recently.. I'm a good football field behind everyones tastes here in America..  The rest of the world is into rock and singer who sing and not scream.. If you can't sing it don't scream it.. Just don't.. 

Monday night I was down here and Skootr was rolling around in the dining room and so I thought I'd go out and sit on the deck for a bit and as I went out the door I had this feeling of out witting the cat, she couldn't have gotten up and run out the door.. But somehow she did, there she was at the edge of the deck and I said get in... and before I could start to say here she was off  the deck.. So I sat there for a few minutes then headed back in to watch the rest of whatever I was watching figuring she would hit the door like she does and I would get her in.. Meanwhile mom got ready for bed, latched the outer door and shut tight the inner door and so if Skoot went to "knock" on the door, it wasn't going to budge.. I went out and called for her until about eleven, but here she finally came.. dam nut case cat..

I was walking around Walmart yesterday in the electronics department just looking at the "toys" and came across some of these displayed on the shelf by the blue ray players (nearly impossible to find a dvd only player now) and they have a nice selection of web content players such as Roku and Netgear..  And I thought of this before but not too seriously.. My little brother switched exclusively to the Roku for about a year but this past fall (in time for football season) he started to get Directv again.  The promise that there would be more programming like what satellite tv delivers never happened or hadn't happened yet and still hasn't yet.. What might be attractive about getting it here now is one, we have wireless internet so having it anywhere in the house is logical now.. and two, I have looked at Donald's and there is a lot available to watch on Netflix alone.. They don't stream everything but they do have a lot and I have  lot of streaming type movies/tv shows on my queue and just have trouble watching them on the computer because there are so many other things to do.. I get shows and watch them on my dvd player and have a good selection to watch but to watch things I haven't seen would really be cool..   Anyway I am just in the thinking stages right now.. Just like with Webtv which I checked and looked at seriously getting and then eventually didn't, or dish network satellite tv which I did get.. The cd recorder to transfer records to disc I watched the price go from  a thousand dollars to under three hundred and then bought it..  So this might be a few months or more before we pull the trigger, or I might say no.. There are so many things to chose from.. All those toys in the big boy toy section of the store..

BH

REMEMBER TO TIP THE WAITER

Yesterday was a truly memorable Memorial day and not necessarily  for a good thing.. We go to the program at the cemetery every year and have since dad passed away and truth is I now wished we had gone before as well.. During the 21 gun salute one of the guys fell after the first shot.. I was video taping this part of the ceremony because I never did before.. When the guy fell I felt that feeling when you see something bad happen..  when it happened I thought ah crap and stopped filming shortly after and will delete that video.. He seemed to be fine but it brings things into perspective.. The reason I wanted this part was I wasn't sure how many more times we would get to see the old guard do this and after that happened I again thought that very thing.. After I got the cord wrapped up that Donald borrowed,  me and mom headed to the car and  as we were walking she told me she about had a heart attack when he fell.. And she was in tears as we reached the car.. An emotional wreck, she was hopping the day was going to go fine with no problems at all.. While Jordan and Adam and his kids were there, nobody mentioned them coming for lunch and I told her not to worry if they come by we have enough burgers and just not to worry we would make do.. Turns out they couldn't stop by, Jordan had to get to work that afternoon..

It was nice to talk to everyone.. Ian was his usual fix it person.. I asked about Tabitha, the missing soldier in the family..She seems to be doing better as she is at least out of the hospital although for how long... That is anyones guess..  Talked to Bob about all sorts of things but I for the life of me can never remember what I want to talk to him about when he is around, and that isn't just this time but literally every time he is around and this dates back to years.. And sometimes when I am lucky enough to remember it's like I blurt it out, so proud to finally remember some mundane shit.. But it seemed important at the time...

Every seven days and change the Dell datasafe reminder pops up to backup my data, and while annoying I think I would rather have that than to have to worry about when the computer was about to shit the bed..

A couple years ago I got this game pack that included two monopoly games, risk and my favorite scrabble.. And I played and do play it a lot.. Well I tried the upper levels and that included the genius level to see  how I might do and against that genius level I stayed close fore two or three turns.. Then the computer played a bingo or two or three.. A bingo is when you clear your seven letter (tile) tray and you earn a bonus fifty points for clearing the tray plus the points from that word which can be seven eight nine or more letters depending on how the words are linked together..   Last week mom told me she played an upper level and used the hint or best play button to see what word should be used and so I did that strategy playing the genius and won.. An empty victory it was but it was so cool to have three bingos in a game and score nearly five  hundred points, when scoring over three hundred is my regular best..

I was talking about the lawn yesterday and again today with mom and while it is patchy good (green) there are areas that just look horrible..  I take full responsibility for the way it looks because I kept saying "but it is March, it will rain in April..  It is April, it will rain sometime soon"  It is nearly June and we have gotten maybe a quarter of an inch of rain since early March.. We are in a drought and so I am relying completely on the sprinklers to water the lawn.. Never had to do this before and I still think the way I am watering is fine with the timer and everything but it makes me wonder.. And how much water is enough and do I keep watering the way I am and am I pouring water down the drain the way I am using it.. Just not sure of anything any more...

The pumpkins are up.. Three or four pumpkins are through the surface and really starting to grow quickly.. When Ian was down yesterday I was going to tell him one of these can be his, hopefully the largest one but just like with anything I'm sure he wouldn't understand that it will be October before they are done and for that matter they might or might not grow, be big or be totally crapped out like the last few years I tried to grow pumpkins. I got a bag of sunflower seeds today  a Russian variety that is supposed to be big.. Eight to twelve foot tall  flowers.. I guess we'll see what we get this time..

I tried the Aurora browser today for the first time in over a month.. It had a update.. A as in singular but since it updated every week I am figuring it updated just to the latest update..

On the subject of computer programs; Last week I tried to do a video clip of a movie I liked and post it to my Youtube site and the program I have been using was Picasa do do this with.. The first clip was just shy of a minute, the other was ten seconds and when I tried to get picasa to do what I had done so many times before, it wouldn't.. I think it had updated so I tried to get an earlier version.. Long story long it took several attempts to get the picasa program to work and when in the end it didn't work, I thought I might try some other program.. But what to try??  Should I go to c-net and browse the programs there or try something I never thought possible.. Try a program already on the computer.. I saw it.. Called   Windows Live Moviemaker.. Could this program actually work??  Long story (even longer) it did.. And best of all when it changed the file format it was to wmv and I tried to upload it to Youtube and it went so fast I thought I figured two things out at one time.. One find a program that can edit video, and two find a file format that can upload to youtube faster than anything I had done before.. I used to convert all my files to avi and never had trouble uploading to youtube but then recently that changed and I couldn't upload a minute video without clearing a fortnight (I always wanted to use that term) to upload it..

BH

FOR MEMORIAL DAY

The Star Spangled Banner

In 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the poem, Defense of Fort McHenry. The poem was later put to the tune of (John Stafford Smith's song) The Anacreontic Song, modified somewhat, and retitled The Star Spangled Banner. Congress proclaimed The Star Spangled Banner the U.S. National Anthem in 1931.

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their lov'd homes and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

I love that mountain with those four big heads
I love Velveeta slapped on Wonder Bread
I love a commie... if'n he's good and dead, yup
I love America

I love Old Glory and homemade pie
I think them Ruskies should be sterilized
I love my chicken Kentucky Fried...
Finger Lickin' Good!

Hey there, this is A.B. Cooper from
Cooper's Carnival of Clean and Classic Cars
It's our Fourth of July ... sale.
Here at Cooper's Carnival of Clean and Classic Cars
At the corner of Collins and Commerce
I've got lot full of the finest funny looking cars money can buy
At prices even you can afford
So come on down and say hello to me, and granny
And bring the kids to meet my snake
I say, "bye"
Granny says, "bye"
and the snake says, "sssssssssss"

I love General Patton in World War II
My Pocket Fisherman and my Crazy Glue
I love the Beav and Wally too, yeah
I love America

I love the bomb, hot dogs and mustard
I love my girl, but I sure don't trust her
I love what the Indians did to Custer
I love America

Here they come!
There they go!

I love my jeans and I love my hair
I love a real tight skirt and a real nice pair
And on the fourth of July, I love the rockets' red glare
I love America

I watch the A-Team every Tuesday night
I graduated, but I ain't to bright
I love Detroit 'cause I was born to fight
I love America

I love the Tigers but I hate the Mets
I ride my Hog but I race my Vette
I gotta job, but hell I'm still in debt
I love America

I love my bar and I love my truck
I'd do most anything to make a buck
I love a waitress who loves to... flirt!
They're the best kind
I love America
Turn me on
Well, I gotta go now
I love America
Bye Bye, I tell you what though, I really do love it
You ain't going to catch me at no mayday rally

BH