Last Edited Blogs (3,373)

Merry Christmas! I hope yours has been great. Mine was excellent. Good food, good company and some great gifts.

My sister and her fiancée gave me new pots and pans, and my mother gave me World of Warcraft cook book. 216 pages of the best food from Azeroth, so I am excited to dive into that and cook some great stuff.

Speaking of cooking great stuff.. I have so many ideas with food, that I might need a full week to test all my ideas. One of them is to cook some bacon until it's 30 seconds from being burnt, and then set it to cool off. Then, I'll use my chopper to grind it into dust, and then mix it into some salt, so it'll become bacon salt. Or - maybe I'll just grind it onto fine bits, to sprinkle that on food!

I also want to make my own chilli oíl, but I am guessing it isn't that hard to make. Just take some olive oil and shove some chillis into it, and leave it to infuse for about a month or so. Maybe longer..

I also want to make my own jerky, but for that I need a dehydrator, which I don't have yet. Maybe that's my next purchase..

How would you sleep...how would you feel...how would you change your life....would you even change your life at all...

If, we discovered we are not at the top of the food chain? What if all this time we thought we had our government...our military....our police force around to protect us...when in reality, there is nothing they can do to protect you. How would that change your being?

It is said in the next few years, humankind can go one of two routes. One way is not so great for us...whereas the other way...we literally become woke. No...not like the woke we speak of today. I am speaking of a wokeness where if we ask who was responsible for J.F.K., that answer is freely provided. There is nothing hidden.

Like I mentioned, the first way is not so great...

But, the second way may not be so great either. It is said that ignorance is bliss....but with all the knowledge that could be provided to us, the reality of our lives may not be such an easy pill to swallow either.

Perhaps...we are not the top of the food chain.

Swatting as in being swatted is when someone calls the police falsely stating a crime was committed at the address of another person... in this case it's Georgia representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene. On Christmas day, with family attending her party, crisis hotline received several calls requesting emergency services giving out her address.

This is not the first time it's happened to Greene. On X / Twitter, she stated it was the 8th time!
So Merry Christmas to MTG as it made someone else merry too!

I buy Jeans size 36x30 and had that size for years. When my weight goes below 200 pounds, they get too loose and I keep pulling my pants up. I dislike belts and suspenders aren't in this time-zone. Some my my pants with the same size fit differently. Recently, I went through and pulled a few pairs marked the same, but way too tight!

I bought 2 pairs of 36x30 jeans last week and got around to trying them on last night... I could swim in them so they have to be returned and next time, I'll actually try them on in the store to confirm they fit correctly.

Last summer, I wanted to buy some shorts. Real shorts. I've expressed my dislike for the knee length cargo shorts, but sometimes that's all that's available and I go without. I blogged about some worn out white shorts that had holes in them, but that blog disappeared.

Walking by the women's wear, I found shorts that were the length of the tennis shorts I wore years ago. I pulled a size 18, held them to my waist and said, yeah, they should fit, but I was wrong. Too big. Next time back, I bought a size 14 and they were kinda loose. Okay, it's size 12 and that worked, so I went back to buy 2 more shorts in ladies size 12.

I've heard stories where garment manufacturers lie about women's sizes so when a woman who wore size 9 when she got married, is now a size 20, feels 'a whole lot better' about herself if the label is 14 and fits kinda loose. I get that picture.

So forget the number, if the clothes fit, wear 'em...

My studio / home office is in turmoil. For years, I've been working for companies as a salesman & designer on a commission or sub-contract basis. Sometimes, they provided a workspace, cubby or office of my own. When the workload increased, I stayed longer hours or took work home to complete. Remembering back more than 30 years ago, my design drawings were done at a drafting table in their facility. I had a portable drafting table at home maintained a fully functioning office, complete with phone lines, FAX, scanner & printer.

10-15 years ago, I abandoned the drafting table and started making drawings by computer. I subscribed to a service that allowed me to seamlessly remotely link my home & office computers. They claimed to have a secure connection and all seemed okay. With the approval of the company I'm working for now, the IT guy said there was a 'worm hole' security weakness to their network and redid the connection so all my files are supported by Google products that synchronize to all my devices. I no longer have to pay for the other service.

For the past few months, I've been working on a project that has lots of rooms. Main kitchen, catering kitchen, summer kitchen, 6 bathrooms, his & hers master baths, bar, 3 laundry rooms... it's a big freaking job and lots of drawings. Most of these dealings are digital, but my meeting notes are on printed copies, so I need lots of space to layout all the documents. I'm a paper guy and retain more information if the drawing is printed and not on a screen.

I used to have dual monitors before and downsized to a single 27" monitor for each system. Enough is enough. My eyes aren't getting any better. One monitor is 10 years old and the icons are starting to 'burn into' the screen. I have one 32" monitor for drawing and bought another that's new in the box waiting for me to get out of 'procrastination mode' and change that old monitor.

Year end now and I'm moving things around, archiving stuff and putting folders into plastic stackable bins for future reference. Okay, as long as I'm doing that, it's time to reconfigure the layout to get the added desk space.

Part of the turmoil is mixing and matching. The older monitors have VGA connections. Some have DVI, the newer have HDMI and the newest have Display Port. The VGA doesn't support ultra-high resolution, so I'm only using that on a computer that does email and web surfing. I bought some adapters that change the DVI and HDMI to work with Display Port so I can take advantage of high resolution with the larger monitors.

The showroom will be closed between Christmas and New Year, so I'm not planning to see too much activity next week. If I stay focused (no pun intended) I'll be able to organize 'my everything' that will allow me to put an end to the turmoil I've created.

AUTOTUNE is a digital audio processor pitch correction software that can transform a mediocre singers voice to perfection. What it does to vocals is what Photoshop does to images!
Available as computer download software or rack-mounted stand alone device, Autotune has been around for more that 20 years and has become a standard in the recording industry.
While it's intent was to correct off-key singing, with the thousands of settings, Autotune can be adjusted to give all kinds of coloration and effects to voices like pitch change and robotic-like sounds.
Let's say, you cannot hit the high notes... sing the song in a lower key and have Autotune change the pitch to whatever key you need.

The first time I heard Autotune in use was Cher's recording of Believe. It's the 'pitch-shift' effect she used with a hard setting to pull the notes to standard tuning. That gives it a grainy and very unique sound.

Never is a strong word. Often there's some bad mojo attached to saying never... when you do something and use the word never, the situation could change making you the fool.
Try to use it sparingly.

Probably the first example I recall, was in high school and my classmate Billy was turned around to me bragging how he never did homework. A few seconds after the words left his lips, the teacher said "Billy, I want you come come up to the blackboard and show us how you solved problem number 3 in last nights assignment."

I look at what happened in Ukraine, where most of the Ukraine men 18 years and older stayed and engaged in the fight with Russia whereas a significant number of Ukraine women hightailed it out of Ukraine to party elsewhere, and so I have to believe the same thing will happen when the sheet hits the fan globally.

Maybe I am wrong? Do feminist fight for equality or just advocate for what benefits them? For instance, have any Feminist lately fought for conscription equality?

ONE
He had a meeting with his friends from the sport club, an online meeting ofcourse. He told me that one of his friends noticed something and asked him.
His friend : Hey, what happened to your razor? Is it broken?
Him : Nope. There is this woman. Her name is Kal from Indonesia. I have grown my whiskers for her.

My silent response -->

~~

TWO
Once I asked him if there's any Muslim in his area. He said he wasn’t sure if there is.
Me : Let say I come to your city and I accompany you to a sport event where there are many friends of yours. What do you think will your friends say or do when seeing me, a Muslim woman wearing hijab, holding your hand?
Him : They will be nice to you because you are with me.

My silent response -->

~~

THREE
Sometimes when we video called, he let the door behind him open so I could see his son’s bedroom door. Once I saw his son entering his room.
Me : Is that your son?
Him : Yes, the youngest. Do you want to be introduced to him?
Me : Naah. I am not ready. Next time, ok
Him : Sure, whenever you're ready

My silent response -->

~~

FOUR
I told him about what a big tall western man did to me when we’re on the Train from Paris to The Netherlands.
Him : If I was with you that moment, do you want me to act accordingly?
Me : Naah, I can handle it. If he started being abusive, then it’s your turn.
Him : I have never been beaten but I am not afraid to
Me : Nooo… I don’t want that to happen

My silent response -->

And every day there is always something, even just a little thing, that makes my heart touched.
Isn’t he so very adorable or what?

Have a good weekend, everyone!