What goes around, comes around … and spins around

| January 31, 2021

This past Christmas, Megan ordered a fancier turntable for Taylor, which arrived this past week. He was excited set up his gift and shared the photos. It looks nice. It is hard to believe millennials have gravitated to vinyl record albums and turntables in this century, but like my friend Mark, my son Taylor enjoys […]

Woodworking ideas: Workshop dust collection improvements

| January 30, 2021

My basement woodworking shop is a dust-making mess in our house, but there isn’t much I can do about it now other than to improve how I collect and filter and keep dust from gravitating into the furnaces cold air returns and upstairs. In our previous house in Hudson Ohio, I was fortunate to have […]

Tech Friday: Our small Echo Dot on the Home Theater ceiling

| January 29, 2021

Now that the wiring in the basement is no longer laying on the floor in order to feed the kitchen television cable extender and ceiling repairs are finished up, I’ve been cleaning up and moving things back into the home theater and game room areas. With some fresh paint everything looks pretty good, so I […]

Archive: Professional Brenda and the Hawk Migration #TBT

| January 28, 2021

When searching for a photo of my 1996 Toyota 4Runner (never found one), I stumbled across a couple personal photos from 1997 and will archive them for today’s Throwback Thursday #TBT. One of “professional Brenda” dressed for the office in 1990’s style (ha!) and the other of our family on an October Hawk Migration birding […]

Do all grandparents love their grandchildren as much as I do?

| January 27, 2021

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Bubblicious, but I am not talking about bubble gum popping

| January 26, 2021

All I can think about are the stock market “bubbles” from the past. I’d love to believe the upward trend we’ve seen this past years is genuine and built on an appropriate foundation, but suspect as most know, it is being built on “hope” and “stimulus dollars.” Now that is not to say that certain […]

Music Monday: Lexington Lab Band does 1971 Chicago song

| January 25, 2021

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A Sunday filler post for those willing to pray for our country

| January 24, 2021

"if my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." — 2 Chronicles 7:14

These days, I have been upscaling my coffee and my toothpaste

| January 23, 2021

Once upon a time, I was … or at least tried … to be frugal in most things. I’ve always shied away from buying higher priced brand names, when there were less expensive option. Coffee is a prime example … since I was perfectly happy with the Chock full o’Nuts brand of canned coffee since […]

The best part about Inauguration 2021: Memes of Bernie Sanders

| January 22, 2021

Not being an advocate for those advocating bigger government, higher taxes, progressive policies … or most Democrats in general, I was not looking forward to the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States this past week. In fact, I didn’t watch any live coverage and relied on the  news clips […]

Tech Friday: Look what arrived this week – the Wyze Cam 3

| January 22, 2021

It was back in November when everyone was Black Friday shopping for gifts or ording Cyber Monday items … that is when the inexpensive security camera company Wyze, sent me an email about their new camera and motion detection subscription. At the time I was struggling with way too many notifications after the company lost […]

We love having our photo albums on the Echo Show #TBT

| January 21, 2021

Both Brenda and I enjoy the hundreds (if not thousands?) of photos from our albums and digital archives that I’ve uploaded to the the photo section of the Amazon Prime storage cloud. We likely enjoy it more since it sits on our kitchen countertop (great for Alexa Echo messages to Annalyn and Ellerie too). So […]

Question: Can I get the COVID-19 vaccine in Ohio yet?

| January 20, 2021

While talking with a customer on the phone today and talking about when I’ll be traveling to NE Ohio again, they asked me when they could get the Covid-19 vaccine? See Covid-19 Vaccination Program – LINK. So I figured it would be appropriate to include a screenshot from an Ohio-based health care provider in our […]

Woodworking: Collecting workbench hold-down ideas

| January 20, 2021

It is common when woodworking on a bench to use some kind of vise or clamp to hold down a work piece. For longer boards I’ve always used either a couple of clamps on each end or my home-built vise and square hardwood bench dogs. (below) BUT … I’ve envied woodworkers who have 3/4” holes […]

The US trend is politically left as opposing voices are squelched

| January 19, 2021

It’s not “breaking news” that we live in a changing United States of America or that propaganda and control over speech is being used to steer large swaths of the population towards leftist ideology … but what is eye-opening is just how coordinated the powers that be are in opposing the “rights” protected by our […]

Music Monday: Early Pure Prairie League and Vince Gill

| January 18, 2021

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Adding and storing cordless power tools and lithium batteries

| January 17, 2021

In keeping up with lithium battery powered tools, those of us who have married into a brand have our reasons (battery warranty in my case).In reading most of the comparison literature and write-up websites, Price and warranty aside, I would probably choose Milwaukee (and have for a couple 110 volt wired tools) as a rechargeable […]

The wire from the TV signal box is now in the basement ceiling

| January 16, 2021

My wife is great … and her decorating and building taste as to what “looks” nice grows on a person after nearly 40 years of marriage … but I still grumble about some of the decision she makes. One of them was wanting a drywall ceiling rather than something removable when we finished the basement. […]

Tech Friday: Increased memory cheat on a smallish web server

| January 15, 2021

Years ago when RAM was expensive, it was common to set up a SWAP space file for additional memory on computers and servers with plenty of fast hard drive space … especially when speed was not as important as preventing crashes. As applications get a little more demanding and server traffic increases, memory use steadily […]

A bit disappointed in the 2021 LSSU’s Banished Words List

| January 14, 2021

One of my favorite January traditions is looking at the Lake Superior State University’s Banished Words listing that get posted on December 31. I can’t believe LSSU has been doing it since 1976 and it is fun to look at their archives! For the year ending 2020 (or 2021’s list), LSSU selected COVID-19 as the #1 […]

A Toyota 4Runner window sticker and missing a photo #TBT

| January 14, 2021

While shuffling through a bunch of old scans and photos and uploading stuff to my Miami University .EDU Google Drive account for free cloud storage after downgrading my subscription to OneDrive (they refused to renew the 1TB of space at my previous 4-years of discounted service), I ran across the window sticker from my black […]

Archive: On January 6, 2021, my nephew Ben, Emily, Liev and Ellis welcomed beautiful baby Lyra Eileen Skinner into the world

| January 13, 2021

We don’t see my nephew and his family nearly enough, but a week ago, my nephew Ben, his wife Emily, and their two boys, Liev and Ellis welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world. The boys baby sister, and Ben and Emily’s first daughter, Lyra Eileen Skinner was born in the morning, weighing a […]

Stealing cookies, punishment, deterrents and election laws

| January 12, 2021

The Storming United States Capitol 1/6/2021 and White House plus multiple cities protests 2020 In recent years, NPR has not been my source for balanced reporting and commentary, but I still occasionally pick up a morsel or two that resonates. This time it was shared by a politically liberal/progressive friend on her daily Life Logs […]

New for me on Music Monday: Call It Dreaming by Iron & Wine

| January 11, 2021

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An interesting #book: EPIC – An Around-The-World Journey Through Christian History by Tim Challies

| January 10, 2021

Thanks to my daughter Katelyn and her family, I’m in the process of reading the Tim Challies book, “EPIC – An Around-The-World Journey Through Christian History.” It is the new book I mentioned in my 2020 Christmas wrap-up post … and it has been challenging to put down. BUT … I’m sort of using it […]

Bold and accomplished leaders often lack diplomatic tact

| January 9, 2021

As a “very” amateur military history buff who is currently reading the book “I Marched With Patton,” I came away from Frank Sisson’s memoir in thinking about other leaders who earned the respect of their men, but offended others and were seen as abrasive. Accomplishing a goal and “winning” was for the most part their […]

Tech Friday: New audio player for blog with CSS tweaks

| January 8, 2021

A simple blog upgrade project that I’ve been contemplating for a while now was one of my 2021 New Year’s resolutions … so I’m worked on it this past week’s Music Monday post. I’m not sure how long the new button and player will remain unchanged since I seem to keep testing and tweaking it;  […]

The 2020 Election, the Georgia Runoff and changing America

| January 7, 2021

For red, white and blue flag waving, National Anthem honoring, military respecting patriots … who believed in the traditional values that founded this country … January 6, 2021 was a tough day. The election in Georgia for control of the U.S. Senate, the last line of defense for Republicans, went to the two Democrats Raphael […]

Sad, but still enjoying the final season of Last Man Standing

| January 6, 2021

Now that the final season of Last Man Standing has started (Jan 3, 2021), Brenda and I are finally catching up on the previous season that I recorded on the DVR. We had forgotten just how much we enjoyed this sitcom. It is hard to remember the last time both of us laughed at the […]

The vote in Georgia could be the turning point for America

| January 5, 2021

I’ve watched the political divide and ideology between the right and left grow wider during the past decade … and probably longer, but the voices and actions haven’t seemed this divided since the 1960s. The debate is no longer on a hot-topic or two … or between the traditional bigger government. liberal Democrats and smaller […]

Music Monday: Like Kenny Chesney, I have a yearning to be free

| January 4, 2021

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Filler #video: We don’t have groomed hedges, but ..

| January 3, 2021

Looking at the tool for tools sake, but also the technique is nice!

A cigar box for sewing clips and NE Ohio drugstore memories

| January 2, 2021

Adam Savage, from Mythbusters claim-to-fame, has been regularly posting a few of his shop ideas online. A few months ago he triggered me into improving my portable Sailrite Sewing machine set-up (well my wife’s sewing machine that I use .. cough, cough). Anyway, a few weeks after he built his table for his impressive Sailrite […]

Tech Friday: A “Groovy Gorilla” Linux 20.10 server update

| January 1, 2021

After the previous challenging server update from years on Ubuntu Linux 12, 14 and 16 to a questionable 18 upgrade … I’ve been hesitant to upgrade the server to  “Focal Fossa” 20.04 in the spring and summer … so I didn’t. But now that we are at the end of the year (actually by the […]

Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee

  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
My Desultory Blog