My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on January 5, 2023

A little bit of recipe reminiscing for Throwback Thursday #TBT this week. Over New Year’s Day, I enjoyed a “Bean Soup” recipe conversation with my daughter Katelyn. We discussed using the ham bone and pieces of ham from our Christmas dinner. I opted for a delicious Ham and Potato soup and froze a couple smaller containers for later. Shockingly even Brenda liked it!

Katelyn commented over Christmas that she would find my mom’s (her Grandma C’s) recipe for the bean soup and sent a flurry of photos with her new Pixel 7 phone, with it’s impressive camera. She also stumbled on a plastic bag of her Great Grandmother Bluhm’s recipes and notes and I enjoyed seeing the “From the Desk of Dick Bluhm” and my grandmother’s handwriting – a disappearing skill and dying art. It was fun to remember them and have fond memories triggered.

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Category: Archive, Food, Friends, Personal, Photos, Recipe, TBT | No Comments »
Tags: bean soup, bluhm, christmas, grandmother, ham and potato, handley, katelyn, momc, new years day, recipes, TBT

Posted By RichC on January 4, 2023

It has been about a month-and-a-half of steady construction on Katelyn and Drew’s #homebuilding project (the hashtag is how I’ve tagged their home construction on MDB).

Since the Oostras were together on January 1st, they enjoyed a drive out to their Whitehouse, Ohio property as a family to check on the progress. It was shocking that there were roofers working on New Year’s Day (see roof in photo). Glad to see there are some go-getters still willing to work (the question is, are they all legal Americans???)

Of course it wasn’t all just about their construction project as they were together for the Oostra family Christmas and the cute “heavy sprinkling” cookie maker was busy baking too (twice this year there have been some “well” decorated cookies!)

Category: Archive, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: construction, family, homebuilding, new years day, ohio, oostra, roofers, whitehouse

Posted By RichC on January 3, 2023

The Lake Superior State University list of banished words from 2022 for 2023 is out! It has been fun to regularly include their words and a link on MyDesultoryBlog … it has become a January tradition! Check out their full archive by year from when it started in 1976.  

This year, nominations came from most major U.S. cities and many U.S. states, plus Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Portugal, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, India, China, Namibia, South Africa, Nigeria, American Samoa, Malaysia, the British Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and throughout Canada.

Here are the list of the banished words and terms for 2023 and the reasons for their banishment:

1. GOAT

The acronym for Greatest of All Time gets the goat of petitioners and judges for overuse, misuse, and uselessness. “Applied to everyone and everything from athletes to chicken wings,” an objector declared. “How can anyone or anything be the GOAT, anyway?” Records fall; time continues. Some sprinkle GOAT like table salt on “anyone who’s really good.” Another wordsmith: ironically, “goat” once suggested something unsuccessful; now, GOAT is an indiscriminate flaunt.

2. Inflection point

Mathematical term that entered everyday parlance and lost its original meaning. This year’s version of “pivot,” banished in 2021. “Chronic throat-clearing from historians, journalists, scientists, or politicians. Its ubiquity has driven me to an inflection point of throwing soft objects about whenever I hear it,” a quipster recounted. “Inflection point has reached its saturation point and point of departure,” proclaimed another. “Pretentious way to say turning point.” Overuse and misuse.

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Category: Blogs, Misc, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: annual, banished, lssu, words

Posted By RichC on January 2, 2023

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Category: Memories, Music, Travel, Video | No Comments »
Tags: dan fogelberg, florida, memories, mp3, mp4, music monday, same old lang syne, winter

Posted By RichC on January 1, 2023

I would like to wish everyone visiting MyDesultoryBlog.com a Happy and Healthy New Year … and after seeing this “black ice” social media shared video from last months deadly winter storm … safe traveling in 2023. Whew … very frightening.
 

Category: Holiday, Social Media, Video, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: black ice, crash, driving, mp4, social media, video, weather

Posted By RichC on December 31, 2022

If you were filling your tank, paying to keep the lights on or buying groceries (or shopping for nearly everything) … 2022 has been a struggle. If you were saving for college or retirement, it was also very painful. Will 2023 be a continuation or a painful recession … or is there a chance inflation retreats and the stock market recovers?

With prices rising at the fastest pace in 40 years, the Federal Reserve and other central banks aggressively tightened monetary policy. The result was a painful series of interest-rate hikes that hammered stock valuations and raised fears of recession. That, in turn, fueled a selloff that claimed the technology sector darlings of the past decade as its greatest casualty.

The Dow has fallen less than 9% this year, protected by resilient value stocks in the index. But the S&P 500 has shed nearly 20% and the Nasdaq is down 33%. All three indexes fell into a bear market, although the Dow finished the year in bull territory.

It was the worst year for the stock market since 2008, with volatility to match: The S&P 500 saw 46 daily moves of 2% or more in either direction, the most since the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Full story on Barronsonline

Category: Financial, News | No Comments »
Tags: barrons, economy, inflation, investing, pain, retirement, saving

Posted By RichC on December 30, 2022

Prior to 2022, I managed phone numbers and contacts on my iPhone poorly – perhaps “the wrong way.” Every year I created a new A/SPAM list of callers and emailers and self-managed these lists. Of course this didn’t stop callers or text messages from new unknown phone numbers. So I tried a couple of different blocking apps for the iPhone with questionable results. Eventually I did settle on using Truecaller … BUT it wasn’t and isn’t foolproof … nor did it really do the job all that well … especially when it came to managing all those new and old messages.

This past year I finally discovered a simpler and better way to manage as well as clean my contacts and pile of texts that were unwanted and part of the SPAM test message problem … and you might want to make it part of your 2023 New Year’s resolution? Thankfully it is pretty simple and included in the iPhone’s Message app settings – yet it isn’t often known by Apple iOS users.

1. Go to Settings, then Message, then Unknown and Spam
2. Toggle on “Unknown Senders”
3. In my case, check the Truecaller app (not a necessary app or step)
4. Disable notifications from unknown
5. Go back to Messages app and touch “Filters” (arrow above)
6. To clean up,then  select “Unknown Senders” (Junk, Promo, etc) and touch 3-dot menu/Select Message, then “All” and “Delete”
7. From this point forward, use only view Known Senders and then occasionally toggle to Unknown for for the 2-factor codes, etc AND to clean up your unwanted text messages in bulk

Category: Apple, Cellphone, How-To, Productivity, Tablet, Technology, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: imessage, ios, iphone, messaging, tech friday, techfriday, text messages, tidbit, tip

Posted By RichC on December 29, 2022

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Category: Archive, Holiday, Personal, Photos, Video | No Comments »
Tags: 2022, annalyn, archive, brenda, christmas, corbett, dinner, drew, ellerie, family, katelyn, megan, mp4, oostra, presents, richc, taylor, time-lapse

Posted By RichC on December 28, 2022

Here’s a tool tip that isn’t widely known:

If you need a little more screwdriver leverage  … or your hands are slippery … check to see if a hex socket or wrench will fit on the handle of your screwdriver to give you a little additional torque (a 1” socket works for my standard Craftsman screwdriver). Just be sure you have enough down-pressure on the screwdrivers as with all the addition torque it is easy to strip out the fastener heads … be they straight blade or Philips heads.

In the past, I often would use an adjustable wrench to hold the straight blade (photo left) in order to bust loose a stubborn fastener, but I have also bent the tip of a screwdriver with all the additional torque. Also, in a pinch, you can use a set of channel lock pliers on the shaft or handles (use care) … but they can easily damage the plastic of your better tools … so beware when using any kind of plyers.

Category: Photos, Tidbits, Tools | No Comments »
Tags: phillips, plyers, screwdriver, socket, straight blade, tips, tool tip, wrench

Posted By RichC on December 27, 2022

How many of us who have been trading stocks and investing for decades have ignored the wise advice about buying a stock as it drops? Chart watchers, and maybe investors who have favorite companies, often listen to the conflicting thought from brokers, financial advisors and TV talking heads. We ignore the lessons from our past and choose instead to follow favored corporate management or entrepreneurs and make the mistake of “trying to catch a falling knife” … or buying a stock as it drops.

Unfortunately I did the same last week, even knowing that year end tax loss selling was probably going to make things worse and ignoring the sage. I instead opted to use my Twitter $TWTR profit from Elon Musk’s crazy social media company buy and reinvested it in another Elon Musk company: Tesla $TSLA. Ugh, now I’m paying for not heeding the “falling knife” advice.

Will I now have to wait for Apple or Google to want a “real” car company?

Category: Automotive, Financial, Idioms, Innovation | No Comments »
Tags: $TSLA, $TWTR, apple, elon musk, google, investing, stock, tech industry, tesla, trading, twitter