My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on 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 installed our original Amazon Echo Dot on the ceiling below the semi-hidden projector for the display. After a quick test, Alexa is doing her thing with the quirky personalize programmed voice routines.

Surprisingly the small Echo Dot on the lower basement ceiling does a pretty good job even though a full-sized Echo would have been better for the room . Perhaps it’s all the extra insulation in the walls?

Category: Alexa, Archive, Entertainment, Gadget, Photos, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: Alexa, ceiling, DOT, echo, home, home theater, projector, repairs, smart, speaker, tech friday, techfriday, television

Posted By RichC on 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 trip to St Joseph Peninsula State Park on the Florida panhandle. I was on the Audubon board back then and we as a family spent more time hiking and going on outings. In retrospect, those were great years and very good times together as a family. If you are not making time to do outdoor things as a family … don’t put it off … time flies by way too fast (and no … playing Angry Birds together doesn’t count).

While I’m at it, I’ll include this previously used animated gif from 1982/2013 (it flips) that I had forgotten about but spotted when doing some computer housekeeping.

Category: Archive, Memories, Nature, Personal, Photos, TBT, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: 1997, 4runner, ani gif, anigif, audubon, birds, brenda, family, florida, hawk, hiking, katelyn, migration, peninsula, richc, st. joseph, taylor, TBT, toyota, trip, trips

Posted By RichC on January 27, 2021

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Category: Archive, Memories, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, birthdays, ellerie, family, katelyn, Photos, ponytail, sisters

Posted By RichC on 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 companies are not doing well and going gangbusters due to less competition due to the pandemic, but overall, most Americans (and people around the world) are sitting tight, earning less and hoping for brighter days ahead. They aren’t necessarily being productive or adding to a countries GDP, it’s growth and wealth.

The good news is that it does look as if most people are ready to recover when the vaccines begin to slow the Coronavirus spread (no sign of that yet). The questionable part is just how much damage to society’s fabric did COVID19 do?

Part of progress is learning to do things more efficiently, and we have for the most part. Unfortunately just as with automation, computer efficiency and most any advancement in the past … fewer workers will be needed. Some questions are, will we need expensive commercial real estate, malls and stores, office towers or all the businesses that support them and the infrastructure? Is business travel really the most efficient way to be productive? If it becomes unnecessary, what happens to all those employees and the cities they once worked in?

(more…)

Category: Business, Financial, Politics, Productivity | No Comments »
Tags: barrons, bubbles, coronavirus, covid19, economy, finance, investing, jack hough, jeremy grantham, pandemic, recovery, stimulus, stock market, trading, valuation

Posted By RichC on January 25, 2021

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Category: Friends, Music, Video | No Comments »
Tags: band, chicago, lexington, mp3, Music, music monday, musicmonday, rob pottorf, saturday in the park, sidney ohio, youtube

Posted By RichC on 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

Category: Blogs, Faith, Politics | No Comments »
Tags: america, bible, chronicles, country, Faith, filler, heal, healing, peace, pray, prayer, united states, usa, verse

Posted By RichC on 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 1980s (and have the coffee cans to prove it) until Katelyn and Drew spoiled and hooked me on Dunkin’ Donuts Hazelnut coffee. I justified it by using a one-cup coffee maker instead of a pot (I even reused k-cups years ago).

It was pretty much the same for 99 cents a tube Pepsodent until it became more difficult to find in the stores we shopped. No big deal since other brands seemed to have equally good toothpaste UNTIL they started playing around with the tube size. So instead of spinning our wheels, Brenda has just been buying whatever toothpaste is on sale.

Then came the marketing brilliance of Proctor and Gamble with a great new toothpaste that they must have tested on people just like me? They are giving dentists these trial tubes KNOWING I’m going to love their Crest 3D White Brilliance toothpaste. Now I’m hooked on the good stuff and am trying to convince Brenda to buy it … even thought it cost more than the other tubes. I’ll start with adding it to our list: “Alexa, add Crest 3D White Toothpaste to our shared grocery list.”

Category: Alexa, Business, Financial, Human Interest, Marketing, Misc, Personal, Shopping | No Comments »
Tags: 3dwhite, brilliance, chock full o'nuts, coffee, crest, dentist pepsodent, dunkin' donuts, frugal, Marketing, toothpaste

Posted By RichC on 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 afterwards. I think it was the pre-inauguration liberal CNN commenter’s remark that made me ignore the day: “The light beams reaching out in Washington DC were like the extension of Joe Biden’s arms embracing the country.” Ugh!

Negativity on my part aside, I do wish our new president well in his term and his stated goal to unite the country. I do hope he can keep America strong and prosperous.

Senator Bernie Sanders “left out in the cold” on Inauguration day 2021

On the positive side, was any violence and there was a bit of levity with the sharing of Bernie Sanders memes after seeing him sitting by himself “out in the cold” (ironic?) I’m not sure how many memes there were, but his photo has been manipulated in practically every way imaginable. I thought the original was funny enough, but the creativity of people (with way too much time on their hands, as Brenda would say) was impressive.

The best one was the Cincinnati oriented Bengals meme (being a Bengals fan) … but it was outdone by a favorite TV BBT  comedy meme … although you might have to a Big Bang Theory fan to understand it.

Senator Sanders is at least making the most out of it … for charity no less (even socialists can do the right thing once in a while): Bernie Sanders puts mittens to work: Inauguration meme lands on sweatshirt for charity.

Category: Humor, News, Politics | No Comments »
Tags: america, bernie sander, big bang theory, creativity, culture, election, inauguration, internet, meme, Politics, united states, unity

Posted By RichC on 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 their motion detection partner – it really does help with false alarms.

The promotion was  for their new WyzeCam3 and offered a free new pre-order camera IF I were to sign up for their motion detection subscription. Since I needed to do something anyway, I subscribed thinking the new camera could be used at the condo.

I had all but forgotten about the camera promo since the motion detection really seemed to help reduce fall triggers … but the new camera arrived this week. A couple thought after reading about the improvements has me thinking about where to install it since this new small camera is also usable outside (my current cameras are mounted inside and are used looking through windows … although like the Wyze Pan Cam monitoring the poolhouse garage). Hm, I may have to test at the front door?

Category: Gadget, Shopping, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: Cam, camera, canary, promo, security, subscription, tech friday, techfriday, wyze, wyzecam3

Posted By RichC on 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 for Throwback Thursday #TBT this week I’m including one of Tootsie from the EchoShow that I sent to the kids earlier this month by text message …  and am adding one from our old 1999  photo album  when she was just a puppy.

She had a good life and is missed by all of us.

Category: Gadget, Personal, Photos, TBT, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: album, Alexa, amazon, echoshow, Photos, slideshow, TBT, throwback, thursday, tootsie