My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on May 8, 2024

Late spring yard work and continued Kubota diagnosis and repairs continued over the weekend, but on the 7th, another year for me is in the books; can’t say I’m feeling all that different?

But THANK YOU to my family and friends for wishing me a Happy Birthday … and some doing the traditional Howard family singing. Someone asked how I celebrated … I replied, “with a dentist appointment” (although I did have some strawberries with whip cream for dinner’s dessert to made up for it).
 

No sense in wasting a post on me, so will archive a few photos from the weekend: Taylor was in a wedding for his friend Will (and Ali) and forwarded a couple nice photos. Very nice. 

Katelyn sent a cute video of Annalyn reading her French to us (she is a learning machine) and a great photo of Ellerie working on her car (something tells me we have a hands-on kiddo here — and the “tool stool” put to good use).

Category: Archive, Audio, Friends, Holiday, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: dentist, family, happy birthday, kubota, pond, repair, richc, singing, yardwork

Posted By RichC on May 7, 2024

The sunsets across rural Ohio never really get old. I’ve driven home to Cincinnati this time of evening more times than I care to remember while coming home from NE Ohio … but those days are now behind me. This time it was returning from a spring vacation in April and I realized that there was a photo and personal “that’s my husband/dad” kind of joke that might be worth archiving. 

It seems that when Brenda and I were pretty much alone on our beach walk, a young man and his girl ahead of us were planning something special. As we walked closer, we saw the guy bend on one knee and propose. The girl  “accepted” with a leap and a hug (thankfully).

I could not help myself but to “sneak” a photo and say “CONGRATULATIONS” as we walked by — yes, received a polite “thank you” from the couple — but a sneer from my wife. 

On another subject, part of our time was spent chatting back and forth with Brenda’s sisters and their husbands about planning a trip to Utah together. It has become almost humorous as to the number of times they have had me “noodle” (Gary’s term) the airfares and times so we could coordinate our flights, etc. 

We still haven’t come to a final conclusion as to what will work, but Gary and Ann finally booked their trip from Atlanta and it is now our turn to fit travel to their schedule. Just FYI, I’ve done everything but buy the tickets for the rest of us, but am trying to be patient enough to have them all agree (I should probably just book Brenda and my flight and be done with it … but we do still have time). 

Category: Advice, Archive, Aviation, Misc, Personal, Photos, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: airlines, airtravel, delray beach, florida, proposal, sunset, tickets, vacation

Posted By RichC on May 6, 2024

If you’ve followed Music Monday entries in the past, you might have noticed a post or two have been generated by Fox Business segment breaks. On Friday, Stu Varney’s producers slipped in “The Saga Begins” a parody song by Weird Al Yankovic from 1999. I thought to myself, the short 15 second audio-only segment does not do the song .. or Don McLean and “American Pie” … justice (see 2017 post).  

So I looked up the video on YouTube and decided to send a comment on X.com to Varney & Co and decided it was blogworthy even though May the 4th was Saturday (Star Wars Day)! 

Category: Entertainment, Humor, Music, Social Media, Video | No Comments »
Tags: al yankovic, american pie, don mclean, foxbusiness, music monday, music video, musicmonday, Star Wars, the saga begins, varneyco

Posted By RichC on May 5, 2024

With the lawn growing like crazy, this is definitely not the time for a mower to need service. The local Kubota dealer is backed up 2 weeks for service and I’m struggling to diagnose the exact problem. So far I’ve only taken things apart, broken a “fuel return pipe” and ordered parts. 

Nothing like breaking a an “overflow return pipe” on my Kubota #diesel to mess up my Saturday mower repair plan. 😡 pic.twitter.com/5EjEDplrgJ

— Rich Corbett 🇺🇸 (@RichC) May 4, 2024

Category: Diesel, Photos, Repairs, Shopping, Social Media | No Comments »
Tags: diesel, engine, injectors, kubota, mower, twitter, x.com

Posted By RichC on May 4, 2024

Juliëtte Sterkens gave an excellent TedTalk on “What you don’t know about hearing aids” — check it out if you or you know someone struggling with hearing loss. 

For most people it’s not a matter of if, but when, they will lose some sense of hearing. Still, we don’t give hearing loss or hearing aids much thought until it happens to us–or someone we know. 

Only then do we learn that hearing aids are incapable of restoring hearing to normal, especially in acoustically challenging situations. The good news is that modern technology continues to bring us new, sometimes hidden, and often unknown features that can help those with hearing loss overcome more of their hearing challenges.

(more…)

Category: Medical, Video | No Comments »
Tags: hearing, hearing aids, hearing loops, Juliëtte Sterkens, tedtalks, telecoils, youtube

Posted By RichC on May 3, 2024

A bigger than usual update this month for my Linux based servers and as it the norm, I spent a few minutes cleaning up storage and deleting unwanted bulked up logs (usual for me). Hopefully all will continue to run normally and that security will be improved.

Personally I’ve notice a speed improvement (???), but I have also noticed more invasiveness of Google Ads … particularly when not using blockers, etc. It may be time to re-evaluate the limited monetary advantage of having ads … although I do learn from including them on my personal blog.

Category: Blogs, Computer, Software, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: backup, linux, maintenance, server, tech friday, techfriday

Posted By RichC on May 2, 2024

Every once in a while there is a doppelgänger photo, person, sculpture or something that reminds me of someone else (software isn’t always accurate). 😉 

Also a few years back, there was a person who reminded me of my brother Ron, so I posted about it. Back October 2011 at my nephew’s wedding, there was a portrait on the wall that looked a bit like my son Taylor at the time … so took a photo (photo right). 

BUT the other day on social media there were a few more uncanny photos that I thought might be worth including on the subject (click each for larger). Impressive. 

Category: Human Interest, Photos, Social Media, TBT, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: doppelgänger, family, look-alike, photo, sculpture

Posted By RichC on May 1, 2024

Both my wife and I drink too many carbonated beverages. For me it is usually Diet Mountain Dew and for Brenda it has always been Diet Pepsi. I scaled bad several times in my life, but ended up right back in the habit of 3+ cans everyday. Brenda seems to be able to turn it off when needed (pregnancies and medical procedures), but hasn’t really considered it a bad or overly harmful habit — although it has most recently become a financial cost (inflation). FYI, she drinks more than 3 per day! 

Over the years, we’ve read article after article on all the “bads” associated with carbonated soft drinks, but have started to send a few articles back and forth to each other in hoping to reduce the number of cans per day we consume. Here’s one Harvard Health article of interest:

Zero weight loss from zero calorie drinks? Say it ain’t so

… If you’re drinking two 12-ounce cans of regular Coke each day, you could eliminate 280 “empty” (non-nutritive) calories by switching to a zero-calorie alternative. Over a month, that’s 8,400 fewer calories, enough to lose almost two and a half pounds. So, what’s the catch?

One worry is that artificially sweetened diet sodas may create a craving for sweet, high-calorie foods. So, even as calorie counts drops from zero-calorie sodas, consumption of other foods and drinks might add back even more. In rodent studies, at least one artificial sweetener (aspartame) has been found to damage a part of the brain that tells the animal when to stop eating.

(more…)

Category: Blogs, Financial, Health, Human Interest, Misc, Personal | No Comments »
Tags: beverage, brenda, carbonated, diet mountain dew, diet pepsi, harvard, Health, pop, refreshments, richc, soda

Posted By RichC on April 30, 2024

While uploading a late April 2024 peaceful looking Delray Beach scene from my “aging” iPhone 7 Plus, the distorted panorama photo has me wondering just when it will be time to upgrade? Since my 7 year old smartphone will no longer update a few of the apps due to an old iOS … I do realize that Apple will soon force me to do something (even with the replaced battery last year).

Back to the above pano photo:
Brenda and I had a short but very relaxing trip to Florida to both enjoy the beach and closed the condo for hurricane season. I was able to semi-work half days, took an online option writing course and even sold an ornate 22K gold necklace and earrings I gave to Brenda in the 1990s. She doesn’t wear it so due to gold is selling at near $2400 an ounce, we decided it was time to say goodbye.

Also … I’ll add an interesting Florida alligator photo … not mine or near our condo  … but still eyeopening. 

Category: Apple, Cellphone, Financial, Nature, Personal, Photography, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: alligator, apple, beach, condo1718, delray beach, florida, gold, iphone, jewelry, pano, panoramic

Posted By RichC on April 29, 2024

Earlier this year, someone on my X.com feed included a Fleetwood Mac video from 1976. I saved it remembering how nearly all of us in Founders Hall at ONU who were listening to albums on our turntables, reel to reels, 8-tracks or cassette decks enjoyed their music.

One of the favorite songs … of many … was “Rhiannon.” So for today’s Music Monday, here it is from the album and the video mentioned above.
 

Category: Music, Video | No Comments »
Tags: fleetwood mac, founders hall, mp4, music monday, musicmonday, onu, rhiannon