My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on March 5, 2018

After President Trump’s bombshell about placing tariffs on US imported steel and aluminum last week (although he did suggest it during his campaign for president), comments made later made it sound like cooler heads may prevail — that … and the fact that many of President Trump’s advisors remained quiet or gingerly disagree. Speaker Paul Ryan step out on a limb as well and has concern that tariffs and a potential trade war would hurt more that it would help.

I’m sure all free and open trade thinkers understand the US currently has unbalance and harmful trade, but know adding taxes is not something Republicans are comfortable endorsing.  Most watchers now believe that such stiff tariffs and an overall trade war may be overblown and that negotiations are taking place to avoid something that could have negative economic consequences. This help the markets swing from a 100 point drop at the opening  bell, to a nice across the board gain by 4PM.

After digesting, investors bought back US stocks and “seemed” to believe the US economy (and world economy) should still be in “grow-mode.” Today the DJIA closed up 337 points or 1.37% as other US indices closed up a full 1% and more as well – WSJ Link. Who knows what will trigger the next bounce up or down? Volatility and nervousness seems to be here to stay for a while.

Category: Financial, News | No Comments »
Tags: djia, economics, indices, investing, nasdaq, stocks, trading, wall street

Posted By RichC on March 5, 2018

https://youtu.be/Rlu-a1lgeTo

William Franklin Graham Jr. (November 7, 1918 – February 21, 2018)

Adding a story that is fitting after reflecting on Billy Graham. I read it during my brief morning (usually evening) devotional and had me smiling as I remembered pre-NIV King James Bible reading as a teenager.

This morning, I want to tell you a story of God’s grace. It’s an amazing and true story of how God has used imperfect people, imperfect processes, and imperfect institutions to do something extraordinary. The story begins with one faithful Christian man named Howard Long. Howard Long was not a scholar. Howard Long was not a theologian. Howard Long was not an ordained minister. Howard was simply a Christian businessman who worked for General Electric and who attended a CRC church in Seattle, Washington. Howard’s job required him to travel around the country, and because he took the Great Commission seriously, whenever he did travel, he made it a point to talk to people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When he would do that, he would read from the bible, the King James Version of the bible; but Howard was becoming increasingly frustrated in his evangelistic efforts because the words of the King James Version were becoming more and more incomprehensible to the people he was sharing them with.
(more…)

Category: Faith, Obituary, Video | No Comments »
Tags: billy graham, christianity, death, evangelism, salvation, youtube

Posted By RichC on March 4, 2018

This content is restricted.

Category: Archive, Misc, Personal, Photography, Tidbits, Video, Woodworking | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, birthday, brenda, drew, easel, family, ikea, katelyn, magnetic, present, richc

Posted By RichC on March 3, 2018

The new kitchen décor favored by Brenda is growing on me. Initially I fought the oversized glass crystal cabinet knobs (more expensive) and three rather than two crystal oriented pendant lights (I had already wired for two and had to add a third – $$$), as well as the excessive number of cut glass drinking glasses of all sizes … but they are ALL growing on me (I still can’t shake the “cheaper is more attractive” decision-making process). 😉

The pendant lights were particularly beautiful at about 6-6:30 in the evening the other day when the low southern sun came in the windows and reflected colorful light all over the new kitchen cabinets.  Even the cabinet knobs sparkled and I have even found myself gravitating to the glasses even to drink ice water with supper … even when eating alone! Thank you Brenda for your great taste … I say that … knowing … she’ll never read this. 🙂

Category: Archive, Art, Misc, Personal, Photography, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: brenda, crystal, decorating, glassware, kitchen, photography, reflection, sun

Posted By RichC on March 2, 2018

This content is restricted.

Category: Alexa, Audio, Cloud, Productivity, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: Alexa, amazon, annalyn, automation, echo, gadget, gadgets, gif, home, mp3, tech friday, techfriday, voice

Posted By RichC on March 1, 2018

I’m chuckling at the “famous portrait” subject line, but then again, how many people actually have a portrait of themselves painted by an artist? (might as well make this a ThrowBack Thursday #TBT post)

My grandmother, Ruth Walker Bluhm, was an artist and painted a portrait of her first grandson in the 1960s. She was in my estimation very talented and I’m pleased to have several of her oil painting displayed in our house. My wife Brenda enjoys them too and we now have a pretty nice collection of art, several which our hers. I’ve mentioned a couple of them previously (1, 2, 3), but this one is the most personal and likely only appreciated by a couple people.

Our granddaughter Annalyn will be ONE year old in March and my daughter Katelyn asked each of us to bring a photo “as close to 1 year old” as we could. The joke bantered back forth by the grandmothers was that photos were very rare “when you are the third child.” I of course smiled having been the oldest and having a few extra photos to pick from … or should I say, “having my brother pick from” since he has the photo albums!

Here’s the photo I’ll be sharing with Annalyn at her birthday party. (more…)

Category: Archive, Memories, Personal, Photos, TBT | No Comments »
Tags: Art, birthday, family, grandmother, painting, portrait, richc, ruth bluhm, TBT

Posted By RichC on February 28, 2018

What a pain. I had a major crash on my iMac and wiped out my Parallels install (corrupted the virtual hard drive).  One would think this would be an easy fix, but it wasn’t.

I spent about 6 hours attempting fix after fix to restore a back up version of the virtual disk (Apple’s Time Machine) but it wouldn’t recognize. I attempted to recode several config files and likely messed it up even further. Eventually I restored everything Parallels related including the afore mention .pvm virtual disk folder from my earliest Time Machine backup and finally it looks like I’m back in business. I checked the Mac disk for back sectors, but all came out clean (although I think Mac OS remaps?)

I’m crossing my fingers for now and will carefully tweak any changes and updates incase something recent corrupted my Parallels install?

Category: Apple, Computer, Personal, Productivity, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: apple, back up, Computer, crash, imac, mac, parallels, virtual

Posted By RichC on February 27, 2018

As mentioned before, it is great to see my son Taylor enjoying a couple of my interests or hobbies like hiking and photography when I was younger (actually I still enjoy them). Ignoring the lousy weather (we had a lot of rain and flooding), he ended up hiking with "a friend" (?) at a favorite place at Red River Gorge in Kentucky. He shared a couple photos so figured I would archive them on the blog for posterity – reminds me of when "we" were regularly taking hiking trips as a family years ago (a photo from one in the 1990s below).   

Katelyn, Taylor & Jeff’s dog Heather in NC in 1994 – my favorite vehicle ’94 Toyota 4Runner

Category: Archive, Hobby, Personal, Photography, Photos, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: family, hiking, megan, photography, red river gorge, taylor

Posted By RichC on February 26, 2018

This content is restricted.

Category: Audio, Music | No Comments »
Tags: christopher cross, mp3, music monday, musicmonday, sailing

Posted By RichC on February 25, 2018

For frequent long distance flyers, give this airline reservation travel tip a try …

We have never bought an upper-class seat; if ever we’ve flown anywhere up front, we’ve used miles to upgrade from economy. If you want to do that, call reservations and drop the name “revenue management.” The reason is that revenue management’s job is to make sure a flight is profitable, so they’re the ones telling [reservation agents] what they can say; they’re like Flying Club’s boss. Not everyone knows that this department exists, and by mentioning it you reveal yourself as someone who knows how things work and understands how seats are released. Say to the agent: ‘Have revenue management released any first-class seats for miles upgrades yet?’ When they say no, ask them to check or just be put through to revenue management so you can ask when they will release some, as well as how many seats are left. Politely respond like this: ‘You have 20 seats unsold? Why aren’t you releasing them?’ Often by the end of the conversation they say, ‘OK, we’ll release one for you,’ or they might tell you to call back tomorrow. Doing that, we’ve had a pretty much 100 percent success rate.

Bloomberg

Category: Aviation, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: airlines, bloomberg, flyer, frequent, revenue management