Hurricane Helene (2024) looks to be big enough to pack a massive punch. Hopefully all in the low-lying area of Florida’s big bend and gulf coast area are evacuating.
From my perspective, my daughter and her family are on a Disney Cruise and will stay at sea at least 12 hours longer as they wait for the Port of Canaveral to reopen. Who knows what kind of flight they will find when it is time to return (although expect the Orlando airport and airlines already knows how they will handle the MANY delayed/changed flights)?
In Ohio, it doesn’t look as if we’ll be spared some wind and rain … but hope the tornado watches Florida is already seeing will not make it this far north?
Once again, a social media “what is it” post (on X.com) intrigued me enough to comment on the glass insulators that were used on phone lines for years … especially along the railroad tracks when I was a kid.
The antique photo triggered a Throwback Thursday #TBT memory of hanging out in an area behind our house that I’m sure we were not supposed to be. Part of the time we did nothing, but walk and talk … while other times we acted like hoodlums and both threw stones and shot slingshots at the glass insulators on top of the telephone poles (boys will be boys). Thankfully we were smarter than to be smoking, drinking or doing drugs. After admitting the previous “sling shot” behavior, it might be hard to believe, but we were “still pretty good kids.”
A change of plans is something that can cause stress … but nothing like the stress of having a child with a medical condition, no matter their age.
Brenda’s younger sister Ann and her husband Gary have a grown daughter who has overcome hurdle after hurdle in living with a chiasmal optic glioma. It has not only impact her eyesight, but occasionally head pain — severe headaches.
Sarah was on vacation with friends this past week at their condo in the mountains of Utah and was taken to the hospital suffering from severe head pain. CT scans and MRI later have convinced doctors that the altitudes while hiking in the mountains could be the cause.
Taylor and his newlywed longtime friend, Mike, were in Chicago for the weekend and they sent me a few photos of their time together … sort of a post-wedding bachelor get together. I’d did check the Chicago Cubs – Nationals score (they lost), but it did look beautiful at Wrigley Field.
I spent the weekend getting a few fall yard chores done. I started to put away the outdoor furniture (just some) and getting ready for a hiking trip with Brenda’s sisters to Utah. It should be nice.
According to a Wikipedia post, it was from his 8th album, Save the Dancer and “became his greatest hit reaching number 23 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and spending three weeks at number 17 in Canada.”
The number of times that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has come up in conversation recently had me interested to know just what is so good or evil about it. To even have Former President Donald Trump declare he “hasn’t read it or even cares to know what is in it,” yet it still has far-left progressives and the Harris/Walz campaign all up in arms about a think-tank policy proposal. It had me intrigued enough to research a little bit … and also let AI do some light summary work.
Project 2025 Summary
Project 2025 is a comprehensive plan to reshape the U.S. federal government, established in April 2022. Led by the Heritage Foundation, the initiative aims to implement the agenda and ideologies of former President Donald Trump. The project’s primary objectives are:
Dismantle the Administrative State: Eliminate the independence of federal agencies, such as the Department of Justice, FBI, Federal Communications Commission, and Federal Trade Commission, and place them directly under presidential control.
Restore Family Values: Emphasize the importance of family as the foundation of American life.
Defend National Sovereignty and Borders: Strengthen border security and national defense.
Secure Individual Rights: Protect God-given individual rights to live freely.
The project’s flagship publication, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” (2023), outlines policy suggestions from over 400 scholars and experts. Key proposals include:
Eliminating the National Flood Insurance Program and replacing it with private insurers.
Placing the entire federal bureaucracy under direct presidential control, a concept known as “unitary executive theory.”
The new iPhone 16 Pro Max has arrived and the set-up process begins. Sorry for the distraction; I’m probably going to be “trying” to get the new phone up and running this weekend. 😊
One of the “very few” complaints with the Apple MacBook Air M2 is that macOS Sonoma 14.6.1(and likely all recent MacOS versions) does not have a way to make the menu bar smaller in height. This is the one display dimension that has been the most difficult to get use to in coming from twin 27” side-by-side displays (iMac and Apple LED Cinema Display). Even with the old iMac running MacOS Catalina v10.15.7 the menu bar did not “waste” as much vertical screen real estate as the MacBook.
Comparing MacBook Air M2 Sonoma (left) to iMac 27” Catalina (right)
There is an control center adjustment to “hide” the menu bar on the MacBook Air, but … and a big BUT … is that the space gained is only visually hiding the menu text and does gain any useable space. One gains nothing in the display height dimension unlike perhaps removing the visual space under the notch extending the full width of the MacBook’s display?
Come on Apple, “think a little different” (smarter) for those of us wanting just a little more useable space on our ever shrinking notebook computer displays.
For me, I’ve really owned just two iPhones (iPhone 5s and 7 Plus), although have included Brenda’s iPhone 14 with an arrow in the image (previously she had an iPhone 7 not highlighted) for model designation purposes.
Personally I think they are all looking the same and would love to see a bit more innovation … maybe a flip-phone like my favorite Samsung i500 SPH from 20+ years ago running Palm OS? Come on Apple, bring us something really innovative!
From my perspective, my daughter and her family are on a Disney Cruise and will stay at sea at least 12 hours longer as they wait for the Port of Canaveral to reopen. Who knows what kind of flight they will find when it is time to return (although expect the Orlando airport and airlines already knows how they will handle the MANY delayed/changed flights)? 
