My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on September 10, 2024

Since July’s “swim with my iPhone 7 Plus,” I’ve been using my friend Jeff’s older backup iPhoneXS (2018). Having a “Plan B” has been most appreciated after my attempt at saving a buck and buying a refurbished iPhone 15 Pro. Thankfully the reseller refunded my “Plan A” purchase in full since it was a struggle to stay connected with US Mobile’s Verizon (Warp 5G) or their GSM option. It was likely a faulty chip or antenna issue. 

So instead of trying another refurbish or even new iPhone 15, I opted for “Plan C” which was to wait for the September 9th iPhone 16 announcement … and so far I’m glad I did. After watching the Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event introducing their new Apple Watch, AirPods and Apple Intelligence (AI) … their new iPhone 16, 16+, 16 Pro and Pro Max were unveiled. They look great … besides not being a “flip-phone” … and it looks to be exactly what the doctor ordered. So the decision now is not if I should buy a new iPhone this year, but should I preorder one? 

The new camera control button alone … along with a giant leap in photo quality from my basically free iPhone 7 Plus (carrier paid for) and borrowed iPhone XS will make it well worth the purchase. Besides,  my daughter has been lecturing me about the less than acceptable quality photos compared to her Google Pixel Android phone.  

So stay tuned to see if I place an order or wait a little longer — don’t suspect any deals are coming, but this year’s pricing is the same as last year. Huh? 

Base pricing as of 9/9/2024 

• iPhone 16: $799 – 128GB
• iPhone 16 Plus: $899 – 128GB
• iPhone 16 Pro: $999 – 128GB
• iPhone 16 Pro Max: $1,199 – 256GB

Category: AI, Apple, News, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: ai, airpods, apple, apple intelligence, event, glowtime, iphone, watch

Posted By RichC on September 9, 2024

Category: Music, Social Media, Video | No Comments »
Tags: filler, mp4, snippet, x.com

Posted By RichC on September 9, 2024

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Category: Archive, Personal, Photos, Tesla, Volkswagen | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, birthday, ellerie, family, granddaughers, herbie, vw

Posted By RichC on September 9, 2024

Back during COVID, Americans were not able to eat out the way we once did. Our habits in the Corbett household changed a bit, although we actually started cooking a bit more after our favorite restaurant closed (we were no longer just tossing food in the microwave or on the grill).

One of the things we looked forward to on the weekend was “dinner and a classic movie” … and it improved once we started the HelloFresh meal subscription. At first, it was just to try it (it is pricey) … but we enjoyed it so much that we continue far longer than we expected. I’d like to say that we tried to buy and make the recipes on our own, but we have not. ☹️ 

One of the add-on items that started to be a regular for me was a small bucket of Blount Clam Shack Gumbo. Eventually I asked if it was or could be sold at our grocery store locally, but never could get it carried locally. Since we’ve given up on subscription meals, Hello Fresh wasn’t an option anymore. Blount doesn’t sell direct to consumers, but I did find a way to order from distributors — now our freezer is stocked. 

Remembering Jimmy Buffett (1946-1923)

Fast forward to having some “Gumbo” on Music Monday and a Jimmy Buffett song from his 1999 album, “Beach House on the Moon” … here’s a 2017 LIVE version when he performed at Wrigley Field. We should invite Megan and Taylor up for some gumbo … and listen to the album (CD). 😉
  

Category: Food, Music | No Comments »
Tags: blount, clam shack, gumbo, hellofresh.com, jimmy buffett, music monday, musicmonday, wrigley field

Posted By RichC on September 8, 2024

If you’ve been checking in daily, you’re likely tired of seeing woodworking ideas, tidbits and magazine clipping? I’ll try to promise that this is the last of them in my “to archive on the blog” folder for a little while. 

First, the Rockler sled is something I sort of already have … but still worth considering. My small cross-cut sled is the most used table saw accessory in my workshop. Second, the 10” saw blade draw idea might be worth considering, but I really don’t have enough different blades for the Delta cabinet saw  to make it worthwhile. Third, is a photo of Glancy’s No.1 Penetrating Oil (made in America) that I’m adding to my wishlist as something I really would like to compare with the Danish Oils that I’ve been using. 

Category: Archive, Ideas, Tidbits, Tools, Woodworking | No Comments »
Tags: articles, glancys, jibs, magazine, oil finish, rockler, snippets, tablesaw, woodworking

Posted By RichC on September 7, 2024

As the US Presidential Election looms, we still really don’t know how Kamala Harris intends to govern — it’s been 1-1/2 months since President Biden stepped down. And many of us have questions:

What are her policies?

From a few appearances … by that I mean ONE interview …  are we expected to believe the her views have changed, but her “values have not.” What we do know is that her positions for the entire previous decade in political office are not her positions today (so she says).

When she was the San Francisco DA and the California’s Attorney General she was a liberal California Democrat. When she was a US Senator from California, she was known as the “most progressively radical in the Senate.” When she ran for president in 2020, her views were way too left of where the national Democratic Party was (at the time) and she received no electoral votes and dropped out.  Instead Democrats nominated a perceived moderate, President Biden. Once partnered as VP with Joe Biden, the administration veered hard left — so much for bringing the country together as so many American voters expected. 

Now we’re left wondering about the trial balloons being floated by the Democratic nominee. Again she received “zero” votes in the primary and has been flip-flopping a few new ideas that were quickly modified.

What are her real positions? Does she still believe illegally crossing the US border is not a crime, taxing unrealized capital gains is good for the economy and that more police on the street doesn’t make us safer?  Should we judge her by her past … or believe what she says now … or wait to see IF she puts anything to paper or on the Harris/Walz campaign website? 

Harris website still lacks policy despite Walz saying Americans
deserve to know ‘exactly what she’d do’ — Fox News

Category: News, Politics | No Comments »
Tags: abraham lincoln, democrat, election, kamala harris, Politics, presidential, wikipedia

Posted By RichC on September 6, 2024

Europe and their big government overreaches in restricting personal liberty by American standards, but that same heavy handedness often does more that the U.S. to protect an individual’s privacy from Big Tech and their sweeping data collection machines. 

Ever since social media and cloud-oriented companies desired to take ownership of their users data, it has been a constant struggle for people and their elected representatives, or self-appointed power-hungry dictators, to 

thread the needle as to what data is private and what data can be collected and used by Big Tech companies. In the US, business titans work to get their puppets elected, whereas in Russia/China, companies share the data under twisted arm.

From the “liberated people’s” perspective, we all know that receiving tech services isn’t really free … and we likely have all found ourselves pressured into agreeing to give something to tech companies — usually our data. Some accept a degree of “spying on our emails and web habits,” knowing we’ll likely receive selected advertising and marketing. We use free email and search engines such as Google and accept their terms … but some of us also “try” to be smart about just what we are sharing with them and giving up. We all have different limits … unlike the limits dictated by European bureaucrats who think they know best. 

I personally have tried to distance myself from blatant data collectors, but still find myself using Gmail, several Google apps, some cloud storage, occasionally their maps and limited photo services. They just work well and often have better services … so I still them. Still, I’ll purposely switch to search engines that I “think” aren’t collecting and using my data. I have private email for work and use paid for apps that aren’t as obvious about making money from my data. 

This brings me to the lack of trust when it comes to our own American citizen elected representatives who are suppose to be overseeing the hired career bureacrats running things in Washington DC. It has probably always been true; first, they are their to protect their jobs, second to increase the power and centrally control government and third, go after those who they perceive as a threat to their power. I likely first noticed the weaponization back when Lois Lerner use the power of the IRS to go after people associated with the Tea Party, but have seen it come out into the open over the past decade. No more doing it in the shadows.

Take a moment to listen to Tulsi Gabbard on X.com below. She was once a Democrat senator from Hawaii, but now has little in common with the progressive movement that has overtaken and in my opinion corrupted that party. The phrase “power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” fits today’s Democratic Party perfectly (attributed to Lord Action in 1887). 

Kamala says she believes in freedom, but I was put on a secret terror watch list after I publicly criticized her. No one will be safe from political retaliation under a Harris administration. I put my life on the line for this country. Now the government calls me a terror threat. pic.twitter.com/3xjgjmrLhD

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard)

September 4, 2024

Category: Business, Idioms, Politics, Social Media, Video | No Comments »
Tags: big govt, bigtech, cloud, collection, data, google, government, idiom, idioms, irs, lois lerner, phrase, power, tea party, tech friday, techfriday, tulsi gabbard, Washington DC, x.com

Posted By RichC on September 5, 2024

Katelyn, my now 38 year old adult daughter, read yesterday’s wedding ring and capsized Trinka dinghy sailing memory and mentioned that I should have included her 7th grade “Time In A Bottle” artwork. She reminded me that it was a “traumatic” incident in her young life (although personally, I did feel that I had everything under control … but the water was cold). 😉

While I could have included a photo of her art for the archive using my normal “Edit Add” … it seemed to make a little more sense to include it as a Throwback Thursday #TBT post. 

Category: Archive, Art, Memories, Personal, Photos, Sailing, TBT, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: artwork, capsize, katelyn, sailing, TBT, time in a bottle, traumatic, trinka, wedding band

Posted By RichC on September 4, 2024

While at the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo over the weekend with KDAE, I took a photo of a surprisingly comfortable leather chair that was on the SS Col. James M. Schoonmaker. The chair was “I think” original to the ship in 1911 and looked interesting enough to dig a little deeper for a woodworking idea. 

Also, I had some poison ivy on my ring finger and forgot that I took off my wedding band (I’ve rarely had it off) and couldn’t remember if I left it at home on the nightstand or lost it (it was home). In any case, it gave me an excuse to tell the story of losing my first wedding band that Brenda’s late brother Mark made when he was in dental school. 

In the mid-1990s, we were visiting my mom and dad either in the fall or spring near Panama City Beach in Florida as we did several times. I had cartopped our Trinka sailing dingy and we decided to drive down to the long stretch of beach property part of Tyndall Air Force Base to beachcomb and try sailing in the Gulf of Mexico. It was colder, windy and too rough for the little 8 foot boat and I ended up capsizing with a very young Taylor. Thankfully we were not that far offshore and I was able to right the boat put Taylor in it but the waves kept swamping the boat as I struggled to keep it right side up. Taylor hung onto the mast as I kicked and used the sail to work our way in. Brenda swam out as my mom, dad and “frightened” Katelyn watched from shore. 

Thankfully everything was fine in the end (health wise) but I ended up losing the wedding band that Brenda’s brother made from dental gold. The cold water must have shrunk and numbed my hands and I semi-recall catching it on the stainless steel transom while I was pushing the boat to shore and keeping it upright. It was loss but I was thankful to still have my life and a son! 

Family Hawk Migration Trip to St. Joseph Peninsula

A couple of years later, the kids and Brenda bought me a new replacement gold band for Christmas in 1998 — the photo above.

Category: Archive, Misc, Personal, Woodworking | No Comments »
Tags: chair, gold, leather, ring, wedding band

Posted By RichC on September 4, 2024

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Category: Archive, Personal, Photos, Travel, Video | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, brenda, drew, ellerie, family, great lakes, katelyn, labor day, museum, ohio, richc, Schoonmaker, toledo