RichC | December 19, 2024
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is infiltrating almost everything we do on a smartphone, tablet or computer these days. Last week, my X.com feed sent a message that “you should try generating an image of yourself” based on whatever data it collects. I suspect it relies on my profile information, but am not sure what else it […]
RichC | December 17, 2024
It is that time of year … time for Christmas photos … with children and pets? Well a “dog” in the case of Megan and Taylor, but our granddaughters in the case of Katelyn and Drew. In both cases these 2024 photos belong on in the My Desultory Blog archive. Here’s one of Gigi with […]
RichC | December 16, 2024
It is probably time for me to start listening to Christmas music, but I’m still stuck on SiriusXM “The Bridge” and stumbled across another great song from my high school and college years. So for today’s Music Monday, here’s a song by the Stills-Young Band (Stephen Stills and Neil Young) from 1976 called “Long May […]
RichC | December 15, 2024
Click image of landscape pond from back in 2008 when we asphalted the rear driveway. Both have aged. ☹️ My mistake this past month was when it came to scrubbing some of the waterfall area off and using Dawn dishwashing soap … whoops! Not a big deal, but it still has creating an offseason soapy […]
RichC | December 9, 2024
There’s no getting away from highlighting music from the 1970s on Music Monday — I can’t help myself. 😊 While listening to the segment-change music on a Fox Business show, KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Get Down Tonight” from 1975 caught my ear. I realized that Harry Wayne Casey and his band was highlighted before in […]
RichC | November 28, 2024
First off, Happy Thanksgiving 2024. I hope you can be as thankful as the pilgrims were at that first Thanksgiving in 1621. “Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four […]
RichC | November 25, 2024
Not that my daughter appreciated that her 2018 VW Tiguan left her stranded on the “highway” … but sometimes automotive breakdowns are a part of “life.” So it seemed somewhat appropriate to feature the catchy Tom Cochrane‘s “Life is A Highway” as today’s Music Monday song. Sorry about the water pump failure Katelyn! Tom Cochrane originally […]
RichC | November 20, 2024
President-Elect Donald Trump is currently preparing his list of nominees for the cabinet he needs to help advise him. Along with a few controversial picks, Trump has also added a couple of high profile names, Elon Musk and the Vivek Ramaswamy to a new advisory panel … a committee that is smugly being referred to […]
RichC | November 18, 2024
Although I listened to a fair amount of “easy listening” music through the years and have posted music by Lobo years ago on Music Monday, I don’t recall listening to his 1972 song back in the day. According to Wikipedia, Kent LaVoie (Lobo) released the “Don’t Expect Me to Be Your Friend” on his “Of […]
RichC | November 8, 2024
Apple is finally rolling out the much ballyhooed Apple Intelligence on Apple devices … including my new iPhone 16 Pro Max. Their have been a few laughs from me when it comes to the AI “summary” feature generating a questionable summary (an automotive enthusiast John Rowe’s X.com comments – he does NOT recommend Sunbeam). On […]
RichC | October 30, 2024
Besides the impressive rally at Madison Square Gardens last weekend, the relentless schedule being pushed in these final days (months actually) of the 2024 Presidential Election must be exhausting. Donald Trump as done everything from working at McDonald’s, to podcasts, or large outdoor rallies … one that nearly took his life. JD Vance has been […]
RichC | October 21, 2024
After late last month’s Music Monday song from Simon and Garfunkel, it was difficult not to include the Side-A song at some point … and better sooner than too much later. “Cecilia” was first recorded by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel for their 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water. It reached #4 in the US […]
RichC | September 18, 2024
When thinking about seasonal weather forecasts, it is enjoyable to check in with The Old Farmer’s Almanac. It has become a regular habit … although I can’t say how accurate year to year how close they are to what really happens? I’d venture a guess that they are probably more accurate than hurricane forecasting. […]
RichC | 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 […]
RichC | August 9, 2024
While looking on Wikipedia for for the history of old the adage “A picture is worth a thousand words,” I came across an interesting 1913 newspaper clipping from the town just south of my adopted hometown of Sidney, Ohio — that of Piqua, Ohio. It is always interesting to stumble across tidbits from the past […]
RichC | July 1, 2024
It is hard to believe that the country music band “Wild Country” from Fort Payne, Alabama, now known as “Alabama” has been around since 1969? I was surprised. The band’s popularity exploded in the late 1970s and early 1980s after 2 hit songs in 1977 and a record deal with RCA Records (about the time […]
RichC | June 22, 2024
As the election season nears, the calls and text messages to my cellphone ramp up in earnest. My voicemail message for the past couple of years has been one that indicates that I no longer pickup calls from unknown callers — I don’t mind callers leaving me a message, but have grown tired of solicitations, […]
RichC | April 6, 2024
The subject line is my questionable twist on the Francis Church response to Virginia O’Hanlon in 1897, Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus (see below). All of us “seeing” inflation month after month really don’t question its existence, but we do wonder how long inflation will continue a higher than the desired two percent […]
RichC | April 1, 2024
It seems shocking, or at least it surprised me, that Louis Charles B.W. (BuckWheat) Stevenson’s popular hit “My Maria” had not been mention as a Music Monday song? I happened to hear it last month on SiriusXM’s 70’s on 7 and jotted it down to check the blog. I did find the Three Dog […]
RichC | March 17, 2024
Going to college after high school has always seemed expensive, but by working, borrowing and getting help from parents … it was do-able, and by today’s standards, seemed affordable. I can’t help but smile noticing that when I finally paid off my student loan that I could start saving to put my kids through college. […]
RichC | February 12, 2024
The passing of a great American patriot and country music singer/songwriter Toby Keith Covel last week from stomach cancer at age 62 was depressing. Surprisingly I have not posted about Toby Keith in the past on the blog or for Music Monday, but really should have considering his impressive career and devotion our military and […]
RichC | January 27, 2024
Brenda and I have been enjoying the NFL playoffs in late January from Florida this year and are looking forward to watching the final two games before Super Bowl LVIII on February 11, 2024. This weekend America will be watching the Detriot Lions vs the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC and the Kansas City […]
RichC | January 24, 2024
Although the time difference makes instant text communication a little more challenging than usual in staying in touch with my buddy Jeff, I’m still enjoying the interesting business travel he is starting early in 2024. I lost track of the number of countries will be in while making cybersecurity audits of client plants, but it […]
RichC | January 8, 2024
Took a screenshot of my iPhone’s Sirius XM app last month while listening to an old Casey Kasem‘s American Top 40 countdown on the 70’s channel. There’s always something that catches my ear on the weekends when it comes to 1970s songs and thought it was a good choice for Music Monday. The song was […]
RichC | November 20, 2023
The Grass Roots was an American rock band that achieved significant success between 1965 and 1975. The band’s origins trace back to the collaboration of songwriter duo P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri, along with the involvement of Lou Adler. For Music Monday, here is their 1971 hit “Sooner of Later” from “Their 16 Greatest […]
RichC | October 10, 2023
Hatred runs deep in the middle-east as many in the Arab world have never accepted the State of Israel … which is probably an understatement. I haven’t posted on the “war” (as declared on Saturday by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) at this point since so much is unknown, but television news coverage is 24/7. […]
RichC | October 3, 2023
Let’s just call this a PSA since I’ve been busy rethinking My Desultory Blog themes after updating to PHP 8.2 and how at least use the thousands of old blog entries for reference … or more precisely, remembering things! Anyway, the monthly “Archives” section is the same (select a previous month), but the “Calendar” was […]
RichC | August 30, 2023
Jim Brown played for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) from 1957 through 1965. Considered to be one of the greatest running backs of all time, as well as one of the greatest players in NFL history. (Link)
RichC | August 21, 2023
William Royce “Boz” Scaggs “recalled: “Lido Shuffle” was a song that I’d been banging around. I … took the idea of the shuffle [from] a song that Fats Domino did called “The Fat Man” that had a kind of driving shuffle beat that I used to play on the piano, and I just started kind […]
RichC | November 14, 2022
About a week ago while watching television, the song “Make Your Own Kind of Music” in a Volkswagen commercial caught my ear. It triggered a “Can you dig it?” psychedelia thought that I thankfully only knew from observing the “far out” subculture during the 1960s. Still, a lot of the music and memories are from […]
RichC | October 30, 2022
Although the meme floating around social networks (the one at the bottom of this post) is probably not correct, I enjoyed it enough to do a little digging. Personally I’ve always thought that “the whole (or full) nine (six) yards” had to do with the innings in a baseball game (old article below), so I […]
RichC | September 24, 2022
In order to ensure sufficient oxygen within their burrow, prairie dogs use the Bernoulli’s principle. One of the entrances is built with a raised mound of dirt, while the other is not. This determines different wind velocities and different pressures. (Massimo – @Rainmaker1973) Bernoulli flow and viscous entrainment were identified by the researchers as the […]
RichC | August 31, 2022
The largest of the Egyptian pyramids is the Great Pyramid of Giza., one of The Seven Wonders of the World. It was the tomb of the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu and was build in the early 26th century BC. It stands 481 feet and is normally seen from a horizon view as in Wikipedia (photo […]
RichC | August 2, 2022
Learned a few interesting geographic facts about the nation of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean from Brilliantmaps, Reddit and of course Wikipedia the other day and found the timezone oddity particularly interesting. The country is “the furthest ahead of Greenwich meantime at GMT +14, making it the first country in the world to ring-in the […]
RichC | July 4, 2022
According to a little American Revolutionary War reading this past year, our Declaration of Independence was celebrated on July 4, 1777 with a 13-gun salute in the morning and 13-gun salute in the evening (13 for the 13 colonies). Interestingly, many historians suggest that the Declaration of Independence was actually signed on July 2, 1776 and […]
RichC | March 28, 2022
Once again, in looking to get out of the 1970’s Music Monday rut, I pulled out a music memory from my trusty Apple iPod and Shuffle … mine is filled with Jack Johnson tunes (right – see Wikipedia list of iPods). The one I used most often was clipped to the back of a cap […]
RichC | February 16, 2022
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RichC | September 6, 2019
Perhaps it is just me, but I’m growing tired of the software development trend to make every piece of software resemble a smartphone app. I spend a significant amount of time using a desktop computer with plenty of display real estate, yet apps and webpages are all trying to make their mobile apps, notebook computer […]
RichC | May 5, 2019
Every student learns just how big and important the Mississippi River is in our country. From transporting materials from the America’s breadbasket to markets throughout the country and beyond … to draining the snowmelt and rainfall off the land so it can be cultivated (was reminded of this with all the flooding this spring). It […]
RichC | August 20, 2018
Last week we lost the singer and pianist Aretha Franklin at age 76 who’s trailblazing career began in the turbulent 1960s when America was being torn apart (sounds eerily familiar). I was in grade school when her R and B records were popping on the charts and being played on AM radio; I didn’t really […]
RichC | July 21, 2018
As a filler post, a couple random or desultory tidbits crossed my path this week; I found them mildly interesting: The "bison," which can weigh as much as a ton, can "race up to 40 mph, jump up to 6 feet vertically and quickly pivot," so don’t try to out run them. The "peloton" is […]
RichC | January 16, 2018
Ok … this Google app is a bit personal … but curiosity and some appreciation for art has me interested enough to forgo my privacy concerns. Google updated their Art and Culture app that compares a persons selfie with their huge archive of art from museums and other institutions. The computer-vision technology compares points on […]
RichC | December 26, 2017
California Gray Whale watching is on most ocean lovers "want to do list" but few have up close and personal opportunities like this. Part of me wants whales to "fear" humans and keep their distance (for their own protections and survival), where another part of me loves seeing the bond between mammals and knowing the […]
RichC | October 10, 2017
Although I’m the last person to criticize folks for tweaking their diesel engines for performance and efficiency, I cringe when I see modifications that purposely over fuel and pump a bunch of black smoke when it is unnecessary (not under load). There has to be a commonsense balance between neutering diesel engines with excessively costly […]