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Our first day in the New Year was a quiet one. We didn’t go out, other than having our traditional New Year Polar Bear Club meeting (in the pool). For more details see Dawnell’s blog entry.

Other than that, I didn’t do much: played some stupid Facebook game (now that’s something I should have made a New Year’s resolution about!), worked a bit on my picture collection, ignored my other New Year’s resolutions (except for that math thing!) and ordered us a Blue-ray player with Netflix access capability and “Instant  Tray Opening” at Amazon I think I will replace our wireless LAN setup with a cat6 wired one, which involves getting up in the attic and making some tricky wall drops.

Yesterday my previous boss (CEO at HF Engineering) asked if I would come along on a trip to a photo store in Orlando (he’s a serious amateur photographer and considering making his hobby his profession). He and I both now do contract work for our previous customer. He told me he’s looking for some cheap office space. I told him that in principle I wouldn’t mind sharing an office space from where we could do our contract work. I like the idea, but it probably means I would have to concentrate on getting more contract work. Plus there is the cost factor. We’ll see.

After that Dawnell and I  visited ex-coworker and fellow Dutchie Tim de Waal and his lovely wife Toni and their 9 month old baby Nathan: see Dawnell’s blog entry. They live in a wonderful apartment with a great view over Melbourne’s marina with beautiful sunsets. Unfortunately we had to cut our visit short, as I wasn’t feeing quite well. We’ll do it again soon.

Went to bed early (with a math book!).

This morning my buddy Bob Cuyt called from Belgium (he and  his family just got back from his wife’s fatherland Slovenia) and we chatted for a while. He turned 55 yesterday and will become an opa for the third time. Time doesn’t slow down.

Daughter Laurilee and grandson Jackson are on their way up here. Better get dressed.

It’s a somber and cold winter day. 9 C! For Florida, that’s cold! Bitterly cold.

The picture above is my first “Picture of the Day” for 2010 .. Bonnie on her new sofa.

I just read something in the news that had me scratching my head. (Happens a lot!).

Before I share the link to the article with you, please .. humor me!

Please perform this little experiment: Have someone handcuff you, hands behind your back.

What? No handcuffs? Booooring!! Anyway, if you lent someone your handcuffs, or lost them, then just do this: put your hands behind your back.

Then, hook your two pinkies, so as to emulate the idea of having your hands handcuffed behind your back.

Don’t let go! Keep those pinkies hooked!

Done that?

Good!

Now … strangle yourself!

Then let me know what you think of this article!

I’m SOOO thrilled.

I bought a gadget on eBay for $50: a pair of  Netgear powerline Ethernet adapters (link).

You plug one into a power outlet and connect it to your router. The other one you plug into any other outlet and run an Ethernet cable to your … whatever… pc, laptop, you name it. And you have a network connection. An alternative to wireless.

Why am I so thrilled? It’s just something you plug into a wall outlet, NOTHING to configure, NOTHING to install… and it just simply WORKS!

Compare THAT to that friggin’ webcam I installed and took me three nights and 3rd party software to get working! (http://70.118.43.165:8080/ select ‘javascript’ and you MAY catch one of my cats .. or both).

Disclaimer: I’m not saying that powerline is better than wireless. In fact, I also used a Buffalo wireless bridge that ALSO just worked out-of-the-box. No installation, no configuration, just plug it in and connect the Ethernet cables.

I LOVE stuff that ‘just works’ …

This is another riddle. And I’m going to use it to gauge if what I just experienced is part of American culture or just a bizarre experience.
I will moderate your comments so as to not give away the clue (if there is one).
This Friday I was driving a car in Cincinnati, Ohio.
With me were my wife, her daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend.
At some point we passed a fast food restaurant and everyone (except me) started to yell.
They HAD to eat there! They hadn’t had THAT in YEARS.
That was SOOOO good .. they couldn’t believe we were so fortunate to run into (actally: pass) one of ‘those’.
They made me turn around.
I parked. We went in. My wife ordered the food and returned to our table with …
(I’m not making this up!) … TWENTY hamburgers!
Did I mention there were only four of us?
I ate 5, my wife ate 4, her daughter ate 5 and the boyfriend, not a big guy at all, ate 8.
I know, that doesn’t add up to 20, but in all fairness, I only ate 3, but when we walked back to the car I burped … and two came back up.
As a further hint I can tell that for the 20 hamburgers, 4 servings of French fries and four soda’s my wife paid … $14.99
A further hint is that the next day we agreed that it hadn’t been such a great experience after all.
We were STILL tasting the stuff, that now was being described as “pure grease and salt”.
I personally agree with the “grease and salt”, but not with the “pure”. I think it was half-recycled industrial waste. Probably radio-active as well!
Sometimes you get what you pay for!
ANYWAY … was this just a fluke or could you think of the name of the hamburger joint we visited?

 

I’d like to introduce a new category for my blog: NCOTW, or, “Nutcase Of The Week”

In it, I’d like to mention a person who, in my view, deserves that label. All the combined posts in this category form my list of people to avoid at all cost.

The first person to receive this ‘honor’ here is Donald E. Wildmon.

He’s the founder and head of the American Family Association. (I expect many nominees in this category to be ‘public’ figures)

What happened?

Walmart, just like many many other companies (amazon.com comes to mind), has an affiliate program that pays you a small bonus when people order something through a so called click-through link on your website. Basically a small commission for sending buyers their way. Good business practice I think. Walmart has some 23,000 organizations signed up for that program. One of those organizations happens to be a small obscure gay community. Someone actually ordered something through that click-through link, and Walmart paid them $4.17 in commission. Read that again: Walmart paid a member of its affiliation program $4.17 for sending a buyer its way.

Enter Donald Wildmon, the founder and head of the three million member American Family Association.

He sent THEE MILLION EMAILS (how far are we with those anti-spam laws anyway?) to his flock, urging them to boycot Walmart for ‘supporting homosexuals’. Other Christian organizations are now following his example (especially after one of them found out that Walmart sold the, oh horror,  “Broke Back Mountain” DVD), but Donald started it, so, fair is fair, HE gets my vote! Not that I think he’ll make a big impact with this, after all, his earlier call to boycot Disney Corporation for allowing gay couples into Disneyland didn’t exactly bankrupt Disney, but still.

Ironic is that Walmart, not exactly the most ‘progressive’ corporation around, just announced that it will put ‘Christmas’ back into its slogans. Something Donald’s club persuaded Sears, Lowe’s and Target to do. You’d think that that outweighs paying a gay website $4.17. But no. Principles are principles and gays are scary and dangerous.

Donald, you’re one scary and dangerous fruitcake nutcase!

(I can’t help wondering what Donald’s take on Ted Haggart’s mishap is, but I fear the worst)

Link to one of the many articles on this.