By the way...

The Papa Murphy's in Athens, AL tastes just like old times:

YUMMY

Facebook has a pretty cool feature (several, actually).....

However, the one I am talking about is a "profile badge". You can leave your mark in various and sundry places online. Like so....



Create your own (you obviously have to be on Facebook) here.

Without further ado (and slightly later in the day than necessary).....

Happy Birthday, Mom!

One of those things in life that you just can't beat is happening by the old Krispy Kreme shop when they've just made a fresh batch. I had almost forgotten how excellent their fresh doughnuts were. See, I made a midnight run to Krispy Kreme last night, but they didn't have anything ultra-fresh (but the blueberry cake doughnut and bottle of milk were still great). After dropping a card off to my mother tonight, I figured I'd give it another shot. The reward was fresh and doughy and glazed goodness this time. Yummmmmmmmm.....

Been a while....

I know, I haven't even been griping about politicians or anything of that sort. Just getting a little bored with that, I suppose......

I hope Obama can get a better balance between the powers of the government versus the rights of the people. Maybe he'll get some things right.

And so, to the mundane little point of this post...

Having come to north Alabama from northern Illinois, we left a few good restaurants behind. Mind you, I don't miss them enough to go back, but I did/do fondly recall places like Granite City Food & Brewery® and Biaggi's. I was driving around the fairly sedate town of Athens last night and saw a little promo/pop-up canopy in front of one of the numerous strip shopping centers in Athens. I was very surprised to see a restaurant name that I didn't figure I would see again. Athens, AL has a Papa Murphy's Pizza. "Take and bake" isn't that new of a concept. Hell, grocery store delis have done take and bake pizza for years. However, these pizzas from Papa Murphy's are really good. I did find it slightly ironic that this new store is in the same strip mall as Papa John's...


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See ya '08. Hello 2009!

Happy New Year

I know y'all know what's coming next.........

Wishing y'all a VERY MERRY Christmas.............


more animals

For the celebration du jour....

Happy 16th Anniversary,

Suzanne!

I must say today with no delay.................

Suzanne - Happy Birthday!

I just found a tremendous set of vids/music via YouTube.....

Props to Gamer2k4......

He put up a compilation of all the songs from Praise The Fallen by VNV Nation (probably my favorite band). I selected the ones that would be most fitting when running on ye olde treadmill to drop into a little playlist. And here it is:

To all of you out there in the aether......

I hope you have a:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ummmm, yeah?!?!?

I just finished scanning a story from the news that folks who self-identified themselves as "elected officials" averaged a 44% on a quiz of civic knowledge. The report on this sad state of affairs was released by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. I haven't yet taken the quiz due to time constraints, but I will. It's very scary when some of the folks we elect to represent us and administer our towns/counties/states/what have you fail a quiz like this....

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

-George Santayana

This certainly isn't one of the better vids I've ever put on YouTube......

but here, in all it's glory with the President-elect's likeness and voice (and my music), it is:



I am sure that the folks who will be in power over the next four (or eight if they don't screw things up more than where we find ourselves right now) will provide plenty of fodder for jokes and/or criticism. I just felt that this would be a sufficient point to start....

Hopefully this next tidbit can help someone...

Several months back, I became unable to play music with MySpace's music player. I had sent them several e-mails and NEVER RECEIVED a response. I started fooling around the other night (vamping out to get ready for the night shift) and solved the problem. The MySpace music player is Flash based. It was changed to a much slicker interface several months ago. However, the new player requires the ability of Flash to be able to store third-party content on your machine. I don't even remember when I had changed the setting in Flash, but I do know that the MySpace music player didn't work after they retooled it. In any Flash animation, you can right click the animation and change a number of local settings for permissions and various settings that allow some access to your computer. There is also a series of "Global settings" that can be accessed via http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html. I discovered that my problem was in the "Global Storage Settings Panel". I changed the settings via this control to allow sites to store 1MB on my machine and now have the "Allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer" and "Store common Flash components to reduce download times" checkboxes checked. After I closed the browser, the MySpace music player worked like a charm. This problem was a total annoyance because I've discovered some great music via MySpace.com. I just wonder if there's anyone else out there who has had this problem.....

To all of those who have served and sacrificed.......

To that end, I find it very fitting that just one week ago this evening (as is nearly the case every four years), participatory politics determined the next course for the nation and made history at the same time. I know that some folks are exceedingly happy and others are fairly dismayed. I'm just kind of ambivalent. As is frequently the case, I see the potential for good policy AND/OR bad policy over at least the next four years. I know that many on "the right" think that Obama will veer far left and guarantee the GOP a win in four years but I'm not so sure. The world will probably not end (unless the Mayans were right) so hopefully we will see.....

Thank a vet.......

Bob Barr opines on the differences between McBama and Ocain....

I just read the headline "Christian right intensifies attacks on Obama"....

One thing that it references is a COMPLETE WORK of fiction entitled "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America". If you want to peruse this ABSOLUTE PIECE OF TRIPE, click here. I thought this could be made into a killer movie. Someone should start fleshing out the screenplay. I thought that one of the funniest things about this was the statement at the very end.

"© 2008 Focus on the Family Action, Inc.

This letter may be reproduced without change and in its entirety for noncommercial and nonpolitical purposes without prior permission from Focus on the Family Action."

What the hell is the purpose of the letter in the first place? The entire thing has one and only one aim: politics. First of all, much of this is NOT the change that Obama seeks. Focus on the Family is using EXTREME hyperbole and illogical extension of Obama's known policies to hoodwink folks into believing that God is going to damn Christian folks who vote for Obama STRAIGHT TO HELL. Where the hell is Pat Robertson when you need him? He'd probably tell you that God was planning a Category 1,000,000 hurricane if Obama wins on November 4. Granted, the minds of those who receive this junk are probably already made up. I seriously want the hallucinogen that was being used by the folks who concocted this cockamamie piece of CRAP.....

Buck the establishment - vote Barr or Baldwin or Nader or McKinney

Obama v. McCain v. Barr v. Baldwin v. Nader....

I'll start this off with my favorite. Here's some recent Bob Barr video:



Now onto "the maverick". One thing (other than the experience factor he constantly brings up about Obama) McCain often brings up is the absolute necessity of victory in Iraq and how his major opponent didn't support the surge. McCain would NEVER EVER support a timeline. However, one interesting piece of news in recent days is that the final details of a semi-"status of forces agreement" were hammered out between the US and Iraq. Lo and behold, one of the details contained therein is kind of a timeline (looking out to 2011). I wonder what McCain thinks of that. Regarding the surge thing (which was where all of this was going anyway), McCain knocks Obama on it often. The surge itself seemed like a tacit admission that there were NEVER enough troops to FULLY COMPLETE the mission in the first place. In fact, I hope that future administrations remember the lessons of cases like that of General (ret.) Eric Shinseki. Another facet of the "surge" discussion? I was listening to a story about how the US pays money to a number of the "Al-Sahwa councils" in Iraq and how that duty is being transferred into Iraq hands (with what I believe to be Iraqi funds). The US military folks discussed in the story had some concern because some people in the Iraqi military didn't seem to believe the urgency of continuing the program. Ironically, payment to back these Sunni militias started around the end of 2006/beginning of 2007. We were paying folks who were involved in the insurgency. I'm absolutely sure that these payments also had to do something with the downturn in violence in the country through 2007. We were paying people to not perform criminal acts. It will be interesting to watch what develops with the transfer of responsibility for payment into Iraqi hands. Will the money continue to flow? If it doesn't, will there be an upswing in violence? What other factors played into Iraq becoming seemingly more stable over the last 1.5 years? McCain's continued rhetoric regarding the largely irresponsible conflict seems to hold less merit as time goes on....

Finally!

It was a happy time to see the close of the last of the Presidential debate for this election cycle. This debate, of course, brought more of the same old discussions and half-truths. I don't think McCain succeeded in his promise to whip Obama's "you know what". McCain did a little better this time around but not necessarily well enough to overcome the inertia of the numbers game that we've seen over the past few weeks. Heck, it doesn't matter who wins anyway. They're just opposite sides of the same old weathered coin and though they've both bandied about talk of "change", Washington will still remain largely out of touch in many ways. That's especially true if you're inclined to the Libertarian line of thinking like me.....

We've never tried a recipe from Martha Stewart before this evening. I saw a recipe for "Cheddar Topped Shepherd's Pie" in a Martha Stewart magazine and thought we should try it. The normal cook of the family brought up making some Zatarain's dirty rice but I suggested that we try this shepherd's pie. We used several shortcuts that cut the time in about half. I made the "Spinach, Mushroom, and Red-Onion Salad" to go with dinner. I think I liked dinner better than the wife unit (1 each) because I had two FULL plates and I still saved some leftovers.....

Wayne Root was on Fox News again this past Monday. Check it out:



Peace, y'all!

And so.......

the "you know what" whipping is just about to start. Don't worry about me, I've taken my Vivarin.......

Sadly, I doubt we'll ever see a third party candidate at these debates again unless the candidate is some kind of celebrity already with a coherent message (hence name recognition and potential electability to boot). Check out Bob Barr's "Counter-Debate" here...

I just saw a story on the news talking about the wildfires in California....

They were talking about the fires as seen from space. Here's the picture they were using:


-picture courtesy of NOAA, NASA, and the OSEI

The image is from NOAA's Operational Significant Event Imagery (OSEI) site. Check out the OSEI's current events page....

By the way.....

Here's the location of El Olmeca as a .kmz file for Google Earth.

If you need instant map gratification, here's the Google Maps version:


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And thus the eager anticipation has ended.....

We've been waiting for the Mexican restaurant in the new (and smallish) shopping center right around the corner from our neighborhood to open for a number of months. It finally opened on Monday. I considered going the day it opened, but the wife unit (1 each) was in Florida and I had other stuff to do. However, she got back today and we went to try it out this evening. It's called El Olmeca......




We enjoyed it! If you're in the area, give it a shot. Mmmmmmm, that means restaurant quality margaritas and Mexican food within walking distance. Excellent!

Today's political advertisement.....

Bob Barr on CNN's "Situation Room"


I was interested to see that I received a letter from Senator Jeff Sessions regarding my request that he vote against the "bailout". I was very happy to see that Senators Sessions AND Shelby held their ground and voted against the package the first time around and the second time as well. I suppose that we'll start to see some results within a few weeks or months, but the implications and results will probably take several years.....

Well, I'll probably check out the last snoozer (oops, I mean Presidential debate) on Wednesday night. Old Johnny Mac promised to "whip Obama's you know what". I'm sure the same old tired soundbites and vague half-truths will find their way into this back-and-forth as well. On the other hand, I can handle watching the debates better than SOME FOLKS I KNOW.......

Well, I'm going to cut it off here. Peace, y'all!