General Blog

July 8, 2012

Dale Carnegie Speech II

This is a test run of the 2-minute speech I’ve got to give tomorrow before my Dale Carnegie class. I need to use a visual aid for this, and describe an accomplishment. I’ve tested this a few times to get it polished but I think writing it once will help. Here we go… (enters speaking area, pushing my commuter bike) Hello, I’m Robert Raymond and this is my bicycle. (pause). So, let’s talk about Easter Island. (pause for audience to shift around). Easter Island is in the South Pacific, some 1400 miles from anywhere. You might remember it for those […]
July 12, 2012

Time Machine

I went back into time today and I didn’t even do it with atop a platform-mounted saddle with a big clock on it. Was just sitting in my pod, pushing papers and bits about, the headphones funneling a 70s station into my ears (I like 70s music – it’s a far more comforting time than now). The song “Hotel California” came on and I blinked. I suddenly (and vaguely) recalled a game I used to play on the Atari, a two-player thing where you shot your way through top-down mazes. I remember sitting at my pal’s Jesse’s exotically-Jewish house, working […]
July 15, 2012

Virus II

You might remember my claim to have defeated the virus a short time ago. I spoke too soon. It seemed I still had pellets lodged in my cyber-hide, buckshot from a virus mix that blasted my defenses while looking for (of all things) muzzleloader wav files. Microsoft Security Essentials was killed and Malwarebytes did its best, but evidently I had numerous infections. It was odd, but Malware (my favorite tool) never entered into the fight (after some initial finds). No, it was MSE (after I reinstalled and fixed the updater) that took the fight to the enemy. Eventually we found […]
August 3, 2012

Another goof!

A thousand apologies to readers of my weekly Dog Ear blog. It’s pretty easy to speak your mind aout writing when you don’t allow your listeners to talk back, isn’t it? I’d added the Dog Ear section when I’d last cleaned up the site. Didn’t look back, and didn’t look too close, I suppose. Anyway, today I was just musing over the Yamato piece I’d posted and saw no comment info. Hmmmm. Maybe its something to do with having to be logged in. So I logged in. Still no comments. Hopped to another blog area and there were the comments. Something was wrong. […]
August 4, 2012

The ten worst inventions in the world

Below are what I consider to be (in no particular order) the ten worst inventions in the world. Following this are the dishonorable mentions – perhaps they’ll go into their own list soon. So here they are…. 1) Cellphones. Never has it been easier to convey imperial disdain, to marginalize and ignore another living human’s existence. Add to this the ability to ruin dinners, concerts, quiet time, and tender moments. And all this so you can answer ‘Sup?’ to someone who finds your social input the equivalent of a bag of Doritos. 2) Texting. Not only does this provide all […]
August 12, 2012

Back in the Star Wars saddle

Last week the nieces asked if I’d like to role play again. We’d had a fun (but confusing) session (HERE) about a year ago. Everyone wanted to play again. While it wasn’t the usual weekly session I was used to, sure, I’d ref. From my side of the shield, the story was pretty twisted. The action took place on the Imperial space station Tarkin, a trade-routes-straddling drum that used centrifugal force to keep things glued down. The spaceport and slums were on the inside (deck three), the poor huddled beneath a vault of greasy smog, the outer deck for the […]
October 2, 2012

Dumped

Came home from the club last night to find a new guest in the house. While driving to the gym, my wife had found a stray kitten on the side of a busy highway. Thunderstorms were coming in. Night was falling. She did the right thing – stopped, fetched it, brought it home. It was a yellow kitten, its eyes barely open, with flees and hardly any meat on its bones – you could hold it in your palm. JB did what she could – fed it milk from an eyedropper. We kept it in the bedroom in a box all […]
October 22, 2012

Lock down

It looks like I’m getting hit by registration bots. I’ve gotten about a dozen registrations today and they all have the same format. This being the case, I’ve locked down registrations until I can figure out what to do (if anything). You can still leave comments – you’ll just have to answer the little coded id question. No big deal. If you’d really like an account, simply send me your username and email address and I’ll set you up. Sorry about this. The web can be a crazy place.
October 28, 2012

NO UPDATES FOR A WEEK OR SO

    The site will be undergoing maintenance and background work, and I’ll be occupied with other hobby efforts. This means I won’t really have any updates for the next week or so. See you when I get back!    
October 31, 2012

Robert Raymond, Vampire Hunter

Months in the marking… Back around March or April, my admin told me (following my stint as a carnie barker at a work function) that she knew what I should be in our Halloween work party – Abe Lincoln, Vampire Slayer. The idea had appeal. It took some doing. First, JB and I went to see that silly movie, just to see what it was about. Then I read a book on Lincoln. Then, a month ago, I started letting my beard grow out so I’d have something to work with. And then the final weeks – renting a tailed […]