Who’s got the most money now, Bill Gates? Donald Trump? If you got lots you can purchase a nice piece of land with lots of big, beautiful trees… but you can’t buy a 70 foot oak tree. Only one way to get one (in the sense that I’m talking about). You plant a seed and wait a long, long time and then, maybe, you get to look at a beautiful tree. But you don’t own it.
Category Archives: YouTube (Mine)
How I use Google+
I’ve been making a lot of screencasts lately. (Sort of like the guy with a new table saw can’t stop cutting up 2x4s and sheets of plywood) I’ve done a bunch for a friend with a new Chromebook, but this one is just me cutting up 2x4s. It runs 15 minutes which is too long for a screencasts but once I realized nobody was going to watch this anyway I figured, why not? My imaginary audience is made up of people who insist Google+ is a dying ghost town.
CORRECTION: I was wrong in saying the “All” circle was posts from everyone using Google+. It is everyone in any of your circles.
Man on tiny TV tying a bow tie
Spring on the Prairie Garden Trust
A perfect spring day on the Prairie Garden Trust.
Warren Krech: 40 years behind the mic
Warren (“Krech in the Morning”) Krech is retiring from radio at the end of the month, wrapping up a career that started in 1972. He’s been on the air in Jefferson City, Missouri, since 1984. Almost half a century of getting up every morning at 3 a.m. Be hard to find someone more involved in his community than Warren and it’s hard not think in terms of “end of an era.” He has seen and been part of a lot of changes in radio and talked about them in this 16 minute chat/shoptalk.
Steve TV (Birthday Song)
Click the three little horizontal lines at top-right to see all 40 videos in playlist.
The best light
Those last few minutes before the sun goes down.
68 and counting
In truth, I’ve pretty much stopped counting. Celebrating that date of one’s birth seems… arbitrary. If one had a big party on August 10th for fifty years and then discovered there had been a mix-up on the birth certificate and you were born on August 11th… what? See? Arbitrary. But a party is a party, if that’s your thing. I really don’t need much of an excuse to drink too many beers. But, like January 1, it’s a good benchmark. For some, a day to look back. Or ahead. But I’m doing less of that these days, so… let’s just say I’m happy to be here.
“Individual humans are merely temporary forms taken by the single, shifting web of life on earth. If humans are not really separate things, then their births and deaths are also not real, but simply one way of seeing the rhythms of life.” (Immortality by Stephen Cave). My favorite excerpts (PDF) from the book: Immortality (Stephen Cave)
Mad as Hell speech from Network
SALT Gun
Last fall I came across a story (and video) about the SALT Gun, a non-lethal home defense weapon. Think of a paint-ball gun except the balls are filled with some combination of chemicals that incapacitates. This video is what persuaded me to order one of these. And I like the idea of a weapon that won’t kill my drunken next door neighbor if he stumbles into the wrong house at 3 a.m.
After reading the operations manual and handling the gun for a bit, I decided to return it. (The company has a 30 day return policy.) Here are a few of the reasons I decided not to keep the gun. First, from the ops manual:
Pressurize the SALT Gun only when it will be immediately used.
At 2:00 a.m., in the dark, with a stranger in the house… will my wife remember this extra step?
Firing the SALT Gun – Eye protection must be worn by the user.
I’m guessing this something they have to put in the operations manual but it raises the question: Is this device save for my wife to use? Must she keep safety glasses with the gun?
I found the Trigger Safety Button hard to operate. Had to push very hard and fiddle with it to move it to either position.
And finally, I found the gun bulky, a bit heavy for a woman and generally unwieldy. This might be the perfect solution for some… but not for us.