Geezer

There are 386 posts filed in Geezer (this is page 30 of 39).

Patriotic passports

My first passport, 21 years ago!

Kelly and I took the kids to the post office this week to get their passports renewed. We were hoping to have them in time for our upcoming trip to Orcas Island, so that if we had some time we could cross the strait and see what it’s like to riot in Vancouver. Okay, not really, but it’s always good to have an up-to-date passport.

While we were waiting for the paperwork to get done, I recalled that it was about this time of year that I got my first passport. It was July 5th, 1990 and I was serving in the Navy during that time – my ship, the USS Elliot (DD-967), was visiting Hong Kong that week. I remember the humor of celebrating America’s Independence Day while docked in a British colony. Continue reading →

Tiring of hotels

Boy, it didn’t take me long to get tired of hotels. It’s not like I’ve been traveling much lately – in fact, I don’t travel nearly as much as I used to. The travel itself is fine, though: I love going to new places. It’s the hotels that I’m not fond of. For this week’s stay here in St. Charles, the best available hotel I could find was the Best Western. It’s turned out to be okay for what it is but it’s rather free of personality.

I was reminded the other day of the absolute joy I had with staying at a bed and breakfast during my weeks of consulting for NeTraverse for a project we were doing with AllTel in Jacksonville, Florida. I really looked forward to leaving work and joining the B&B owners on their front porch for wine, cheese, and deep discussions about all sorts of topics. Here, I come back to an empty hotel room, which is not that thrilling to say the least.

I think I’ll check out some of the area B&Bs and see if I can find something a little more lively for my trips to St. Charles.

Chipping away at the speeding

Raleigh Police are making progress with the speeding motorcycles. Last night officers cited two motorcyclists for careless and reckless driving. The officers caught them as they were lining up, apparently to race each other. Six other motorcyclists fled the scene.

Police have learned that motorcyclists come here from all over specifically to race. The word on the street is that they meet at a gathering place and then go to the racing area (which is, unfortunately, my neighborhood apparently). Printed fliers are apparently used to organize these events. If officers find evidence that motorcyclists have been deliberately racing each other they can not only arrest the perpetrators but they can also seize the motorcycles involved.

I know many officers are motorcyclists themselves and I understand the appeal. I just don’t want anyone racing at 120 MPH down a street near my neighborhood.

On the air with Rivendell

By LeRe Pics

My use of online music services like Pandora, Mondomix, TaintRadio.Org, and my recent voiceover dabbling has gotten me itching to start my own online radio station. Or reignite my itch, I should say: back in 1997 I became one of the first to apply to the Library of Congress for a compulsory license for Internet radio (back when the list of online radio stations would fit on just few pages). I never followed through with it because it was a leap of faith: the song royalty rates were not fixed and could have been enormous once they were.
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Road Rage

I rediscovered this gem today.

Catatonia
Road Rage

If all you’ve got to do today is find peace of mind
Come round you can take a piece of mine
And if all you’ve got to do today is hesitate
Come here, you can leave it late with me

You could be taking it easy on yourself
You should be making it easy on yourself
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Local blogs

I was searching through the MT.Net archives tonight, trying to find the name of the service that sorted blogs based on their location. Turns out I found it, or where it used to be, anyway: Local Feeds. It used GeoURL meta tags to mark your blog so that you could easily find blogs in your area. It was a pretty useful service when I first found it seven years ago.

Wow. That’s a long time.

Anyhow, Local Feeds is defunct now, which is a shame. The reason I love Facebook so much is because I like knowing what’s going on in the area. I check Twitter often, for the same reason. Problem with Twitter is that I don’t get enough depth from it. I guess the same applies to Facebook: there’s only so much that one can fit into a status update.

I would like to see someone revive the blog geotagging idea and provide folks with a location-based blog search. I think it would fill a gap that the status-update services just can’t provide. Anyone out there want to take this up?

To My Third Grade Class

It’s posts like this that make me wonder what it would be like to be a teacher:

To My Third Grade Class
We have 30 days left together. You don’t realize this yet – You are just eight years old and the only thing you count down to is Christmas. You are living for Soccer at recess, Spelling games, and Art on Fridays. You live for computer class free time and the moment you can multiply 6×7. That’s one one of my favorite things about you- you are too busy filling up today to worry about tomorrow.

This was written by an online acquaintance whom I’ve never really met but I read her blog because I love her writing. The post also reminds me of how quickly our own kids are growing, and how fleeting childhood (and life) really is.

Walter Breuing, world’s oldest man

I salute the late Mr. Breuing. What an amazing life he lived – all 114 years of it!

Walter Breuning, the world’s oldest man and second-oldest person, died Thursday. He was 114.

Breuning was born Sept. 21, 1896, in Melrose, Minn., and spent his early years in De Smet, S.D. That first decade of the 1900s was literally a dark age for his family. They had no electricity or running water. A bath for young Walter would require his mother to fetch water from the well outside and heat it on the coal-burning stove.

via Walter Breuing, world’s oldest man.

Ignoring the have-nots in a digital society

Want to use a computer? Take a number

We took the kids to the Cameron Village library last Sunday and loaded up on the kids’ books. As I usually do (being the curious sort) I took note of the crowd making use of the library’s computers. I always like to see what kind of folks are depending on the library’s computers. Like many of my visits there, I found a crowd at the computers. There wasn’t even a single workstation available.

As my kids were checking out their books, I listened as a mom and her 10-year-old son pleaded with the librarian to get a computer. I guessed that he had a school assignment he needed to complete.

“What if they’re not doing anything important – playing games or something?” the mom asked. “Could they give it up then?”

The librarian shook her head. “As long as they’ve got time left on their reservation, they can use it however they like. Now, if they get up and walk away, leaving it unattended, then you could step up and use it.”
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