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Saturday Night Retro

Exactly 17 years ago yesterday morning on the 21ST of May of 1993 in the heart of Melbourne Florida ‘Captain Airwaves’ was officially born. He was my original pseudonym in cyberspace. Of course back in 1993 nobody knew what the World Wide Web was all about. After all Al Gore had just invented it, and he hadn’t yet explained it. Back then the most popular form of modern communications between personal computers across the free nation was via the telephone dial-up bulletin board system (BBS). Mine debuted real early on that morning 17 years ago, and it was named after my lovable childhood cat (still alive at the time) – Fluffy. She was a Manx, and the name of my first creation in cyberspace – ‘MANx CAT BBS’. That first bulletin board system lasted a little over four years, and it eventually spawned a spinoff site on the emerging web at the time – ‘MANx On The Net’. That web site eventually morphed into the ‘MASSIVESMASH.COM‘ hit music web site that survived and thrived for the better part of a decade during the late-1990s into the new millenium. It faded several years ago, but it inspired this personal blog that continues today.

‘Captain Airwaves’ was actually the pseudonym of the late great John Carmody – the famed daily television columnist of “The Washington Post” newspaper from 1977 to 1998. During my high school years in the early-1980s he inspired me to get in to the entertainment business somehow someway. The bulletin board, the web site, and the blog was as close as I got to that dream. I adopted the ‘Captain Airwaves’ pseudonym for the BBS, and then after a couple of years my followers at the time (known affectionately as ‘MANxsters’) promoted me to ‘Major’, so I became ‘Major Airwaves’. When the web site hit it big I took on the ‘Major Hitwaves’ name and persona to more accurately reflect my role at the time as a deejay on the web. Nowadays I’m still ‘Major Hitwaves’, but I’m more commonly known as simply ‘The Major’.

17 years ago this past week I was unemployed, living off of my savings, and having way too good of a time with all of my friends and neighbours in the Melbourne area. The 1400 block of South Oak Street rocked back then, and ‘Captain Airwaves’ was crankin’ out the hits from his second floor studio efficiency – and all up and down the U.S. 1 and the A1A.

Here’s one of those hits of the time – an obscure track that was a local smash on the radio and in the nightclubs of Melbourne. It’s His Boy Elroy – and a track about them “Chains”. As are most of the songs that I feature here on the ‘Saturday Night Retro’ it’s one of the greatest songs ever made according to me.

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Thursday Night Mini Thoughts

– This is the one blog per week that’s never scripted and never planned.
– It just happens – right here – right now.
– I have no earthly idea what I will type out next.
– I’m thinking much faster than I can type.
– I hope that I don’t offend anyone this week.
– If you ask me what religion I am then I will tell you that I’m not religious.
– That’s because religion hates, destroys, and kills humans.
– Jesus Christ loves, rescues and saves humans.
– I follow Christ – that’s my passion – it’s not my religion.
– Today was one of the craziest and most unpredictable days at the workplace.
– A work day like today only happens about once every several years.
– The enemy was everywhere today, so I’m glad that I had my armour on.
– Mixed in with some of the lowlights were a whole bunch of highlights.
– One such highlight was the always dependable Lunchtime hour.
– Lunch was served at the Longhorn – where nearly everybody knows my name.
– The Longhorn is one of my favourite weekly traditions.
– The ‘Cowboy Pork Chop’ – I dig.
– I’d dig it even more if it were twice as big.
– I’ve now been on Twitter for 9 months (and 3 days).
– During those 9 months I’ve sent over 1,380 tweets.
– That’s roughly 150 tweets per month – or 5 per day.
– I really enjoy tweeting, and I can’t imagine Life without it.
– It’s a form of accountability (as is this blog).
– I want my closest friends on this journey to always know what I’m up to.
– The rainy season has officially begun all across America’s Riviera.
– It’ll be a rare day or night when there is no organized rain somewhere nearby.
– This is what we’ve got to look forward to for about 5 to 6 months.
– We’ve also got to deal with an active hurricane season.
– This may be our busiest season since the record-shattering season of 2005.
– I’ll be your personal storm forecaster – not your fearcaster.
– Look to my tweets for common sense storm forecasting all summer long.
– The stock market collapsed again today.
– Money evaporated into thin air just like that.
– I’m in it to win it for the long-term.
– That’s what I said when I first went public as ‘Captain Airwaves’.
– 17 years ago tonight I entered cyberspace for the very first time.
– It only took a couple of years to go from ‘Captain’ to ‘Major’.
– I eventually took my ‘Airwaves’ and converted it into a ‘Hitwaves’.
– This weekend on ‘Saturday Night Retro’ I’ll look back on 17 years of fun.
– On Sunday I’ll mark exactly 45 months on ‘My Fantastic Journey’.
– Stick around for fresh new blog posts during this upcoming weekend.
– Follow me on Twitter in the meantime.
– Thank You for living Life with me.
– Now go out and have some fun !

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Thursday Night Mini Thoughts

– As I begin these ‘Mini Thoughts’ it’s 1:38 PM CDT on a Friday afternoon.
– That makes this a delayed edition of the ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’.
– I’m at my brother’s and sister’s-in-law home in dark and stormy North Texas.
– Showers and thunderstorms are slowly moving their way through the region.
– I’m just hoping that the power stays on as these heavy storms move through.
– Winds are occasionally gusting up to 40 MPH.
– It’s a good day to stay cool and dry inside.
– It’s a good day to play a competitive game of Scrabble and maybe some Uno.
– Uno is a longtime tradition with me and my brother dating back some 25 years.
– We may be playing a lot of Scrabble and Uno during this rainy weekend.
– The inclement weather is expected to continue for the duration of my visit.
– If I remember correctly it was like this last May when I visited here.
– May seems like the mini rainy season for North Texas.
– That’s fine, for when I return in July I’ll be able to experience sweltering heat.
– Speaking of sweltering heat – and a nice segue way …
– My flight out of Miami yesterday afternoon was more than 2 hours late.
– It actually arrived in Miami more than an hour late.
– We finally lifted up into the air at 5:25 PM EDT.
– That’s 2 hours and 20 minutes past the scheduled departure time.
– It was a smooth flight towards the northwest at 40,000 feet.
– It was in a Boeing 777.
– It was perhaps the nicest and most modern plane that I’ve ever flown in.
– I even sat in business class – no extra charge.
– I’ve never enjoyed as much arm room and leg room in any previous flight.
– It was a special and unexpected treat.
– The original 757 that was supposed to fly was replaced by this 777.
– I’m all for sudden replacements in aircraft when they are upgrades.
– We touched down at Dallas-Fort Worth at 6:53 PM CDT – nearly 2 hours late.
– It took a full hour – YES – 60 minutes – to eventually get to our gate.
– So my 5 PM arrival turned out to be an 8 PM arrival.
– That’s when I finally met my 23-day-old niece Taylor Lesley Day.
– She is as gorgeous in person as she is in pictures.
– Have you seen the latest pictures over on my Twitter account ?
– I hope that she loves me as her lovable uncle forever.
– We picked up a large Domino’s Pizza and ate it at home.
– I was so exhausted after about 11 hours of travel time.
– I actually slept pretty good last night on a foreign bed.
– This morning I woke up nice and refreshed.
– For Lunch today we picked up burgers and fries at Whataburger.
– There’s about three dozen Whataburgers in Florida – all  in the panhandle.
– I don’t know what’s for Dinner yet, but I’m hoping that it’s MASSIVE.
– I came to Texas to spend quality time with my family – and of course EAT !
– My brother said that they give extensive tours of Dallas Cowboys Stadium.
– We may try to do that on Monday before they take me back to the airport.
– I’ll be back at home late on Monday night.
– Tomorrow night I’ve got another edition of my ‘Saturday Night Retro’.
– I’ll be remembering one of the greatest years of my previous life – 1987.
– On Sunday I hope you’ll join me for ‘My Fantastic Journey’.
– I’ll be featuring a local homegrown (Dallas Texas) Christian Rock band.
– Those are my ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ for now – one day late.
– Better late than not at all.
– Be sure to follow me on Twitter, and stay tuned as the blogging continues.
– You won’t regret it pal.

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Animals Blogging Life Money Travel

Tuesday Night Grab Bag O’ Thoughts

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow – It’s been a rough couple of weeks with the stock market experiencing a near meltdown due to European economic crises and apparent human error on Wall Street. It’s negatively affected my retirement savings plan in a big way. After reaching a new record high on Friday April 23RD my savings had dwindled in value by a MASSIVE 6.5% as of this past Friday May 07TH. It’s the biggest one-week and two-week drops percentage-wise for me in nearly 18 months – since the two weeks immediately following the 2008 Presidential election. The good news is that even with the recent short-term drop my retirement savings plan is up by nearly 65% over the past 18 months. It’s all temporary. What goes down – must come back up again. It’s reverse gravity. The immediate goal is to not panic during these occasional financial meltdowns. The ultimate goal is to have enough money in the plan to live on when it comes time to retire – whenever that may be.

Boots: 1993-2007 – My little buddy Boots died 3 years ago next week on May 17TH 2007. Boots carried my unique personality in a little 10-pound feline body. Anybody who thinks that a cat can’t be trained to do what you want them to do obviously didn’t know my cat. I was fortunate to live with Boots for nearly 12½ years until his premature death. He died way too young, but he was actually dying a slow and increasingly painful death during his final few years. His longtime doctor finally convinced me that putting him out of his misery would be the last great deed that I could possibly do for him, and so on that very sad morning I watched him go to sleep for the final time. A memorial still exists today at the far end of one of my living room couches where he often relaxed.

Happy 21ST Birthday To Taylor Lesley Day ! – That’s 21 days young. Two days from now on Thursday afternoon I’ll be meeting the newest member of the Day family for the very first time. She’s Taylor Lesley Day, and she’s my niece born on April 20TH 2010. She was born to my lovely sister-in-law Christina and my little brother Danny. She weighed in at 7 pounds 12 ounces at birth and her height was 20 inches. I’m sure that she’s above 8 pounds now and perhaps an inch taller. I can’t wait to meet her in person. In fact I can’t wait to buy her very first teddy bear. I’ll have my brother use my phone to take a picture of  Taylor and I and then I’ll tweet it to my followers.

Blatant Promotion – The regular blogging continues on-location from the northeastern suburban corridor of Dallas Texas. After flying from MIA to DFW and then meeting my niece I’m sure that I’ll have about 50 or so ‘Mini Thoughts’ to share this Thursday night. On ‘Saturday Night Retro’ I’m hosting a HI-NRG dance party straight from the heart and soul of 1987. On Sunday The Truth that is ‘My Fantastic Journey: It’s In The Lyrics’ continues. It’s all right here on my blog – my Life. Thank You for being a friend and living Life with me !