– Let’s get spontaneous.
– Let’s be extreme.
– Only 56 more hours until Daylight Saving Time ends and Standard Time begins.
– I’m lookin’ forward to that.
– I’ll appreciate the hint of daylight on my way to work shortly after 6 AM.
– I wish we stayed on Standard Time all year long.
– It was another meeting-filled Thursday at work.
– I was in our conference room for about 3 hours of various meetings.
– It’s sort of like the boardroom on “The Apprentice“.
– I dig it because I never get fired.
– If you adore the hot and humid weather then this is your last gasp to enjoy it.
– More normal temperatures return next week with a series of cold fronts.
– I’m also expecting a major cooldown in about 2 to 3 weeks.
– I hinted about that on my Twitter account last night.
– Are you ready for an unusually chilly and wet winter season ?
– December, January, and February could be ridiculous around these parts !
– I’m lookin’ forward to much lower electric bills this winter.
– They typically average as much as 60% lower than during the summer months.
– I’m hoping to kickstart ‘The Major’s Walk-A-Thon’ on Saturday December 05TH.
– That’s where I walk around my neighbourhood early on Saturday mornings.
– I pray for my neighbours, enjoy God’s creations around me, and get healthy.
– Those are 3 things that I never did prior to the start of this fantastic journey.
– 3 weeks from tomorrow morning my long road trip to and from Texas begins.
– I plan to start packing up my car with odds and ends to take with me soon.
– The best part of it all is that I can bring whatever I feel like bringing.
– There is no charge for my luggage, and there is no weight limit.
– Sat. is Halloween for those of you that care enough to send the very best.
– I’ve got a special double feature for you here on the big scary blog.
– First in the morning it’s a special ‘Halloween Morning Shenanigans’.
– Then at night on ‘Retro’ we’re gonna do “The Monster Mash”.
– But before that tomorrow night is Disco night.
– I’ve got the # 1 smash in the U.S. the day Jimmy Carter became President.
– Be sure to check that out, and enjoy your upcoming weekend !
– Be safe, and turn around – don’t drown.
Category: History
It’s the 102ND edition of the weekly ‘Grab Bag’ of my miscellaneous thoughts:
1. It’s not supposed to be in the lower-80s outside when we wake up early in the morning, and we shouldn’t have heat indices way up into the mid-90s late in the afternoon – during the final week of October ! This is not normal South Florida weather for this time of the year. If you want more normal weather then stick around. I see a very gradual cooling trend beginning this weekend with a noticeable cooldown in about 10 days. How much cooler ? Stay tuned !
2. I tend to accumulate a lot of loose change in one of the small compartments of my car. Sometimes it gets totally out-of-hand where if I were a real annnoying person I could actually buy an entire fast food meal for over $5 in all loose change – but I would never do that. What I try to do is to pick out about $0.75 or so in quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies so that I can use it for exact change whenever I walk in to a fast food joint or store. Whenever I do that it always seems like the total cost of my bill is so many dollars and 98 cents, so I end up using no change at all. When I don’t prepare in advance with loose change I end up getting a bill for something like so many dollars and 2 cents – or 14 cents – or 26 cents – or whatever so that I end up getting another pound of loose change. Make cents sense ?
3. For a whole year from November of 2007 through November of 2008 I suffered through 8 colds. It’s been nearly an entire year since then, and I can only remember one minor cold over the past 12 months – and even that one cold may not have actually been a real cold. There have been sick people and their nasty germs all around me everywhere I go, and yet I’ve miraculously stayed on the healthy side. I know though that it’s only a matter of time before the germs gather strength and invade my body like there’s no tomorrow – when I least suspect it no doubt.
4. One of the places that I now avoid as much as I can is Starbucks. It’s where I picked up at least several of those 8 colds from 2007 into 2008. Once I stopped going there (both locations – Homestead and Florida City) – the colds stopped. Nevertheless I have a dilemma to deal with now. Yesterday morning I tried this for the first time ever, and it was outrageously scrumptious. It was perhaps the most delicious instant coffee that I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. I want more now ! I may eventually find myself at a nearby Starbucks purchasing some more of them, or I may even buy some online.
5. 4 years ago this week we were dealing with the aftermath of the surprisingly devastating Hurricane Wilma. It was the most destructive hurricane to affect South Florida since Hurricane Andrew 13 years earlier. Water, power, and telephone service (mostly cell) was out in some areas in a wide swath of South Florida for up to a month, and traffic jams lined up at the rare gas stations and grocery stores that were actually open for business. Due to a blatant lack of preparation on my part I waited in line for gas for about 8 hours on one of those early days of the aftermath ! It seems like it’s been more than only four years since that chaos.
Be sure to check out my ‘Thursday Night Mini Thoughts’ later this week !
This week it’s the TOP 5 greatest Microsoft Windows operating systems of all-time:
1. Windows 98 – It was the greatest Windows ever made, as it fixed everything that was wrong with Windows 95. I was utilizing at least one remaining Windows 98 system at work all the way up until the Summer of 2007. That operating system was tough !
2. Windows XP – Ask me again in another year (or less) and I may declare this to be even greater than Windows 98. Over 8 years after its initial worldwide debut at retail this is still by a MASSIVE margin the most utilized operating system – Microsoft or otherwise – in the entire universe. Its current market share ranges somewhere between 60% and 70%. Most of the systems that I manage at work are dependable Windows XP systems.
3. Windows Vista – I bought my current Windows Vista system at home during the Summer of 2008, and I’m very happy with it. I like Windows Vista a lot. We only have a few systems at my workplace that use it though. Eventually those will get upgraded from XP to Vista through attrition. From what I understand the brand new Windows 7 is to Windows Vista as Windows 98 was to Windows 95. It fixes what was wrong with its predecessor, and it adds a bunch of cool new features.
4. Windows 3.1 – I had never heard of Windows before this version that was on my very first modern desktop computer system that I bought about 17 years ago in 1992. That was a cool little 486SX (that cost a small bundle). My original dial-up bulletin board system and subsequent web sites that were the ancestors of this here blog were born on that very first system – courtesy of Windows 3.1.
5. Windows 2000 – This was technically the debut of Windows 5.0, and Windows XP was technically Windows 5.1. My experience with Windows 2000 systems at work was rather limited as we stuck with Windows 98 for an extended period of time and then went straight to Windows XP. Windows 2000 had its issues, but it certainly was nowhere near the debacle that was Windows ME !
We’re kicking off Halloween here on the big blue blog as ‘Retro’ brings back two treats over the next two Saturday nights.
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Halloween was a fun event back in the day. I remember a bunch of them all around my Lanham Maryland neighbourhood from 1975 to 1980. Trick-or-treating in our favourite costumes was the in thing to do back then, as we cruised from door-to-door and from street-to-street up and down Red Wing Lane, Wren Lane, Wood Thrush Drive, and Nightingale Drive. I probably dressed up as Batman more than any other costume. Into the early-1980s I outgrew the whole dressing-up part of Halloween, but my little brother was just getting into it as a grade school student. I walked him all around our McLean Virginia neighbourhood and also into the adjoining Madison Of McLean and King’s Manor neighbourhoods in search of globs and globs of candy.
Back in 1986 while I was living in the U.K. Bronx New York rapper (and former disco deejay) Kevin Smith – better known as his stage name – Lovebug Starski – scored an ENORMOUS radio and club chart smash with this amazing hard-hitting track. It’s “Amittyville (The House On The Hill)” y’all !
CountUp 