O-Dark-Thirty

I have a confession - I don't crave pickles or jalapenos like I used to. About six weeks ago I got off one of my blood pressure medicines and since then I haven't craved pickles or any salty foods like I did before. My blood pressure is fine still. However, it is summer and we do have quite a few cucumbers. Time to make some pickles! Here's the four jars of refrigerator pickles I put in jars last night! (I used the same recipe I mentioned in a previous posting .) They'll be ready to eat in about four weeks. Along the same lines, here's a picture of some of the stuff we're growing. The cucumbers went into the pickle jars, but so did the little hot peppers. Frankly, they are not very hot (really) so I don't think they'll make a difference in the taste, but it seemed like a good thing to use them for. The leafy things on the right are Chinese spinach, a red-veined edible amaranth (yeah, I had to go look it up). A nice young lady at the plant

I am an expert at ETL: Data Extract, Transformation and Load. I didn't know this until my brother helped me rewrite my resume. When I described what I did he told me ETL is a current business buzz-word and much-desired skill. That's nice, I guess. In my job we spent many, many hours extracting data in various formats and getting it into a NASA ISS database. In the early years that involved a lot of OCR - optical character recognition. OCR has certainly improved in the last two decades. Budding authors have exactly the opposite problem. You want to take your computer file and convert it to paper - a book. A very nice lady at church asked me about our books a few months ago. The first book that my wife and I published ( Preparing for the Fiscal Cliff ) was very small (but, arguably, important). This lady wanted a copy, but wasn't interested in the electronic version. When I put my latest book out ( My Mother-in-law Misadventures ) this sweet woman was disappointed th

Every article on writing good blog posts says you need to be consistent. I follow a number of blogs, so I know this is good advice. Back when I started writing my blog I decided to post on Prime Days. That's an okay (if somewhat quirky) schedule, but hard to follow. In the early part of the month I need to be creative as I post on the third, the fifth, the seventh, the eleventh, the thirteenth... you get the idea. Near the end of the month I get long stretches where I don't post. I guess that's not very consistent. I think I will try a different schedule, but bear with me while I try to work it out. Since I average about nine posts per month, I'll try to switch to twice a week, once on Mondays and once on Thursday or Friday. I'm not sure yet, but we'll see how it goes. Thanks for your patience. Usagi, who now runs free through the neighborhood, also thanks you.

And, yeah, I like the suit. Spoilers: since I can't seem to figure out how to do those really cool spoiler tags in my blog that other bloggers have, I'm doing it the poor man's way - spoilers are white text on a white background. If you see a gap in the text, it's a spoiler of some sort. Just highlight it to read it. A review First of all, I'm a Superman fan. Let's just get that out of the way right at the beginning. I watched the old black and white versions when I was little. I delighted in the 1978 version with Christopher Reeve (though not much of a fan of Margot Kidder). I don't think I missed an episode of Lois and Clark and I thought that Dean Cain was an excellent Superman (and was a fan of Teri Hatcher). I didn't enjoy Superman Returns at all. I'd like to scrub that one from my mind actually. I'm also a Spiderman fan. The Sam Raimi trilogy for Spiderman violated a Spiderman premise when the webs shot from Peter Parker&

Bioshock Infinite (PS3) It's a game - and it's a story. Having said that, there might be some spoilers here, so be cautious. My two youngest gave me the game for Father's Day (thanks, kids!). As an aside, I might add that I think they should move Father's Day to Saturday morning or Friday night, so we Dads can play with our cool presents all weekend. As it stands I actually took Monday off work and indulged myself in an entire day of playing Bioshock Infinite . Darling was sweet about it, but doesn't see the attraction. What can I say? I am a gamer. It is too bad that I tied up the 52" television all day. It is fantastic that I played on such a large screen, though. I played the game all the way through to the final battle, or what my Dear Daughter read was the final battle, and I failed. At that point I had played over eleven hours on Monday and it was time for bed. I was tired from so much gaming (and had taken a mere 740 steps all day!).

I'm not sure what the purpose of a blog is. I enjoy writing one, as long as it is on my own schedule and I don't need to cater to the whims of others. After all, it's my blog - the only whim I should cater to is my own. To date I have 241 posts, and 38 of those are Draft versions that I may or may not post (37 without saved titles). Some are too introspective and others too boring. Some are simply files I tried to capture from one of the computers I decommissioned and I thought I might be able to make a post of them someday. I started writing on my blog on 5/10/2011 when my Dear Daughter said if I didn't start a blog she would take the name O-Dark-Thirty . My first blog post was the written version of the short speech I gave the church on our mission trip to Africa. It is still one of my favorite posts (and it was an awesome trip). I don't have categories on all my posts. I didn't learn about those until just a few months ago. I went back in time and

The archetype Superman in movies One of the Wired reviewers didn't like the new Superman movie . I can't comment with any knowledge, since I haven't seen the movie yet. However, lack of knowledge never stopped me before. It usually doesn't stop anyone. Aside: One friend sent me a quote yesterday from Thomas Sowell's piece on Townhall where he says "There seems to be something liberating about ignorance and inexperience. You are free to believe whatever you want to, unencumbered by hard facts and, if you have political power, to impose your headstrong ignorance on those with first-hand knowledge." Since I am ignorant on so many issues, this seems to allow me to speak on any subject - and perhaps be taken seriously. Don't take me seriously… Please. Back to Superman So, anyway, this reviewer doesn't like the movie. I sent this review to my buddy Wes and he commented back to me "Well, it was well written and he hit on some goo

Grabbed this from CNN. Sorry guys. Over the last couple years I wasted thousands of dollars on classes designed to teach me things that would provide me with other streams of income. Let's see. I was very excited and dropped about a thousand on a class to teach me to do programming for the iPhone without doing any real programming. The same information is now available in eBooks that cost less than twenty dollars. I spent about a thousand dollars on a course to teach me how to write eBooks and create massive wealth by writing hundreds of excellent books. You can really get wrapped up in the pitch, let me tell you. Again, that same information is out there in eBooks and some are probably free by now. Of course, hundreds of them were written by people who bought the course. I spent some hundreds of dollars to join a writing "club" where the members helped each other by reading each other's books. (If you want to know the actual name of the club, send me an em

I am a Futurist. Seriously. I have the degree and everything. Currently the program is operated at the University of Houston and they now call it Strategic Foresight. I belong to both the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) and the The World Future Society . Back in May the WFS solicited submissions for the next issue of their magazine. They wanted a three-hundred word essay on what might disappear by the year 2030. I scribbled off a short fiction piece and sent it in. Not surprisingly I just received a very nice rejection letter (always know your market - they rarely do fiction) . Undaunted I turn now to my own personal audience, my blog readers! (I love you both!) Here's my short short-story, clocking in at 319 words. Enjoy! The Doorway The air smells of ozone as I walk along the streets, small rivulets of water flowing next to the curb, carrying bits of debris from the passing thunderstorm. Glass storefronts reflect distorted images of the neon signs i

James Altucher has a new book! It is called Choose Yourself and available at Amazon in Kindle and paperback versions. James will actually pay people back when they read his book. Well, he has plans to refund your money if you read it in the first ninety days of publication and send him the receipt with proof you read the book. Details of his deal are on his blog . His dear wife Claudia thinks he lost his mind. I mention James in a lot of my posts, actually. I first mentioned him when he wrote a post about Memorial Day that had me thinking. I also thank him in my newest book, My Mother-in-law Misadventures , but he probably doesn't know that. He's the one that made me realize it was possible to self-publish my book . (And no, my Dearest Daughter, self-publishing is not the same as vanity publishing. It's a lot more work.) I've read 27% of his book according to my Kindle reader. Much of it relates to James' Daily Practice, which is amazing, but he gives mo

I mentioned my buddy Bill was getting his new puppy over the Memorial Day holiday. Bill said in his weekly report " Spending time with Sawyer, previously called Nolan ." I like the name Sawyer. Here's a picture (taken at the breeder's, Ammo's Brittanys ). Status of the My Mother-in-law Misadventures : I currently have 27 downloads from Smashwords (all using the free coupon which expired last week) and one sale on Amazon . Though none of my friends have written a review, our dear friend Tammie wrote me and said "Bought it, read it, LOVED it!!!! I could envision every scene and laughed out loud many times. She was a character and much loved." People don't realize how important good reviews are for book sales. Our last book was downloaded over three hundred times and received only one review, for three stars. I consider three stars perfectly acceptable. I even belong to a book club for which I bought the membership. The idea was that eac