In addition to changing the theme (overall design) of the blog this week, I’ve also deleted about 30 categories. Hopefully this will make it easier for you to find something of interest to read.

I am also working on an e-commerce catalog of some of the merchandise I and a helper make, a wiki for stuff that interests me but is not directly related to the blog (recipes and so on), another blog at http://nmwoodworks.com/gardening, an ftp site with some special interest audio and document files and, and, and …

As a result

As a result of deleting the categories, there are, at present, precisely 123 posts labeled “uncategorized”. Until I can assign proper categories to the orphaned posts, consider that category a ‘grab bag’ of sorts and an interesting study in the human psyche.

Well, mine, anyway.

The network news is tonight eulogizing the Rocky Mountain News. Let us all take a moment to solemnly reflect on the demise of a dinosaur that could have adapted but chose not to. yet another cherished institution.

Okay … I just had to get that out of my system. I feel better now. As usual, there’s more after the break.

Click here to read on, my friend.

Mr. President Obama is looking more and more like “Bush with a Blackberry”.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/obama-adminis-1.html

I’ll probably add more to this later, but I thought I’d pass this much of it along today.

If you were seduced into voting for him, did you really think that B. H Obama was for ‘change’ or did you just like his Superman pose? Click here to read on, my friend.

This is the fourth in a ten-part series.

Most of us are considering the possibility that we may have to retrench our finances. For some, this goes unnoticed, just one more part of the ebb and flow of life. For others, it’s traumatic.

Here are some suggestions for how to actually enjoy life on the cheap. Click here to read on, my friend.

Last fall, on one of those almost-warm autumn afternoons that Michiganders relish so much, with leaves changing and just a bit of chill in the air, a little girl in a frilly dress, sweater and patent leather shoes ran toward me in the parking lot. As I knelt to meet her, she launched herself into my arms and wrapped her arms in a death grip around my neck. I scooped her up and stood with her, swaying back and forth like we always did … or would, if we had ever hugged before.

Click here to read on, my friend.

As more and more of us enter economic hard times, this is beginning to look like the real thing … a genuine, dyed in the wool Depression with a capital “D”.

My Grandparents fed 11 kids on a West Virginia farm during the “Great Depression”. They had about 50 acres, of which eight or ten were horizontal. According to my Dad, my Grandpa was one of the 9 worst

Click here to read on, my friend.

“DPS fails kids, fed school chief says” – Detroit News, 2/14/09 front page

Well, much as we agree with that statement, Mr. Arne Duncan, Education Secretary under President Obama, was quoted as saying “I am extraordinarily concerned about the poor quality of education, quite frankly, the children of Detroit are receiving. I lose sleep over that one.”

Quite frankly, Mr. Duncan, what little credibility you once had, evaporated the moment you unloaded that lie on us. Click here to read on, my friend.

This is the third in a ten-part series.

“Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on a pugilist: It reduces him to his fighting weight.” — Josh Billings, Humorist Click here to read on, my friend.

That, at least, is what his new boss, Peter Karmanos, would like us to think. Click here to read on, my friend.

A big worm with gnashy-gnashy teeth, slimey skin and a taste for your wallet.

I pulled the short quote below from a BBC article about a worm attack which is estimated to have roughly 9.5 million active infections on computers running Microsoft Windows as an operating system.

Let me say that again … Nine Million, Five Hundred Thousand infected computers which could be used to simultaneously attack a single computer and kill it. That’s bad. Real bad if you happen to rely on that computer (which, by the way, you do – keep reading and I’ll explain later). Then having gotten their first taste of blood, they could move on to attack another and another, like some modern day Babylonian army of well-armed locusts. Odds of 9.5 million to one and having the element of surprise in their favor would likely tilt the odds wildly toward victory for the attackers.

“Yawn” you say, “there are millions and millions more computers in the world. We’ll just get them all to fight back.”

Yeah, you and which army of programmers?

Click here to read on, my friend.