Category: Misc Stuff

14 years ago, my smokin’ hot wife, Cyndi, and I were married.  It has been a wild exciting ride up to now, and I hope for many many more.  Did I mention she’s hot?

It is now officially 2013.  Happy New Year!

Image from striatic via flickr

See that foot?  See those sandals?  When we in Serbia, I bought those Sandals for around 1,500 dinars ($25ish).  Well, I literally wore them out!  In the summer, they were my shoe of choice.  Before we left, I had them wore out.  I’ve been looking for ones like them ever since.

Well, things are looking up.  Since today, when I found this picture, I’ve finally been able to ask for a quote from my good friends at Saleigh Mountain Leather in Hermann, MO.

After I migrated the website to an updated platform and enabled SSL, I thought I should check for dead links.  Well, I found and corrected a bunch…I have a bunch more to finish.  In this process, I found many of my dead links were for sites that had either gone dark (meaning I couldn’t find anything about them), moved (and left some sort of redirect), or just updated their site.  In some cases, I don’t really care; however, in others, I wish I had the stats or main idea the article was making.  So, here’s my question for my readers that blog:

How do you think I should deal with content from other sites?
How do you handle it on your blog?

Also, when the sites went dark, I was removing the links from the text and adding a note at the end including the link (just not hyperlinked).  What do you think about that idea? 

Image from sheeshoe via flickr

Cyndi got me minecraft for my birthday.  Not the lego version (above) but the PC version.  I’m excited!

This is a very post-modern sign.  No posting of signs….except this one to say no posting of signs, of course.

I get teased some quite a lot unmercilessly about the amount of coffee I drink.  It is unwarranted.  Now, I don’t drink that much.  2 cups in the morning (normal mug sized) and 1 or 2 travel mug sized cups once I get to work.  That is it, except for the odd time Cyndi and I go out for coffee.  That isn’t that much, IMHO.  Especially because it is filter coffee.

In Serbia, it was another story.  I would drink 1 liter of Serb coffee in the morning.  Then go out for 2-4 more coffees during the day (or have some at home).  

Image from h is for home via flickr

I’ll put it simply:  I think that learning a foreign language if you are going to stay in the US is worthless.  What’s the point?  You can travel thousands of miles in any direction and run into only native English speakers.  What benefit does learning a language provide?  Except for people who have a reason (translators, etc…) I would say there is none.

Now, things change if you move or travel to another country.  When we moved to Serbia, all business with the government had to be conducted in Serbian (perhaps our government could take note).  Most people around us spoke no English so to just live, we had to learn Serbian.

But say you want to learn a language.  As a native English speaker, which language do you pick?  I’ve been thinking about learning another language living in Europe to help ease my pains as I travel.  Which to pick though–I thought I had written about this before, but I can’t find anything on my site…guess not…arg, I can’t even find the article I remember reading.

Anyway, which to pick?  This morning, the Telegraph had the top 10 (for the UK).  Here is the article (a slideshow really) and here is the list:

10. Portugese
9. Japanese
8. Russian
7. Cantonese
6. Arabic
5. Polish
4. Mandarin
3. Spanish
2. French
1. German 

For me, Spanish in high school took the desire for it away.  I’d only learn French if I were to live there.  I had seriously considered Russian (somewhat good in Eastern Europe…although Serbian has allowed me to get by as much as I think Russian would) and German.  Glad to see German was at the top.

Image from tochis via flickr

…so if I blog about not having anything to blog about today, have I really blogged?

Image from uggboy via flickr

Cyndi wanted to go see The Phantom of the Opera in London.  I told her to get the tickets and we’d go.  Well, we went and she had a great time.  I had an ok time…there were holes in the play that I wish would have been filled in.  I liked Wicked better…..  After, we had dinner at the best BBQ in London.

[Updated 2012-12-26 14:34:31] Some of the links didn’t work.  I updated them.