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Time to Cleanup My TextExpander Snippets

I ran across a terrific blog post by Thomas Borowski discussing his TextExpander snippet for Pelican blog posts. I have my own snippet for such purposes, but love his solution for Slug creation.

TextExpander is one of those small pieces of software I use every single day and can’t imaging doing without. The premise is simple, a short bit of text expands and turns into a large amount of text. For example, I use dates a lot in my day job, so I have several simple snippets that dump dates in the right format. Number one on the list is ,ds which expands into 2014-03-22.

Jealous Car

Yes, I’ve mentioned it before, I love my Prius. It’s a great car and I’m not ashamed to say it. I love the cool technology and the pleasant ride, and I love the great mileage. It is a terrific car.

But, I do love, lust after, and dream of the Porsche 911. Yes, it’s Porsche, like Portia.

What a lovely car.

Catchup

It has been a while since I’ve posted anything. Some fun stuff going on, so here are some updates.

I finished NaNoWriMo 2013 as a winner! What a fun challenge. Everyone should give it a try. If you have ever thought of writing a novel, start thinking about it now for the 2014 NaNoWriMo. Start roughing out an outline.

Catbird Is An Actual Bird

Catbird is an actual bird!

“The catbird seat” is an idiomatic phrase used to describe an enviable position, often in terms of having the upper hand or greater advantage in all types of dealings among parties.
According to Douglas Harper’s Online Etymological Dictionary, the phrase refers to the Gray Catbird and was used in the 19th century in the American South.
Source
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Dragons Past and Present

Below is a paper I wrote for a college lit class. It was a fun research project. Enjoy – Bill

Dragons appear in our oldest mythology and folklore. Dragons have been a source of terror and mystery, throughout history. They populate early mythology, medieval literature, the Renaissance, and modern fiction. The dragons of today share many characteristics of the dragons from our earliest folklore and myths. No longer the feared hero’s antagonist, or the confidants of emperors, today dragons live on in our fiction.

People Are Challenging

I make no claim to understand people. In fact, I’m often confused by peoples motivations or responses.

For a long time, I was convinced that my lack of understanding was a result of my own limitations. I believed I was either naive about the situation, or I had put up too many barriers between myself and others to ‘grok’ their meaning.

We all have so much in common, so why is basic communication so difficult? We are all born, we all die, we all suffer, and we all experience occasional joy.

Old Words

Packing, boxes, tape, more boxes more tape…. That’s my life for the next few weeks. I’m getting ready to move. Finally facing reality and ditching the too-big house and moving into an apartment in the part of town where stuff actually happens.

And I am going to use this opportunity to shed much of the stuff I’ve been hauling around for the past thirty years. We’ll see how that goes.

Common Questions

People are funny. Most folks require a certain comfort level to ask certain questions. But coming out on your blog does encourage those close acquaintances or friends to ask questions. That’s cool. So here are the most common couple of questions.

By the way, I’ve noticed including certain words in a blog title, such as big, ass, gay, and party generates an interesting array of visitors to the site. I’m not sure what they are hoping to find :-) but I hope they are not too disappointed.

Scalzi's Take on Privilege

John Scalzi ruffled some feathers again on his blog when he used a gaming metaphor to try and explain to the Straight White Male players in life that they are on the lowest/easiest setting. It’s an interesting read and plenty to think about.

Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is – Whatever: You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the ‘Gay Minority Female’ setting? Hardcore.
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My Big Ass Gay Pity Party

I had a rough day yesterday. I let myself go to a dark place and the resulting big ass pity party wasn’t pretty.

The trigger is always something trivial or on the surface silly. In this case, a distant semi-relative posted about their engagement on that awful so-called social media site, Facebook. I threw in my congrats because that’s what you do. Of course the little green jealousy monster started whispering in my ear. Everything is so perfect for them…health, youth, love of family and friends…why them?

Gravity Arranged

How does gravity work?

Oh the dreaded scale! We’ve all heard the story about Newton and an apple. Anyone who’s been ice skating knows with personal clarity the importance of treating gravity with respect.

So how does it work? Any two objects in the universe with mass are attracted to each other. But it’s not just a factor of attraction of mass, gravity is a force affecting space as well.

Where are my thoughts

Where are my thoughts?
In small boxes and cubbyholes,
Arcane bits of the past
Whisper the names of old friends
And hum old songs.
In files, yellowed paper and faded handwriting.
Checks, receipts, manual for a long gone kitchen appliance,
To do’s and to don’ts,
Old addresses and old loves,
Old projects, old degrees, flight logs
And pictures of Navy subs.
Perhaps on the computer,
Etched on platters, matters of drive;
Work and toil, man and machine.
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Basic Troubleshooting Techniques

Troubleshooting is tracking down pesky bugs, rooting them from the code and squashing them. Having some basic troubleshooting skills can greatly enhance your bug fighting. The goal of troubleshooting is to quickly identify the root cause of the problem, however, don’t confuse troubleshooting with problem solving. Problem solving is answering the question, “Can this be done?” or “How can we do this?” Troubleshooting on the other hand is answering the question, “Why isn’t this working?

Podcasts

I am so behind on podcasts. At present…after a day of listening to podcasts, I have 8.2 days of content left to listen to. And it’s good stuff! I’m a huge fan of the TWIT network podcasts. I remember most of these guys from the old Tech TV days, and enjoyed Leo’s radio show in L.A.

The ‘I Should Be Writing’ podcast is one of my favorite writers/authors podcast. Of course NPR’s Books cast is great, but there’s something very engaging about Mur’s casts. She also has some outstanding interviews.