The Blog

Author’s Note: This article has been significantly expanded upon since originally written. I haven’t changed any pre-existing content, but have added author’s notes at the end for the sake of those that want to read the new material without having to re-read the entire article. So that’s interesting news huh? Let me guess, you probably didn’t know that Amazon just decided to go whole-hog (that’s “all the way” for you Yanks) into the meal kit market, did you? I see you’ve got that blank stare. What’s a meal-kit?  Ok, back up and let’s catch you up to 2017. We live in a busy world, an incredibly busy world. To keep pace and keep on top, whether for better or for worse, people are changing the way they do things. Meal kits are a good example. Say you want to be a good cook, but don’t have the experience? Or let’s … Read the rest…

For the last three years I’ve been wanting to write. The search for a good plot to wrap the reader’s mind around really proves the old adage true – there is indeed nothing new under the sun. Regardless of the hooks I want to use, they’re already taken and for the most part they’ve been done very well. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. The genre I think I’d most enjoy writing would today be called post-apocalyptic fiction, or prepper-porn depending on whom you read. Something happens to change the way the world works in a fundamental way and the characters either struggle to adapt to the new world as it has become or they hunker down to survive some sort of short-term hardship with the hope that life will eventually return to normal, they will be able to watch Game of Thrones again on HBO, and … Read the rest…

So I get an email today from siteground.com, the web host I use to host this website. They host all the small stuff I do; my company, Amy’s company, etc. I rarely ever have any issues with them and they’re good for the price. The email warns me I’ve exceeded the allotted amount of CPU utilization in a 24-hour period that I’m allowed. Now that my friends is hilarious. I’ll spend the time to draft an important article, put pictures with it, proof-read it, and post it and I’ll be lucky to get 4,000 views on it in a month. I spent 30 minutes last night writing off the top of my head about random doodoo and boom… the server gets hit too hard. I checked the traffic statistics and it was somewhere in the range of 8,000 views on the blog post in 12 hours. Really? About nothing. Beard … Read the rest…

I was looking through the blog tonight and saw how very few posts I’d written this last year. Then I looked over at my original blog I’ve hosted on blogger for the last decade or so. I made my first post on that blog on February 9, 2005. Between then and June of 2011 I composed 1,296 different posts. Some were of course short; one or two paragraphs. Most were pages and pages. I’ve never known to lack for conversation, even with myself it seems. In six and a half years of writing on that blog I posted almost 1,300 times. If you consider my average repeated abuse of the vernacular, that’s somewhere around two King James Bibles worth of whatever was in my head at the time. I covered everything from gaming, to recipes, relationships, friendships, my trip to Europe, my time in Africa, and a lot more. In … Read the rest…

So, I admit it. It was indeed inevitable. If you order enough things enough times from enough vendors, someone is eventually going to try to pull one over on you. So this past week, I (read as my wife) got robbed by an employee of Dell, in conjunction with probably at least one other person though I admit the accomplice part is pure conjecture, but seems reasonable. We hired two new doctors at Bear Creek, which means I have to order my wife two new laptops. The field doctor gets the new Panasonic Toughbook for ruggedized outdoor work. I ordered that on 6/26 from Panasonic. The in-clinic doctor got a fancy new Dell XPS15 quad core business grade laptop without all the ruggedized features. Both were ordered the same day. I’ve ordered custom Dells in the past so I’m familiar with the wait time that sometimes accompanies a high-end purchase. … Read the rest…

I was reading an article tonight about Amazon getting ready to hire 100,000 new employees between now and 2018 to work in its new stores. The downside was the news that of course relates to such a booming industry; stores like JC Penney and others are downsizing or shutting down stores by the hundreds, with one of the giants laying off a total of 8,000 employees when they recently shut down their entire nationwide chain due to the inability to compete with retail giants like Amazon. If you follow the technical news, and I do so religiously, its almost impossible to miss the trends in other areas towards robotics; from Amazon admitting to wanting to add more robots to make things run smoother and faster to commercial trucking one day soon being completely overhauled with driverless vehicles. Then there is the inevitable trend, even in food-service industries to start adding … Read the rest…

This is going to make some people angry. For that I apologize. This also needs to be said, so I’m saying it. For the record, since many of you out there reading this might have no idea, I’ll clarify where I’m coming from. I’m speaking in this article from the viewpoint of a firearms instructor. I’m not speaking as a white male, as a citizen of the south, or as a person that hates either police or people of color. I don’t want to start this off on the wrong foot. I AM a white male, who happens to live in the south. I DO respect the police and think they have an incredibly hard job to do in today’s climate. I DO think that it is true that black people are more likely to get shot today, than they were three years ago for the same thing. But I also … Read the rest…