zBlackX

I’ve been meaning to revisit a previous post about the price of gas. (Ken even encouraged me to update this a while back.) I didn’t put it in writing in that post, but I predicted we would never see $2.00 gas again. Turns out I was wrong; probably because the economy has crashed so hard.
I’m not sure I’ll do much better at predicting the future of the economy then I did predicting gas prices, but I don’t have a good feeling about it. Time will tell.

I seem to remember a discussion on Ken’s site a while back about $4.00 gas.

(I can’t find it now. It’s possible it was not in a post but, in off-topic comments on something else, and I don’t have the patience to search the whole site. It’s possible I’m remembering stuff that didn’t happen also.)

I don’t know what the price of gas in Tennessee is, but as of a couple of days ago we have $4.00 gas here in Phoenix.

Worse, I suspect it’s not done going up.

We had our first 100 degree day this year earlier this week. In fact it got up to 114 the next day. The high today was 74, quite a drop from just 2 days ago. It might be a dry heat here in Phoenix, but anything much over 100 is just hot!

Yesterday, as it was cooling off the people over in the next cubicle were discussing whether it was raining yet, or not. The consensus was it was raining (they could feel the rain drops hitting them), but it was not visible on the ground, so someone said, “It’s a dry rain.”

I received this at the end of an email earlier today. I found it amusing enough to share.

“Notice: No trees were destroyed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
“DISCLAIMER: This e-mail is a natural product. The slight inconsistencies in spelling and grammar only enhance its distinct character and are in no way to be considered flaws or defects.”

Ken talked about his keyboard dying recently. My monitor gave out last night. It had been acting up for a while, small twitches, probably indicating a capacitor was marginal somewhere in the circuitry. Whatever gave out caused each pixel to show up as about a 1/2 inch tall, smeared, and all piled up on top of each other. Not readable at all, although I did manage to click on the right blur and shut the system down on about the 6th try. Now I’m using a 14″ with too much red. Everything on the screen has a vague pink tint to it.

An interesting article about time sinks, “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.” Well worth the read.

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It’s been a long time since I posted. Ken seemed to think I should have had something to say before this but every time I looked nothing came to mind.

But GPS saved Jesus.

Baby Jesus gets GPS
Baby Jesus ’saved’ by GPS
Stolen Jesus statue tracked by GPS
GPS Jesus nabs thief — Plastic son of God defended by satellite angels
Thief arrested for stealing baby Jesus with GPS

This recipe was supplied by a co-worker after a holiday office get-together we had.

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Squeeze the juice of 1 orange into a large bowl.
Peel 1 orange and separate into sections. Dice the sections and add to the bowl and stir.

Decore and dice 1 apple; add diced apple to bowl and stir.

Decore and dice 1 pear; add to bowl and stir.

Peel and dice 1 banana; add to bowl and stir.

Add 1/4 cup of chopped walnuts and 1/4 cup of raisins or Craisins and stir.

Serves 4.

Add remnants to your compost, if you have one.

You can add more fruit or less to the salad to suit your taste. Some people, for example, will add another apple or banana in order to serve 5.

The fruit salad goes good over cheese cake or plain cake or with ice cream. I like mine with Irish whisky. Serve the whisky on the side.

For variety, add strawberries, blueberries, sliced grapes or other fruits. Use fresh fruits. Whisky is good fresh too, but will keep indefinitely.

If you like, use canned fruits. Save a lot of time by making the salad from canned fruits, and the salad will keep longer, too, but canned fruits have preservatives and sugar added. The recipe above uses only fresh fruits, so only it has only the natural sugars and no preservatives. Irish whisky comes in glass bottles, is good any time, but you probably won’t be able to keep it very long.

I have a friend who will have fruit salad and whisky in the evening. It takes him all night and he still doesn’t finish the fruit salad.

If you want to save time, put all the fruit into your compost and just drink the whisky. It’s even quicker to not even bother with the fruit.

Regards . . . Jerry O.B.

If I’m over the hill, why is it I don’t recall ever being on top? — Jerry Muscha (as per slashdot.org)

“You’ve got to ignore the voices. They are not on your side, and you never tell anyone about them, especially your teachers. They get panicky for no reason.” Reese — “Malcolm in the Middle”