Monday Morning The Vat was just fine. Reloaded.

We had a good Thanksgiving. Both of our families were dealt with without any violence. My family can be particularly difficult, but they were good.

With the ongoing changes in search engine tech it is time for me to begin recoding our websites with CSS and html 5 compatability. For years I have just been wedging stuff into the sites wherever I can make it go. The web maintenance end of this operation is really nearly a full time job in itself. I am going to start with the Art by SVC site. I am focusing on getting templates in place so I can build the site faster and be able to add to it with more ease. I also want to make our Google Ads, Stevia, Apple and PetSmart ads fit in better. We make very little from them but it does pay our webserver fees in the fall. Every little bit helps.

Labor Day Preparation

Tomorrow, as some people know, is labor day in the US. The history of this day is a little odd. Politics being what they are, Labor Day and the international May day celebrations both sprung from the killing of US workers by police and military in Chicago. Wikipedia has covers the details here, for those who want to peer into our history for a moment.

Saturday Sue and I went out to see my mother. She is somewhat depressed by the death of my aunt (91 yrs old), so she needed a visit. Mom is still getting around and seems determined to stay mobile. She is staying up on politics and becoming more certain that "they" are lying to her. I am glad to see that at 87 she can still recognize propaganda. It gives me hope for us all.

Well, I got distracted, I just spent an hour looking at how to videos for planting vegtables. I think I need to learn, or remember, a lot of old information. The web is an amazing tool. I am glad to be in this tech world. Just plain fun.

Tomorrow (monday) we head out and buy a new stove, the old one's spirit is gone. *sigh* it is always something. We should be able to hit a good labor day sale or two. We are looking for a small stove, there are just two of us. I'm looking forward to doing some baking in a reliable oven.

Audio, is it one of the medias of the future?

What other form of entertainment can you fully enjoy and still 'work'? Audio includes Podcast stories (like my own), Radio music, news, shows, audio books, and talk shows. It allows your mind to exercise while you perform those menial tasks from shoveling snow, laundry or just driving somewhere. I think this has a real and long term future. Even as I work on this I am listening to a Rex Stout novel.

Another Flint professional has an interesting article on the Radio Industry. You can follow this link and give it a read, or have your browser read it to you....

Just be sure to enjoy life. It is not a trial, it is the penalty.

Another Day in Flint

I just got Sue set up in the Flint Etsy Handmade show downtown Flint. I need to get Sue to take a couple of Pics of the event and her set-up. Hold on while I switch and e-mail her. Still there? Ah, good. Lets see if she picks up the message.

I know that our town has a reputation, but its not so bad, well, not for an aftermath city anyway. I was surprised at how many people had come out of their rubble piles to check out the show. They seemed to be a nice young, well armed group. It should be interesting.

Actually the crime rate has been dropping radically here in Flint for the past few years. Personally I think its because people stopped coming to our town and we are just short of targets. Which reminds me, whose coming to visit? This has nothing to do with anything, but I need to renew my hunting license.

OK, while Sue is at work I have a chance to really go wild. I think I'll start by catching up the dishes and then move on to a rousing round laundry. Now thats some crazy stuff. Maybe I'll get a chance to squeeze in a couple more pages of the Gatekeeper comic as well.

Interesting Holiday

On wednesday we received news that Sue's Grandmother had died. She was 94. The death was not unexpected so it was not overly emotional, however, the extra duties on top of satisfying two families was tiring. That will have to do as an explanation for my infrequent postings.


We had hoped to get down to LeftoverCon for a visit, but with everything happening we just could not do it. I wish we had been able to work that out.


The family visits on Thanksgiving were a little strained. My not being able to eat the unknown foods at both families places caused some raised eyebrows, but, well, I have not felt this good at the end of this holiday weekend in years. It was the right thing to do, and darned difficult to do. I just do not know what commercial foods I can eat and feel ok, so I have to duck them all.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about what to do with my blogging/podcasting. I am finally forming some distinct thoughts on the subjects. I will be trying to use different blogs for different purposes. This one will highlight my twitter comments on the side and personal comments in the body. I'll use twitter to do vague updates of projects/duties that I finish that you folks may want to take a look at.


For Dragon Storm I want to try to get some good "content" on the DS Beta and LJ blogs. A longer explanation of how and why cards exist should be a good place to start. It will be an illustration of the Chaotic world of Dragon Storm by sticking information about the world in the original comments plus in responses to questions that come up in the Beta blogs and LJ blog.


I have been putting up links to articles I have found of interest on that blog. Since I spend some time everyday searching for material to use in gaming and life I may as well pass it on. One of the things I have learned as I search the web is that I have an awful lot to learn about this communication thing. Sometimes knowing how much there is to learn is daunting, but what the heck, I'll just keep plowing onward.


At any rate I think I'm starting to sort out what is going on in my mind and a way to split it out into a series of blogs.


At any rate, if you what to dig through my different blogs to see what interests you, you can find them all at our handy dandy links page. dig through and see what interests you. Let me know if there is something more you want to see.

Unbelievable Food

Sue made two small entirely organic lasagna's today. It is extremely good that she froze one before cooking. It was unbelievably good. I've had a number of these in good resturants and none of them are even close to what Sue made. I'm not sure if I want Sue to have more time to cook or not....

She also made organic chocolate chip cookies. I ate every one I could get my hands on. Again, Sue put some of the batter away. OK, so I had Mild too. Right now I am typing this, drinking coffee and enjoying a relaxing day.

It has Returned, not good.

My gut infection has reared its ugly head again. The blood and pus is running through, but it should not be in me anyway.

As some of you know all too well, stomach problems are no fun. I'm afraid that it is ultimatley my own fault that it is back. I have let a number of noxious comerrcial foods to return to my diet.

The result is that I am temporarily out of action as movement is causing me dizziness, and other less attractive reactions.

I will be able to fix this as long as I eat very carefully and just clear the system and the mind.

Everything is fine in Flint

Well, saturday off started fine, then it headed downhill.

We had a chinese lunch at a place called Hong Kong Buffet in Flint. The service was good, the people were nice. OK, thats the high point. The buffet had a good selection, reasonable price, fresh food and rather bland taste. The Buffet was just OK. What you do not want to do is order off the menu. Sue ordered Almond Boneless Chicken. What she got was bland and did not even resemble Almond Boneless Chicken. Sue did not eat it and complained. They said they would just charge for the buffet. When we got the bill, it was not that way.
My feeling: Find somewhere else to try. Buffet average, service good, menu poor. I did find three glowing reviews of this place on-line. I do not know where those people ate, maybe the restaurant has gone downhill since those reviews.

We had rain all day saturday, 5 inches in all. I headed down the basement to be sure our dehumidifier was running. I found water, and not water I wanted. We bailed out a 100 gallons of water and called for sewer help. We moved out all of our equipment out of the basement and now the house is a mess. It is going to take a couple of days to get things in shape around here. The worst part is that it is still frakkin raining. Tonight it is supposed to rain. What a surprise. At least our sewer is working now.

Sue is down at the Flint Farmers Market selling today, so I'm on clean-up duty and I'm scheduled to get the new art pages for Sue's website done. With all of the copyright silliness going on I am having to tag every piece of artwork with a creative common license. For most we are using Non-commercial, attribution, no change copyright. That means people can use the images for personal use, but they have to attribute the work to Sue. I have about 130 pieces ready to go, now I need to make the pages.

Well, off to work.