Who is June E. Botich?

She holds Patent # 6667697

Not impressed.

She holds the patent on the little raised bumps on the F and J keys on most keyboards and typewriters.

Note: Her patent is HERE. It seems to deal with putting tactile edges on keys rather than bumps. Yahoo, however, credits her with patenting the bumps.

Come this summer there will be no more tomorrows for "Annie."

After 85 years, Tribune Media Services announced Thursday that it will cease syndication of the comic strip featuring the iconic redheaded orphan on Sunday, June 13.

 

Oddly, I have been worrying about this for days!

In an earthquake, do the mountain goats fall off the mountain?

Note to self" Self, build ark!

It's more than location...

I like to watch HGTV's House Hunters International

especially in the Caribbean or Bali

many episodes are in Europe

this is what the European financial crisis means to American buyers in previous episodes:

Assume an American couple bought a house costing 200,000 Euros in December 2009, it would have cost them a little over $300,000.

Yesterday, a 200,000 Euro house would cost a little over $250,000.

Heard online

The British Petroleum oil spill is the revenge of the English  for the revival of the Tea Parties.

Nice picture, except that the dude is dead!

It's a funeral home.

The rider is recently deceased.

Make up your own joke.

The full article is HERE.

There is one of THESE guys in ever bar!

In this case, it's the Apple employee who left the prototype of the next iPhone in a beer garden.  Probably not going to be employee of the month!

ps. It look like he waxes his eyebrows.

This just got ridiculous!

Ozzie and I were eating our lunch at one the the local McDonald's -- the one attached to a gas station.

That tanker puller diagonally behind me. Before I could get out, that guy pulled the hose in back of me. I was in the second space, you can see me trying to back up.

"I need to get out."

"I'll be 45 minutes."

Then the fun ensured.

I called ConocoPhilips. The lady was nice. She transferred me to the station owner. He was nice.

He especially liked the part where I went up to the counter in the gas station and asked who was in charge.

"Nobody."

He really liked that part.

I'll keep you posted.

Wow!

Arizona is now the only state where you can be arrested because your name is Jesus.

"Dead man was stabbed"

That was a headline in today's STL Post-Dispatch.

My first thought was "Why would anyone stab a dead man?"

Hurray for Hollywood [Sign]

For some reason, Howard Hughes owned all of the land around the famous "Hollywood" sign. His estate now owns it and they want $12.5 million or they plan to cover the slopes with condos. UGH!

A community group has been trying to raise the money, but like a true B-Movie, they fell short.

To the rescue at the last second came none other that Playboy's own Hugh Hefner, who wrote a person check for needed $900,000. The sign is saved. Hefner comes across as a good guy. And, the Hughes estate is richer.

Schwarzenegger didn't contribute and cash, but he did show up for the photo-op. Politicians, don't you just love them!

The tree does not fall far from the apple.

Apple is now very close to being worth the same or more than Microsoft (stock price x number of shares outstanding).

Oddly, this is good news for Microsoft since it is a major investor in Apple.

It would also be good news for the Rockefeller Brothers who were the initial major investors in Apple, except that they are all dead.

NOTE: News update: David Rockefeller is alive and 95!

WHY?

I always park my car far away from everybody else!

But someone will always park next to me!

Maybe it's my magnetic personality!

Maybe they're just an...you know!

The brown SUV in the DISTANCE is mine.

When I came out a Kohl's that truck, in an almost empty parking lot, had parked NEXT TO ME.

It has to be some kind of personality defect...probably related to potty training.

This you HAVE to see (and hear).

Bird dances to Ray Charles!

The simpliest way to write "Jesus"

The image is of "Jesus" in a first century Hebrew text.

The letters roughly translate y-sh-oo-a (switching from right to left to left to right).

The pronounciation would be Y'shua (or Joshua).

The name can also be written with one or more Hebrew letters for h, pronounced he (producing Yehoshua).

Translation to Greek got rid of the ua, since Greek men's names cannot end in an a. They changed ua to us.

The Greeks also had no Y so they used I.

The J was not invented until the middle ages.

Happy Easter!

Note:  There is great disagreement over how "Jesus" would have actually been probounced. Part of the problem is that the last letter above (on the right, it looks like a Y) -- named Ayin -- is silent (like the H in honor). This might produce Yey-soo or Josh. Although the Ayin is silent, it does indicate that the word should end with an exhale from the back of the throat -- like Fonzie's "Aaay!" Other places in the Bible, where the Ayin is preceded by an H-sound, are easier to translate as "waa" as in Joshowa -- JHWSH, plus an Ayin at the end, producing JHWSH' by modern convention.

Can you spot the problem?

Enough

Saw kid last week at the milk store. Probably 16. He had his pants in back pulled to below his butt cheeks so almost all of his faded boxers showed. That kid was less offensive than bicyclists in their anatomically-correct, unisex, Lycra bike shorts. You're 30, go put on some decent clothes!

Gallows Humor

A really easy question!

Which direction is the prevailing wind at my house?

(The flowers are fake. I put them in the hostas to add some color.)

I nuked my Twitter account (again).

There is something about Twitter that I simply do not like.  Not sure what it is but I killed my account (again).

Suspicious? Do you think!

An odd fact:

Blair House (where guest heads of state stay) is larger than the White House (70,000 sq ft v. 55,000 sq ft). It is actually a group of interconnected former townhouses.

Click here for some interior photographs.

[The tall building behind Blair House is the New Executive Office Building.]

Makes texting while driving seem somewhat insignificant...

Rolling meth lab explodes on I-44 near Union

UNION — Two people who ran from a burning car authorities describe as a clandestine methamphetamine lab were taken into custody Monday in the woods along Interstate 44 near the Union exit.  Full story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

puh-tey-toh, puh-tey-tuh

Tonight: A chance of drizzle before 7pm, then a chance of sprinkles between 7pm and 1am. Cloudy, with a low around 40. North wind between 9 and 13 mph.

I de-reactivated my Twitter account:

Call Supernanny!

At least he's got a good look at her ankle tattoo!

It is sometimes difficult to understand Google

Why Google spends time and money on some things is often difficult to understand. The new Google Public Data Explorer falls into that category. It is major nifty -- you can chart all sorts of information. I am still not sure why you would want to!

Can't make this stuff up! From St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Threat of real tornado postpones drill


ASSOCIATED PRESS

03/09/2010

ST. LOUIS — Statewide tornado drills scheduled for today in Missouri and Kansas have been postponed because of a small risk of an actual tornado.

Took this photo yesterday (Saturday)!

Drop by for some used Ginsu Knives and, maybe, a couple blocks of marble?

Still in sneezing rehab..

Oddly, all they talk about is sneezing, which makes me want to sneeze more!

Cleaning out closets.

I can't stop sneezing.

Is there Sneezing-Rehab?

Start your week with some optical illusions

Click here.

In case you fell bad about missing my birthday...

No, wait,I actually have one of these! [True!]

Call me if your bulldozer even breaks down!

This was the week that was...

A Pennasylvania school district passed out 2,300 laptops, then used their built in cameras to spy on students, at home, in their bedrooms. [Note: This is the logical result of our conservative supreme court saying schools can control what students do when they are off school property.]

There is a rooster loose in the Soulard histroic neighborhood south of downtoan St. Louis. It is keeping people awake with its crowing. So, and I am not making this up, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed a law against roosters in the city. It is unclear how to enforce the law against a ferrel chicken. [Note: The rooster is universally known in the neighborhood as Jerry Seinfeld.I don't know why.]

GM is going to paid the CEO it sacked $60,000 A MONTH for 20 hours per month of consulting. Anyone who still does not understand why the US auto industry is a diaster please raise your hand!

I have a friend who was in Manhatten when the planes flew into the WTC towers. He was in Austin this week when the plane flew into the IRS highrise. Spooky.

Hey!

It snowed, again!

Maybe they took 'Get Organized' to seriously!

This is truely strange!

NOTE: It's the same guy. It has been photoshopped, probably for a phtotgraphy class.

The good jokes never get old:

The Olympics.

People trying to win jewelry.

I received the original message. I thought they'd gone nuts!

SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAM

I had to turn Comments off on all postings, hopefully just a s short amount of time. I have been hit was spam Comments bad!

The greatest waste of time ever!

Stare Down Betty -- Click Here

She blinks at random.

Ozzie likes to sit out in the cold, so I have a web camera in the garage so I can see when he wants in.

The door is actually open, but just not quite wide enough. Ozzie refuses to push a door open.

The creepy thing is that he appears to be looking at the camera.

OH THE HUMANA...oh you know

Just as every guy knows that clothes dryers eat socks, every guy also know that individual Cheerios escape from the box only to fall to their death This is the only explanation for the numebr of Cheerios on my kitchen floor.

Jim's big garage sale!

I'm selling thing on eBay!
The snowblower and power tools get the most bids.
I have a bad habit of buying the most expensive power tool to do one specific thing--so most of the saws have cut one board max.

Use some Monday time adding to this list!

Top 10 Worst TV Spinoffs of All Time

Wow! That was a close one!

The Jersey Shore gang almost didn't sign for a second season!

But they did.

Pity if all that talent had gone to waste!

What are they famous far again?

Here's the odd twist: Jersey Shore's second season will be filmed in Miami.

I guess so no one would have to a buy shirt.

"15 Worst TV Spin-offs Ever"

Kind of fun, from EW online. Click HERE.

Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger dies

It's difficult now to remember how controversial this book was when it was published. The big issue was whether high school students should be allowed to read it. Holden Caulfield was seen as an anti-hero, a rebel by teenagers. To adults, he was just plain nuts.

I read it as a kid, eight grade maybe, but then I read almost everything as a kid -- even the books the city's Liberian kept under her desk. This always included the books on the New York Times Best Sellers List (me reading and her hiding). In the 1950's, where I grew up, this was somewhat dangerous for both of us.

Scary that the U.S. government banned books into the 1960's, they're only words.

It's a website that reports crimes involving meat!

Yep, click HERE. Crimes involving meat.

Need a date for Saturday night?

Looking for the ladies, go to cities with the blueish dots.

Looking for dudes, go to the cities with the brownish dots.

The larger the dot, the better your chances.

Click HERE for the full article.

Do this to Ozzie and you'd have no fingers!

Click HERE for more doggie dress-up pixs.

Higher education is a wonderful things!

Here, waste some of your Monday work day looking for unusual scholarships!

NOTE: I have sat on scholarship committees. Many scholarships receive only a handful of applications, even the non-wacky ones.

Note 2: No, I don't know who the dude in the tree is, or how they got him up there.

This is not a fake!

The Republican senator-elect from Massachusetts posed nude for Cosmo. It was for a good cause. He did it for the money.

Another right of Winter

I went to the eye doctor (Optometrist) today. I have insurance, so I needed my lenses changed. Could see that one coming!

Need salt?

The salt is on the floor of my garage. You can see the bumper of my car in the lower left.

IDOT does a great job in the winter. Before it begins to snow, trucks are sent to wait on the shoulders of the roads, all night if necessary. I had a friend who did this in the winter, until his IDOT truck caught fire and burned to toast (he's okay). IDOT dumps tons of salt, and then keeps plowing and salting until the roads are clear. Oddly, the roads often look snow covered but they are just stained white from all that salt.

On the way into town, there is an S-curve on the north side of a hill. IDOT strays liquid salt on that stretch of highway almost every night in the winter, just in case!

I guess this is what he is referring to...

TV preacher Pat Robertson said the quake in Haiti happened because the Haitians had made a deal with the DEVIL to gain their independence (in 1804).

I guess this is what he is referring to--Haiti is the only nation to have achieved independence by slave revolution.

Historical note: Many of the French colonists in Haiti fled with their slaves to Cuba. From there, they went to New Orleans, helping to ensure the city's French heritage.

How do they think of this...

Babies holding their dads.

In answer to an email...

Yes, I scrape the icing off of Christmas cookies, it violates my 'no food touching food' rule.

Search "Frozen Wave Pixs" on Google or Google Images

This is an example of what you get!

When I was young...

Poor people where I lived made their own ketsup -- today the exact same thing is called salsa!

You could tell where poor people lived because they had cedar shakes on their out-buildings. The farm houses originally had cedar shakes but, when they had enough money, poor people replaced the cedar with tin. Now, rich people have cedar-shake roofs.

My mother hated antiques. She considered them to be old furniture because, when she was growing up, all her family could afford was old furniture. (i.e., Hand-me-downs -- my toddler bed was already over 80-years old when I was a toddler. I still have it, in a closet.).

We were ahead of our time.

Yes, it's a guy hanging on a pole.

Probably the first episode of Russian Idol.

Maybe this won't be a waste of time!

Click HERE to find missing money or unclaimed property by state.

This is NOT a pay site.

The subject of today's sermon is 'Godmode'

Actually it's not a sermon but a hidden Windows feature that lets users access all of the operating system's control panels from within a single folder.

This works with Windows 7.

It also works with Vista 32 -- but it causes problems with Vista 64.

Left click your desktop. Select NEW, and then FOLDER.

Simply rename the folder you just created:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Yes, I know that seems stupid and way too simple but it works.

As always with Windows, be sure to create a Restore Point and a Rescue Disk before making any changes.

I gave myself a present!

I heated the driveway -- and, actually, part of the street!

This has to be one of the strangest news stories...

MacBook allegedly shot by Israeli security officers

Click HERE for the story.

Don't it always seem to go -- That you don't know what you got till it's gone

The photo shows Pennsylvania Station, New York, built in 1910. The photo directly below is a view inside that large area that sticks up above the roof line. Note the scale of the building in relation to the size of the people in the photographs. Penn Station was demolished in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden, shown in the last picture below. The tracks and passenger areas under the station are still there--but the grandeur is gone!

NOTE: There never was a Track 29!

CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO
Glenn Miller
- from "Sun Valley Serenade"
- words by Mack Gordon, music by Harry Warren

Pardon me, boy
Is that the Chattanooga choo choo?
Track twenty-nine
Boy, you can gimme a shine
I can afford
To board a Chattanooga choo choo
I've got my fare
And just a trifle to spare

You leave the Pennsylvania Station 'bout a quarter to four
Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore
Dinner in the diner
Nothing could be finer
Than to have your ham an' eggs in Carolina

When you hear the whistle blowin' eight to the bar
Then you know that Tennessee is not very far
Shovel all the coal in
Gotta keep it rollin'
Woo, woo, Chattanooga there you are

There's gonna be
A certain party at the station
Satin and lace
I used to call "funny face"
She's gonna cry
Until I tell her that I'll never roam
So Chattanooga choo choo
Won't you choo-choo me home?
Chattanooga choo choo
Won't you choo-choo me home?

It's that time of year again!

The guy above is having a religious experience, or freezing his b@lls off. My guess is it's both! The larger picture is below. Note that in the U.S., this would probably constitute child abuse (if you ignore the religious aspect of it).

As we have discussed almost every year, the Feast of the Epiphany is celebrated in the West as the Twelfth Day of Christmas--the day the Maji showed up with the presents. Only Polar Bear Clubs jump into icy water, and that's on New Years Day, and it has nothing to do with religion (but probably a lot to do with booze).

When I was young, we celebrated January 6th as Little Christmas (called Nollaig Bheag in Irish and we got presents).

The Russian Orthodox and many other Eastern Churches celebrate the Epiphany as the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. Priests bless the water and then the faithful take the plunge--going underwater three times. In some areas, a priest will throw a wooden cross into the frozen river or lake and the local yuts jump in in a mad scramble to get the cross. This all takes place on January 19th (because of difference between the Gregorian Calender (us) and the Julian Calendar). See photo from Siberia below, yes, Siberian, on January 19th!!!!!!!

In past years, we have seen Russian soldiers taking the plunge and a special pool set up in Moscow's Red Square. THIS LINK will take you to more pictures.

As you might expect, this used to be done primarily by men and (before cameras) mostly naked. THIS LINK is to a set of recent pictures of the faithful who still observe that practice. Please note that there is male nudity and, in their defense, it was very cold! [NOTE: I deleted the link because some of those going into the water might have been under 18.]