Welcome
- June 10, 2021
- World Art Nouveau Day 2021
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I am one of those who have always practiced art appreciation. I like the notion of creating more than we are and having those creations remaining for posterity.
However, my standards are not those of many of my peers.
The subjective nature of art in general renders it 'junk' to some and 'treasure' to others. Thus is the nature of humanity and individual taste.
Art Nouveau is an international spin on the style of art, architecture, and other applied and decorative art.
It is known by various name in different languages. Suffice it to say in the US the genre is known as "modern style".
World Art Nouveau Day is dedicated to art nouveau and has been celebrated annually on June 10th since 2013.
While I am all for art and artistic pursuits, some of those examples of Art Nouveau appear somewhat tawdry and of lesser appeal that say ...
the classics.
I am compelled to pursue those avenues in my own perception of what is new and remains art.
Not anything nor everything qualifies in my mind's eye. It's rather like a novel by Stephen King.
Eventually some examples appear to simply stop trying to be art.
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- June 9, 2021
- Feast of The Venerable Bede
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When I was a kid in high school, my senior English teacher, Mr Charlie C Miller, spoke of a person known as 'The Venerable Bede' and his reference was to some of the poetry and poets we were studying during the progress of his project which he called a 'lap' that we dutifully completed.
Sadly I don't remember the specifics in this my ever advancing age; only that it took a great deal of class time and covered many topics.
Bede was an English Benedictine monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom of Northumbria of the Angles.
He was born c 673 in the Kingdom of Northumbria which was an early medieval Anglo Saxon kingdom in what is now Northern England and southeast Scotland and passed on May 26, 735 in Jarrow, part of that same kingdom.
He popularized the use of Anno Domini – in the year of our Lord when dating forward from the birth of Christ.
It appears that Bede's main claim to fame was as a writer, historian, and poet largely based on his Historia Ecclesiastica and he is recognized as being one of the first academic historians.
He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1899 by Pope Leo XIII in Rome.
He holds many accolades and european edifices are named for him to this day.
The list of his writings are quite impressive even for a modern man much less the ancient scholar which he was in his time.
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- June 8, 2021
- World Brain Tumor Day 2021
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In tribute to all brain tumor patients and their families the the German Brain Tumor Association, Deutsche Hirntumorhilfe, has declared World Brain Tumor Day beginning in the year 2000 as an international commemoration each June 8th.
Neuro-onocology is the branch of medical science concerned with brain tumors.
World Brain Tumor Day attempts to bring this research to the fore and make it known internationally in an effort to stem the tide of suffering secondary to the devastation for which this disease process poses causality.
One of their goals is to find a cure for brain tumors.
Another is the transfer of knowledge, cultivation of expertise, and the promotion of interdisciplinary approaches to treatment.
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- June 7, 2021
- Memories of Prince
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Prince Rogers Nelson was born June 7, 1958 and passed prematurely on April 21, 2016. He was known in professional circles and to his fans as Prince.
His career was that of a singer-songwriter who played many instruments, a record producer, actor, and director. He was one of the brightest musical stars the world has known.
He is regarded as one of the greatest musicians of our generation and was famous for those genres within which he chose to play — and often performed most or all of those instruments utilized on his recordings.
He was known for his flamboyant and androgynous persona, and that exceptionally wide vocal range which included a far-reaching falsetto and high-pitched screams.
The tragedy of Prince is how his ending came. He died at age 57 due to an accidental fentanyl overdose while he was at his home compound awaiting previously scheduled treatment for substance abuse.
He was one of those performers who was an acquired taste for me personally, but I grew to appreciate that talent which he couldn't help but prominently display as both time and performances went on.
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- June 7, 2021
- Exploit Upswing
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I've noticed a lot of exploits from western Europe and Russia lately. They don't concern me much because all I do is firewall those offending subnets immediately then go about my business.
The present setup provides for a single firewall rule to control the entirety of LAN and WAN access.
The general thrust is either hijacking a remote desktop connection or meaningless web access via spiders.
Either way, I'm not there to be walked by some dummy with a spider they wrote. The thought of gaining remote access to my network is pretty laughable given the hoops through which jumping is required ... it's all looking like some young hacker wannabe trying to flex technical musculature which simply isn't there. Duh.
I remember having the same thoughts when I was a youngster in the beginning on the West coast accessing forbidden resources and getting into trouble.
Back then they would come and see you if you went to the wrong place because everything was dialup. With the advent of internetworking I suppose there simply are few resources for maintaining order ...
Or the impetus given that the bulk of jurisdictions are too preoccupied with lining their own pockets with taxpayer dollars much how the democratic party of the United States is presently engaged.
It's all okay though because maintaining control is fairly easy as long as you can whip up a firewall rule in short order — and I can.
As I always say, the resources are there for public access but behave or begone.
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- June 6, 2021
- Shrek the New Zealand sheep passed in 2011
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I don't have a lot of experience with sheep. When I was younger I became attached to a goat given to my daddy upon his retirement by his best friend. It was a horned nanny named 'Gem' and I encountered this goat when it was quite young.
Gem didn't know that she wasn't a human child. She would play with the nephews and nieces whom mama would watch during the day and would leap and frolic with them as though she was just another niece.
My daddy never understood the pain I went through when he took the goat to market and sold her. I understood that getting caught in the fence continually was problematic. But then there was the issue of the goat identifying itself as a family member and having that reciprocity from me made the issue of taking Gem to the market more problematic for me personally.
While I had formed an emotional attachment to the animal, Daddy just saw her as another goat.
On this day in 2011 Shrek, a 16 year old castrated male Merino sheep from South Island, New Zealand passed away.
Born in 1994, his claim to fame was remaining unsheared for 6 years and subsequently grew a gigantic fleece.
Typically Merino sheep are caught and sheared annually.
When he was finally caught he was not recognized by his owner.
He looked like some biblical creature.
John Perriam, Shrek’s owner commenting on his discovery after 6 years of growing wool.
It would appear that good grooming goes beyond the human realm into those of sheeples.
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- June 5, 2021
- Hot Air Balloon Day 2021
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One of those things in life I believe I'll forego is a hot air balloon ride. It's not that I don't trust the technology per se ... it's primarily my wish not to be high up in the air. I have similar feelings about airplanes, helicopters, spaceships, and so forth. I remember returning to Chicago after leave from the Navy and thinking just how high up in the air 45,000 feet appeared. Shudder !
It's not a fear of heights so much as a fear of falling. I even have issues with tall buildings. I recall going to the observation deck at a very tall building in the Post Oak area of Houston adjacent to the Bechtel office building where I was working. It felt as though the building were swaying in the breeze ... and I had problems awaiting the elevator's return to the ground floor.
Travel in a hot air balloon is about as old as flight gets for human beings. The first manned flight in 1783 by the Montgolfier brothers in France not withstanding; it simply has not been something for which I found allure.
Each year Hot Air Balloon Day comes and goes. Each year I decline to involve myself in the ecstatic pleasure of being suspended from an envelope in the basket of a gondola hoping that the thing doesn't catch on fire from pilot error or come into contact with some set of high tension wires. Both present opportunities for abrupt drops to the ground and subsequent mortality.
I suppose I just don't feel lucky. If you do and are so inclined I hope you'll take any opportunity which may arise for a hot air balloon ride. I won't ever knock anything just because it may not appeal to me personally.
Happy Hot Air Balloon Day to you !
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- June 4, 2021
- Remembering Tiananmen Square in 1989
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This entry concerns the concept of the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 Memorial Day which are in effect memorials for those lost in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
My personal exposure was via the television back in a time when I felt that the main stream media actually had conscientious news agency goals and not the libtard presenter of democrat misinformation which preoccupies them presently.
History will likely frown on the government of Communist China who would just as soon murder their own citizens with armed military as kill us with viruses they cultivate in the Wuhan laboratory so they can better steal technology and other secrets courtesy of the Biden family criminal organization and the rest of the democrats.
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 are known in China as the June Fourth Incident. These were student led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989.
The Tiananmen Square Massacre ocurred when troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military advance into Tiananmen Square.
These protests began on April 15 until forcibly suppressed on June 4 when the government declared martial law and mobilized the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing.
Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.
The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the 1989 Democracy Movement aka Tiananmen Square Incident.
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- June 3, 2021
- New UPS units for the servers
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Both of my UPS units being well beyond end of life, one started giving a battery failure ... in the middle of the night no less.
I took this opportunity to replace the server UPS units in a preemptive manner.
The new units are the APC® Back-UPS Pro 10-Outlet Tower Uninterruptible Power Supply, 1,500VA/900 Watts 1,080-joule, BN1500M2.
They have the benefit of only having to back up the actual server. None of the associated infrastructure will be loaded onto them as I have a third UPS for that.
These units are designed for medium sized offices and should help to keep the electronics protected in the event of power spikes, surges, as well as outages. My tiny implementation should be a walk in the park for them.
After all, the web and mail servers remain mission critical because these boxes connect me to the outside world in my old age.
I just hope they last the same 10 years as the last two have.
Good luck with that !
My up close and personal inspection has revealed quite a bit more dust than should be there. I'll be hitting that with the vaccum, damp cloth, and electronics wipes directly.
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- June 2, 2021
- I remember Leave it to Beaver
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When I was a kid, one of those early programs I could be found watching was the latest episode of Leave it to Beaver, a family oriented sitcom of my early childhood. The lead was Jerry Mathers, who portrayed the various antics of Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver along with his brother Wally and various friends and schoolmates featured in the episodes.
I followed this program for a rather extended period of time, well into syndication after the run had completed ... mostly as a function of missed episodes and that failure to absorb a lot of that which I watched due to my various preoccupations.
Gerald Patrick Mathers was born June 2, 1948 and became a performer at he age of two. I lost track of him after his enlistment in the Air National Guard. I saw him with shaved head and in uniform and pretty much wrote him off as a performer at that time.
I never really engaged his acting again but he was an important part of my life during the Leave it to Beaver years. It is my understanding that he is an accomplished singer as well but I have never seen him engaged in this type performance.
His divergence from my existence saw him marry three times and have a few kids. He also developed type 2 diabetes (such as that I have) and he was the first male spokesperson for Jenny Craig.
He has had a weight problem with which to contend and I note that every time I see him in the media he is smiling and appears quite happy.
I miss the old days when we were kids and I lived vicariously through his character's antics on the television program. I dare say that Beaver was certainly no more troublesome a child as I and I'm glad that Jerry Mathers has been able to enjoy his life after being a child star.
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- June 1, 2021
- Remembering Andy Griffith
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When I was a kid there was Andy Griffith, Barney Fife, Aunt Bee, Opie, Ernest T Bass, and Otis among Floyd and all the others on the Andy Griffith Show.
He was pretty much a fixture in my entertainment life for as long as I can remember — but my childhood in particular.
Andy Samuel Griffith was an actor, comedian, television producer, southern gospel singer, and writer. He was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina on June 1, 1926. He passed at his family farm in Manteo on Roanoke Island in Dare County, North Carolina on July 3, 2012.
Even when I encountered him in other presentations alien to that image of him I retained in my head he was still the Andy Griffith of my memories.
My Grandma Sallie loved Matlock. She was partial to legal shows like Perry Mason so this was a likely attraction based on her other stated tastes. So Andy Griffith got another run with me and Grandma sitting at her teevee, volume as high as it would go.
I remember the day he died from a heart attack at age 86 at his home. I recall that I thought his final affairs to be rather rushed as he was interred within 5 hours of his passing. I can only believe that these extremely fast proceedings were a part of his will and last testament.
Be all of this as it may he remains one of those people I will always remember because of my exposure level to his art and those others he shared with me as the result of those scripts he brought to life.
Rest in peace.
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- May 31, 2021
- Clint Eastwood remains a favorite
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There is a small collection of actors upon the earth that I truly respect and admire. High among this number is Clint Eastwood Jr.
This actor, film director, composer, and producer piqued my interest as a child portraying Rowdy Yates in Rawhide, which I watched with my father early on.
In my late teens and young adulthood it was Harry Callahan that kept me coming back for more.
Since then I have been keen for staying in touch with his work and he has afforded me countless hours of enjoyment for my infinitesimal trouble.
Some of my favorite examples of his work include Gran Torino, Space Cowboys, Unforgiven, The Dead Pool, Heartbreak Ridge, Pale Rider, and Firefox.
However, if you're ever entertaining me you certainly will be in good stead with anything he's done. I will sit, watch, enjoy, then praise your excellent theatrical taste!
Clint Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California after being elected in 1986.
In 2000 he received the Italian Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award, honoring his lifetime achievements.
He has also received two of France's highest civilian honors, he received the Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1994, and the Legion of Honour medal in 2007.
He has also won four academy awards but I'm afraid that the oscar just doesn't mean much in that leftist libtard reality they force upon the world anymore.
I'm sure he is happy to receive them, however and I certainly cannot begrudge him for an award which once was more than it is now.
He remains a tour de force in the world of entertainment with me and I will continue to follow his work as we grow older. He is 90 years old today. Happy Birthday to you !
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- May 30, 2021
- The Feast of Joan of Arc
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Over the years I've read a lot about Joan of Arc. I have seen theatrical presentations regarding her life. I have wondered wide eyed long and hard regarding those events which constituted her existence and it's cruel end by fire at the hands of men claiming to represent the Almighty.
Known also as the "Maid of Orleans" and the "Maid of Lorraine" Joan of Arc was a a young girl living in medieval France who became a French military leader at 17 in an attempt to restore the rightful king to the French throne and claiming to have actually heard the voice of God and believed that God had chosen her to lead France to victory in the 100 years war with England.
As a consequence of her actions today is the day in 1431 that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake as a heretic by a politically motivated tribunal consisting of pro-English and Burgundian clerics at Rouen, Normandy.
There was an overwhelming lack of incriminating evidence presented against her.
She had charges of cross dressing among the 12 issues concerning her arrest.
On May 23 1430, she had been captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction who were a group of French noble traitors with allegiance to England.
She was an illiterate peasant woman who was able to confound the most educated group of people from her era. Her execution was primarily a ploy to remove that embarassment she posed to the elite who could neither defeat her in battle nor successfully conduct a campaign against her.
Her executioner stated after the execution that he greatly feared to be condemned to Hell for he had burned a holy woman.
In 1456 court of inquisition authorized by Pope Callixtus III examined the trial and debunked the charges against her. She was pronounced innocent and declared a martyr.
She was canonized May 16, 1920 by Pope Benedict XV at Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
She is now Saint Joan of Arc. Her attributes are Armor, banner, and the sword. She is the patron saint of France, martyrs, captives, military personnel, people ridiculed for their piety, prisoners, soldiers, women who have served in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), and Women's Army Corps.
She has been a popular topic throughout history and she is the subject of many examples of literature and art since her death.
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- May 29, 2021
- World Digestive Health Day 2021
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It's another World Digestive Health Day.
It is held anually each May 29 under the auspices of the World Gastroenterology Organization.
It promotes a select disorder to be covered from a standpoint of public awareness, prevention, and therapy.
This year's topic is obesity and the impact of collateral morbidity caused by the presence of being grossly overweight.
So all you obeast blivets get out there and make yourselves aware of that national tragedy secondary to fast foods and poor dietary habits.
The stupid food industry has forced upon you death by diet in the name of profits so they just shovel you into an early grave much like you shovel that greasy fast food down your gullet with wild abandon.
Piggies unite ! World Digestive Health Day tries to get your diet straightened out before it straightens you out horizontally !
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