Yesterday I procured 5 dozen donuts from Krispy Kreme with a coupon Teresa gave me. This brought what would have been a stupendous bill down to the $25 range and it was quite a stack of boxes containing 4 dozen glazed along with 1 mixed dozen which we placed on the counter in the kitchen at work upon arrival.

A couple hours later we walked in there and noticed that 3 dozen donuts had somehow mysteriously walked off from the premises and nobody saw anything and the cameras were not pointed properly to catch the exit with the loot.

After a brief spate of disappointment I ended up feeling admiration for whomever was able to walk off with the three boxes of glazed doughnuts without a trace. However, I will likely be more cautious in the future should I ever take the plunge again.
 

When I was a child I was a cub scount. My mom even took the plunge with me and became a den mother. It was all a wonderful experience ... even though I did cry when my goldfish died — though he really didn't have a chance.

I was really into it all with the uniforms, merit badges, and various other doo-dads we wore to symbolize our achievements and rank. I believe I had just become a Bear scount when I departed for good. I remain unsure of the circumstances of my cessation of scouting but feel certain it was associated with one of those moves required of we "Navy Brats" ... but I still remember the many friends and memories of that wonderful time.

Today is World Scout Scarf Day

Now when I was a cub scout I didn't call my neckerchief a "scarf". I believed that boys wore neckerchiefs and girls wore scarves. Nowadays I believe the names are all interchangeable — with a scarf simply being a trans-neckerchief or something in keeping with the wasted English language which was at that time still so proper and well defined.

World Scout Scarf Day is one of those late efforts to instill meaning into the experience of scouts by wearing their neckerchiefs in public each August first. It's all very sweet and inkeeping with that promise I felt way back then when I was young and not yet the jaded old codger I am today.

The day has been promoted since 2007 and they even have a site now. The date is significant because it commemorates the first Scout camp in 1907. It is said that "once a scout, always a scout" and while I don't quite pursue things to that degree I view the day as important and revel in all the warm and fuzzies that cub scouts let me experience courtesy of my Mom.

Happy World Scout Scarf Day and if I still had my neckerchief I'd be wearing it !
 

The Dutch artist Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Post-Impressionist painter. Though he is considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt, he remained poor and virtually unknown throughout his lifetime. His body of work has had great impact on 20th century art. He died tragically of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers, France on this day in 1890.
 

Vincent

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul

Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue

Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night

You took your life, as lovers often do
But I could've told you Vincent
This world was never meant for
One as beautiful as you

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frame-less heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget

Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will

Don Mclean

Enrico Nascimbeni, Don Mclean, Roberto Vecchioni
Copyright: Music Corp Of America Inc, Benny Bird Co. Inc.

One of those banes of my existence is Adobe Flash. My primary complaints surround the dreaded "flash ads" but I also view "flash content" as cliche anymore and could really use a dose of HTML5 on these web pages still clinging to it.

Those native capabilities to be derived from browsers supporting open standards like WebGL and HTML5 are indeed eclipsing the plugin based browser add ons such as Flash and I for one will be glad to see it leave as the has been it is for a decade or more now.

Yet the ads persist. Yet the video based sites like YouTube continue using it ... with all the exploits and old technology that goes with it.

Deprecation has it's place in IT. Flash is deprecated. It's time for it to go away. That content which is based upon it can simply evolve or go away with it as far as I'm concerned. I look forward to the day when I can banish the plugin forever ... but even I have things at work which require it.

So much for forward thinking vendors and their penchants for embedded limitations into their work by choice.