A Timeline of Half A Million Words

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The kongnamool is used is part of a meal involving multiple side dishes, some rice, and some pork belly, but it’s good on it’s own. 1 pound soybean sprouts2 tablespoons soy sauce1/8th cup sesame oil2 tablespoons Korean red pepper powder2 teaspoons garlic, minced2 teaspoons sesame seeds2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar (or apple cider vinegar, if I don’t have rice vinegar) Put a pot of water large enough to take the entire pound of bean sprouts on to boil. While you’re waiting, take everything but the sprouts, and mix them up in a glass or plastic bowl and set it aside. Once the water is to a full boil, drop the bean sprouts in for 30 seconds. Take them out, drain them, and rinse them with cold water until they’re cooled down. Let it set for a bit to let it dry (just a couple minutes), then put the sprouts and the mixture in a bowl and mix them up. This is one of the side dishes for “Korean BBQ” based on a place here in town that does it. But, they’re good by themselves, or, cook an over-medium egg, and drop it on top of a handful of kongnamool for tasty breakfast. Despite the amount of red pepper involved, it’s not particularly spicy!

A super-simple thai peanut salad dressing, can also be used as a dip. 1/2 cup peanut butter2 tablespoons fresh lime or lemon juice2 tablespoons rice vinegar2 tablespoons soy sauce 1 tablespoon honey1 teaspoon sesame oil1 clove garlic roughly chopped1 cup of water(Optional) 1/2 teaspoon of dry chicken bullion (crushed fine) Put them all together in a jar, and shake like crazy. You can serve it over a simple salad with lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes if you don’t want an authentic Chinese style salad.

Movie theaters are required to have closed caption devices available for the deaf. Drive-in theaters aren’t. Important to know if you or a loved one is deaf. I have a workaround for that! There’s some reasonable logistical reasons for drive in theaters to not be required to have caption systems. Still sucks, though. Another thing is old movies don’t have support for captions either, which is where this all started. I’m in a private group for movie showings, and I inquired about captions for those older films they were showing. Of course, the answer was that they didn’t have captions. Someone spoke up and said it’s possible to set it up yourself, and posted a link to a caption database. This changes everything. Local Drive-In Theater Starlite Drive-in is a historic theater here in Wichita – the last one in town, and one of the last functioning drive-ins in Kansas. Recently, they closed down entirely, much drama ensued, and members of the local community helped it get bought by another drive-in owner in Oklahoma (otherwise, the land was going to be used for an ugly warehouse type thing), and reopened! My girlfriend and I went the the drive-in before it closed, and while it’s a cool idea, she can’t keep up: she’s deaf, and without captions, she’s only getting parts of the dialog. So, I wanted to support the local drive-in idea, but I really didn’t feel good about dragging her along to something she’s not going to enjoy asRead the rest of this...

Every family has someone who writes down recipes in a book, to be used again later. That book becomes almost sacred in some families, because it holds great-great-grandmother Mayda’s secret split-pea soup recipe. And, those recipes get handed down to the kids, etc. It’s cool. I don’t have one, but Kelly does. One day I found a recipe for something that I wanted to put in her book, and she said I should get my own (fair enough.) But, let’s face it, I’m generally more of an electronic sort of guy, particularly since I’ve already got such long standing domains. This is my attempt at my own recipe book. This includes things of my own (which I rarely write down, but are rarely the same exact dish twice), and stuff I found on the Internet. Now, I could just set aside and area for links, and call it good. There’s a couple of reason I don’t do that – I hate the format to start off with. I don’t need 6 paragraphs of backstory on the recipe before I actually get to the ingredients list, and have the cooking instructions spread out between 6 different advertisements. Plus, when those sites go under, well, the recipe is gone. This blog turns 10 this year – it’s not going under anytime soon. And, even when I do follow a recipe, I tend to start improving it – so, I can track my changes and improvements to it. So, if you start readingRead the rest of this...

I’ll skip all the colorful story stuff and get right to the meat of this – there’s two very easy ways to bypass Tumblr’s adult content policy for some pages and discussions. This won’t work for everything, but a quick test of it showed it works fine for the web comic I was trying to read, and a few other pages. Method 1: Copy & Wayback & Paste When you run into a page with the content block, copy the URL from the URL bar. Go to the Wayback Machine ( https://web.archive.org )Paste the URL in the box that says “Enter a URL” and hit returnSelect any version of the page older than December 1st, 2018 (the content policy went into effect Dec 17th, 2018, but some pages were affected before that)Enjoy. If it’s got an archive of the page, it even includes links to the notes, etc., so you don’t have to miss out on the discussion part. Sometimes you’ll end up with broken images that weren’t archived – pick another date (before Dec 1) and you’ll probably find the images, too. Method 2: The Plugin If you’re using Chrome, Firefox, or Safari, use the Wayback Machine plugin – it’s faster than the copy / paste method. Once in installed, just click on the Wayback plugin when you run into a page that’s been affected. Select “First Version”, and BOOM! You’ve got a copy of the old page in a new tab. You can also look for other archivedRead the rest of this...

Yeah, I’m 47 now.  Of course, I’m sitting behind a computer, working on a major project, and packing up my apartment.  And, of course, thinking about the last year or so.  As usual with me, it’s been an interesting ride.  So, grab a cup of tea, coffee, or other favorite beverage, and come along for a look back at the ride.  And, given the number of trips involved, there was a lot of riding.  Oh, and since I love to take pictures of everything, there’s a lot of pictures of that ride.  This is only the highlights, and there’s a whole lotta stuff that happened at 46 (er, 27 Mk 19) that I’m just not going to bother posting. A lot of this stuff is things I’ve started to write up before, but finally getting around to writing up, using my birthday as an excuse to do it.  Some of them will EVENTUALLY get their own posts that expand upon things like the campsite and hot springs in Colorado.  Update:  OK, it didn’t get done until nearly a month after my birthday.  So, there’s some minor updates in there, some labeled, some not. The Trips: California On the road to Alpine, California Next day after my Birthday last year, we hit the road bound for California.  I had been to California plenty of times for work.  Fresno, Woodland, and a few other areas, along with having flown through LA a couple of times.  I had even seen the Pacific oceanRead the rest of this...

If you read only one rambling blog post with no discernible point behind it today, you might want to pick a different blog post.  But, since you’re already here, you might as well keep reading… Last week I decided it was time to refresh my Tai Chi (Taiji, Taijiquan, however you’d like to refer to it 🙂 ) knowledge, since it’s been a while.  I’ve never managed to learn a complete set of forms. So, I set out to find – and learn – one of the complete sets.  The source material I had learned years ago disappeared, so I began searching online to find it again. Quick primer for those who don’t know, and care just enough to wonder:  Tai Chi comes in various flavors.  Like, quite a few flavors.  Some of the stuff dates back to 16th century, and some of it is actually extremely modern.  Some of it is based on the ideal use in combat, some of it for exercise and flexibility, and some of it is vaguely metaphysical in nature by concentrating on the idea of chi (qi) manipulation.  There’s traditional styles, simplified traditional styles, and Americanized styles ;-).  And, then there’s a further modifier, what’s being used:  hands?  Sword?  Broadsword?  Or, heck, maybe just use a cane?  (Yes, there’s a specialized form just for use with a cane.) Each of these a forms.  Each form broke down into Movements.  Each movement has a name such as “The Heavenly Horse Gallops Across the Sky” orRead the rest of this...

Becoming more active in the community, and the world as a whole, has been a goal of mine for a while.  I’ve not been as good at it as I should be.  Facebook activism doesn’t count, and even that is sometime I carefully dole out (someday I’ll bother writing a blog post on the company site that explains why).  Now, I have been to a protest before.  Well, my running joke about it is that it was less of a “protest”, and more of a “loiter”.  I stood out on the corner of a Bank of America for nearly 30 minutes wondering where the rest of the protesters were – come to find out, part of them didn’t show, and since it was a cold day, a number of them didn’t bother getting out of their car. For the Women’s March in Wichita, which is part of a larger series of marches going on throughout the US, totally different story.  I’m sure some people are going to view part of what I say as negative – it’s not intended that way, it’s just the observations of a first timer.  And, there’s a second part to the post, which covers a bit of anxiety issues. Women’s March in Wichita My first inclination of how large the march really was. Trump becoming President of the United States has caused some serious unease in quite a few segments of America.  I won’t bother explaining why – that’s better documented by other people in many,Read the rest of this...

Cleo isn’t my cat – I don’t have a cat.  My roommates have a cat.  However, the cat has adopted me, loves the heck outta me, and spends a lot of time curled up on me, or hanging out in my office space.  Here’s the thing: after a conversation with a friend, I got to thinking about the nature of why the cat hangs out with me. and realized there’s some aspects of that which represent what I’d want out of a relationship.  And, no, I’m not saying I want a relationship with a cat – I’ve already had a Kat in my life, and that didn’t turn out so well. 😉 I don’t feed the cat.  Not part of my gig, and since she’s got problems with seizures if she eats certain foods (and I have no idea what they are), she doesn’t even get to lick my plate when I’m done.  That completely takes the motivation of food off the list.  Same goes for changing the litter box, providing toys to play with, and all that good stuff.  Basically, I have no real connection to the cat, beyond affection. I’ve spent a lot of my life worrying about being useful when in a relationship.  Somehow, I feel that proves my value.  By nature, I’m a fairly competent person.  I can cook, clean, do laundry, fix a car, cut down trees, write professionally, develop software, sew (somewhat – I need practice), do plumbing and construction, and… well, you get theRead the rest of this...

The God / The Universe / Deity of Choice / Random Circumstances struck oddly, so I thought I’d post and talk about this for a moment.  See, I was getting ready to write this week’s article for Advanced Mobile Healthcare, and I look at the list of topics we came up with last year (I still haven’t gotten through all of them, yet), and the top one that I kept avoid that should be easy is “Anxiety”.  Additionally, I wanted to write a post (probably entitled “A Moment of Beauty”) that was going to require I explain some things before I do. Yes, I’ve written a lot about emotional abuse.  There’s a whole section of things in my life that I didn’t write about on here, and I’m not going to.  It’s a set of secrets that, at the moment, only four people know about. When I have the chance, five will know.  Beyond that, well, some things just don’t need to be shared out. Wrapped into that whole thing is a further story, too – this one, I’ll share.  I’ve talked a little bit about the effects of abuse, and well… I understated it a bit.  OK, more than a bit.  A lot. While writing about Anxiety Disorders, I ran across this little factoid:  50% of those with ADHD end up with an Anxiety Disorder at some point.  Half.  Holy shit.  7% of adults may have ADHD (there’s under reporting issues, and over diagnosis issues).  That’s a fuckton of people withRead the rest of this...

Introduction It’s not that everything changed overnight for me.  The things that happened, they didn’t all happen in one day, and the effects were slow and gradual, until suddenly they weren’t. If you haven’t already, be sure to head over and read part 1 of this series of posts (this is part 10), in particular the Introduction section that puts this into a bit of a larger context, and gives a couple of disclaimers (like, for instance, assuming that I’m talking about a specific person or persons in these posts.)  Even if you don’t read the rest of that post, read the Introduction.  This isn’t just about a single person in my life, and it’s not about men or women.  While it happened to a guy, and it’s being told by a guy, you can change “he” and “she” to any gender you like, and it still fits.   It’s Not That Bad Here’s the first thing I want to get out of the way:  there are two phrases that go with any sort of abuse.  The first one is “It’s not that bad, other people have had it worse.”  The second one is “It didn’t really happen.” There are plenty of variants of either of those phrases such as “It’s all in my head”.  Or, there’s the ones that other people tell you, such as “You’re just being sensitive” or “Oh, seriously, get over it.” If you’re going through something like this, and you stumbled across this page, you’ll wantRead the rest of this...

Introduction This in one in what’s probably going to be a small series of posts looking back at old relationships.  I’ve been married twice, and have had a number of long term relationships, and then there’s the various short term relationships (which I have very little interest in, and haven’t had much affect on my life in general.)  Most of those relationships went well, to be honest.  I used to gauge success or failure as “am I still in a relationship?  No?  Then it was a failure.”  Thing is, that’s really not that good of thinking.  For instance, if you’re in a relationship, and it ends because it’s a bad match?  That’s a success, actually.  One or both parties realized at some point “This isn’t the right relationship”.  Continuing it would have been the mistake, not ending it. And, of course, a good number of relationships (or even what I might call “near relationships”) resulted in great friendships that last to this day.  Those are most certainly successes.  I’ve even had ones with women I was already friends with, and didn’t walk away with a bad experience, or a failure:  I walked away with a much stronger bond with them.  Generally speaking, I learned there wasn’t a whole lot of downside – as long as you didn’t let the wrong ones in. This is just one example of the things I’ve been rethinking lately.  Well, that might be the wrong way of stating it – some of it come bashingRead the rest of this...