Some years ago, my dad died. It was a very peaceful, graceful passing. A number of my more spiritual friends mentioned that "he would make his presence known" after his passing. Well, other than my personality traits becoming exactly like his, there has been no "sign". No dreams about him, no physical sign....nothing. As mentioned in previous posts, my mom died last November. I guess "plagued" would be an inappropriate word, but since November I have been "inundated" with frequent dre...

Well! I seem to be the tortoise and not the hare. Or do I mean the reverse? I was was going to post my thoughts about the Bush Document/New Times Roman/Superscript fiasco, but after a casual flip through some of the other posts here, I see that it has been well over done. So, tonight, I offer you simple, basic pabulum. Worst of times: November, 2003, my mom dies. March, 2004, I file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, after a really, really BAD financial year in 2003. Best of times: June...

I am completely strapped, drawn and quartered for time right now, but I just had to share...... If you're a television / news junkie like I am, this is the time of the year when all of the local television news stations put their interns in front of the camera for the first time. And maybe behind the camera too! So, this one local station put TWO new faces to cover a potential tornado touchdown here in central Virginia. Normally I would ask "Why?", but after living in Corporate Americ...

Long story short..... 2004 was an extremely bad year for me, financially. Any individual instance of a financial dilema, happening once per year, I would have been able to handle. Unfortunately for me, I was hit with about 4 or 5 financial dilemas in 2004. I was forced to file for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. My checking account was garnished by a creditor, and I started recieving court summons from various other creditors. I certainly do not consider bankruptcy a bad thing. I consider it...

Things have been getting crazy. In my "So Much To Write About, So Little Time" article, I had mentioned that my time here at Joeuser has been limited due to a combination of domestic and work-related obligations. Well, those "obligations" have grown, and the dreams that I've been having lately aren't helping any. The "real life" obligations I can't avoid. As I mentioned, there is always laundry and dishes etc. As for work, I have project (drafting) deadlines, and lately we've had a r...

Last year, August 18, 2003, Hurricane Isabel made land fall around Nags Head, North Carolina. Without attempting to look up this information right now, I recall that is was a Cat. 3 or a Cat.4 by the time it made landfall at Cape Hatteras, NC. The center of the storm tracked right over, or slightly to the west of Richmond. The damage that Isabel brought to central Virginia, and out lying areas, was extreme. Prior to Isabel, central Virginia had experienced months of "above average" rain,...

It has been one of those times in my life where everything has "come to a head". I have not had the opportunity to post any of my misguided thoughts lately. I have been drawn and quartered at work, and of course there is the obligatory domestic chores to be done once I get home. Who was it, Ben Franklin who said (paraphrasing) "Nothing is certain except death and taxes"? Apparently ol' Ben-o-rama never had to deal with dishes, cleaning, laundry or yard work. These things are defint...

I have considered myself a "Draftsman" since my last year in High School. In the late 70's (in High School), and the early 80's (in College), a person in the Drafting Technology field had to have a deep concept of geometry, simple mathmatics, and have a large amount of "Board Time" - ie having a T-sqaure, pencil, compass, protractor etc. and actually, physically, bisecting a line segment or finding the tangent of an arc. Drafting has been the bulk of my working experience, since the early...

This is just one of those things that completely cracked me up earlier this evening. It was the day when I receive a TON of fliers in the mail. One of the fliers was for a "Grand Opening" of a Dollar General store. All tagged items will be 50% off. Think about it. In my best Jay London voice......thank you. Enjoy the veal, I'm here until Thursday. LLS

Are you aware of the growing technology-savvy terrorists that are on the rise? Terrorists certainly aren't the 3rd-world, illiterate individuals as the general Western public perceives them to be. They are hacking website servers in an endeavor to proclaim their accomplishments, publicizing their rhetoric, and in some instances, offering their multimedia downloads as well. This idea peaked my interest several months ago with a link to a Windows Media video of the Nick Berg murder on th...

Obviously, I was able to log in tonight! I have had some login woes for the past several days. On Monday (7/12), I was able to log in as usual. On Tuesday, everytime I tried to log in, I would get an error message about my browser "Not Accepting Cookies". The problem was, my browser IS accepting cookies! I am thinking that this login issue is still a slippery slope. I was able to log in 10 minutes ago, so I decided to, just for grins, log out and log back in again. I got the "coo...