life, the universe, and everything (although not always in that order)
I just want to be ok, be ok, be ok
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I live in Florida where the unemployment rate hit 12% in December of last year. As of June it stands at 10.6%, while the national unemployment rate is 9.2%. Meanwhile, political brinkmanship continues in Washington between Republicans and Democrats over raising the debt ceiling and thus allowing the U.S. to continue limping along economically. Listening to and reading the news, it would appear we have only a few more days before we as a nation officially default.
The last Borders going out of business in Tallahassee
As I travel from Orlando to Tallahassee and back I see more and more empty buildings where there used to be businesses, or buildings about to become empty. As bad as our economy has become, I wonder how much worse it could get post-default. I can't wait to find out.
An empty former Blockbuster in Orlando
So while we're all waiting for economic Armageddon to officially arrive August 2nd, here's a cheerful little ditty to help us keep our spirits up. I heard it playing in the background during one of the infinite ads that ply the SyFy network. Enjoy!
I rarely write inflammatory (what some might call trolling) titles to a post, but this building you see before you deserves it. I've been seeing this building next to I-4 just east of Altamonte/436 and Crane's Roost for nearly 12 years, and never knew who owned it. Today on a trip up to Lake Mary with my wife I saw it yet again. That's when I told her I wanted to stop by on the way back and poke around the property, and photograph any parts of it if I could. What I discovered was this still unfinished eighteen story (I counted) white elephant, overgrown with weeds and yet still under slow-motion construction. It looks impressive with its exterior glass curtain walls, but that impression is quickly lost when you see the unfinished lower stories and look inside to the unfinished interior spaces. A quick check via Google leads to an article written in 2010 by the Orlando Sentinel about the Majesty Tower. Based on what I read in the article it's owned by SuperChannel ...
I've been using NetBeans for a while now, starting with version 4.2 in beta. One of NetBeans' key selling points (in my not-so-humble-opinion) is Java GUI building with Matisse . That feature continues to be quite powerful and unrivaled, especially for a free-as-in-beer IDE. I even wrote a lovely paean to the wonders of NetBeans and why I moved away away from Eclipse to NetBeans . Now, it looks like I may have to eat some of those tastefully written words. What you're looking at above is a complete Ruby on Rails project hosted and running within Eclipse 3.3 Milestone 5 on Windows XP. Milestone 5 was released this past Friday, February 9th. I installed it Saturday, and then went on a plugin hunt to fill out additional features and capabilities. Why did I decide to re-install Eclipse, especially a milestone? So that I could get a complete integrated development and test capability in one convenient package for Ruby on Rails. Like a lot of other folks I've been playing ...
The Florida Gingersnaps are a reaction to the loss of my Lucy (whose photo still adorns the header of my blog) and Max back in June 2015 combined with coming across John Scalzi's Ohio Scamperbeasts on his blog Whatever. John Scalzi had also lost two pets, both cats, and his new kittens, named Sugar and Spice, were replacements. A reasonable one-to-one replacement I might add. But why Gingersnaps? Because they're both gingers, and because gingersnaps were my daughter's favorite cookies back when they were little little characters themselves. When I first lost Lucy (the cat) I never intended to replace her with any other animal, especially not another cat. And that's the way it stayed until October, when my oldest daughter's newest cat (which she'd rescued) delivered a litter of five kittens; three female calicos and two ginger males. Mom, going by the name of Sunshine, is an all-ginger female. It's funny how genetics works, and how the two males cam...
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