This Old Blog

Went looking for Boycott Novell tonight to see what Libelous Ranger Roy Schestowitz was writing about and found this when I hit the URL: Technical difficulties? Really?!?!? Who'd of thought such a blazing beacon of truth would be taken down by something as mundane as "technical difficulties"? It appears that the hosting site, Net-Profits.com, is still up and running with a three-month-old site status posting: The website is under development for the New Net-Prophets.com, focusing on being an incubator for Open Source and Free Software projects and websites. Whatever that means. The only decent live link seems to be to EDU-Nix.org, the open source educational distro produced and managed by Shane Coyle. That's right, the same Shane Coyle who helped to co-found Boycott Novell, and whose name was taken off the Boycott Novell masthead leaving just Little Roy Schestowitz and his venomous hate-filled screed against anyone and anything that crossed his path or dared to speak ...

My eldest wrote an interesting post about Sarah Palin (a link to her blog is to the right). Dan Quayle was George H. W. Bush's VP from 1989 to 1993, back when Lauran was just a wee tot. During that period he became known more for his speaking gaffs than for just about anything else. Snopes has an interesting collection of some of his more notable and interesting sayings, while trying to weed out the inaccurate cruft attributed to him. I'll let you follow the link to read some of them. If there is one moment for which Dan Quayle will be remembered, it has to be the vice presidential debate with a rather senior Lloyd Bentsen, in which Dan Quayle was trying to make the point that he had as much Congressional experience at the time as John Kennedy when JFK ran for president. In rebuttal Lloyd Bentsen replied "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." Which, depending on your politic...

I lead off this time with the sign of the times, a going-out-of-business sign for Circuit City. I shot this on the way home from the airport on MLK Day. It's now been a week since they declared liquidation, and during that period I've managed to visit the three remaining locations in Orlando that I'm aware of (downtown Colonial Drive, Mall at Millenia, and across from Florida Mall, where this was taken). The store at Florida Mall is the oldest I know of. It was in business when I used to take the then-little girls to eat at Olive Garden, some 18 years ago. I remember the interior was low-key and aimed at selling luxury electronic systems at prices I could ill afford at the time. My taste in gear ran more towards what I could afford at Sears, K-Mart, and Walmart. Circut City was just way out of my league. But as time passed I gained in earning power and Circuit City transformed itself from a high-end retailer to yet another big-box mover of electronic goods. That's when ...

Earlier in January I read an article about the upcoming re-launch of the Honda Insight on Wired. According to the article, the Insight turned in some pretty impressive mileage numbers in real world driving: During a day behind the wheel last month, we managed an impressive 42.4 mpg without even trying. When we pushed the Econ Mode button and used Eco Assist to mind our hypermiling P's and Q's, the Insight returned an amazing 65.6 mpg. That's on par with the best figures we've seen from the Prius. That's all I needed. So the wife and I drove down to a local Honda dealership on Highway 50 and I put a deposit down on an Insight, even though they won't be released until late April at the earliest. That's due, in part, to Honda promising that a base-line Insight will cost $18,000, which in this day and time is actually pretty darn cheap for a hybrid, especially compared to the Toyota Prius. Of course, Toyota announced that the 2010 Prius, which will also be rele...

Call me sacrilegious, but today's swearing in was overdue and overblown. Yes, I voted for the man. I still have his fading bumper sticker on the back of my paid-for six-year-old Kia Sorento (my wife has that one and the even more faded Kerry/Edwards campaign bumper sticker on the back of her van, which she has refused to take off as long as Bush was in office). My problem is over-exposure to Barack Obama. From the day he was elected there's been a steady drum-beat of Obama this and Obama that, from his cabinet appointees (six of which were confirmed today) to his evolving policies on the economy and the related stimulus package. I'm suffering from Obama Fatigue, and it's time to turn all of this off. The best way to do that is for President Obama to hit the ground running and immediately start to work on the staggeringly difficult issues that former President Bush has left behind, both here and abroad. Lord knows the new President's got his hands full. There will un...

I traveled up to see my parents and family in Atlanta (north-east in Lilburn, actually) over the weekend. Sunday I went out to lunch with them at a Longhorn Steakhouse on Killian Hill Rd. On the way to the restaurant I noticed closed stores just like I'd noticed in Orlando. My family told me that there were empty stores all over the Atlanta area just like the Orlando area. After lunch we stopped off by a Barnes and Nobel on Pleasant Hill Road (we're a family of readers), and when we'd finished we went across the street to Gwinnett Station Shopping Center. Starting from there and moving south-east towards I-85 I saw darkened store after store, as well as a number that were in the process of going out of business. Stores that ranged from Office Max, Kroger, and Circuit City to smaller businesses such as Sam Goodys and Hobby Lobby now stand closed and dark over empty parking lots. Only one former business, a CompUSA store, found new life as a Salvation Army. Main entrance into...

We now move from the south-west side of Orlando to the east near the University of Central Florida. There are a lot of defense contractors in the area as well as the university. The following group are located on University Blvd, the main drag leading to UCF. One of the many corporate-owned Bennigan's stores (now empty) from the collapse of the company in June 2008. This used to be a Kentucky Fried Chicken until September 2008. Then it shut down and remained empty until late December. It's now 'evolved' into a Chicken Lickin's franchise store. Shut down 2008. What is surprising about this (and others near UCF) is that they went out of business at all. This area also includes Research Park, and companies such as SAIC, Northrup Grumman, General Dynamics, PEO-STRI... In other words lots of students and lots of highly-paid engineers. A dead Fazoli's. According to the sign on the window the store moved to a new site in Oviedo. This store closed sometime around mid-20...