"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Following on from Friday’s barbecue grill post: I went to Lowe’s to see if they had replacement side burner parts for my Weber gas grill, but really to look at that combo gas & charcoal grill I’d fallen in lust with. Would you be shocked to learn the combo grill is a flimsy piece of crap, […]
I don’t know how long outdoor grills are supposed to last, but we’ve retired one charcoal kettle grill and one gas grill since moving into this house in 1998, and are some years into our second set. The charcoal grill, a Weber, is holding up well, but the gas grill, also a Weber, is giving up the […]
I guess I’m going to have to learn about the cloud. I know, in general, about cloud computing, which is related to the cloud but not exactly the same thing. With cloud computing, instead of paying for and installing software on your own PC you can access similar software online, often for free, and prepare documents and spreadsheets […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! Banned Book Links Texas ministers will protect teens from demonic “reading” habit Ten books read in school that will change your life as an adult Why The Giver is one of the most banned books in America Eleven quotes […]
“And so it went, sand piling up to the heavens and homes sinking toward hell.” — Hugh Howey, Sand Omnibus Sand Omnibus Hugh Howey I looked at the different ways readers categorized this book, and one label I didn’t see was Young Adult. That surprises me. Sand has many of the elements of YA fiction: teenaged protagonists, coming-of-age subplots, […]
When they didn’t immediately locate the pilot of the Massachusetts Air Guard F-15 that crashed in West Virginia Wednesday morning, I figured he was dead. An eyewitness reported seeing a parachute, which led to hopes the pilot had ejected and survived, but since there’d been no radio contact with him I assumed he’d either been killed during the […]
Ugh, relatives in the heartland. Again. I unfriend out & out racists when they reveal themselves on Facebook, unless they’re kin (I did unfriend a nephew, but it was over animal cruelty). In the wake of Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson and the protests that followed, some of my relatives have started sharing white supremacist chain letters and […]
During our drive to New Mexico last week we had to stop at two US Border Patrol checkpoints, one on the White Sands Missile Range inbound to Alamogordo, the other homebound on I-10 between Las Cruces and Deming. We were racially profiled at the first one, which is to say the BP agent glanced at us […]