CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

I still *want* to love you, but you're losing me

Dear TiVo,

I read two articles recently that spurred me to write you this letter.  The first article described how at the end of July 2009 you had 3.05 million subscribers, but at the end of July 2010 you were down to 2.38 million.  Five years ago this would have surprised me, but not any more.

The second article was from your site, describing the spiffy new QWERTY TiVo remote with a sliding face and a full keyboard.  I was overjoyed by the news, as I’ve been waiting for a remote like this since I bought and activated my first TiVo back in 2002.  I read the article in great anticipation, wondering how pricey the remote would be.  Hm, $90.  Not unreachable, but seemingly a

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Typical US Airline Flight

I loathe and despise coach business air travel.  When I travel personally, it’s usually with Marie, and we usually plan to make sure we can travel in comfort.  You see, I’m 6’5″ and not svelte, and coach seating is not designed for me to fit in comfortably, and when we travel for pleasure we either wait until we can splurge on first class, buy a third seat so we have room, or make the best of sitting side-by-side.

However, when one’s company is footing the bill and you don’t have the flexibility that you do with personal travel, you get the seat you get and you have to make the best of it.  You can try for exit row or bulkhead, but those seats are in demand and sometimes hard to get.

Lucky for me, on

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The proposed site of the so-called 'Ground Zero Mosque'

I blog this morning feeling quite thoroughly American.  I have taken paid time off from my stressful but cushy job where I work from home for a corporation halfway across the country.  Engineerboy is manning the homestead while some electricians work their electron magic on our old 1940′s-wired cottage.  I’ve taken refuge at a local coffee shop, chilling in the air conditioning with an espresso drink, a blueberry muffin, and Wi-Fi.  I’m humming along to the Garbage song that’s softly playing in the background.  Baby Bootsie is snugly snoozing and strapped to me in the that marvel of upper middle class parenthood engineering, the Baby Bjorn Synergy.  The only other patron of the coffee shop is a retired grandfather who chats with the coffee shop owner

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Don't lose your cool...

We recently replaced two of our old, crappy window unit air-conditioners with newer models.  The new units were from Home Depot and the installation was do-it-yourself, and when I was done I realized that I had two undisposable hunks of junk to deal with.  You can’t just throw away a system loaded with refrigerant, so I figured all I had to do was figure out how everybody else did it, then do that.

My first strategy was to ask at the local recycling center here in Brenham.  They said I could probably take them to the collection station (dump), so the next time I went to the dump I asked at the office if they would take window unit air-conditioners.  They said they would, as long as all the coolant had been recovered by an

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Did Disney at least buy you dinner, IMDb?

I started visiting the IMDb site way back in the day, even before they were bought by Amazon.com.  Back then, IMDb was a site for film lovers and film scholars, an encyclopedic collection of information and opinions about film (and, later, television).

However, once Amazon.com purchased IMDb they have slowly but inexorably worked to “monetize” the traffic on the site.  They added a fee-service called IMDb Pro, which provides deeper and newer information, and they have also blithely accepted saturation advertising for any and every piece of crap excreted by Hollywood, as long as the budgets were big enough.

For example, the screen shot to the right is of the home page today, and as you can see it is *plastered* with advertising for and editorial references to Disney’s “Prince of Persia”.  By

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You probably wouldn't remember, I probably couldn't forget

Today I was sitting in the car in the car wash listening to tunes, and I heard an old favorite – “Jungle Love” by The Steve Miller Band, from 1977.  The song sounds kind of pop-y and like a confection, but the lyrics have, to me, always been more poetic and abstract than the tune and the refrain.  Here are the lyrics, as best as I can decode them (leaving out the refrains):

I met you on somebody’s island
You thought you had known me before
I brought you a crate of papaya
They waited all night by your door
You probably wouldn’t remember
I probably couldn’t forget
Jungle love in the surf in the pouring rain
Everything’s better when wet

But lately you live in the jungle
I never see you alone
But we need some

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"If you could make God bleed, people will cease to believe in Him."

Iron Man 2 is a not-disappointing sequel, however it’s also not as entertaining as the original.  But, there have been only a very few sequels that equaled or surpassed their predescessors, so that’s not surprising. 

What was surprising, for me, was the understated performance by Mickey Roarke as Ivan Vanko (right), Iron Man’s nemesis with a family grudge in this installment.  Calling his performance “understated” is an…well…understatement, because Vanko is of course a larger-than-life comic book villain.  However, within that context, Roarke’s performance is carefully restrained and excellently realized.

Also well cast and well characterized are Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer, head of a competing defense contracting firm, and Garry Shandling (Garry Shandling?!??!?) as Senator Stern, Iron Man’s foe in the Senate who is looking to have the

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Dogs eat it, flies swarm to it

I thought I’d try to be a little more gentle on the environment and use an ‘organic’ fertilizer for our yard.  I found Scotts® Organic Choice® Lawn Food at the local Home Depot and decided to give it a try.  I just spread it this weekend so I can’t speak to its greening or healthifying effects on the lawn, but I can state, unequivocally, that my three dogs and every fly in the general area *love* it.

I first spread it on the front lawn, without any drama, and the only slight warning sign was the very…er…’organic’ smell of the stuff.  However, it smelled like it could be a rich source of nutrients, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Then I spread it in the back yard, where our

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The preparation and the finished product

I’ve always been partial to McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin with Egg, but I prefer to avoid fast food whenever possible, and I prefer to eat healthy ingredients.  For the sake of this article, “healthy” refers to the ingredients being as natural and pure as possible, and as free of chemicals, hormones, pesticides, preservatives, cruelty, and “modified” ingredients as possible (and not necessarily “food pyramid” healthy).

So, over the years I have learned to make breakfast muffins at home, and have refined the recipe to the point where I can barely eat fast-food muffins any longer, since they pale by comparison (if I do say so myself).

The recipe below is for three muffins, the ingredients are:

3 farm eggs

1/3 lb of natural pork breakfast sausage

3 tbs butter

3 slices Kraft

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