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

Disclaimer: the article below represents the noodlings of a dumbass who is talking about things way over his head, but which he nonetheless found interesting as a mental exercise.

When JFK was elected, the US had its first (and so far only) Roman Catholic president.  Barack Obama was the first African American president.  That leaves some interesting milestones still ahead of us, such as first female, first (openly) gay, and first (openly) atheist/agnostic.

I think there’s a good chance that we’ll hit all of those milestones, at some point, and that it’s just a matter of ‘when’.  I also think we’ll hit them in that order (female, gay, secular).  And I also think that as we hit each milestone, it will create a greatly increasing disturbance among conservative US

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I’m a data person, and any time I have conceptions, preconceptions, prejudices, opinions, or assumptions, and there is relevant data available, I like to challenge my own opinions with facts.  One opinion I hold is that the United States is losing ground on being the ‘Land of Opportunity’ from an economic perspective.

I’ll stop here to state that I understand I’m talking about ‘first world problems’, and that the average American has it pretty good compared to the average world citizen.  Also, I’m not an economist, sociologist, futurist, or any other kind of credentialed -ist (other than ‘technologist’), so these are just the noodlings of an interested observer.

That being said, the people that put together the CIA World Fact Book seem to know a lot of things about

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First, let me say that I am not a doctor and I make no claims that what worked for me will work for anyone else, or that anyone else should try the things described here.  However, I did want to relate what worked for me so that others who may have had it work for them could see they are not alone, or those thinking about trying it will see that there is at least one case where it worked.  The ‘cure’ described here goes against every piece of conventional wisdom and medical advice that I have ever seen about insomnia, which made me doubly motivated to share it, since I know that it works for me.

When I was in my early teens I had an episode of sleep

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Today was the day we took Weagle to the vet for the last time, after her battle with lymphoma.  The photo here is of her last visit to Galveston, which was yesterday.  She loved the beach, it was her favorite place, so we took her for one last visit.  As you can see, we had the beach to ourselves, down by San Luis Pass, and Weagle strolled in the surf and chuffed at some birds, and had her own Sausage McMuffin as a treat.

Weagle was an extraordinary being.  She came into our lives as a tiny puppy, adopted from the Houston SPCA after Houston was devastated by storm damage and flooding from Tropical Storm Allison.  We knew there would be a lot of dogs hitting the shelters after the storm, and

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I love home-made iced tea, and have gone so far as to post my recipe for it.  As you can see in the picture to the right, I use translucent Tupperware 1-gallon pitchers for the tea, and after over a year of use the pitchers were getting tea-stained.

I did a lot of things to try to remove the stains – scrubbing the hell out of them, letting them soak overnight with dish soap, filling them with boiling water hoping to cook the stains out, etc, etc, etc.  Nothing worked and the stains just kept getting more stainier.

I eventually turned to the web, and many (many) people recommended soaking overnight filled with warm water and a little bleach (yuck!) or OxiClean (double-yuck!!), but using any kind of chemical like that seemed, well, yucky.

Then

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We love breakfast taquitos, usually from Whataburger or a local Mexican restaurant, but also wanted to make them at home from time to time, and have developed this recipe over a few iterations:

Ingredients:

2 potatoes
6 eggs
6 scallions, chopped
3 oversized flour tortillas
2 tbsp cooking oil
2 tbsp butter
Salt
Pepper
Optional: shredded cheese, salsa, Tabasco sauce, or whatever else you might want to try putting on a breakfast taco

Start a heavy, large skillet heating (we use cast iron) on medium-high heat (set to 7 on our electric that goes to 10).  Wash the potatoes and shred them with a grater, leaving the skins on.  Spread the shredded potatoes in an even layer on a microwave-safe plate, and microwave them on high for 5 minutes, uncovered.  Remove from the microwave and set aside.  This step is important because to get crispy

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Mourn the dead, honor the heroes, fight injustice, embrace freedom, celebrate life, and, on today of all days, forget to hate.

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Peace.

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Welcome back to the Mynagirl Fashion report, resurrected after many years on hiatus!!  Baby Bootsie has been sleeping peacefully this evening, so I’ve been able to have a nip and quip at the fashion for the 2010 Emmys.  Thanks much to technical crew Engineerboy for giving us these gorgeous images armed with only a remote, a capture card, and some great timing.

Ladies in Nude

Pale neutrals and golds were a definite trend.

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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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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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