I bought my first computer in 1996. It was a Gateway PC running Windows 95. I was a Windows guy for many years. I started working at an advertising agency in 1998. It was there that I first became exposed to Apple and the Mac. It took me a while, but I bought my first [...]
I’ve always been a fan of Laurel and Hardy. Came across this video. They are dancing to “At The Ball, That’s All”, sung by the Avelon Boys, from their classic 1937 movie, “Way Out West”.
I’ve recently discovered the music of the 1920′s and early 30′s. I particularly like Ted Weems and his Orchestra. Weems was from Pennsylvania and started a dance band with his brother while attending the University of Pennsylvania. Ted, who had originally intended to become a civil engineer, found himself attracted to a musical career. They [...]
Today is Willie Mays’ 79th birthday! He celebrated with members of the California State Senate and Assembly. Images are courtesy of MLB.com
I never realized that the city of Detroit has bid many times to host the Olympic games. They bid on the Summer Olympics 7 times – in 1944, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968 and 1972. Their best chance of securing the Olympics was in 1968. Detroit was selected over Los Angeles, by the USOC, in [...]
I came across a great website the other day. Shorpy is an online archive of thousands of high-resolution photos from the 1850s to 1950s. The site was named for Shorpy Higginbotham who was a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago. The pictures on the site are absolutely amazing. The sharpness of the pictures [...]
Spring has always been my favorite time of the year. I’ve always enjoyed the emerging flowers and plants after the long, cold winter. But, the part of spring that I enjoy most is the start of baseball season! My favorite team is the San Francisco Giants. As a kid, I enjoyed watching Bobby Bonds, Orlando [...]
A year ago today, was the last time I posted to this blog. Ironically, that post had to do with the defeat of my Michigan State Spartans in the final game of the 2009 Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament. Well, two days ago, my Spartans lost in their Final Four game against Butler in the 2010 [...]
I just came across a list called “How to Tick People Off”. These are some of the ones I thought were pretty funny! 4. If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others. 19. Decline to be seated at a restaurant, and simply eat their complimentary mints [...]
On November 27, 2007, I blogged about the last Russian Imperial Family – Czar Nicholas II , Empress Alexandra and their five children. On July 17, 1918, the Romanov family was lined up, believing they were posing for a photo, in the basement of the house they were being held. They were then brutally shot [...]
My son and I love Ruby Red Squirt! We definitely drink it more than any other pop. But, within the last month, we hadn’t been able to find it anywhere! None of the grocery stores carry it. Nothing at Target or even Walmart. We thought that this was the end – we would never drink [...]
I spent many years in jobs related to the printing industry. I came across this poem, and what it says is as true today as it was when written in 1904. “CAN’T I HAVE IT RIGHT AWAY?” By Strickland W. Gillilan I sat beside the estimator’s desk one afternoon— He hadn’t had a smell of [...]
I want to introduce you to our almost 9 month old puppy. His name is Chester and he is a Golden Retriever. We got Chester back in July. He is a big boy – 80 lbs. We never had a dog before, so this has been an interesting experience. He just started training classes. He [...]
Remains of the house where George Washington was raised have been located and excavated by archeologists at Ferry Farm, just across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg, Virginia. The archeologists have been working on the site for seven years and confirm finding the foundation and cellars. Far from being the rustic cottage of common perception, the [...]
Well, I hope to be posting more often again. My laptop issue has been resolved!
Ever since Brad Delp, lead singer of the band Boston, died in 2007, the band has struggled with how to continue preforming. Boston has been Tommy DeCarlo’s favorite band since he was 13. He had always dreamed of being a rock star. But to pay the bills, he was working as a credit manager at [...]
A greeting card sent by Anne Frank in 1937 has been found in a Dutch antiques shop. The card was sent to one of her best friends, Samme Ledermann. A school teacher named Paul van den Heuvel came across the card while looking through a box in his father’s shop in Naarden, near Amsterdam. The [...]
Obviously I haven’t written a new post lately. My laptop is dying. After being on for about 10 minutes, it shuts itself off. I think it is overheating. The fan runs constantly. Good times. So, it hasn’t been as convenient for me to blog. I hope to be back soon though!
According to a Danish researcher, if you have blue eyes, you’re related to a common ancestor. He found that every blue-eyed person descended from one person whose genes mutated some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Before that, everyone had brown eyes. Geneticist Hans Eiberg says that blue eyes occur when the human default – brown [...]
A few days ago, I came across a posting on Autoblog about a 1939 GM Futurliner that is up for sale on eBay. I remember seeing one of these once but, for the life of me, I can’t remember where it was! So, what is a Futurliner? Futurliners are a group of 12 stylized buses [...]
We went to the auto show in Detroit today. The very first Detroit Auto Show was held in 1899 at the Light Guard Armory. It was organized by the Tri-State Sportsman’s and Automobile Association. This first show featured major attractions of big-game trophies bagged in Africa and an exhibit of fishing tackle, hunting equipment and [...]
Less than two weeks ago, I wrote how warm it was and how it felt like Spring. Well, that’s just a faded memory now! It was 2°F when I woke up this morning and has warmed all the way up to 10°F at 4 pm. I guess it’s a good day to sit home and [...]
In April 2006, Bruce Springsteen released We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, a collection of songs popularized by the folk artist Pete Seeger. My favorite song on the album is Erie Canal. Erie Canal is one of those songs that I, and a lot of kids, grew up singing. But, I never really listened to [...]
The last couple of days have felt wonderful. The temperatures have been in the low 60′s – 30 degrees above normal! We had 7″ of snow on the ground a week ago, and it’s all gone now. It felt nice to go outside without a coat on! But alas, it’s only January. Spring around here [...]
Disney’s The Jungle Book has always been my favorite. (The DVD was a great Christmas gift!) I never saw it as a kid, but was introduced to the 1967 classic with my own children. I think its my favorite Disney movie because of the music and the character voices and the memories of enjoying it [...]
In the UK, 200 year old maps are being used to locate ancient trees. These maps show how the landscape use to look before deforestation, and also help to show where the ancient survivors are located. Ordnance Survey/Landmark have compiled a digital archive from more than 1000 maps which will be used to build the [...]
Have you ever wondered about the history of some of the Christmas items we are so familiar with? Here are a few examples: Christmas Lights – The use of small candles to light a Christmas tree dates back to the middle 17th century. The candles were glued with melted wax to a branch or attached [...]
The U.S. Census Bureau has released a new report analyzing the most common surnames. Smith remains on top, followed by Johnson, Williams, Brown and Jones. What’s interesting is that, for the first time, two Hispanic names have cracked the top 10. Garcia comes in at number 8, and Rodriguez at number 9. You can search [...]
My great great grandparents, Nelson and Louisa, died in Florida around 1900 and are buried in a Waldo, Alachua County cemetery. A couple of the things I’m trying to accomplish with my family history research is to find out where my many grandparents are buried and to obtain a picture of their headstones. But, the [...]
We went to pick out our Christmas tree tonight. We’ve been getting Fraser Firs for many years. This year we decided to try something different. The first tree we came to was called a Grand Fir. We had never heard of it before. They told us it’s common in the Pacific Northwest. It’s much softer [...]
The first map ever to use the name “America” will go on display at the Library of Congress on December 13th. It was created by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in 1507, and is also the first document to show a separate Western Hemisphere and label the Pacific Ocean as its own body of water. “America” [...]
Evel Knievel passed away today. He made quite an impact on us kids in the 70′s. Soon after we moved from California, we were eating dinner at Topinka’s, a long-closed restaurant at Seven Mile & Telegraph roads. It was September 8th, 1974, and Evel was attempting to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. I [...]
One of the greatest mysteries of the 20th century may finally be solved. The last Russian Imperial Family – Czar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra, daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, and son Aleksei, were executed by Bolshevik revolutionaries. On July 17, 1918, the Romanov family was lined up, believing they were posing for a [...]
As Oklahoma celebrated its 50th anniversary of statehood in 1957, the city of Tulsa commemorated the occasion by sealing a gold and white 1957 Plymouth Belvedere Sport Coupe in a watertight concrete vault under the lawn of the Tulsa County Courthouse. The car would be unearthed 5o years later, in 2007. Among the items included [...]
I am a direct descendant of William Bradford, a leader of the Pilgrim settlers, who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower in 1620. He was Plymouth Colony’s longest serving governor. In learning more about him and his fellow settlers, I’ve come across many “facts” and stories about the Pilgrims that aren’t as accurate as we [...]
For those of you who haven’t seen Oscar in a while, here he is. I bought him last year around Labor Day. He was only about an inch long at the time, but now he’s close to 9″. I feed him mostly commercial pellet food, but he also nibbles on raw fish, lettuce, earthworms, beefheart [...]
A North Carolina mother gave birth to twins early Sunday morning on November 6th. Sounds pretty normal. But it happened right around the time Daylight Savings Time was ending. The first twin, Peter, was born at 1:32 a.m. Thirty four minutes later, Allison was born. But, because the clocks moved back an hour, Allison’s time [...]
On November 10, 1975, the bulk lake freighter S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a violent storm on Lake Superior. With a length of 729 feet, she was the largest boat on the Great Lakes when built in 1958. The Fitzgerald left Superior, WI on November 9th with a cargo of 26,116 tons of taconite pellets. [...]
A 90 ft. church tower in the Northern Germany village of Suurhusen, has been officially recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most lopsided building. It bumped the Leaning Tower of Pisa out of the top spot. The church was built in the middle 13th century and the tower was added [...]
FamilySearch, the family history arm of the LDS Church is undertaking an ambitious project of digitizing their entire microfilmed collection of family history records. They have more than 2.3 million rolls of microfilm, which is equivalent to about 6 million 300-page books. These records are held in their Granite Mountain Record Vault, located twenty miles [...]
So, I upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard over the weekend. It took about 45 minutes. I didn’t run in to any problems. I have a 2.66 GHz. Quad-Core Mac Pro with three internal hard drives. One contains Leopard, the second, Windows Vista Ultimate, and the third is a shared drive containing music, photos and [...]
Leonardo DaVinci’s mural painting, The Last Supper, can now be viewed up-close by anyone on the Internet. The Italian imaging firm HAL9000 has posted a 16 billion pixel digital scan of the famous work on their website www.haltadefinizione.com. You’re able to zoom in on specific areas of the image as if you were standing right [...]
