⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS In “Slingshot” (2024), two determined men face a cosmic divide, caught between duty and destiny in a high-stakes space thriller. My Rating: ½ (0.5/5 stars) Don’t waste your time. It looked…
This has been some week for hardware and appliance problems in my household.
Thursday, I had a silent hard drive crash. It could have happened before then, but I didn’t notice it until Thursday. The drive was there last week, but Windows 11 would not recognize it. I tried it in two different computers to rule out bad cables or a motherboard issue.
I didn’t realize the drive was 10 years and 3 months old until I removed it and looked at it. It is kind of like a washer, you don’t think about how old it is until something happens. I had a stale backup, so I probably lost 5 to 10 percent of the stuff that was not backed up.
Read on ign.com · View original Mastodon post
Here is another example of what I was talking about in a recent blog post TV Isn’t What It Used to Be. According to IGN, the first season came out 3.5 years ago. That is a long time to wait for a second season.
I will watch it because the first season was good. But if I miss it, I won’t really care. By this point, I would have to rewatch Season 1 just to remember what happened before starting Season 2.
⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS My Rating: ⭐ (1/5 stars) Not worth watching there were several times I wondered why I was watching this. Plot was kind of a mix of Giver, Enders Game, The Allegiant and Hunger Games all in one…
Celebrating 10 years of exploration, discovery, and adventure in the vast, ever-expanding universe of No Man’s Sky. Happy Anniversary to Hello Games, No Man’s Sky. It is 10 years, and hopefully another 10. A sequel would be great…
Read on ign.com · View original Mastodon post I don’t watch this series, though it has interested me. Still, its general theme fits what I want to talk about here. People wonder why TV viewing and TV series are dying. Well, when you have…
Celebrating 25 years of blogging with gratitude, reflection, and a sweet slice of success surrounded by creativity and joy. August 6, 2001, 25 years ago. I started blogging. I had a website made by Microsoft FrontPage and hosted on GTE…
I saw the title of Antonio’s post the other day on bubbles.town, “I Couldn’t Live Without My Glasses”, and it intrigued me.
The first thing I do when I wake up isn’t checking my phone or making coffee. It’s putting on my glasses.
This was never me. I was the opposite. I could see my phone and other things up close, such as the alarm clock. Putting on my glasses was usually the second or third thing I did because I needed them to see at a distance.
Before cataract surgery, I was nearsighted and also had astigmatism. I could see things up close without glasses, but I needed my glasses to see clearly at a distance and for almost everything else. What Antonio wrote still struck a chord with me because I could relate to nearly every word in his post.
Do you ever have a bunch of blog post ideas bouncing around in your head but no idea where to start, what would actually be interesting, or how to flesh them out? That’s been me lately.
My vision is improving, but my eyes aren’t fully healed. My right eye, the first to be operated on, just hit the one-month mark. The left is about two weeks behind. I have one more doctor visit to get a prescription for reading glasses and maybe fine-tune my distance vision. Distance seems okay, but reading and intermediate vision are tricky. The intermediate could use some fine tuning, and my short-distance vision is definitely worse and needs more correction. With this better vision, I’m trying to blog more, get more done, and make progress before the next hurdle.
Catching up feels overwhelming. I keep trying to do five things at once, so I need to slow down and focus. On top of everything else, I have a backlog of podcasts to listen to or watch and a pile of unread items in my RSS reader. I’m slowly whittling the list down.
I’m trying a new program called Wispr Flow to compose this post and see how it works. I’ve always wondered if composing this way, using my voice, would be easier than typing and then refining. I’ll give it a shot for a little while and see if it helps me focus. If it goes well, I might use it more for quick drafts.
I just wanted to say I saw the news of John C. Dvorak passing yesterday. I hadn’t heard much from him in years and often assumed he had retired. I was first introduced to him by watching Leo LaPorte and TechTV back in the day.
I remember being introduced to Google Voice when Mr. Dvorak and Leo talked about it on a show. I can’t recall the exact show or episode, but Mr. Dvorak talked about how he and his son used it to save on phone costs. If I remember correctly, it helped with long-distance charges, though I’m not certain. I also remember reading the articles he wrote for PC Magazine.
What I didn’t know until he passed was that he came from a semi-famous family, the inventor of the Dvorak Keyboard (never used one).
It’s getting to the point where some of the pioneers from the internet era are starting to pass, and that’s a sad reality. I knew of John C. Dvorak more than Om Malik, even though Mr. Malik and I were closer in age. These losses feel like the end of a chapter.
Praying for his family to have strength and resolve.
A thoughtful couple contemplates the evolving intersection of creativity and technology, symbolized by a brain merging artistic tools with digital circuitry under a spotlight.
I was browsing topics and titles on bubbles.town when I came across a post by Panagiotis Vryonis, AI-generated blog post images are not cool any more. It reminded me of another post I read a few months ago, On AI Images and Feature Images in General by Kev Quirk. I have been meaning to respond to his piece.
Last year, I wrote a post about using featured images called To Feature Image or Not. That post surprised me by getting a couple of responses. I usually get almost no feedback, so the email replies were unexpected.
The readers who responded basically said the same thing: It is your blog. You can use featured images if you want.
Celebrating 100 years of Moody Radio, connecting generations through timeless broadcasts and iconic moments captured in history. This is a year of anniversaries. Moody Bible Institute turns 140 and Moody Radio turns 100. I listen to…
Me with my glasses for the last time full time pre-surgery.
I just shared good news about my heart journey, and now I can finally share another medical milestone for 2026: my cataract surgeries are done and my vision is back.
For the last couple of years, my sight kept slipping, no matter how many times I got new prescriptions from the ophthalmologist or optometrist. A new prescription might clear things up for a few months, then the blurriness would come back. I found myself contorting my face and doing all kinds of facial tricks just to see. It was soul-sapping. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t get depressed easily. At 57, I’ve had low moments before, but nothing like this. The vision loss pushed me into a prolonged low spell. I stopped wanting to read and lost enthusiasm for work, except as a way to pay bills. Even blogging suffered. After my most prolific year in 2025, I barely posted because I literally couldn’t see well enough.
A man reflects with quiet satisfaction as he reviews positive echo results, surrounded by reminders of gratitude, strength, and progress in a warm, sunlit room.
I wanted to share a long-overdue health update about what has happened this year and why I can finally talk about it. I recently had my second Camzyos cardiology echo and doctor’s visit of the year. I normally go every six months, and this visit gave me my best numbers yet.
On Camzyos, my obstruction is much better controlled. My echo looked fantastic, so I included a table below comparing my results before and after starting Camzyos.
When I first started Camzyos, I was not getting my refills consistently because of REMS requirements and the timing of my echoes and doctor’s visits. This created gaps in treatment. Once my refills became consistent and those delays stopped, the treatment began working much better.
⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS In “Project Hail Mary” (2026), a lone astronaut awakens to an uncertain mission, fighting for humanity’s survival amid the vastness of space and the unknown. My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½ (3.5/5 stars) —…
Celebrating 250 years of freedom and unity with fireworks lighting up the night sky above the U.S. Capitol, as the American flag proudly waves in honor of the nation’s milestone birthday. Happy 250th birthday, United States of America!…
Celebrating 70 years of USF’s rich history and vibrant campus life, where tradition meets innovation under the open skies.
Star Trek: Outposts Unknown - Official Announcement Trailer - IGN To boldly go… and build in Star Trek: Outposts Unknown. Check out the Star Trek: Outposts Unknown announcement trailer for this upcoming narrative-driven outpost builder game set in the Star Trek universe. Build complex research facilities through the mysterious X’Lehari System. Explore strange new worlds, guide your crew through dangerous encounters, and uncover a cosmic force threatening all life in the system. Set alongside the era of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, your journey will take you across hostile environments, abandoned ships, ancient ruins, and a fragile civilization in desperate need of aid. Star Trek: Outposts Unknown will be available on PC. A demo is out now on Steam.
⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: MILD SPOILERS
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War (2026) brings intense espionage and action as Jack Ryan and his team navigate a deadly covert conflict in a high-stakes battle for global security.
Why Gen X is the real loser generation Don’t cry for millennials or Gen Z. Save your pity for those in their 50s
— @daily-reads-TheEconomist on mastodon via Daily Reads
I am a Gen Xer, and I do not consider myself part of a loser generation.
I do think my generation came up during a time when the family was under assault from companies, the economy, and a culture that made it harder and harder for one parent to stay home. I know my mother and father resisted that pressure for as long as they could.
