It has sat there on the shelf for allmost ten years. Since before I played guitar, long before Texas. It has haunted me, jeering at me in my creative hours, begging to be finished, begging to be made whole so that it can be the masterpiece it was meant to be. "It" is a song I started years back. A song based on a fantasy of a chance meeting with an old folksinger (a la Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan). Onlly in my song, the old folk singer has given in to the ravages of alcoholism and age, and the ch...

Tonight was our Friday night jam session. For those who've kept up this week, I put together song lyrics I'm pretty proud of ( Link ), and when I went in to the jam session, I pulled a couple of friend aside. I've never really written music before and needed a little help. As I sang the song a capella, we decided that it works best in the key of "G". We put together some rough tablature, with a little trial and error. The chorus begins in "C", and the arrangement is pretty simple. I decided ...

I don't put my poetry out much, but this one I think you'll like. It's a song lyric, really, and it works with the tune I have in mind. It's a rough draft, but the basic idea's there (and the chorus is done): Superman Sleeps with Winnie-the-Pooh Superman in his caped pajamas Is running through our hall He can leap over tall buildings Though he’s only two feet tall When the night is late He falls asleep in my hands He’s not afraid of the big T. Rex But he’s afraid of the boogeyman ...

This week in our free time, my friends and I have been sorting through our haul from last Saturday's auction. Things were off to a good start when a high number of items had a good resale listing price on half.com. Even better on Sunday when our first sale came through. Followed by another on Monday. Then three today. In three days' time, we have nearly doubled what we spent at auction (although gas must be accounted for), from the sale of five books. Five books, it must be noted, out of TWELVE ...

I encountered one of those interesting situations today. One where the solution was for me to sit in front of the computer and just fix the problem. Those situations do not often come up, but when they do I try to help the best I can. This was ten miles out in the country, a dialup customer, who had just purchased (well, is renting to own, to be more accurate, but that's another story) a new computer with Windows Vista. When I tried to describe the situation over the phone, she didn't understand...

Some years back, I had a small book reselling business. It wasn't much, but I made good margins, learned how to buy and sell, and most importantly, learned what NOT to do. One of the biggest downfalls of the business was that I did not have any extra help to inventory, ship, and receive books. Well, a few weeks ago, we caught a glimmer of some possibilities when we received a whole bunch of equipment from a major corporation. We will begin to see returns on that investment (of time more than ...

I've always been mystified by the idea of taking a vow of poverty. To me, raised as I was in the liberal household of liberal households, it seemed compelling: live as the world's poor do so that you can help the poor. Now, I grant you, the poverty vow as usually expressed in the Catholic church, Buddhist monks, etc, has little to do with that and more to do with self denial of the material so that one can draw closer to God. But in the world of the Uber liberal, there's something noble, somethi...

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=ArDU83F_vYUJqgEegPO_QXU5nYcB?slug=ap-hancock-lawsuit&prov=ap&type=lgns   Baseball fans know the story all too well: St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock died in an April 29th car crash when his SUV slammed into a tow truck that was towing a parked car away. Hancock had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system, was speeding, was using a cell phone, and was not wearing a seat belt. Marijuana was also found in the vehicle. Now ...

A look at my account information reminds me that I am just shy of my 3 year anniversary on JU, by about a month. I would be hard pressed to detail my exact whereabouts three years ago today at this time, but it wouldn't be long odds to guess I was sitting somewhere 760 feet below the scorching surface of Death Valley, working what I could get to support my family. I would have been unaware that in less than three months, events would be set in motion that would change my life radically...agai...

Years ago, I believed that affirmative action, while wholly imperfect, was at least a good transition towards balancing the scales. As time goes by, I am rethinking that position. A perfect example: Mike Tomlin, the new coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. In their excellent article on Tomlin, SI touches on the infamous "Rooney Rule" that requires teams to consider minority candidates for coaching vacancies. SI said that Tomlin's hiring was NOT because of the Rooney Rule, and I believe them. Tom...

I'm a history buff. A MASSIVE one at that. This is a major part of the reason I try to get involved with projects like the Woody Guthrie Center in Pampa, TX. And so I was surfing around looking for some artifacts the other day, when I came across an eBay find. The New York Times from April 15, 1935, the day after Black Sunday, one of the most notorious dust storms of the Dust Bowl. The paper has a great article on the subject, and is an important piece of history to Pampa, and to the center, ...

http://sports.yahoo.com/sc/news;_ylt=Aj87iM0lzwNX2ItWKld3Oko5nYcB?slug=ap-landishearing&prov=ap&type=lgns The hearing on reigning Tour de France champ Floyd Landis was not supposed to be a big story. It was supposed to be yet another steroid scandal, of course, but one exposing the seamy side of a sport that few people outside of aspiring participants really care a whole lot about. I mean, except for one race out of the year, bicycling is pretty much eclipsed by world class miming c...

I was in my early twenties before I knew more about Woody than "This Land is Your Land". It's not that I had anything against Woody, it's just I hadn't been raised to his music. I really seriously began to listen to him in college. Other than Henry David Thoreau, no other imperfect, mortal individual has influenced my life and my philosophy more than Woody. That has made it especially thrilling to be involved as I am WITH the Guthrie Center in Pampa, knowing that even if my part in preserving...

After my "perfect day" on Wednesday, I finally got to start to sort through the haul yesterday (it will actually be awhile before I've totally calculated the haul). The main concern of mine was the laptop. I don't have a laptop, and I'm starting to need one. I have an HP that was given to me, but it has a bad power jack. We have a chance to save the machine by having a new jack soldered on (fortunately, I know exactly ONE person who's good enough at soldering to give it a real shot. One person, ...

For the casual reader, two pieces of background information help set this story up: 1) I am a tech geek; 2) I am a board member on the board for the Woody Guthrie Folk Music Center in Pampa, Texas. Today was the kind of day that you're morally compelled to write about. The very reason blogs exist. It started on Monday. The Network Administrator of a large company that does business in the area was at the school helping with the network. I spoke with him about my designs on some older machi...