Monthly Archives: October 2008

Feed Changes

Posted on October 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

I’ve made minor changes to my Atom, RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0 feeds so please me know if you have any problems with it. I’ve also made the RSS feeds be extended entry feeds so let me know how that is working.

Thank you.

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Tagged atom, blogging, feeds, RSS, web sites

Rent a car for $1 a day (one way)

Posted on October 11, 2008 | 1 comment

Dollar rent-a-car needs some cars moved so they’ll rent you a car for $1 a day (max 10 days) for a one-way delivery. Lots of pickups all over the place with specific destinations all over (especially Florida). Ends October 25th, 2008.

Not so useful if you don’t need it, but if you need to go to one of these places…

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Tagged car, car rental, money, one way, rental

Politics new rules

Posted on October 11, 2008 | 2 comments

These are my new rules for campaigning:

You can’t talk about your opponent.

That’s it. I’m tired of them answering a question by talking about their opponent. It doesn’t tell me what they are thinking. It’s a waste of time if I want to hear what a politician is thinking and planning if they are wasting half their time talking about what their opponent is (or isn’t) doing.

They need to sell themselves! Show us what they can do. Convince me to like you not to dislike the “other guy”… Continue reading →

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Tagged campaigning, debates, news, opponent, people, politics

To Be Continued…

Posted on October 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

These words, “To Be Continued”, make my top list phrases that I don’t enjoy. It’s usually a good episode of the show that ends with these words, why make a cliff-hanger of a bad episode(?). This week I was watching “The Sarah Jane Adventures”, it’s a children’s show offshoot of the new Doctor Who series; not exactly the same but enough to give me a Doctor Who fix in the off season. I haven’t mentioned much about the show but I like the Sarah Jane character (played by Elisabeth Sladen), she’s made a few cameo’s on the new Doctor Who series (that started 4 years ago) and while she was a regular on the series in the 1970’s (although I never watched it then). Actually, “regular” isn’t the proper word, I think she’s the longest running character on the series traveled with two different doctors, met more doctors and companions than probably anyone else; she’s had her own audio drama series now this TV series and recently appeared again on the Doctor Who series (saving the world and more, of course).

“The Sarah Jane Adventures” is the story of Sara Jane Smith, years ago she used to travel through time and space with The Doctor, but now on Earth still protecting the earth from Aliens. But she has an entourage of children, the girl across the street (who discovered her secret), the boy she adopted (super smart grown child rescued from aliens) and Clive their best friend (but mostly a side-kick). And they all work together to save the world (or sometimes just London itself).

Most of the stories for this series are two-part episodes, but when they started this season last week they ran the first two as one hour long episode, so I forgot. Was sorely disappointed while eating dinner that when the tensions started to run high on the show and as I started to recall this fact, the phrase “To Be Continued” popped up on my screen ending my show… Continue reading →

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Tagged Doctor Who, Elisabeth Sladen, London, Sarah Jane Adventures, Sarah Jane Smith, television, The Sarah Jane Adventures, To Be Continued

The Spaghetti Harvest – I Found It!

Posted on October 6, 2008 | Leave a comment

So I’ve been looking for some high quality footage of the Spaghetti Harvest footage for years, this still isn’t that great but it’s completely watchable (previously all I could find was some really crummy footage on the BBC site).

I saw it as a child, a local theater generally ran mini-documentaries (skiing, skateboarding, car building, etc.) instead of cartoons before a movie, and I’ve always remembered it. I knew it was a joke but it was totally deadpan; I’m sure to this day some people think that spaghetti grows on trees. Most people don’t even believe me when I say that there is a such a mini-documentary.

It wasn’t until years later I learned it was part of a (normally serious) BBC show they showed on April 1st, 1957 (which upset some people). It’s believed to be one of the first times television was used for a April Fools Joke. A lot detailed history, including the text of the narration, from the Hoaxapedia Article Swiss “Spaghetti Harvest”.

Direct link to the Spaghetti Harvest YouTube video (in case my imbedded footage doesn’t work). I finally found this since I saw someone stumble onto my site looking for info on it and decided to Google it again. But I’m still looking for a higher quality copy if anyone finds one on-line or knows where I can purchase it.

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Posted in food + drink

Tagged April Fool's Joke, April Fools, BBC, funny, Panorama, Spaghetti, Spaghetti Harvest, Spaghetti Harvest 1957, spaghetti weevil

October is Domestic Violence month

Posted on October 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

Images Prplribcrp October is Domestic Violence month. They say one in four of us are affected some way by it and it’s why you’re seeing the purple ribbons this month. Every 15 seconds a woman is battered (it’ll probably take you twice that time to read this blog entry). October is kind of an everything month (there are only 12 months to share) and breast cancer seems to get a lot of the attention and sometimes DV gets overlooked. (Related news.)

Firststep First Step is a local shelter in Wayne County and they are celebrating their thirtieth anniversary this year. Over 14,000 crisis calls, 7,000 nights of shelter and 20,000 hours of counseling are provided almost every year. I’ve volunteered with First Step, generally I’d be on call a few times a month (8-12 hour shift) and get called to hospitals (police stations, etc.) and talk to people and their families after they’ve been assaulted, I’ve also done things with the kids such as day care, field trips, etc. I originally started doing this at a shelter in Lansing; taking the kids on field trips and watching them while the Mother’s were in meetings/sessions. Field trips were just the older kids (ones who walk on their own), but when were were just watching the kids it was from infants on up.

First Step always having fund raising events so keep your eyes out for those, it’s a way to donate and have fun at the same time (sometimes it’s a movie night with auctions, shopping at department stores [you get a discount and they get a cut]). Shelters are always looking for donations, please don’t just think of them around the holidays, they need donations all year round. They always need volunteers to help. My links here just point to First Step, please search around for services in your area.

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Tagged Dearborn, domenstic violence, Domestic Violence, First Step, Michigan, news