3/15 extensions filed. Still cranking out returns, even though I’m the oldest I’ve ever been in my entire life. Monday is the first day of Spring! 🌷 🌼

Fantastic Superbowl! Two excellent teams fought like hell and the team with MVP squeaked out a win. Halftime show also excellent, maybe only 2nd of all time to Prince. Top notch commercials, with even a wonderful Disney commercial that was true to its tradition, not woke crapola.

⭐ Possible Titles for Andy ⭐

A Fool No More

Ballad of a Programmer

Beyond Here Lies Andy

Diggin’ Down Discoveries

Miller Court Now

My Own Version of Me

Now It’s Rainin’ Again

PRESSing On

Rainy Day Ideas

Tangled Up in Bytes

Walkin’ My Dog Around

Woodburn Ways

On Friday Dave Winer recorded a podcast which has data that everyone in the blogosphere should know about. It is an appeal for developers & users to work together. That is always how I’ve felt here on microblog. Not being a developer, I was surprised that Manton did his own thing and never asked for input from users like me, who were using Android, not Apple, and had a lot of experience in using Dave’s blogging tools. I thought he would see users as a valuable source of ideas, as Dave did in developing his software.

Dave has unusual clarity of thought in this recording. I hope those involved with Indieblogging would listen to him, take it to heart and help to make the blogosphere grow in a healthy way.

December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy.
— FDR - President of USA.

This video is an interview with the author of a book about Pitcairn Island which is one of the most remote locations in the south Pacific. The book is The Far Land which is discussed in the video.

There are a lot of videos about the Mutiny on the Bounty story on YouTube.

A number of residents of the island are ham radio operators and I have made radio contact with them using Morse Code. I have also made contact with people on many other islands in that part of the Pacific. When I lived in CA it was very easy to work that part of the Pacific, even with very low power, such as 1 to 5 watts of power.

Here’s a Steve Jobs story for all you Apple fans.

Shannon Bream has been a huge upgrade to Fox News Sunday. She is always cheerful and fair to everyone, not to mention smart as a whip. I think she’s the biggest star on Fox, a perfect example of how journalists are supposed to act in America!

I watched most of the World Series games again this year. When I was growing up in the 40’s and 50’s, baseball was known as the National Pastime. My Dad was a good example of that. He always had the radio on KMOX whenever the Cardinals were playing a game. If we were watching network TV shows in the evening on our only TV in the living room, my father would also have the radio on next to him, tuned in to the Cardinal game. In the heat of the summer as we were outside painting the house, we’d also be listening to Harry Caray give the play by play coverage of the Cardinal game. And most years, the Cards weren’t even competitive in the standings!

Most of my childhood, except for when I was barely one year old, the Cards didn’t even win a World Series until I was in college in 1964 and again in 1967. But all those other years we were still following the games, live on the radio. We were always hopeful. It was how we passed our time.

And we always watched the World Series games, always rooting for the National League teams. We knew those teams because the Cards had been playing them all season long. Back then the Cards never played American League teams, except in the World Series.

As grad school and then work took me to new parts of the country, I didn’t have time to follow baseball as closely.

I lived in Los Angeles for a number of years and during that time rooted for the Dodgers in a World Series they won. Then I moved back to Silicon Valley and supported the Giants during the Lincecum years and then after that I followed & supported the Giants during the Posey era, which included WS wins in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

In those Posey years I was doing a lot of accounting and tax work from my apartment in Palo Alto. I started listening to the Giant broadcasts on the radio. They had a policy of replaying the day games over the air after midnight. I became a night owl and a huge fan of the Giants broadcast team, which consisted of Jon Miller, Duane Kuiper, Mike Krukow and Dave Flemming. In 2014 Miller was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame and he certainly deserved it because he was fantastic in announcing those Giants games. During that period, Giants baseball had definitely become my national pastime again!

After that my life took me to Santa Clara, Salinas and finally back to my hometown of Decatur, IL. During that period my greatest sports passion was the Golden State Warriors huge successes with coach Steve Kerr and Warriors Great, Stephen Curry, with NBA championships in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022.

Before that I was also a huge fan of the SF Forty-Niners during the Golden Era of Joe Montana, Steve Young and Jerry Rice. The Niners won the Superbowl in 1982, 1985, 1989, 1990 & 1995. Wow, what a great record of winning! I’ve been extremely fortunate with following successful professional teams over my adult life.

Anyway, I didn’t really have a plan to watch the Astros / Phillies World Series this year. But I did and the first two games were fantastic and then I started rooting for Dusty Baker. Somewhere during those two games, I suddenly realized the super level of skill required in major league baseball.

Hitting a 100 mph fastball has to be one of the most difficult tasks in any sport, let alone hitting all the other pitches that the pitchers get bouncing all around the plate. Pitchers in the WS can be unbelievable, but so are the batters.

And on the field things can get just as close. One throw out at second had the runner safe, but on replay the camera showed he was actually out by an inch or two. Amazing!

Before the series was over, I had reached a conclusion I had never considered before. Baseball really is the most difficult sport!
And it is difficult in so many different ways: pitching, hitting, fielding, base running & defense. The possibilities are endless and there are so many ways that players can make a difference by inches.

Certain body types tend to dominate certain sports. Super tall people tend to end up in basketball. Gigantic people tend to end up in football. Of course there are exceptions, such as Stephen Curry who is a bit over six feet tall, but has dominated many basketball games and even basketball seasons.

But what is the perfect body type for baseball? I can’t think of one that trumps all others. There is such a wide variety of individual skills in the sport, that there is none that dominates all others in the sport. Look back over the history of the MVP in the World Series and you’ll find all kinds of body types, from a wide range of positions played in the game. In the 2022, the MVP was even a Rookie, a player in his first year of MLB.

I find one thing to be the most amazing unchanged thing about baseball. The baseball infield is a diamond with exactly ninety feet on a side and it always has been, going all the way back to the early 1900’s. Surely over the decades the best athletes have been getting bigger, faster and in better shape. One might think that base runners might be able to run those 90 feet faster than the fielders can throw them out. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. So some runners are out by inches and others are safe by inches. This is totally amazing to me. Is there some principle of physics that makes this continue to be the case? It baffles me, but it continues to make the game super competitive, which is a huge plus for the dedicated fans.

Poor old Joe gave another lecture on TV tonight. Why do his handlers let him embarrass himself like this? He doesn’t seem convinced that the history books will say he really won his presidential election. He has a LOT of attention on the 6 Jan 2021 attack on the Capital. But the FBI has spent tons of hours rounding up people who were involved in that event. Many were held in solitary confinement for a really long time, were charged with crimes and most have pleaded guilty or were convicted. The rule of law has worked as expected, as far as I can tell. That’s the American way, which has worked just fine.

Calm down, Mr. Biden. We have a new election to attend to.

The 42 year old woman who got beaten up by kids on a DC bus said she didn’t want the kids arrested. She wants their parents to be held responsible. GREAT IDEA. Yes, yes, yes, do that!!! That might actually be an effective solution to turns things around!

I finished my 38th tax season at 2 pm yesterday. All my clients had their returns by noon, plenty of time to mail them at the post office.

New rule for next year. All clients must get me their stuff by the end of June. No more painful, exhausting October deadlines. 🎉

In Nov 1952 we moved to Decatur because my dad had been transferred to the new home office of the Illinois Power Company where he worked.

That was the first major crisis in my life. I would lose all my friends at church and at school, to move somewhere where I knew no one at all. It scared me, a LOT. My brother and I tried to talk our parents out of the idea, but to no avail. We were both very happy in Galesburg. Why change anything when everything was going so well there? It seemed so unfair and unnecessary.

It was definitely the most shocking thing that had ever happened in our lives. I suppose our dad had gotten a big raise, but money meant nothing at all to my brother and I. Neither of us had any money, nor any need for money.

I never again felt as safe and at home as I had felt in Galesburg. But of course we soon had a new home, school and church. We got over it. 🏡

“I had a resolution this year:”

“Only talk to people who listen to me!”

Ye West told Tucker Carlson in an interview broadcast on Fox 7 Oct 2022.

Watch John Cleese’s War on Wokeism at Freedomfest. In his short & cheerful guide on creativity Cleese surprisingly reports that creativity is a skill that anyone can acquire.

The next time you feel like you’re leading a pretty tough life, watch this series of four videos about a man who lives alone in Patagonia.

This arrangement of the song is the most true to the version we sang that morning at church: three solo verses by three different singers, with full chorus singing each refrain. Of course ours was a little better.

Many decades later my brother, who is an astronomer, began giving lectures about the scientific basis of the Star of Bethlehem, which he eventually published in text form in Imprimis, a publication by Hillsdale College.

I was never consulted about my opinion on these scientific investigations. All of his work was published long after Queen Elizabeth had been crowned, so I have labeled this as #1A, being so recent that it could certainly not earn a #2 designation in this series.

In the 1940’s we were living in Galesburg, IL, my birthplace, as well as that of the great Carl Sandburg. Ronald Reagan had also lived there decades earlier. Our life was centered around the First Christian Church, a church Reagan could have easily attended when he was a kid there.

My first starring role came as a singer in the children’s choir, which was led by the much loved Dr. Sykes who sat at the organ console and directed the choir while playing the organ from there. The choir was on the stage behind the organ. But for my starring performance I was standing in the opposite direction near the back of the church, a floor up, in the front of the balcony. I was one of the kings featured in We Three Kings, but I don’t remember which one. It was surely a Christmas time service, hence the decision to feature the stars in the choir. Dr. Sykes had asked me to sing to the people in the farthest corner of the church, which I did, really belting it out. It was a high point in my early life.

They had outfitted us with white robes tied in the middle of the front with giant red bows. It was okay for the girls in the choir, but I thought very inappropriate for the boys, especially those with solos to sing. I would have preferred to have wrapped the robe with my leather belt holding my holster and cap gun, but no one ever asked for my fashion advice.

On the drive home after church, my father always stopped at the store to buy a copy of the Sunday St. Louis Post Dispatch, the really big thick one of the week. I liked to read the many colored pages of the comics. And if I was really lucky there might also be a picture in the sports section of my friend, Stan the Man Musial.

Series Introduction

On 9 Sep 2022 Jean wrote: “I wonder if there is anyone on Micro.blog who remembers the world before Queen Elizabeth II. I would love to know.”

I thought about Jean’s idea for a while, then opened Keep and listed 20+ post ideas in a few minutes, so maybe it would be easy to get a series going. Of course my world was small back then.

Elizabeth was crowned on 2 June 1953. Yes, I have many memories before that date. Many interest me. I have no idea whether they would interest anyone else, maybe a few.

I will number the posts as I post them. I called this one “intro,” after almost calling it #0.

I’m always happy to get feedback from others unless it makes me feel bad, you know, like practically everything on TV does these days. 😉

Yesterday the nurses on her floor at the hospital all signed a lovely thank you card for my wife. They were acknowledging what I already suspected: she is the best worker they have in Housekeeping, BY FAR!

They also gave her a bouquet of fresh flowers & a $25 gift card. 💐

European leaders have not served their people well in turning away from fossil fuels in favor of green energy sources so soon. They have not planned this transition well. Europeans will have a hard time staying warm enough during the upcoming winter.

Ron Chester - 29 Aug 2022

Our city has been recognized as the 13th most affordable.city in the US.

13. Decatur, Illinois

Cost of living: 16.0% below US average. Metro population: 104,688.
Median household income: $53,725. Median home value: $103,100. Unemployment rate: 6.5%

Our city has been recognized as the 13th most affordable.city in the US.

1. Decatur, Illinois

Cost of living: 16.0% below US average Metro population: 104,688 Median household income: $53,725 Median home value: $103,100 Unemployment rate: 6.5%

🏡

Our city has been recognized as the 13th most affordable.city in the US.

1. Decatur, Illinois

Cost of living: 16.0% below US average Metro population: 104,688 Median household income: $53,725 Median home value: $103,100 Unemployment rate: 6.5%

🏡

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Thomas Paine, The American Crises, 1776