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Timothy S. McTaggart's Archived Blogs Apr-Jun 03

 

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13 Jun 03 (Friday the 13th!!)

Hookay, what else to do on this evening of Friday the 13th, except maybe write another blog. Seems an excellent night to fire up the transmitter and crank out another late night broadcast on 100.9 as well, so if you're around here and read this blog in time, tune that radio in! This last week has been a week of a cohort vehicle's gas tank leak, hail damage and other ailments (the previous week was his turn at water leaks in a residence). Not to be outdone, my vehicle did a $1600 bambi. The previous bambi was about 23 years ago, with no damage to the 1970 Impala I was driving at that time. Newer cars do not fare as well, much to the dismay of USAA, my excellent insurance company. Off we go next week to San Angelo's version of 'Auto Penting and Denting'. This year has been consistent if nothing else. I just hope we make it through the rest of it relatively intact. So lemme get loose, thump against the wall once and high tail it out of the room (reference to the illicit Nokia 'phone video' commercial going around the internet).

9 Jun 03

Dang, I hope to catch this up soon. As of late I've felt like the cat in the Nokia 'Phone Video' commercial, with all the stuff going on. Details soon as I regain some composure. Until then, I'm Timothy S. McTaggart. After that who knows who the hell I may be.

11 May 03

As far as I am concerned, one too many loud obnoxious commercials finally aired yesterday on one of our 'fine' local FM stations. Between that, the bad choices in formats, and limited song selections that continually repeat, I decided I'd had enough. I had already put several of these stations on notice (letters, E-mail, phone conversations, etc) to no avail. So I purchased an XM satellite radio receiver yesterday, and only a day later, don't think I'm gonna look back. Can't say I didn't warn our local radio stations. I may still listen to our NPR affiliate (to whom I've paid more in contributions than what is the subscription fee for XM). It's great to have the music again. My tastes are quite eclectic, so more than 100 channels of music works for me. In fact, I was driving back from the parent's place (Mother's day, don't you know) this evening and had the overture to HMS Pinafore (Act II) blasting on the car stereo. Having some good music should do well for my blood pressure, too. Call this a plug if you will, but so far, this has been worth the price of admission. Later, chinks.....!!

10 May 03

It may be a few weeks since the last blog, but it is time to catch things up. Yes, we survived Easter. The sunrise service went really well and 9.75 band once again helped spread the word as well as a bit of good music. The office has been crazy, with implementation of a new computer system. Also, there's been some interesting goings on between myself and the property manager of my place of residence. The new lease states that our residences will be routinely inspected for health and safety purposes. As this is a trashed out bachelor pad here, it failed the first inspection, miserably. Further contributing to matters was said manager's mention of the vast amount of electronics I have plugged into electricity. Wishing to consult those in the know regarding how I need to safely wire this stuff, I suggested consulting a fire inspector. To make a long story short, a one each Karla Fant who is a fire inspector here, showed up (she's good looking, though), found and wrote up five items in my residence and caused similar (probably more) grief for our property manager's office. I have since fixed said items in my place and it passed a follow up inspection with flying colors. I've done one fire before and well understand where a fire inspector may be coming from. I still wonder if this was the best idea (and I hope the property manager doesn't consider this a retaliatory measure for telling me to clean up my pad!), but I think we're less likely to burn things down now. I have actually cleaned up my pad as well, so now I can't find anything. This place was indeed in desperate need of a cleaning up, so I thanked said property manager for inspiring me to get it done. The place has nearly 12 years of wear and tear on it (bass amplifiers and sheet rock don't get along too well, among other things) so I'll get to suck up a fair charge if or when I vacate. Anyway, I am looking for a house at the moment. If anybody reading this blog knows about one here in San Angelo, speak up! Well that's about all I know for now. Hey, I want to say thanks to Jeff with level 2 support at Cox Internet for sorting out a glitch tonight when I tried to update my blogs here. He says he's never tried to do an FTP from a dos prompt like I normally do when I update this thing. So he had me try it from the browser instead, which apparently hit the same glitch. Jeff then did some magic somewhere and things began working with the browser as well as my old school FTPing from the dos prompt. Jeff says I'm one of a dying breed, doing things from the dos prompt. Sheesh! Thanks, though.

19 Apr 03

'Twas the night before Easter, and all through the house, not a... no wait, never mind. Once again I am involved with a sunrise service (PA system and playing in band for same) so this night before isn't the best for getting any sleep. Hence my writing of another blog. Now to find something to blog about. Seems some of the hard part of our Iraqi venture is getting the electricity back on in Baghdad. The sooner that gets done the better for everyone involved. Interesting now that some people in Baghdad are protesting our presence there. Looks like we're about to realize how crazy it's going to get with efforts to get a democratic government on line, since we Americans are probably not familiar with the nature of Iraqi people. Mr. President, you got us into this one. Well that's enough of my comments there for now. I am fed up with the Nigerian scam junk E-mail letters, so I have written The Ultimate 419 Scam Letter. Enjoy.

15 Apr 03

"Let me tell you how it will be, There's one for you, 19 for me", but enough of my repeating lyrics from 'Taxman' by the Beatles. One year I drove by the post office on this day of 15 April with that song blaring on the car stereo. This was while all the crazy stuff was happening with everyone getting their tax returns in by the last minute. Well we gotta pay for this war, in amongst other things. The hard part in Iraq will be getting some type of administration going that serves the folks there better than the last one did. Looting is only going to work for a short time during all the celebrating, and then these people need to get to business putting a more democratic government on-line. That's gonna take awhile too. Folks in the tea houses in that part of the world are asking the question "who's next?" in regard to Afghanistan and now Iraq (the latter of which I have yet to see much 9/11 association). I'm not comfortable with this new direction, this "Pox Americus" attitude that our administration is taking on. So how is all this being paid for? Who's next, indeed.

 

 

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