Welcome to my little Nerdery on the Net! :)

Today was Nicholas' first official day behind the wheel for the first two of six required hours of check rides before he can apply for his learner's permit from DMV and experience the joys of graduated licencing. To say he was more than a little bit nervous was a grand understatement. Very excited to be taking yet another step toward adulthood to be sure but very nervous just the same. Truth be told, he has…

OK, I will stipulate for the record that traveling I-40 was pretty much a monumental amount of suck pretty much from the east end to past the mess that is White Oak just west of the county line. But only the first third of it can be blamed on that scary wall of water descending in one fell swoop from those nasty rain clouds. Once we got past that epic waterfall that people who have…

It seems almost unreal to imagine that my daughter is 14 years old and much closer to when she flies away from the nest than she used to be! It seems like it was yesterday that we were taking the most notorious picture of her we've ever taken. It was taken two weeks after she was born and the boys are hovering over her where she's laying on a pink boppy pillow. Nicholas was fixated…

Today's excitement came in two waves starting off with the joy of logging onto the credit union's bill paying application and sending a "kiss off" final payment for the Traverse to the rat bastards who bought the loan six months from maturity with very little warning that I've done a couple of deep dives on earlier this year. I can assure you they and that payment will not be missed! Now hopefully they'll keep their…

I'm in the process of resurrecting the content from the old website covering the kids adventures and family (finally made it through 2009!). During the sifting, I found these pictures that I've never published before from a trip I took to NYC in 2009. On the way back home to Garner, I stopped by to visit my Uncle Frank (from the Hungarian side of the family) in South Amboy NJ and enjoyed a nice little…

I loved Mike Milbury's take on the Canes/Rangers series where he really didn't think a whole lot of our chances. No way we could stand against Panarin and Zabinejad and the oh-so-mighty goalie combo of Lundqvist and Shestyorkin. I wasn't expecting him to be a fan given his connections to the Bruins and Islanders but if you're going to purport to be an analyst, you need to at least pretend to consider all of the…

Yesterday's adventures included a quick trip to downtown Chapel Hill…on the way back, we decided to wander about Brier Creek and let the Traverse have a vote on our cuisine. Let's just say the "arroz chaufa" with Inka Kola really hit the spot! Then there was this purple corn and pineapple concoction called "chi cha morada" that was very interesting and tasty. The roasted chicken and sides that were shared all round were amazingly tasty…

With Wednesday's nasty storms came a big power outage caused by a lightning strike to a pole just outside the neighbourhood. The surge seemed to go at least as far as a junction box about a fifth of the way to my house and it took about seven hours before power was finally restored. But let's just say I'm thankful that all of the electronics round here seemed to survive perfectly fine in spite of…

Today’s phrase in Hungarian is inspired by one of my lovely neighbours who was truly shocked to find their idea of my age was decidedly less than what they thought it was to the tune of about 15 years… ;) Hogy lehet ötven éves?!? (How can you be fifty years old?!?) That has to be a first for me! It reminded me of when I was at university at UCF many eons ago…I used to…

A few days ago, Katie noticed that the nest on the porch needed the "No Vacancy" light with the new Lady Robin taking up residence. It's clear she wasn't terribly impressed with the original design of the nest and she definitely has added some height to the walls. I've really missed having the robins round the front porch area even if it means I'm not going to be able to avail myself of the chair…

Whilst researching NC DMV registration fees, I discovered that the numbers on their site to register a personalised plate didn't exactly add up to what they're wanting on the renewal bill. It turns out that NC DMV is increasing their fees starting 1 Jul 2020 to the tune of at least $2.75 on a personalised plate. Now, you'd think I'd discover this unfortunate news on their website…a press release, an indicator that fees were going…

Today's trip down memory lane comes from the back of Dad's house in Port Orange in November 2006. Mind you, this was many years after the crops of corn and other vegetables he would help grow on Grandpa's farm in Hutsonville IL. Grandpa's farm wasn't huge by the corporate farming standards of today but it was a decent and respectable size and that with his job as a turbine operator at Central Illinois Power helped…

With all of the protests and civil unrest going on recently , this public statement from former SecDef and Marine Corps General James Mattis may well have flown under most people's radar. But the fact that General Mattis has broken with the usual tradition for retired military officers to avoid the appearance of violating Article 88 (contempt toward officials) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is rather shocking, to say the least. And…

Yes…even knowing Katie was going to be all eye-rolly and NERD, there was no way I wasn’t going to have the live feed from Pad 39A on the TV. But I can’t be the only one amused at the names of the astronauts… ;)

It's not often I get to tell Bob Murray of Murray Energy where he can file his Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan (here's a hint…it's a rather notorious orifice!), thoroughly reject Santander Consumer USA's completely inadequate response to my consumer complaint a couple of months ago, and at the same time suggest that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is at best a paper tiger with no interest in actually regulating bad actors in the financial services…

Sometimes it is just a matter of perspective of experiencing the bitter makes one appreciate the sweetness when it comes round. Lindsey truly gets it. It might be hard to remember at times but perspective is always the key! (Look up her “String Sessions” duet with Amy Lee of Evanescence if you don’t believe me. The song was amazing but the interview afterward even more so…) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uSWXKh9JpY&feature=youtu.be

I'm thinking the driver of this vehicle and I would agree on quite a lot of things, not the least of which would be that the Peruvian sense of humour totally rules! :)

There are some lessons one can learn from spending any amount of time on a nuclear submarine that definitely apply to social distancing and navigating tight confined spaces. This is especially critical on an attack submarine (think Los Angeles class) which are much smaller than the missile submarines ("boomers" like the Ohio or Virginia class boats). One of the most critical is that unless you need to be somewhere quickly, you hug the walls or…

In a nutshell (!), I inherited a portion of my great-grandfather's mineral rights from under the family farm land in Southern Illinois which have had mining leases with several coal companies, the latest being Murray Energy that bought out The American Coal Company that operates the Galatia IL coal mine. In our main story, yesterday I finally received the latest in a series of love letters from the law firm handling the Murray Energy Chapter…