Welcome to my little Nerdery on the Net! :)

With best wishes for all those wandering about in fancy dress canvassing their neighbourhoods for candies and treats...this evening is for looking at history back some 39 years. My father was stationed at Ft Sam Houston near San Antonio TX and Halloween came round as it always does. But this year was going to be special...I'd found out a while earlier that Mom was pregnant and due in October and Lee finally made good on…

I ordinarily don't do the "share memories" thing but in this case given last night's announcement by their excellencies the Wake County School Board vis-a-vis band activities which effectively renders impossible the normal functioning of a band by banning woodwinds and brass that make up the majority of the instruments from playing, I give you this picture of the Fuquay-Varina Marching Bengals featuring Miss Savannah Coley as one of two colour guard members performing at…

To all of my friends and family who are celebrating the New Year...a very sincere wish for one far more sweet than the one we've endured and a hope that all of the people can eventually find peace and love for each and for all.

I never imagined a month ago as I stood near this iconic building tucked behind the US Capitol that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would no longer be with us. After all, she'd fought many health issues these past few years with a courage only a few of us could ever imagine and she seemed like she'd outlast them all through sheer force of will and perseverance. And whether you agreed with her positions on many…

It's been somewhat amusing watching the various political parties and lobbying groups carpet-bomb my mailbox for the last month or so and I'm pretty sure the next seven weeks will be more of the same. I can't even imagine how much postage the Republican Party or their surrogates has wasted sending near-daily advertisements with the occasional "survey and personal appeal" from President Trump (actually, it really comes from the Republican National Committee) who seems more…

Random video in the YouTube recommendations list…George Carlin busting a rant in one of his HBO specials with visible subtitles in Italian. He's a laugh riot in English but in Italian it is next-level awesome! Oh, YouTube…you know me so well! :)

This lovely phrase comes from the Magyar language (modern day Hungarian) and it literally means "NO, NO, NEVER!" Amongst the older generation of Hungarians back in the day, this would refer to the hated Treaty of Trianon imposed upon Hungary from the victorious powers of WWI that saw Hungary reduced to one third it's historical size and made the country the land-locked country it is today. The Treaty was so resented by the Hungarians of…

Finally the new series of Top Gear is upon us which once again allows us to follow the boys larking about in cars and generally delighting silly petrol heads. But in the first episode, it is clear that someone in the production team has a right buggered sense of humour or they don’t particularly fancy listening to Lancastrians. So Chris Harris, Freddie Flintoff, and Paddy McGuinness are tooling about in convertibles they bought on a…

This really blows…Sergio Perez has given his all for Force India / Racing Point but it looks like he's getting the push so that Seb can take his seat. I can't be the only one that thinks that not only does that completely suck rocks but that Seb Vettel is a daft choice to replace Checo. Just goes to show you that billions can buy you a F1 team but it ain't worth a hill…

Nick finished up the required six hours of behind-the-wheel training clearing the way for him to seek his learner's permit under graduated licencing. Today's session was very early this morning and apparently he did a bit more "drifting" today on the motorways than he had the previous two days. Of course, the first image that popped into my head was him doing a fair heap of oversteer and letting the rear of the car slide…

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…