Photo Finish Quandry.

Back when I first started the moblog, I started it on TextAmerica based on a feature on the now defunct TechTV’s “The Screen Savers”. I loved the service but probably didn’t do as much as I could with it.

Now I’m finding Flickr much more interesting, as I have several other blog friends using the service. So I think I’m going to start using Flickr and kind of abandon my Textamerica account, though I’ll leave a link to Textamerica too.

The other question is, do I want to post my photos directly into my blog or do I want to have them on a separate page.

Decisions, decisions.

12 June 2005 by Geek 0

But Don’t Lick The Cashier.

On our way home from Buffalo today, we decided that we needed a little chocolate high, as we were both very groggy from staying up past our bedtime and sleeping in a hotel room last night and then wearing yesterday’s clothes again today. So when we stopped for gas in Canandaigua, Earl ran into Wilson Farms and grabbed a couple bottles of water and a couple packs of Mallo Cups.

Oh My God.

I have not had Mallo Cups in a couple of years and I had forgotten just how wonderfully delicious they are. As an added treat, I had completely forgotten about collecting Mallo Cups points!

Oh My God Again!

I love collecting points. Granted, you need 500 points for a free Mallo Cup or something like that, but still, it’s a goal that everyone should strive for. I’ll probably eat my weight in Mallo Cups just to get that free candy bar.

These points have reminded me of the good ol’ days of S&H Green Stamps days. For those unfamiliar, let me quickly explain. You went to a the market or gas station or department store that featured S&H Green Stamps. Based on how much you spent, the cashier would spin a little wheel like contraption mounted above the cashier that dispensed the proper number of stamps for the amount of your purchase. (If you go to Subway, you’ll find the exact contraption if used there to give out Subway stamps.) You then took those stamps, licked them (I really think they tasted like ass, now that I think about it) and pasted them in your S&H Green Stamps book. Once you had the proper number of stamps, you browsed a catalog of varied merchandise and sent your stamps into the mail order company. They mailed you back your selected item. The big spenders with thousands of stamps got things like canoes and tents or entire living room set. We weren’t as disciplined as we should have been so we would only have a couple of books and would get a Tupperware canister set or something like that. The canister set had to be in avocado.

We were extra lucky in that we had an “S&H Green Stamps Redemption Store” in Syracuse. I can still picture it to this day, right next store to the old A&W on Brewerton Rd. in Cicero. This store resembled a Service Merchandise catalog store. Sure enough, there was that canoe and tent set for 10,000 stamps or something big. On the other wall was the avocado Tupperware canister set.

As I reminisced over S&H Green Stamps, I took the opportunity to search the internet for information and found that they have morphed into S&H Greenpoints. A quick scan of the website shows that they can be used with a nice variety of places, like Best Buy, Barnes and Noble and The Apple Store.

Oh My God Thrice!

I’m all excited about collecting points for a new avocado canister set, just like the good old days. It’ll give me a place to store all my Mallo Cups.

12 June 2005 by Ponderings and Musings 1

Fun In The Sun.

Earl and I decided to enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend and hit the road in the Jeep on Saturday. We put the top down, slathered ourselves in sunscreen until we were whiter than Rose McGowan and headed for the big city. The big city of Syracuse, that is.

Actually, on our way to Syracuse we stopped and visited with my dad up at his store. We chatted about my grandfather and his health (he hasn’t been doing well lately), looked for the kittens that recently made an appearance on the second floor where they store insulation and moulding and basically just shot the bull for a bit.

After stopping for lunch at a diner in Pulaski and then driving around a bit, we ended up going to BalloonFest in Syracuse. It was hot, hot, hot at 95 degrees. We basted in the sun, took a stroll around and listened to some music. I was very pleased to see that the carnival rides included The Tempest, my favorite carnival (or around here, “Field Days”) ride of all time. My second favorite, The Trabant, was also there. I didn’t ride either of my favorites, mainly because the heat was starting to take it’s toll and I didn’t think my stomach was up for the ride. In retrospect, I’m becoming a major wuss. I’ve always prided myself on my amusement park endurance, as my mother raised us on “The Trabant” and “The Tempest” because the Merry Go ‘Round made her dizzy.

After BalloonFest (where no balloons flew due to the heat), we ate a Dinosaur Barbecue. If you are ever in Syracuse, you MUST stop at Dinosaur Barbecue. By this time, it was 8:00 or so and still very warm and muggy. So we did the sensible thing.

We took off to Buffalo, 150 miles to the west. It was Bear Night at a local bar there, and we wanted to hang out with some of the guys we had met at Bear Trek in Danbury back in April. It started to rain part of the way, so we had to pull under a bridge on the Thruway and put the Jeep top up quickly, but it was all good fun. We had a really good time in Buffalo. It’s nice to be able to hang out with like minded guys. We didn’t get to bed until 3:00 a.m. but we didn’t care.

This morning we headed back home to enjoy the day on the ranch.

I really appreciate being able to have spontaneous weekend like this. It’s a great way to get geared up for a good week.

12 June 2005 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Speed Racer, part 2.

I had a couple of people mention they hadn’t seen the picture of my car (probably because it’s buried on the old blog). Here it is again.
J.P. and his Acura
Note that I never miss an opportunity to pose for the camera.

11 June 2005 by Drive. 2

Go Speed Racer, Go!

Sometimes you just got unleash the kid in you. Especially behind the wheel of a 2005 Acura RSX Type-S on a Friday night down the main street through downtown.

The group of high school and/or college kids in the Volkswagen Jetta had nothing on me. 36 years old, 6000 RPMs, 3rd gear, 52 MPH. Through downtown. They’re thumpin’ their rap music, apparently through an pretty robust Alpine system according to all the tell tale stickers on the car. I’ve got “I Love The Nightlife (Disco ‘Round)” by Alicia Bridges cranked on the Bose system, sans advertisements. We Acura owners don’t like to boast.

They tried to race only once, even though there were numerous opportunities after that original spanking. They waved when we parted ways. It was all in good fun.

The kid still has it in him.

* * *

Is this all déjà vu? Read the last paragraph of this old blog entry.

11 June 2005 by Drive. 2

Looking Pretty.

My apologies if you find the technical talk boring, but I think I’ve figured out the stylesheets for my blog enough to get it to look good in all browsers, including Internet Explorer. If you find any pages that look odd, please drop me a line and let me know.

10 June 2005 by Geek 0

Today’s iTip is HOT.

“The Game Of Love”, Santana feat Michelle Branch.

O.k., everyone can calm down, my iPod is working once again. In case you suffer the same trouble as me, here’s what I did.

1. I downloaded a nifty program called YamiPod. You can find it here.
2. I ran the program on my Mac, with the iPod plugged in and iTunes closed. Actually, iTunes kept crashing so that second part was easy.
3. I opted to “restore” my iPod, which gave me a few ominous messages but did what it needed to do.
4. I unmounted and remounted my iPod and then opened iTunes. iTunes promptly did it’s thing and updated all the music on my iPod, bringing everything back to normal.

I see light once again!

“Get Up, Stand Up (Phunk Investigation Radio Edit)”, Stellar Project featuring Brandi Emma.

Now that I’m able to enjoy my tunes again I am able to blog in style! I’m finding myself reading more and more blogs these days and actually going beyond lurking and dropping comments all over the place. As I typed that last sentence I had visions of a pigeon in Central Park leaving his mark. Isn’t that lovely? It gives you insight to my self-esteem, comparing my thoughts to pigeon poop. Oh well. I’m really not that screwed up in the head.

Really.

“Relax”, Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

With this very hot, sticky weather here in Upstate N.Y. I am reminded of my club days when I was spinning tunes at the local bar. It’d be a hot Saturday night in July. The bar would be crowded with men and women, all drinking beer, pop or foofy drinks (it was a gay bar after all). The dance floor would be a sea of bare chested men, hairy bears and a smattering of drag queens marinated in some outrageous perfume, all punctuated by a few bare-chested lesbians. I’d keep the floor moving and the crowd pumped with tracks like “Relax”, “Brand New Lover”, “Let The Music Play”, “Point Of No Return” and other 80s and 90s dance tracks. Of course I’d compliment the mix with a “Stars On 45” jingle and then segue into some late 70s stuff. That was always a popular mix. Something like “Come To Me” by France Joli or “Searchin'” by Hazell Dean.

“Two To Make It Right”, Seduction.

Thinking about this stuff is getting me in the mood to go out and celebrate gay pride this year. Earl has mentioned a couple of local gay pride celebrations coming up. I think we might have to join in the festivities.

“Tell Me When”, The Human League.

9 June 2005 by Gayish. 0

How Not iFriendly.

So I was ready to settle in and write my latest witty blog dialog. Not that anyone reads what I write but I amuse myself easily.

I grabbed the iPod, plugged in the headphones and was ready to jam to the last batch of music I downloaded.

Except they’re not on my iPod.

Spin the wheel, spin the wheel, click, click, click.

There seems to be *nothing* on my iPod. Whenever I plug my iPod in to synchronize with iTunes, iTunes closes and wants me to send a crash report to Apple.

OH MY GOD.

This is giving me flashbacks to Windows XP. Apple announced this week that they’re switching to Intel processors. We’re going to have Pentium Macs.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the dark ages.

9 June 2005 by Geek 0

My Apologies to Internet Explorer Users.

I was all proud of myself for tweaking my blog page last night and getting it just the way I wanted it to look. Unfortunately, due to Microsoft doing their own thing, it doesn’t render correctly in Internet Explorer. So my sidebar ends up at the bottom of the page, sans my smiling face. I don’t know if its been doing this for a long time or since I just made the changes last night.

Sigh.

Thank you for your patience, I hope to have it fixed soon. If you are currently using Internet Explorer and would like to see how this page (and the internet in general) *should* look, I highly recommend following my “Get Firefox” link to the right, er, below.

Addendum: If anyone can help me with the CSS problems I’m having with Internet Explorer, I’d really appreciate the help. Everything looks great in Mozilla based browsers, but IE is moving the floating sidebar to the bottom and I can’t figure out why!

9 June 2005 by Geek 0

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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