This is one of my favorite songs from the 1980s. The funky bass line, the instrumentation, and the vocals are just wonderful. We didn’t hear this much on Top 40 radio in Upstate New York, it was a little too funky for the bland approach to Top 40 back then. I discovered the track on “Soul Train” (it might have been the performance in this video) and I bought the 45 back in the day.
When I was Program Director of the Rhythm/Dance Top 40 in the 90s, this track was prominently rotated in the back catalog. We made our own radio edit from the original 12-inch version; I should recreate that using modern methods and share it someday.
From 1983, here’s the S.O.S. Band and “Just Be Good To Me”.
I enjoy flavored coffee. I don’t add anything to the coffee, I drink it black, albeit with the flavoring thatLcomes with whatever I’ve ordered from Amazon or picked up a local store. I always look for signs of natural flavoring instead of the artificially flavored stuff. I don’t asL what the natural flavoring is, I just focus on the word “natural”.
Amazon was having a sale on a variety pack of Crave Coffee. The coffee has been quite good and the pods have been working as intended. Working pods without getting grounds in the cup or water shooting out from the Keurig machine are always a win, and never a certainty when ordering from Amazon. There are some brands that have produced a harrowing experience.
I was surprised at Crave Coffee’s marketing approach around their logo. It’s very strange to sink five spikes into a face with an abnormally large smile drinking coffee.
Few folks I know understand this, but it is on my bucket list to experience an airline flight like this once in my life. I may have to max out a credit card to do it, but I will do it before I depart.
I always get nervous when I see things like “No Refrigeration Required” on items like mayonnaise. But here we are, looking at a container of mayonnaise with no refrigeration required.
It makes me wonder what’s added to the mayonnaise to not require the traditional methods of validation. Are there plastic beads? I know at one time we often heard, “better living through chemistry”, but I have this thing about food expiration dates and the freshness of my meal in general, so perhaps I’m extra sensitive to additives and things done to our food to make it last longer or through unnatural means.
Of course, refrigeration is just a gimmick to slow down the aging process of our food but over the decades I’ve learned to accept that. And I’ve put a *lot* of preservatives in my body over the decades, so I don’t know why I look at these bottles of no refrigeration required mayonnaise and wonder what they’ve done to it, so maybe I should just learn to accept progress.
Dan Robinson from StormHighway.com caught an amazing lightning strike during the storms passing through St. Louis on Friday the 30th. Here’s a video of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis getting struck by lightning.
Earl and I have visited the St. Louis Gateway Arch in the past. The experience was not enjoyable as I had thought it would be. The arch itself is amazing and an impressive engineering feat. But the ride to the top of the arch in an oversize clothes dryer drum with four of your closest friends was not enjoyable. The tilt-straighten-tilt-straighten-tilt-straighten of the vehicle as it made its way up didn’t bother me, it was the close quarters with a tiny porthole that was messing with my head. As long as I could see outside the vehicle I was avoiding a complete panic, but that porthole was small and my eyes were frozen on the “scenery” passing by.
Once we were at the top of the arch looking out the windows I was still a little wigged out about how small the area was; it felt the inside of an airliner but with everyone running around. Again, I’m glad I did it once but I don’t need to go up there again.
Truman has been quite social this week, spending more time than usual on his cat tree in the family room. It gives him a good vantage point to see what’s going on around the house without being too overwhelming or intrusive. I totally get that.
He’s also been doing well with his canine friends Lucky and Jinx. They all seem to have come to an understanding on space and such. The dogs protect Truman from trying to escape outside into the desert heat. When all is well they even nap together.
With the desert heat kicking into high gear this week, I needed to abandon the practice of sunset walks around the neighborhood as a form of exercise. Even though the sun is setting around 7:30 PM (1930) MST, it’s still well over 100F when this is happening and the walks are just not enjoyable for me. One of the things I realized back in 2021 when we first moved here was that summer was the indoor season here in the Sonoran Desert, versus our summer experiences back east.
I can live with it. I can easily live with it.
In order to keep my calories burned counts up I have gone back to playing Beat Saber on my Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. The experience has been good for the most part, aside from my aging headset occasionally glitching as it’s trying to update or something in the background. It’s still stuck on Chicago time because Meta offers absolutely no way to change the time zone on the unit after it’s original setup. So I play Beat Saber in the future when I’m in the present. I find this highly disconcerting due to my OCD-like tendencies, but I deal with it.
I think of Beat Saber as just an overblown version of Super Breakout from my Atari 2600 days and that’s probably why I enjoy the game. I tend to keep the same playlist for the experience; my favorite song on the platform is “Boy With Luv” by the South Korean boyband BTS. There’s one maneuver in the “hard” level that’s fun, because you get to throw the sabers in the air and then the colors change and it’s just a feel good moment. Plus, the song is written in a major key and we all need more major key experiences in the world.
Things needn’t be discordant all the time.
Graphic from a random marketing message somewhere on the InterTubes.
A couple of months ago I purchased new keycaps for the mechanical keyboard I use for work. I’m particular about the keyboards I use, much to the chagrin of my husband. My fussiness around keyboards comes from the fact that I’m a fast touch typist, averaging 100 words a minute and creeping higher on a good day. I’ve also been a touch typist for a long time, and I grew up with electric typewriters and the mechanical computer keyboards of the 1980s. I like to bang along when I’m working, and to keep things calm during my team meetings, I employ a quiet keyboard that I keep to the side when I’m taking notes. I don’t want folks thinking there’s machine gun fire in the office when there’s not.
I’m also particular about keycaps and the aesthetics of the keyboard. When I replaced the keycaps on my mechanical keyboard earlier this year, I went for the retro terminal look of the early 1980s. I have been quite pleased with the results, and the new keycaps provide the exact clackity-clack feel I enjoy on keyboards, especially when I’m writing long presentations, emails, or writing a lot of code.
Older shot from May, can you tell which keycap I installed upside down by mistake? I’ve fixed it since then.
The folks at Drop.com occasionally have a sale on keycaps sets, so I ordered another set of similarly styled keycaps for the Linux computer used for gaming, flight simulator, and the like. They are slated to arrive this weekend and I’m looking forward to seeing how they hold up. I decided to step away from the Dasher terminal blue and went with an orange theme that will compliment the Starfleet accessories I have around the computer.
I’ll be sure to share a photo when I get things set up.
The key to happiness is through a man’s stomach. Or something like that. One of my grandfathers highly recommended to me that I marry someone that can cook and I did just that. There’s a reason I have a dad bod. My husband is an excellent cook.
Chris and Mike made steak, broccoli, and rice bowls for the family and it was absolutely delicious. Not only did I marry an excellent cook, we have plenty of skilled folks in the kitchen in the family.
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.
