Impeached

Impeached!

Big Sandy Returns!

Yesterday I ran into an old friend...Big Sandy! My beloved truck of 17 years and 175,000 miles was in the school parking lot for the first time this year after I sold her to a co-worker last May. She looked good. I'm glad she has a good home.

Seeing her actually made me regret seller her. I love my Jeep but Big Sandy was a beast. If my son was of driving age or if we had a bigger house with a bigger driveway I might have kept her. She was a loyal machine.

tamales

That time of year! Last Friday our school had their annual Adopt-A-Kid Christmas parties. Each class at the high school "adopts" a kindergartner in need and provides them presents for Christmas. We also eat. We eat a lot. And some years, if I'm lucky, one of my students brings homemade tamales. I love tamales and I don't get them very often. These were amazing.

Robot Madness!

Last Saturday, Jackson and his robotics team "The Banana Bots" competed at the North Texas FIRST LEGO League Regional Qualifier. The team programs robots to perform certain tasks in a certain time frame. There were dozens of teams there including two other teams from Jackson's school.

And they were named GRAND CHAMPIONS of the event! This qualifies them for the Regional Tournament in January. They were surprised when the team was announced as Grand Champions. It was a pretty exciting moment.

Winter Recital

My son, the maestro.

The Jackrabbit at Dusk

Grey and Blue

Blue making friends at the grocery store parking lot. Nice gray Rubicon with 32 inch tires. #jeepsparkedbyjeeps

Eno's for lunch

She's happy because we went to Eno's for lunch.

Mandolorian Arguments

Disabled Comments

photo: This meme I made a few weeks ago really has nothing to do with the subject of the post. Just a dumb joke that apparently I have to explain way too often therefore taking away from the legitimacy of the joke.

The other day I stumbled upon the very first post of this blog. Written in February of 2006 I invited readers to leave comments on my posts.

Back in the day when blogs first became a thing there was an idea that blogs, due to the fact they had a comments section, could democratize and perhaps "civilize" public discourse.

How naive we were back in those days. I remember reading the comments underneath news articles on my favorite news sites in the late 90's and being shocked how awful some people were in their comments. That was before I understood the concept of the internet troll. That was before I understood how internet anonymity emboldened people to say shockingly rude things to other people. Seems quaint now to see the best in people.

Now there's a mantra to people who post a lot on the internet..."Don't read the comments."

Several years ago I disabled comments on my blog. First of all, very few people actually read this blog and I rarely got comments. Discourse never really happened. Secondly, I began to get a lot of spam comments selling all sorts of things with links that I would never had recommended clicking. I actually only got one or two random troll comments in over a decade before I finally disabled the comment section. I honestly was more concerned with the spam and potential viruses that come along with the spam comments than any trolls.

Still, seeing my post asking for comments took me back for a few moments to a day when we actually thought civil discourse was possible in the blogosphere. What an optimistic time. However, I'm not going to enable comments.

Halfway

Well, I've finally reached the halfway point of my Ulysses Project. I've been reading two pages a day (sometimes more, sometimes less) since April and I calculate that I shall finish sometime by the end of May or early June 2020. Still not quite sure what it's all about but I will finish this thing!