Change is not the same as Progress

     Pill bottles used to have a piece of cotton in them. This kept the pills from getting shaken up too much and getting broken. It also absorbed moisture. You had to pull it out to get to the pills, and then put it back in after you got your pill out. Some people would complain about this. Big deal.

       Now, many pill bottles have this little plastic cylinder in them. I think it's supposed to absorb moisture, but I'm not really sure. One day, when I'm feeling really bad, I won't pay attention. I will mistake that little cylinder for a pill, and swallow it. It will then absorb all the moisture in my body.

      My wife will find my shriveled carcass on the kitchen floor and the open bottle of pills on the counter. She will be extremely upset that I didn't put the lid back on and put them back in the cabinet.

The Dogs of the Highland Games

     We spent the weekend at the Central Virginia Celtic Festival and Highland Games .  They have competitions like the Caber Toss and Hammer Throw, as well as a lot of great bands, bagpipers, vendor exhibits, food vendors - with foods from both sides of the Atlantic - whiskey tasting, beer trucks that sell beer from the British Isles and the Colonies, axe throwing, a Britsh Car show, and rows of tents for all of the different Klans and families.  There are lots of guys walking around in kilts and women in Renaissance-style dresses, as well as lots of other Celtic-themed outfits, and a few that are just . . . well, different.  This year, we spotted a Storm Trooper in a kilt.
     One of the things that makes this event different from many others is that everyone is allowed to bring their dog.   It's one of my favorite aspects of the event.  The dogs are as varied and interesting as the people, and they all seem to be enjoying themselves.  I give you a small sample of the Dogs of the Highland Games.




Click image to view photos as a gallery

Keeping Up With the Technorati

Technorati (n) - the class of people who create, and are quick to adopt, new technology (I just invented this term, so if you see it somewhere else you know where it came from).

      MySpace was the first social media site I had. Initially, I created an account to read someone else's blog. Actually, it was so I could follow my Niece's trip to France. Since then, I've created accounts for Facebook (then closed it, then opened it again), Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and probably a few others that I've forgotten about.
      I thought about starting a Tumblr or a WordPress blog, or even having my own hosted web site, but I'm not sure what I would put on it that I couldn't put on one of the existing social networking sites and avoid all of the maintenance and cost of a hosted site. MySpace seems about the most comprehensive offering of it's type; you can have your own 'page' with basic information about yourself, make 'friends' with other people, and post a blog. Google+ gets just about everything right, but it doesn't seem like people have rushed to start using it.  Twitter is great because everyone is limited to 140 characters.  I wish that were true in real life.
      My prediction is that all the jumping around from one service to another will level out as people decide how they want to use social media. There will be different niches to accommodate the different ways people want to use it all, becoming a little less fad-driven and a little more of a practical decision by the users. Having different options is a good thing and no one is tied to only one option.
      I'm counting on MySpace to be around for a while so future generations can go back and look at my blog posts and say "Wow, he was really ahead of his time. Too bad he wasn't recognized for the genius he was during his lifetime!"  But just in case, I'm posting this here, too.

I have a blog

Somehow, it's just not enough to have a facebook and google+ account, a twitter account, a mySpace account, and whatever other account I have that I haven't used in so long that I've forgotten about it.  So I've finally started a blog.  It will not be particularly interesting, nor well-read.  But if anybody asks, then yes - I have a blog.