Posted onBlahg

Have you tried drinking only natural wines?

by 2 Comments on Have you tried drinking only natural wines?

Natural Wine Co WebsiteI was first approached to con­sult on the Nat­ur­al Wine Com­pa­ny web­site three years ago when the busi­ness plan was just a twin­kle in the founders’ eyes. They had no logo, no loca­tion, just a dream. It took some time and a lot of hard work to get things togeth­er, but this year the dream became real­i­ty. The brick and mor­tar Nat­ur­al Wine Com­pa­ny store opened in Brook­lyn the Sat­ur­day before Thanks­giv­ing and the web­site was launched concurrently.

Nat­ur­al wines—wines … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Giving BooksOnBoard a second chance

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After all the feed­back I got from report­ing my first impres­sions of Book­sOn­Board, I decid­ed I might have been hasty in judg­ment, and that I should give them anoth­er chance. After all, they are an ebook sell­er that accepts Pay­Pal and I some­times end up with client pay­ments in Pay­Pal that take days to trans­fer to my check­ing account. It would be con­ve­nient to be able to use them as a vendor.

Fore­warned with the knowl­edge that I would … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

I think maybe I’ll start parking on the sidewalk

by Leave a comment on I think maybe I’ll start parking on the sidewalk

Today while I was feed­ing a vaca­tion­ing friend’s cat, some­one backed into my parked motor­cy­cle with her car. After months of liv­ing with shot steer­ing bear­ings I final­ly got them replaced less than two weeks ago. Now my steer­ing is messed up again.

I don’t think its too bad but the mechan­ic’s shop does­n’t open again until Tues­day. It appears that the brack­et that lim­its the range of steer­ing is bent, as I can turn the han­dle­bars all the way to … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Toward a new right

by 21 Comments on Toward a new right

From time to time I am remind­ed of the com­plete and utter inad­e­qua­cy of the terms «left» and «right» as they per­tain to the realm of polit­i­cal beliefs. Even the Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty’s two-axis Nolan Chart is only a small step in the right direc­tion. This kind cat­e­go­riza­tion over­sim­pli­fies opin­ion about the role of gov­ern­ment in a dan­ger­ous way that pre­vents both lib­er­ty and progress.

Recent­ly I had cof­fee with Jason McClain and had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage in a brief … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

An unreasonable day

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The peo­ple at Land­mark have a thought-pro­vok­ing piece of advice: be unrea­son­able. While this may be relat­ed to the idea of using one’s fac­ul­ty of rea­son, it is not quite the same thing. The sug­ges­tion is that we (human beings) often get caught up in a web of rea­sons for the actions we take, and the sug­ges­tion they make essen­tial­ly means to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for voli­tion and free will—or more specif­i­cal­ly to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for our choic­es rather than … Read the rest

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With the rain at my heels

One can look at life in one of two ways: as not hav­ing sec­ond chances or as some­thing with lim­it­less sec­ond chances. Both are use­ful in its own way; no sec­ond chances means that every moment and every choice is pre­cious and can­not be reliv­ed. Unlim­it­ed sec­ond chances, though, means its nev­er too late to jump back in the race, what­ev­er that race may be.

While I cer­tain­ly believe that each moment is elu­sive and can­not be recap­tured, I’m still a … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

outerspaceways.info is the place!

by Leave a comment on outerspaceways.info is the place!

When I was a teenag­er, my moth­er told me that I had weird taste in music, and I can’t say she was wrong about that. I’ve always liked music with alter­na­tive scales and tun­ings, and music with com­plex polyrhyth­mic beats. This attract­ed me from a fair­ly young age to bands and musi­cians like The Res­i­dents, Con­rad Schnit­zler, King Crim­son, Philip Glass, Tuxe­do­moon, and of course the high priest of free jazz Sun Ra.

For … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

BooksOnBoard is not on board

by 12 Comments on BooksOnBoard is not on board

This past week­end I tried a new ven­dor of elec­tron­ic books: Book­sOn­Board. I found the store in the Stan­za app on my iPad, which so far I believe is the best eread­er soft­ware avail­able. Stan­za includes in-app links to sev­er­al sources of elec­tron­ic books, and Book­sOn­Board is the first choice listed.

My first impres­sion of Book­sOn­Board is not favorable.

Cre­at­ing an account was sim­ple and quick. Book­sOn­Board takes Pay­Pal, which was a require­ment this week­end since some of my mon­ey … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Just for a little warmth

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ImageTomor­row morn­ing there is street clean­ing on the East side of my street, which is where the Moto Guzzi was parked until about a half hour ago. I went out to move the bike and, not­ing the chill in the air, thought that it would be nice to have a fire in my fire­place tonight. I’ve run out of Duraflames, but since I had to move the bike any­how, I thought I may as well go down to Safe­way and … Read the rest

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Couch to 4K

Nine days since my last run. I know that run­ning this infre­quent­ly just makes the whole process more dif­fi­cult, but I have to take my oppor­tu­ni­ties when I can. While I’ve been kept pret­ty busy with a full sched­ule late­ly, I can’t say that I don’t have oppor­tu­ni­ties. In this case, «oppor­tu­ni­ties» trans­lates to «win­dows of motivation.»

This morn­ing I had more get-up-and-go than usu­al. I’ve done laun­dry, cleaned the cat­box, tak­en the trash out, and topped it off with … Read the rest

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