Every Teachers Nightmare!

Every teacher has those nightmares that they pray will never happen in their classroom.This has got to be one of them.

'Nuff said!

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Picture Monday. April 14, 2008

I read my brother's latest post on his blog HORST ONLINE a few days ago. He wrote about my weekly picture feature so I thought he would appreciate the following pictures. Perhaps he can fill in some of the lapses in my memory.

This is a picture of some childhood friends. From left to right we have Gail Harkin holding her younger brother Kenneth Harkin; Mike Harkin; and Lance Horst holding his baby brother, me.

Above on the left is a picture of Michal Ann and Lance.

No this is not Eddy Haskell. This is another picture of my brother Lance. My brother was never like Eddy Haskell but one of his friends was. I remember the time when his friend Don pushed me into a puddle of water at the house. I can't remember why he did it. I'm certain that I was blameless though. Yeah right.

This is a snap of my brother with his wife Pam. I am not sure of the occasion. Perhaps he will write in and enlighten me and I can add that to the blog.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

AWSOME! Just The Black Notes

I came across this video this morning and thought it was awsome and wanted to share it with all of you.

I found it on the blog Already Not Yet. Check it out.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

And Now, For Something Completely Different!

Thanks HEMA for a great time.

HEMA is a department store group in Europe with stores in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. Now I have never been to the stores but I have visited their website. The best I can tell they only carry products that are their own brand and have been developed by them. I can tell by looking at the website that they offer quality merchandise and truly place the customer first.

How do I know this?

Simple! Read this statement from their website:
a real HEMA product
All products are developed at Headquarters. Safety always comes first at HEMA, which is why all products are tested in HEMA’s test laboratory. Nothing goes on sale before it meets strict HEMA requirements. Likewise, much attention is paid to the quality of the products. If a product fails to please the customer, the motto ‘Not satisfied - money back’ applies. The customer is refunded. That is the real HEMA.

HEMA also likes to have a good time.

How do I know this?

Witness this Flash Demo page featuring products from their store. It is great fun to watch; and remember to turn up the sound on your computer to get the full effect. HEMA producten page.

I hope you enjoy this light diversion on this wonderful weekend. PS. Look at the name of the boom box on the first line of products.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Retro Saturday, April 12, 2008

I remember the very first game system I had way back when in the 1980's. No it wasn't an Atari. I bought the Magnavox Odyssey system. Mainly because it was the system that my brother, Lance bought. My wife and I lived in the Dallas area at the time and it seemed that the only place you could get games for this system was at a chain of local electronics stores that were in the malls. I can't even remember the name of the store anymore. In the 80's the Odyssey was great fun and the height of technology. I could sit forever, at least a couple of hours playing the silly game. I searched this AM for a commercial for the Odyssey game system. Here it is.This was not the exact system that I had. This was the first one that was released in the late 1970's. Mine came along later. Here is a Japanese commercial for the game system that was similar to mine.Interesting fact: Atari released the first arcade game, Pong, in 1972. Before Atari could copyright the game other companies rushed their versions to market under various iterations. Soon Magnavox noticed what was going on and got very interested in the game also. But for a different reason. It seems that Atari Pong was very, very, very similar to a new game that Magnavox had demonstrated a few months earlier, The Odyssey. The guys over in legal began doing some snooping. Guess what they found out? Yep. Right there in the guest book was the signature of Nolan Bushnell, the owner of Atari at the time. It was time to for someone to strike a deal and they did. The rest is history. I got this information from turbotommyturbinado on YouTube. Here is his video of the arcade game Pong.Wasn't that exciting?

I had that game system for a few years. Then when Woolcostarted closing stores in 1983 I bought the Atari system and started scouring the DFW area for Woolco's and closeout prices on games. I bought several. You know, it always seemed that Woolco marked up all their prices just so they could mark them down again during the closing process. Emphasis on "seemed". I don't really know. After all I was much younger and slightly less knowledgeable then.

I put the Odyssey up and I don't really remember that much about after that. I played the Atari for some time but the interest slowly waned. I eventually put it away only to take it out some time later and introducing it to my son and daughter. They thought it was great and have been playing games ever since in most of the game systems known to man. I know. I fell asleep last night watching Julie play Lego Star Wars on her Wii.

If you like to play the classic arcade games try Neaves Games and play online. You can play Space Invaders, N-Blox, Asteroids, Snake, Simon, Tic-Tac-Toe, Hexxagon, and Frogger.© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

The $20 Free $40 Coupon

Coupons are good. Saving is good. Saving $40.00 is even better. One problem though. The $40.00 coupon ended up costing me close to $20.00. Go figure! I guess coupons are just like that.

My $40.00 coupons for the digital-to-analog converter box came in yesterday. It was really interesting. They actually look like credit cards; although they take great pains to stress that they are not credit, debit, or gift cards and you can not get cash for them. The card comes with a list of qualifying converters and the locations and names of local stores where the consumer can purchase the boxes. I did some checking and I found that most boxes cost $59.95 and the coupon is for $40.00. I did find boxes at Wal-Mart though that cost $52.97 and $49.87. I endedup getting mine at Radio Shack. I had to get a cell phone charger for the truck anyway and thought that I would "kill two birds with one stone", so to speak. I could have gone to Best Buy or Circuit City also. The converter box at Best Buy was the store brand, Insignia. The others I looked at were Magnavox, RCA, Zenith, and DigitalStream.

Important note: The receipt from Radio Shack reminds you that if you return the box you can't get the full amount back; only the actual amount you paid. Tough luck if you buy one and then don't like it and want to get a different brand.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.