Wham-O, Just Because I Like the Way It Sounds

Slept late. Tested my blood sugar and it was 160. YIKES!!! It happens most of the time after a birthday party. I didn't really party, I just stayed up late and ate later than normal.

Yesterday afternoon Julie got a brilliant idea. "Let's go to Toys-R-Us and buy a Slip-N-Slide for Jace." So we packed up and went to Toys-R-Us in Waco. Pitiful. Pitiful. Now understand, for whatever reasons, I just don't like going to Toys-R-Us. Maybe it's the prices. But the store in Waco seemed half stocked. Maybe they did a bang-up business the day before we came! I don't think so. It just seemed that they weren't doing very well; but I digress. No Slip-N-Slides. Nada, nothing. We looked at shoes for Jace. Nothing worth a toot!

My Mother never could say "Toys-R-Us" the right way. She always called it "Toys-For-Us". Oh well!

After Toys-R-Us we headed to Target. BINGO. A shelf full of Slip-N-Slides. And cheaper too. Julie bought the Slip-N-Slide. Chris and I bought shoes for Jace, supplies for my classroom, and a host of other things.

We brought the loot home and Julie got to work on the Slip-N-Slide. And waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, Scott, Jess, and Jace came over. Jace and Julie slipped and they slid. They got wet and they made a mess. It got dark, I went inside. I watched the "Music Man" and sang along. Fortunately no one else was inside to listen.

Did you know that Meredith Wilson wrote the "Chicken Fat" song? Yeah, and Robert Preston sang it. It's interesting, the song was commissioned by President Kennedy for his big push on physical fitness.

After the movie I stepped out on the back patio to watch fireworks. After a few minutes I came in and watched them on TV. After the fireworks I watched an Alfred Hitchcock interview on the Dick Cavett Show. It was recorded, not live. Very good though.

It was a good 4th of July!
© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Happy Birthday America #232

Happy Fourth of July and may God Bless America!
© 2008 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

More Notgeld #2

In my posts Is That History Peering Back At Me? and More Notgeld - Installment 1 I have shared some scans of a portion of my Notgeld collection.

Today, instead of new scans I am going to share some more information I have found while researching Notgeld. Richard Holmes has a lot of great information on Notgeld, as well as informative links, on his web-page German Inflationary Notgeld 1922 - 1923.

Richard states on his web-page: After WWI, Germany was plunged into one of the worst inflations ever to hit a western country as the government struggled with the truly massive punitive damages demanded by the Treaty of Versailles. During this brief period of hyper-inflation, people who did not convert their savings into tangible assets lost them completely . Many bank accounts were closed because even large pre-war sums of 100,000 Marks were longer worth even the price of a postage stamp. The middle class was by and large reduced to poverty, theft and petty crime soared, pensions became worthless and many people starved to death.

Below are two examples of "high value" notes that were printed to cope with the runaway inflation of the day. The first note is a Private Company Issue by Phoenix Mining, 5 Billionen Mark (5 Trillion Marks).

This is a Reichsbahn (German Rail) Issue, 10 Billionen Mark (10 Trillion Marks).

I thought that the one below was quite interesting it is a Munster Landesbank Regional Issue, 4.2 Goldmark / 1 Dollar deniminated.

* Note that in German "eine Milliarde" means 1,000,000,000 (an American billion) and "eine Billion" means 1,000,000,000,000 (an American trillion)

These three scans are courtesy of Richard Holmes. Please visit the Richard Holmes's Homepage.

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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And Now The Weather--No Wait!

Many people say that my daughter Julie is related to me. When they say this they are meaning that she is very much like me. It seems that I tend to do things a lot like her. Or more precisely, she does things like me many times. We can be watching TV and hear someone say something that is less than intelligent and both of us will often comment about it at the same time.

Last night we were watching the local news on KWTX-DTV, the local CBS affiliate. When the broadcast begins each evening the anchor does their teases for the news, weather, and sports before going to their first news story. One of the teases they announce each evening is their signature "No Wait Weather". Last night Julie commented, "Why do they call it "No Wait Weather" and then make you wait before they do it?

Along those same lines this same station tends to have a difficult time with some of their broadcasts. There are many times that we are watching the local news on this same station and will see captions misspelled or the pictures running have nothing to do with the story being presented.

And now for something completely different. We were watching some episodes of "How Do They Do It?" yesterday that I had recorded on the DVR. In one episode the show was telling about how solid rocket boosters are tested. Because the test facility is in Utah the story was describing the wide open countryside and during the description they were showing a rancher with an extremely long handle bar mustache riding on horseback. Good! A later episode was explaining how silicon chips were made at Texas Instruments at a plant in Texas. As a lead in to all things being big in Texas they showed a close up of the very same above mentioned rancher and his handle bar mustache. Or maybe it was his twin brother, or perhaps sister!

Nah!!!

Probably just never thought someone would notice.
© 2008 Barry T Horst


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The Not-So Magic Jack

Last night I was watching TV when an ad came on. The ad was designed to be like a sales pitch on some shopping network. The sales pitch was for the Magic Jack; a USB device that turns your PC into a phone and allows you to make "free" phone calls. After listening to this 5 minute commercial I decided to look it up. Hey, there wasn't anything else to do that late at night.

When I made it to the Magic Jack web-site I was less than excited. 100% Risk Free, 30 day free trial, free calls only to USA and Canada; all examples that threw up red flags for me. Further research revealed that you have to get a new number and it may not be in your home area code.

The whole time I was on their web-site there was a number indicating the number of people taking advantage of the free trial offer. More about this number later.

Enough of the Magic Jack web-site. I decide to do more looking around. So I checked Boing Boing Gadgets to see what they had to say. Boing Boing reports that the Magic Jack EULA (End User License Agreement) states: "You also understand and agree that use of the magicJack device and Software will include advertisements and that these advertisements are necessary for the magicJack device to work ... Our computers may analyze the phone numbers you call in order to improve the relevance of the ads". Hmmm! Now about the number I mentioned earlier. You know, the one that is supposed to indicate the number of people taking advantage of the free trial. This is what Boing Boing has to say about that number:

Even the "look how many people came for a free trial" counter on the homepage is a fake, a javascript applet that increments itself automatically:

// the interval (ms) between new visitors
var interval = Math.round(86400000/perday);

As if targeted advertising, systematic privacy invasion and the signing away of your legal rights wasn't evil enough!

Thanks Boing Boing. Now let's go to Ooine.com and see what they have to say. Oh my! It's not good either. It seems that the Magic Jack uninstall program does not exist. Don't worry. Ooine.com has the help you need at "How To Uninstall Magic Jack from your PC". I guess I'll just keep my cell phone.

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

Picture Monday, June 30, 2008

Today I am highlighting some pictures from Chris's side of the family. Yesterday was Chris's Aunt June's birthday so I decided that this would be a great time to post some of her family pictures. Aunt June is Chris's father's sister. She currently lives in Moberly, Missouri. So get ready. Here we go!

The picture below is a picture of the old home place in Nevada, Missouri. It looks like it was a crisp winter morning when this was taken.

Below we have a picture of Tom Brannaman. He was Chris's father's grandfather. The next picture is Tom Brannaman's wife. Let's see, that makes her Chris's father's grandmother. Gee it's sure hard to keep family relationships straight.

I love this picture! This is a picture of Aunt June in a goat cart. Look at her hair. She was a cutey in 1926.

This is Aunt Maude. This is Aunt June's aunt. Chris says that is her dad, Henry on her lap.

Aunt June stands with her brother Henry, Chris's dad.

The picture below is Aunt June and her husband, Uncle Doyle. Aunt June is holding Chris's cousin, Gary; and her other cousin, Virginia is standing. She must be holding a favorite doll.

© 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 near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.