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A few points I wish my blogging brethren would all bear in mind over the next few years:

Very strange dream this morning.

I may have to start recycling some of my old “meme” puns.

Pissing people off isn’t going to make buy what you’re selling.

Every goddamn time I need a USB cable for some gizmo I only use once in a while, the only cables I can find have one of the two out of three connectors that won’t fit my gizmo.

Swami Salami is retired. For now, at least.

I’ll bet it’s not as boring as your grandchildren or your honor student.

It’s just another Wednesday night. Right?

...one that won’t cut off circulation in my legs if I use it on my actual lap.

Not a creature was stirring, not even a Bronco.

Why aren’t you asleep?

“Journalists”—cow-tippers of democracy.

It was a post about nothing. Now, not so much.

They have jackets for every activity!

Coweta County sure needs a mayo clinic…

That’s the Jingle Bell Rock!

Not quite the same as writer’s block.

Not bad. Not as good as the original, but not bad.

Stop it! Just stop it!

What’s Christmas in the 21st century without this gem?

Been wondering why the site looks different lately?

Don’t worry, I’ll still be making $#!+ up. Eventually.

Trying to get the American Revolution to adopt me.

The second thing we do, let’s kill all the TV news “journalists.”

Let it snow. Come on now, snow. Snow, damn you!

Pay no attention to the big giant yelling disembodied head.

Ding, fries are done!

Scribble, scribble, scribble.

Do this now. H/t Vodkapundit.

I may have to stop doing these if I can’t keep coming up with puns for the entry titles.

“Biden 2016”...? Riiiiight.

Some things would be better left unsaid, and if not unsaid by the left then said only by the left.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. I’m thankful to still be able to travel across state lines without having to show an internal passport at the border.

Non-members may once again comment here.

In nature, stupidity is a capital offense. I think nature is wise.

Zawahiri can kiss my ass.*

Buh-bye, Ted.

Pardon our dust.

Every single objection I raised earlier this year against having Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) join this year’s national ticket, played at least somewhat into the shitstorm she endured while running

While I don’t deny that 0bama Derangement Syndrome (ODS) is a very real concern, I would also caution people against falling prey to ODS Derangement Syndrome (ODSDS), which is the ultra-paranoid

To the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coasties—to all who wear or have worn the uniform of this great nation to serve in her defense, thank you.

I pray someday we can be worthy of such

The highest temperature ever recorded in Alaska was 100° F. on June 17, 1915; at Fort Yukon.

Fort Yukon is on the Arctic Circle.

If the global is warmening, shouldn’t the highest temperature ever

If anyone ever tells you that Sen. 0bama is “the 44th President-Elect,” kindly correct them. In actual fact, there have been only 35 presidents-elect including 0bama—while Grover Cleveland counts as

Say: “A guy throws his drum set out the window.” Then click the red button.

Shamelessly stolen from InstantRimshot.com.

I did not vote for Barack 0bama for president. I oppose his “progressive” proposals and disbelieve his moderate ones. All you need to know about what I think of him can be summed up in the fact I

I do plan to resume writing, either in “Dance” or in Play Rough, by next week. Still decompressing from that stupid political thing people insist on inflicting on themselves and their fellow

As far as politics goes, I’ve gone “John Galt.” The training wheels are off, America, just like you wanted. Be careful, have fun, and you know where the band-aids are.

I’ll be over here if you need

All politicians, political commentators, and politically inclined ordinary citizens, would you please be so kind as to leave me alone now?

I don’t mean just until the next campaign. I don’t want to

Rather than let the Media Wing of the 0bama Campaign do the same psy ops they tried in 2004, I’m going to spend tomorrow (technically, “later today”) away from my computer as much as possible.

I’ll

Watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show on TV at home, alone, just doesn’t cut it.

Call it autumn fever if you like, but I’m not feeling much interest in blogging or writing these days. Does it seem to you that the election campaign has also gone on hiatus, or is it just that I’m

If you use Blogrolling.com, you’ve noticed that the blogrolls aren’t updating. Pings are refused (as they have often been, chronically, in the past year or so) and now you can’t even log in to

Went to jury duty as ordered, and was on a panel that included 50 of us—all for a single trial involving two defendants, one accused of murder.

Since there were only a few trials to take place, or

This is not me.

I never did finish pursuing this, but with the help of a local Sons of the American Revolution member—who is also, like me, a HODAR (Husband of a Daughter of the American Revolution)—I seem to be

Seems that a lot of people out there are starting to argue over what kind of condiment is best to put on the $#!t sandwich that an 0bama presidency would represent.

I assume “mayonnaise” would be a

Why pay for a newspaper, or watch ads on TV, when you can get the same caliber of information here for nothing? Anyway…

It occurred to me at dinner this evening that 2008 is the first time both

It would be impossible to refrain entirely from blogging through the month of October in a presidential election year, but the activity here is almost certainly going to be light between now and

Just watched another episode of “Sons of Anarchy,” the TV program I mentioned in this entry.

Another theme being prodded from time to time on the show is anarchism. Apparently Jax’s late father was

The last couple of days I have not only not been blogging, I’ve been kind of remiss in writing.

You hadn’t noticed, had you? That’s why I’m mentioning it.

#67,312,645,346,567,589,342,387,656,904,578,234:

I’ve been having a number of frustrating problems with Firefox over the last few months, starting with a disturbing tendency for the browser to crash

...the letter AAARRRRRR!!!

Chris and I have recently become riveted to the new FX TV series “Sons of Anarchy.”

I read somewhere that there are parallels to Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the character relationships of Jax, his

As so often happens when somebody “upgrades” a service that works perfectly well, SiteMeter turned their hit-counter service into something completely unusable.

I don’t get more than 150 uniques per

I stole the background image (file here in case I stop using it) from Andrea after she promised she was going to ditch it (she hates stripes).

I don’t mind stripes, but I don’t care for the color.

...but taking second place in a caption contest is more like a cheesesteak with a pickle spear and a side order of nice, hot fries.

Autumn’s coming, at least way up north. The trees in this parking lot at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have turned a brilliant orange.

You can see a live shot of this view and some others

I don’t care if 0bama meant to refer to Gov. Palin with his lipstick reference, since obviously most people saw it that way. I don’t think “I’m stupid” is any better a message for him to send than

...but since I read those who do, sports follow me.

My Sacramento River Cats are playing (again) for the Pacific Coast League AAA minor league baseball championship.

Sorry about those RedHawks,

Chris at MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy notes,

Joe Biden tells a heart wrenching story on the stump… The trouble is, it isn’t true.

But read the first comment, the one by Rhymes With Right, for an

Jim Treacher asks,

Are there no idiots in the Ivy League?

Don’t you just hate rhetorical questions?

Patrick O’Hannigan looks at why political and media 0bamarrhoids attacking Sarah Palin have wandered—seemingly on purpose—into a hornet’s nest.

In making his point he refers to a book by Louis

My mother, who was born and raised in Montana and would have been 82 yesterday, would agree I think with Howie’s mum. A lot (and not just because they share a birthday).

I started writing “Play Rough, Fight Dirty” months ago, and it just sat there for most of the intervening time with Chapter 1 still unfinished. In the last two weeks (or so) I’ve finished that and

I got curious tonight about an event I remembered from my childhood in Sacramento, the “Pig Bowl,” an annual benefit event in which sheriff’s deputies, playing as the Razorbacks, squared off against

I’ve got such a huge case of blog fatigue, I think I’m going to challenge myself to not blog at all during the month of August.

See you in September. (Or will I?)

Update: some of the best of

All that‘s been fixed now, and the lost version of the comment template improved upon rather than merely reconstructed.

To those who noticed, I apologize for the inconvenience.

Tune in again next week. Or maybe the week after.

Today I blogged for the first time in five days. Except for absences from home—and those mostly before we had a laptop—I don’t think I’ve ever gone five days without posting something to whatever

Stolen from D.C. Thornton.

A bad week for friendships? Maybe—but this is just downright scary.

I kinda sorta care about these people, in my own snarky, anti-social way.

Update: LocalMalcontent’s grief explained.

My Linux laptop is still stuck with Firefox 3b5—I can’t find a package for a more recent version, Firefox’s “Check for Updates” Help menu item is grayed out, and I never have figured out how to

I’ve been thinking about that whole “writing up my vacation” thing.

I’ve been home for over a week now, and still haven’t even started writing, let alone posting. The reason is, simply, that

In 1976, the American people invited Jimmy Crater to become president and mind the public’s business.

He wasn’t very good at it, so in 1980 the American people invited him to go home and mind his

My first real blog post was put up on May 3, 2002. I’ve been at this now for 73½ months, give or take.

On May 3, 2009 I will have been blogging for seven years. I think that if I ever for real stop

I think before I can write up the vacation, I need to get pictures posted. And that may mean I’ll have to not wait for my wife to do whatever it was she wanted to do with her pictures before they

It’s 90° here at Castle McGehee right now, and the humidity feels like 90%. And of course we left the A/C turned all but off during our absence, so guess what it’s like inside?

Thank goodness for

We’re in Chattanooga, as predicted. Our dog and at least two of our cats have deigned to recognize us. We have things to do tomorrow and then we cart the whole kit and kaboodle home on Tuesday.

I

Most election years, people watch for an “October Surprise.” I suspect that if Barack 0bama is elected, people should watch out for a December Surprise.

After which, the election outcomes in 2010

I’m very much ready now to be someplace where I know I won’t have to pack up everything and hit the road again anytime soon.

Tomorrow we get to Chattanooga, where we’ll stay a couple of nights with

Earlier today I had the thought that I hope I never have to fly anywhere again. I had this thought a week and a half into a driving vacation. Go figure.

Anyway, I subsequently decided it isn’t

Sixth day of our trip. We have yet to take any pictures. We’re just enjoying. Today while we were in the hotel (indoor) pool, a hailstorm passed through. We watched with pleasure, because we weren’t

(Cartoon by Red Planet. Swiped from Michelle Malkin.)

I said it was going to get busy around here. And it is. Unregistered commenters may find whole days passing while their comments await

Been doing a little more about preparing the new Vista laptop for our trip. I’ve been able to hack all but one of my must-have extensions into working with Firefox 3 RC1 even though only a handful

In Fedora I can’t figure out how to install new applications, and I’ve never been able to use the laptop’s wireless capability. So now I’m taking Bobbert’s advice and downloading Ubuntu.

I won’t

The learning curve on our Linux laptop threatens to be too steep for my comfort, with a long trip looming on the schedule and the need to use a portable computer for e-mail and pictures—so last

Last night I was using our laptop, getting it ready for some traveling we’re going to be doing, when it downloaded an update from Microsoft. I let it install and shut down, as per the usual.

When I

On May 21, 2002, I posted the first entry in blogoSFERICS, which is the direct ancestor blog of The McGehee Zone. I was using Blogger at the time and posting on Blogspot. A lot of things have

Is it just me, or does it seem that the mu.nu and mee.nu domains have been going down a lot lately?

What’s up with that, anyway?

The McGehee Zone isn’t “going dark.” I’m just taking a bit of a break, and enjoying meatspace a little bit. Like, for example, this, which we got at Home Depot a couple of months back, at a really

I went through both fuseboxes on my truck but never found any blown fuse that might have caused the in-cab fan to quit working.

More to the point, when I started up and headed out on a short drive

Pixy Misa’s two domains—mu.nu and mee.nu (at least I think they’re his)—are down, as is Protein Wisdom which is hosted by Pixy.

Has anyone been able to reach any other .nu domains?

Update: PW’s

Summer’s coming and the fan in my truck has quit. And I’ve had no luck so far finding a blown fuse that might explain the trouble.

The last time I had a fan quit on me, it was dead winter in

For some reason neither Apple Quicktime nor the alleged Quicktime “Alternative” player (which, when I installed it, looked EXACTLY like Apple Quicktime) allow me to change file associations. Which

From the time I started using ExpressionEngine as a blogging platform in 2004, I’ve had my comments page configured to hotlink commenters’ e-mail addresses if they didn’t input a website URL in the

I did finally go ahead and create an alternate “skin” for the site, but it’s based on the look my first blog had about the time I migrated from Blogger to Movable Type. You can check it out here.

Jeff Goldstein, of Protein Wisdom blog, spoke at some kind of panel thingie about blogging today, and via a comment by Happyfeet there’s a link to some video of the panel thingie.

One of the things

After several failed attempts, I’ve finally got Winamp installed and working on my bugbox. For some reason the two primary hard drives on which I install software—one external where I keep my

I don’t usually like being told what to blog, and I very rarely participate in blog memes unless something just happens to strike my fancy the right way at the right time. But, well, what the

Firefox 3.0b5 needs airbags.

In my last session with it, it crashed three or four times. So, I’m back with 2.0.0.@#$!!

A couple of the extensions I was running on the beta are too advanced for this

I’m kind of warming up to this version now, since rediscovering how to hack my favorite extensions so this version of Firefox thinks they’re compatible with it (and they work, so apparently they

I’m posting this using the portable version of Firefox 3.0, beta 5.

I don’t hate it. I wish it supported more of my extensions, but I don’t hate it.

Rumor is, some of the items you’ve seen around the internet today may not have been entirely accurate.

Investigators are looking into it. Very hush-hush.

...and see what, if anything, comes back:

If someone tells a joke, and the only one who laughs is him, who failed?

Looks like the best way to raise my comment-per-entry average is simply lower my entry-per-week average.

What’s happening is, the interval between items I find that I want to blog about, has

I only stumbled on this today, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

The control panel main page shown on the site doesn’t really make me think, “this is a powerful and flexible CMS for people who

I don’t know why but my comment system seems to be down and I don’t know what the problem is—the error message I get when trying to post while not logged in, is singularly uncommunicative. Yet I

Stupid comment spammer (well, stupider than usual…).

One spam comment got through this afternoon, so I put unregistered users’ comments back on moderation. And tonight the spammer threw almost 20

Maybe it’s spring fever. Or maybe I’m just bored with Teh Top Story™ (that election thing everybody keeps talking about—what’s up with that anyway?).

Anyway, as of this timestamp, I’m still here.

You may have noticed The McGehee Zone looks a little bit different tonight. I’ve been fiddling with the look.

Originally I wanted to make up an entire alternate theme in a separate template group,

The McGehee Zone is #3 on Google for “georgia tennessee border.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is #10.

Update: And I’m #1 on Goodsearch—whatever that is. The AJC doesn’t show up there until #12.

People who post gibberish in blog comments may believe there’s nothing anyone can do about them.

They are wrong.

Update: Commenters who are not registered and logged in will have their submissions

Just got the docs back from the National Archives, which I will submit to SUVCW to see if they’ll let me join.

If you’ve been using the RSS 1.0 feed for The McGehee Zone (or for cats. iz. perverse., for that matter), you’ll need to change over to either RSS 2.0 or Atom, as I’ve decided to drop support for

Years ago, I fired Network Solutions, or whoeverTF they were calling themselves then, for being unresponsive in my attempts to manage what was at the time the only domain I owned, McGeheeZone.com. I

It’s not likely to make me very popular hereabouts, but I’ve begun the process of qualifying for Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (SUVCW), the Yankee counterpart to Sons of the Confederacy.

Does anybody have any clues about why Mark in Mexico hasn’t posted since last July? From the comments on his last post, quite a few of his readers are still mystified why his blog has gone dark.

I

Over the years I’ve struggled with how big to make my blogroll. When it’s too long, I can never keep up with it. When it’s too short, I’m always missing out on something, and a whole lot of people

I don’t think this was supposed to happen.

I recently did some reorganizing of The McGehee Zone by bringing all blogoSFERICS and Yippee-Ki-Yay! entries over from those weblogs—a term of art in

As usual, when I do a meme, I get it from Dustbury. Today’s example:

Premise: bold each of the statements that applies.

Original source: The list is based on an exercise developed by Will Barratt,

I’m signed up for a bunch of those “social networking” sites, ranging from those aimed at the BMW-driving urban professional <snicker>, to Facebook (I couldn’t bring myself to do MySpace, not even

Yes, we’ve reached that dreaded state of affairs where in order to freshen the front page I bring forth a moldy old relic from years past.

In January 2003, Iraq was still controlled by Saddam

This Christmas, one of the gifts I received from my wife’s aunt, uncle and two cousins, is a book called The 3:00 a.m. Epiphany. It’s a book of exercises in brief fiction—in the case of some of the

Although I wouldn’t ordinarily want to see a big fuss made over a birthday, it seems to make my wife and mother-in-law happy. And this time, also some other people. Thanks, all.

Update: As a further

Pillage Idiot:

I was driving home from the Metro with the radio on, and they were playing Haydn’s Symphony no. 94 (“Surprise”). The nickname “Surprise” apparently stems from an incident in which

Or something. Charles took the best title, and then took the next best one for his opening line.

1. If you could pause your aging process, at what age would you choose do to it? (Meaning you would not

Just had a registration attempt from someone calling himself “koojonnyb.” His web domain has nothing on it but a “coming soon” notice, and as far as the internet is concerned he didn’t exist until

With apologies to Charles who, if he hasn’t been the sole sender of legitimate trackback pings to The McGehee Zone, has certainly been the most frequent—and of course to everyone else who’s ever

Last I saw of Indepundit, he was re-running old posts for a little while, and then the site went all but dark. The front page comes up with no content, and when I try to access the archives I get an

Just had a look at Technorati, and most of the “blog reactions” to The McGehee Zone in the last few days are from spam autoblogs—blogs posted to automatically by software that just finds keywords

The meme:

Devise a list of 5-10 courses you would take to improve your life. It’s more fun to be in classes with friends, so include one class from the person who tagged you that you’d also like to

A lot of the Christmas-themed YouTubes I posted last December are no longer available, but this one’s still good.

I despise Windows Media Player these days. (You can go ahead and tell him that, I already did—by way of his Sucker Disservice department.) The current version, 11, eliminates some of the usability

...on any possible return of Enetation, and the old archived comments from this site that were stored there.

It’s been four weeks today since I had to disable that script, and Enetation’s site still

As promised here, pictures have been posted.

What? You want a sample?

Anybody out there have any pull with Uncle Sam? If you could use it to get the National Weather Service to adopt across-the-board telecommuting, so we could live here while Chris continues to work

You’d think with less than two weeks to go before the road to Clingmans Dome closes, and a major holiday just two days away, people would find other things to do than walk up a steep paved trail to

Well, not every mountain. But we’re hoping to be able to make an attempt on Clingmans Dome tomorrow. Unlike last year, the weather seems to be on our side and we should at least be able to get into

ExpressionEngine came out with a new version today, and as I was in the middle of some post-upgrade cleanup—for example, to make the trackback expiration extension work despite the upgrade—my host’s

Every so often I go over to Acidman’s place and follow the “originally published” links—because that’s where the conversations were. And anyway the conversations were just more fun when the host

The other day while out and about I happened to see a Chevy Vega station wagon for sale. It could’ve been a ‘71—it was certainly from the earlier years of that model’s run—but what caught my eye and

You shoulda.

And yes, I did do this before.

Went and got my new driver’s license, a ten-year renewal. Only claimed a 95-pound weight loss, though. Just to be modest.

Then I went and checked out a new local bookstore and picked up some reading

Apologies for the slowness of the site of late—one of the scripts points to a site called Enetation, which hosts the surviving comments from when I was using Blogger, which was back before they

On the very same day this arrived, I found the missing original cable in a place I would have never thought to look for it, and I still have no idea why I would have put it there in the first

The information on my driver’s license dates back to 1999. Back then I admitted to weighing 335 pounds.

Four years later I chose to renew by mail, sparing myself the ordeal of going to the

...to get a Bag O’ Crap.

Apparently the universe is a Scorpio.

Somebody got here from this Yahoo! search, which had me wondering at first whether someone out there was hoping for good news.

And although this was the next hit after the ones pointing to The

He’d been saying “Day By Day” would be back on 1 November, but Chris Muir has gone ahead and resumed publication today yesterday. No complaints here; if Chris is ready to hand out the

First I had to wait until it was possible again to order the replacement transfer cable for my .mp3 player. Then the damned site kept having fatal errors during the checkout process, resulting in my

A few days ago Chris Muir took a break from his “Day By Day” comic strip due to a family emergency. Today we learn the outcome of that emergency.

That’s Why I’ll Never Want to Be Anything but a Cowboy:

I’ve paid my dues like all buckaroos Who insisted on riding the bad ones I’ve had my share of bad breaks and bruises You bet I could tell you