Happy November!

It's November! I'm guessing that I'll see the first Christmas commercial on TV within the next week. The Christmas tunes will start before Thanksgiving. Since there's all this early seasonal stuff, I might as well tell you that December will find three HNT themes, as we've done in the past. Veterans will remember what those are; newbies will be able to read about them in about two weeks or so. The idea with them is to take the pressure off during the holiday season. Most of you have appreciated that in the past. And it's sorta fun, too!

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As anticipated, I didn't have a single trick or treater knock on my door. Which is the norm anymore. I do miss the old days, before razors and pins were found in apples (who gave out apples?), or weirdo middle-aged single men answered the door, or it wasn't safe to go out after dark. Instead I watched football and "The Walking Dead" on AMC. That should be an interesting series!

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I actually got a lot of stuff done over the weekend. I fought with my router for most of it. It seems to intermittently turn off with no warning. Then comes back on with no coaxing on my part. I've done the recycle the power thing and the reinstall the driver/software/set-up thing. It's still hit or miss. Anyone with any great ideas?

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Spent far too many hours individually cutting and pasting the names/URLs from my former blogroll. Blogrolling.com finally went tits up. Or, as they say, will go offline as of Nov. 1st. For what was a great service, they really dropped the ball as far as customer service is concerned. According to their support forum, they don't have a list of emails of their customers so that they could let us all know that they were shutting down. Bullshit--it takes an email to log in! They didn't even plan to put up a "WE'RE CLOSING!" page until someone took them to task about it. Anyhoo...I had to cut/paste over 400 different links. By hand. Individually. They didn't even offer any sort of export function. Disappointment and frustration is about all I feel for them anymore. I could say that you get what you paid for, since the basic service was free, but I was a paying customer (well, used to be. they haven't had paid accts for over a year). Is it too much to ask for some consideration??

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The big sex list came out last week. My disdain for that list has been documented on here before, but I had to check it out to see if it lived up (down...) to my expectations, or if it had improved at all. Well, my expectations were completely met, with a bonus. Blogs were rated higher than they should have been, others were rated lower than deserved. Many blogs listed that haven't had a regular upkeep in months, or posts that only occured once/twice a month. Many notable omissions from the list as well. And the coup d'grace...the #1 blog was exposed as a fake. None of my opinions have to do with the fact that I didn't make the top 100 (I WAS nominated!). More because it reeks more of a junior high popularity contest. And equally as clique-ish. Those of you on the list--congrats. I do wish I could be more enthusiastic about it...

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I've been listening to a lot of Pandora when I'm at work. Mostly jazz, some classical. But for the past few weeks I typed in "Western Swing". This is the old country stuff. Bob Wills. Lots of steel guitar. The roots of rock and roll in its infancy. I love this stuff! Maybe it's because I can appreciate it on a musical level. Maybe because Pandora will occasionally throw in some jazz guitar, thanks to Chet Atkins. Or maybe because it's of lyrics like this: "With calves like that, you gotta be a cowgirl..." That's quality, right there, folks!

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Speaking of music...wouldn't it be wonderful if our own lives came with a soundtrack? Can you imagine how many bad/stupid decisions we'd avoid if we heard the music? Or the times we'd avoid walking down a dark street if we heard that dissonant music crescendoing? Or how our pratfall wouldn't hurt as much if we heard a little slide whistle, bongos and xylophone at the same time?

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Remember the high school girl in the pictures for my Band Geek HNT a few posts below? The day after I posted it, I got a wild hair and tried to find her on Facebook. Well, guess what?? Yep! I found her! I sent her a message (because I was 95% sure it was her, but that 5% is always sticky...), hoping that she's still at least remember me! After all, we dated in 1972 (38 years ago--and that's not dog years!). It's been over 35 years since we had any contact at all! The good news--it was her, and she remembered me! Our time wasn't a figment of my imagination! We sent some info back and forth to get reacquainted. Hopefully we'll keep in touch now on FB. Gotta love technology!