O-Dark-Thirty

Family Heritage is a funny thing to talk about. When you have the facts, the story seems dry and mundane. When you know the people, most seem normal and boring. Well, my Uncle Frank wasn't boring, but he was sort of crazy. He was a postal worker, so we expect crazy a little (just kidding, for all those hard-working postal workers out there!). We don't have cliff divers in our family. We don't have sky divers - well, I did once and the certificate is on my wall, but that was a long time ago, my way of celebrating my college degree. Get a degree - jump from a perfectly good plane. In today's job market that doesn't seem quite so odd. The pout is familiar... We all want to be related to royalty, showing our family is somehow more than it seems. When I was a young man I read that Denmark had a royal family with the last name Bernhard . I then navigated through life convinced I had royal roots, so the mundane aspects of my own life seemed less burdensome. Wel...

My youngest brother had some problems with Outlook. Every time he tried to start Outlook it failed with an error message about the .pst file. Just to be clear, I'm certainly not a computer expert, so it's always possible that my advice is just flat-out wrong . But it's free, so that's something. I am my brother's technical advisor for computers. He's in such trouble… On to the problem. STEP 1:  First of all, you need to find and make a copy of your .pst files, which is where Outlook stores mail. In Windows 7 the files are hidden to protect the user.  STEP 1A:  The file(s) should be located in "C:\Users\Specific User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook" but because it is hidden you won't find the AppData folder. To see AppData, enable viewing of hidden files and folders in Control Panel > Folder Options > View. (The flag(s) you want might be called something like "Display the contents of system folders" and "Show hidde...

Before I begin, I need to clarify a few things. Firstly, I've collected tidbits from the internet for almost two decades, since the days when you only surfed it for jokes and recipes for cookies. Twenty years is a long time. I have a lot of early internet information in dozens of files. Some of that information will begin to find its way to this blog. It's my way of preserving history, I suppose. Secondly, I don't have authors for most of this gathered information. Back in the early days of dial-up and on-line bulletin boards much of what was posted wasn't signed. If it was signed, it was by BillytheGoatWrangler or MySweetBaboo1241. I didn't keep those author names. So I apologize if the pedigree of the information is lost. I'd credit the sources if I knew them. Thirdly, I am far from an expert on women. I am probably an anti-expert. There's the time I got my wife a violin for Christmas and thought it was the perfect present. That's anothe...

The cake was yummy! Our youngest son, JV, turns nineteen today.   Happy Birthday, my beamish boy! He's away at college and we really miss his smiling face and the way he would walk around the house humming. Not only do I love him because I'm his Dad, but I really like him as a person. If I were a fellow student, I'd want him as my friend. Der junge Mann (family joke) has accomplished much in these few years. At an early age he put together a portfolio of drawings. He doesn't share them, but they showed a lot of innate skill. Darling, who is a good artist herself, once tried to teach my Darling Daughter, Youngest Son and I how to draw a tree. DD and I drew something resembling little bird tracks across the page, studiously focusing on the paper and how the tree looked. Trust me, neither of our drawings even resembled the tree (sorry, Honey, but it's true).   However, the lad not only drew a passable tree, he shaded it. Darling didn't even mention sha...

Mom would have been 78 this year. Happy Birthday, Mom. When our cousins laughed and told my youngest brother that Grandma Jen wasn't our Grandma he just smiled and walked away. "She's my Grandma," he said. When they told me, I was irate. I was eight years older than my youngest brother, and I knew it wasn't possible for Grandma to be my cousins' great Aunt. I also hate being confused and I knew Grandma Jen was our Grandma. In a family tree Grandma Jen was our great Aunt, our real grandmother's younger sister. We have very little information on our grandmother. Elva Gertrude Elston was born in Sanilac County, Brown City, Michigan in 1915. She left the farm and her family and moved to the big city of Detroit when she was eighteen. According to relatives she never used the name Elva, but went by the name Peggy. She was very beautiful. My Aunt Ida (Peggy's youngest surviving sister) told me that Peggy came home to the farm for a few weeks duri...

Frank: "Recently, I was honored to be selected as a judge at a chili cook-off. The original person called in sick at the last moment and I happened to be standing there at the judge's table asking for directions, when the call came in. I was assured by the other two judges (Native Texans) that the chili wouldn't be all that spicy, so I accepted. Here are the scorecards from the event: v       Chili #1 – Cecil’s Maniac Mobster Monster Chili Ø        Judge # 1 – A little too heavy on the tomato. Amusing kick. Ø        Judge # 2 – Nice, smooth tomato flavor. Very mild. Ø        Judge # 3 (Frank) – Wow, what is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway. Took me about a half gallon of water to put the flames out. I hope that’s the worst one. These Texans are crazy. v       Chili #2 – Dave’s Afterburner Chili Ø ...

A few years ago The New York Times posed an article title 31 Steps to a Financial Tuneup .   It's still available and is an interactive site, allowing you to check off the ones you finish. It also gives estimated time for each step. I consider it one of the best sites out there for yearly financial planning. The following list has one personal recommendation as item #0. Other than that, it comes directly from the New York Times site. 0. If you go to church check your tithing amount. If you aren't giving ten percent, bump it up a little bit to get closer to the ten percent goal. You should know all the good your church does with the money. If you don't, think about a different church! (~ 5 minutes) 1. Save 1% more from your paycheck This really works. Even if you can't do one percent, consider a little bit more than you do now. I know I didn't take advantage of my employer's retirement matching program when I was young - because I was stupid. This ca...

On a personal note, let me congratulate my friend Congressman Randy Weber on being sworn into the US Congress today. Now get to work! President Obama signed the new Fiscal Cliff bill (via autopen from Hawaii ) so it is now law. Officially the bill is called The American Taxpayer Relief Act , though I have to admit I don't feel very relieved. The PDF is 157 pages long. How does it affect average citizens?   I'll use myself as the basis for most comments - 'cuz I can't speak for anyone else, can I? By the way, this isn't intended to be entirely comprehensive. I'm not a tax guy, and certainly don't want to be. Top of the list is the two percent the government takes back after giving us a break for a few years. For the last couple years we've only paid 4.2% payroll tax on our first $113,700 earned (which is everything most of us earn). That was nice, but it's gone now, and the tax is back up to 6.2%. So if you're making $48,000 per year (or...