Happy Mother’s Day/Emergency Room Visit

On Sunday, Mother’s Day, Susan was filling up her car at a gas station when the gas pump’s handle physically broke. The broken pump’s handle sprayed gas directly into her eyes, nose, and mouth, as well as all over the outside (and partially inside) her car. Susan looked for an emergency shut off button and a call attendant button and, unable to find either, ran inside the station to have someone shut off the pump as the hose continued to shoot gasoline all over the parking lot. The attendant’s response: “Oh, is pump number two broken again?” Within a few… (read more)

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A Begrudging Return to the Office

In President Biden’s most recent State of the Union address, the president called for the “vast majority” of federal employees to begin transitioning back to the office, citing “significant progress fighting the COVID-19 pandemic has made it safer to do so.” While Biden’s motivation and the current state of COVID may be debatable, what is not debatable is that I fall into the category of “vast majority of federal employees.” Last Wednesday I returned to the office for the first time in approximately two years. Here are a few random pictures and thoughts I had while returning to the office.… (read more)

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Part Mexican, Part Italian — The Return of Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza

If you were to take the hottest, most delicious slice of pizza you’ve ever had and combine it with the most tantalizing Mexican dish you ever tasted, the results would be… well, pretty far from Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza, which returns to restaurants next month after a two-year hiatus. What is it about the disappearance of fast food items that makes us crave them? Back when the McRib was a regular item on the McDonald’s menu, the restaurant could barely give them away. In 1985 the pork(ish) sandwich vanished, not to be seen for another ten years, when it was… (read more)

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Ferrari Dreams on a Festiva Budget: A Visit to the OKC Auto Auction

I have been following the #vanlife movement for six months now, and can’t get the idea of building one out of my mind. People are converting vans into miniature RVs and using them to travel the globe. This isn’t an entirely new concept — people were camping in Volkswagen busses more than 50 years ago — but the current state of these camper vans is something to behold. Some people live in them fulltime, while others are weekend warriors, venturing out for short stints on the road. Some spend a few thousand dollars on their conversions while some camper vans… (read more)

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The Olde Orchard: Old Restaurant, New Location

Live in the same town long enough and you’ll eventually start referring to houses by who used to live there, and buildings by what they used to be. If I were giving directions to someone from out of town to The Olde Orchard, I’d tell them it’s located at 326 Elm Avenue in Yukon in the Old Mills Plaza, just off of Main Street. To anyone from around here, I’d just say it’s where the Miller Grill used to be — and to a real old timer, I might even call it the old Big Ed’s. Pulling into the parking… (read more)

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Time (and Surgery) Heals All Bones: Morgan’s Wreck

Sunday afternoon, about a quarter past four, I answered a call from Morgan. “Dad, I wrecked my car.” After confirming that she was okay and off the road, I told her to stay put and that I would be there as quickly as possible. Had I known the condition of her car at that point in time, I have realized how pointless telling her to “stay put” was. As I was backing down our driveway, my phone helpfully offered to direct me to my car which it said was parked ten minutes away. After driving a few miles east, I… (read more)

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Saved by the Milk Crate of Power

Random old power supplies

Gadgets have an innate ability to stop working at the most inopportune of times. Saturday afternoon, a few hours before my friends were scheduled to arrive for our monthly “Nasty Pirates” bad movie night, the little device I use to stream movies from my server to the television in the theater room stopped working. No device, no movies. Fortunately I have two identical devices (I have one in the living room as well) and so I was able to temporarily swap the two, get things up and running, and save the day. When I initially swapped the two devices I… (read more)

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Resolution Complete: Passed ASL Course

I’ve been wanting to learn American Sign Language (ASL) for several years now — no real reason, just sounded like a fun challenge — and for this past Christmas, Susan enrolled me in an online ASL course. Discover Sign Language is an six-week/24 hour online course offered by Oklahoma City Community College with the following description: Gain confidence in your ability to sign with the Deaf community. This course immerses you in silence to help you gain an understanding of the perspective of the hearing impaired and uses videos to demonstrate not only how to make signs, but how to… (read more)

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The Book of Boba Fett has Closed

For more than 40 years, Boba Fett has been one of the most popular villains from the Star Wars universe. Boba Fett made his animated debut in a nine-minute cartoon nestled in the middle of the wildly unpopular Star Wars Holiday Special (1978), and made his first live performance two years later in The Empire Strikes Back. Kids loved everything about Boba Fett’s armor, from his cool helmet to his missile-firing jetpack, but his most alluring attribute was the mystery surrounding him. Who was this masked bounty hunter who stood side by side with Darth Vader and was able to… (read more)

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Pixoo-64: A Pixel-Pushing Art Display for Retro Fanatics

Pixoo-64 displaying a Biker Scout from Star Wars

I’m a fan of old school digital artwork. For the past five years I’ve enjoyed viewing ANSI artwork (created in the 1990s for BBSes) in my office on a dedicated Raspberry Pi running PyAns. Another style of vintage art I really enjoy is pixel artwork. Pixel graphics are images drawn on a grid, one pixel at a time. These pictures can be very small, like characters from an old video game, or very large. The sprites that make up characters in most Commodore 64 games are only 24×21 pixels in size. Other pictures, like the backgrounds from those games or… (read more)

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