End of the School Year

On Father's Day, we will be picking our son up from school, thus completing his first school year away from home.  Unlike most school kids, my son will only be home a couple weeks.  With his special education needs, he has always had extended school years.  He gets a couple weeks off in June, goes back in July, and gets another couple weeks off in June.

Deciding to send our son away to school was one of the toughest things that we have ever had to do.  As much as we miss having him around the house we know he is in a good place, and he is at the school that we want him to be at.  Below is a letter from the National Association of Special Education Teachers that was awarded to his school.  His school is one of only 52 in the entire United States that has been designated a school of excellence.  It pretty much sums up why we are glad he is there.  

More Blogging Frustrations

Image via WikipediaIf you are an observant person, and a regular visitor to my humble blog, you may have noticed that I have a different template right now.  I ended up changing the look a bit last night.  It wasn't that I was unhappy with the previous look of the blog, but I had some technical difficulties that led to me making the change.  I may end up changing it a bit more here in the near future.

I came home from work last night to finish a blog post that I had started earlier in the day on a new study on Electric Cars and their emissions compared to gasoline powered vehicles.  After I finished the post and published it, I clicked on the "View Post" link that shows up when I publish a post and immediately noticed that all of the widgets on my sidebar were now missing.

Mike Golch left a comment and a message in Entrecard to let me know they were missing.  When I looked at the layout screen available in Blogger, everything looked like they were still there, but nothing was showing up on the screen.   I tried a couple different templates and all of my widget appeared, but at the bottom of the page.

I spent a couple of hours fiddling around with different settings.  Eventually I found an article on the Blogger help forum that suggested that there might be a problem with an individual post that was causing the problem with the sidebar widgets.  So, I opened a link for each individual blog post, and lo and behold, on some of the posts the sidebar widgets appeared.

Once I identified the blog posts that were causing the problem, I simply republished them from my laptop and it seemed to clear up the issues.  I think I have identified what was causing the problem.  The mobile blogger app that I had on my cell phone and my tablet had been republishing random posts.  Those were the posts that created the issue.

If nothing else, it game me a subject to blog about this evening.  Speaking of having subjects to blog about, Sheila at The Ad Master is having her 2nd Annual "I Can't Come Up With a Blog Post Day" where bloggers can can win $100 by promoting her contest.  So, consider her contest promoted. 

The Electric Car Part Deaux

Image via WikipediaLast month, I posted my thoughts regarding The Electric Car.  While I am not necessarily opposed to the idea of the electric car, I did question the benefits of the car in terms of the benefit that is most touted; that of zero carbon dioxide emissions.  I wondered whether or not the zero emissions of the vehicle would be countered by the increased emissions in higher demand for electricity to recharge the car.

Monday afternoon, while driving home from work and listening to The Mark Levin Show, Levin highlighted a story that gave the answer to my pondering.  Levin read directly from the Yid with Lid blog the results of a study conducted by Britain's Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership which is funded jointly by the British government and the car industry.

You can read the entire analysis at The Lid, but the gist of the article is this; by the time you add in the entire production and operation of the electric vehicle will emit more carbon dioxide than a similar sized gasoline powered vehicle.  The increased emissions come primarily from the increased demand for electricity and the production and disposal of the batteries used in electric cars.

Normally I take published studies with a grain of salt. So often, the data is manipulated to get the desired results by those who sponsored the study.  However, with a group such as the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership conduction the study, one would think that they would have a vested interest in producing a study with the opposite results. 

As I said in my original post on the subject, I tend to be a big picture kind of guy.  Unfortunately those that are pushing the green agenda will continue to only see one side of the equation and not the whole picture.  They will continue to push the virtues of the electric car in spite of the evidence that it really isn't going to accomplish what they claim it will.

Related articles

• Surprise! Yet another green myth up in smoke (virginiavirtucon.wordpress.com)
• British Study: Electric Cars Not So Green (michellemalkin.com)
• "Fail: Electric cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents" and related posts (thenewspundit.com)

New Hampshire Republican Debate

Image by DonkeyHotey via FlickrLast night, I watched the Republican Debate on CNN.  I was a little late for the start of the event because I had a hard time finding the channel, so I missed some of the candidates introducing themselves.  Actually, my channel guide showed that the debate was going to be on CNN International, but it wasn't.  I eventually found the regular CNN station, but that should give you an indication of how frequently I watch the channel; not at all.

It is still really early in my mind to try to narrow down a choice for the Republican nominee, but I had a great interest in watching the debate.  The candidates that were participating in the debate were Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Tim Pawenty, Michele Bachman, Rick Santorem, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich. 

One of the things that I was particularly interested in seeing was whether or not Gingrich could recover from the majority of his campaign staff quitting on him last week.  When Gingrich announced that he was running, I was excited because if nothing else, Newt gives ideas.  Unfortunately the last few weeks have been tough on the former Speaker.  He had a couple of nice moments, but not enough to set him apart from the rest of the field.

There were not a whole lot of bombshells throughout the evening, with the possible exception of Michele Bachmann announcing that she would officially be throwing her hat into the ring to run for the presidency.  None of the candidates did anything that really made me change my viewpoint on any of them.  There are aspects of each candidate that I like, and each has their individual flaws.

That being said, I really like Herman Cain.  Michele Bachmann is a solid conservative, and as much as I like Sarah Palin, to compare Bachmann to Palin as the media will do, is not fair to Bachmann.  Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum each have characteristics that I admire. Newt has some good ideas and made some good points, and I hope he can contribute to the race.  Those would be my favorites, in no particular order, but all of the participants would be an improvement over the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Music Monday-Toby Keith "As Good As I Once Was"

Since I was bemoaning my increasing age yesterday, I thought that Toby Keith's "As Good As I Once Was" would be a good choice for Music Monday.

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. Rules are simple. Leave ONLY the ACTUAL LINK POST here and grab the code below and place it at your blog entry. You can grab this code at LadyJava's Lounge Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.

Growing Older but Not Up

Image via WikipediaAbout 10 years or so ago, I worked with a guy who was about 15-20 years older than I was.  He was a wise and intelligent man that spoke in a rather simple way.  One might think from listening to him speak that he was a southern, redneck country boy, but his manner of speaking belied his intelligence.

As he was approaching retirement age, he began to suffer from an assortment of maladies that slowed him down a bit.  He started having problems with his feet and had to sit on a padded cushion at this desk.  In spite of his pain, he kept up a good sense of humor regarding his aches and pains.  He frequently told me that growing old wasn't for sissies or cowards.

More and more each day, I am coming to understand what he was talking about.  I am only 50, but each day seems to find new aches.  I have been suffering from BPH for a few years now, and my doctor has me on Avodart.  I usually end up waking up at least once during the night to go to the bathroom.  I am not sure I know when the last time I got a solid eight hours of sleep.

In addition to the BPH, I have been developing arthritis in my wrists.  It is particularly bad in my right wrist.  Since I am right handed, it can be a little more aggravating since that hand gets a lot more use throughout the day.  Past issues with knee and back pain tend to flare up a lot more easily these days.

The latest issue to come to the forefront for me is some foot and heal problems.  I wake up each morning with a great deal of pain in my right heal.  At first the doctor said it was Achilles tendonitis.  Then he said it was plantar fasciitis.  Either way, it hurts to walk or stand on my feet for long periods of time.  Because the pain is in my heal, it also sometimes flairs up while I am driving as my heal rests on the car when my foot is on the gas.

Still, in spite of it all, I keep trying to keep up with those younger than me.  I must have been crazy yesterday.  Normally, I work from 5pm-11pm when delivering pizzas on Saturday night.  One of the other drivers needed yesterday off, so they asked me come in at noon.  I needed the money, since my care needed a major repair earlier in the week, so I agreed. 

I ended up working a little more than 11 hours yesterday.  Not only was it a long day on my feet, but the temperatures in the early afternoon topped 90 degrees.  Needless to say, my dogs are barking up a storm today.  But, I made it through it, and earned a little extra dough.  On top of that, I learned a new aspect of the pizza business.  In my three years delivering, all I had done previously was deliver pizza and cut and box orders.  Yesterday, I actually helped to make the pizza.  So it just goes to show you, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Diana's Banana Babies

Every now and then, I will do a paid post for a website or a product.  I always try to give my most honest opinion of that product within those posts.  Then every now and then, there is a product that I like so much that I just have to right about it, like when I read a book I love like "Rawhide Down."  Diana's banana babies is one of those products.

My family loves to snack.  My son and I like the same kind of snacks; Cheez Its, pretzels, and just about any kind of chip.  I also like to eat a lot of meat snacks like beef jerky.  It is rare, however, when Mrs. Dickster and I both want to snack on the same thing.  Diana's banana babies is a product that the two of us are currently addicted to, the dark chocolate variety in particular.

Diana's banana babies are chocolate covered frozen bananas that we have found in the ice cream novelty section of our local Giant food store.  They come in dark chocolate covered and milk chocolate covered.  We have been loving the dark chocolate ones, but we have yet to try the milk chocolate.  There is just something about the flavors of bananas and dark chocolate that taste great together.  The coldness of the frozen treat is a great way to beat the heat. 

Related articles

• Chocolate Covered Frozen Bananas (diethood.com)