Name Game: Kent Clark Kent

 It happened again. I think this name variant has happened before, but I'm not sure. I thought I had enunciated my name properly, then again I was wearing one of those COVID KN-95 masks and had my glasses on. So I was sort of incognito. 

Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent in "Superman"

Yep this time the cashier thought I had said my name was CLARK. I had to listen for this vastly different name to be called to pickup my order. Usually with the other names they are similar enough to mine that I can sort of tune out the difference in pronunciation. I could sort of do that with this too, but I always have to check to see what the ticket spells out and listen for that name. It is tempting sometime to give a wildly fictitious name. The problem though it can't be too crazy because then the person who has to call out the names wouldn't be able to pronounce it correctly. I would also have to remember whatever name I gave. I have toyed with giving "Captain Kirk" as my name, which isn't too far off from the truth. I would just have to worry about getting caught impersonating an officer or accused of stolen valor.

Random Stuff Episode 1: DVD Update & Ebay

Random Stuff Episode 1:

Updates: DVD & Ebay

For quite a while now my regular DVD player attached to the TV in my living room I have not used because it gradually stopped recognizing DVDs. It accepts audio CDs but sadly the laser that reads DVD video information has been broken for something like 2 or 3 years. It has been even longer since I watched DVDs on a regular basis. When this problem started back whenever at first it was just an occasional DVD disc. Then it became every DVD disc I would put in a disc and it would give me a "no disc" error. I noticed I could put an audio CD in and it recognized that and played the audio from them, but didn't recognized DVDs. I had purchased a cleaning disc that is supposed to help, but it didn't. However  I have still been buying occasional DVDs via Ebay and elsewhere, but mostly from EBay.

I have a CD/DVD ROM player on my ancient Windows XP laptop but ages ago whenever I would view videos the computer would overheat and crash. I also have an external DVD ROM Drive but that is a pain to have to plug in all the time plus I had the overheating problem with that laptop so I got out of the practice of DVD viewing.

This lack of a DVD player problem was on the back burner for a long time. I finally got a really cheap DVD player from Best Buy ($37 and some change including sales tax). I was going to get one at Target for about twice as much, but my Target no longer carries DVD players or DVDs and I don't like buying electronics online or trust getting electronic equipment shipped. Ironically that is how I got my Chromebook. My biggest concern with that isn't with the risk of damage during shipping but rather the porch pirates when it gets delivered. Anyway now I have a basic DVD player again. I hooked it up and the first disc I watched was a Doctor Who episode on DVD. Felt good. 

Also related to the DVD issue and my past computer problems, which my Chromebook has helped recover from somethings. My lack of activity for my DVDProfiler cataloging. I need to get things updated and try to see if I can transfer the base program from my ancient XP to my Chromebook. I don't want to have to download the program and learn that I have to pay for it. I think I paid for the software ages ago to have an account tracking more than 50 DVDS. I have way way more than that in TV series alone. A few years back they added an Android app. Not sure if you can add stuff on it, but I can at least see my online collection on it. 

 

I sold another card on Ebay on 29 June for $6 ($2 plus $4 shipping I don't use the Ebay Standard Envelope or PWEs when selling) the last sale was on May 3rd for $7 total.

Changes at Goodreads

 

Over at Goodreads they have decided to make some changes including getting rid of the "creative writing" section/ ability. A few years back when I used it frequently, well some-what frequently this would have annoyed me. Also if I had forgotten they were going to do it and didn't save any of my work in that section I would have been ticked. However I don't use it that often and all the writing I had over there I saved onto the cloud in my private Google Docs.

For lack of anything else here is a sample of one of the only 9 writings I had over at Goodreads. It was mostly gibberish and nonsense and a Stream of Consciousness exercise: 

I Say What?

OK it’s been a while since I've done any kind of writing here. I guess this will be more of a journal type thing than a regular attempt at something to be read. 

As I enter the stream, the stream of consciousness I attempt to write whatever pops into my mind. I will try not to edit it as it comes to me. Except to attempt to correct spelling errors when prompted that an error was made

So here we go again and again and again to write each and every word that comes to mind as it comes without thinking of how it sounds or if it makes any sense whatsoever. and we begin the begin benign. ACK that took some thinking of how to spell it, and the eventual having to use Google to spell it correctly. There is a sign of the times using a search engine, actually the website that is a search engine to find the proper spelling of a word rather than looking it up elsewhere. Well right now I don't have a dictionary handy so OK Google it is for spell checking. Blah, blah blah de blah blah. BLAH! So there!

Sigh heavy breath release. Back to the matter at hand or rather at mind. Getting a few distractions not sure if I can continue this exercise. Yeah No guess that is it for now. Big disappointment. Barely got anywhere. Heavy Sigh. 

Originally Drafted/ Updated 02 Aug 2019

Some Stuff This That The Other Maybe

 As usual I'm not sure what this post will be about yet. Might just be a mishmash of stuff.

I did have an Ebay sale. A football relic card one of those "Rookie Letterman" cards of an autographed manufactured letter "A". I originally had it listed for much more but had lowered the price a few times. It was at $7 I got a couple of watchers on it and sent out an offer of I think 25% so around $5. The buyer counter offered with $3 and I accepted the counter-offer, so that is the price it sold at plus $4 shipping. It sold on Tue 3 May and was shipped out Wed 4 May (I had the day off for a doctor's appointment). An odd message exchange occurred long story short apparently the buyer had a problem with another seller that was being extremely rude, but they messaged and went off on me instead. They apologized for the mishap. After the card was marked as being delivered on Saturday 7 May I got a positive "Perfect" feedback from the buyer.

I've been on Ebay a long time and for the most part I like it but there are some decisions they have made over the years I don't agree with or don't like. I haven't liked any of their TV commercials much. For the most part because in their ads they give a false impression that everything is brand new and that all the sellers are professional. Anyway moving on.

I don't do music streaming. I will occasionally listen to music on YouTube and watch the accompanying video images if they have any, but I don't stream via sites like Spotify. Apparently I had signed up for Spotify via my Facebook account and was charged $10 for their premium service on one of my credit cards. Well I put a stop to that by asking for my forgotten password to create a new password and then close the account. So maybe I'll get charged again next month if any time passed from the billing date to my cancelling the account. I don't know if I fat fingered something on my Droid, or my tablet when it was functional. At any rate any signing up was not intentional.

That seems to be it for now at least for what I want to disclose at this time.

Nantucket Nectars: Bottle Cap Facts

So what is "under the hood"?

The subject of this post is a bit odd but I'm not the first to ponder it. A not so quick Google search landed me with just about all the dang links in this post. OK so let me start at a sort of beginning...

A few years ago, I forget exactly when, after discovering this trivia topping thing I started to collect a little bit. To clarify a little of this vagueness. I acquired a liking to the various fruit juice flavors from the Nantucket Nectars Brand. The company prints facts about the island of Nantucket (and people although I don't recall seeing any about people) on the inside of the bottle caps. This practice of printing facts on the inside of bottle caps seems to first been done by Snapple. At least they claim that, the practice might go back farther. Well now as in currently the mother company that owns/runs Snapple owns/runs Nantucket Nectars. According to the online sources I found there have been over 750 different Nantucket facts printed with 100 some being produced in any one year. In doing some poking around I found this "Put a lid on it" article which is interesting.

When I was first trying to figure out how many different ones there were I discovered this 101 Things Blog from a 2011 post which updated her 2010 post on the subject. Back then she seems to have 70 some caps. I found an archived list that someone else came up with that has 257 caps on their blog from sometime earlier. That is the largest list I have seen from the semi-quick research Googling I did for this post.

Back those few years ago I was going to try to collect them all before I discovered there were over 100 per year made at any one time and a grand total of 750 or more. I don't know why I have kept the ones I do have, other than to write up a post about the phenomenon of it. I wonder if I can sell the collection on Ebay? Or find out if the 101 Things Blogger Amy still collects them. Maybe I have some she doesn't.

More recently I noticed they now use plastic recyclable bottles with plastic caps. They still print local facts about Nantucket under the plastic caps. The caps are dark purple and the facts are printed in white or light gray which makes it difficult to read the facts now.

NOTE: This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for ages and ages. When I first began the draft for this post the company was still using glass bottles with metal caps. I don't know when they made the switch from glass to plastic. The switch to plastic bottles takes some of the fun out of getting the juices. I tried adjusting the plastic images to read the inside sayings better but I'm not an expert at photo editing. Sorry those don't look right.

March Madness Or March Mindless?

 

This month of March was one for the books. I don't have a proper subject to rant about or to discuss as it has been a Family Thing month. 'Nuff Said. 

Not sure what I'll blog about on my cards blogs. Well I do know what I'll blog about over at Curly W Cards, but not at the other one just yet.

Till Next Month.

Name Game: Why Haven't I Seen This One?

 

It has been quite a while since I had one of these. The last time or two I thought I had seen every possible way my name could be perverted or messed up. Well a few months back in October Me my sibs and my blood nephew were having a Family VaCay in Virginia Beach, VA off season. One day for late lunch almost dinner we stopped at Starbucks. Now I'm not a coffee guy so I rarely get anything coffee I don't like it straight I need it either Mocha style with enough cocoa to drown out the coffee bean "burned water" flavor that I hate coffee for (just as smoking is like sucking ash) or have some caramel in the mix. So anyway they had some kind of Apple Cider/ Apple Crisp type flavor. I think it was a limited time flavor. It was pretty good. I think I'll stick to Mocha style though. The hint of apple seemed a bit off.

Anyway the purpose of this post is that a variation of my name was used, as you can see from the scan of the sticker that was on the cup. "KERT". Now at times I could have sworn that I had maybe seen this variant but usually it is the "CERT" or "CURT" or maybe even "KURT" that I have seen. OK Whatever.

State Of The Blog: 2021 Recap

STATE O' THE BLOG

2021 Edition

This year my "State O' The Blog" year in review post is a few days and about a week late. Because I really a lazy SOB. OK So for the 2021 blogging tally OH MY I  MADE THE QUOTA! Thanks to doing a huge bunch of Album Reviews that I had originally posted on Rate Your Music on a weekly basis. Yes that brings up the yearly average and makes me happier.

Here are the monthlies from 2021:

January: 2
February: 1
March: 5
April: 5
May: 6
June: 4
July: 4
August: 2
September: 1
October: 1
November: 1
December: 1

TOTAL: 33
Monthly Average: 2.75

This breaks the 6 year losing streak. 

Now lets look at how the 2021 blogging matches up with past years:

2006 - 32
2007 - 43
2008 - 36
2009 - 34
2010 - 18
2011 - 20
2012 - 38
2013 - 93
2014 - 57
2015 - 24
2016 - 29
2017 - 16
2018 - 18
2019 - 12

2020 - 17

2021 - 33
Yearly Average: 43.33

What a relief. 

As for my trading card blogs (CaptKirk42's Trading Card Blog and Curly W Cards) both of them I only did the bare 1 post per month minimum so they both only have 12 posts for the year 2021 just like for 2020. For those my only posting goal is to make at least the bare minimum of 1 post per month, 12 posts per year.

Happy New Year: Welcome 2022 Goodbye 2021

GOODBYE 2021 HELLO 2022

2021 was another COVID-19 Pandemic year. This has gotten beyond annoying and some of the powers that be seem to want to keep everything shut down and keeping the world in a mess. 'Nuff said about that I don't like being political.

Soon I will make my annual "State of the Blog" post to publish sometime early January. As far as my posting for 2021 went it was a bit more than just the bare minimum one post per month of most years. This was because of my catching up on my posted album reviews that I cranked out one a week to get them done. However I don't think my post quota goal was met. OH Well.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Pop-Tarts Another Taste Test: Frosted Crisp Apple

 OK so here I am, well was a few months back, with another taste test of what I hope will be a restoration of childhood nostalgia. Once again I saw a different Apple of Pop-Tart on the grocery store shelves. This time it was FROSTED CRISP APPLE. Yum!

Now if you have read all my posts on this blog you might remember I have done a couple of Pop-Tart taste posts. One was for another apple flavor "Frosted Orchard Apple Cinnamon" and the other was of all things Fruit Loops. Back to this "Crisp Apple". On the surface it looks like another Kellogg's attempt to bring back the favorite "Frosted Dutch Apple". Right? Wrong. Well sort of. I don't know if they intentionally keep introducing apple flavors that are similar to the original Dutch Apple flavor or not.

As with many other Pop-Tart flavors this one is a bit dry due to the pastry part. The filling part was so-so unheated, but slightly edible when heated up (toasted). OH well.

I have come to the conclusion that due to the recipe changes of the pastry over the years, and the use of  dryer chemical sugar substitutes particularly in the frostings, they will never revive my old favorite flavor FROSTED DUTCH APPLE.