Happy 20th Blogiversary To Me!

 

WOW 20 YEARS? Since I started this dang thing? The amount of content I actually have here is less than half that time. Anyway. I thought I would look to see what my very first post was and it was called The Beginning or The End?  I mentioned that I had been "blogging" for a little while on my personal website that I had back then. I simulated a blog there by writing a diary type page on the site. It was a pain in the butt maintaining it. 

As I mentioned in that first post, I would do CD and DVD reviews, mention new purchases of that media, track updates I made to the website, and probably a few other things. Sadly my old website is long gone. Maintaining the registration for a website was the biggest reason I let it go. I still barely have some of the files from that site on whatever floppy discs survived my late 2023 apartment inspection purge. Among the various things I decluttered was about 90% - 95% of all the computer floppy discs I had.  The biggest thing I got rid of during that purge for my apartment inspection was the very large dinning room table that was too big for my apartment's dinning room and 6 chairs with it.

State O' The Blog: 2025 Recap

STATE O' THE BLOG

2025 Edition

2025 was a year of very very low blog activity. Practically none at all. 

Here are the monthlies from 2025:

January: 1
February: 0
March: 0
April: 0
May: 0
June: 0
July: 0
August: 0
September: 0
October: 0
November: 1
December: 1

TOTAL: 3
Monthly Average: 0.25

Now lets look at how the 2025 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

2022 - 14

2023 - 14

2024 - 8

2025 - 3
Yearly Average: 28.25

Another RED year yippie.

So yeah very little blogging this past year just the bare bones. I think this is the last year that I will do the average totals. I might do a "State O' The Blog" at the end of 2026 but I don't think I'll do the average posts totals as that ties in with the keeping up with my quota counting.

Happy New Year: Hello 2026 Goodbye 2025

GOODBYE 2025 HELLO 2026

2025 was an OK year. New car back in January. Nothing too spectacular that I can recall.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I'm NOT Dead Yet!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. It's been ages many months since I have blogged here, or even on either of my two card blogs. Mostly because the desire to blog isn't as demanding as it was a few years ago. I don't feel that I "have" to meet the one post a month quota that I used to implement upon myself. I also have never had a huge following so most of the time I am basically just writing for myself.  The task of coming up with something to write about can be a little stressful when you are "forcing" yourself to do it.

One of the things I do want to do is get back into album reviewing and maybe some book reviewing. Right now I'm trying to locate a notepad that I had begun composing one of my CD reviews on a year or two ago. I recall that I had started the general overall reaction I had to that particular album, but I was going to go into detail with the tracks. Some of the tracks remind me of other artists and one of the tracks is a cover of a very popular song from 17 years previous. I have a few partial draft posts for some other album reviews, most are just the bare bones information about the album that is being reviewed - the title, artist, picture of album cover and that is pretty much it, if anything.

I also have a partial post from several years back that closes out a section I used to have on this blog. I will leave that a mystery in case I don't ever get around to it. Just as for my Curly W Cards blog I have a post that reviews the Nationals 2019 World Series that I never got around to finishing. I wonder if I'll ever get around to finishing either of those posts. I want to it is just that for some reason I have procrastinated on them. For both there are some specific details that I want to include that I haven't gotten around to putting into the draft post.

So yeah I still WANT to blog I just don't force myself to go through the motions of blogging and the routines that you go through and the practice that you do.

State O' The Blog: 2024 Recap

STATE O' THE BLOG

2024 Edition

2024 was a year of very low blog activity which the numbers reflect and at the bottom I will mention the major causes.

Here are the monthlies from 2024:

January: 2
February: 2
March: 0
April: 0
May: 1
June: 0
July: 0
August: 0
September: 0
October: 2
November: 0
December: 1

TOTAL: 8
Monthly Average: 0.67

Now lets look at how the 2024 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

2022 - 14

2023 - 14

2024 - 8
Yearly Average: 29.26

Another RED year yippie.

This year had some lows. The kind of lows I don't like to talk about when they are happening and I don't want those "Sorry to hear that" pity replies from everybody while I'm experiencing them. Stuff happens and you roll with it. Some stuff you accept other stuff you try to fight but in the end stuff happens.

Late March I had some excruciating back pain, so much that I went to the hospital to get my back checked out. I do have Scoliosis (curvature of the spine). I think it was being irritated by adjusting to a months old toe wound on my right big toe that thanks to my diabetes was not healing. The toe wound was infected down to the bone and the first tendon of the big toe. So bye bye right big toe. Hospital stay was 2 weeks then I went on to rehab for what would be a total of 6 months at two separate facilities, a regular retirement home and then an assisted living center before getting to go home. It is at a time like that where being single without a live-in partner to be a health care provider sucks. Family is either too far away or in the case of family that was close by they were in the process of getting ready for a move, which oddly wouldn't get done until closer to end of this year.

The other bad setback for this year was early December I got into a car accident, fortunately I wasn't injured but my car was totaled. I am in process of getting a newused car estimated arrival 02 January. When I had gotten out of rehab I had to have my car in the shop because it hadn't been running for 6 months, the battery was drained and some rats had gotten into some of the engine wiring. So yeah didn't have much time with the car this year.

As for my Ebay I only sold 1 item early Dec a sports card. I thought I had sold a couple of other things, but those were sold near the end of last year. Meanwhile over at COMC (Check Out My Cards) I had a record number of yearly sales there. I will put the details for those on my card blog sometime soon hopefully.

Happy New Year: Hello 2025 Goodbye 2024

GOODBYE 2024 HELLO 2025

2024 was a so-so year, there were a few bad things that I will mention in my State of The Blog post in January. Had record year for trading card sales over at COMC most sales in one year for me there. Also for 2025 I'm getting a newused car.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

When To Blog Or Post

 From time to time on social media and in various internet forums, and those rare occasions in real life, I sometimes find myself saying (typing, writing) something that is taken in a way I didn't expect or is challenged and I feel uncomfortable with what I originally said. This is why I try to stay away from talking politics. Sometimes this misspeaking leads to very awkward backtracking that I usually have to just eventually give up on. Often it makes me want to not interact on any social media anymore, especially on whatever platform I made the gaffe on. If it was on a forum I will sometimes just avoid that forum for an extended period of time, if I can. 

Upon later examination, if I do take the time to do that, I often find part of the problem or what I think is a problem, came from being emotional about my reaction and quickly reacting without taking enough time to process what was said. This coupled with the replier taking things at face value or trying to read something else into what I said that isn't in whatever it is that I said.

It is also caused by me having reached an age where for many things I just don't care about them anymore. Other possibilities could be that I stink at being social and am becoming a horrible unsocial person.

Getting Back into the Swing of Things

 ...And I am back to the Blogiverse from my mostly medical absence. Few if any may have noticed but they don't care, I don't care either I just blog for the fun of it now days, if others see it they see it. Long story short I had some health issues, a toe/foot operation that was diabetes related with back issues that had me in the hospital for 2 weeks then 2 months in rehab with PT (Physical Therapy) and OT (Occupational Therapy) until my insurance quit and I had to relocate for 4 more months of rehab at an assisted living complex out-of-pocket. The back pain was what kept me down for so long. 6 months away from your home is a very long time. Being single, living alone and not in a relationship sucks in this situation, that is why I was in rehab for so damn long. No live-in caregiver. Your life gets disoriented and super off track. It is difficult to keep track of finances and lots of other everyday life things that you don't notice until you don't have access to them anymore. There was a period of almost a week when I was in the first rehab center (a regular retirement home) where my old cell phone gave out (it was very old and I kept dropping the damn thing) and even though I had my work computer, another story but I won't tell that one too long and complicated, with recent updates to the network and my lack of being on the network resulted in me being off the grid for 4 or 5 days? No internet and no phone, another long story I don't want to tell the details of (I sort of blogged about it here). Fortunately my sister (who is normally in CA but had come east to help me out some and see if I was getting good care) was able to get my Chromebook from my apartment so I could get back online and was able to get me a new Android cellphone that upgraded me in that department. So I was able to manage most of my finances OK. Work was another story and I did get back eventually.

Without going into detail there are a few permanent life changes. I'd rather not discuss the medical stuff.

I slowly got caught up with some of the TV that I had missed. I had access to TV but in the 2nd rehab the TVs were in common areas so I didn't always have control of what was being shown. A few of my shows I had watched and missed some episodes of I will have to get the DVDs of their last season(s) to checkout what my Xfinity Cable is now charging for On-Demand. Yeah I was away from some of those shows for that long.

I also now have access to my CDs so I can listen to stuff the way I prefer to listen to them and on my own schedule and not just watch some obscure fan made video on YouTube for the song.

NOT Connected

I have recently been offline from the internet for a few days. Plus my cellphone seems to have died. So I can't text people about the outage. I managed to get internet access, but anything with my cellphone is not accessible. I have said many times in many places to many people that modern Technology is GREAT when it is working properly, but when you lose access to all of your devices that either link to the internet or has a texting network it SUCKS big time.

Happy Blogivversay To ME!

 

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY!

Today is the 18th Blogiversary for this here blog "Kirk's Knook".I don't remember what my first few goals for this blog were, but I'm sure I steered away from those early on, or abandoned them for being too lofty. 

Now a days my only goal is to post at least one post per month. I have said a few times before about my yearly self appointed goals for my blogs. Sometimes I wish I was more enthusiastic about blogging and more prolific in my post writing, but it is what it is and I yam what I yam.

As is my tradition I am timing this post to be published at the same time of day that my very first post on this blog was.

State O' The Blog: 2023 Recap

STATE O' THE BLOG

2023 Edition

This year my "State O' The Blog" year in review post is pretty much on time. It was a typical bare bones posting year... sort of.

Here are the monthlies from 2023:

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

TOTAL: 14
Monthly Average: 1.17

Now lets look at how the 2023 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

2022 - 14

2023 - 14
Yearly Average: 30.44 

Another RED year yippie.

As for my trading card blogs CaptKirk42's Trading Card Blog and Curly W Cards I missed posting in November for them. In years past I would have been very upset with myself for missing a month, but now I really don't care. If I stopped blogging completely I just wouldn't care any more.

Happy New Year: Hello 2024 Goodbye 2023

GOODBYE 2023 HELLO 2024

2023 was a year... well a year that WAS. It is time for a new year and in 2024 we in the United States of America have the "honor" of voting for a "new" POTUS. Fun fun fun.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Life Interupts Blogging.

 So yeah. I had somethings to do from around Thanksgiving until forever. It didn't leave me with time to work on my blogs. Basically my personal montly quota of 1 post per month suffered a huge set back. In the past I have thought about hanging things up completely. I don't think I'll do that, but my not so frequent blogging will continue to be not so frequent. It might have long periods of non-activity from now on. Blogging definitely doesn't mean as much to me as it once did and hasn't for many months maybe even a few years. As with many other facits of life things that meant a whole heck of a lot to me just a few years or even in some cases a few months ago, now I can shrug my shoulders at and say "Ehh Whatever".

EEK soon it will be time for my yearly "year in review" and such.

Blogging Rant And Work Moves Around

 Of my 3 blogs this one is sometimes the most difficult to come up with posts for as it is the most personal and I don't want some stuff made public. The draft posts that I do have in the draft queue for this blog still require more effort than I am willing to do, or rather take more time to complete than I usually allow myself. A good portion of them are reviews that I still need to actually start the writing of the review. Several of them will require re-watching, or rereading, or re-listening to whatever it was I wanted to review. Sometimes I wonder why I bother even writing a rant about my inaction. Well in some ways it gives me something that I can post about. So there is that.

Meanwhile at work our office is in the process of vacating one of the floors of the building we are in. We are currently on 3 floors, 2 of which we occupy the entire floor and 1 (the one I am on) our offices are maybe 1/4 of the floor. One of the full floors we are exiting from with most of the people moved. We have til the end of the year to exit completely when the lease runs. After that we will be only on 2 floors one the full floor and the other one at about the 1/4.

Reading A Book About A Visit To "The Future"

Once again I find myself facing the end of the month and not really knowing what I really want to blog about. I have plenty of long term ideas for somethings, but many of those take lots of planning or at least a bit more planning that I am willing to do in a short  period of time. I don't want to rush some of those ideas. A few have been sitting for a long time. I have 11 drafts for posts for this blog, I'm not sure about how many drafts I have for my trading card blog but it is probably quite a few more. Some of the abandoned drafts may stay abandoned. There have been a few times when I had a lingering abandoned draft for so long I lost total interest in it or it seemed to be so far outdated that I just deleted them.

I suppose that some of my problem with post subjects comes down to things that I feel comfortable with presenting to the entire world. Sort of what you decide to post on social media. I try to keep some things off it. I guess I should evaluate the things that I like or enjoy doing or reevaluate them.

Well I guess one thing I can talk about is a book that I am currently reading. I have stumbled with it a little probably due to the format and quite frankly some of the writing style, prose I think it is called, The Book is titled "Chronicles From The Future - The Amazing Story of Paul Amadeus Dienach (Based on his Diary Pages)" Edited by Achilleas Sirigos. The basic gist of the book is it is the "diary" of a man (a Swiss-Austrian teacher) from the 1920s in failing health slips into a year long coma and when he wakes up recalls that he had "lived" in the body of a man in the year 3906 while in his coma. Knowing that he doesn't have much more time to live he records his memories of "the future" in a diary, written in German, and then gives his diary to his favorite student George Papachatzis who translates it into Greek. It claims to be a true story about time travel. The "student" was a real person, however the existence of the "author" is a bit sketchy. The only references to the "author" are linked in someway to this book.

At any rate the book is somewhat interesting, but it has taken me a bit of an effort to plow through. At times the "future" reminds me of something like "A Brave New World" or "Logan's Run" with the culture of society and an emphasis on youth. In the future presented, which is a few hundred to maybe a thousand years post-nuclear war money and wealth is no longer a priority, Young adults after their formal schooling spend roughly 2 years working like crazy and then retire to appreciate the finer things in life. A few people work longer than the standard 2 years but the majority don't. Currently I am 32% through the book.

Some have criticized the book because of some more modern references to later technology. The reasoning for the modern references is in part due to the publishing "history". It appears that the first Greek translation wasn't published until after WWII and was only shared with the free masons or some similar group who decided to hide the book. Its first major publishing was the 1970s. It has only in more recent years been translated into English. So any claims of the events being factual are very suspect. I think most of it is to just give more mystery to the overall story.

Mondegreen Fun - Misheard Lyrics A Rush Job

 It is time for another round of Misheard Lyrics or as it is technically known as "Mondegreen". Sometimes they can be earworms, sometimes not. But usually they will stick with you until you learn the real lyrics, if you do.

So for this episode I present a song from the rock group Rush. From their 1980 Album "Permanent Waves".

The song I misheard the lyrics to is "Freewill". 

The words are from the chorus, this line "I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill". 

What I heard was "I will choose a bathysphere, I will choose freewill". I admit it was decades before I realized what the real lyrics were.

An Update? Name Game and Nantucket Nectars

 I guess this will be an update post.

So in the "Name Game" area nothing really new but maybe a parallel variant? At Chick-Fil-A where they use your name for the order ID, and the source for many of my misspellings. I got a "Kurrk" with TWO "R"s. Usually I just get it with one "R". Good thing it wasn't "Talk Like A Pirate Day" or it would have been at least 4 "R"s.

In the ever popular "Who Really Cares?" category the latest plastic bottle top from a "Nantucket Nectars" Island Orange juice the underside of the cap was "When looking for a place to live, or anything else on Nantucket, the bulletin board at the Hub might be your best bet." Oh the previous cap I had gotten (I think from a Peach Orange bottle) was "The winning pumpkin at Nantucket 2002 Island Fair pumpkin contest was approximately 660 lbs."

CD Update: Discogs Order From Japan?

 

OK so in my last post of 2022 I mentioned that I was waiting for a CD I had ordered through discogs from a seller in Japan. Well the CD arrived on 03 Jan 2023. I placed the order on 25 Nov 2022 and the seller marked the CD as being shipped on 27 Nov 2022. In my previous post I mentioned that I got it for a good price it was $20 for the CD and $10 shipping and tax. A total of only $30. Often when I saw the CD listed the price of the CD itself was at least $30 and shipping was often at least $30.

So to end the curiosity the CD in question was "Here We Go Again" (2004) by the band SR-71. I mainly got it for track number four "1985" a song that was covered by the band Bowling For Soup the same year 2004 and they turned the song into a big hit. The original version is a bit cruder in sound and overall quality in my opinion. Also the cover adjusts and smooths out some of the lyrics. A few weeks back I discovered another cover of "1985" by a group called First To Eleven which is pretty good. The first few seconds to the first minute I didn't like it but it grew on me.

SR-71 Here We Go Again (2004)

Image from discogs.com

Anyway part of the story with this disc is when it did arrive 5 weeks and some odd days after the initial order I noticed the package came from Utah. The mailing label was printed 25 Dec 2022 HUH? The company I ordered it from is in Japan. Apparently the company has a shipping center in Utah so they can send orders to the US (with AG after the company name). I don't really mind it because apparently the Japanese pressing of this CD is the only one thus the "rarity" of the release. Yes my copy has the OBI strip with it. That was one of the reasons I got this particular copy, some of the other copies don't have the OBI strip. A few years ago I didn't even know what an OBI strip was. It is the strip of paper on the side with all the Japanese writing that all Japanese album pressings have. They also include a booklet that has all Japanese writing. For some CD releases it is more that they include a booklet written in English. It is not a necessity for Japanese pressings for me but it makes them more fun.

On a different note: I had an odd Ebay experience. For one of my purchases in which the seller didn't give a tracking number, about a week after it was marked as shipped I get a message from the seller that the item was returned with address "no such number". That is very odd since Ebay has my proper address as well as Paypal (which I paid for it through). So I replay "that is odd" and send my mailing address in all caps so that any "i" s or "L" s or other similar letters can be identified and I spelled out Maryland so that the state abbreviation of "MD" is not mistaken for an "MO" (Missouri). 3 or 4 days later I got another message that the package was returned again and the seller asked if I had another address. I restate my bewilderment and say "unfortunately that is my only address". I don't want to go through the problems one could get by sending to my work address which is in SE DC on a letter street which could be misdirected to SW or NW or NE DC. So I said I guess you will have to refund me since it is "undeliverable". Poor seller must be handwriting everything and has bad penmanship? I would love to see a picture of the bad address to see how it was messed up. Latest is the seller is attempting to send for the charmed third time. I hope it gets here. And it arrived. The item for those curious was a back issue of a Sports Illustrated Suimsuit issue to replace a water damaged copy I had. The package had one of the previous labels that had been marked with the "NSN" No Such Number with return to sender sticker under the good mailing label. Turns out that they had replaced a 3 in my street address with an 8 everything else was right except my name on the original label was "Kris" and my last name of course was misspelled with the more common "son" ending. Another interesting thing, the seller according to the listing is in Illinois, the original label was sent from Michigan and the final label was from Texas. So the seller either has a couple of locations or they sent from a drop shipper.

Tues 24 January got a message that I sold an Ebay item. 2 promo buttons for the movie "Passion of The Christ" for $2.99 plus $4 shipping. Looks like one of those I'll loose a buck or two transactions. Just glad they sold to someone who wants them. My Ebay store is now down to 70 items. I am working on some draft listings of a few books.

State O' The Blog: 2022 Recap

STATE O' THE BLOG

2022 Edition

This year my "State O' The Blog" year in review post is pretty much on time. It was a typical bare bones posting year.

Here are the monthlies from 2022:

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

TOTAL: 14
Monthly Average: 1.17

Now lets look at how the 2022 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

2022 - 14
Yearly Average: 29.12 

Another RED year yippie.

As for my trading card blogs CaptKirk42's Trading Card Blog I managed to go 15 posts and Curly W Cards I only did the bare bones 12 posts for the year. For those blogs my posting quota is to make at least the bare minimum of 1 post per month, 12 posts per year. For this blog my posting goal is a lofty 32 posts in the year with the minimum of 1 post per month, 12 for the year.

Happy New Year: Welcome 2023 Goodbye 2022

GOODBYE 2022 HELLO 2023

2022 was in some ways a challenging year on the family side very emotional. Other than that it was mostly unremarkable. 

Soon I will make my annual "State of the Blog" post to publish sometime early January. Blog wise 2022 was pretty much a typical bare bones minimum posts year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!