Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts

Monday, September 07, 2026

I've Changed My Mind... Again... Maybe.


 As I go through this life, I often find myself thinking of the past. The things I used to do, some of the things I still do, and some of the things that I have done a 180 on how I feel about them. On occasion there are also things that I will stop doing or even thinking about and then decades later revisit them. For now I am just thinking about things that I enjoyed doing but for some reason or two no longer do.

As a Teen I enjoyed playing all sorts of role playing games and war games. Games like Dungeons & Dragons, first the original version then The "Advanced D&D", Diplomacy, Risk and a bunch of other things with the group of friends I hung out with. So yeah "geeks" or "nerds" yeah I was one. Most of my fellow nerdy friends were the top students in the class. Me I was "Mr. Average". Senior Year of high school when the class rankings came out I was in the middle of the list. I don't recall if the total number of students were odd, which would make me the exact middle, or if it was an even number making me either the tail end of the top of the class or the beginning of the bottom of the class. I like to think it was an odd number because I always recall being in the exact middle of the class.

After high school I lost contact with those friends One I have since reconnected with on Facebook, and he seems to be the same. He appears to still be into playing strategy and war games. In the typical life fashion we drifted apart. College life took over our lives and we moved on. Soon I stopped playing those games mostly because I didn't have any new friends that were into that stuff and I didn't really pursue them anymore. There was a short period of time in College when my group of friends dabbled with D&D but it didn't last, and frankly it didn't feel the same way that my Junior High and Senior High School years felt when it came to those games. It was a different energy and I guess attitude. 

I still enjoy the Sward & Sorcery Fantasy fiction genre or "Swords & Sandals" as some call it for books and films And I like the newer steampunk genre of things. My interests in those genres come and go. I tend to stick with Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) more anyway. Especially space travel and time travel.

In music there have been songs that when they first were released I couldn't stand them or their genre, then many years later and often decades later I kind of like them. I can tolerate them at least. Then there are some songs or groups that I can NEVER like or appreciate, and I try to appreciate everything.

I think that will do for now. If I felt like it I could probably go on about this sort of thing for quite a while.

Saturday, August 29, 2026

Power Outage Fun.

 


I had a blackout recently at my apartment on Thursday night. During a thunderstorm watch. The power went out about 6:10 PM. I am glad it happened the day it did and not a day or two before. The two days before maintenance had been working on my apartment's HVAC unit. They had to take the compressor out and take it to their shop. It was a big old thing that takes two to lug around. My AC had not been functioning. It sounded like it was trying to run, but it wasn't cooling and the digital controlled thermostat was acting weird, it would blink out whenever you tried to make any adjustments. Well it took them two days to fix it, the compressor was bad and there was a pipe leak that had to be fixed. So then the night after they had fixed stuff came the power outage.

During the power outage, the power company gave me some robot recorded status update calls. The first call stated that power outages had been reported for my building and that they were working on the issue. Estimated restoration time based on past outages and assessment of any damage was at first 9:30, then call 2 the time was cutback to 8:30, or maybe 8:15, call 3 estimate was 8:00. Then shortly after 8:00 the power was still out and they apologized about not having the power back yet. Then around 8:10 PM the power was restored. About 5 minutes later the final call of the evening stated the power was restored.

During the power outage all of my Xfinity service was out. I have the 3-in-1 bundle of Cable, Internet, and Landline Phone. So my WiFi was also out. Fortunately for my cellphone I have Verizon so I could the cellphone.

Friday morning while checking my emails, there were a couple of emails from the management company of my apartment complex telling about the power outage for 3 of the buildings in the complex. Apparently not all of the complex was affected. 

Before the power outage I had been doing a load of clothes in the washer, when the power came back on the clothes washer came back on.

Friday, February 20, 2026

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.


Thursday, January 01, 2026

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.

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

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!

Saturday, November 29, 2025

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.

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

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.

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

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!

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

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.

Monday, May 06, 2024

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.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

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.

Monday, January 01, 2024

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.



Sunday, December 31, 2023

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!

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

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.

Sunday, April 30, 2023

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.


Tuesday, February 28, 2023

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."


Sunday, January 01, 2023

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.




Saturday, December 31, 2022

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!

End of Year Babbling

 


Alrighty then. It is the end of 2022. Hey on Christmas day I had an Ebay sale. A lot of 20 Topps 1978 Jaws 2 trading cards for $4.99 + $4.00 shipping. Headed to Florida. I think that makes 4 maybe 5 sales this year. The number of items in Ebay store is now at 71. So there is that to yack about, which I just did.

What the heck else?

Oh I have a CD on order from Discogs. It is my 4th purchase from the site in the last 2 years. Without disclosing the album I will say it is a somewhat hard to find title. I don't know why it doesn't seem like it would be that obscure of a title but apparently it is. I have had this CD on my wishlist over there for sometime now and every once in a while I would get a notice that a copy was available from a seller in Japan, but the shipping was outrageous (at least twice the cost of the CD often much more) and the sale price before shipping was also high. Granted often times they were brand new and sealed copies, but even used copies of Very Good or lesser condition were super expensive. Every time a copy would show up it was very expensive and only available from Japan. Also it was always the same 2 or 3 sellers, sometimes they would have 3 or 4 copies for sale. I kept refusing to give in, until near the end of November. I decided to bite the bullet and order it from a seller in Japan. I'm not thrilled about the idea since it is coming from the Orient which is the most problematic area for ordering stuff from, but that is mostly China that is awful. The overall price is good and cheaper than the previous copies and other copies that are sometimes twice the price I am paying, even cheaper than one of my previous purchases for a vinyl album that is even rarer and an Original Master Recording that was worth the price I paid for it and much cheaper than OMRs of that album usually go for. So this CD has been shipped and is on its way. It has been almost 5 weeks since I placed the order, and the expected ship time is 4 to 6 weeks. So I have another week before I expect the disc to show up. In the meantime another copy for the same price I paid total is available here in the US. UGH it figures when it is finally available in the US I am already waiting for a copy from Japan, Oh and the condition of this CD is marked as being VG+.


Friday, September 30, 2022

Subject Unknown and some Reflections?


 So yeah I don't know what this post is going to be yet. It is that time of month again. I don't have any Ebay updates, I don't have any reviews ready yet. I haven't been reading much. In fact I haven't been doing much of anything exciting. Just going through the same old boring routine. Oh sure I read some interesting things on my Facebook feed which is about the extent of my social media. I also checked out pictures and posts on Instagram but that is just mindless internet surfing. I guess the most exciting stuff this month has been some of the odd YoutTube videos and the ancient alien conspiracy videos rabbit hole.

My lack of excitement lately had me briefly thinking about blogging in general and if it is time to hang it up or not. I go through this from time to time. The perfectionist in me refuses to allow me to NOT Blog my minimal 1 post per month. I can't stand seeing those gaps in my posting archives calendar. It has been I don't know how many months or years since I had one of those no posting gaps. I don't intend to start that, and don't want it to become my go-to habit.

Then that leads me to think about some of the things I think or do that I never mention here, either because they are way to private or are family related and I don't want to have too much of my dirty laundry spread over the Cyberverse that isn't already there. Of course there already is a ton of it out there. As soon as you log onto the internet for the very first time personal data gets sent to thousands of data storage lockers.

A good thing is several of my go-to television shows have started their new fall seasons and the reboot continuation of "Quantum Leap" started. I am hooked just as I was with the original. Season 2 of CSI: Las Vegas might take a nosedive as Grissim & Sarah maybe leaving again. OH well whatever.