Welcome to Bud’s Blog

Posted March 1, 2009 by oldereyes
Categories: feeling older

If you’re new here, this post will tell you what Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog is all about.   If you’re not, the place may look a little different.   The Home page is now Bud’s Blog, so you can scroll right down to see the latest posts.  You can also look under Recent Posts in the sidebar or, if you want a quick view of my favorite posts, try the Bud’s Favorites link.  This Welcome post is what used to be the home page.  But it’s still the same old blog.

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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes – Marcel Proust

Sometimes Older Eyes work, too.

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How Hot Is It?

Posted September 29, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: curmudgeonly rants
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We may have missed the worst of the current Socal heat wave during our flight home from Minnesota but we certainly didn’t miss it all. According to the weather ap on my Blackberry, it’s ninety-one degrees outside. Usually when we get our September-October hot spells, they are due to Santa Ana winds coming in off the desert, bone-dry and hotter than hell.   Today it’s still and sultry with the possibility of thunderstorms tonight. Checking the averages temperatures for Anaheim, it turns out we’re only a few degrees above normal. I guess I’ve been spoiled by the cool summer we’ve just enjoyed.  Still, it’s a good day to be cloistered in my office blogging. Read the rest of this post »

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Peculiar Behavior

Posted September 28, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: curmudgeonly rants
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We made it back to Socal, arriving on the tail end of a record-breaking heat wave that brought temperatures up to 115 degrees, territory usual reserved for our Little House in the Desert in San Tan Valley (formerly Queen Creek) AZ.   Other than a few gate changes and a half hour flight delay in Dallas (truly nits among the possible difficulties to be encountered in flying these days), our return was uneventful.    Now, it’s Top Sites Tuesday #79, Two Thoughts on Tuesday, and I’d have expected that eleven hours in airports and airplanes would have provided a multitude of thoughts.  But looking back, I could only find one. Read the rest of this post »

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Monday Smiles – 9/27/2010

Posted September 27, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: Monday smiles
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As this posts, I will be in the air somewhere between Minneapolis and Dallas-Ft. Worth, heading home from a predicted 71 degree sunny day in Eden Prairie to a predicted 104 degree day in Anaheim Hills, CA.   Headed home from spending almost every waking hour with friends to just us in our House in the Hills.  Home from having a rich and interesting itinerary planned for four of our days to trying to find our way back into our own routines.  En route, I hope to finish Under the Dome, Stephen King’s ambitious new novel (which runs over 1,000 pages) and do a little writing.  I’ll get some alone time with the Love of My Life (as alone as you can be on an American Airlines 738 jet).   And I’ll spend some time savoring our mini-vacation.   To say our friends kept us busy would be the height of Read the rest of this post »

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Comments on Comments

Posted September 25, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: writing and blogging
Tags: , , ,

When I look at my WordPress Stats Window, it seems apparent that the number of visitors to Bud’s Blog per day is much greater than the number of comments on my posts.    That is to say, a substantial number of readers either comment only rarely or are lurkers.   While the latter may sound sinister, in internet parlance, a lurker is someone who reads discussions on an interactive internet forum (such as a message board, blog or chatroom) but never participates by adding content.  This sort of lack of participation has been observed by bloggers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba and dubbed the 90-9-1 rule which suggests that internet content in such a forum will be created by 1% of the participants, while 9% may edit or modify content, and 90% will view the content without contributing, that is, be lurkers.   In information sciences, the Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule says that in any group activity, 20% will produce 80% of the activity.  So I guess it would be expected that many readers might not participate by commenting … but that doesn’t keep me from wondering why they don’t.   Readers are, after all, more than statistics. Read the rest of this post »

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Friday Favorites 9/24/2010

Posted September 24, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: Friday Favorites
Tags: , ,

Favorites certainly come and go.   Whether I’m rummaging through the vinyl LPs hiding in our storage bin, the CDs hibernating in our entertainment center (once known as a stereo cabinet) or my Windows Media library, I’m likely to encounter old favorites that aren’t anymore.   Some, like the Kingston Trio, were a product of the times, while others were the product of my stage of life … Neil Young was attractive to the sort-of-antiwar, quasi-hippie engineer of the sixties.  Some of their music, I still like (Kingston Trio’s Scotch and Soda … Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl), but favorites they’re not. Read the rest of this post »

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Airport Ramblings

Posted September 23, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: curmudgeonly rants
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Well, we’re flying again.  If you’re a regular here, you know I have a love-hate relationship with flying and a hate-love relationship with airports.  It’s just too many people crammed into too little space for my Inner Curmudgeon on one hand but on the other, I love the joyful solitude of looking down on the earth from 30,000 feet from the sanctuary provided by my Bose Noise Canceling headphones.   The curmudgeon is a little less apprehensive about this trip since it’s a mini-vacation to visit our friends, Barb and Stan, in Eden Prairie, MN … and because we’re flying out of Ontario International Airport.  The Ontario airport was expanded from a single terminal building to a beautiful (and expansive) facility just before 9/11 and the economic decline brought the airline industry down to earth.  As a result, it’s comfortable and rarely crowded.  Still there are travel rituals … like scouting the airport for potentially noisy passengers, then worrying where they’ll sit during boarding … that must be honored. Read the rest of this post »

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And the Answer is …

Posted September 21, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: perspectives
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Monday Smiles – 9/20/2010

Posted September 20, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: Monday smiles
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In spite of my tendency to go dark sometimes (earning me the nickname, Bud Heavy, in my Men’s Group  in contrast to our more upbeat Bud Light), I’ve learned what it takes to see the shades of gray descending around me and take some positive action to keep me out of a black hole.   But for the last few weeks, I’ve been in a dark place, probably darker than the events around me warranted.   Sure, I had some reason to be troubled by each event along the way, but a lack of sleep and a mountain-of-too-much-to-do … which left little time for those positive actions … contributed, both to my sour mood and my tendency to over-react.   I tend to be an all-or-nothing person when it comes to my spiritual practices … if I normally write two pages, I’ll opt for none if there’s only time for a paragraph.   I could manage fifteen minutes in the park but I don’t if I’m used to an hour.   Maybe some lesser measures would have helped … who knows.   But just as light can’t escape from a black hole in space, Older Eyes couldn’t seem Snap Out of It in his usual fashion as the days rolled on. Read the rest of this post »

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Signs

Posted September 19, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: spirituality
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I suspect that everyone who’s anywhere North of atheism has mentally uttered the words, OK, God, I’ll try to deal with this but a sign that You’re with me would sure help.   And I know a number of people who claim to have had an answer, something that gave them some solace that God was indeed there.   So, do you believe in signs?   Or, perhaps more importantly, since this is Bud’s Blog, do I?  If you are a regular reader, stop right now.  What’s your guess?   Does Older Eyes believe in signs? Read the rest of this post »

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Friday Favorites 9/17/2010

Posted September 17, 2010 by oldereyes
Categories: Friday Favorites
Tags: , , , , ,

If you’ve been reading Bud’s Blog for a while, you know that  I love music.  If you’re new here, I still love music, by the way.   And if you could magically reach through cyber-space to get a look at my Windows Media Player library, you’d find a diverse collection of genres … from classical to rock … and artists … Carlos Santana to John Williams (yes, both the composer-conductor and the classical guitarist).   But, although you’d never guess it from my music collection posts, my favorite genre would be jazz.   In the sixties, when I was in college, it was very cool to listen to jazz if you were an intellectual young man … or even if you just thought you were one.   Dave Brubeck. Read the rest of this post »

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