Train Running Low On Soul Coal

Welcome to Florida. Now go home.

  • Headline of the Day

    One of my favorite daily news stops is the New York Post, a paper I’ve read and followed for many years. I’ve become a bit annoyed lately with their increasing clickbait tendencies. But I offer them some forgiveness when they publish a headline lie this:

    That’s correct. Donkeys. Only in California. The story is pretty straightforward: wild donkeys live in a nearby mountain area. Some have wandered into town and the campus looking for grazing areas. Feeding them is discouraged hard, as they can become too attached to humans. Not to mention they’re donkeys, an animal with very strong kicking force and some aggressiveness. The story even mentions local sheep herders using donkeys to fend off wolves. Wolves.

    After considering the facts here, I believe the donkeys are probably demonstrating more general intelligence and common sense than most of the faculty.

  • Charley Crockett, Johnny Mercer Theater, Savannah, September 4, 2026

  • Unusual Ad Timing

    I understand planning ahead. But Reddit’s advertising algorithms just tossed this one out a little early, don’t you think?

    As I type this, it’s 86℉ outside and the local temperatures will hit 94℉ later with heat advisories. Speaking of that, I don’t get the need for “heat advisories” today. 94° is pretty normal because I live in Florida, remember?

  • Things I thought about or did this weekend or last weekend or whenever…

    I can still fabricate a network cable with standard RJ45 connectors and a hand crimper.

    I used the think the NFL was the biggest money-printing machine after the federal government. I am more and more convinced each week that the WWE is catching up with them.

    I really need to start culling through my photo collection and deleting a bunch of them. I have pictures of a counter top covered with wine corks. I have a picture of a large planter filled with dirt; no plant, just dirt. An embarrassing number of food photos. Far too many photos of an ex-roommate’s dog. Pictures of the screens on a treadmill at Planet Fitness with results I’ll never actually use.

    Still don’t care about soccer.

  • Superpower

    I was in the doctor’s office this morning, waiting and staring out a window, when an idea hit me.

    If I had the opportunity to request a superpower, I would want it to be the ability to find lost things. First for myself, then for anyone who asked. I guess I would have to have some look-back-in-time ability, so I could figure out where someone put something. You know, like going into the past and re-tracing their steps.

    I bought a dustpan a long time ago that I put in the garage for my own exclusive use. But it vanished, can’t find it anywhere. My wife doesn’t like me using the one in the laundry room on the garage floor. I want my dustpan back.

    I wish I could do this. Everyone would be calling me.

  • The Burning RV – Tampa, Florida – 24 Nov 1991

    In November 1991, the New York Giants returned to Tampa Stadium (the old “Big Sombrero”) for a regular season match up with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills in that stadium in Super Bowl XXV earlier in the year. As a long-time Giants fan living in Florida, I was thrilled they were returning and scored two tickets for the game. I invited my work friend Jack Marshall to come to the game with me.

    The game itself was pretty exciting. The Giants posted an early touchdown when return man Dave Megget ran a punt back 70 yards for the score. Jeff Hostetler started the game but was replaced late by Phil Simms due to a back injury.

    The highlight of the game (or the low point, based on your perspective) occurred during the third quarter. Jack and I had end zone seats, a few rows from the top of the section. At one point, we notice a number of people standing along the wall behind the top row, drawn by something outside the stadium.

    Fortunately, I had my camera with me and caught this photo of the distraction: a fan’s recreational vehicle somehow caught fire out in the parking lot. I witnessed flames rising from the RV by at least ten feet. As the image indicates, the thick black smoke from the fire could be seen from a good distance. We never did find out what the cause was, but my guess is some cooking device wasn’t properly secured before the owners headed to their seats in the stadium. I imagine they were pretty upset to find their ride hollowed out by flames when they returned to their spot.

    By the way, the Giants won, 21-14.

  • Why, Google?

    This is a short vent about Google. I needed to get this out…

    Why does Google constantly warn you when your free 15 Gb of cloud storage is close to full, then make it so difficult to delete anything from your account?

    Yes, I know the actual reason why – the scarier the warnings, the more apt you are to buy more of their cloud storage – especially once you discover the hoops to jump through to clean things up.

    GMail isn’t so bad, while still not being simple. I generally clean out email by the year. I keep the current year and remove everything else. First I use the Google Takeouts tool to archive everything for a download, then import the mail into a local app for access. Generally, I mark all email based on the date, move it into a temporary folder and then delete it all. Pretty simple.

    Google Photos, on the other hand, is a major pain in the ass. There is no bulk delete method there. You have to open the web app, mark the images manually (batches can be manually marked based on the date, but there’s no bulk marking method). This is time consuming to a level you wouldn’t expect from this behemoth of a tech company.

    Rant over. Get better, Google.

    This is why I use Immich.

  • My Audacity mistake

    I discovered that when you rip an audio source using Audacity, then run the built-in exporter to create individual music files, you must remember to un-mute the source track before exporting. Duh.

    I ripped an old Magazine vinyl record (The Correct Use of Soap)) last week. My process is to rip each LP side to separate tracks, then cut the individual songs to their own segments with labels. Then I clean the ticks and pops and amplify everything before exporting to FLAC files for my server.

    Kelly and I set out for V Pizza last night and I pulled the Magazine album up in Symfonium and touched the play control and…crickets. Next song, the same. Tried another recent rip (Mott the Hoople’s Brain Capers) -same thing! I tried a few older items to make sure it wasn’t the audio app, but everything else worked fine.

    When we arrived back home, I pulled up the original Audacity project files and that’s when I discovered, on both albums, that the A-side track was in Mute mode in the app – but not the B-Side in both cases. I opened Navidrome, pulled up the magazine album and clicked through each song’s start…and when I hit the first track from the B-side, I heard the music. Again – duh.

    The fix was easy – un-mute the track, re-export the songs, push to the server, issue solved.

    Don’t do this.

  • Madison Square, Savannah, December 26, 2025

    Madison Square, Corner of Harris and Bull Streets, Savannah, Georgia, St. Stephen’s Day, December 26, 2025.

  • The Chapel of Santa Lucia visit, Varano-Oppidi, Italy. July 19, 2025

    (Click on the slideshow above to see larger version).

    Kelly and I experienced a wonderful 14-day journey across Italy in mid-July 2025. We were joined by Kelly’s sisters Brenda and Mary, her brother Terry and their respective spouses Frank, David and Michelle.

    Our journey was supposed to begin with a couple of days in Venice, but a canceled flight left us stuck in Newark for a day. After our abbreviated visit in Venice, we journeyed across the boot to Florence, followed by a few days in Rome, then to spectacular Sorrento on the coast, and finally concluding with a weekend in Naples.

    The Naples segment was not part of the original itinerary. Brenda and Frank lived in Naples for five years back in the late 1990s while Franks was stationed there with the Navy. They came up with the idea of tacking on the extra days to visit there. Mary and David also decided to stay on.

    I had another reason. After my cousin Carole contacted all of us cousins about our family’s chapel, built for my grandfather in 1955, I thought this might be an opportunity to finally see it after hearing about it for many years. After some searching on Google Maps with the help of Carole’s photos from her visit, I was able to not only find the village of my grandmother’s youth, Varano-Oppidi, but I was actually able to find the exact location of the church using the Street View feature of Google Maps.

    Carole provided the email address for a distant relative who we would hopefully be able to meet there to actually visit the inside of the chapel. I sent a detailed email to her directly, and Kelly followed her on Facebook, but we didn’t get a response before we left. We chose to go find it anyway and hopefully find someone locally who might be able to help. (Kelly later saw a post on Facebook stating our relative was in Prague that weekend).

    Kelly and I rented a car in Naples and began the drive southwest on Saturday, July 19. (Driving in Italy is…an adventure, but that’s for another post). The weather was lovely that day, but rather hot (most of Italy is in July – that will teach us!). Most of the drive was along freeways until we reached the Campagna region, where we exited the big road and wound our way through very rural areas until we reached Varano-Oppidi. We entered the village slowly, looking for any familiar landmarks. At one point, Kelly told me she thought we passed the church – and as she said this, I looked out the driver’s window – and there it was.

    The village is small, much like many rural one-stoplight towns you see across America – except there was no stoplight. There was literally no one around, to speak of. I saw a man emerge from the house next door, but he drove off without a word. (I later learned this was actually a guest house where one could stay, like an AirBnB). The chapel was locked, so we were not able to visit the inside at all. There are no exterior windows looking directly into the chapel interior. One window in front opens to what looks like a small storage room.

    We were a bit saddened to not be able to explore the interior of the chapel. At one point, I strolled down the road to Bar Tabacchi Luna to see if anyone knew who might help, but the few folks there weren’t much help (and neither was my bad Italian, probably) .

    In spite of the disappointment of not seeing the inside, I’m very happy we stayed the extra days and made the trip to see it. Being there and seeing it invokes the loving memories I have of my grandparents. They’ve both been gone for many years, but I still think of them today, profoundly proud of how they came to America and eventually lead a large, warm and loving family.

    I believe we tend to look at the world as small today, because we are able to communicate instantly – with words or live images – with literally anyone at any time. Making the journey to Varano reminded me that people like my grandparents came great distances for a better life, while still having attachments to anchor them to their original home.

    I want to go back some day. The one hour Kelly and I spent there made the entire trip worthwhile and knowing where it is gives us a pretty good reason for another journey.