MMGA - Make Me Great Again, Maybe...

  The bulbs, the plants, and the trees are all starting to spring to life and I am feeling it as well.  Something about spring just gives me hope.  I've been out and about nearly every morning, weeding, watching, and waiting for the signs of my bulbs and perennials.  I know it is coming, but I get excited about it every year and more so the last few. I lost the sage bush this year, it was just too cold this winter.  It's too bad as it had gotten very large, but there was just no saving it regardless of how much I mulched it in the fall.  I do appreciate the chives every spring. I have some rosemary cuttings and some lavender to get planted and a lot of my thyme made it through the winter.  You can see the remnants of the sage bush on the bed below the chives :( I am interested to see what comes up in my beds this year as I planted some items in the fall for testing.  I do have some early sunflower coming up, but I suspect the frost might get them ...

  First, I want to point out that my break from social media is downright awesome (Note: I am still on LinkedIn for industry news, but that vendor/company dating site is getting on my nerves as well).  With that written, I am making one more post as I think this issue requires I at least scream from the rooftops and the only rooftop I have that might reach more than one person is Facebook – unfortunately.  So, I will post this here and my brain-dump blog so that I can feel like I said – something.  I would write the editor of my local paper, but I don't think anyone actually reads the paper anymore and it isn't local.  Hell, I don't think anyone reads anymore.     This will be long and if you are interested in any of the actual research links, I have them.  Please note, when I say research, I mean actual research.  You may, if you are well educated, understand what that means.  Research is not going on the internet to find a YouTube vide...

  There is something about an animal oozing into you that just calms you.   On a side note, I think I have had that blue hoodie sweatshirt since 2001.  I have worn this hoodie for all kinds of things, playing outdoors with the kids, working on the yard, lounging around the house, and a host of other things.   As I was thinking about this hoodie, I realized how badly we have all been sucked into the consumer economy and regardless of how you "feel" about the economy, we are a consumer economy.  Not an information economy, not a manufacturing economy, and not a financial economy, we are a consumer economy (Finance about 8% of GDP, Manufacturing is about 11%, with consumer spending about 70% of GDP).  Yes, it is extremely complex to talk about a national economy, but consider the fact that the only thing American consumers seem to be concerned with is the cost and consumption of goods. e.g. New phone model came out, I must have it regardless of the f...

Ok, so how is it, there is a Hobbits from the 1978 Lord of the Rings cartoon dressed for the holidays?  Well, that would be me playing with OpenAI's new integrated photo editor.  This is how it ended, but where did it starts? The other day, I was watching nerdy YouTube (this would be my go to as a tech junkie) and came across a discussion about OpenAI's new text to image and image manipulation capability.  Prior to this change, editing services were part of a few offerings, but for the most part you could only get one iteration of an image and couldn't continue to edit the same photo.   Well, I had a little fun after work and figured I would give it a try.  I quickly scanned some pictures and decided to go with a picture of my wife and I from Disney World in 2021.  It was our 20th anniversary and we were heading out to a Disney Halloween Party (note: these are more for the kids, but the short lines were worth the admission.  It was also the Intern...