1 Foot in the Grave

Just the way I had spent most of my days the last 3 years, in early May, 2009, I was holed up in my cave of an apartment waiting to die. I was told I had end-stage Emphysema and not a lot of time left.

But that day last May was the beginning of something that changed the way I felt about my life and what I wanted to do with at least part of what I had left of it. The credit goes to David Bromstad, interior designer and host of Color Splash » Read the whole entry »

In response to so many letters to the editor of Feather Publishing newspapers…

Can we finish up with the complaints about our local California Highway Patrol real soon, please? It’s getting tiresome and some of you are sounding like whiners. Really. Because there have been so few cheering for the CHP, allow me.

I’ve been driving the roads of Plumas County most of my adult life. That totals around 12 » Read the whole entry »

More than a year ago – yeah really, that long ago – I wrote What My Other Foot Wants. This was/is my own personal “bucket list” or as I called it, my “other foot list.” Well, things have changed in the last year. My health hasn’t gotten better, but I have a different attitude and my priorities have changed. I am paring the list down, maybe changing a few details or even adding new. But this is only about one item: number 8 on my other foot list is outa here.

That’s right, no great computer mod that has designs to be published in a computer magazine. I already did that. It was a great mod I called Functional Design. It took a couple of months to build and had » Read the whole entry »

I can’t believe I let this website nearly die. It has been over a year since my last post and I am still kickin’. I am doing better than this blog. My apologies to all of you thinking you shoulda never added it to your favorites or bookmarks. To show you my sincerity, I have finally given the site its own favicon – the little graphic you should see just in front of the address in your browser (browsers are weird – you may not see it yet, but you will when your browser gets around to it). It looks like a smaller version of the graphic you see over there on the left upper corner of this post.

My health has deteriorated, as is expected with a disease that is chronic and has no cure. But they adjust my medication levels and » Read the whole entry »

…My other foot should get. No doubt you’ve heard of “The Bucket List.” I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I understand the premise. Well, I don’t want to copy the title, but it is, in fact, a bucket list. But because my website’s name is “1 Foot in the Grave,” I figured a good and proper name for my bucket list would be “My Other Foot List.” Although I do have one foot in the grave because of this damned lung disease, my other foot is not ready yet. This is sorta what my other foot would like to do before I die. » Read the whole entry »

I believed in the black eye — “I would rather fight than switch” (the advertising slogan of Tereyton cigarettes) — but I finally quit almost 9 years ago. After smoking cigarettes for 35 years and pot for 20, I’m finally starting to get something back for it. Yeah, sure, I got the bad breath, the yellow teeth and stinky clothes a long time ago, but now the really good stuff is comin’ my way. » Read the whole entry »

Not a whole lotta real pleasures in my life these days. I really love spending most of my time on this computer, building websites, working with graphics. I also enjoy a few television programs and occasionally I will watch Late Night with David Letterman. He has an irreverent sense of humor and usually gives me a good laugh or three. But the music has never been all that great for me. I don’t know who picks these groups, but some of them are down right repulsive. Whata ya gonna do but change the channel. » Read the whole entry »

A couple of days ago, my new friend, Nancy, asked me how I posted pictures in my blog – the way the text was wrapped around the images instead of beginning at the bottom edge of the image. I’m glad she asked because it gives me an opportunity to show some of you one of the first things I learned about HTML and CSS. » Read the whole entry »

“The Mad Modder” was a tag I picked up sometime in 2003. I was known as “Grump” for a long time – not an undeserved nick-name – and in ‘03, I was hanging out a lot in case modding forums. I built the computer you see in the picture (click it to see a larger version) and it impressed someone at CPU Magazine and it was featured in the October 2003 issue and I became the first “Mad Reader Mod.” Of course, the title was derived from my nick-name and a few people in the modding circles began calling me “the mad modder.” I even got the domain name, TheMadModder.com, which at one time had a pretty nice forum – another one of those things I had to give up when I got sick. » Read the whole entry »

Although I had planned for a long time to start a blog (I think I made my first effort in 1993 or 4), I had never decided on what script to use until just a couple days ago. I was actually looking for something that I could use for a Floor Pro Network so that my members could have their own blogs. I tried a couple things out and even settled on b2evolution. But when I installed that application and was faced with the configuration and other options, I gave WordPress another look. » Read the whole entry »