fstroupe.com

Well, we’re moved, settled in, and though I still have some stuff left to do, it’s pretty much done.  Never try to move during the holiday season LOL.

I did squeeze in a couple of reviews, Sapphire’s Radeon HD 5670 1GB video card, and Asus’ M4A785TD-V EVO motherboard

Both are at ThinkComputers.org.

As always, more reviews are coming:  Titan Skalli CPU Cooler, ASRock P55 Extreme motherboard, Intel i5 661 processor, Gigabyte P55A motherboard, some other stuff.

My congratulations to Senator Elect Scott Brown for a magnificent win in Massachusetts.

On this Christmas day, try to take at least a little time to remember the REAL reason for the season.  Our Lord God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to Earth to save us from our sins.

New to us anyway.  Cindy and I have neither ever owned a house.  To finally realize “the American Dream” (yeah, like most of us don’t live the real “American dream”) we bought a house.  It is basically a “fixer upper”, but very much livable.  I’ve spent the last two days cleaning and painting, and nowhere near through.  Moving towards the end of the week.

A few months ago I attended the United Methodist Lay Speaker Basic Course. One of the possible projects for being certified was designing a talk at least 10 minutes long.

On Jul 12, I spoke at Ebenezer United Methodist Church and Myrtle United Methodist Church, both in Myrtle, MS. Here is a video of the talk at Ebenezer, part 1 and part 2. The title was “It’s Not Rocket Science!”.

The Prez checks out a young lady’s posterior in L’Aquila, Italy, while a knowing Nicholas Sarkozy looks on. (photo from Reuters, story from The Drudge Report)

When I was a little kid, I was fascinated by Leonardo DaVinci.  Not his paintings, which were mostly done just to make some cash, but his engineering interests.  Mainly the drawings that we’ve all seen, mostly military devices that were centuries ahead of their time.

I always wondered if any of these devices had ever been built.  The technology didn’t exist in his time to build most of them, they were merely drawings of his thoughts, and it is very doubtful that many, if any, of them have been built over the centuries.

A new show on Discovery Channel is “Doing DaVinci”.  On this show, a team of artists, fabricators, builders, etc, build devices that DaVinci drew.  It is in the cable reality show format, in the vein of “American Hot Rod”, “Monster Garage”, “Junk Yard Wars”, and the like.

“Doing DaVinci” airs on Discovery Channel Mondays at 10PM Eastern/Pacific, 9PM Central.

I don’t surf much anymore, I really don’t have the time or inclination.  I have been a trivia freak for many years, I guess since I was an 8 year old kid sitting on the living room floor reading from A to Z of the World Book Encyclopedia. (seriously)  When Trivial Persuit came out in the 80s, I was a master.

Anyway, I surfed across an awesome trivia site the other day.  It has something for everyone, and a lot for trivia lovers.  The site is called FunTrivia.

Be careful, it is very addictive.

I am 1/2 century old today.  Have been receiving AARP mail for a month or so.  I already felt old, feel no different today, I guess.

I think that some of the hummingbirds have migrated, I’m really not sure.  In my area, the honeybees get kind of weird this time of year, and for the first time they have discovered my hummingbird feeders.  The birds obviously do not like the bees, and they will seldom land on the feeders while bees are present.  So, I’m not seeing quite as many hummingbirds.

I don’t remember ever seeing more than one hummingbird at a time.  I haven’t seen a lot of hummingbirds in my life.  I guess I’ve seen more in the past six years or so, since I’ve lived in my current house, maybe a total of a dozen in that period of time.  Earlier this year I put out some hummingbird feeders, just to see if the feeders would actually attract hummingbirds.  They started appearing in a few weeks, and the number gradually increased.  Over the past month, there are somewhere between 20 and 30 hummingbirds hanging out in my back yard.

In the heat of late July and early August, they mostly fed early in the morning and in the evening, but the past four or so weeks have been uncommonly mild, and they have been feeding all day.  Over the past couple of weeks, they have been drinking over two quarts of “nectar” a day from my three feeders.

The “regulars” are of three species:  Broad-Tailed, Black-Chinned, and Ruby-Throated, or that’s what I can determine, I am far from an expert.  If you happen to see another species in the photos, please let me know.  Earlier in the year we saw Rufous and probably some Allen’s, but haven’t seen either in a month or more.

These birds are really a trip to watch.  They “play” by racing around the yard chasing each other.  The three species interact with each other and don’t appear to fight.  They perch next to each other on the feeders.  I haven’t really been interested in watching nature for several years, but for some reason I am captivated by these tiny birds.  I guess I’m just getting old, or maybe I envy their seemingly endless energy.

I guess they are eating so much because they are getting ready to migrate to Central America.  I think I’ll add more feeders next year to see if the number of birds increase with the amount of feeders.