The Keys Are On The Dashboard
The engine is no longer idling. There's gas in the tank and the driver has stepped away from the vehicle. Final thoughts probably tomorrow.

There Will Be No Blogging
For a while. It's getting into the ramp-up to Thanksgiving and I've got a pretty serious health problem that will probably be taking up a lot of time as well. Though it will be interesting to learn about the exciting field of wound closure. Something new. To me.
UPDATE: The wheels of medicine grind exceedingly slow. I have an appointment at the Wound Healing Center on Monday next. Today I have to get out and get my scrip filled.
UPDATE: Running on Keflex and water. I have made my lower leg the honorary eighth dwarf: Weepy. Yeah, gross. Sorry. Just sucks to be me right now. This, however, a condition I would gladly wish on my worst enemy. INTRADAY UPDATE: A very good friend came over to help get some sustenance and, despite my revulsion at consuming anything, I drank a glass of milk and ate a Lean Cuisine meal. Also had some diet Dr Pepper which was like nectar. It's easier to hydrate with a fluid that goes down like silk. And apart from all the leg rot, I'm feeling better. The prickly rash I'm developing (contact dermatitis, but to what?) is not helping.

Why No New Posts?
Neal Stephenson and Stieg Larsson.

What're You Lookin' At?
I'm peeved and dyspeptic. Just move along, move along. Any trouble from you today and I'll go Vincent and Jules on your monkey ass. Seriously. Come back in a couple of days. This mood is bound to pass. The weather is not helping one single little bit.

Adding The Market Ticker To The Blogroll
It's become a daily read and today's post there is no exception. In fact, it's worth a RTWT. I'll be adding that momentarily but first a snip from the post linked in the first sentence:

That of course isn't the point of the complaint. The complaint rests (properly, in my opinion) on the premise that the so-called "boom" in many parts of Europe was financed with German capital, which was effectively appropriated under false pretenses.

Gee, where have we seen this before? Banksters lying and cheating (cough-liar loans-cough!) and trading in derivatives without any money behind them (cough-AIG-cough!) and when the smoke clears suddenly the national governments are told "hand over hundreds of billions right now or the puppy dies!"

Uh huh.

G20 governments are increasingly coming to the realization that "borrow and spend" doesn't - and can't - work in the intermediate and longer term. Despite the bleating of Geithner at the G20 meeting he got nowhere trying to jawbone people into more Keynesian-style games.

We blew $4 trillion in the United States over the last two years and change and got nothing for it, and as a consequence we are stuck with the debt and haven't solved the problem. $4 trillion, of course, is about 30% of GDP, and this "support" has amounted to roughly 11% of GDP over the last three years.

Denninger gets right to the heart of the matter. I was at first disinclined to blame the "banksters" because of the massive culpability of the government in pushing fraudulent mortgages but I've come to realize that the current state of affairs is the very embodiment of moral hazard: profits are retained and when the inevitable losses begin to mount, they are passed on to the taxpayers. It's the essence of what really angers me about President Obamabi. He speechifies and acts like he's going to go all hard-ass on wall Street but all he's done is pump taxpayer money into those exact institutions he pretends to be against. And this new "financial reform" legislation does nothing but institutionalize bailouts with a $50B fund for precisely that purpose. That's taxpayer money he's putting up for his faux capitalist crony "bankster" friends. And they know it.
Even more unfortunately, the mainstream media either doesn't understand it or, as is more likely, doesn't tell the truth about it. Political power for the left is more important for the MSM than eternal verities like truth telling. I've worked in both banking and journalism. Neither profession can be relied upon. One has your money. One has your flow of information. Or, more accurately now, "had" as the rise of the Internet has seriously disintermediated the left wing journalist info guards. The Market Ticker is precisely one of those reasons the web is killing print news. We get more truth from knowledgeable people who are both directly involved and providing direct information for people who seek it out.
I hope you make the site at least a frequent stop. It may have a little more technical information than the average blog reader is conversant with but by sticking to the reading it will become progressively easier to grok.

Gotta Add To The Blogroll
Washington Rebel seems like a good addition. Any blog that can show me the phrase "Epic Prow of Christina Hendricks" is all right in my book, err, blog.

Ugh
Lack of posting is due to my feeling like warmed over poo. Not warmed over death, just warmed over poo. Whatever I'm going through isn't killing me but it is lingering. It pains me to post this inconsequential info but I haven't been able to come up with any biting and trenchant observations or even pop some corn for humor.
I'll be back to the keyboard in a more interesting way shortly. I appreciate your attention while I muddle through.
One thing I can suggest though - If you haven't watched the latest episode of "Glee," called "Home," hie thee to Hulu to do so. Kristin Chenoweth and Matthew Morrison have a duet of "One Less Bell to Answer" that is absolutely amazing. Then again, that a voice like that can come out of a tiny little sprite like Kristin, not much more in music is more amazing. That little babe can belt it out. Yeah, "babe." I said it.

Posting Will Resume Shortly
Or is that I'll be posting my résumé shortly? Hmm. No matter.
I have been engaged in the most boring of life and, after getting over a lingering week of GI tract badness, I will be back to boring youse wid my life in the next couple of days. Observations will include the Sherlock Holmes movie (which may as well have been titles "Yo! Holmesie!") and a brief mention of opera. That's right. I said "opera."
UPDATE: I think I'll get summat long-winded tomorrow. I'm enjoying the Metropolitan Opera's broadcast of "Traviata" too much today to think of writing anything mundane.

Lack of Blogging Will Continue
PoW appreciates your patience as we work through these times of crisis and universal brouhaha. I am blessed with a home visit from the Wilmington Boyz who have done more for me in a day than I could have done in three and tomorrow will likely accomplish a couple more things that would tax my old joints. My place will look considerably different after they've gone. I need to find a good sleeper sofa in fact. And they've promised to come back and help me with the deck farm when the plants come in. Deal!
This is not to mention the other projects I'm working on which will chew up big hunks of rough time until I get my taxes in. Bleagh. However I will point out a site I'll be adding to the blogroll shortly: The Market Ticker. It's an econ blog and it gets into technical matters but not so dense as to be impenetrable and Denninger's pessimism about the economy is well-founded I believe. Check it out, there's something to be learned there. I wanted to extract something from his latest post but to do it justice, I'd have to quote the whole thing and that's not fair. Go there and read much. I hope you take much away from your reading.

Buggeration!
Placeholder post here. My little sausage fingers are busily busy in other works and days so PoW must languish a bit. This morning was already taken up with dealing with a desktop that didn't power up. Yikes! I Need this machine to do things. But a little poking and prodding (and actually swtiching power outlets once) has Corvinus (yes, I always name my machines, don't you?) up and running. So you won't see me for a couple of days but life does indeed go on. Hope y'all are well.

Light Posting
There won't be much on PoW for the next several days as I'm immersing myself in the arcana of IRS regs and the arrival of the ACC tournament. But a couple of things of note in this springing time - I turned off the heat in the house today. I probably could have done it a couple of days ago but didn't think of it. Today is just so pleasant outside that my hand to the thermostat was forcéd. For my internal seasonal calendar, there are a few special days: turning off the heat, opening the window overnight and peepers day. One down, two to go.
Also, should anyone be ordering anything from the Hanes website, I have a $1.99 shipping code for the next 30 days which I won't be using: #103060. Might save you a couple of bucks if you're planning to buy.
UPDATE: Unbelievable! You won't believe where this URL takes you: http://5z8.info/REFINANCE-NOW_r9k5t_whitepower

Have A Great Day Everybody
A busy day will lead to a decided lack of posting here at PoW. So go, enjoy the lengthening of days and I'll try to come up with something interesting or amusing for another day. My netbook is slated to be delivered today so the great Hackintosh project will begin at the start of February.
ADDENDUM: The Woot Off is still ongoing. Check it for strange and wond'rous bargains on things you don't really need.
DAMMIT: The Woot off had a Kai Shun Yanagiba knife for $65. I missed it. Click the link for some unutterably gorgeous knife porn.I would have gone for the 270mm version. And then I would have gone to my local fish monger for some sushi-grade fish just so I could slice it. Oh, I'd eat it too. Make no mistake about that.

Layout Change
I've been dissatisfied with the width of the previous blog design for a while. I've elected to move to a new layout which I'll be tweaking in terms of color and other touches in the next couple of weeks. I hope you like it. These new things always take some getting used to.

Enjoy Yos'ef!
PoW regular read and blogpal Joe Sherlock is taking off for a while. So The View Through The Windshield will be on hiatus for a bit and we will miss it but very much hope Joe has big ol' buckets of fun while he's got his digital feet up. It must be noted (and to my chagrin, has not been yet) that Joe's addition of his own videos to his blog is a great example of the active and involved mind. My father, who was a huge 'gadget guy' would not only have approved but would have been pestering me to get the whole video thing running for him. And I would have.

Alert The Media!
How exciting! There is snow falling at Chez BlogDog even as I type (I'll drag the camera out for a couple of pix today just for giggles). And I got my first InstaLanche! Brought to me by knifeblogging and pancakes. Mmmm! PANcakes!

I apologize for the over-use of exclamation points in this post. Really! I do!

Y'all Play Nice
I'm going hiatal on your monkey asses. Don't worry. I'm headed off for a brief sojourn in Le Pome Grande, Ooki-na Ringo as 'twere. So have fun. Just don't set the drapes on fire.
OK, you can set the drapes on fire but put it out before any real damage is done.
If you want some good reading, I added Coyote Blog to the blogroll. (inhaling deeply) good stuff man (letting out breath)

Oh yeah: I made a pilgrimage to Costco this evening. It was mixed bag if ever there was one. The bad consisted of first, finding that Costco carries, at a much lower price, the precise brand and package of yeast I just bought from Amazon even with the free shipping. D'oh! (I'm thinking of making these.) And the other drawback was the bill. Oy! Double my usual and over half of that was in three items: One set of USDA Prime steaks, one set of USDA Choice steaks (compare and contrast) and Gillette "Fusion" razor cartridges. Holy cow them little knives is expensive. But the best damn shave I've ever had.
The good stuff, on the other hand was multifold. I found kimchi there, for the first time ever. Decent stuff too, made either by Koreans or in Korea. Either way, it's as it should be. Then, I got some smoked salmon spread. Which I had to try when I got home. Oh yeah. Smoked salmon. What's not to like about that. If I'd gotten crackers on this trip, I'd be jamming that stuff down my maw even now. OK, not really, but it is good. I restocked my favorite shampoo after letting my supply run down to one leetle hotel give-away I stashed against just such an emergency. Which is good because my stylist (yeah, I have a stylist, what's it to ya?) just gave me the treatment today. Damn I look cute. And I got some "Le Grande Creme" soft cheese. It is the ice cream of soft cheese - mild, not even a hint of the brie ammonia in the crust and as snowy white as a cone of soft serve. It would be effectively useless to cook with but as a snackin' cheese ... oooohhhh baby!

Blogging Lite
It has reached the dog days of summer and I will be picking up my house guests, Lois and Lana later today. I may be blogging a bit but you can expect a week or so of little posting. There is much other fun stuff to do - the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum near Dulles airport for example. Planes! Rockets! Wheeeee!

Give Blood
And you will find that blood is not enough. There is so much going on and so many people are commenting on it that I haven't felt like adding my own coppers to the conversation. The Deck Farm™ is hanging fire and pressing on my increasingly feeble attention as I'm in the process of making the new ErfBoxes and getting the last couple of things I need to make this happen.
My self-purchased birthday present LP arrived yesterday which means digging out the USB turntable and having a "digital day." Which may be tomorrow. There is ripping to do, dammit!
But unless I have a flash of inspiration, it's unlikely that I'll post here for the next couple of days. Go, read the chewy richness of the blogosphere and check back here later. I'll be here. Just stretching and yawning.

It's Summertime
Don't hock me about the lack of posting.
Dammit.
Besides I had to get my haircut today and I look FABulous!
Speaking of which - how gay are the Pep Boys? Manny, Moe and Jack, well we don't have to imagine how he spends his time if his very name .... Yeesh. I'm not shopping there. It smells too much like rubber. They say it's tires but now I'm not sure.
In other news: The triple socket for the car is working like a chim ... champ. I had to get beefier hook and loop fasteners (velcro for those of you in Rio Linda) than the piece that came with. Holding up the iPod/radio thingie takes some support after all. And now I can charge my iPhone as I drive, listen to the iPod and run the GPS all at the same time. Technology is grand.

Blogopause
Just a note to the readers that there'll be a brief cessation of posting as I spend the day setting up my new iMac (the reflective glass screen is very disconcerting if you sit, bleary-eyed and rumpled in the morning - eek! Is that me?) and working on the Deck Farm™. Yes, the plants have arrived and now action is urgent.
I'll take pictures.