Clay Dowling's blog

My Christmas presents this year were all directed towards wood working. This is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, and I didn't lose any time putting my gifts to use. The first thing I built was a box for our artificial Christmas tree. You can see it in my Christmas Tree Box photo gallery.

If you're thinking of this for your own tree, be warned that it isn't cheap. By the time I purchased the materials and hardware it cost me $60. It's definitely cool though, and I consider the money well spent.

I've been bitten by the video bug lately, probably inspired by my wife's interest in the Flip video camera. We don't, of course, have said camera, but I figured out earlier this week that our digital camera can take very short videos. I also found Kdenlive, a video capture and editing package for Linux.

I've been warned that video editing is very complicated, and even more complicated on Linux. I was happily surprised when I downloaded Kdenlive, installed it, and found it to be extremely easy to use. You can see my first effort here:

I've been going through the wishlist and cleaning up some of the entries. This is a really good time to check your entries and make sure that a) the description you've entered is correct and b) the items you have entered are actually on your list. This is doubly important for those of you who share a computer, since there are some items on lists that appear to be on the wrong list. If you don't, you have only yourself to blame if you get an item that was intended for somebody else.

I'm in the middle of building a deck. If you've built a deck before, you know that it's a fair amount of work. Being an over-achiever of course I can't do a simple rectangular deck that's bolted to the house on one side. Mine is a free standing 14 foot square, which requires a central beam in addition to the beams on the edges, built into a corner of the house. The corner opposite the corner of the house is cut at a 45 degree angle, making each of the legs leading to that corner 7 feet, and that face 10 feet long.

This news article prompted it: http://www.news4jax.com/news/14193259/detail.html

Now mind you, as an allergy sufferer, I understand that it's something that got dumped on you and there's nothing that can be done about it. But as a peanut lover, and especially a lover of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, this absolutely stinks. I think in the case of extreme food allergies, the many shouldn't need to sacrifice for the few. In this case, one kid with a peanut allergy has forced all students at the school to give up peanut products.

This isn't an ideal solution that covers everybody, but it's a good start. Instead of the current system where real health care coverage is only available as part of a group plan, a state wishing to promote business could become the defacto group provider. Anybody in the state, from the self employed to the giant factory owners to retirees, can buy in to the plan. People on public assistance are automatically enrolled and the premiums are part of their public assistance payment.

I ran into this while surfing at CNN today: http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1326 Now, as a Christian, I'm obviously not in agreement with what Cathy Griffin is supposed to have said. But it seems to me that about the last thing that Christianity needs is the kind of militant cheerleader we have in Bill Donohue. Last I checked, Christians were a majority group in this country.

Some of you may have noticed that this site has been up and down like Tommy Smothers' yoyo. Hold tight, I'm currently working on changing that. This site is currently up on a jury rig, but hopefully in the next week or two I'll be moving it to a new, more reliable home.

Just started seeing the new TV ads for Meerkat Manor. I think they're absolutely hillarious. Check them out at http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/meerkat/meerkat.html. Animal Planet has always pitched this as a soap opera, and they aren't wrong. These little guys lead busy and complicated lives. And nothing in those ads are exaggerations or distortions of the truth. The neighbors really are trying to evict them. Flower's daughters sleep around. Carlos probably does have fleas.

Let me be the first to send electronic congratulations (at least via this site) to Michele and Dale Lingar, and hope that they're took busy enjoying their honeymoon to be reading this until it's been up for a week or two. I wish the two of you a long lifetime of happiness together.