Mephistos

It has been a while since I have done one of these, but just as I occasionally comment on some music I also occasionally comment on a movie (I have about a dozen of these, both music and movies to post yet).  I did however just see a new movie at the Kentucky Theatre over the weekend.  By the way, if you have not seen a movie at the Kentucky, you should make a plan to do so – it was restored some time back around 1987-88 to its splendor as 1930-40’s theatre.  They run a mixture of art films, popular movies, cult classics on the weekends, along with the occasional other oddity mixed in here and there.  In addition they have the Woodsongs television show filmed on location and occasionally other concerts are held in the venue.  One of my favorite Wednesday afternoon about sixtenn or seventeen years ago was seeing Dr. Zhivago on the big screen. Read more…

So during my time of frustration this morning, while I have been trying to figure out if I can get a restore from tape for the pictures that were accidentally removed, I have been easily distracted.  I thought I would throw up a couple of notes in regards to a couple of things that I have found this morning that look like they would be very nice to use with the blog.

First, I have noticed that a lot of folks have signatures at the bottom of their blog entries these days.  I like it, as one of the things I am always harping on is the lack of personal touch that occurs here in the electronic Read more…

In case you didn’t notice there are no pictures here in the Mephistos blog land this morning.  I did not realize it until just a minute ago when I went to finish up a couple of the posts from that I had been working on earlier this week, but now I see that they are all gone.  Nothing that WordPress did, and really nothing that I can blame on anyone else or any other 3rd party software package.  The big question is what did happen? Read more…

I had this thought that just would not let go of me for some reason this eve as I drove from the gym to the office for a bit of work.  The thought was just how I probably hit at least four of the deadly sins over the weekend.  The more I thought about the more I realized that even in my corrective action for some of the number, I probably transgressed another one.  I was probably put in this mindset by the french film I saw yesterday that starting with a viscount commenting about the only sin left to an old man was that of gluttony, as he devoured a chicken leg.  The more I thought about it, the more I really thought it would make a good blog and so here I find myself at nearly 4:30 a.m. in the morning contemplating not so much my ability to check the big ones off, but rather contemplating how hard it would be for someone to not, if honest with themselves, transgress at least one or two on occasion. And quickly, while I am thinking of it, the small image above is of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things. Read more…

A good thing has come out of having my car broke down and in the shop for repair.  Yesterday afternoon I went and picked up the more rugged of the bikes (the one one needs work anyway and is in Danville).  Then given that all other plans had fallen through I road the bike downtown.   It was a good little trip to downtown and made me remember my college days a little bit, as when in college I had a bike around for a couple semesters and I also road right through part of Transylvania’s campus on my route.  I rode to a couple of different places once down town and much later – somewhere around one in the morning, I headed back home.  I think all told I probably rode close to five miles, but really can not say for sure. Read more…

I went back and forth over a few possible titles.  I could have went with the obvious and very fitting ’slacker’ and the simple yet somehow not exactly eloquent ‘I suck’ would have being very appropriate.  I even wrote the whole thing under the working title of just ‘pathetic.’  Bottom line is that last month I was working toward a post to the blog everyday.  I actually came pretty close to that mind you and as a result of that and additional networking efforts the traffic and such really expanded here at mephistos last month. Read more…

I am flabbergasted.  After my tirade yesterday about this I can not believe that the powers that be did not listen to me on this matter.  I am surely being accidentally overlooked by them in this matter, as I am sure if they had read my blog that they would surely not have went ahead with and 85 billion dollar bailout of American International Group, (AIG) Inc.  I really have a had time with this bailing out of private companies to begin.  However, when earlier in the week there was so much commentary that ran to the effect of the federal reserve is sending a message to Wall Street – there will be NO more bailouts.  Letting Lehman Brothers go ahead and fail to emphasis the point was what happened earlier in the week recall. Read more…

One of my things (and indeed really a part of the job as well) is keeping up with technology. I am of course usually much more interested in technology as it effects the larger scale of things, especially as it applies to business and such. One thing I am noticing though is that there is becoming a change in the way things work – instead of the business and then to the consumer, technology is going from the consumer to the business. It is kind of an odd thing for me. I love technology, yet I am rarely a first adopter of new technologies that are mass consumer market oriented. For instance, first regular use of a cell phone for me – within the last three years. Realization that the “internet” was not all text based information via telnet and FTP – 1997.

Anyway, that being said I have a pretty good pulse on things these days. Having seen, read, or even used some of these new things lately, I thought it might be good to share a few of them on a regular basis here on the blog. Read more…

Being the fiscal conservative that I am when it comes to government I have to wonder what the heck the powers that be have been thinking on some of their recent choices.   There are just to many wrong choices being made, but let me see if I can work trough them.

From my perspective I really can’t see how the government can justify the major bailout that it has recently made available to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.   Yeah, I get it, at one point they were government programs.  However, they had long since moved toward the private sector, having private investors and paying those private investors dividends as well as rewards on the stock market.  They assumed private risk in order to potentially (and did for some time) a private reward and the private sector backed them, putting their faith Read more…

I have been thinking the last few days of several things that I (and sometimes along with my roommate) do that are fairly green and in many cases actually a cost savings over what it would be if you were doing the non-green alternative. I thought it might be a good list of things to share here. Yeah, I know most of these are easy and no brain power really required. However, just in case I have tried to list out the reasons why I personally think they are green.

• Converting to the low wattage light bulbs.  I realize that they are bit more pricey then regular bulbs, but the equivalant light output for often times 1/4 or even less of the actual power to be used.  Further, while the replacement bulbs are a bit pricey and it is questionable if they would actually pay for themselves with the power savings over their life time one thing is for sure.  They do not typically burn out like nomral light bulbs do.  As a matter of fact, I have had some of these bulbs Read more…