After a couple of days of semi-sunny, completely muggy, stay inside weekend days followed by a clear hot Monday we went straight to more rainy muggy days. Tropical moisture has flowed up over the coast to our…

Hurricane Alex may have missed us but it’s been raining all week. I have discovered that if I plug my computer feed into the plasma in the kitchen where I sit at the table all…

The Yard The rains last week had me cruising around on Monday for most of the day. I was flying formation with squadrons of dragonflies as I made my rounds on the Deere…The summer numbers…

Thunderstorms and Heat The week started off with thunderstorms rolling through the area…Lights were blinking, internet connectivity was problematic at best but we kept on keeping on. Wednesday’s storms missed us and by Thursday we…

You Are Not Spending The Summer In SE Texas The temperatures for the past week have started each day above the 75° mark on the thermometer. From there they just keep climbing. Yesterday we saw…

At the end of a long weekend of unending fun…I built a gazebo, bar-b-qued for the family, updated  the software that runs my genealogy site (which managed to break it until I gave up and…

The Weather I climbed out of bed this morning to find the temperature had fallen below 70° for the first time in what seems like weeks… Who would have thought that a spring-like morning at the…

Harris County has a whorehouse for sale. Commissioners Court has on its hands the Velvet Touch, a business that operated on Highway 6 South, and will consider this morning how to dispose of it. The…

As I usually do, I started this Saturday morning reading my email and listening to podcasts…After the daily Writer’s Almanac, Saturday brings The Splendid Table. Listening today led me on a web browsing meander I…

Let’s Talk Weather You know it’s summer here on the Texas Coast when you step outside before sunup and the humidity settles around your shoulders like a heavy damp cloak. At daybreak the mercury has been hovering…

General Muse Over the past week it has seemed as if I am neglecting the daily muse here at Coffee Muses…What with experimenting with WordPress 3.0 on a couple of test blogs (and posting about…

I don’t know about you, but I have a few. Some of them I share with my wife. The problem we always have had was trying to comfortably share the laptop screen with each other…

One of the most interesting sounds to float in the door on this cool mornings is the call of the Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). Once you hear the loud raucous laugh of a Pileated you…

For over 35 years one of the defining events of each year was the opening of the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. During much of that time, OTC was the largest tradeshow we did each…

The afternoon temperatures are closing in on the 90’s most days here for the last week. A cool afternoon is one that just tops 80. At least the nights are cool…And that means the mornings…

Just to give you an idea of the area of the state we were covering here is an image of the page in The Roads of Texas – 5th Edition map book I use to…

This past week my wife expressed a desire to visit the cemeteries where ancestors are resting up around Milam County in central Texas. Since the weekend was one of the few our daughter was off…

Planning Your Life My morning email brought me this… Gary, here is your schedule for: Thu Apr 22, 2010 All day Thu Apr 22 Retirement Day Gary Boyd I don’t remember when I set up this…

I’d spend it at the battlefield this weekend… Bugle calls and thundering cannons will fill the air Saturday at the old San Jacinto battlefield — the site where Sam Houston’s army won Texas’ freedom from…

For most of the past decade I had picked today as my last day of employment with Freeman. Earth Day 2010…The fortieth anniversary of the defining idea of my generation and 38 years into a…

Love it. Robin Sloan has previously discussed this type of “production as performance” video on Snarkmarket but Pomplamoose has started using the term “VideoSong”: ~ via Pomplamoose covers Lady Gaga’s Telephone. So began one of…

Some of the shots I took yesterday as I played on a roadtrip into Texas Spring…

This morning I spent some time with some friends, old and new, via YouTube… First it was my buddy, Fred First’s Slideshow presentation of the images in his second book as I sipped my first…

Many years ago (way back in the decadent ’80’s) as I began to move into middle management I discovered Tom Peter’s In Search Of Excellence. I took the book to heart. I strove to make…

Who would of thought the bean counters have gotten into what was once the territory exclusively of designers. They know are looking at the cost of ink used to print with different fonts…The next thing…

The past couple of weeks have found me spending more time outside with my 18 month old grandson and less time living  online. Of course the weather has made it easier to be outside enjoying…

[ti_billboard name=”Spring Day”] We took a drive around the county yesterday…Me and my Nikon. The slideshow above has some of the results…I hope you enjoy.

Crooks and Liars has a list working of what we can expect in the first year while we wait for the full bill to kick in… Here are ten benefits which come online within six…

[ti_billboard name=”test”] Boy talk about killing time in a hurry…I was perusing Google Reader this morning and ran across a video from WordCamp New York (WordCamp NYC Session Video Posted « Tierra Innovation: WordPress CMS…

And I’m on the road to being  proud again…Ain’t that America?

The globe recorded its sixth warmest February since record keeping began in 1880, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA’s) National Climatic Data Center. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies rated February 2010…

For some reason this year my wife has spring break off. It makes no sense, she could never get spring break off when we, you know, actually had kids off on spring break. But this…

Wind power generation in Texas is growing so quickly that it is testing the limits of the state’s electrical grid. The state set a record on March 5 when wind turbines generated 6,272 megawatts of…

I found this in my email reading today…It makes you wonder if the modern world is really all that modern after all. Apparently for about a third of the world’s population not a whole lot…

Welcome to the International Year of Biodiversity You are an integral part of nature; your fate is tightly linked with biodiversity, the huge variety of other animals and plants, the places they live and their…

Spring Gradual warming that began earlier this week is forecast to continue through the weekend, and by early next week high temperatures should climb into the mid-70s as warm, wet air flows inland from the…

This afternoon I finally started working my way through my Google Reader subscriptions. The sequence of stories brought me up short and I tried to capture a screen shot. Evidently I had left the laptop…

Today, Texas celebrates 174 years of its Lone Star Identity. This past year has given me a closer connection to this piece of Texas history. Research has now connected our family to Willis West. Willis West arrived…

Blue jays and robins are a sign of winter in my neck of the woods. Over the weekend a notion of mine, one that has been percolating around in this head of mine, kept roiling…

I tossed and turned in bed last night in a perfect storm of  tax related muses…nightmares…planning. I had a meeting with a CPA yesterday. I had arranged the meeting to try to get a handle…

Mr. Will, from his pontificating height, has this to say about Sarah Palin in his latest column… She is what she is, and what she is merits no disdain. She is feisty and public-spirited, and…