🍿 Watched The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026) on Disney+

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS In a galaxy far, far away, The Mandalorian and Grogu embark on a thrilling new adventure filled with danger, loyalty, and the enduring bond of the Force. My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½ (4.5/5 stars)** Overall, I liked it a lot. I think Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau do the Star Wars Universe justice. My favorite moments were probably the little guys and Grogu. I love their good baby, bad baby thing. I also liked seeing Sigourney Weaver in it. My only negative is that it felt a little too long. I think some things would have had...

TiVo Charging for Skips?

“TiVo Plans to End Free Automatic Commercial Skipping in November, Tests Paid Premium Replacement Service By Luke Bouma · via Cord Cutters News Read original post →” TiVo, there is a name I haven't heard or thought about in a while. I used to love the hardware and platform. I thought I was the coolest tech-savvy person, and that TiVo was the way to watch TV. The tech was just so cool. At one point, I had three of them. Most were the OTA version, though I had the cable version once with a CableCARD. That was an adventure to...

🍿 Watched Slingshot (2024) on Prime Video

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS In "Slingshot" (2024), two determined men face a cosmic divide, caught between duty and destiny in a high-stakes space thriller. My Rating: ½ (0.5/5 stars) Don't waste your time. It looked interesting and had some big-name actors and actresses, but it wasn't worth it. The movie was too long for the ending it had, and the plot was weak. This product uses the TMDb API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDb

This has been some week for hardware and appliance problems in my household. Thursday, I had a silent hard drive crash. It could have happened before then, but I didn't notice it until Thursday. The drive was there last week, but Windows 11 would not recognize it. I tried it in two different computers to rule out bad cables or a motherboard issue. I didn't realize the drive was 10 years and 3 months old until I removed it and looked at it. It is kind of like a washer, you don't think about how old it is until something...

Took Them Long Enough, Huh?

Read on ign.com · View original Mastodon post Here is another example of what I was talking about in a recent blog post TV Isn't What It Used to Be. According to IGN, the first season came out 3.5 years ago. That is a long time to wait for a second season. I will watch it because the first season was good. But if I miss it, I won't really care. By this point, I would have to rewatch Season 1 just to remember what happened before starting Season 2. You're telling me it took them 3.5 years to make...

🍿 Watched Altered (2025) on Prime Video

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS My Rating: ⭐ (1/5 stars) Not worth watching there were several times I wondered why I was watching this. Plot was kind of a mix of Giver, Enders Game, The Allegiant and Hunger Games all in one but not done very well. But I was tired and lazy so let it go on. Please don't buy this free is how this one should be. This product uses the TMDb API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDb

No Man's Sky 10th Anniversary

Celebrating 10 years of exploration, discovery, and adventure in the vast, ever-expanding universe of No Man's Sky. Happy Anniversary to Hello Games, No Man's Sky. It is 10 years, and hopefully another 10. A sequel would be great. Thanks, Sean Murray, for a great game that started rough but has grown into a masterpiece, and all free after initial purchase. I don't play as much as I used to. When I do jump back in, I am there just to explore. I don't really care if I never reach the center of the universe. Game companies can take lessons from...

TV Isn't What It Used to Be

Read on ign.com · View original Mastodon post I don't watch this series, though it has interested me. Still, its general theme fits what I want to talk about here. People wonder why TV viewing and TV series are dying. Well, when you have to wait a couple of years for 8 to 10 episodes, maybe 12 if you are really lucky, that is ridiculous. From an outsider's point of view, something is clearly wrong with the TV industry. I have said this a hundred times, and I will keep saying it: when I was growing up, TV had an...

Happy Blogiversary to Me, 25 Years!

Celebrating 25 years of blogging with gratitude, reflection, and a sweet slice of success surrounded by creativity and joy. August 6, 2001, 25 years ago. I started blogging. I had a website made by Microsoft FrontPage and hosted on GTE (now Verizon) in the homepages they offered back in those days for residential customers. In fact, your ISP provided everything for you. You had so much website space and an ISP-provided email, which you lost if you changed providers. That's foreign today. But I started on Blogger before it was owned by Google on this date in 2001. Hard to...

Learning to Live Without My Glasses

I saw the title of Antonio’s post the other day on bubbles.town, “I Couldn’t Live Without My Glasses”, and it intrigued me. “The first thing I do when I wake up isn’t checking my phone or making coffee. It’s putting on my glasses.” This was never me. I was the opposite. I could see my phone and other things up close, such as the alarm clock. Putting on my glasses was usually the second or third thing I did because I needed them to see at a distance. Before cataract surgery, I was nearsighted and also had astigmatism. I could...

Do you ever have a bunch of blog post ideas bouncing around in your head but no idea where to start, what would actually be interesting, or how to flesh them out? That's been me lately. My vision is improving, but my eyes aren't fully healed. My right eye, the first to be operated on, just hit the one-month mark. The left is about two weeks behind. I have one more doctor visit to get a prescription for reading glasses and maybe fine-tune my distance vision. Distance seems okay, but reading and intermediate vision are tricky. The intermediate could use...

I just wanted to say I saw the news of John C. Dvorak passing yesterday. I hadn't heard much from him in years and often assumed he had retired. I was first introduced to him by watching Leo LaPorte and TechTV back in the day. I remember being introduced to Google Voice when Mr. Dvorak and Leo talked about it on a show. I can't recall the exact show or episode, but Mr. Dvorak talked about how he and his son used it to save on phone costs. If I remember correctly, it helped with long-distance charges, though I'm not...

Responding to the AI Image Debate

A thoughtful couple contemplates the evolving intersection of creativity and technology, symbolized by a brain merging artistic tools with digital circuitry under a spotlight. I was browsing topics and titles on bubbles.town when I came across a post by Panagiotis Vryonis, AI-generated blog post images are not cool any more. It reminded me of another post I read a few months ago, On AI Images and Feature Images in General by Kev Quirk. I have been meaning to respond to his piece. Last year, I wrote a post about using featured images called To Feature Image or Not. That post...

Cheers to 100 Years, Moody Radio

Celebrating 100 years of Moody Radio, connecting generations through timeless broadcasts and iconic moments captured in history. This is a year of anniversaries. Moody Bible Institute turns 140 and Moody Radio turns 100. I listen to Moody Radio almost daily. I think Moody Church and Moody Bible Institute are the premier Evangelical Christian sword in today's world. You can find a great timeline with historical pictures here. Happy 140 years, Moody Bible Institute, keep turning out those Christian men and women. Happy 100 years to Moody Radio. Here's to another 100 years, unless the Lord tarries. Links may be shortened...

My Vision's Big Comeback

Me with my glasses for the last time full time pre-surgery. I just shared good news about my heart journey, and now I can finally share another medical milestone for 2026: my cataract surgeries are done and my vision is back. For the last couple of years, my sight kept slipping, no matter how many times I got new prescriptions from the ophthalmologist or optometrist. A new prescription might clear things up for a few months, then the blurriness would come back. I found myself contorting my face and doing all kinds of facial tricks just to see. It was...

Echo Results Looking Good

A man reflects with quiet satisfaction as he reviews positive echo results, surrounded by reminders of gratitude, strength, and progress in a warm, sunlit room. I wanted to share a long-overdue health update about what has happened this year and why I can finally talk about it. I recently had my second Camzyos cardiology echo and doctor’s visit of the year. I normally go every six months, and this visit gave me my best numbers yet. On Camzyos, my obstruction is much better controlled. My echo looked fantastic, so I included a table below comparing my results before and after...

🍿 Watched Project Hail Mary (2026) on Prime Video

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: FULL SPOILERS In "Project Hail Mary" (2026), a lone astronaut awakens to an uncertain mission, fighting for humanity's survival amid the vastness of space and the unknown. My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½ (3.5/5 stars) Okay, first thing: overall, it wasn't a bad movie. The pacing drags at the beginning, and several scenes could have been explained more clearly or cut shorter. The second half and the ending are much stronger. The first half felt slow, and the premise is kind of stupid, but the story between the two main characters at the end is the best part. Ryan Gosling...

🇺🇸 Happy 250th, America 🇺🇸

Happy 250th birthday, United States of America! What a strange moment to mark a birthday, given everything going on in the world. Even so, I believe the U.S. has done enormous good and has served as a beacon for the world since at least World War I, if not sooner. I remember being about 7 years old in 1976, during the last major milestone, America’s 200th birthday. My aunt, uncle, and cousins lived in Lakeland. I was staying with them, and we went to the train yard in Lakeland to see the Freedom Train. It did not stop in Lakeland...

USF Turns 70

Celebrating 70 years of USF's rich history and vibrant campus life, where tradition meets innovation under the open skies. As you get older, anniversaries and milestones hit you differently. I don't know why. I don't regret anything in my life, but I do feel nostalgic sometimes. The other day, driving to work, I learned that the University of South Florida is celebrating 70 years this year. That surprised me, because the first founding class attended in 1960, so the 70th anniversary is actually a few years off. I attended USF from 1987 to 1990. I didn't graduate; I would have...

Star Trek: Outposts Unknown PC Game

“Star Trek: Outposts Unknown - Official Announcement Trailer - IGN To boldly go… and build in Star Trek: Outposts Unknown. Check out the Star Trek: Outposts Unknown announcement trailer for this upcoming narrative-driven outpost builder game set in the Star Trek universe. Build complex research facilities through the mysterious X’Lehari System. Explore strange new worlds, guide your crew through dangerous encounters, and uncover a cosmic force threatening all life in the system. Set alongside the era of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, your journey will take you across hostile environments, abandoned ships, ancient ruins, and a fragile civilization in desperate...