July 4th Musings

I'm just gonna say it again for this year: I'm not a big fan of 4th of July.

It's too hot for a holiday where the main event is outside. And what's so great about fireworks anyway? The lights are okay, but they are accompanied by the most ungodly racket. Who needs that? (and happy 85th birthday to me. I'll go trim my nose hair now.)

I looked at my blog archives to see if I've already posted about not liking Independence Day. I have. In 2004, I posted about the time Brent lit fireworks with a small blow torch, and I was too ashamed to admit that I was chicken-shit. Although I see that I didn't word it that explicitly and honestly. 2005 brought nary a mention of the holiday at all. There was a post last year, but it was mainly how I got drunk and got called a fat-ass. There were no fireworks in my day.

I can hear neighbors lighting their explosives now. For once, it's damp enough that I don't have to worry about them lighting the dry leaves in my gutters. Neither the dogs nor the kid are frightened by the noise, surprisingly.

We went sailing this morning. Had a good sail going, and the wind started picking up, but the sky got darker as the thunder got more frequent, so we headed in a lot sooner than I would have liked. Then, we waited for the summer storm to pass. It never did, so Dad and I went out in the motor boat, and it started raining pretty good right as we reached the lake. But at least we spent a good bit of the day afloat.

Since that mini-post is pretty dull, here are some other things that I've recently found on the Internet that are worth knowing.

• Say you're at your computer and want to text someone's phone. But you don't want to go get your phone and mess with all the tiny little buttons. Just email [phone #]@telefilp.com, and it will figure out where their phone is and send them the message. It's very convenient.
• Sailflow.com, for good wind information, including a graph that shows actual vs. predicted winds, often in real time.
• Ever hear a cool song in a commercial and have to try to track it down? songtitle.info will let you know what it is. I've liked that "Punkrocker" song since it played as vintage Cadillacs flashed on the screen, and didn't have to wait for it to start getting airplay to hear it.
• Another music site threatens to be promising, although I haven't played around on it much: secondhandsongs.com keeps up with who covered what songs, and who did them originally.

Shocker! Lead story on tonight's local news is that they had fireworks and live music downtown. Probably the same reporter who has to hang out at the post office on April 15 and try to talk to the people who didn't file their taxes until the last possible day.