Jeremy Herndon

I think that the exploration of Mars is so cool, it would really be something if the scientists discovered that there is/was/could be life on Mars. I love science fiction books/movies/television shows, and anything that has to do with exploring other planets, looking for signs of some kind of life really excite me! I read that the space explorer Phoenix has landed on ice; the scientists concluded that photos taken of the “white stuff” show that the “white stuff” is shrinking, which means that it is ice. That is supporting evidence that there really COULD be some kind of “life on Mars.” Very cool!

Over the course of my life, I have had to take several student loans to get through college. I was not a good enough student in high school to get many scholarships or grants, and my folks were not in an economical position to pay for my schooling. If I wanted to go to college, then I needed to get as many college loans as I could get. Unfortunately, the college expenses exceeded the amount of money that I could borrow through the subsidized programs and I even had to get a couple of private student loans to finish up.

I’m really glad that I was able to get these loans to get my college degree, but I have to admit that I am finding it difficult to make the payments on the loans.  I’m worried that with this economy going the way it seems to be going (prices keep going up) that I’m going to be having to ask for a hardship deferral on the loans, which is something that I really don’t want to have to do.  I want to get them paid off!

My cat thinks that the world revolves around him. He thinks strange people are out to kill him and he has to hide. He thinks that the vacuum cleaner is the work of the devil. He thinks a closed door is a bad door, and needs to be open at all times. He thinks that there is no such thing as too much food in his feed dish. He thinks that houseplants are appetizers and mice are dessert. He thinks that I should not wear jewelry, or belts. He thinks that being brushed is a preview of being in heaven.

One of the things I like the most about the Internet is how it has opened up the world of shopping. It seems that it is so much easier to find products to buy that just a short time ago I did not even know existed! I think it is great that there are so many shopping engines available to use to find the product that you want.

One of my favorite shopping engines is called exspecto.com. I like it a lot because it has features on it that I have not seen on other shopping engines before. It has Set PriceAlert, advanced sorting, view price history, strong locale searches and more. I also like the feature that you can use called Rate product so you can advise others what you like or don’t like about the product once you buy it.

I really like shiny things. I like a lot of chrome on my truck, and I like stainless steel appliances in the kitchen. My wife tells me that she’d prefer different colors in the kitchen, but since I let her pick out the bells and whistles on the appliances to make her happy, she let me pick out the colors to make ME happy. Seemed like a good compromise to me!

Now I’m trying to sneak in some stainless steel accents in other places around the house, like the bathrooms and the living room. I’ve found a good website that specialized in stainless steel accessories. Not surprisingly it is called The Stainless Steel Store!

I’ve found a great Blomus Stainless Steel tape measure that I’m going to put on my “gift wish list.” Also a great Blomus Stainless Steel Magnetic Bulletin Board that I want to put in the kitchen beside the door.   I could spend a lot of time and money at that website!

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about how the paper version of newspapers are obsolete, and that the newspapers are going to go out of business; being replaced by online news. I’d hate to think that were true; I like getting the paper newspaper. I like to take it with me to work, to read on my breaks. I like to take it in the car with me and read when I’m waiting for someone to meet me.

I use the newspaper a lot after the reading is over. I use it to wash my mirrors and windows. I use it to line the carpet to protect it from kitty litter when I’m cleaning the litter box. And, when I have puppies, I use it as an aide to house break them. If I had birds (I used to, but don’t now!) I’d use the newspapers to line their cages.

Veterinarians and animal rescue leagues need used newspapers to line their cages. Schools need newspapers to teach social studies and current events.

I hope that the paper version of the newspaper sticks around for a very long time to come!

This morning I was unhappy to discover that my car had a flat tire.  I guess it was a good time to have a flat tire, since I was home at the time.  Not that it is EVER a good time to have a flat tire; they are a pain in the butt!  But if I HAVE to have a flat tire, I’d much rather be at home discovering it than out on the road; especially on an Interstate Highway in rush hour!  But face it, a flat tire is an aggravation, no matter what!

Thank goodness my spare is good, but it IS a donut tire so I need to go to the tire store as soon as possible to either get this flat tire repaired (I hope it is repairable!) or replaced.  I didn’t have road hazard insurance on the tire that is flat, if I have to buy a new one I will be SURE to get road hazard insurance this time!  Tires are not cheap!

I’ve heard that the Zimmer company has manufactured some defective Durom hip replacement cups that are causing some of the recipients of the cup troubles.  Because of these issues on zimmer durom cup, the Zimmer legal department is contacting recipients of the cup and asking the patients to sign a release of liability agreement.  There are many durom lawsuits going on right now over the defective cup, and the durom lawyers are advising anyone who receives such a request from Zimmer to NOT sign the release.

They say that signing the release would prevent you from having any recourse should the cup fail in the future.  You might also be opening yourself up to being sued by Medicare or your health insurance.  So, folks out there in the audience who might be reading this should take note of this – if you have one of these cups, do NOT sign the release!

Have you ever even heard of “shelf stable milk?”  I hadn’t until I ordered a box of food from Angel Food Ministries.  Part of their basic box of food includes a small carton of “shelf stable milk.”  It is real 2% milk that is sealed in a wax type of container that does not need to be refrigerated until it is opened.  The expiration date on it is many months away; it keeps just fine until opened.  Puts me in mind of the canned sweetened and/or condensed evaporated milk. 

My grandparents tell me that during the “Great Depression” they would buy canned condensed evaporated milk because it was inexpensive and did not need to be refrigerated.  They told me that they didn’t even refrigerate it after opening it, they would just put it on the kitchen counter and cover the opening with foil to keep bugs out.  I don’t know what the “safety rules” are for refrigerating canned condensed evaporated milk, but seems to me that it should be refrigerated after opening.  What do you think?

I can remember when I was a kid my mother showed us how to make candles, using wax, chopped ice cubes, and milk cartons.  It was so fascinating, stirring the melting wax, pouring it over the ice that we had poured into the milk cartons.  What was really cool was peeling the milk cartons off after the wax had cooled and seeing the really neat designs that the ice had left in the candles!  That is just one of the fond memories I have of my childhood; doing fun things like that with my mother.  She is such a crafty lady!

Recently my mother decided to try her hand at the cottage-industry candle making business. She wants to make soy candles and sell them at craft fairs. She loves to make candles, and she figures that it would be a great way to make a little bit of pocket money while doing something she loves to do! She told me that she found a great website called jarstore.com where she can buy wholesale Libby jars for her new candle-making business. Libby jars are her favorite jars.  She has asked her best friend Carol to come over and help her at the craft fairs; they can sit together at the tables and visit with each other in between customers.  I told her that if that’s what she wants to do, then she should go for it!

Today I was driving around and noticing that spring really seems to have arrived. The grass is greening up; the daffodils, forsythias, tulip trees are in full bloom. It won’t be long before everyone I see is sneezing and blowing their noses and complaining about their spring allergies! It really is a shame that so many people suffer from the pollen floating in the air from the trees and flowers. This would be a good time, though to own stock in allergy products and facial tissue!

Ever since I’ve lived in this house I’ve been wanting to fix up a room in the basement as a fitness room. I live too far away from a commercial gym for me to want to sign up for any kind of gym membership. I know that I would never go there. But I also know that if I had my own treadmill or elliptical machine in my basement in my own fitness room that it would get used every day.  Especially if I installed a spa tub in the room, and a television!

I am sure that I could get a really good deal on exercise machine combinations when I’m ready to buy them.  I just need to get my friends and relatives to give me a couple days of their time to help me build the room!  I’ve measured out the dimensions and am putting together a supply list now.  I can hardly wait to get it done!

I was very irritated today. I went to the self-serve gasoline station to fill up my car. I clicked on the trigger to make the pump continue to pump (it is supposed to kick off when the tank is full) and I was using the windshield washer squeegee and fluid that the station provides to clean off my windshield and headlights. The trigger didn’t kick off, it kept going and going, even though the tank was full. I noticed that there was gasoline just dripping down the side of my car. I rushed to the nozzle and turned it off manually. Boy, was I ticked off! I made the station give me a free car wash, and take $5.00 off of my charge for gas.

I admit that I really enjoy watching television.  A lot.  After a long hard day at work, I look forward to relaxing at home for a couple of hours watching my favorite shows before heading to bed.  My wife and I have been thinking about checking out the Direct TV Options and see how they compare to the cable service that we currently have.

My brother has been telling me how much he loves his Direct TV, and has been encouraging us to switch to Direct T V service as well.  He tells me that I can watch a lot more sports and movies than what I currently get with the service I have now, for about the same price as what I’m paying now.  So I guess I’ll look into it.  If I can get more channels for the same amount of money, then that is a better deal.  And I’m all about getting good deals!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all of you “out there” in “Blog World.”  I hope you all had a great day and drank lots of green beer, and ate lots of corned beef and cabbage.  I like the light-heartedness of St. Patrick’s Day; I don’t know anybody who disdains it at all.  I can remember as a child being sure to wear green to avoid being pinched!  I don’t know where or how the “pinching” tradition started, but there were a couple of years in my youth that I wished that tradition didn’t exist!

I think it is very interesting how the elementary school children in the public school system are taught one version of American history and that it takes a very long time for them to learn about all of the “skeletons” in the American closet!  Once they learn about all of the sordid details of the “bad” parts of the American history, it’s a miracle that they have any patriotism left at all!  I think it’s only natural for the college students to become disappointed and disillusioned with the country.

Which is really too bad, because even thought there have been a lot of bad things in the American past, the country IS growing and trying to improve!  The fact that the American President is bi-racial is proof of that growth!  I think that the American flag is going to be getting a lot more respect now that President Obama is making so many positive changes.

We have an American flag that hangs on a bracket attached to a post on our front porch.  It is getting pretty rough looking; I am thinking that it is just about time we got a new one.  I’d like to get a tall flagpole to install in our garden as a centerpiece and put a new flag there.  I think that would look really nice.

I’m not quite sure why people get so weird about Friday the 13th.  Wait a minute, maybe I remember now.  There were 13 people at “The Last Supper” and it was on a Friday, right?  Or am I mis-remembering?  It doesn’t matter, I don’t think that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day at all!  I think that superstitions are so silly!

Paula has a girlfriend named Sue who recently moved to New Jersey.  She moved there because her employer transferred her.  She didn’t really want to leave the area, but with the employment situation the way it is, she felt that if she didn’t take the transfer that she wouldn’t have any job at all. Sue calls Paula every day since she left here, and is trying to convince us to move to New Jersey too.  She says that New Jersey Jobs are plentiful and high paying. 

So, Paula and I have been talking about the possibility of going up there and checking it out.  Sue says that we can stay with her while we are looking around, so we just might do that.

I am getting so tired of every time the wind blows around here our electricity goes off for hours on end. I have a generator already, but I have to manually start it and throw the gen-tran switch on and off.  It’s a pain in the neck to have to keep doing that!

I really want to get one of those generators that starts all by itself and runs until the power comes back on. I’ll have to start pricing them. I know they are expensive, but I think in the long run the cost will be well worth it.

Almost every day when I check my email, I am reminded of how many times spammers and evil hackers are trying to invade my computer.  I am frequently seeing warnings about a new virus that has infected many business computers, and sometimes I hear from a friend that their computer crashed because of a virus that their computer picked up.

I can remember one day going to my sister’s house and she was so upset because her computer had crashed and she had not backed up her important data.  All of her precious photographs of her little ones were gone forever, and all of her tax return information was now history.  That was not the time to remind her how many times I have stressed how important it is to backup your files onto an independent storage disk or drive.

Anyway, as I was saying, viruses are a very real threat.  Many computers come with some kind of anti virus program already installed, but those are frequently inefficient and obsolete by the time you actually get your computer up and running. 

I recently discovered a free anti virus download is available from the cyberdefender.com website.  They have a lot of very good software programs designed to protect computers from hackers and viruses.  They also have software for identity protection, register cleaners; I’m impressed that they have received good reviews from USA Today and ComputerWorld for their products.