The Lewis Show

It has been a time of remembrance this year for sure. Earlier in the year, my last grandparent passed, now I'm reflecting on the passing of my aunt Sally. I have more memories related to her than any other family member because she spent a lot of time with my brother and me. I can remember her spending a whole day with me in Virginia Beach taking me to see Jurassic Park and riding the carousel at Lynnhaven Mall. Her family was always very kind to me, her two daughters, my cousins Michelle and Valerie babysat for me a lot  while my Mom worked. They all just for some reason thought the world of me, and I'll never forget feeling like I belonged whenever I got to hang out with the Fitzgeralds. I can't say I'll miss my aunt's cooking. I don't think that it was bad, I just remember being a very picky boy and she was the type that would not let me get up until I ate everything. I'm still scarred from eating ham, and I can say she takes all the credit for that....

Aunt Sally passed away earlier this evening. She was sleeping and passed peacefully. I'll post more about her tomorrow.

Please keep my aunt (seated middle) in your thoughts. She's taken ill and the news was not all that optimistic. Just thought I'd share. She was a big part of my upbringing and I owe her in many ways. Aunt Sally taught me to be a strong individualist, brave in every situation, and to have heart and compassion but tough love in all things with friends or family, or anyone. Despite that, I'm very thankful for many good memories. I may not ever forgive her though for making me eat Liver and Onions. Yuck! 

Things are really getting heated with the election coming in just over a month. One would think with everything going on, social networks would be a resource for collecting information, and discussing ideas and topics. One would think that people would practice restraint and tolerance with various opinions. One would thing wrong. Social networks have an obvious bias and little room for tolerance for ideas outside of their own. I don't think I've ever seen so much snide, snarky, and outright mean posts and comments. On top of that, the trolling has gotten out of control. To say I'm disappointed with the state of social media would be a pretty fair understatement. The problem with the big conversation is that most people have already made up their minds and nothing is going to change that decision. The same applies to me. So discussion about topics will never go out of style, but for people to post horrible misrepresentations about candidates is only going to turn most pe...

I also predict one day we'll all talk like we Twitter.

  One could not contain me with this much techy goodness!

My pirate name is: Black William Kidd Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. Even though you're not always the traditional swaggering gallant, your steadiness and planning make you a fine, reliable pirate. Arr! Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com. part of the fidius.org network

So I've been posting little blurbs here and there, but I haven't really updated anyone on anything in a couple weeks, so I figured I'd take your time and this space to give everyone that update. The house hunting continues. We haven't made any decision towards any house at this point, but we are going to take another stab at things later on this week. The market is working to our favor with interest rates creeping down a bit. The Fed could have really helped by dropping them just a bit more, but they are fine where they are. I just hope they stay where they are for a few more weeks. Janine and I went to visit Sam and Jessi over the weekend to tune out from the world, play computer games, and relax..mostly relax. Always good to see our friends and we're always grateful for them letting us crash their place over the weekend. Happy Birthday wishes go out to Sam today, who is now in his mid 20's. Whew...that's just old. Take it from me! That's really a...

Sherwood Forlee (link's in the title)is credited for designing this sandwich bag which gives an impression of moldiness. I think this is sheer genius and a great way to deter theft. Someone did make a point about someone throwing away said sandwich, but I say if I'm not going to be able to eat my delicious sandwich, then no one is! Unless that person is in serious need of penicillin, then it's just one big let down.

Today started my vacation and the first real break I've had from work since March. I'm just relieved that I get to kick back for a couple days before rejoining the rat race. Day one was spent looking at houses. We've again found a really nice, retro house in the North Side and we're going to put in a bid tomorrow at noon, so we shall see what happens. So stay tuned, the excitement is coming fast!

Tropical Storm Hanna was mostly a non issue in Virginia. We got some much needed rain, but it was pretty harmless. My car on the other hand does not agree. I heard a loud crashing around around noon today and figured something smacked into the house, so I went to look. I opened the door and found a branch speared through my windshield on the passenger side.  And to think, I was starting to get attached to that windshield. The next one will have big tires to fill.

September 1998, the exact date is still debatable, Google fired up it's search engine. One would think it should take ten years to build the strong reputation it has considering it takes many brick and mortar business decades to do just that. I have had Google as my home page for 8 years now myself. What about you? Is your first view of the web that classic, minimal GOOG home page?

You bet I'm ready for some Football! I'm eager to see the beginning of the Aaron Rodgers era. I also get a bonus by watching the legend, Brett Favre still throwing passes in a Jets jersey.  It's going to be a fun year.

Want want want want want want want. And want .

I think we have all watched at least one Peanuts holiday special growing up. Some people do even today as adults. The man behind that animation was Bill Melendez . He passed away this week at the age of 92. There just seems to be a theme with behind the scenes movie, animation, and sound people passing away this week. We will not know what we've lost with these entertainers, until they're all gone. There's comfort in knowing his works will out live us all. Thoughts go out to his family.

I was very sad to hear that Don LaFontaine had passed away recently. I'm reminded of my previous life in radio and how I aspired to have that booming commanding sound like Don and others had. From what I can tell he was a decent man and he will definitely be missed. My thoughts go out to his family.

One of the first things that I noticed about people's habits concerning web browsing is that once they settle on a browser, they settle on it. This year has been the exception.  There has been a huge resurrgance to Firefox when they released version 3. Social networking, now a large part of net useage, even got into the browsing game with Flock . Apple introduced their native browser  by making Safari available for Windows users. And then of course there's Opera which is probably the most under rated browser ever created. I do get to enjoy it in some part on my Nintendo Wii. Microsoft has been working fast to get Internet Explorer 8 onto the market touting it's web standards compliance. So what's a web surfer to do with all these great tools? Well, you make the game even more interesting by introducing yet another browser. One that is faster and better equipped for cloud computing. Along comes Google's Chrome . I have been using it for about an hour and I ...

For those that spend a lot of their time reading blogs (you know who you are), or even reading news I strongly suggest Google Reader to make that experience easy, organized, and fun to share. And, don't forget to subscribe to my mountain of feeds starting with this one! This video takes a minute or two to explain exactly how it works and shows how simple it is to set up.

I figure since I'm always talking about her, I'll let her get a few words in edgewise too. Janine has been the best thing that could ever happen to me. One of those reasons that I love her so much is  that I can talk to her and she's right on my level...well she's way over my level, but she comes down to mine. She isn't a big time blogger or anything, but I've always encouraged her to share her thoughts, and why not let her use my forum to do just that. So you're going to see some content from her over the next several days and weeks, and I think it will add a nice element to The Lewis Show. I think she'll have a lot of good stuff to offer and I hope my readers enjoy and comment on her posts. I am debating adding one or two more writers, it all just depends on where I feel lead to go. As I posted earlier, if anyone wants to contribute, I'll gladly let them in. I think it's time to make my blog a place for community, be it local or worldwide. ...