Pictures of Hummingbirds

I thought people might like the following photos taken by Fifteen-year-old photographer Marlin Shank. Thanks to  Anita and Kathie for these. Enjoy

Fuzzy logic

A great poem by Gayle Noble


I opened my eyes as if in a dream
All around me was the sea of life
I felt like a dingy adrift ....
How will I guide myself though this mess?
I need a compass ...


The conscious came forward ...
"I will guide you. I always point due right. Set your course by me."


I need someway to move, I thought ..
The breeze of imagination played with the strands of my hair.
Oh, I thought. How can I use that?


The full sails of hopes, dreams, and desires fluttered in the breeze.
With what can I trim these sails?


Moods, whims and fancies fell out on deck;
They went straight to trimming sails.


Who will guide this boat?
"Fuzzy logic reporting for duty, Sir ..."
I looked at the scruffy logic ... well ...


Fuzzy picked up my compass and looked around. "I need some rudders."
Analytical logic, statistic logic and intuitive logic reported.
They stood stiff and grim in the wind of imagination.


A fancy made a face.
A whim went so far as to stick her tongue out ... testing.
Analytical logic took out a little black book and wrote down their names.
I would have to keep an eye on him!


Fuzzy took the helm; "Full speed ahead!!"
I played with a few whims to trim the sails more to my fancy then went below.
I had forgotten already about analytical.
I didn't notice when he put my name in the book.


No longer adrift on the sea, I was a full clipper
capable of pirouette turns though the course of life.


I haven't woken up yet.

Ralph and Edna

Ralph and Edna were both patients in a mental hospital.One day while they  were  walking past the hospital swimming pool, Ralph suddenly jumped into the deep end.

He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there. Edna promptly jumped in to save him.  She swam to the bottom and  pulled him out.When the Head Nurse Director became aware of Edna's heroic act she immediately ordered her to be discharged from the  hospital, as she now considered her to be mentally stable.

When she went to tell Edna the news she said, 'Edna, I have good  news and bad news.  The good news is you're being discharged, since  you were able to rationally respond to a crisis by jumping in and  saving the life of the person you love.  I have concluded that your act displays sound mindedness.

 'The bad news is, Ralph hung himself in the bathroom with his  bathrobe belt right after you saved him.  I am so sorry, but he's dead.'

  Edna replied, 'He didn't hang himself. I put him there to dry.... How soon can I go home?'

My first ventures on the Web (late 90's)

I was surprised and delighted to find that a group of web historians have taken the time and energy to recover much of  the old Geocities web sites. For those not familiar  Geocities  was a place where one  could go and set up a web site for free. I built my first site there in the mid 90's but over time it was displaced by fancier and other  sites and my site went down as Geocities closed its doors and since I had drifted off to other things I thought my work was lost and it would have been except for a group of dedicated people who rebuilt Geocities or most of it including my old site.t


The group that rebuilt the site calls themselve Reocities.  On their page they say We've rebuilt the walls to the Cities and the streets where a large part of the early settlers of the World Wide Web used to live in. You can still find them where they were before, but not all of the houses have been rebuilt yet.  


I am happy that they have done this as they have recovered and rebuilt, some of my early pages, so in a sense I have been reborn.  I did not realize that I was one of the early settlers of the Web, but I am happy that some of the sites I built were recovered. All of the links don't work and I have no way of editing them, but the find does bring back some very positive memories. So if  you want to take a look at some of my early work on theWeb (back in the late 90's) go here


I put the following about me on that early page  so I thought I would share it here:


I am within ten years of my retirement, and as I look back over my work history, I take pride in the number of divesified careers I have enjoyed. I enjoyed the humor of the following as it sums up some of my thoughts towards work and where it can take us.

• My first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got canned ... couldn't concentrate.
• Then I worked in the woods as a lumberjack, but I just couldn't hack it, so they gave me the ax.
• After that I tried to be a tailor, but I just wasn't suited for it.
• Then I decided to become a Travel Agent, but I found the work too foreign.
• Next I tried working in a muffler factory but that was exhausting.
• I tried working as a retail store manager but I was always losing the inventory.
• Next was a job in a shoe factory; I tried but I just didn't fit in.
• I became a professional fisherman, but discovered that I couldn't live on my net income.
• I tried becoming a consultant but no-one would listen to me.
• I managed to get a good job working for a pool maintenance company, but the work was just too draining.
• I tried politics once, but since I could only be truthful, my downfall was inevitable, and I didn't last long.
• So then I got a job in a gymnasium, but they said I wasn't fit for the job.
• I got a job as a historian until I realized there was no future in it.
• Just for the html of IT, I tried web design but I kept forgetting my (java) script .
• I finally landed a job as a teacher but they said I had no class.
• So I am now considering retiring, because I think I would be perfect for that job!