I realize that I have not been typing for a while. And, while I had great intentions when I started this missive, I'm sure it will fall short. However, I feel I have to write. Or at least I did when I wrote this a couple years ago. Sometimes it takes a while for a blog entry to mature. Note that most of this was written when Obamacare was still being debated, prior to passage, though, given that, a surprising amount of this still gets debated today.

Normally, I avoid writing political or religious things in my blog. This isn't because I lack convictions, merely because my convictions are not shared by all who read this. And among my convictions is the intention to not be overly inconvenient. How that is relevant is likely not clear, but trust me, it is.

At any rate, there's something I've been mulling over for a week or so that I think I might be able to clarify (to myself) by writing it down (for others). (Even if those others are extremely limited in number. I embrace no illusions of relevance. Especially after being silent for ... however long it's been since my last entry. A while.)

You've really got to admire their persistence. I just cleared somewhere around 14,000 SPAM comments off this site. Most of those were never "approved", so they weren't visible to anyone but myself, but someone (or several someones) paid hundreds of dollars to put those comments on this site.

Oh, I've also disabled all of the spam accounts that could post auto-approved comments. And made creating a new account a process that requires explicit approval from me. Oddly, while I haven't deleted these yet, there are also nearly 6,000 user accounts in this drupal instance, 99.9% of which are bogus accounts created just to drop SPAM onto the site.

Someone recently told me I was "manly". I may be tall, I may be a bit broader than average, and I may lumber about rather awkwardly, but... I'm not sure I qualify as "manly". I'll have to think about that one. Nope. I will continue to think of myself as just me. However, this intimation of manliness that was sent my way led me to consider... How lame is it that I haven't posted on my blog in months? The answer was not one I could warp into something that was in my favor, so off I am to write a blog entry.

Paint here works very differently from paint in the US.

Paint in the US is generally latex, and basically glues and seals the top layer of whatever you're painting.

Paint here does not work that way.

Latest SPAM headline: Fulfill your partner(s) sexual fantasies with a harder, longer and straightened erection

Now it needs to be straightened? Next they're going to want to add ribs... or a vibration generator.

On second thought, a vibration generator sounds interesting... But probably wouldn't help in the duration goal. There's just no winning here!

I've had a webcam link on this blog for... well... as long as the blog has been "active". However, the webcam has been down for at least a year while I figure out what to do with it. Well, now, for a limited (or maybe not) time, it's back up again! (It is likely to get relocated to the house at some time in the near but indeterminate future, but for now it's pointed out the window at the minivan.)

I realize this isn't really all that interesting. I just thought I would mention it because I have a few minutes before Jana gets out of the shower and decides that we're done working for the day. Since I've already decided I'm done working for the day, and I'm kind of in that grey area between working and going to bed, but with nothing to do, I thought I'd write a couple of paragraphs that no one would read.

And for a couple of paragraphs, the subject of the intermittent webcam is perfect!

Yes, I've spent months away from the blog. Things have been nuts busy lately, and they don't look to be getting any better until March, so I'm just going to try and write stuff here anyway.

Big news is the house. Yup, we have one. And yup, it's pretty nice. And yup, we just spent around $3000 putting appliances in it, though the actual appliances haven't arrived just yet. Oh, and yup, we ran into unexpected difficulties. (Though really, are they unexpected if you know they're coming, you just don't know specifically what they will be?) More on that later.

As I believe I've mentioned before, the building across the street is a popular place to make movies. I suspect this stems from the fact that the building is empty, and that it's in pretty good shape. When we moved here, a bank (CSOB) had its offices in there. They occupied the entire building, had conference rooms, a large entrance hall, and lots of little offices. I'm assuming the building has all of the standard office building amenities as well, it's a pretty large building. Even if it is well over 100 years old.

I tried to write this entry yesterday, but I failed to complete. Actually, I ended up having to reboot my machine because it refused to start applications properly anymore, and thus lost all of the content I had typed. Frustrating that.

Last Saturday, I went for my second visit to the house. The reason for the visit was to show the girls what the house really looks like, instead of just showing them the pictures that I had taken the first time around. In that, the trip was extremely successful. The girls loved the house, loved all of the flowers in the front yard, and even seemed to like catching grasshoppers across the 'street' from the house in the grass. However, there was a sour note to the visit as well...

Today is the first day of school for Anna and Chloe. School in the Czech Republic runs from September 1st to the end of June, so 10 months of schooling, and two months of 'summer vacation', which usually means going to summer camps, spending weeks with grandparents at the cottage, and generally being outside. One thing about Czech school, though... They do ease the kids in a bit. The first day for Chloe (who is entering 1st grade this year) is only a couple of hours long. What I currently believe is that school will run from 8-noon or so for Chloe, and 8-1:30 or so for Anna. The actual time they finish school varies by day, especially for Anna, who will be going to a different school most Tuesdays and Thursdays. Anna's first day in 4th grade is also a bit longer than Chloe's. Generally, I suspect Anna will have a tougher time of it... Jana thinks she's got a really nice teacher, though. So maybe it will be OK. School...

More vacation photos. In the old days, I'd be reduced to pulling these out of a drawer somewhere when people came over. Welcome to the age of the internet, when I can just drop these in a blog somewhere (see, simple) and inflict them on wandering internet denizens. My dad loved taking slides, actually... He had to get out the slide projector, set up the screen, and run through hundreds of photos organized carefully into wheels. Digital photography and the internet have made it so much easier to inflict these kinds of things on friends. So easy, in fact, that we can inflict it on the public at large, if they're willing to sit through the presentation.

I didn't get a chance to submit all of these while we were on vacation. Partly because of spotty internet connectivity, partly because of being busy working on a couple of other projects, and partly just because I didn't have the time. Well, I don't really have the time now either (there's something else I should be doing), but I'm posting them anyway.

OK, it looks like I'm going to do this blog entry a little bit differently. A lot of pictures, but not in the same thumbnail style of the photos I've been uploading one at a time and serving up piecemeal. (I really need to change my site to something that is on my own CMS, and that I can manage personally... With a custom photo album feature that actually works and cross-references my photography for me. But that's for a future vacation... Perhaps over Christmas.)

At any rate, given the fact that I have posted nearly nothing about the house so far, I figure that at least my loyal readers (and anyone else interested in the location/look of the house we're probably buying in the next few weeks) should be able to see it.

OK, there's lots to report...

Anna is tired and grumpy. This isn't a surprise, it pretty much happens whenever she doesn't get enough sleep, but it's worthy of reporting, don't you think? Actually, if she doesn't start sleeping, it's getting bad enough that we're considering cutting our vacation short and just going back home. So far not, though... And her enjoyment of the hermit crabs broke the tension at least a little.

In other news, we are looking into giving up on the first place, and possibly buying a different place. I'll post pictures later, but the big drawback of this place is that it was flooded in the 'great flood of 2002'. So, it's close to a river, and when the river went about 20 feet above flood stage, this house had water on the first floor. I haven't gone back (after our first tour) to see just how high the water got that year, but it was enough. We can (as far as we can tell without actually signing a contract) get flood insurance on the place, since 2002 was considered a once-a-century event, but the basic question is... Would you buy a house that had been flooded in the past?