Crewman6 - Never give up... Never Surrender!

Are you ready for Windows 8? According to Wikipedia, an unofficial source released the date as October 2012. True or not, the free Windows 8 Consumer Preview came out late February, and is said to be overall complete except for minor tweaks and adjustments. As far as how it’s going to operate, expect major changes. Windows 8 is not just an extension of existing Windows. Rather, it’s a complete rewrite from the ground up, with entirely different structure. At this point, I have to start...

I’m a born-again, die-hard, fanatical Kindle Fire owner. Owned a Kindle since the old days. Pre-ordered the Kindle Fire tablet during the first run of orders. Got one from the first batch of deliveries. Generally, I’ll wait for a technology to mature before buying it. The forerunners tend to be the ones that work out the ‘undiscovered bugs’. Lucky me, though, mine was perfect. Easy to set up, worked as smooth as… Silk. (Sorry- inside joke. That’s the name of Amazon’s custom designed web...

Spoilers ahead: read at your own risk! Just got back from seeing John Carter of Mars in the theater. Really wanted to see it, so I got the afternoon off from work, and caught the earliest showing possible. The John Carter story is a series of 11 books, beginning with A Princess of Mars. Written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator (and writer) of the Tarzan books. I find it nice timing that Princess of Mars came out 100 years ago this year. Took them long enough to turn it into a movie! (I’m...

I enjoy watching Storage Wars. We’ve all taken to hollering “Yuuuup!” loudly and obnoxiously. Dave Hester has become the lovable bad guy, the surly curmudgeon that takes pleasure in ruining everybody’s day. Young up-and-comers Brandi and Jarrod have that love to bicker, bicker to love thing going on. Darryl? Ummm… Not really a good pigeonhole for him. He’s like the redneck down the road a ways, you wave at now and then, but just don’t really know him. And my personal favorite, Barry. The...

Silliness rules. Going beyond a simple fad, planking has really taken over. I have a hard time imagining anybody so out of touch that they haven’t heard of it. Even if you don’t know how to plank, you’ve at least heard of it… right? It wasn’t all that long ago, I didn’t even know what it was. At least, not in terms of the fad. I only knew of it as an exercise for the abs. Times have changed rapidly. Not only has planking become prevalent, it’s actually invaded my life. Friends on Facebook are...

I’ve loved Sherlock Holmes since I was nine. That’s the Christmas my Aunt Arlene gave me my first collected Sherlock Holmes omnibus. As a gag, she first wrapped a guide to speaking spanish, and let me think that was my gift. But after enjoying my attempt to pretend I really liked it, she relented and gave me the Holmes book. I was immediately entranced. Now, more than 40 years later, I still have that gift. Threadbare, worn with years of reading and re-reading, I no longer read that...

Has the Harry Potter wave finally peaked? Is Harry Potter, the boy who lived, on the way out? I don’t think so. We’ve got Harry Potter books, Harry Potter Movies, Harry Potter toys, Harry Potter websites… you get the idea. The books have broken all sorts of sales records. I’m not going to burden you with facts and numbers. (If you actually LIKE facts and numbers, a good place to start is JK Rowling’s bio over at Amazon.) Harry’s success is startling, phenomenal, and one of a kind. At this...

I’m not the man I used to be. Correction… I’m a lot more than the man I used to be. In my 20′s, I weighed 121 pounds, with a 21″ waistline. Over the decades, I’ve put a few more pounds and inches on. At 40, I decided to do something about it. Due to being maniacally single-minded (and, just plain old ‘single’), my bicycle took me about 350 miles a month. From early in the year, to the end of summer, my weight plummetted from 230 pounds, down to 150 pounds. Now, ten years later, I’m no longer...

Thanks to our friend Glenn (a highly talented professional artist/animator) I have a new logo today. Given that my online handle was inspired by Galaxy Quest, it has my name done up in Galaxy Quest style, with a beautiful drawing of the NSEA Protector swooping through the letters and gracefully flying back under the title. Myself as a caricature typing on the computer, and quoting the Galaxy Quest tagline. He nailed my look… in all my aging computer nerd glory. Now Crewman6.com has the...

For all of us struggling to get everything done in one day… and always coming up short… I wish there were 6 more hours in the day. Only, the rule would be, those extra hours don’t get sucked into a job. I’d hate to have a 30-hour day, only to find the average workday has gone from 8 hours a day to 14 hours a day! Nope, I’m talking about just time, at the end of the day, when you look around at the things you meant to do but ran out of time. For my friends who know about my assigned writing...

I’m over fifty. I’ve been told by my younger co-workers that I qualify as an old guy. I don’t feel old, though I seem to need more naps than I used to. Like most of us, I’ve struggled with fitness and health for years. When I was a teenager, and before leaving home, we had a lot of work carving our yard and garden area out of Georgia woods. Dad and I spent a lot of time with axe, sledgehammer, and wedge. Not to mention shovels and rakes. Trees came down, stumps were dug up, land cleared by...

In over 50 years, I have to admit I’ve never had the urge to get a tattoo. I’ve admired them. Seen beautiful ones. Seen clever tattoos. Some of my friends are slowly turning their bodies into museums of modern art. But I’ve always held back. To get a tattoo; that’s a serious commitment. A lifetime commitment, really, when you consider the expense and incompleteness of removing one. I suppose I just haven’t seen the one that tells me I MUST wear it. But I’m still looking. I’ve always said if I...

I’m not much of a car guy. As a matter of fact, under general circumstances, I view a car as something that takes me from one place to another, carries my stuff, and siphons money out of my wallet. I briefly worked at Nalley Honda in Brunswick. The guys I worked with were a great bunch, and my boss was a serious eye-opener. Where I used to think all car salesmen fit a certain … stereotype, Al broke the mold. He was a great guy, believed in a fair profit margin where customer AND seller win,...

Before we get started, let me make one thing perfectly clear (Sorry for the Nixon impersonation… trust me, it doesn’t get any better in person!) — I am not an expert in anything. But in my life of over half a century, I’ve been impacted (or at least grazed) by many experiences, and some of them actually involved cars. If you’re buying a car, you have a lot of choices. Gone are the days where the two or three car dealers in town controlled your options, and how much you paid. Competition is...

I missed out on the original American Idol craze. Didn’t get to see Kelly Clarkson win, or Ruben Studdard. As a matter of fact, my only knowledge originally came from the movie, “From Justin To Kelly”. Working in a video store, I remember the talk about it’s release. At the time, it was the fastest movie ever to make the leap from major theatrical release to video. In asking what the fuss was, I learned all about Idol. Thought it kind of funny that Kelly and Justin actually were required to...