You have to admit, dedicating an official work day to goofing off and calling it Labor Day has to be one the great malaprops of all time. And it has to be more than a little ironic that what started off as a day commemorating one of America's greatest achievements — the unionization of America's workers against the tyranny of the 'barons' of their day (child labor, anyone?) — now represents a big chunk of what's wrong with America. I s'pose entitlements and overall government largesse roughly account for another big piece. If there's one core word that encompasses the entire quagmire, it would be the word unsustainable. Just ask the U.S. Postal Service and the jam it's gotten itself into because of its inability to lay off highly-paid unionized postal workers.
Nonetheless, happy Unlaborious Day, everyone! If you're looking for something to do, I have some suggestions below.
Home Repair
Finally! At last you don't have some cheap, paltry excuse to hand the wife on why you can't get to all of those fix-it jobs that have been piling up!
Rather than this being a "how-to" site, it's more like a "Can I do it?" site, and should give you a pretty good idea as to whether you can handle it yourself. And, in the course of finding out 'if' you also find out 'how', so much the better.
A water heater is a pretty good example. Because they're large, they look kind of forbidding, and most people's first thought would be to call the plumber if it started to leak. But when you actually look at what exactly needs to be unhooked, it's really quite simple, and bendable supply lines mean you don't have to get an exact replacement for the pipes on top. And, just between you and me, a pipe wrench is probably cheaper than a 4-hour visit from the plumber.
Rainy Day
I rarely write unless I have something new to add to the narrative, or at least have a fresh slant on something. The OJ jury got it right. Magellan was a fraud. Maggie's Farm is politically centrist. You know, the usual kind of wild hyperbole you expect to see in the blogosphere.
Art Gallery
For your visual delight, here's one of the best pictorial galleries and video collections in town. If you're really looking to while away the day, there are some
full-length features on the 'Special Vids' page, and, if you're into
movies, I daresay there's nothing out there quite like 'Doc's Bag O'
Clips'.
Windows Tips & Tricks
If you (1) like exercising some control over your system, but (2) have installed Win 7 and are frustrated by its lack of user control, take a peek at my Win 7 setup page. I've spent a serious number of hours tracking down the tweaks to most of the common complaints, such as eliminating garbage from the right-mouse-button 'context' menu, the 'New' menu, getting rid of the "Shortcut to" tag, changing the path to IE's 'Favorites', and disabling those ultra-annoying pops-outs from the Task Bar icons.
I'd also blushingly add that I've never seen anything even close to my 'Facts & Fallacies' page. You read every word on that page and I guarantee you'll come away with a different perspective.
Ratville
"EEK! It's an ugly rat! Quick, kill it!!"
Smooth move, humanity. Looked at objectively, a rat is just another small, cute furry animal, no different than a guinea pig, hamster or gerbil.
But throw societal convention into the mix and it's "EEK! KILL IT!"
Ratville is for the rest of you.
Flying The Friendly Skies
I presume you've heard of Google Earth? It basically lets you fly around the globe in your own personal space ship, then zoom in to look at your topless neighbor sunbathing majestic peaks and valleys. It's a series of patched-together images from every spot on the globe, and there are big sites out there dedicated to posting the latest crazy/odd/mystifying/beautiful spots people find. You click on the link and the program flies you there. Very slick.
For example, there are huge compass roses out there that you'd never have a clue what they were from the ground, as well as a whole shitload of wild hedge mazes, cities and terrain in 3-D (you can fly between buildings and down the Grand Canyon), real-time airline tracking, real-time weather, strange 3,000-year-old geoglyphic inscriptions spanning the length of a football field — and that's not to mention some very convincing alien crop circles.
I've put together a number of video tours to show off this remarkable program. The 'Google Goofs' tour is a riot.
Doc's WordPress Guide
Presenting the best way to get a blog or web site going, bar none. Apart from it probably being the largest WordPress how-to site out there (50,000 words @ 82 pages), it also gets into how to turn this great blogging software into web software. This is a key point, because if you want a business web site, you don't want all that blog-y stuff around like 'Author', 'Category', 'Comments', etc. And, once you get rid of that, it's a superb editor for a web site, business or informational.
Doc's Secrets
Want to get into the Guinness Book of World Records with a monumental achievement that will last until the end of time? Want to get on TV at the Olympics? Want to actually contact every member of Congress, not just their flunkies? Want to make a bzillion dollars? The answers lie within.
Well, that oughta keep ya busy for an hour or two.
