Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Oh, yes.

Happy Birthday, RSR!

During my blogging hiatus in Boston I let slip a major milestone - on 23 May Red Stick Rant was a year old.

So.... Everyone sing along, now:

Happy Birthday to the blog mentioned below!
Happy Birthday to the blog mentioned below!
Happy Birthday dear Red Stick Rant!
Happy Birthday to the blog mentioned above!

For those who missed it, here is my very first post.

Focus.

We've got lots happening these next few days work-wise and home-wise (end of school, projects due, yadda yadda...), so blogging will be light to non-existent. But do not, dear readers, wander off in the time being - there's still plenty of fun stuff in the archives, so set a spell and have a look round. And we will be back after we get these things knocked out, with more RSR excitement!

I'm Baaaaaak.

I spent the last three days on a father-son camping trip on Lookout Mountain in northern Alabama with about 80 other fathers and sons. 8-hour drive each way, and several days of some really intense fun. Every time I am back there I remember why it meant so much to me when I was his age - and I hope he gets the bug, too.

I'll post some images tomorrow, but right now I am beat and off to bed.

UPDATE 28APR08: A few images from the weekend:


View down Little River. (image by Red Stick Rant)


Dogwoods in bloom . (image by Red Stick Rant)

Hello, Other Home.

According to Mr. Sitemeter, someone from Newtonville, Massachusetts - my other home town - just stopped by for a visit.

Mmmm....Cabot's.

Friday Midday Blog Link.

I should poke through folks' blogrolls more often. Via Billy Ockham I came across View From The Porch, which I highly recommend. Women, weapons, and P. J. O'Rourke - never a bad combination.

Well, Hello There!

Welcome StandFirm and Midwest Conservative Journal readers! Glad you stopped by. Make yourselves at home and poke around our eclectic little site. As most of you came here because of an interest in the epic struggle of The Episcopal Church (tm) to achieve utter irrelevance, here is a look at our posts relating to things church and faith. Enjoy, and y'all come back now, y'hear.

Our Favorite Day.

April Fool's Day is a very special day here at RSR for obvious reasons. (It's April, and some say we are utter fools.) (more than some - ed.) But it is also three days before a major deadline for our office, so posting will be light these next few days.

As we have for the past several years, we celebrate this day by helping to pen this bit of April Foolery for a friend at one of the best emergency preparedness websites out there. Most of it is "in-the-know" humor, but see if you can pick out which sections your humble blogger wrote.

UPDATE: Hee. Hee. My first "exclusive." I am such a stinker.

Arrrgh!

Several times in the past week I tried to embed YouTube videos, only to have them not show up on the site. Until days later. So if you saw a whole bunch of YouTube videos posted this morning, some of them two and three times, my apologies.

No more YouTube embeds until I can get this sorted out.

Now continue on about your daily lives, dear readers.

-The Management (what there is of it)

Do I Want To Be A Blogging Star?

Not really. (OK, maybe. Just a little. -ed.) But I probably should follow these rules of blogging more closely.

Chewing My Own Leg Off.....

.....Is how I spent my day. Well not actually, but it sure felt like it at times - we attended a 6 hour continuing ed seminar on pre-cast concrete. Though, as seminars went this one was pretty interesting, and I did actually learn some things. But there are only so many hours a human being can be forced to watch PowerPoint presentations without going off his/her nut.

Plus, I've got a few crises lurking on my desk here at the office that require my attention. More later.

Troll Feeding.

Someone from Baton Rouge, not surprisingly named "Anonymous", left a comment in this post calling me an idiot for not understanding how the UN is supposed to work. Like I care how the UN is supposed to work. (Though it would be nice, once a decade or so, if it did actually work.)

I know I shouldn't, but it's Sunday night and I'm bored - so I responded.

ARRRRRRRGH!!

Apologies for the "newer" new look.

Something seems to have gone wiggy with my sidebar items, as they are now showing up at the at the end of the blog. At least, that's the way it looks in Safari. Some kind of formatting issue, but since I'm using a standard Blogger template it is most puzzling.

I reformatted the site using several canned Blogger templates, stripped everything off I'd "customized", reformatted it again - but no joy. I'm hoping that this is a Blogger issue, 'cause my (very limited) HTML knowledge base has been exhausted. Plus, it's Sunday night and your humble blogger is also quite exhausted.

More tomorrow.

UPDATE: OK, I have poked, prodded, changed, deleted, reset, and guessed. Nothing. The darn sidebar STILL will not show properly!!!!!

UPDATE: D'Oh!! Thanks to a reader suggestion, the amazingly simple problem has been identified, and fixed. And the problem was....... YouTube. Well, one of their videos, anyway. Now that that's done, blogging will continue later today once I get back from meetings.

A New Look

OK, dear readers, here it is - the new RSR look.

Let me know what you think.

Blogging Isn't Everything, Y'know.

I've been busy the past few days taking care of some personal business and attempting to relax a bit. (Moderately successful on the former; not so much on the latter.) If you must have your RSR fix, dear readers, my Ron Paul piece is up over at Louisiana Conservative.

And if that isn't enough, Matthew has some interesting posts at his site for your reading enjoyment.

More later. Promise.

'Tis The Season....

Blogging has been, and will continue to be, somewhat light until after Chrstmas. Along with the usual seasonal rushing about, we have several 2 January deadlines here in the office. Since we are closed between Christmas and New Year's, this means we need to be wrapped up by this coming Monday. Fun.

And on a happier note: this little site will be six months old in a few weeks, and I want to thank each of you for your patronage and support. My Sitemeter stats will never set the world on fire, but that is not why I do this (for why, see my first post). I do not know who most of you are (you never write.....) but I'm glad you find what we put up worth a look. So to each of you, my dear readers, a very Merry Christmas from Red Stick Rant!

A Note Form The Management: Comments

We at Red Stick Rant have a very simple comments policy: "No profanity. No whining. No Spam. No hysterical rants. Reasoned, respectful rants only." It is listed every time you, dear readers, go to post a comment. And we do enjoy your comments.

But....

If you violate the rules, we will remove your comment. ESPECIALLY if you dump spam on our little site. So let this be a two-fold warning, dear readers - first, play within the rules (so far, most all have); and second, do not click on any links in any comment from anyone named 'Adam'. I do not know him; I have never conversed eith him, and I do not care what site he "writes for", or how it can make me money. HIS COMMENTS ARE SPAM, and they will be deleted as soon as they are found.

Other than that, dear readers, we at RSR hope you have a blessed day, and comment to your heart's content.

Naked Emperor Watch.

It's been over a month since The Naked Emperor posted anything. Anything at all. Not a thing on politics (commentary at which he excels). Not a thing on the the saga of the "Katrina Kannon". I check, hoping against hope, but.......

So listen here, bro - either you get busy on that keyboard, or I'll release your Kindergarten papers where you say you want to be, not the just "The Naked Emperor", but....

"EMPEROR OF THE WORLD"!!! And the fact you colored outside the lines on at least seven occasions.

Hey, its all there in crayon and glue.

Blogger's Block.

I hate times like these; I don't know what to blog about.

Yes, me. At a loss for an opinion.

The local elections are (mostly) over, and those that remain are pretty uninteresting. New Orleans, and her recovery, are the same - a joke - but how many times can you point out the obvious? I am sick of blogging about The Episcopal Church (tm), as the politically-correct tailspin seems to be getting more extreme (and the crash everyone wanted to avoid more inevitable). Besides, that is a niche market covered by far better bloggers than me. We seem to be winning the GWOT (aka The War), and the evidence is obvious even for anti-American pessimists and the Press, (Sorry, I repeat myself.) Hurricane season is over, as is baseball season, and both had positive results from this vantage. Yes, the Presidential race is heating up. But do you really need ANOTHER blogger's opinion on that? (My $.02: - If Hillary couldn't keep track of simple personnel files during her last stay at the White House, why should we trust her with the GO codes now?) Plus, we are busy as hell right now, work-wise, and I don't have time to scour the 'Net looking for interesting stuff.

What's a blogger to do?

More later.

UPDATE: Hello to the person/persons from The Episcopal Church's (tm) Domestic Foreign Missionary Society who found this site and this post by doing a blogsearch for "episcopal church" or anglican. Nice to see you. Poke around a bit - we have much more on the fastest shrinking denomination in America.

Spiritual Exercises.

I'm going to be away for a few days on personal business, so no postings unless there is something urgent. Until I great back, check out the many fine blogs in the blogroll on the right (which you should be doing anyway). And, GO SOX!!

God's peace, one and all.

P. S. Naked Emperor: Wish you were here.