Jack Manassas and Company

1 August 2016  – The Bell Ringers Last night, we had another visit from the bell ringers.  These are two young men that have been making the rounds of the neighborhood, ringing doorbells late at night.  On 7/31, they rang the doorbell once at 10:15 PM.  I saw them running down the street about 15 minutes later.  They returned and rang our doorbell again several times at 0:45 in the morning. I suspected they would be back again tonight.  So by secret means known only to the Boy Scouts, I managed to surprise them as they were sneaking up to the front door to ring it again, at 10:11 tonight. Because I happened to have my camera with me, I took several pictures of them as they ran away, and continued to take pictures of one of them as we ran down the street. “What the hell?” he said as I continued to take pictures of him. “What the hell?  What the HELL?” I yelled at him as he ran up the hill.  “What the hell are you doing, ringing doorbells ...

October 25, 2015, Sunday After breakfast, we crossed to Pacific time and readjusted our clocks. We stopped in Wallace Idaho, site of the Big Burn, a huge wildfire that consumed millions of acres of forest land in Idaho, in 1910. We ate at the Silver Grill and Bar, then went across the street to Tabor's Emporium. This is a gigantic consignment shop. Apparently, when old people die in town, their relatives clear everything out of the house and put them on sale at Tabor's Emporium. For $26.45, we found and bought what appears to be an actual Toltec mask. This is a ceramic mask with the Toltec helmet and one cheek puffed out as if chewing coca leaves, and a lizard on the forehead. Someone clumsily drilled a couple of holes on either side of the mask and threaded wire through them so that it could be hung on a wall. The mask contains no maker's mark. It has what appears to be very old dirt in the nose holes. As soon as we can, we will have the mask assess...

How to Remove an embarrassing image from Google Suppose you do something stupid, like getting an embarrassing picture taken of yourself at a party. Suppose that the picture gets posted to a website, and that it comes up at the top of the images page when your name is googled on google images-- How do you get rid of the picture? 1. Contact the website to have the webmaster remove the image. If clicking the embarrassing picture gets you to a website, Google will not remove the picture. First, you have to get the website that hosts the picture to remove it. Fortunately, this is usually not too difficult. The webmaster of the site will often remove the picture if asked nicely. Hosting companies are sensitive to bad publicity, especially if there is even a hint of libel, and many picture-hosting sites have a link to request removal of the image. After the host removes the image, it could still show up on the google search. After removal, clicking...