On this date in 1854 Sherlock Holmes was born.
One of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous characters, Sherlock Holmes was a “London-based consulting detective whose abilities border on the fantastic.” Mr. Holmes was famous for his logic, reasoning, and forensic science skills.
All but four of the Sherlock Holmes stories were narrated by Dr. John Watson; of the four that weren’t, two were narrated by Holmes, and two were written in the third person.
This wasn’t a recent milestone. On one of the 25 operating Ford assembly lines, sometime during the day, the one millionth Ford Model T rolled out of the factory and into the light in 1915.
For NaNoWriMo this year, I tried an experiment. Normally I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking coupled with Scrivener and LibreOffice.
This year, I used Notes, Scrivener, Dragon, and Siri on my iPad and iPhone. I dictated virtually the entire work, sometimes when I was sitting in traffic, or out hiking, sometimes at home, or just wherever (“wherever” includes waiting on annoyingly late dates to show up. I’ve decided that waiting for someone who doesn’t have the respect to show up within 15 minutes of the date isn’t worth waiting for. No matter how big her boobies are).
My work schedule has been: get up early, dictate while I hike (watching out for coyotes – they’re out in force). Get back home, pick up my computer, head over to get coffee, and spend the hour there organizing everything I’d saved in Notes into Scrivener. Then organizing the Scrivener bits into something reasonably coherent.
I’ve been working roughly 4 hours a day on this project just to see if I’m more productive by using ‘gap time’ (the time between locations, assignments, waiting for the microwave to ding, drive-time, waiting for clients or dates, and down time throughout the rest of the workday). It isn’t dedication, it’s a science experiment.
San Bernardino County’s Devore and Big Bear animal shelters will provide 5,000 animals with microchips at no cost to families.
The michrochips are part of a $36,079 donation from the Animals aRe First Fund, ARFF, a nonprofit organization that supports the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, Animal Care and Control (ACC) Program.
Microchips offer a safe method to identify an animal’s owner by using a unique identification number assigned to the implanted microchip. Through this service, the ACC Program can assist in the reunification of lost pets that may otherwise be impounded at animal shelters.
The Big Bear Animal Shelter will use their share of the funding to provide thousands of animals with microchips at no cost to pets passing through the shelter.
To support a homeless animal this holiday season, please visit ARFF’s website HERE.
On this day, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address to a deeply divided country. It wasn’t a long speech – 278 words, total – but it continues to be one of the most enduring.
Not once does the President use “I” or a teleprompter. He doesn’t come to divide the country based on the color of skin. He comes to unify. He uses the word “we” over and over again to talk about a unified country. Both the idiot who occupies the White House and all elected members of Congress could learn quite a bit from this speech and this man.
Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and his ideas weren’t popular; liberals didn’t want to end slavery. They were fighting and dying to save their way of life. Republicans were a new party, and didn’t garner much favor in the south. In fact, it was specifically because of the Republican party that liberals created the Ku Klux Klan. Liberalism was then, and continues to be today, the most divisive and un-American ideal that was errantly imported to this great country.
The country has drifted far from where it was in 1863. Liberalism continues to be a disease that spreads hate among the uneducated, and continues to insist on dividing people based on race, creed, color, religion, and sexual preference. Once liberalism and all of it’s vitriol is removed from the landscape, we can have peace, unity, harmony, and a nation based on the belief that all men are, truly, created equal.
