Recently in General Category

Ever wonder where the once-sleepy, now-burgeoning little Texas town known as "Cibolo" came from? The Handbook of Texas Online, maintained by the Texas State Historical Association, provides an interesting perspective on its history:

Cibolo is on Farm Road 78 and Cibolo Creek, sixteen miles west of Seguin in western Guadalupe County. Cíbolo is Spanish for "buffalo." The banks of Cibolo Creek are quite steep, and along its entire course, which is the boundary between Guadalupe and Bexar counties, there are few places where pioneers could find a safe crossing before the development of bridges. It is said that Indians stampeded buffalo over the banks to disable them so they could be slaughtered. Jacob Schlather bought land in the area in 1867, and his son George built a store to supply neighboring settlers, who were mostly German. The store was sold to Charles Fromme in 1882, and the settlement became known as Fromme's Store. When the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway built through the area in 1877 the station was called Cibolo Valley. A post office called Cibolo opened in 1883. By 1890 the community had a church, a cotton gin, a general store, and 100 residents.

In today's article, "Atkins cheer for beef and beer," BBC News reports that, while many formerly unassailable giants of the U.S. food industry are floundering through the market changes created by the Atkins diet revolution, others are having their businesses fueled and fortunes stockpiled:

Brewing giant SAB Miller and the US beef industry have both credited Atkins for sharp turnaround in their fortunes. SABMiller said surging sales of its low-carb Miller Lite beer had helped lift annual profits by nearly 50%. And in the US, beef barons said Atkins had contributed to a 10% rise in beef prices this year.

Whoever could have imagined life at such a rapid pace? Having just returned from a family vacation in the north country of New Hampshire, my spare time is now being gobbled up with painting and preparations in our new home, so that we can finish our afore-mentioned "half-a-move" this weekend. Until then, I am alive, but blogging not.

Not particularly eager to have your blog showing up on search engines? Are you living in fear that a potential client's decision-making process will be impacted by your latest, less-than-flattering post? Well then, you ought to be primed for this "helpful tech tip of the day." To solve your dilemma, place a robots.txt file in the root directory of your site and provide instructions therein for visiting search engine "spiders." For example, the following contents would prevent most spiders from indexing your site:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Or, the following code would block indexing of only the "blog" subdirectory.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog/

More information on guiding the activities of cooperative search engines can be found at the Web Robots Page or on Google.

If you happen to use Serence KlipFolio for your PC-based news aggregation needs, you are welcome to utilize this klip file to monitor updates on my blog.

Taking the cue from a number of good friends, I have decided to launch a personal Web log. With an estimated three million active blogs being maintained in the United States (according to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project), will the humble blog fade in the manner of passing Internet fads? Or does it mark another chapter in the maturing process of a gradual, but nevertheless radical, redefinition of our culture of communication, so predominantly unilateral for the past century? I will venture to say that the latter is destined to be the case, and so much the better to participate in the process.

It is my hope to occasionally post my musings on miscellaneous topics, including interesting life happenings, books I am reading, music I am listening to, technologies with which I am fascinated, and issues over which I simply need to vent. My warm welcome to all who chance to visit this page.

Soli Deo Gloria