Carve A Cool Jack-O-Lantern This Year - It's easier than you think!

I always wanted to have a go at making a jack-o-lantern with a fancy pattern.  J was old enough to enjoy it this year so we gave it a try.  Turned out pretty well (see pic above), it wasn't as tough as I thought it would be and there’s still time for you to do the same this year!

Introduce The Kids To Classical Music With These High Energy Baroque Tunes!

sillyDaddy loves him some Baroque!

J and D throw a nightly dance party in the living room and they love to bust out moves to either classic rock, childrens' tunes or, you guessed it, fast paced Baroque.

Early Baroque Hottie

In sillyDaddy's humble opinion the Baroque and Classical are two of the most enjoyable of all the musical periods.  Sure, they all have good stuff to offer but generally I find the Renaissance/Medieval periods and earlier to be a bit too druid; the Romantic and later - a bit too schmaltzy.

Listening to baroque even produces a documented mood enhancing benefit.  Granted, you have to occasionally suffer a little harpsichord but hey, it's all good.

Tip: choose "allegro" movements which have lots of energy if you want your kids to dig it.

Don't know where to start?  sillyDaddy can help...

Re-purpose Baby Food Jars To Store Your Miscellaneous Hardware (And prevent archeologists from finding your skeletonized remains)

As a boy, I always loved going into my uncle's workshop.  His father built (and I mean "built" literally) the home where my cousins were raised and where he and my aunt still live.  His workshop contains equipment accumulated over two generations and his work bench shelves are lined with jars filled with hundreds of random pieces of hardware.

There's something really nice about looking around that shop and thinking about how the equipment and hardware has been used and about all of the projects and all of the problem solving that's gone on there.

I wanted to recreate some of that same feeling in my much smaller shop.  I don't have a lot of equipment but I do have a growing collection of miscellaneous, loosely organized hardware.  To make my shop extra cozy, I decided to use some of J and D's very first baby food jars to store my odds and ends.

I was sharing my idea with my grandmother and she suggested I mount the jars to the bottom of each shelf to free up all the space below.  Hey, I guess they're right; senior citizens, although slow and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose*.

Here's how to do it:

Get The One Free Program I Download For All My Relatives

CCleaner is a program that deletes all kinds of stuff that bloats your computer and makes it run slower.

I've used this absolutely FREE application for over a year and I've installed it whenever a family member has asked me to work on their pc.

This application helps to optimize your system and protect your privacy by deleting all kinds of third party applications, browsing history and unwanted cookies and it cleans up your registry files.

You can set it, as I do, to run when you start up your computer.

The download is easy and it's FREE!

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Grid Of Life - stay on the grid if you want to live!

[UPDATE: The Grid O' Life has been updated with some new information.  Bad news for folic acid and coffee lovers (in fact I'm pretty sure that if you wash down your folic acid with coffee your pancreas will explode).  Good news for Vit D.]

I've tracked medical journal articles related to a bunch of key health topics for the last couple years.

The articles were interesting but I wanted to connect all the dots so I could really begin to use the information - especially considering sillyDaddy's age and the pesky linear nature of time.  I also thought it would be a cool thing to share with family and friends.

So I spent some time recently putting the findings into a simple grid to make the info a bit easier to consume (click on the image below).

No, it's not an all encompassing list.  It's a compilation taken from the legit journal articles I've read over the last couple of years.

A green cell indicates a positive effect.

If something catches your eye I recommend you go to ScienceDaily and conduct a search to read the associated reports.  ScienceDaily pulls the latest articles from a range of journals from across the world.

BTW Dad, if your doctor recommends statins for your high cholesterol, RUN!

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