Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category

On this day in 1974, “Sunshine on my Shoulders” hit #1 for John Denver. The one thing I liked the most about John Denver was the pure honesty in his music and the fact that I never saw him trying to sell merchandise like clothing brands, colognes, or wii accessories. Of course the Wii wasn’t around back then, but if it was, we wouldn’t have seen him trying to sell them.

On this day in 1975, on ‘All in the Family’, Mike and Gloria had a baby. That was classic television. Classic I tell ya!

Rob Reiner always made me think of an rv repair person or something. I don’t know why but I could never take most of his acting seriously. He did play a meathead real good though.

Here’s a blast from the past for you…

On this day in 1973, Donny Osmond received a gold record for his hit, “Too Young”.

Sometimes I am so ashamed to admit I grew up in of the ’70’s.

On this day in 1957, Leave It To Beaver debuted on CBS.

On this day in 1966, The Monkees debuted on NBC.

I love The Monkees. I don’t care if they could sing or not. I could care less if they could act or not. The Monkees were fun, and they still are. They represent something people in America are losing, and that’s the ability to make fun of themselves and just enjoy some things for what they are.

On this second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, please take a moment to remember the victims. More than 1.1 million volunteers have responded to help but more are still needed, and many homes have still not been rebuilt.

Oh sure, everyone knows about the “refugees” of Hurricane Katrina, and many of us, myself included, have our own horror stories about “non-victims” who attempted to take advantage of the system or even demanded that people “take care of them”. But I am not concerned with those people now, as they have disappeared back into the slimy little holes they crawled out of. The people I am concerned about are the real victims of Katrina. The people who took all the proper precautions and fled when they knew the storm was bearing down on them.

Since the day of the disaster, Americans have donated over 14 million hours of volunteer service to help rebuild New Orleans and the other affected areas. This has been the single biggest volunteer response to a disaster in our nation’s history, but there are still many jobs to be done, lots of work to be completed, and many people who still cannot return to their homes.

Several people I know had homes in the affected areas, and luckily most of them have been able to return or have settled elsewhere around the country, but let’s take a moment out of our day and do what we can to help. Heck, I’m not asking you to volunteer, or even donate money, I’m simply asking you to help raise awareness so others will remember as well.

When we moved into our house, we originally put out big screen television in the basement, and converted one room into a movie room. It was awesome. The only thing it was missing was home theater seating. Since then, we’ve moved the tv back upstairs and the movie room is no more. I sure wish we had kept it all down there, then I could sneak away to watch a movie from time to time.

Earlier today my wife discovered talkr.com.

Talkr.com is a free service which takes your text based blog and creates an audio podcast feed so visitors can listen to your posts rather than read them.

Each post on this site will have a link to listen to the post, and I will be adding a subscribe button in the sidebar as I get time.

For now, you can subscribe to the audio feed with this link (subscribe)

Pretty cool stuff if you ask me.

 
There are an estimated 170,000 people in the United States and Europe who are in need of organs. Many of them face a very dark future and may die if they don’t receive the organs they so desperately need. Over 70,000 people in the United States alone are waiting for kidneys and deceased organ donations are not keeping pace with the demand.

There is a growing need for live donations, and Matching Donors is working to fulfill that need. Matching Donors helps match those willing to donate an organ with those who are so desperately waiting to receive one.

Living donors can safely donate a single kidney, part of their liver, a single lung lobe (out of the five they have), and portions of their pancreas, bone marrow and instestines.

Take a moment out of your day to visit Matching Donors and learn about live organ donation.

When I first started blogging, over ten years ago, I never thought I would make money by simply writing about the things that interest me. Sure, I have run a few ads in the sidebars here on RetroMental for over a year now, but I never made more than 21 cents per month on those ads.

I thought it would be nice if I could make enough money so this blog would be self-sufficient. Then along came Smorty. Smorty is a blog for money program that allows me to get paid for blogging about the things I would be blogging about anyway, by simply placing a link back to a sponsor site within my posts.

The link above is just such a link. It’s hardly intrusive in any way. By joining Smorty I am able to reduce the number of ads in the sidebars (since they weren’t making any money anyway) and still make a small income from blog advertising.

Smorty connects advertisers with bloggers and allows bloggers to keep doing what they have always been doing, while making some money on the side. Now I might be able to afford that subscription to Reminisce magazine I have been wanting.