Amazon Fire TV Stick

This month, I cut the cord, cancelled my Spectrum cable TV service, and switched to YouTube TV, which meant I needed a way to watch YTTV on, well, my TVs! There’s a dizzying array of devices for the cord-cutter (Roku, Apple TV, smart TV apps, and more), but since I’m already an Amazon Prime subscriber, …

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A New Orleans Tricentennial Celebration with Harry Connick, Jr.

My wife and I last saw Harry Connick, Jr. when he came through Clearwater on his “Your Songs” tour back in 2010. Back in March he announced a short tour in June to celebrate the New Orleans Tricentennial. Clearwater was lucky to have two dates on the tour so I of course got us tickets to …

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Amazon Echo

For Father’s Day I got an Amazon Echo, Amazon’s voice-activated smart home speaker. You may know it (her?) as Alexa. If you’ve followed the blog, or even just glanced at it, you know I love tech gadgets and am also no stranger to dabbling in home automation so the Echo has been a fun toy to play …

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Alton Brown Live! The Edible Inevitable Tour

My apologies to Alton Brown … apparently I am cursed when it comes to attending his live shows. Back in 2009 I went to the “Good Eats Turns 10” live show in Atlanta. In that show was a trivia segment that had (pre-selected) people from the audience come up on stage. One of the participants …

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WIJFR: Year Zero

Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it’s a prank, not an alien encounter, when a redheaded mullah and a curvaceous nun show up at his office. But Frampton and Carly are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on American pop songs ever since “Year Zero” (1977 …

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GoalZero Rock Out portable speaker

The GoalZero Rock Out portable rechargeable speaker, which I received as a recent birthday present, is the latest addition to my solar-chargeable gadget collection. The Rock Out unzips around its edges (like a suitcase) to reveal the on/off switch, mini-USB port for charging, audio input jack, and audio output cable. The other half contains a mesh pocket …

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You kids and your music these days

Driving home with my daughter the other day I was “forced” to listen to 101.5, her current favorite radio station. I really don’t listen to the radio anymore (not since getting my first MP3 player in 2002 and then switching to the iPod in 2006 and discovering podcasts) but she’s at that tweener stage where listening to …

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They’re creepy and they’re kooky …

This afternoon we caught a matinee showing of the just-started US tour of “The Addams Family” musical at the Straz Center. It was an enjoyable, funny show and our whole family had a good time watching the antics of the Addamses and the Beinekes. I didn’t find the music/songs to be as earworm-worthy as those …

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