Here I tell you a bit about why I blog and the things I like to write about. I’m not very good at story telling but I’m good at describing stuff. So that’s what I try to do.
What We Blog About
When I started this blog, I did so with the intent of making it easy for my extended family to keep up with me. My extended family is large and scattered. And most weren’t interested.
Now we write about stuff that interests me, usually greyhounds, photography, audio, home computing infrastructure, and music.
Occasionally, I will try to write about civics, economics, and community but usually from the engineers perspective that these are emergent properties of complex large-scale systems that can be spoken about objectively rather than tribally.
I try to describe the stuff we use here at Dismal Manor and Camp Dismal, and how we interact with our rescue dogs. Greyhounds are wonderful critters but need to learn all the stuff they would have learned as companion puppies. Teaching takes some knowledge and patience and one must remember that they are physically adult but still a bit puppy (saplings in the greyhound community).
Retired Moocher?
Mitt Romney, running for president, dissed all of the retirees, calling us no load moochers because, well we didn’t have jobs and were obviously lay-about eaters of bon bons.
Dismal Manor?
One of my ongoing amusements is to portray the current greyhounds in dog Twitter. Yes, that is a thing. Dogs have their accounts and handles and write about what they have been up to from their point of view. The rules are
- Be nice or keep quiet
- Have fun
- Stay in character (mostly)
Dog Twitter is a friendly place where we make fun of ourselves and our “masters”. Dismal Manor takes its name from the Dismal Swamp occupying the southern parts of Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. It is inspired by Fircombe Hall, a mythical household in the London Suburbs and the current residents @BonesNorah and @BarkButton (Donnie Darko, more properly). Tweedy Man and Tena Lady are heads of household (they think) and there are offspring Lurch, Dwarf, and Elf.
What We Twitter About
Dismal Manor inhabitants include Rocky Fancy Pants (@NickGreyhound1), Red Queen Missy (@MissyGreyhound), and the Dismal Wizard (@dlhamby, totally boring), a retired and recovering software engineer. We are members of ZombieSquadHQ or #ZSHQ for short. The dogs patrol the lounge, garden, and environs where we run into various actual and mythical critters like this friend of Big Bird on exhibit at Norfolk Botanical Garden (@NorfolkBotanic), yes the west latitude Norfolk.
Dismal Manor Dispatches 