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Chilly Weather Brings Chili Weather

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Dropping temperatures around the Texas Coast this week have ushered in the return of several cold weather traditions.

The power lines are filled with hundreds of migrating birds each evening looking for a place to rest up for the night.

Locals are dressed like they are ready to catch a ski lift in their puffy jackets and fuzzy boots.

And I have a never ending craving for chili.

Now, in fairness around this part of Texas I am sure there are people for whom chili is an every week kind of meal.

After all, with so many chili cook offs to enter one would need to spend the entire year perfecting the recipe prior to the start of competition season.

When the craving for chili strikes there is a quick process for feeding the craving. Step one, purchase a can of chili. Photo R. Anderson
When the craving for chili strikes there is a quick process for feeding the craving. Step one, purchase a can of chili.
Photo R. Anderson

And with the start of various hunting seasons there are all sorts of exotic meat beyond cow that people can put in their Texas chili.

More power to those who have the year round urge for chili but for me the urge to eat chili coincides with falling leaves and falling temperatures.

Of course I can eat a chili dog or chili cheese fries year round but to sit down with an actual bowl of chili as the main course takes temperatures below 60 degrees.

Over the past few weeks I have sampled chili of all shapes and sizes but much like Goldilocks and her porridge I have not really found one that has been just right.

Growing up my mom made a certain chili which much like her special birthday meatloaf just always tasted good.

Add the fact that the chili was always served in bowls that had gold leaf accents, and it truly was a meal fit for a king.

A few weeks back I went over to my parents

Beyond

If a Twitter Joins the Stock Market Does it Make a Sound?

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The other day Twitter joined the ranks of companies that have gone before it in the tech sector and went public.

Yes, the company that introduced the world to #hashtags and retweeting has gone mainstream with an initial public offering (IPO) on the stock market.

Through the years tech companies have entered the stock market with a bang with some weathering the storm and becoming actual players in the market and others faltering and falling by the wayside.

It is of course too early to tell which one of those categories will best describe Twitter when all is said and done but history has definitely not always been kind to internet based companies.

With social media rather young in the grand scheme of things it is hard to put a price on how much owning a piece of the next great thing.

Thanks to Twitter I can now tell the world how I am feeling 140 characters at a time from my phone proving once again that technology fills voids that we did not even know we had. Photo R. Anderson
Thanks to Twitter I can now tell the world how I am feeling 140 characters at a time from my phone proving once again that technology fills voids that we did not even know we had.
Photo R. Anderson

For every tech sector home run like Amazon and PayPal there are the forgotten fads such as MySpace and pets.com.

But while the world waits to see what fate ultimately befalls Twitter investors scooped up all of the shares that they could and the founders of Twitter became billionaires on paper overnight based on the value of their stock.

This of course is not too shabby for a company that has never turned a profit and sees the world in 140 character installments.

A few months back we here at Triple B joined the world of Twitter (@TripleBBrand) because a) we often find ourselves talking in 140 character sentences during the day and we wanted to share them and b) #everyoneelsewasdoingit.

During our time on Twitter we have followed a few news sources and learned a few things but for the most part Twitter has not really grabbed and held our attention the way we thought it would. #muchtodoaboutnothing.

The world of Twitter has also brought the need for rampant in game updates by journalists. While this is meant to tease their stories I would much rather wait for a fully formed story than to be bombarded by in game updates such as “Sources tell us @Ferguson just ate a burger on the sideline, says he is ready to reenter game #Spartanfansrejoice.”

So the news of Twitter going public has us wondering if that means that Twitter will suddenly change in some way to make it more exciting or offer new features to rock our 140 character worlds.

Ironically, I can be far more verbose in the world of SMS messaging on my phone with 160 characters to play with in my messages as opposed to the 140 Twitter allows. #Twittergotschooledbyalexandergrahambell

The business model for Twitter appears to be making money through advertising on

Beyond

I Wanna Go Fast

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For as long as I can remember I have had a need for speed.

Of course as a reporter working on deadline speed is an essential job qualification.

In terms of breaking news there is the speed of needing to be first on the scene when the story is breaking to be able to interview all of the main subjects.

Once back in the office, speed is essential in order to get the story written by deadline to ensure that the story makes the next day

Beyond

The Skies are Alive with the Sound of Airplanes

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This past weekend the skies above my part of Texas were full of vintage airplanes as part of the annual Wings over Houston airshow.

The airshow, which takes place at Ellington Field Airport, allows visitors the chance to see planes up close and personal while thinking back to an age where air power involved actual pilots and crew risking their lives for freedom and not some pilotless drone or guided missile.

Nothing against pilotless drones and guided missiles but few can argue that the amount of sacrifice is the same compared to the risks taken by aviators of the past.

Airshows, such as Wings over Houston, allow visitors the chance to see planes from many eras of aviation in action. Photo R. Anderson
Airshows, such as Wings over Houston, allow visitors the chance to see planes from many eras of aviation in action.
Photo R. Anderson

I was given the opportunity to cover the

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Appearance Matters or What I Learned From

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Last week I went to the doctor for my annual physical.

Over the past few years the actual time spent seeing the doctor has decreased while the amount of time waiting in the lab area for the drawing of blood and the giving of urine has increased.

Now, I know that the urine and blood are the areas that give the doctor the most data in terms of how my internal organs are functioning so I don

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Favre Says No to Comeback Offer from Rams, World Shocked

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So far the NFL season has been one for the ages.

Whether it will be remembered as a good age or a bad age is still a matter of debate.

With a series of teams battling for the number one draft pick next season it seems that there is very little good to say about the play of a quarter of the teams in the league as the season nears the halfway point.

Currently 7 of the 32 teams in the NFL have won less than two games. Conversely only four teams have one loss or less showing a huge divide between the haves and the have nots.

Aside from being a season of poor play by a quarter of the league the 2013 NFL season has turned into a season of last quarterback standing with several teams already using their third or fourth quarterback of the year.

Some quarterbacks have been replaced by injury, while others have been replaced by poor play. One quarterback was even cut by one team for poor play and then injured the following week for an entirely different team.

With more openings for good quarterbacks than available good quarterbacks, teams have had to get creative with filling the vacancies.

Let me just say that with so many quarterback slots open I find it appalling that Tim Tebow is still unemployed with no team seeming to be willing to hire the former Heisman winner who happens to have more playoff victories for the Denver Broncos than Peyton Manning.

While no one has called to offer Tebow a job apparently a call was made to another, albeit slightly older, former Jets quarterback.

Brett Favre, shown here during an event for Snickers during Super Bowl XXXVIII made some people snicker when it was leaked that the St. Louis Rams were interested in the twice retired quarterback. For the record, Favre said no. Photo R. Anderson
Brett Favre, shown here during an event for Snickers during Super Bowl XXXVIII made some people snicker when it was leaked that the St. Louis Rams were interested in the twice retired quarterback. For the record, Favre said no.
Photo R. Anderson

I am of course talking about Brett Favre the man who seems to retire and unretire more times than Andy Pettitte.

If published reports are to be believed the St. Louis Rams reached out to Favre, who last played three seasons ago for the Minnesota Vikings, to see if he was interested in coming out of retirement once again to fill-in for Sam Bradford who is out for the year following a knee injury.

It should be noted that Favre

Observations from the cheap seats, the beach seats and everywhere in between