FYI: My power is out again.

Some rough weather came through the neighborhood yesterday afternoon. About 15 miles up the road, several trees and some traffic lights were downed. We thought we got through unscathed,, but no sooner had the sun gone down then the power went out. As I type this on my phone at midnight, it's been out for three hours. Georgia Power tells me a tree fell on our lines. Current estimated time of restoration is four hours from now.

This is the second extended outage this summer. It happened back on June during the day. At least at night I don't miss the air conditioning.

What's so wrong with my neighborhood that this sort of extended blackout happens at least twice a year? Isn't there a long term solution to this? I bet data centers don't have this problem.

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They say I complain about everything. They might be right. I'm a pretty sour individual who's no fun at parties. But tonight I have a new reason to gripe:

For most of the past two decades, I've made a point of turning on WXIA-TV at 11:30PM on Sunday nights to watch their weekly Sports Extra recap of Georgia sports. On tonight's episode, host Maria Martin announced the show has been canceled to make way for a longer regular newscast.

What terrible timing. Football season is finally just around the corner! I was anticipating another delightful season of watching each weekly Atlanta Falcons meltdown slowly grind Maria and company's determined optimism into a more appropriate pessimistic fatalism. It's the annual rite of passage in Atlanta sports!

I'm sure that WXIA has its reasons for making the change. At least it had The Pandemic to blame when it canceled Wake Up with Chesley in 2022. (For about a decade, it was the show I watched while getting ready for bed.) Television shows come and go, of course, and they keep telling me that no one watches late night television anymore. They might be right, but it still sounds like self-fulfilling prophecy when the networks are the ones canceling all the content that's worth watching. All I can say for certain is that I'll not be making the same weekly effort to watch an extra thirty minutes of "if it bleeds it leads" local news.

Such is life, sadly. Everything you love abandons you eventually, if you don't leave it first. Which perfectly summarizes a season of Atlanta Falcons football. I found my way to Sports Extra once upon a time. I can only assume I'll eventually find my way to another source of weekly local sports coverage. Turn, turn, turn.

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75/2645. Stolen Face (1952)
A mad scientist gives the face of the woman he loves but can't have to a criminal whom he marries and tries to reform. It does not go well. The ending feels very unearned.

76/2646. The Eagle-Shooting Heroes (1993)
A bit like Airplane! for martial arts movies, the further it leans into the absurd the better it is.

77/2647. Stand By for Action (1942)
This war film thinks its a drama, but it's really a comedy. Amazingly, it crams every Hollywood naval cliche into one film.

78/2648. Texas Carnival (1951)
The setting and plot of this Red Skelton musical farce doesn't really have much to do with carnivals, but I think that's pretty standard for most Red Skelton films in which the "plot" is just a loose framework for typical Skelton shenanigans. I thought all the best bits were performed by others (Ann Miller, Ester Williams, Howard Keel, Keenan Wynn).

79/2649. The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Not to be confused with The Hitcher, this one is about a hitchhiker who is really a gleeful murderer who seeks to torture the driver. What's that you say? Still confused? This is the one directed by Ida Lupino.

More to come.

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"I hope you two learned to be more careful around dangerous bottles!"

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I've lived in Coweta County for 24 of the past 36 years, and this is the first time I've seen something like this:

Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2026 21:28:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Coweta County EMA
Reply-To: Coweta County EMA
Subject: Coweta County Public Safety Alert
Coweta County Public Safety Alert: Black bear reported near Oak Shores Dr in Summer Grove. Secure pets, avoid the area, and do not approach the bear.

Bears? Roaming the subdivisions of Coweta County? It seems the deer have new allies in their Great Uprising, and there can be only one reason for this: they've come for our data centers.

Well, they can have 'em.

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