The Royce Files

 This month celebrates a decade in the Go for me. And likewise it is also the 10 year anniversary of Harvest Community Church- one the big reasons I found my way up here. Let me recount the early days of my time here and especially related to this church I aided in starting. Things were not going well in the Twin Cities where I worked- they could not afford to keep me on board. Well that opened a few possibilities. I accepted the invitation to join a group of U of M Morris grads in pioneering a new church in Fargo, North Dakota. I took a summer training course in Morris and then moved up to Fargo- with no job and little money. I was pretty distressed and took up running. The first meeting of the church was in an apartment a few blocks away from where I now work. I eventually ended up living in the apartment but that was after the church changed locales- first to NDSU then to the basement of the Black Building . Harvest stayed in the Black Building spot for a few years. It was...

Now another installment of my look at ugly online ads that are on the 'nets. Now that campaign season is underway anything that attractions the disgruntled citizen is sure to be fair game. And official Obama ads are cropping up right next to the ugly ones. Albeit the real Obama ads are fairly clean cut stuff usually tempting the viewer by asking them to "join the team" or "Obama needs your help." For some reason the opposing candidates don't get into that stuff. Perhaps if Tim Pawlenty begged for help in an online ad he would not have returned home sad and morose. Well, here is an interesting riff on one we saw not too long ago. It is the super hero first lady but not she has become even more super by having a rotating light on her noggin. It must have been the illustrator's day off at the ad agency. Joe decided he knew how to make another ad by using his photoshop skills. Viola! Emergency Super First Lady. And all it required was a few clicks....

The Blue Angels were in town this weekend but leading up to their performance at the Fargo Air Show they practiced in the skies above. They screeched over my workplace numerous times. I actually had a pretty good view from my upper windows. It was hard to photograph a decent show since they zoomed by with lightning speed. But let me tell you, they came pretty close. It seemed we could hit them with a rock if they were not moving so fast.

Today we will miss one more cat. Sweetie, an appreciative feline, who battled on despite he fading health will be well remember not only for age - she was nearing 20 years - but for being a fixture amongst our community.  Sweetie kept us entertained with her antics especially when it came to computers.  Even though popular by most people's standards, Sweetie shunned further popularizing her fame. She had no phone nor blog, and posted no tweets or Facebook status updates but instead left us with a myriad of memories and experiences. I guess if she did have Twitter it would probably say- "Hungry, need food!" most of the time. Sweetie would have had tons of friends on Facebook. And her blog would probably be about gourmet cat food and Catherine's room mates. Today I memorialize Sweetie who lived all 9 lives to the fullest and made life just a bit more bearable for many. Through many close calls this past year we stuck near you and you made it through. Now I...

An now another exciting installment of Ugly Online Ads. In our last post we were seeing the Obamavertment making a comeback and the old also getting more ads. Well we got a little more of that and then some. Our first is a scary looking lady. I think this was used to sell a miracle wrinkle cream or perhaps a sleep reducing program. I think it may do better as an advertisement for a Star Trek convention. The make-up job on this lady reminds me of some alien that Captain Kirk romanced. Next we got an old guy and an ad invoking the powers of the chief executive of the United States. The thing about this ad that I can't capture for this blog is when you hover over it the old guy begins to turn into a line drawn version. Makes it rather eery and odd further creating the disconnection to the object of the advertisement but drawing us to the ad because of its sheer weirdness.   Our final ad a friend brought to my attention last week. It was on Yahoo for a day or so and I haven't s...