Mar 022012
 
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City Lights, France-Italy Border (NASA, Intern...

City Lights, France-Italy Border (NASA, International Space Station Science, 04/28/10) (Photo credit: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center)

By now, Ralph is winging his way over the ocean heading towards the land of canals and spaghetti, Italy.  He has his bags packed, his cell phones rented, and this blog pushed to the back of his mind where it will reside with many other undesirable things like pond scum.

A vacation.  Do you ever have a “vacation” that you come back from, rested, relaxed, and ready to return to work?  Yea me neither.  I am hoping that it will be different for Ralph.  See, he is just going with his wife to Italy.  We can only hope that he brings her back with him.  I guess it depends just how bad the flight actually is.  But that is another story.

Over the past year I do believe that I have grown complacent, letting Ralph and Bob, well mostly Ralph, have at this site and run with it.  Now It is back to me and the fine work that used to fly from my fingers.

Have a great Vacation Ralph, you deserve it. Continue reading »

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Feb 272012
 
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Another week of 2012 down the drain, February almost at an end, where is it all going?  Well Bob is off on his quest to be the go to guy for wordpress video blogging, and Ralph is getting ready to be either an Italian, or an American lost in Italy.  So that leaves me, riding a stumbling pony around the Cantankerous Old Coots stable.

So with all of the lack of discipline and lack of posts from me it will either be a ghost town of old promoted posts or I will get back into the good saddle and write like I used to when this whole blogging thing got going.

I am inspecting my girth strap as we speak.  Posts will be new and fresh, hopefully they will be interesting.

Continue reading »

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Jan 202012
 
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Originally posted 2011-04-15 11:21:08. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Chemical structure of Caffeine.

Image via Wikipedia

This post today represents the 199th post on Cantankerous Old Coots.  I thought we could take a peek back at the year that was and explore a bit about this site, and the snarky comment that started it all.

It is only appropriate that Ralph will have the 200th post on the Coots.  Not only has he posted the most on this site, it was his comment over on my blog Catharsis of the Bogue that started all of this madness.  It was March 22nd of last year that I started this site.  On the 23rd I wrote the following post:

Well folks I did something very impulsive last night. I was sitting here trying to come up with some topic to write on. I am tired and only partially fueled by caffeine. My wife said I had that “look” and tonight’s post would be a doozy. She has seen the writing frenzy that exhaustion and caffeine has wrought.
The problem was this. Carlos sucked all of the ideas out of me during the PreWriting Challenge! Ok not really but it has been a day of writers block for post titles. I have a couple of story ideas though. I had a thought this morning after taking the kids to school that I hope I was not running dry of ideas. I am almost at my 3 month mark and ready to push past it.
I know there are more ideas, I just either need more sleep or more caffeine to make them flow. Or some good inspiration. I went and read some blogs, left some comments and tweeted a bit. After that I went back to look at my comments just hoping there was something there.
And there was! My internet buddy and purveyor of many life experiences Ralph(http://ralphcarlsonblog.com/) had left a comment. The discussion was about niches, and fitting in, when Ralph says,
“I am not sure that there is any market for cantankerous old coots but if there were, I’d claim it.”
I laughed and replied that I would sign up for the RSS feed of that. I didn’t think much more about it until Dave Doolin pipes up with his sage advice to go claim it. So I did. Coming in the next week or so, I will have a bunch of work with another blog at www.cantankerousoldcoots.com.
I think I am going to fill the blog with the wisdom and rants of those older than me, even though I am getting up there myself. I hope to get Ralph to fill the first guest post with something profound, and later Dave with something that would be totally inappropriate on his site.
I need to create a badge….crossed Preparation H and Ben Gay over a grouchy old guy’s face…. Our motto could be “Whatever” and our niche is “Advice for life from old coots.” We of course would have to adopt a Red Green type lodge… Hmmmm there are many possibilities. I would love to hear suggestions. We would have bylaws too…if you are under 40 you need to have an old coot persona or you can’t be published. Only rants on things that were better in the past could be posted. Any bowel problems are better off on your own site unless they have a really funny punchline and a cute nurse involved.
Wow I must be tired. This is going to be huge amounts of fun. Let me know what you think in the comments and sign up for my newsletter, I will keep updates in that as well!
Thanks for reading!
-Justin

And now here we are 200 posts, 6 authors and 134,000 words published.  It has been a good year.  If you are new to this blog, thanks for coming!  Sign up for our newsletter and get the first Coots e-book from Cantankerous Old Coots University.  If you are one of our long time readers, thanks for sticking around and boosting our numbers!  If you have never commented, now is a good time to do so!  If you feel feverish, head on over to one of the Coots other blogs: Ralph’s, Bob’s or mine.

Continue reading »

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Dec 182011
 
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Originally posted 2010-09-13 11:53:28. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Good Monday Folks!  Well the time is upon us, fall.  Kids everywhere are headed back to school in droves, from elementary students to college students.

We here at Cantankerous Old Coots are following suit in a way.  We are opening the Cantankerous Old Coots University! Yes today brings in a whole new era in the pursuit of Cantankerosity.

The Coots University will be your ultimate source for all things Cantankerous.  Forums to discuss cantankerosity and lessons to bring out your inner coot will be paramount.

Today We release the first set of lessons in how to be a Cantankerous Old Coot in the finest of PDF EBooks.  This set of lessons is absolutely free for the time being when you sign up for our mailing list.  Plus anyone who signs up for said mailing list between now and Labor Day (September 6) and the first day of Autumn, September 23, will be on a list to receive special discounts on tuition as well as other goodies as they come along.

Our first set of subscribers is very special.  Become one of the students at Cantankerous Old Coots University today and you will be well on your way to becoming part of the faculty.

Continue reading »

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

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Nov 182011
 
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We are Cantankerous, that is established.  For some reason, when we start talking about Coots, Zemanta (a groovy little plugin that helps you add pictures to your posts) brings up this:

Common Coots

Image via Wikipedia

These are Coots.  Worse they are common coots.  At this site, we strive to be way beyond common.  Typing “Coots” into Google gives you 10 different sites with definitions of the birds.  Finally at number 11 is our site, the Cantankerous Old Coots.com.  Not too bad, but we are ever striving to get that higher.  As our Alexa rank rises alongside the readership of this site, Google can’t help but put us above some mangy waterfowl.

I would like to start typing Coots in this blog and wait for Zemanta to bring up these pictures:

 or even  or heaven forbid

Continue reading »

Justin

Justin is the young Coot with a Cantankerous Soul who continues to be educated by older, more cootish Ralph and Bob. His Cantankerosity is his own.

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

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