Life, the Universe and Everything

So here's a new blog. Just what the world needs, right?

And the title is not exactly original. I ripped it off from a Douglas Adams book, but the title encompasses a small fraction of the stuff I hope to talk about here.

I've been blogging since 2003, starting at AOL Journals with "Progressive Musings: Partisan Ravings in a 'Fair and Balanced' World," which was a liberal political thingy as you might surmise from the title. I first came to Blogspot in 2004 with "sotto voce USA," which was mainly a political journal at first. I then began writing about politics with a very talented group of people at The Blue Voice. I've added a couple of other journals over the years, dealing with photography, the Civil War, and sports. You can expect to see those topics and others here. It is my plan to consolidate all my other blogs into this blog. I'll be moving blog posts from the other blogs here, then deleting them from the original blogs. A lot of original, new material (I hope) will be mixed in.

Who am I? Just call me fdtate. I'm nobody in particular. I'm just an average guy with an average life. I live in a very small town which is literally right down the road from Chattanooga, Tennessee. I've lived in the metro Chattanooga area for most of my life. I have a wife, three grown kids, and a grandchild. I have a college education, but no degree. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I do have an associate degree in computer programming, but know just enough to make a minor computer problem a whole helluva lot worse. I'm a liberal who is counting the minutes and seconds until the reign of George W. Bush is over. But enough about me for now.

I hope you'll come by and sit a spell from time to time.