Best wishes to you and yours for today, the rest of the year, and into the new year. Please stay safe. Enjoy the little moments, and indulge a little too. Thank you for visiting B&P; whether you simply browse through, comment, or contribute. Our fun, little family wouldn’t be complete without YOU 🙂
Hey friends – we have some Bits & Pieces merch to clear out.
Thanks for your jokes! We’ll be contacting the winners and sending out merch soon 🙂
Jon (Jonco), 73, died December 28, 2021.
He was the son of the late Benjamin and Ruth. He was preceded in death by his nieces; Melissa and Renee, and his grandbaby Samantha. He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Pat, son Dave (Staci), daughter Kris (Seth), brother Paul (Janis) sister-in-law Gail (Mike), as well as his grandchildren; Renly (Melanie), Seth (Sarah), Vince (Mady), and Logan (Joe). He was also loved by many nieces, nephews, cousins, extended family, friends, and more.
Jon and wife, Pat, owned a series of small grocery stores in St. Louis City for 40 years. He always had a passion for computers and any sort of tech, and upgrading to the latest and greatest. He was a people person and loved communicating, from starting his own newspaper as a child to building web-sites, to writing blogs that are viewed worldwide. He was a loyal, long-time member of the Brotherhood of Gluttons and loved getting together with his Glutton friends. He was a father figure and mentor to many – always willing to lend an ear and give the most open-minded advice he could, even if it wasn’t what you wanted or expected. He loved his dog, Buster. He especially loved getting together with family and playing games.
He and Pat visited 48 states together, most notably an Alaska cruise for their 50th anniversary. He loved all things to do with St. Louis, and they had many dates there. He was a modern-day explorer – searching and scouring the web for entertaining bits and pieces to share with his thousands of blog followers. He celebrated talent in all forms. He was extremely creative, smart, witty, and loved being behind a camera or microphone. He was a story teller, a eulogy giver, a trivia master, a foster parent, a pro shopper, a videographer, a movie lover and movie maker, a magic enthusiast, an Elvis fan, a dinner group member, a photo-bomber, a drone pilot, an athletic supporter, a teacher, a learner, an inventor, a thinker and a consumer of all parts of life. He loved adventure; flying, skydiving, hot air balloon riding, scuba diving, motorcycling, and driving his Tesla. Above all, he was a humorist – he looked for the funny in everyday life.
His list of life advice for others (in his own words): “Find things to laugh about. Spend time with family and friends. Don’t let someone ruin your day. Treat people the way you want to be treated. How you react to things that happen in life is much more important than the things that happen. Practice random acts of kindness. Pay for someone’s meal at a restaurant drive-thru. Remember that you’re not always right and they’re not always wrong; people say things from their own perspective.”
Jon supported many causes and especially those causes that were important to his friends and family, so in that regard – any donations should be directed to your local charity of choice.
On September 30, 2011, just over a decade ago, “Going to Pot” the first Friday Firesmith appeared. I was guided to “Bits and Pieces” by a friend of mine who read it first thing every morning, to set the mood of the day, and I had been around for a while before I became part of the activity.
The first time Jon and I traded emails I had written him to say thanks for the site. I knew how much work went into making something like that happen, and he replied that he enjoyed it, and we talked about the process of what he posted and why. Jon was one of the very few personalities who were actually who they appeared to be. I had lunch with Jon and his wife many years ago, as they were traveling through the state. Both Jon and his wife seemed to ease into a conversation with anyone, warm, friendly, pleasant to be around, nice to waitstaff, and full of stories of being on the road, in one manner or another. We always talked about doing it again, and had not the plague reared its ugly head, I would have made it to Vegas.
Most of you who have been around for a long time remember the puppy I found back in 2009. He wasn’t in as bad shape as he might have been for a stray, but Lucas became my dog, and as a Weimaraner, Lucas was photogenic and beautiful. Full of life, and sometimes full of mischief, Lucas was fun to write about. In October of 2013, I found a lump on Lucas’ on the gum his right canine tooth. The first vet I went to see told me it was cancer, and all we could do was go home and wait for Lucas to die. After a week of despair, I decided to go to another vet. He told they could operate, but it would take thousands of dollars, and it had to be upfront. I maxed out credit cards and wrote a large check. I was getting ready to sell my truck, refinance my house, and pick up a second job.
Jon called me. He had been following the story on my blog, and Jon said he wanted to launch a crowd fund from Bits and Pieces. To make a long story short, Jon saved my house, my truck, and from abject poverty. Jon, and many of the people who are reading this right now, donated money for Lucas the Loki Mutt, and for that I will always be grateful, more grateful than I will ever be able to express, and I will never forget it.
Jon introduced me to friends I might have never met. People I have met in person now. The crowd fund sent people to me I would never get to meet, but the house in which I’m writing this right now belongs to a woman I met through that effort, and that may yet to prove to be the most interesting story that comes of Jon’s efforts in my life.
Jon united people and created a world in which laughter was the currency, and off the wall videos and photos was the geography. Jon brought joy into the lives of people who needed it, and he created a community of friends. He was more than some random guy running a website, he was human, he was someone you could talk to, and he was my friend. I never argued with Jon if he wanted to edit out a post, or simply delete it. That happened once in ten years, and I didn’t blink an eye. Jon was a man I trusted. I trusted his vision and insight more than I trusted my own.
In my life, I’ve never known anyone like Jon, ever. A singular personality in the world where so many are not, Jon was the real deal. He was who he appeared to be, and he was one of the best human beings I have ever met in my life.
This is goodbye, Jon. The world is a lesser place for you moving on, and I am diminished for the loss. But everyone who ever knew you was a better person for it, and whatever greets you on the other side, that place too, will become better. Because in the end, that was what you did best, is make the world a better place.
Take Care,
Mike
We are very saddened to report that our dad, Jonco, has passed away tonight. Mom came home yesterday from work and found him unresponsive and with a head injury. He had a major brain bleed from a bad fall. He was ambulanced to a local hospital where they had to put him on life support. Mom and us kids were able to be with him. He ended up in hospice for an hour or two and died peacefully this evening with us all around him.
Thanks for being a friend to dad in whatever capacity you were. If you are reading this we know you are a friend and hope that you take comfort in knowing that he appreciated all of your support over the many, many years of running these blogs. We know for a fact that he considered you all part of his extended family.
As you may know, he did some pre-posting, by setting up posts in advance – so you are sure to see some future posts, that he had planned – we decided to leave them as he had planned them.
We would love it if you comment with a favorite memory of him, whether it’s a personal memory.. or of how these blogs have positively affected you.
Love to all – take a moment and hug each other, and crack open a beer and make a toast to our dad – Jonco.
Dave and Kris
and Pat
We have successfully (apparently) completed an upgrade to our hosting plan for this site. The site was on a shared server (with lots of other sites) and now it’s on its own server in the cloud. It should be more stable and run a little faster. B&P was only down about ten minutes during the upgrade.
This comes at a pretty hefty ongoing cost, or at least it seems so to me, so your donations are very much appreciated.
It was 19 years ago today (March 31, 2002) that Bits and Pieces was born with a single post. Miss Cellania left the first comment. B&P was started over on Blogger and after a little while, I moved it to a self-hosted WordPress site where it still resides to this day.
A couple of years after that people were urging me to monetize the site with ads. It was getting more and more expensive to keep the site going. Domain costs, hosting costs, security costs, blogging-utilities costs keep rising so the need is there for revenue. We changed hosts last year and the new host is several times more expensive than the previous host but I have no doubt that it was the right move and is worth the cost. While the ads help we depend on the generosity of the readers and their donations to stay afloat.
B&P has been a big part of my life for these 19 years. It’s been a labor of love. While B&P isn’t as popular as it once was it still gets over 2.27 million page views a year. We’ve had some ups and downs over these years, the worst of which was a hack in 2010 that caused the loss of two or three years worth of posts.
Thank you! I’ve met a lot of really nice people both online and in person who I consider good friends if not like family members. Thank you for stopping by, whether you do it daily, weekly, or just every now and then. A special thanks to those who comment for I think you’re the lifeblood of B&P. I don’t think the site would still be here without your input. Thanks to my fellow bloggers whom I “borrow” from and to those readers who send me things to post. I don’t know how long we’ll continue here, but I’ve got to see if we can make it to 20 years.
I still love doing this and having people from across the globe be part of our little world-wide neighborhood. Thank you!
Apparently, some posts aren’t showing up for several hours and then a bunch will show up all at once. They’re supposed to be spread out about an hour apart. I think it is a plugin related problem but I’m not sure. Plugins are being updated fairly often and that has a tendency to muck things up for other plugins on occasion. The posts are showing up in a timely manner for me but apparently not for everyone else which makes it hard for me to troubleshoot the problem.
So for the time being I’ll be deactivating some plugins including the Like Button plugin. You also might see Test Posts pop up from time to time.
We were having trouble with the Donate button on B&P. It worked but it was sending irrelevant error messages to the dashboard or the editing side of the website.
So we’re using a different plugin to collect your generous donations which help keep this site going, year after year.
It would be helpful if a few hundred of you would make a donation so we can make sure it works right. Or a few dozen of you… or a few of you…. or just you. Somebody… please! 
I get a lot of emails and spam comments directed at B&P (and other sites) for one reason or another.
Puzzled: I used to get 4 or 5 emails a week in the form of complaints about products ordered from the puzzle company bearing the same base name as this site but using the .com suffix. I had created a canned response giving the writer the correct email address where they could contact the people who could (I didn’t say would) solve their problem. I guess they just Google Bits and Pieces and find my contact info. The puzzle company, and many other online companies, do a pretty good job of burying their contact info. So I did some research and found the correct email address for their customer service department and put it into my canned response.
Since the Covid-19 outbreak started they must be selling a lot more puzzles because I get 3 to 5 complaints every day now. (The puzzle business must be good!) I don’t mind directing them to the right place and I even get a couple of ‘thank you’ replies, but not that many.
Guest posts: I get quite a few emails from people wanting to do a ‘guest post’ on the site. These ‘guest posts’ are almost always hyping some website, product, or niche that isn’t of general interest, or at least I don’t find them interesting. Some even offer to pay me to post them. I almost always just ignore them. Some seem to get upset that I don’t reply to their email.
Foreign Affairs: I get A LOT of spam email and comments on posts in foreign languages and contain a bunch of foreign language links. I just delete these. I get some that have been loosely translated to English. I understand if English is a second language and it’s not perfectly clear but in some cases, English must be the 8th or 9th language. Here’s an example of a comment on a post that I received this morning, apparently translated from Polish:
I loved as much as you’ll receive carried out right here.
The sketch is attractive, your authored material stylish.
nonetheless, you command get got an shakiness over that you wish
be delivering the following. unwell unquestionably come more formerly again since exactly the same nearly very often inside case you shield this increase.
It had a link to some kind of gaming site, in Poland I assume. I considered replying in an altered English, but ‘I ain’t got time for dat!
The Good Shit: Of course, I get quite a bit from readers/friends sending things that they think I’d like to share. I appreciate these submissions and do post many of them. Some I don’t because I’ve posted them recently or sometimes I just don’t understand them. I rarely reply to these submissions mainly because of the time it takes but, rest assured, I do sincerely appreciate your submissions and the time and effort it took to send them to me.