You will find that the state is the kind of organization which,
though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith --
This is significant not so much for what it says as for who said it.
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though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith --
This is significant not so much for what it says as for who said it.
------------------------------------------------
I'm getting very annoyed about the mares [http://www.marestare.com/fcam.php?alias=pacificpintos]. I watched Blossom until 1:45 am last night, then went to bed. This morning at 9 am the note said she had a little boy foal, seven hours before. Do the math. That makes three out of three that I've missed by minutes.
Maybe I have some kind of power.
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I'm also getting annoyed at the way some groups use words to twist our perceptions, like the current political commercial from Albany that says that "the Obama administration" cut grants to schools, blah blah budget problems blah blah, but "we can still get the money from Washington" by demanding greater accountability and making the schools meet certain standards.
It annoys me greatly that they imply the Obama administration arbitrarily caused the problem, but are careful not to admit that the Obama administration requires higher standards to get the money. Apparently reward for high standards are the province of anonymous "Washington", but arbitrary cuts are "Obama".
Too few people will catch the twist there. They're just left with a distaste for Obama. That pisses me off.
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I was supposed to do two things yesterday - go to Home Depot and pick out the flooring and paint colors for the NJ house, and lead a hike at 2 pm. I thought I'd go to Home Depot first.
At 9 am, it was raining hard and looked like it was going to continue, so I got on the laptop and brought up the broadband connection (Verizon Wireless) to notify people that the hike was canceled. Verizon said it had to update the connection maps, and I clicked "ok". It said it did it successfully --- but thereafter I had no bars. No connection. No nothin'.
Of course, the first thing I did was make sure I had paid the bill. Then I restarted a few times. Then I called Verizon technical service. I was on the phone with "Neal" in Arkansas for 90 minutes. We tried a few things, then reinstalled the software from the original CD, twice. While waiting for loadings and so on we had a nice conversation about the baby he and his wife are expecting in August, about living in mountains rather than flat, about animals, wild and domestic, and finally we realized that the software I have is probably just too downlevel to work anymore. I used to get automatic software updates, but for some reason it never updated to the current level. Too bad I can't get to the internet. I could download the current level.
So then I took the laptop to the Verizon store in Kingston, where a fabulous little lady all alone in the store multitasked beautifully with several customers and me, and she installed the current level of broadband software on my laptop.
By then it was 1:35 pm. Too late to notify people that the hike was off, so I rushed to the trailhead, arriving at 1:58, where I waited in the rain for 20 minutes in case anyone showed up. Nobody did.
Then I went back across the river to Home Depot, where I got thoroughly overwhelmed by paint colors. I know in my head exactly what I want, but those colors don't exist on paint cards/chips.
I brought home a pile of brochures and cards.
By then it was after 5 pm, and I collapsed.
.
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