3792 What happened to Bill?

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

I saw this picture of Bill Gates the other day:

(From http://mashable.com/2013/11/04/bill-gates-interview-human-health/)

The photo confused me.  He's younger than I am, a lot younger, but he looks ten years older.  His skin looks like he's spent every waking moment out in the sun, without sunblock, and we know that's highly unlikely.  There's something wrong.

So I asked Google.

Nothing definitive or verifiable, nothing from reliable sites, just unverified rumors of Parkinson's Disease.  Whatever.  But I'm sure there's something going on with him.  Can it be just stress?

Wandering around what turned up for "Parkinson" with various other search arguments, I am surprised at how many people in public life have Parkinson's.

Ten years ago it was brain tumors.

Almost like ... a fashion, or something.  Strange.
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3791 Beware of strangling sheets

Monday, November 4, 2013

We are doomed.  Last night on "60 Minutes", Leslie Stahl (I think that's who is was) actually said in reference to the Guantanamo trials, "one obstacle after the next".  I was horrified.

-----------------------------------

If you ever see an ad for "1800 thread count microfiber sheet sets", usually mentioning Egyptian comfort in the text, DON'T BUY THEM!

I bought two sets maybe five years ago, when they first came out, at a booth at a county fair, for just about $49 a set. The product name was "1800 Thread Count Egyptian Comfort Sheet Sets".  The label said, "Enjoy the softness of Egyptian cotton", in large type. In smaller type it said "microfiber".  I stupidly thought that meant they were Egyptian cotton.  Egyptian cotton has exceptionally long fibers, so it is possible to spin it into finer threads, and I thought that's what the "microfiber" meant - very fine cotton thread - and that's how 1800 count was possible.  (Remember, this was before microfiber dusting cloths were so common.)

Not true.  Nowhere near cotton. They're a synthetic fiber. 

The damn sheets don't really fit any mattress.  Technically, they fit, the corners meet, but they don't stay taut.  The bottom sheet gets baggy in the middle of the bed because the sides won't stay tucked under the mattress, making folds and slippery patches, badly enough that when you move your legs, the sheets can, like, wrap your legs.  When you turn, the top sheet wants to tangle around you, too.  Unlike real cotton, they don't have enough body to behave.

The only good part is the pillow cases.  They can be good for your hair style, but they won't stay on the pillows.  You have to pin the opening closed or the pillow escapes.

The people selling this crap imply that you'd pay up to $300 for sheets of this quality in a major department store.  Bull poopy.  No legitimate store will sell them, and nobody anywhere sells them for more than $39, usually between $20 and $30.  Perhaps they figure nobody will sue as long as the price is ridiculously, embarrassingly, low.

See this online retailer:  http://www.egyptianbedsheetsets.com/bed-sheets.asp
Note that NOWHERE do they say anything about synthetic fibers.  These folks don't even mention the word "microfiber".  You are purposely led to expect cotton, even though they don't actually say what they're made of.

BEWARE!
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3790 Three kinds of sleeping men

Sunday, November 3, 2013

I was lying in bed this morning, snuggled under the blankets with Jasper curled against the back of my knees, and I was thinking about which side of the bed I choose to sleep on.  I start on the left**, often roll over to the right during the night, then back to the left by morning.  I guess it's because the table with the clock and my eyeglasses is on the left.  At the country house, I sleep on the right, and pretty much stay there.

In my experience with sleeping with men (and I have a lot more experience than you'd even guess), I've found they seem to fall into three groups.

The first two groups don't consistently prefer one side over another.  Their choice is based on the layout of the room, and in that they are consistent.

1.  Some insist on sleeping on the side of the bed nearest the door.  If you ask, that's what they say, that they want to be nearest the door. Even if you're sleeping in a strange place, like a hotel, they want to be nearest the door.  Which side they sleep on changes with the room.  I think of them as "The Protectors".  These men also tend to walk toward the outside on sidewalks, and insist on opening doors for ladies.

2.  Some want the side of the bed nearest the bathroom, and if you ask, that's what they say.  The bathroom.  I think of them as "The Piddlers".   These guys tend to be a little  bit self-absorbed and stingy.

3.  Then there's the guys who always sleep on one particular side.  If you ask, they say that they always sleep on the left (or right), with raised eyebrows, like "Duh?  Is there any other possibility?"  Mostly you don't have to ask.  They simply state it as fact, no discussion allowed.  I think it probably has to do with which side of their body they sleep on, and want to be facing out, or in, and know exactly where the edge is.  These are "The Rigids".  They like things a certain way, seldom break routine.

Of course this is just my experience, and some men are combinations or exceptions.  The Man, for example, always sleeps on "his side" of the bed and is pretty Rigid in his habits (well, very rigid) and often his thinking, but in all else he is a Protector.

Do you prefer a particular side?  Why?

--------------------------------------

**I'm never quite sure what people mean when they say "right" or "left" in reference to a bed.  Is it as when you lie on your back on the bed?  Or when you stand at the foot facing the head?

Seems to me that since the bed has a head and a foot, it would have a right hand and a left, so it would be like lying on the bed on your back.  But The Man uses the opposite, and we all know he's never wrong.
 
It doesn't  much matter what's correct, since the person speaking is not necessarily using it that way.

Later - We don't seem to have this problem with chairs.  "Put the table to the right of the chair" means to your right, not the chair's right, and most people understand that.  Oh, Good Grief!  Does that mean The Man is right again!?
.
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3789 Missing the target

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

There's this thing I'm seeing more and more of, where someone is keeping track of everything you look at online, and then selling that information to advertisers, who then focus on your "interests" for those ads over there on the margins.  Targeted advertising.

Hey, folks, you're doing it wrong!

Like Amazon keeps track of what I've looked at or bought, and then makes suggestions, "just for me".  Only what they show me are things I've already looked at or already bought!  That makes no sense.  I already have it, or I've already rejected it.

When I buy something on eBay, I get a message that "People who bought [what I just bought] also bought [pictures of of similar items]".  Well, a couple of problems there:
1. There are NO other people who bought what I just bought.  I bought the only one.  You lie!
2. If other people bought these other things, they're already sold.  What help is that to me?

If I search for toy ovens, for days afterward I am inundated with ads for toy ovens.  Hey, I just bought one!

I have to draw on my eyebrows, and they frequently disappear within an hour, so the other day I searched for and bought a blond eyebrow pencil (actually a liquid with a fine brush to draw "hairs" with) that is guaranteed to last all day.  I bought it from a particular beauty supply outlet.  Now my margins are filled with ads from that outlet, not ads for any of their other products, but ads for the very same pencil I already bought.  Duh?

Targeted advertising is crap.  It's been poorly implemented by people who don't have enough brains to understand that people don't want to look at things they've already looked at.  It's being signed up for and paid for by retailers who are no smarter.

Maybe people might be interested in things related to things they've looked at? 

Like after I had looked at covers for the a/c units, maybe instead of throwing more a/c covers at me, you should suggest patio furniture or grill covers.  After I bought one John Smith book, instead of suggesting I buy that book again, maybe you could suggest other books by the same author, or a different author in the same genre.  After I bought the toy oven, maybe you could suggest other toys in the same age range.

I am especially disturbed by Gmail's scanning my emails for keywords.  I mentioned to a friend recently that I had gotten chubby since last we met (Yeah, I've gone from the size 6 and S I wore three years ago to 10 and 12 and M, and at my height, that's really chubby), just that one line, and suddenly my sidebar on Gmail is full of ads for shops specializing in foundations and those sizes with the Xs in them (which I can't wear no matter how big I get because the proportions are off for my height, the shoulder seams reach to my elbows).

One of these days I'd love to write an email full of exciting keywords just to see what happens - but I don't want to draw the attention of the NSA.
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3788 I don't get some people's taste

Sunday, October 27, 2013

There's a bunch of women discussing the attractiveness of a Scotsman on "Cute Overload", here.

As one woman said, he's "a little long in the tooth, and portly to boot, but a full head of hair, nice smile, lovely accent", but still a candidate for the "Men of" calendar.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind meeting him.  He has potential.  And my taste in men runs to dark hair and eyes.

Then the commenters suggest who he reminds them of.  One woman suggested Mr. Bates from “Downton Abby”, and others agreed. Many women have found Mr. Bates attractive, including me.  (He's the one who went to jail on bogus charges.  I'm unsure how much of Mr. Bates' attractiveness has to do with his appearance, and how much is the character's personality and our sympathy for his situation.)

Anyway, a few other women suggested who he looks like, and here's where I lost the connection. 

Um, Benny Hill?
Johnathan Winters?
Uh, yeah, they all have squarish faces, and hair, and the proper number of eyes and noses, but the level of attractiveness is way off.  Not even close!  In fact, I have to wonder about any woman who finds either of those two attractive.

Hmmmmm.

I guess it's good that different women (and men) see and are attracted to different things.  Otherwise a lot of us would never find a mate.
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3787 My widgets

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Today I learned how to take a screenshot.  Windows 8 makes it really easy.  There's my new widgets over there on the right.

It's 52 and raining here, and 47 and cloudy at the other house.

I don't need or want the bottom half of the calendar, with the big 23, but I haven't figured out yet how to get rid of it.

--------------------------------------

Later - Phooey.  It's overlaying text on the right Blogger screen, so it's hard to read.  Any smaller, and it would still be hard to read, but for a different reason.  Tough.  If you click on the screenshot, it should get clearer....
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3786 Widget wacky

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

On my old Vista, I had "widgets" on the sidebar.  A nice big analog clock, a calendar showing the whole month, gauges showing CPU and storage utilization, and two weather doohickies showing the temperature and conditions for both houses.

I loved them.  Glanced at them all the time.

Microsoft got rid of them in Windows 8, ostensibly because they presented a security threat, but the forum consensus is that Microsoft wanted people to use those stupid cluttering apps.  The ones you can't see when you're on the desktop.

So, I searched, and found several free widget programs.  Again, the consensus is that the best and safest is from http://8gadgetpack.net/.

Installation was quick and easy.  I got everything I needed, including two small weather gadgets, the ones that show temperature and atmospheric conditions.

Then I clicked on "options" to set the weather gadgets to my locales.  The one for the city house was easy.

The country house was weird.

I asked it to search for Red Hook, NY, 12571 (that's a village upstate, near Rhinebeck, not the old dock area of Brooklyn, and what I had been using on Vista as being close to the country house).

It told me it couldn't find a weather station for Red Hook, but offered me Slingerlands as the closest.  Slingerlands is way the heck up by Albany.  Duh?  Not even close!

So I shrugged and asked for Milan, NY, which is close and is in the same zip code as Red Hook, and has an airport, so I know there's a weather station there.

It said it couldn't find Milan, but offered me Red Hook as the closest.  Duh?

I don't understand.

But at any rate, my widgets are all set up, and I'm happy.
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3785 Notice for all pet owners

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

If you have a dog or cat, and give them jerky treats, please read this:

http://news.yahoo.com/fda-seeks-pet-owner-help-dangerous-jerky-treats-120212167--politics.html

Mysterious illnesses and deaths.  FDA is gathering info in an effort to identify the problem.
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3784 Dago

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Well, this is the first post in years without the leading green quote.  I still haven't solved the problem of how to get to my ".wps" documents.  No big deal.  Eventually I will.

------------------------------------

There's a food truck in the Albany/Schenectady area named "The Wandering Dago".  New York State had no problem approving the business name, but now someone in the government has decided the name is offensive, and the truck has been banned from places under state control, like the Empire State Plaza in Albany and the Saratoga race track.

The truck owners and operators happen to be Italian.  They like the name. They not only like it, they're proud of it, and by serving great food, they feel they are saying exactly that. They can call themselves Dagos if they want, right?  They've gone to court, claiming their first amendment rights have been abridged by the state.

I've been idly following the story for a while.  There's no resolution yet, but it doesn't look good for the wandering Dagos.  The judge's name is D'Agostino.  Catch the first four letters.

------------------------------------

This brings up something that generally bugs me - the tendency to much wider interpretation of the Constitution than the framers ever intended. 

The first amendment was meant to permit citizens to criticize the government without reprisal.  Period.

It was not intended to allow anyone to say, write, wear, do, display any insulting, profane, irreverent, impious, disrespectful, sacrilegious, obscene, blasphemous, indecent, foul, vulgar, crude, filthy, dirty, smutty, coarse, rude, offensive, indecorous, just plain nasty thing to anyone else, anywhere, any time. Which is how most people want to interpret it. 

Neither is it the function of government to protect people from being insulted or offended.

So I don't think the state has the right to ban the Wandering Dago truck from tax-supported public areas just because some people are offended.  I also don't think the owners have a right to the name guaranteed by the first amendment.  The first amendment has nothing to do with it. 

No, I don't know what the solution is.

The whole issue is annoying.

Now, if this were Europe....
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3783 Snubbed by Google

Saturday, October 19, 2013

" ... the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."

--Carl Sagan:--

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

When you have some wait-time, visit this site:  http://9-eyes.com/.  The name comes from the fact that Google's street camera has nine "eyes".   Jon Rafman has collected images from Google map street views, from all over the world.  Some are beautiful, some are interesting or unusual, some are disturbing.  [There's one I can't look at.  It's the fifteenth photo, the one right after the one with three kids carrying speakers past a slummy apartment building.  You might want to unfocus your eyes and skim quickly past the 15th.  I wish I could eliminate that one.]

Whoever collected the views seems to like "working girls".  There's a lot of police action, a few accidents (one seems to be fatal), some tourist sights, some shots that appear to have been taken in a large aquarium, and lots of exotic scenery.

This site, http://mashable.com/2013/10/18/google-street-view-invasive-species/, about using Google street view to track  invasive species, mentions that there are views of Antarctica, the Galapagos, the Amazon, Mount Everest's base camp and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, including links.

Now, here's my problem.  If you go to those links, you see one-lane roads through forest, dirt roads through prairies,  barely discernable tracks through deserts, streets in obviously dangerous parts of cities, streets covered, literally, in garbage.  Streets where there's nothing, for miles and miles.  Even places where there are no roads at all.

Do you see my street?

NO!

One day a few weeks ago I was at the stop sign at the end of my street when the Google camera car went past, right in front of me on the cross street.  Did it go down my street?

NO!

I  am insulted.
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3782 Catchy little tune

Friday, October 18, 2013

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words.

If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

--Philip K. Dick--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMoK0focAFE&

 From an NPR article:

In November 1972, Italian pop star Adriano Celentano released a song that hit No. 1 in his home country, despite the fact that it wasn't performed in Italian.

It also wasn't performed in English.

In fact, it wasn't performed in any language at all.

The song, called "Prisencolinensinainciusol," was written to mimic the way English sounds to non-English speakers.

From "Now I Know" (a great place to visit, by the way): [A better link for the same place: http://nowiknow.com/archives/]

Despite the fact that the words aren't actual words, the song was incredibly popular in Italy and in other parts of Europe, cracking the top 10 on the Italian, Belgian, French, and Dutch charts (peaking at #1 overall in Italy) and hitting number 46 in Germany. Perhaps the listeners didn't know that the words were made up. Perhaps they didn't care. The song was catchy, regardless, and as any American non-Korean speaker can testify (think Gangnam Style), sometimes the "words" don't matter all that much.

...

Bonus fact: In 1963, a group named the Kingsmen covered the song "Louie Louie," originally recorded by Richard Berry eight years prior. The Kingsmen's version is a classic and you've almost certainly heard it (but if not, here you go) and likely can sing the whole thing -- kind of. You probably have no idea what the actual words are because they're a garbled mess which is impossible to understand. But that didn't stop an angry parent from writing to then-U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and insisting that the lyrics were obscene. For some reason, this lead to an FBI investigation (!) which concluded, no, the lyrics are just unintelligible. The FBI was right, but they missed something. At about 0:53 into the song, Lynn Easton, the band's drummer, dropped a drumstick and yelled out the f-word. It's audible (but not obvious) in the recording (which if you didn't click to listen to before, you probably will now).

Wikipedia puts it a bit more humorously:  " In June 1965, the FBI laboratory obtained a copy of the Kingsmen recording and, after four months of investigation, concluded that the recording could not be interpreted, that it was "unintelligible at any speed".

----------------------------------------

Back in maybe the late 60s or early 70s there was a Japanese song that was very popular, all in Japanese, and no one knew what it was about.  I heard it on the radio constantly, and I can hum the tune now, but I never learned the name.  It was one of my favorite songs ever, and I may never find it again.

Anyone know what it might be?

Later - The Queen  nailed it in the comments! I had the years wrong, but she still got it.  It's "Sukiyaki", by Kyu Sakamoto, on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zpOc9n7dlI.  Same version with Japanese and English subtitles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C35DrtPlUbc.  I was almost afraid to see the translation, afraid the real words would spoil the song, but they didn't.  The English is pretty, too.  Sad, but pretty.

(Note that there are a few English covers of the song, but they changed the lyrics entirely.  Same tune, but NOT THE SAME SONG AT ALL!)
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3781 Getting up to speed.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

--Hermann Goering--

----------------------------------------------------------

Later last night I installed GMarks on the new laptop, and all my 2,375,984+ bookmarks were there!   But, in looking for the code to download, I came across some disturbing forum discussions - it seems that the guy who wrote it hasn't been maintaining it, and Google has changed some interfaces, and although GMarks SAYS it bookmarked a site, and the bookmark is there when you look, the next time you start up it may or may not be there anymore.  Uh oh.

In the meantime I figured out how to make folders on the Firefox bookmark toolbar, and put some of the most important there, so maybe I'll just slowly transition to that.

------------------------------------------

I also discovered that my favorite online shopping site - the rather expensive boutique with a great online outlet, with nice sales, who gives me discounts and free shipping because I'm a favored shopper, and most importantly whose sizing runs pretty much the same across all items - yeah, that place - the place where with outlet, discounts, sales, and specials I have actually received a box containing seven items with original tags totaling over $400.00, for a total cost to me of $5, which led me to ask how the heck they are staying in business - well, they may not stay in business.  They are in big trouble.

Actually, I'm not surprised.  Not because of the deals, but because the quality of their stuff has fallen badly over the past three years, but the catalog list prices haven't.  They still have boutique prices on chintzy stuff.  It's getting harder to find the quality pieces, so customers are dropping out.  I've been frequently disappointed lately, but I pay so little it doesn't bother me if half the lot is crap.

But - everything always fits, and I am hard to fit.  I am really going to miss them if they disappear.

(Fifteen or twenty years ago, Speigel was like that.  Really nice stuff that pretty much always stayed true to size.  But then it all turned to crap.)

I'm still fussing over my documents.  Commenters "Z" and "Rocky" say there are some Word  knockoffs available, but I haven't looked yet.  Those green quotes at the top of my blog posts are randomly generated from a Works document.  I have something like three more post drafts set up, and then I won't be able to get to the quotes for a while, I guess. 

------------------------------------------------

I'm rather proud of my calmness with this system transition.  I still hate the "apps", but it's easy to get to a desktop interface, and that's familiar.  I haven't freaked out yet, not like this person:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GabihXDzkHY

It's true.  She really did take a hammer to a brand new $1300 MacBookPro, right out of the box, because she couldn't get it to immediately play a Lady Gaga video.  The guy she's talking to, who isn't responding, is her husband of three weeks, and I suspect she's really wanting to bash him, not the laptop. Notice how she starts with threatening little taps.

 (There's a video on her channel from just before this one, where you do hear him respond, and a video after this on Lamarr Wilson's channel (to which I am subscribed, that's how I found it all).  Lamarr had seen this video, and rushed over to her place to find out if it was true.  She seemed to think Lamarr could get it to work after she'd bashed it all to Hell.  Lamarr was pissed, because he's been saving for a MacBookPro for ages and isn't there yet.  Lamarr's involvement convinces me that it is for real.)

Yup.  Proud of my restraint.  I would NEVER wear green lipstick, either.
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3780 Stumbling, but still moving.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

"[T]he West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion

but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often

forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

--Samuel Huntingdon--

------------------------------------------------------------

Played with the new laptop some more today.

I installed IrfanView, so now I can find, edit, and play with all my photos.

I installed WOT (Web of Trust), so now I know at a glance whether a website is considered safe or not.

I installed Flash, so now I can watch YouTube videos.

I verified that the Microsoft virus detector is on and automatically updating.

I bookmarked my most frequently used sites on the tool bar.

So far, so good.

But I have a few major problems:

I can't seem to use the regular Firefox bookmarks list.  I found it, but it's not bookmarking anything but the ones for which I used drag-and-drop to put on the tool bar.  "Bookmark this page" doesn't seem to do anything.  After Google killed their bookmark support a few years ago, I moved to GMarks, and that was working fine for me on the old system.  I downloaded GMarks, and the instructions said to open the installation thingy under Firefox, but I can't figure out how to do that.  This one I may be able to figure out if I play with it some more.

The one that freaks me out totally:
I have a few hundred documents on the hard disk, and almost all of them are Microsoft Works format (.wps and .wdb).  I don't have Microsoft Works on the new machine, and nothing else will open those files!  Let alone edit them.  I really really really don't want to have to buy Microsoft Word (although I guess I'm going to have to), and I absolutely don't want the whole Office package.

I wandered around a bit, and it gets pretty confusing.  One Microsoft site says $109.99 for Word (is that a one-time payment?), and another says $99.99/year for the full suite (home edition)(Holy Crap!  Do people really pay that?).  Word is supposed to be able to open and edit Works files, and there are several free converters out there (although if Word can read Works, why would you need a converter from Works to Word anyway?).  So I guess I'm going to have to devote some time tomorrow to figuring that all out.

Suggestions or explanations of packages gratefully accepted.   Are there any other word processors out there besides what Microsoft has?

-------------------------------------

In other business, two days ago my cold seemed to be gone.  Over.  Done.  I had one day of bliss, and then it came back, exactly the same way it had started the first time through.  I am unhappy.)
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3779 Turkey

Monday, October 14, 2013

Sometimes when you look in his eyes you get the feeling that someone else is driving.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Teacher, Decorator, Baker, Designer, and anyone else planning to color a turkey:

A turkey cock is not a peacock!

A wild turkey does not have rainbow tail feathers.  No yellow, red, orange, green, purple. 

A wild turkey is a mix of black, gray, brown, dark tan, white, and russet.  The head is white or light grey with a little light blue around the eyes and throat, and the male will have a bright red wattle.  In sunlight, the feathers have some iridescence, so you might see a shimmering surface wash of gold, copper, golden green or blue.  The tail is some shade of brown, with stripes of black and white at the end of the feathers.

The tail is NOT a dime store fake native american headdress, so cut that out!

Ok, I can understand if you have small children coloring a turkey.  A palette restricted to browns is pretty boring.  Let them get creative.  Heck, they think pink horses are perfection, and that's fine.  But when an adult is coloring a turkey for adults, a multi-colored tail simply displays ignorance, and is insulting to your audience, not to mention to the bird.

A wild turkey is amazingly beautiful on its own.  It doesn't need enhancement.

He:  "Come wis me to ze Casbah."
She: "You do realize all that fluff doesn't really make you bigger, right?"

[Photo borrowed from the website for the Wild Birds Unlimited nature shop in East Lansing, Michigan, http://lansingwbu.blogspot.com/2012/11/bird-of-week-wild-turkey.html.]
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3778 Kicking and screaming into the new era

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Homophobia: The fear that gay men will treat you the way you treat women.

--------------------------------------------------------------

In the spring of 2007, I bought my first laptop, and went from a heavily modified (by Jay) Windows 98(?) on a desk PC to Vista on a Dell laptop.  Big jump!  The transition was a bit scary at first, but at least I didn't hate it.

Last July I bought a Toshiba "Satellite" laptop.  Woot had a great deal.  It has more than 10 times the everything than my old one, and it's running Windows 8.

Yesterday Hercules finally got around to helping me with it.  He hooked up the old hard drive as an external drive on the new machine, and copied all my photos, documents, and music from the old to the new.  We couldn't get the cookies or bookmarks, though, because Hercules wasn't sure they'd be compatible, or something, I don't know.

Today I played with the new.  I did convince it to use the house WiFi, I set the date and time, installed and synched Firefox and logged on to a few of my favorite sites, got their quick-access icons on the Firefox toolbar and the passwords stored, and that was about it.

I haven't figured out yet how to get to my photos or documents.  There's one of those silly app tiles for photos, and it automatically scrolls through and displays, on the tile itself, random photos from my photo folders, including the naked ones!, none of which happened to show up while Hercules was doing his thing, thank goodness.  I clicked on that tile, and all it does is throw up a full screen cycling mosaic of my photos (including the naked ones!).  It doesn't take me to the photo files, so that seems pretty useless.

So far I hate Windows 8.   It hides everything in the most obscure places, and shoves those stupid useless apps tiles at you.  With Vista, it was easy to find everything from the Start button.  I didn't even have to remember what the name of the program is that I use to edit documents, it was right there, and the notepad and calculator were right up front. 

Now?  Who knows?  I don't even know where to start looking, or how.  I bought a book.  We'll see how that goes.  So far it's been less than helpful on 9 of 10 things I looked up.

Once I'm fully up to speed on the new machine, the old will go to the country house, so I don't have to carry one back and forth.

(Yes, this is being written on the old laptop.  The new keyboard is just different enough that I keep hitting "Alt" instead of "Space", and "Alt" makes very strange things happen, and I am too tired to swear at it right now.)
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3777 Hacks

Saturday, October 12, 2013

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."

--Sir Winston Churchill--

----------------------------------------------------

Some of these "life hacks" are new to me, but very useful.  Others are old, but I had forgotten them.  Check them out:
http://sarcasticcharm.com/99-life-hacks-that-could-make-your-life-easier

3776 More amusement

Saturday, October 12, 2013

I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound

by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it.

--Plato--

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Daughter told two-and-a half year old Nugget that they were going to the playground.
Nugget asked if she could take her little pull toy dog along.
Daughter said yes.
Then Daughter heard Nugget telling the doggie what was going to happen.
It went something like this:

First we have to go piddle.
Then we put our socks and shoes on.
Then we go get in the car.
Then we drive to the playground.
Then we go on the swings and the slides and the climby things.
Then we get in the car and drive home.
Then we put the bandaids on.
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3775 I am amused

Saturday, October 12, 2013

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

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So, truckers are slowing down traffic on the Washington beltway this weekend, starting yesterday, to protest - something - I'm not clear on what, but that's ok because I'm not sure they are, either.  The slowdown doesn't bother me, except that I wonder about the wisdom of pissing off people who might otherwise support you in your protest.

Anyway, I cracked up when I read that the truckers themselves were slowed down by the beltway's normal congestion.  They got caught in a traffic jam!

Snork.....

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There weren't as many trucks on the belt yesterday as expected, kind of disappointing. 

I'm not surprised because I wondered where those trucks would come from.  Trucking companies are unlikely to approve of their drivers wasting fuel and rubber going 'round and 'round in circles in a symbolic exercise, and independent truckers are unlikely to be able to afford it (if their gas-price protests are to be believed).

Yesterday only "a few dozen" showed up.  That belt is long.  A few dozen trucks is normal.  Friday was a normal workday, so most trucks were elsewhere, busy hauling.  I'll be interested to see how it goes today.

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I lived in that area in the late '70s.  I drove on the beltway a lot, and it was never clogged, unless there was an accident  In fact, I was often dismayed at how fast people were driving.  It frightened me.

I hear that these days the beltway is essentially a parking lot.

I wonder how people, commuters, cope with that, because there really isn't any other way to get anywhere.  Yeah, you can drive through the residential areas inside the belt, and through the city, but there are traffic lights or stop signs every three feet (feels that way, anyway), so that's not practical.  I've been hearing from old acquaintances that a 20 mile commute can turn into a 2 hour drive.

An obvious solution would be to stagger office start times, so everyone isn't on the road at the same time, but nobody wants to cooperate with that because everybody has to interface with everyone else.  I guess work-at-home/telecommute is an option, but that turns into either watch TV all day, or work 24 hours a day.

There is a subway system, they were just opening that back when I lived there, but as usual in the US there is insufficient parking at the stations, and a lack of bus transport from residential areas to the stations.  Whoever set it up seemed to assume that every worker had a spouse who could drive them to the station.

Now if this were Europe....
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3774 Wrenches and plans and all that

Friday, October 11, 2013

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it." 

--G. K. Chesterton--

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My back was out or in some stage of delicate for a month.  By the end of last week it felt pretty good, so I figured I'd make it up to the country house this week.

Not to be.

Last Friday, the Nugget was miserable and snobbery.  By Sunday evening I was sneezing, and by Monday I was miserable and snobbery.  'Long about Tuesday evening the miseries started to descend into my chest.  Last night, Thursday, at about 9 pm, a good six hours since I'd taken some (every four hours) Robitussin, I felt really good and thought "Wow, it's over!".  By 11 pm I was crawling to the cabinet for more Robitussin.

Sigh.

Will I ever again see that house?

Nugget is still suffering.  Although her nose is now dry, her voice sounds like a cartoon witch, so I guess the miseries are in her throat and chest, too.  She still laughs and plays, but at any moment the least tiny thing will send her sobbing into her mommy's lap.  I told Daughter if she aches all over even 1/3 as bad as I do, take pity on her.

At least I have Robitussin.
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3773 OMG! I am ... SO! ... DENSE!

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior?

--New York State Senator James Donovan, speaking in support of capital punishment--

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Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side.

I've been hearing that for nigh onto seventy decades,  and  today I discovered I never got it!

I always thought it was one of those "duh" things.  Like, "of course to get to the other side of the road, why does anyone cross the road, if you were expecting any different reason for crossing the road you were overthinking it, duh.  Gotcha."

Note I always mentally added the "of the road".  Which, you will note, is not in the original.  Is never in the original.  Which sort of indicates to me that everyone else in the world got it.  Except me.

It never occurred to me that it was ... a pun?  A double entendre? 

It never occurred to me that a chicken who attempts to cross a road is suicidal, and that "other" and "side" can be capitalized.

I know I tend to be much too literal, but for almost seventy years of chickens?

Am I alone here?  When did you "get it"?

[If you ever tell this joke to small children, for their sakes, please explain it to them.  Don't let them live in ignorance.]
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