A great day! My Dell laptop is back and even though Dell said they had to fix four problems, they retained my files and a cd-rom stuck in the drive. Also, the Dow is headed back up to 9,000!

Today I go to get a Shingles shot. Quite expensive, but those of us who had Chicken Pox as kids are susceptible to Shingles as we get older. This is an extremely painful disease. I can still remember my Grandfather suffering with the pain for almost a year. Sometimes the pain can last for the rest of one's life. (One of my friends is suffering from Shingles right now and as an empath I can feel her excrutiating pain whenever I talk to her.) I am the Shingles Shot Guinea Pig.. if I don't have side-effects from the shot, maybe Elaine will get it.

For years I have toyed with the idea of writing a book about some of my experiences. (yes.. I have had some experiences, you disbelievers) At the moment, the plan is to just write about my experiences in the Baltimore area.. from arrival in the city, to entry into Carroll Lutheran Village.. with emphasis on my time at the Social Security Administration. Also, lots of family stuff to help future Vaughan genealogists. It will probably be the most boring book ever written, but what the hell!

In the "Genealogy Gang" that meets in the Village, each of us has made a presentation about their life. We had about 45 minutes to an hour to do so. My time ran to over an hour, and I never did get past the years before I entered the Air Force. So you see, I have a lot to talk about.. now, whether it is interesting or not.. that is another story. If I get another chance to talk to the group, I will cover my time in the service, then my time in Boston, at the University and in the 38 jobs that I held while in school, and then the Baltimore part. (I may have to supply pillows for nodding heads.)

With my laptop back, I once again have access to a Dell home page, which I like because I can set up views of the titles of email from 8 of my email addresses and also have instant access to my MSN account. Now I have a universe of about 900 messages to look at. I do notice that the old "bugaboo" is back... that is, some of my dear and trusted friends and relatives are starting to forward to me erroneous and vicious "garbage" messages. (I thought that this all ended when 2009 started.) I wish that the people who forward this stuff would analyse what the messages say. Is it showing an underlying prejudice against some group or race or type of person? I now do not open forwarded messages unless the title clearly states that it is not "dumb" stuff. I just ask that those who want to forward such dribble, THINK first.

I have a subscription to what is now XM/SERIUS (sp?) and I listen to it when I am driving. Usually I just listen to XM 151 (Laugh USA) which is a "clean joke" station, and as I have said many times before, if you have to stick some scatalogical thought or phrase into your joke to try to get a laugh from a person with an 11 year old mentality, you are not a real comedian. Yesterday, I switched to some of the talk shows and was completely grossed out by some of the lies being spewed by a couple of these guys. Come on! Do you really think that Americans are so dumb as to believe any of this crap? .... But... sadly, as evidenced by the comments of some of the people who called in to CSPAN this morning... some Americans do believe these lies, when just a small amount of checking, even on the Internet, would show them the truth.

Good news for readers. Barnes and Noble has announced that they have 700,000 books that can now be downloaded to iPHONES or iPOD Touch, and next year they will be coming out with an e-reader. Amazon's Kindle has access to only 300,000. Now, if only we could download some of those books directly to our brains so that it will not be necessary to take all that time to read them. ;0)

I have always thought that I would much rather have a nice paper book to hold and read rather than a computer screen to look at. But recently I went out to the site where you can read Moby Dick online. In my library, because I am a cetology cukoo, I have five different editions of Moby Dick, probably one of my favorite reads. I was able to read all of Chapter One again, but on my PC screen and it was wonderful. The print was large and easy on the eyes and I enjoyed traveling back to New Bedford again with my "brother" Ishmael.

Speaking of Ishmael.. my brother Joe and I are email pals again and I am enjoying his stories of youthful activity. He's an interesting guy, if I do say so myself.

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Expansion of Man's Knowledge?

Someone has written somewhere that the beginning of wisdom occurs when man realizes that he doesn't really know anything at all. Witness the amazing things going on in astronomy. With new telescopes and technology, we are able to see into the past of our universe, and as we see more and more, we find that there are new questions and a myriad of things that we cannot yet understand with our feeble intellect.

"When I was a child... " etc. The bible quote is probably right.. someday we may be able to see more clearly and understand more fully. But right now, our astronomers are having a great time finding new mysteries that invigorate their minds. One of the classes in college that I breezed through without studying was Astronomy 101. Parts of the course deeply interested me, but other parts seemed like a waste of time for me. For instance, I couldn't care less about doppler effects and "spectrum shifts", so I spent my time reading about the planets and galaxies. Because most of the technology utilized latin terminology, it was very easy to pass the tests without worrying about deep study. (Shame on me... but, my idea of college teaching is not to give or take tests, but rather to do the European method of attending lectures and self-study. Memorization of what a professor thinks is important does not impress me .. with one exception.)

One of my German professors.. the famous Dr. Budde .. more about him in a future blog.. did not "teach" German, but instead recited the Illiad from memory in his classes.. in classical Greek.. he assumed that we would read the German literature required for the class and therefore felt no need to discuss it until the end of the semester. I learned a lot from Dr. Budde, even though I don't like memorization, his usage of it was spectacular, and, of course, recitation of classic stories was the way knowledge was imparted before there were books.. and classical German writers referred to the Illiad and the Odyssee often in their works. Besides, a "classical education" requires one to know Latin and Greek.

Sorry about that segue.

Anyway, I see that recently astronomers, during their look through the Universe, have found a new "light" alien planet in the planetary system GLIESE 581, in the LIBRA constellation, 20.5 light years away from Earth. This planet (GLIESE 581 e) apparently is a rocky place which may have had water at some point in time (like Mars?); however, right now it is too close to its sun to support life. But... scientists had already found another planet (GLIESE 581 d) further (farther?) out from its sun, and its in the "habitable zone." Will our telescopes ever be able to "zero in" on this planet and get viewable images... like we do with our "spy satellites" or Google Earth? Star Trek here we come!

Today I read that astronomers, in looking back in time billions of years, have found a "giant space blob" that can't be explained by anything we know about. It has been dubbed "Himiko".. after a Japanese queen. Scientists are mystified by this phenomenon. I'll probably never know what this is all about, but I'll bet my grandson, Cameron will. There are exciting times ahead for him.