Take the Good with the Bad

This has been some week! A lot of computer activity has been keeping me busy.

01. Vista on my Laptop. My laptop went dead a couple of days ago. I love my laptop, except for VISTA that is installed. Every few weeks, it stops functioning and I must try everything I can think of in the hopes that it will start up again. Usually, it takes about 50 or 60 starts, restarts, reconfigurations, various key combinations... etc etc to get it going again.

The first time it malfunctioned, I called the manufacturer and he had me take the thing apart and manipulate some internal stuff.. that didn't work, so I sent it off to him .. and lost the use of the thing for weeks.

The next time it happened, I was able to take it back to the basic way it was when I bought it; thereby losing all the stuff that I had added since the fix.

The next time it happened.. I tried all of the combination of things that I mentioned above.. and, magically, it started up again after a couple of days, without any loss. So now, I just anticipate it bombing out again.. I cuss and threaten it with a toss out of the window.. and then start my unreasoned regime of starts, restarts, etc etc. (And, you know, I was a computer programmer for years.. now, only a young person knows how to really work these new machines; us old dudes, with our old brains can't really get a handle on the new technology).

02. Beautiful new website! The Marriotts Ridge High School came through and created a new website for the Social Security Alumni Association. It was released a couple of days ago. Now, some of us will go to the High School and get some lessons on how to maintain the site. Kind of exciting. Damn smart, these HS kids!

03. Hacker! Some other smart person figured out how to access one of my email sites and sent Viagra ads to everybody, living and dead who I had ever communicated with by EMAIL. So, I got the opportunity to spend lots of time doing damage control.. that means contacting the living persons and sending them apologies. I complained to my email provider, MSN and changed my password, but I don't know if that is enough to stop this clown.

One good thing that came out of this problem was that I heard from a Massachusetts cousin that I thought had passed away. Also, I got a couple of "thank you" messages from some older men friends.

04. Blog Book. Those of you who remember Allen's Alley, might remember the little guy with the "Big Old Wife" who kept a "Bird Book." Well, I learned that I can keep a "Blog Book." Now, since I am now the Patriarch of the Arthur S. Vaughan Progeny family, I am going to bind some of my blogs so that future Vaughan genealogists can have an easier time finding out just what we all were about in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

For quite a small sum, Google will bind selected blog entries. Hardbound at that!

Perhaps I can take my notes for the book I have been writing for a while and put them out on a blog and then get them published that way for a rather cheap price. We'll see. (Incidentally, my story will be about my experiences in four years in the Air Force. I know, it sounds boring, but you might be surprised.)

05. Quaker Voices. Elaine's daughter Emily and her son-in-law, Mat, have created a CD for the Friends School in Baltimore, which Emily attended. Elaine and I listened to it last night and it sounded very well done. The school was founded before the US Constitution was written and has maintained its Quaker values of peace, equality, and truth, among other virtues for all the years since then.

The comments on the CD reminded me of when I attended Quaker Meeting in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts as a young boy. The building was similar to the Dunker Church that we saw recently on a visit to the Antietam Civil War battle site. Pews arranged in a square around a pot-bellied stove. Women set on one side, men on the other.

Nobody spoke until the spirit moved. Sometimes nobody spoke for over an hour and young boys like me had better not nod off, because there was a little old grouchy looking man in the back with a long pole that he used to bop the nodders on the head with.

06. Mini Garden of Eatin': We set up an "earthbox" a couple of weeks ago with three small plants: zuchini, squash, and cucumbers. The zuchini plant is now gigantic and it looks like blossoms are getting ready to pop. The squash plant got bottom rot and I pulled it today. The cucumber plant is holding its own even though greatly overshadowed by the zuke.

Next, I sent for three more "earthboxes" and I spent a lot of time today filling them with potting mixture, dolomite and fertilizer. Now we have to decide what plants to put in the boxes. We already have four large pots of tomatoes (one of which already has three green tomatoes growing.)
Elaine wants to plant dill, lettuce, cucumber and another tomato.

We also bought another upside down tomato plant holder. The one we had last year worked out pretty well for small tomatoes.. and then the holder disintegrated in the winter's heavy snow.

07. Mark Twain! Did I mention that I left my library book out in the rain and I had to try to buy another one to replace it? One of Amazon's sources had a copy and is mailing it to me. The book is (of course) Mark Twain by Ron Powers. Ron's style of writing is a lot like Mark Twain's. I guess that is the way he planned it.

Reading this book about Mr. Clemens' life has inspired me to reread all of his books, but especially his Innocents Abroad. I'm afraid that I did not appreciate it when I read it last. Now that I have learned some background information about the book, I should enjoy it more.

08. Martin Gardner: Speaking of background information. One reads Alice in Wonderland.. and then one reads The Annotated Alice by Martin Garner. Enough said.

Mr. Gardner died this week. I had a very distant puzzler's relationship with this interesting guy.

09. Mr. Mencken: "Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends." Think about that for a while.

10. Watching us? Check out Sky and Telescope magazine for June 1958, page 414 for pictures of a white cross observed on the moon on 11/26/56.

Incidentally, people who would like to help map the moon are being offered the job.

11. Bible study: I'm told that Shakespeare wrote the 46th psalm.

The 46th word from the beginning is "Shake" and the 46th word from the end is "Spears".

(Not in the Douay version) (King James?)

12. The answer is: 9W. The question is: Herr Wagner, do you spell your name with a "V"?

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Weekly Dozen 01/15/2010

Even though we are overwhelmed with sadness over the loss of life in Haiti and are doing what we can to alleviate the suffering there, we still need a slight break to think about some humorous (perhaps) or at least weird things that could be learned this week from various news sources. Let's see if I can come up with one dozen.

(Incidentally, I will be interviewed by a newspaper reporter shortly about this blog and others that I write. .. actually, everything I do since I lost 3 or 4 inches in height is done "shortly".)

01. It has been determined that hamsters who imbibe alcohol suffer hangovers the next morning. (It might be better to feed them marijuana instead...?)

02. Analyst Jose Grenado has written about some things that we have suspected for a while:

a. Googling sharpens the mind. (What about FB and Twitter?)

b. Swearing helps you alleviate pain. (What did I tell you, Elaine)

c. Doodling while in a meeting helps you keep up your interest in what is being said.

03. Water has been found on the moon. (What about the cheese that my nursery rhymes talked about?)

04. Andre the Giant once drank 106 beers in a six hour period.

05. Sarah Palin was asked once more which "founding father" was her favorite. Once again she answered: "All of them."

06. An 8-year old cub scout who travels frequently by plane, has been frisked every time since he was 2 years old. Apparently, his name matches one on the security risk list.

07. Nevada now allows male prostitution. (At least, they have made it legal.)

08. A tall cross is about to be built for a Florida church by a communications company. It will double as a cell phone tower.

09. There is a fight for the Massachusetts Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy. Scott Brown, one of the candidates once posed naked as a Cosmopolitan centerfold, at least that was what I heard on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and they have never lied to me before.

10. The clever Dutch have created meat using cells from a live pig.

11. A British man solved the Rubik's Cube after 26 years of trying. (When they first came out, I handed one to my son to look at. He handed it back to me in 5 minutes, solved. He's got good genes!)

12. A Polish woman is suing a hotel for causing her daughter to get pregnant while swimming in their pool. She is blaming the pregnancy on stray sperm floating in the water.

Please remember that I do not vouch for any of the items above.. I'm sure some of them are true. For more information, you can "google".. and "googling" helps your brain, as Jose G. says.
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