Holding on to Tuesday

For dear life.

Before February of last year, my life was fairly simple. I basically did what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it, with the human interaction factor low on the horizon.

In that short period of time I have gone from someone who can live anywhere and do anything, to a man attached to a schedule, a man who has some say in whether a person makes a living or not.

I guess I'll try this for a while and see how it goes. This will be, let me count, life number 5. I pity the person that lives the same life in one lifespan. It would drive me insane.
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I looked at my watch, it was 6:00p.m., Friday night...

I closed my eyes and opened them again and it was 10:00 p.m., Sunday night.

Where did the weekend go? It's Tuesday now, almost seven in the morning. I will close my eyes, open them and it will still be Tuesday and slightly closer to seven.

How we percieve time. Fugit one moment and stuck in fudge the next.
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Delayed posting

The last post was written at nine past midnight on Friday night. ::bloggar did a bluey on me, with all of the command choices frozen. I went to the ::bloggar website, downloaded and installed it again. It all seems to be working well again.

The author has version 4 in closed beta, like the Google GMail. I'll mention here when both are released to us peasant endusers.
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The weekend began 9 minutes ago

or it could be said the weekend starts the moment you leave work on Friday.

In the words of the great Sufi poet, 'as a thing in viewed
so it appears.'

It appears the weekend is here.
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Though I am on call this weekend, I hope it will still be a quiet and restful time. The last week at work was two pages of todos all overdue on Monday. 

What a long day!

It has been a long, long day. We lost another worker to foolishness. He didn't die, he just isn't coming in tomorrow.
For some reason this reminded me on the way home of the ongoing dispute between the Yorkshire shellfishers and their Chinese counterparts on the southwest coast of the UK.
There was a big deal in the British press a few months ago about the untimely deaths of people caught in tides while trying to fish for cockle shells.
I would go futher online and let you know, but I am just too, too tired.
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The identity of this woman is a mystery to me. She was at the reception. This is the only photograph in the entire selection of someone looking serious. Perhaps she had just tasted the wine from South Africa called Goats du Rhone. Yes, "Goats", as in head butting, stinking little four legged creatures. =30= 

And this is Dee on the right. It was a happy time, as you can tell. =30= 

This is Walter. 

This is the view from the bay. 

This is where the wedding reception was held.  

Made it.

I am back, exhausted and on my way to work.

That was one full weekend, photos to follow.

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I Made it Through Ivan

If any of you were concerned about my driving south through what was left of Ivan I can tell you now, it wasn't fun, but I made it to D.C. and Walter and Dee in record time.

I certainly believe the roads were so clear because of all of the dire storm warning.

After oozing through the Bronx and driving with the trucks on the GWB upper deck, I hit the Jersey Turnpike and went directly to Washington's Inner Beltway with one pit stop in Maryland just before the Harbor Tunnel.

There were periods of heavy rain. The heaviest was when I got onto the city streets after leaving the highway. After phone call and a few turn-arounds, I arrived safe and mostly dry.

Thank you, Walter for letting me make this entry using your computer.
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When is it time to give up all of the blogs, but...

...one?

The internal debate on my shallowside at hte moment is do I take my laptop to D.C. with me or not? There are much deeper debates about the route, where do I stop along the way. Do I stop along the way, how can I avoid talking to strangers, do I tell everyone at the reception that Walter told me to behave myself? Those are the deeper question.

Now, do I take the laptop, or not.

You will know Monday night. If I post blogs, or save blogs for later posting.

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Walter's Party This Weekend.

I would love to stay and chat, but I am reading the Weblogger's handbook.

I am also wondering if hurricane Ivan the Terrible will have any effect on my planned drive to Maryland this coming weekend to attend the wedding reception of my oldest surviving friend Walter. The reception is planned for a water-side restaurant. I hope it lasts long enough for the party.

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Duck and cover, INCOMING!!!

In an article by Reuters writer Lori Santos, she added the following quote
from our honored and esteemed Secretary of State:

"The last thing I am going to do is get involved in this debate about
who did what when, and who earned what where and who was where when,"
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Taking the plunge at Square Space.

After an initial correspondence with Anthony Casalena, Squarespace's creator regarding the use of Opera software on his site, I took the plunge and opened an intitial FREE weblog at Square Space.


This is a test heading. I will change it to one containing graphics later.



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I left out the Fourth Estate...

In my diatribe against technocratic blogger, I left out the "journalists" out there who believe blogging should follow the NYT style book or at least read something about journalistic integrity before online publishing.
The bard's oft quotes suggestions to first kill all the lawyers should have been
followed with the command not to tell the "journalists..."
In my over half century on this planet, I have encounterd the fourth estate
more than a hundred and less than a thousand times.

My last encounter with a TV "journalists" happened last week.

I can say this in all honesty:
Not once did they get it right,
Nor did they seem to care. It was more important to write it as they thought
it should be, as they feel the public thinks it should be..
In the Rebecca's Pocket page she says.
"Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true."

Is it just me, or can you see a "spin" in that satement?
Would it have been just as easy to change the word "believe" to "know?"
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This page lacks depth...

      
In a blog at Home Grazing, I mention the coming of Google based advertising.
It will be tried there first before being inflicted on the kind readers here.

In this blog, the Lockergnome derides those of us who make day to day entries.

It is assumed by him that the blogs belong to the technoheads, the ubergeeks, as we
call them at work. We are all geeks in a way, or we wouldn't be posting blogs.
I co-ran the Golden Gate Computer Society BBS in Marin County, CA, ten years ago.

Some people WAY back then believed the bbs should be restricted to cyber-related chat;
that all the unrelated chatter, or Chaff, as we called it then,
should be removed by the SysOp.

As a red blooded American SysOp, a survivor of Parris Island, I could not, in good
conscience edit them out.

I did provide them with a forum of their own.
Too many occupants on one soap box destroyed the box.

On a good day, in the Speaker's Corner of London's Hyde Park, each speaker is given enough space,
enough elbow room for the crowd to hear and not be overwhelmed by a nearby speaker.

Each blog can be considered a speaker's box, a billboard, or a textbook, or a million or so
other choices. If every book was the same, if all we could print were bibles, where would
civilization be today?

Thank the stars for Burma Shave!!!

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diva

A New Link Added to Home Grazing:

If you are wondering how the Heading Changed..

The difficultly mentioned in the Home Grazing blog was about the limited space in the SETTINGS box for the
Weblogs Index Heading.

It wasn't long enough to insert any meaningful HTML language. This made it difficult to manage
the fonts and the special directions I wanted to give them.

To solve this I used two (paid for) shareware programs.

The first was 602 PC Suite. .

Using that and the Felix Titiling (western) font for Belltower News.
The "random thoughts...loose and grazing" was created using the Academy Engraved LET font.
"=30=" was written in Times New Roman (Bold)

I played with font sizing and placement until I felt I had a capturable graphic the right size for the
heading of this blog.

Then I used SnagIt to capture the screen image of the print and saved it into btn2.jpg.

This changed:

Belltower News
random thoughts...
loose and grazing...

---

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into:

---

---

Of course, for any of this to be of any interest to you, blogging must be your passion. It was a method used many times
in the creation of web pages, with or without tables, for the purist amongst you.
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I complained elsewhere, but...

...I thought it should be mentioned here.

The title box in blogger.com's settings only allows a certain number of characters.
There are not enough characters to be able to do a decent HTML styling of the title.
This is why the title of this blog is so lame.
I have considered using a graphic, with the characters already installed,
but I don't believe the HTML cop they'd be put in the settings' title box allows graphics.

---

Don't you just love it when I think aloud in a blog and publish it?
That's the difference between a personal blog and the classic torn-up letter to the Editor.
I can always tear this one up as well, but not before it's made available to a few million people.
Of course the reality of the situation is, I am probably the only one who will ever read this.
So, what does it matter?

See the article in Home Grazing.

I tried to upload a blog regarding the Epitonic site here at the blogger site,
but it kept timing out.

SO, I posted it on the Home Grazing site instead.
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Looking For Legal Music?

An article in today's New York Times Online entitled No Fears: Laptop D.J.'s Have a Feast By JON PARELES talks about an amazing list of free sights with an ecelctic list of music, from Iraqi to Creole, from Hard Rock in England to Asian music. It's worth a read just to get the link to Epitonic.
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The Patriots won.

I thought I would mention the Patriots won Thursday night, in case you didn't notice.
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What a lot of work that was.

The blog was never fully returned to its former self. I decided to stop trying to do that and just go from here. It's why I replaced the painting by renowned New England Artist, and friend, Beverly Tricco, with a photograph of my son in the waves off the rocky coast of Maine. Beverley's work is displayed here in the upper right corner. I thought each blog should have it's own illustration.


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Home Grazing is BACK!!!!!

Home Grazing

The support blog for
Belltowernews.com

SP-2 Only one loss so far

It was a big loss, my Thingamablogger has lost it's thinga. I am working with the author to find the problem. As with most things data related, it's probably either a lost file, which can be recreated, or a corrupted file, when not backed up, can't. Homegrazing.com is still up and running. I just can't change anything on it using Thingamablogger. Keep your fingers crossed.
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If they don't get you one way...

They get you the next.
Following an ubergeek's instructions, I changed the settings on my laptop to quelch all firewall and virii infection protection.
Then, I reinstalled SP-2 for XP-Pro with all of my fingers crossed.
The first problem encountered was no USB connection for any of the devices.
I reinstall the drivers for the basic USB setup through the control panel
and everything came to life.
Then I tried to start Thingamablog, the new "toy" mentioned earlier. It froze dead.
The error pop-up said the database couldn't be found.
I went through all the changes in configuration I could muster.
Before contacting SourceForge, I even uninstalled and reinstalled it with a clean boot.
Nope, didn't work.
So here I am with all of this free time and I can't play with the new toy, WAAAAaaaAAAahhHHH!
Oh, well, I guess I am over that. There is nothing I can do until I hear back from SourceForge.
Now the hope is this will post through to blogger.com via w::bloggar.
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Today is Labor Day in the US

The first Monday in September is Labor Day in the US. It is an odd holiday in that most people here commit no labor on Labor Day.
It is a day of rest and anticipation.
It is a day of change.
Though the planet says Summer ends around the twentieth of the month,
tradition has it that it ends today.
The frolic ends, the swimming ends, the mindless musing ends.
Tomorrow, work begins. School work, honest work, fashion work, etc.
But no work on Labor Day.
How odd. =30=

Homegrazing.com is up

The page I have been putting together with the aforementioned progam is now up.
You can find it at homegrazing.com. =30=

Like a new toy at Christmas...

Playing with Thingamanblog is like playing with a new toy on Christmas morning. You didn't expect to get it, you're not sure if you like it, but you're sure you want to see what it does.

So, instead of the dozen or so entries I usually make here on a Saturday, there was only the one aboutThingamablog.

The picture below is of Martha. It was taken a few years ago. Her second of two children went off to college this week. She just returned from seeing that the first of the two was settled in his digs. Some people rejoice when their kids go off to school, some are very sad. Martha appears to be somewhere in the middle but, perhaps, closer to sad. =30=

My Very good friend Martha 

A self publishing blog tool that WORKS!!!!

There was a bit of learning curve, not supported by the help file, in the set up.

If you are not used to installing Java files on your PC, that too my cause you a moment's hesitation to use this wonderful, and so far free, application.

Once it is set up, it is almost as simple as w::bloggar. The newsreader seems simple and useful, but I am only interested in the publishing side of it for now. belltowernews.com