Just a few hours more!

Only a few hours left in 2005.

I wonder how long it will take me to write 2006. I know it will be a while because I wrote ‘1995’ before correcting it.

Most of my blogging of late has been over at Grazing Planet and Home Grazing, using Easy Blogs and Thingamablog respectively.

It all comes down to ease of use. In the case of Easy Blogs it is ease of use as it relates to graphics. Once you learn the use of the big X on the right side of the window, your illustrations are limitless.

Thingamablog has the attached newsreader that with a click becomes a blog entry. So, two blogs with two different engines of creation. And then there’s Blogger.

Happy New Year!

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M, Formerly known as Mj

M, Formerly known as Mj,
uploaded by sgtret.

I am busily updating my Flickr account. I finally went pro and am digging up stuff from WAY back to add.

Oh, Yes, the Health!

If you’ve been watching the entries regarding the pneumonia, the good news is I am 90% better. The lungs are clear and most of the congestion is gone. My energy is not quite where it was, but is improving on a daily basis.

That’s the good news. On the other side of the coin, I am on call this weekend and next weekend to make up for the three weeks I was taken of “call.” Oh well.

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Famous Grazing URL

It occurred to that with all of the Famous Grazing blogs out there, we should own FamousGrazing.com. Now we do. We opened a Easy Blogs blog there with the purpose of commenting on the blogs themselves.

This will leave Belltowernews, the former default site for Famous Grazing blogs, to go back to the simple journal weblog it as it started.

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Blog Easy is Addicting

I have been spening most of blogging time filling in the vacant spaces at the more substantial of the two new Blog Easy grazing blogs. The creation of Articles is my latest project.

Once I have that all in place, it will be abandoned along with the other grazing blogs coming out of other than Blogger clay.
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Tomorrow to Work?

I will make an attempt to return to work tomorrow. I am not sure if I will make it through the entire day, but it will be worth a try. The coughing has settled down to a controllable amount and comes with ample warning.

There is another doctor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon, so I will be leaving work early on Wednesday.
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A Tad Better

For those of you who have been following my adventures with pneumonia here, the good news is today, for the first time through all of this, I am feeling a little better. There is still a crackling sound in the lungs, so the pneumonia is not gone, but, I feel a little more energetic than I have for weeks.

My son and I are going downtown for haircuts this afternoon. That has to be a good sign. I will admit my personal grooming habits have been in the dumps for at least a month. I frightened myself when I glanced at my face in the bathroom mirror this morning.
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Two New Famous Grazing Blogs

Using Easy Blogs blog generator, I have created two new Famous Grazing blogs. The first is called Easy Grazing. The other, a retread of a failed site, is called Planets Grazing.

The Easy Blog blog generator requires you to have a hosted site. Our company has a little-used site at brdk.net, so I just added a two new folders to house the Easy Blogs generated pages.

The initial templates chosen lack a certain sophistication, but have great potential. I will spend some time learning the method the templates are generated and tweek each one in a different direction.

In a recent questionnaire sent by a dear friend, I was asked what I do when I am bored. I replied: design web sites and blogs. This caused me to go out and look for another non MySQL or php based blog generator. I certainly found that in Easy Blogs.
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Fortune Cookie

Tonight’s fortune cookie read: “The work will teach you how to do it.” This is followed by a series of numbrers: 34, 25, 1, 47, 8, 33. I will have to see if that number won the next lottery, whatever it is called, around here.

You can tell how stir crazy I’ve become when I report as news the saying on fortune cookie.

Que sera, sera.
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Risen to the Level of Boredom!

Okay, this being sick thing has risen to the height of boredom. I want to stop “resting” and get on with my life. My schedule had one free day in December and that was today.

Perhaps it’s because the anti-biotic treatment ended today and I am not better that I’ve become so peckish. It was a December twenty-one years ago that had me in a hospital close to death. Maybe...

Enough group therapy!

I am going to send myself a get well card and take it seriously
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Flicking Through Flikr

The pain from the torn muscle is keeping me up. I was looking for something that would bore me to sleep, so I went to my Flickr.com account to browse though my uploaded photos.

That didn’t take long because I am yet to spring for the pro account. I went to popular tags and clicked on San Francisco.

I must’ve looked at three to four hundred thumnails. It was amazing to me how the majority of the photos had no people in them. There were the posed tourist shots taken in all of the places where I have been photographed by visiting family.

Then there are the Christmas Office Party shots. There are several up there I am sure the poser would rather not have on a public forum. It was then I realized what I was doing. I had become a virtual One-Hour Photo shop clerk, living vicariously though snapshots taken by others.

A low point in my life.

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Half Century of Places

Central Park Bandshell, Columbus Circle, Washington Square, Thompkins Square, Cooper Union Square, St. Mark’s Place, Avenue D, West Fourth Street, Tenth Avenue, Fort Washington, Turtle Bay, Lennox Hill, Parris Island, Pendleton, San Mateo, Sacramento Street, Nob Hill, Golden Gate Park, Golden Gate Bridge, Marin, Charlotte, Burlington, Quincy,
Providence, East Providence, Deer Isle, Staten Island, Gouvenor’s Island, Long Island, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Treasure Island, Alkatraz, Juarez, Seattle, Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec City, Ontario, Toronto, etc.

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If it is not quite Winter yet...

If it is not quite Winter yet, why is there a small blizzard blowing in my front yard?

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning, as I am sure many other people do as well. BUT, this is my appointment, it is my ribs that are killing me from coughing, and it is my lungs that have had just about as much of this pneumonia crap as they can stand.

Cool off, whew! If you can’t rant on your own blog, where would be a better place?

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Just When The Silver Lining Starts Flashing!

Just when you think all is getting better, things happen.

A cough came out of the blue while I was sitting in an awkward position last night. For some reason a rib poked my gut and now something seems to be torn. This makes every cough feel like a sharp punch in the gut.

Oh what fun.

The good side of this is the coughs are coming less frequently. I am just in mild terror when they do.
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Pneumonia is not fun

This is the 21st Century and Pneumonia is not treated as the life threatening condition as it was in the middle of the twentieth, when I had it last.

In my infancy I contracted it and miraculously survived. It was a proud moment for my mother. Many times I would hear her say to other mothers words like “...didn’t think he would make it” or “it must have been god’s will.”etc.

Now I call in to work and say I have been diagnosed with pneumonia and they want to know if I will be coming in on Monday. In part wonderful and in part sad. Pneumonia is still a major killer amongst the elderly and infirm. I don’t quite qualify as either but am certainly on the downhill side in the direction of both.

With the uber-antibiotic churning through my system and a night time prescription medicine knocking me out for so long, I just about skipped today, I feel on the mend.

I feel as bad as I did when first I went to the doctor and was told it was just a mild infection and should pass in a week or two. As things go at the moment, feeling that bad is an improvement.

I am not going to work on Monday.
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Is that sunlight?

Probably the only climate related thing I miss about living in California is the sunlight.

Of course, when I was there, I missed the changing weather.

In May, we plan to go to Alaska for a week. It is the only one of the fifty upon which I have not put foot. I understand there will be almost constant sunlight while we are there. That should take care of my missing sunlight.

All of the above was inspired by the sun coming through the now bare New England trees into my office. In the summer, I would’ve pulled the curtains, but for now, I am enjoying the light.
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Health Update.

For those of you paying attention, I am on the fifth day of a ten day stint of antibiotics. There has been mild improvement, but not marked.
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BlogWizard a Bust!

BlogWizard from Lionhardt looked like it might have some potential as an alternative to posting one by one on the variety of grazing blogs we have running.

I downloaded it for evaluation, version 2.0.0.8. I couldn’t get it to sign on to Blogger.com to post a simple message. The error message it always gave was:

Socket Error # 10054
Connection reset by peer.

I didn’t give up there.

When I clicked on help, no help appeared, either in the program, or as is so often of late, on my browser.

Not to be defeated, I went to their website - looked into their meagre troubleshooting section and found what basically said, if you’re getting a socket error, you are not connected to the Internet. Of course, I had to go to their page to read that, and to accomplish this, I would need to be connected to the Internet.

It went on to state if there were any other problems to contact their user support, but, if I read the rest of the comment correctly, if I was a user with less than 10 licenses, I would be put on a waiting list scaled according to my license status.

You can be sure I did the next right thing, deleting the program entirely from my machine.

Oh, well. More starfish and all that.
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XTort — Beware!

It is a very good site!

The beware is just because it is so good, don’t go there while at your job. You won’t be able to tear yourself away from the selection.

There is also the danger that you will be tempted to download the freeware onto your work computer. We all know how ant-freeware the corporate slugs are.

It goes against the grain of a for-BIG-profit organization to support something that works and is for free. There is a natural level of suspicion attached to the “free lunch.” This suspicion is based on a long history of scam artists taking advantage of the gullibly greedy part of all of us.

So don’t be too hard on them and download these files in the comfort of your own Starbucks WiFi zone, or even at home.
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Is Xtort.net For Real?

Now that I am so sick I couldn’t answer the phone this morning because I didn’t have the strength to crawl across the bed before the machine picked up the call, I do have the strength to flip through online pages I have bookmarked for future viewing. Xtort.net was one of them.

It is an interesting site. My primary reason for going there was to look for a graphics file similar to pixia that could handle .GIF files. I was somewhat disappointed to find only a link to a Dell page featuring a discounted, ($500.00 instead of $588.00)version of Photoshop CS2 for Windows.

Then, the page filled out, listing a grand selection of free graphics programs with an index to the right of related program types ranging from animation tools to vector editors.

Further exploration of the not so adv. heavy site found a profound selection of singular programs for each and every need of the average and Lake Woebegone style user.

The Author’s claim to have each and everyone of these files on his computer for personal use may be a stretch. That they were tested by the author is more believable. Having all of these programs on one hard disk would be a tad top heavy.

I wanted to post this before I became completely lost going through the selections. I may be gone for days. Keep the search parties to a minimum.

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Officially Sick!

I have been coughing up my lungs for almost a month now. I went to the doctor two weeks into it and was told it was a post viral upper respiratory infection that should clear itself in a week or two.

That didn‘t happen. I went again this morning to a different doctor. She told me it is “Profound bi-basil Pneumonia.“

Before she told me this, I thought I had a bad cold and it was just taking a while to clear. Now that I am told I am sick, I suddenly realize how much in denial I have been.

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Going to the Doctor’s Office Again!

The last time I went, I was told it’s “post-viral upper respiratory infection” that should work it’s way out in a week or two. That was three weeks ago. Now it’s much worse with a continuing low grade fever. Not fun, not fun at all.

Now I am going to the doctor’s office tomorrow morning to see a doctor who probably knows more about all of this then the one that saw me before. I shouldn’t be surprised, it took three doctors over three days to figure out it wasn’t gas in my lower intestine, but a leaking appendix.

Touch Wood.

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Neglecting Other Blogs...

Most of the other grazing blogs have been neglected of late, because I use w::bloggar to edit them. The new online editor at blogger.com is so easy to use now, I have been using that to post most of my messages at Belltowernews.com.

The project that opened most of the grazing blogs had to do with learning how to use all of the various methods available for publishing blogs. Blogger.com and Thingamablog won out completely due to ease of use. The Livejournal and Wordpress self hosting programs are good as well, but just not as convenient. Other Grazing is a Livejournal selfhosted blog and Field Grazing is done with Wordpress. The other, Dragons Grazing, is a b2Evolution based blog. I haven’t given that one much attention either.
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Why does stuff that has nothing to do with me...

Why does stuff that has nothing to do with me, bother me?

In a recent Guardian (UK) article The Royal Society complains about scientist uploading their work to university online archives, where the information can be read, for free, online. The article says, in part:

• ‘A spokesman for the Royal Society said: "We think it conceivable that the journals in some disciplines might suffer. Why would you pay to subscribe to a journal if the papers appear free of charge?‘

I don’t read their publication. Most of my information about the society has to do with Benjamin Franklin. I know they are quoted as an authority on this and that. What this article is saying, basically, is that they don’t want the information to be free because they would rather you pay to see it in their publication and that they should have the editorial control about what goes out and what doesn’t.

A bother on them and their house. Magazines publish history by today’s standards. By the time the information gets into the publication most people seeking it have already found it on the web. Granted, what is on the web needs to be sorted through to get to what’s real, but that’s life in general, isn’t it?
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Happy Thanksgiving!

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Isn’t Chicken Lovely?

A very bad day at work today was totally cured by coming home to my son greeting me at the door with a hug and words of love and a barbecue chicken dinner lovingly given to me by my wife.

Life is good.

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Quick Health Bulletin

This chest thing is still lingering, but I felt much better this morning. Last night I watched the last chapter on Masterpiece Theatre of “The Vigin Queen.” It was a bit disarming to hear her lover, Robbie, cough in a manner very similar to mine and then go off and die at his hunting lodge.

I will keep clear of my hunting lodge.
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Grazing on Thanksgiving

The topic of this blog really has very little to do with Thanksgiving, US style or Canadian. It has to do with the words “Grazing” and “Thanksgiving” combined around the holiday to skew Google and its search engine for the word “Grazing.”

Normally grazing is used to talk about cows, sheep, goats etc. eating grass and other plants found in fields and on hillsides. During the week of Thanksgiving, it refers to the eating habits of the celebrants during the day. Ergo, many people must either rejoice in this behavior of condemn it.

Who cares? What matters here is the skewing of the Google index. What happened to this nation‘s priorities? When did the health and happiness of the American people become more important that maintaining the purity of the algorithm?

What? Geeks have yet to own the world? In the words of the late great comedienne, Never Mind.
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Still Sick.

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Why is nothing working today?

I think I should return to bed. Nothing seems to be working today. I expected to breeze by a few web related updates only to find my access to them has either become restricted or the portal isn’t working at all. I have email messages out there to the responsible parties at RegisterFly. Now all I can do is sit and wait.
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Firefox Extensions

I found this link in DIGG. It is a blog by one of the Firefox engineers. If you are a user and a fan of Firefox, it’s worth a side trip just to read his opening paragraph about starting a blog.

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e.Digital Treo 15 and Windows XP

Recently, I dicovered my old e.Digital TREO 15’s battery wasn’t dead. The doorway holding it to the front of the unit was loose.

I took it out of its protective case and pushed the door shut. The battery still had some life in it. So, I rummaged through my collection of power cables and found one that fit. I plugged it in and soon the machine was fully charged.

Of course, the computer on which I first installed the e.Digital’s Treo 15 Digital Music Jukebox’s installation software is no longer in use. Back to digging though things: I found the CD. Eager to hear what music I had loaded, I installed the software, plugged in the USB cable only to find the old installation software didn’t work on Windows XP Pro.

Going to the e.Digital Website didn’t help. I googled the name of the device and found a 2003 upgrade. I downloaded that, tried again, but XP still wouldn’t admit the unit was attached. Think-Think-THINK!

I reloaded the original CD, stopped autoload and chose Explore. Lo and behold, a txt file regarding installation on XP OS equipped machine.

You have to manually install the hardware, pointing the driver request to d:\drivers\ — then install the viewing software and then install the flash update.

Now all is well and I don’t feel as bad as I mentioned earlier about being iPod Free. The e.Digital TREO 15 has 15 Gb’s of memory. This pretty much holds all of the music I have on my laptop.

Joy to the world!

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Podcast in the car.

The problem with listening to podcasts in the car is the people in the podcast recommend websites and products. The frustration of not being able to look up the URL right away makes a geek cry.

It is now my policy to only listen to podcasts like NPR’s Science Friday and CNN Update and reserve listening to things like DIGG and TWiT on the laptop.

Of course watching a video Plog like CommandN in the car is out of the question. That one would be make it even harder for a geek to pay attention to the road.

This upper respiratory post viral chest infection is really starting to get to me. The doctor said I have to ride it out, but it’s starting to hurt just to breath from all of the coughing.

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The Draw of iPod Through iTunes

I know there are other media players out there. I have paid for Winamp and have used it for years. But, just to try it, I installed iTunes.

Lord, but isn't it easy?

Again, not only easy but addictive. Everything I want regarding online media is easily accesable, the interface is intuitive and connected. Burning disks is a breeze.

The only thing I don't have is an iPod. I have resisted Apple products since they were working out of a garage.

The years I spent perfecting my MS DOS skills were not going to be wasted on some limiting GUI. Of course, MS fell for it, dragging me along with them. Now I am looking at Linux as another way to avoid Apple.

Then there is the upcoming end of year holidays. I wouldn't be surprised if there was one form of iPod or another in the stocking
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Remember the Milk

On the CommandN weekly blog, the site, Remember the Milk was mentioned by the co-host Amber MacArthur.

I haven't gone wrong with anything she has recommended in the past. I thought I was going to be disapointed for the first time when I visited the site.

I was wrong.

Don't let the modest interface fool you. This is a very powerful site worthy of your time and effort. The two owners are somewhat overwhelmed, if you read their related blog, but they seem to have the handle on this and are in it for the long run.

There is a message on the blog asking people to stop uploading large attachments.

They don't say it, but I will say it here, they aren't Google.

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It was like we had won the lottery

The enthusiastic congratulation at work today were invigorating. Everyone, to the man, appreciated the work I had put into this and the spare time I lost in preparation for the test. The peer recognition was outstanding! =30=

I am back

The test was a grueling four hours. I sat down and didn’t get up until the time was up. Then I had to sit through a survey on the conduction of the test. I could have screamed. I ended up doing a chair dance! I passed! Whewwwww!

If I hadn’t completed that certification, I don’t know if I would’ve went into work the next day. I did, I will.

Whew! Again and big time!
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Still At it

Either studying used to be easier, or I am just out of practice. I st at the table, open the books and say, this would be easier if all of this information was on line and cross-linked.

Oh well, back to the grind.


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Big Test Coming Up

When I left school, I thought all the tests were done. Little did I know, they’re not only still there, they are bigger and meaner. Next Monday, I am scheduled to take a HUGE test at Four P.M. in Rhode Island.

You won’t see hide nor hare of me until then.

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The Death of Original Thougth at the NYT

In my pursuit if something other than work on this rainy, (again) Sunday morning, I went to the Sunday NYT and read an article entitled ALMOST HUMAN By CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL.

I honestly believed it was going to be an article containing original thought. It wasn‘’t. It was a review of other writings that may have contained original thoughts.

When our local church changed ministers, I was hoping for a fresh prospective, a few more original thoughts. Unfortunately I was treated to a series of somewhat related soundbytes, connected by quotations and review.

There was a time when articles, especially on Sundays in the NYT, contained original thoughts. But perhaps all of the original thoughts have been used up. I should check with Google. They would know.

Many years ago, when I could be found leaning against oak bars at four in the morning on New York‘’s Upper East Side, a recently retired assassin for the Israeli government regaled on just this subject.

He bemoaned the lack of innovational thinking that used to run his country. He said it was all taken away by the need to be in a state of constant defense. He hoped this would never happen to the US.

This was before 9/11, before Katrina, before government by cabal.
(See today‘’s article regarding statements made by a former aide to ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell.)

Perhaps the lack of original thought is a result of this feeling of constantly being on the defense. Oddly enough, I would ha’ve thought the opposite. The need to defend your home, your city, your country, should excite the brain, should make it want to come up with all sorts of divergent mental exercises. Perhaps it did, for a while, perhaps we just ran out of steam.

Perhaps I don‘’t know what the hell I am writing about. Don‘’t ever forget that last sentence when reading anything any where, especially on The Net.
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Search Name - Poor Results for Belltower News

I just did a search for belltowernews.com on Google’s blog search site and came up with mentions of Bell Tower News at other blogs, but no reference to this blog.

Considering Google owns blogger, you would think the Blogger blogs would get some kind of priority.

It would seem not.
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I Was Waiting for the Dove

This morning when I was awakened by the sunlight streaming through the windows, I looked out upon the still wet streets expecting a dove with an olive branch sitting in the nearby tree. Instead I was greeted by the trees branches, they were waving wildly at me. It was as if to say Mater Nature is not through with us yet.

Still, the sight of the sun was a joy.

Then I went down into the basement and joy left. It floated away on the tide moving from the laundry room into the boiler room and out through the storage area.

It went out through the bulkhead and returned through the kitchen window. On the table by the window lay the sheet of paper upon which is written the flight information for my returning family.

This is certainly Mudville with as fleeting a condition of joy.

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Nine Straight Days of Rain

There are two sump pumps in this house. They are both pumping away and there is still four inches of water in the basement. That could be because there is six inches of water in the back yard.

We’re not being washed out of house and home but anything that was on the floor of the basement is either soaked or floating. When I went down there this morning the laundry had floated into the next room.

A third pump was set up and is pumping away. It hasn’t lowered the water level at all, but I at least I feel like I am doing something.

What a drip!
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Old Man Snoring

We are not having a hurricane here in the Northeast. Its more like a Chinese water torture. I can say without exaggeration that it has rained here for eight days straight. I am glad we bought a canoe last year. I may have use for it yet.


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Female Dog, Female Dog, Female Dog

There have been times before when I moaned about working in the corporate structure. Consider this a similar message. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say it hasn’t been the best of weeks.

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comment on a comment

It is good to know what was called a pound sterling in my youth now has a name similar to the public broadcasting station in my new home town. I certainly thank the guy who runs Soap Detectives.

It’s worth a trip there just to understand how we could sit in front of a box that wasn’t HDTV with Cable and flatscreen and still enjoy ourselves.

Hi, I am the guy running soap detectives. Just to clarify, the old link went to my old paypal account in the UK, thus GBP as in Great British Pounds. It has since been replaced with a new account in US dollars.

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Anasi Boys

Neil Gaiman has a new book, new to me anyway.
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Soap Detectives

BoingBoing.net listed a site where old radio shows are being pod cast. It‘’s called Soap Detectives.

If you read the comment about postage and paypal, the currency mentioned is ““GPB“” I am not sure what that means, but I‘ve a feeling it isn‘’t Canada.

All of that aside, I don‘’t recommend you go to Soap Detectives late at night. The radio shows are in serial form and it‘’s hard to stop at just one. You‘’ll find yourself wanting to know what happened to the baby, who was that dyeing man in the bathroom and who exactly is Mr. Van Dyke?

If you like what you hear, the entire collection can be downloaded using iTunes.

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Technorati blogs

I have been spending a lot time Technorati, you can tell because I have a Technorati Profile in my clipboard. I was looking for a place to put it, Blogger seemed like a good idea.

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The Boys of October

Just to make things interesting, the Boys of October, chose the last day of September, 2005 to make things interesting. I would rather things not be so interesting. There is enough going in the world and in my life. More interesting, I don’t need.

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Three

Three Games to Go!

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Sparse Entries in September

This has been a busy month not only at work but in the rest of what is called my life. People and companies are pulling at me in an unsolicited manner.

I don’t like it and it should be done with by the beginning of next week. Hopefully then my blog entries will pick up.

I also have a ton of spam remarks to remove from ALL of the grazing blogs. It’s like cleaning out the horse stall. Yuck!’

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Melancholy Evenings

You would think an online radio station called Melancholy Evenings would bring you down. On the contrary, the music is all extremely pleasant in a singular fashion. The fare runs from serious Blues to light Jazz, to Frank Sinatra singing “Funny That Way.” and then The Ink Spots singing “It Hurts Me.”

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i Tunes - Live365 -satellite radio

At the moment I am listening to Terry Edwards Playing “You Don’t Know What Love Is” on Live 365’s Evening Melancholy online radio station. z

If you are doing any sort of writing, this is the perfect station. It’s a blues station with a touch of loose jazz. I love it. The Bosa Nova Breakfast station is a great one to bring into a good mood.

This is the free online radio outlet that offers commercial free access on the own player for around six dollars a month ala carte, or if you want to put up around $90.00 for two years, it comes out to $3.75 a month.

I have it hooked into my WinAmp player but they offer you a choice of just about all the major mp3 players, including iTunes. You can also chose the store if you wish to download and own songs that are being played. Be careful using this option. At .99 a song it can add up if you plan to fill you iPod Nano with 1000 songs.

Do the math.

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Zoundry

Zoundry worked once and then fell apart. Without changing the seettings which worked yesterday, we tried it again today. Each try on different blogs came up with a strange error message.It said nothing other than the upload failed because of an Atom Error, whatever the hey that is.

We’ll put that program in the try again latter folder for now. The entries you can make on the new improved online Blogger editor are far superior to all of the offline editors almost exclusively because of the new image upload feature.

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Rainlander Review

Rainlander, is a desktop calendar/events/todo program that resembles the widgets on Mac screens. It has a sister program called Rainmeter. I have installed both and then unitstalled Rainmeter.

Rainlander will stay on our desktop for now. It’s a calendar with a mouse over pop-up for dates where you have added events. Rest the mouse pointer on the date and a balloon pops up with the body of the saved event.
There is a separate box wherein are listed the events for the number of days you have configured the box to display. There is also a Todo box with checkable items that can be edited invidually, crossed out or removed. Display of both the events and the Todo boxs are optional.

The calendar can be linked to Outlook and other programs such as iCalendar. It’s useful unobstructive and so far has not crashed windows. This is a good thing.

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Blog Writer — First Entry

This is my first enty using Blog Writer. If I wasn’t just called to dinner it would be longer, but we have needs that must be met.

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Flickr : Famous Grazing

THE OFFLINE BLUES

THE OFFLINE BLUES     

Considering what is going on down along the Gulf Coast along with the misery inflicting the world in general, it seems a little petty to complain about Comcast losing service to my neighborhood.  So, I’ll be petty this morning without asking for pity.

This is Saturday morning.  We have been without Internet service since Wednesday afternoon.  I have not felt the brunt of it until this morning because we are connected at work.  However, as anyone who works in Corporate America knows, personal use of the Internet, especially for blogging, is Verboten.

Our online banking and webpage modification for other people can’t be done under the corporate umbrella.  Well, it CAN be done, but from where I sit, I know it shouldn’t be done, so I won’t do it.  I can go to CNN.Com and check the news and weather, but I can’t go to MyYahoo! or Gmail, email.com, etc.  That is all personal and I really don’t want my personal information floating around on the corporate “temporary” cache.  Neither should you.

What this is giving me is time to explore the offline features of software usually connected to the Internet. This is being written in MS Word with the Google “Blog This“plug-in installed.   I just tried Word’s scrap on the last paragraph.  It was a choice about which I knew nothing until I saw on the tips feature by Amber McArthur on Leo LaPorte’s Call For Help show out of Toronto.  That was a show we TiVo’d before the cable blackout.  We love TiVo!

But we will now miss the shows from Wednesday to today.  I know, boo-hoo.  When the service is restored this will be come a “Hello Mother, Hello Father” letter from summer camp, but I need to write something or I will go blind.  Okay maybe not blind, but I will definitely lose my skills as a blogger.
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Redhead Whimpiness Confirmed

In this morning’s Scotsman, an online news source I read every morning, it was confirmed that people with what is being called the redhead gene are more susceptible to pain from heat and cold than those with darker hair. They are more likely to not like going to the dentist as well.

I could have told them that and saved a great deal or research time and money.

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Exhausted by a Week of Rest

This week off reminded me what it was like to be retired. Not a moment free.

It was all considered by others to be available time for tasks other than work. When I return to work on Monday, I will more fully appreciate the set routine; where time is filled with tasks that for the most part have a beginning and an end.

Where a house is concerned, the beginning is the day you move in and the end is the day you move out. Unless you are moving to a funeral home, the tasks for the next house begin soon after the ones for the last ended.
As I remember it, the last time, the tasks for the old house went on for quite a while after we moved.

There is the fantasy of living in a self healing rental unit. I did that for 32 years. Of course, it wasn’t one rental unit, more like a dozen or so in that span of years. Each was probably, in its way, better than the last; like getting a better car.

What we had there were neighbors of similar financial and social status, on top of us, next to us and in some circumstances below us. I did try to avoid not living on the first floor. Being somewhat heavy of foot, my mere walking was cause enough for conflict.

So, no matter where you live, there is always a good and a bad to it. While you’re thinking of the next better thing to come along, don’t forget to enjoy what you have while it is still yours.
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(posted using Blogger for MS Word)

Flaw in Firefox fixed

In a recent ZDNet article regarding a security flaw in Firefox it was mentioned that a patch would be coming soon. That patch has been issued.

It fixs a flaw which can occur if an overly long URL which also contains a dash is used to abuse the protection provided by Firefox.

The other big news at Firefox is the release of 1.5 beta.

Of course, I am going to download it as soon as possible. Silly me. I am a sucker for betas above 1.0

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That’s it for Online Photo uploading

The one option we didn’t mention was the upload choice now available in Blogger.com itself.

In the toolbar right on top of the message editor, next to the spell checker, is the new upload image box.

I just clicked it and uploaded another photo of Thomas at bat. “Go Matt!” he likes to yell at the Rox games.
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Late Summer Shadows — Two

This is the other side of the dog walking.
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The late Summer Sun shadow play on walking the dog.
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(Both this and the one above were published here by Hello! I discovered there is a way to take out the Picasa symbol in the setup.)

We all know this is the IP for Home, right?

This is the shot I chose to upload from Zoto.com. There is a lttle more control here about the blog message and the size of the photo than is readily available at Flickr.com. So far, I have liked Zoto and Photobucket the best for uploading photos on line.

Next we try Hello. This resides on the hard disk.
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(note: When I posted this, it shut down Firefox, all three windows with I don’t know how many tabs open. I didn’t like that at all!)

Who is this tall guy?

Who is this tall guy?,
uploaded by sgtret.

This is a first day of middle school photo being uploaded to the blog using flickr.com
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Newly Planted School Flowers

Posted by: sgtret on Buzzn

This shot of newly planted flowers at the school was uploaded using Buzznet.com.

There was a problem with the time settings. This was posted after some of the other photoblogging samples above, but was listed below them because of the time difference in the blogger server and the buzznet server.

I will look deeper into the buzznet site to see if that can be changed. Otherwise, if it matters, I can manually change the date and time in the online Blogger.com editor.
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Rock Still life from Photobucket

This is being sent using the last of the online photo editors that can send photos to Blogger.com.

It‘s called Photobucket. An unfortunate name, but I like that you can edit the photos size right from the comment box.

This is the only one of the three we just tested that had that feature.

Next we return to Flickr, Hello and Zoto to compare the tried and true to the new.
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Photobucket

This is a test post from Photobucket.com

Trying FotoFlix Directly again

w:bloggar was on, I turned it off. See if this works. It did. So FotoFlix doesn’t work using Firefox when either blogger.com dashboard is open or w:bloggar is signed in to Belltowernews.com.

Posted by sgtret

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Trying FotoFlix

In the help section in blogger.com under photo uploading, FotoFlix was listed as a contender. I have uploaded this photo to see how it is displayed.

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Posted by sgtret

bloggar editor behind the times? Nope!

w::Bloggar is a little behind the times with the Blogger.com features. Unless my delving into the help files missed something, you cannot upload a file yet to display on the message from the hard drive. Images, such as the Tibetan Eye Chart in this message, need to have already be uploaded.

It is still the best offline editor for most of the online blogging services. Don’t restrict its user for just the blogger.com web site.

I will send an email to w::bloggar’s author to see if that is in the works.
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Good Morning!

Not much to say this morning. I didn’t have to get up early this morning, so my eyes opened at six. I told them to go back to sleep, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Things to do, places to go, people to see.

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Never follow a kid or animal act.

This afternoon I sent a photo out as a Gmail attachment to people in my contacts list from whom I haven’t heard in a while. So far three people long off the radar responded with a wow as to the changes in the photo of our son.

So, if you’re looking for a response from those who aren’t using email as their primary means of communication with the rest of the world, a photo of a growing child will at least generate a Wow.

It’s better than nothing.

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Jonathon Strange and Dr. Norrell

Okay, here‘s the strange thing:

Yesterday while waiting at the Braintree T. stop for a guest from Kenya, I happened into a nearby Borders to kill time. There I came across a book . It was called Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Upon completion, I intend to review here and in length at Field Grazing.

Then today, as I was aimlessly wandering in the world of Next Blog, I came across the illustration pictured to the left. Unfortunately, the site was in a language foreign to me. It do look as if it was a positive review.

I will continue to read it and let you know when I am done. Don’t hold your breath, it’s a long book.

If you are impatient, you can go to the Amazon.com page about the book and read the professional and personal reviews near the bottom of the page. The only slightly negative review was from someone who only read 127 pages. This was more a reflection of the reader than the book.

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First Day of Middle School

It’s not like the first day of kindergarten, but is almost as emotional. Sixth Grade is a big step for a child. It’s a big step for a parent at well.

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Back to work

I am not sure why, but three day weekends don’t bring me rest.

Perhaps it is because I know when I return this morning there will be two days worth of work waiting for me on my desk. When you are in a 24/7 business, a day off just puts things on hold. It’s not like a factory where the last thing you did is waiting for the next thing you’ll do.

There is no freeze-frame, no pause button. The film just keeps running - leaving you to rewind and continue from there. You still needing to have seen the entire feature before you go home.

A bit of stretch there, but I am careful not to talk about the particulars of my business due to a blog ban.

Damn Blog Bans!

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This is how nicknames happen:

In this year’s class at school, there will be a boy with the same first name as our son.

Not wanting to confuse the teacher and the rest of the school, our son has decided to give himself a nickname.

He is of the opinion that it is better to give yourself a nickname than have a less than flattering moniker pinned by others.

Our son has decided to call himself Books.


We like it.

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Say Hello to Hurricane Maria:

The National Weather Service says it is moving north and at this time is no threat to land. If you look at the larger image on their web page, you will see that it is well out into the Atlantic. If it keeps going north it will peter out in the colder latitudes. If it takes a left turn, it will come right up the street from the ocean. I will watch this young lady.
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Next Blog Ramblings

Occasionally I like to drift through the bloggersphere, a smaller version of the entire blogsphere, by clicking on the Next Blog box on the upper right corner of most blogger.com created blogs.

Doing this takes you around the world, as well as around philosophical, political and religious circles. There are many asian sites where the text comes up only as ?? marks.

Sad.

I would like to see what they have to say. Most of them are rich in graphics and worthy of hitting the page down.

There are an amazing number of Anime cartoon based blogs, and an unfortunately large number of self pity selections as well.

Thankfully, most of them let you know in the heading how deep the self-pity runs allowing you to hit the Next Blog button quickly. There is one on knitting that comes up several times for some reason.

It certainly is worth a visit to the other bloggers if for nothing else, to see why the hell you’re doing it as well.

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Brockton ROX

We attended a Brockton ROX minor league baseball game this afternoon- evening. It was a fun time. The baseball seemed to be background noise to all of the other events surrounding us.

Every thing from Face Painting to inflated jumping areas for the children to sausages and funnel cakes for the grown-ups.

Four small servings of chicken tenders and four waters cost $23.00. Considering the price of gas these days, I suppose that was a bargain.

The Rox lost to the Jersey Jacksals 7 - 2 but they still go into the playoffs as Division Champions. In case you were interested.
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Flickr as Yahoo!

When I went into my Flickr account I was given the option of combining it with my Yahoo! account. I could see no reason for doing this, other than that Flickr is now owned by Yahoo! and I am sure they are integrating their data base and will soon require all Flickr members to be members of Yahoo! Like the Google Account, this way all I have to do is open the Yahoo! account and all of the features will be available by menu.

The above is an example of how decisions are made around here.

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Amber Mac

Leo LaPorte‘s Call For Help on G4-Tech TV has a PEI co-host. Her name is Amber McArthur...

On the web she calls her self Amber Mac.

She produces a video pod cast regarding up to the minute tech news and sites on the web. The podcast can be found at Amber’s personal sight and at various other video ventures around the net. Do a tag search for CommandN on YouTube.com

That’s all for now.
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(sent via MS Word)

This is our first try using MS Word to post

This is our first try at Blogger for MS Word.
I will change the Font on the next line
If the font has been changed from Times Roman to Georgia then there is no Problem changing fonts.
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Prophetic Song

At Fifi’s Grafitti there is a post entitled

"new o'leans"

It speaks of the river and the Army Corps of Engineers attempts over the years to control it. It mentions that the Army Corps of Engineers is not God. I am glad someone is brave enough to say that.

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Okay, that was a long week, but...

We are off for a 3 day weekend, though, you guessed it, I am on call. It is only on Saturday and Sunday. On Labor Day, I actually have the day off. I might even take a dip in the pool, before it freezes over. Ah, New England!

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Non Stop Day

This morning I didn’t have time to make any entry into the blog. I worked late at home and then had to go in early to complete the work.

My previous boss would have said it’s bad time management, but this was just end of the month overload. I have one more thing to do and then I will be off all but one day next week.

That much time off may be too much for me because everything I didn’t do for the week off will be sitting on my desk the Monday I return.

Bitch and Moan done.
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Famous Grazing Portal

We’ve registered grazingporrtal.net as the URL for the Famous Grazing Portal. You will notice the two “r’s”. That was a typo, but a typo worked for Google, so we decided to keep it that way. The URL will be connected to the site later today.

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Long Monday

Monday is rarely fun.

Yesterday was not only not fun it was tedious. I don’t mind hard work, but when you know a lot of it is being done to justify the existence of others, tedium sets in. Sometimes volunteer work is harder because of that.

When I volunteered to serve on a town commission ten years ago it seemed like a good idea. Now it’s become an obligation not cheerfully fulfilled. This could be because of greater responsibility naturally assumed with experience. It could be because my regular work day is so much fuller as well. I am just tired.
Moan and Groan!
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Is it good news when it’s not as bad?

Is it good news when the news you get is not as bad as it could’ve been? I don’t know. They’re saying up to 100 homes were destroyed but the surge from the lake north of the City of New Orleans did not extensively overtop the levee.

It wasn’t one of the biblical plagues of Egypt, many people didn’t die, not so much because the storm wasn’t as bad as expected but because there was a mass evacuation.

Let’s see what it all looks like in the morning light.

My workday went to ten this evening. I expected it to go as late as eleven. I guess in a very minor way, this is good news because it isn’t as bad as it could have been. Why am I feel all sorts of East European all of a sudden?

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New Habits

Every morning I start up Firefox and open the tabs for email.

I have added the blogger page and the 21Portal page to this tab. This is to inspire me to make at least one blog entry a day. They may not be sophisticated, contain graphics and links, but at least they will hopefully guarantee a time line better than before.

The news this morning is Hurricane Katrina threatening my second favorite city. It’s been downgraded from a category 5 to a 3 but 100 mph winds still scare the hell out of me. We’ll see how the city does. Off to work...

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This was the first Sunday I have had off

In a long time.

I looked at my calendar last night and saw one blank day, today. I thought it was a mistake at first, but realized no one wanted a piece of me today. Of course, tomorrow I will start work at 7:00 a.m. and will probably work until 10:00 p.m.

There is balance in the world.

I discovered the 21publish site last night so that’s what took up much of my day. The good thing is I didn’t feel guilty at all for playing with it all day. It was like watching cartoons all day.

The whole day wasn’t wasted. The pool was repaired, the door to the dining room was fixed, a spontaneous lunch with the family from the Vineyard, Twelve Hawks’s Traveler was finished, but none of that was on the calendar. It was all spontaneous.

What a gas.
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21Publish About Page

Famous Grazing was started as an attempt to use every available blog publishing tool on the Internet. At the time of start up, the choices were limited to Blogger, Web Page, Live Journal and a few others. Now there are dozens.

This, our first site, Belltowernews.com. was started using Blogger when it was a private company and cost money. We then opened a Web Page site on our own server. Since then we’ve gone from b2Evolution to MSN Blogs. Examples are:

Field Grazing
Sea Grazing
Artistic Grazing
Grazing in Another Field
Butterflies Grazing
Dragons Grazing
Flickr Grazing
Ghosts Grazing
Grazed Bare
Grazing in the Brave Net
Grazing News
Random Space (MSN)
Multi-Grazing
Open Grazing
Other Grazing
Serene Grazing
Grazing at Xanga
Bell Tower News
Home Grazing

Each of the above is free. There are pay sites, and some of the above offer bigger storage and more features, but each of them is perfectly okay without shelling out a dime.

Below is a snapshot of a page created on a trial basis at at the pay site, TypePad:



Enjoy the blog you create here or at any of the above blog creation sites.
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FAMOUS GRAZING PORTAL!

We have opened a “portal” for the Famous Grazing Series.

It is over at 21Publish. We were playing around with a local Apache server when we came upon a comment about 21Publish. We set the portal up and created two personal blogs to fill out the set up.

If you feel like have your own blog affiliated with Famous Grazing, feel free to join. Any obnoxious or dangerous sites will be deleted.
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Firefox Yahoo Warning

........................................
Click on the Whoops! to see the error message you get when you try to sign up for Yahoo!’s new photomail and use anything except MS Internet Explorer,
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Traveler Twelve Hawks

A reluctant review

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Traveler by John Twelve Hawks doesn’t warn you loudly that it is book one of the Fourth Realm Series. That could be because there is no book two, or three. It leaves you dangling.

(Spoiler Alert:)

As you approach ten to fifteen pages from the end, you realize there is no room for a neat ending. It must be either part of a continuing story, or the author is going to use the all too familiar arrival of the U.S. Cavalry. Here it was the former.

In most reviews I don’t give that much away, but I believe a fair warning, not already provided by the publisher, is needed before you buy this book.

By all means buy this book, though the book is short on sand, it certainly is a decent story worth reading. I hope the plot thickens for the second book, if it is coming. I will buy that one as well.

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G4 - Call For Help

G4 - Call For Help: "

Waterproof Your Gadgets Premieres: Monday 08/29, 11am ET / 8am PT
> Full Show Schedule

Sent from Firefox with JustBlogIt!

Sideblog

Amazing what one letter off can do.

I was going to my sideblog.com page when I left out the letter “b” and was taken to sidelog.com, a Nepalese webhosting service. Watch your step out there.
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If only there was someone on the other end.

The installation of Google Talk was seamless. I have restarted Google Desktop and all seems to be working out well. Now there only needs to be someone on the other end of the line with whom I can communicate to see how Google Talk is any different that Yahoo! Messenger or AOL or MSN or ICQ, etc. Trillian here we come!

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It has only been 85 years?

In this morning’s online NYT there was an On This Day feature imbedded in the story I was reading about Google Talk beta. (More on that later.)

Today’s issue mentioned it was on this date in 1920 the Constitution was amended to allow women the privilege of voting.

Think about that. Women in this country of the brave and the free have only been allowed to vote for 85 years.

This means there are people alive today who were alive when women couldn’t vote nationally. I know Montana and perhaps a few other states allowed women to vote and run for local offices, such as the school board, but they couldn’t vote for congressman, senator or the president.

Only 85 years. To quote myself 40 years ago, “that blows my mind!” It was something I knew in general, but to have it displayed as an aniversary for today brought it the front of the line.
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Google Sidebar starts off well, but...

It was disappointing to try Google Sidebar and not have as much fun with it as I did with Google Earth. Sidebar looked fine, it was easily configured and, for the most part, did everything it said it would do. Unfortunately, it also did something that wasn’t good. It shut down all of my Internet browsers. The sidebar itself looked things up with abandon, changed the news, checked the weather, popped up photos found in the “My Photos” subdirectory.

But, when I went to SnapfilesPro.com to write a review for it, I couldn’t get in. I checked everything, but the only way to get back online was to take the sidebar out of the startup folder.

I will try it again latter in the week under different configurations to see how it does. If I find a way to coexist with it, I will certainly return here and tell you how. My wide screen eMachines laptop certainly has room on the side for it.

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Google Earth is FUN!

Okay, this is something made for me. You can download it, use it all you want, as along as you know this was made for me. I love maps. Google Earth Software takes maps.google.com to another level.

This is the review I wrote for Snapfiles.com:

As a person who loves maps and going places, Google Maps is wonderful. The installation was faultless, and the interface is practically spiritual. I went to the small town where I was born on the Atlantic Seaboard and zoomed in on the house where we lived. I could see the milk truck behing the high fence. This program has layer upon layer. Go to San Francisco and click on the Churches box. I didn’t know there were that many churches in town. Need a pharmacy or gas station? This will not only show you where they are but what they look like. Can you tell I played with this one for a while? That’s why I say, have a lot of spare time before you install this.

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Malika and Chantea

See The Entry Below

Chanty Comes to Vist

This is Chanty. She‘s come up from Virgina with her mother to attend in Cambodian Water Festival being held this weekend in Lowell, MA.  Believe it or not, she‘€™s cuter than this photograph would have you believe.
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Happy Birthday Ally!

I was afraid I wouldn’t make in time to wish my dear friend Ally a Happy Birthday.

The good news is I got the system back up at 2335 and was able to get the message out before the holiday expired.

Now I am going to bed.
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Bad weather coming

You probably won’t get any more entries today. There’s bad weather coming and the river is rising.
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Blogger.com In House Photo Update

We haven’t used the blogger.com online editor in a while.

When we went online to correct a problem with Zoto.com and the ‘ key, we noticed an announcement that you can now upload photos using blogger.com’s online editor. We didn’t know that.

Of course, three isn’t any particular photo we would like to upload at the moment, so we’ll just pick one from the bunch: A church side window representing the rose.

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Bigoted News Coverage

A story reported in Yahoo News, which seems to have originated in Boston’s Channel 5 News has a line in it that reads:

"I lost my green card. I lost everything," she said.

Perhaps I am being oversensitive, but this line is telling me the author of the article wants me to know this building was occupied by non-citizen workers. I am sure the poor woman and the 41 other souls who where made homeless by the fire lost more than an easily replaced government document.

Later on in the piece the lines: "It had been termed incendiary. Arson has not been ruled out, but has not been deemed arson as of this time," DiLiddo said.— Officials are offering $5,000 for information that may lead to an arrest.“

Not a crime, but we’ll give you five grand if you can help us arrests someone anyway. Though it’s only a little local fire story, to the 41 people now without a home, it’s a big deal.

A little more care could have gone into the writing, or to put the blame where it belongs, the editing,.
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No More Noisy Box!

Having gone completely laptop, the trick is to learn the keyboard. If I practice enough, that should be no problem. I have XL hands that need to fit on this compressed space. Also, the keys outside of the alpha keys are not all in the same place as they were on my microsoft wireless.

The other thing I want to learn as well is the touch pad. It sits right where my palm normally sits and there fore, while I am typing the mouse arrow flies all over the screen.

Having Spell Catcher loaded is a big help. When I make a spelling error like capitalizing the first two letters, which I do on any keyboard, it automatically corrects it. This is true in all applications where I type, not only in Word.

Then there is that annoying Fn key where the Ctrl key should be. Everytime I hit it, it changes all of the keys on the right side of the keyboard into the number pad. To undo it.

I have to find another key over by the right side of the F-keys. It has replaced the caps lock key as the one I am most likely to tear our of the keyboard.

My hand also still leaves the keyboard to grab for the mouse and squeezes thin air. Once the hands learn the ropes, I hope that will end as well. The heat coming from the keyboard is a minor distraction for now, but if it gets hotter, I could see that being a problem. I bought an underside cooling rack which seems to be helping somewhat.

Okay, it’s time to study for the test. You will know when the test is close, the study will change to the word CRAM!

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Ann Looking at Martha

Don‘€™t mind me, once I find a new way to blog, I like to play with it for a while.
I know that can get boring to anyone foolish enough to read this blog. I see it like visiting the basement of a man who collects commode plungers, the fascinating thing is not the tool collection, but the fact that such a collection exists.
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Why is Zoto so easy?

It just seems to me that Zoto should be a bit more complicated.  It just does everything I want it to do too easily. That makes me nervous.  There should be more loops to jump through, more frustrations to suffer for this to be real.  I mean, if it keeps up being this easy to  use, than anyone can do it and I won‘€™t feel so special for having figured it out.
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Zoto button

Sometimes it’s easier to write...

Sometimes it’s easier to write when you think no one is reading what you write. Then you get an email complaining about your erratic postings. Even though you think most of what you’ve written is petty, complaining, or just mindless rambling, it’s a shock to think that people make it part of their daily routine to read it.

Jeneane Sessum mentioned this in her blog. I discovered it when doing one of my NEXT BLOG wanderings in blogger.

Another blogger selection I was reading almost daily was Boogie Street. Then in November of last year he announced he was going cold turkey and though not taking it down, he was no longer making any entries. He came back in January of this year to post a photo of a found child from the tsunami that hit southeast asia.

The author of Boogie Street calls himself Mr. Zip. He and I corresponded over one or two things regarding his art and the display of it on other web sites. He seemed a civilized human being.

Now it‘s time for me to get back to reading the news before going off to work for the man.
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Zoto GIF Conversion

Divide 1 by Seven, follow the numbers and then connect the numbers dividable by three.

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This was a test of the GIF conversion to JPG for uploading by the Zoto uploading program.  It works.
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Second Zoto Test

This is being blogged directly from the Zoto web site.  The one below of Andrew and his Jag was sent using Zoto‘s Gmail settings.  If there is a way to set the size of the photo blog display using the Gmail method, I haven’€™t seen it.  When sending the photo to Blogger using Zoto you have a choice between small, medium and large.  The image here is the small selection.
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