Two things have kept me from the blog, a new boss at work and the family away for the holiday.
With the family away for the holiday, and the new boss at work, I have spent an extraordinary amount of time at work with the understanding there was nothing at home to rush to from work.
Now I will be going away on abbreviated holiday and expect to be back sometime early Tuesday.
See you all then. =30=
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Slipped to the bottom
Something about the previous post shoved it down the page. This is a test to see if this is a problem with the templates or just the unique way the last message was created.=30=
Almost Did It...
At 5:20 this morning I leaped out of bed, threw some clothes into plastic shopping bags
and was out of the driveway by 5:40.
I was on my way to a ceremony in NYC. A late dear friend of mine was having the street upon which she had lived for over 60 years named after her.
The ceremony is scheduled for noon today.
On the way to the highway, I noticed the “E“ on my gas gauge light up. I pulled into the Mobil station for a fill up and was blown away by what used to cost $14.00 now cost 29. That woke me up a bit.
As I drove further along on the local roads, I remembered my personal meds. If I had taken one pill this morning, I probably could have made it through the day, but by not taking it, I had to return.
On the return it dawned on me how many people I was inconveniencing by my truly spontaneous decision to go.
By the time I pulled back into the driveway, I had decided not to go. All of that in three quarters of hour and it wasnt even six thirty yet.
Now its 11:18 a.m. and I have accomplished much.
=30=
and was out of the driveway by 5:40.
I was on my way to a ceremony in NYC. A late dear friend of mine was having the street upon which she had lived for over 60 years named after her.
The ceremony is scheduled for noon today.
On the way to the highway, I noticed the “E“ on my gas gauge light up. I pulled into the Mobil station for a fill up and was blown away by what used to cost $14.00 now cost 29. That woke me up a bit.
As I drove further along on the local roads, I remembered my personal meds. If I had taken one pill this morning, I probably could have made it through the day, but by not taking it, I had to return.
On the return it dawned on me how many people I was inconveniencing by my truly spontaneous decision to go.
By the time I pulled back into the driveway, I had decided not to go. All of that in three quarters of hour and it wasnt even six thirty yet.
Now its 11:18 a.m. and I have accomplished much.
=30=
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Video Upload at Google
If you are considering the video upload feature at Google, I would read the legal document we never read when installing programs or agreeing to online service. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but that agreement looks to me as if you are signing away your soul.
This is not to say stay away from the Google Video Upload option. Just to read the agreement. It looks like a program that could be very useful to families to share the video of Junior taking his first steps. As long as they know their sharing Junior’s first steps with everyone who is signed onto the program as well as everyone who works at Google and to whomever Google decides it would be a good idea to display Juniors’ First Steps.
Though at the moment I don’t even have a digital video camera, nor do I intend to get one in the near future, it was the 70 percent paragraph that stopped me cold in my registration tracks and for the first time I think EVER did I click on the NO I DO NOT AGREE button. It felt weird, but it felt right.
Other weekend news will follow.
This is not to say stay away from the Google Video Upload option. Just to read the agreement. It looks like a program that could be very useful to families to share the video of Junior taking his first steps. As long as they know their sharing Junior’s first steps with everyone who is signed onto the program as well as everyone who works at Google and to whomever Google decides it would be a good idea to display Juniors’ First Steps.
Though at the moment I don’t even have a digital video camera, nor do I intend to get one in the near future, it was the 70 percent paragraph that stopped me cold in my registration tracks and for the first time I think EVER did I click on the NO I DO NOT AGREE button. It felt weird, but it felt right.
Other weekend news will follow.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Read the News today, oh boy...
It was the tradition on Sunday mornings to break the Sunday NYT into its various parts, triage the parts and proceed to be informed.
Sunday mornings are now taken up with scanning the headlines of the various RSS and Atom feeds, going online to the NYT, Guardian, Scotsman, Yahoo! News, Google News. This is followed by opening Thingamablog and scanning the Tech News feeds.
The good side of this is my fingers don‘t have the weekly ink smudge, but my brain is certainly assaulted with information.
Reading papers online, papers I would‘ve had to go to the international newsstand in Times Sq. to get before, broadens the reporting on things in the US:
This morning The Scotsman had articles on McCain‘s plans of the 2008 presidential race. It was well written, insightful and from a non-committed point of view. This is refreshing.
Then there was the article on the airline the C`I`A is using to ferry its agents and customers around the world. I would say that article had a slightly paranoid slant, but that is common outside of this country, where they dont understand it really is no more than an extension of a Yale Fraternity.
There was another mocking article about the MoD losing a multi-million dollar unmanned submarine only to have it found by a Scottish lobster fisherman. At first the MoD refused to admit to its ownership of the vessel. This they flipped when it was pointed out to them the hull of the boat had MoD printed all over it.
When the ponied up to owning it, The Scotsman reported, the fisherman wouldn‘t give it back to them until they paid him for the expense of hauling back to port and getting it out of the water. They refused, so the wily Scottish fisherman hid it.
The Tyson Surrender and the Jackson trial were reported with the usual relish papers have for reporting the downfall of American Celebrities and the royal family with its many branches.
Bits and pieces of the tech news found to be interesting will be reported at Home Grazing.
=30=
Sunday mornings are now taken up with scanning the headlines of the various RSS and Atom feeds, going online to the NYT, Guardian, Scotsman, Yahoo! News, Google News. This is followed by opening Thingamablog and scanning the Tech News feeds.
The good side of this is my fingers don‘t have the weekly ink smudge, but my brain is certainly assaulted with information.
Reading papers online, papers I would‘ve had to go to the international newsstand in Times Sq. to get before, broadens the reporting on things in the US:
This morning The Scotsman had articles on McCain‘s plans of the 2008 presidential race. It was well written, insightful and from a non-committed point of view. This is refreshing.
Then there was the article on the airline the C`I`A is using to ferry its agents and customers around the world. I would say that article had a slightly paranoid slant, but that is common outside of this country, where they dont understand it really is no more than an extension of a Yale Fraternity.
There was another mocking article about the MoD losing a multi-million dollar unmanned submarine only to have it found by a Scottish lobster fisherman. At first the MoD refused to admit to its ownership of the vessel. This they flipped when it was pointed out to them the hull of the boat had MoD printed all over it.
When the ponied up to owning it, The Scotsman reported, the fisherman wouldn‘t give it back to them until they paid him for the expense of hauling back to port and getting it out of the water. They refused, so the wily Scottish fisherman hid it.
The Tyson Surrender and the Jackson trial were reported with the usual relish papers have for reporting the downfall of American Celebrities and the royal family with its many branches.
Bits and pieces of the tech news found to be interesting will be reported at Home Grazing.
=30=
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Firefox Locked In
If you go back a few months or so in this blog you will see several articles about Opera web browser and how much better it is that Internet Explorer. It still beats IE hands down, but...
There’s Firefox.
As a shareware/freeware junkie, I try everything for a few days and only incorporate the software into my routine when I find it either increases the speed, lessens the typing or increases the fun. Otherwise, I delete it. If you don’t do that you will soon find your hardrive overwhelmed. This is especially so for programs that assume you want them to start everytime you reboot your program.
Ooops, off soapbox, back on topic, Firefox.
With it’s themes and extensions, Firefox is extremely personalizable. (there’s a word SpellCatcherPLUS
didn’t like.) I tried a download manager extension for 15 days, it reminded me of this in fifteen days. I found it didn’t add to the plate in comparison with the default download manager. I when to the Extensions menu choice, deselected it and it was gone. That simple.
For Opera , not so simple. Opera is customizable to a point, but the ease of customization isn’t at all as simple as Firefox.
. As with any software designed to do a similar job, the similarities will always be greater in number than those features that make each program unique. The focus in comparison shouldn’t be on the bells and whistles, it should be on those features they share.
Starting quickly has always been one of Opera selling points. In this it is better than Firefox.
only if you have loaded Firefox down with a heavy theme and a truckload of extensions. Out of the box, it is as quick if not quicker starting up.
Time to go to the beach. Try them both, then choose Firefox.
because there are no adverts attached in the free version, in fact there is only a free version.
=30=
There’s Firefox.
As a shareware/freeware junkie, I try everything for a few days and only incorporate the software into my routine when I find it either increases the speed, lessens the typing or increases the fun. Otherwise, I delete it. If you don’t do that you will soon find your hardrive overwhelmed. This is especially so for programs that assume you want them to start everytime you reboot your program.
Ooops, off soapbox, back on topic, Firefox.
With it’s themes and extensions, Firefox is extremely personalizable. (there’s a word SpellCatcherPLUS
didn’t like.) I tried a download manager extension for 15 days, it reminded me of this in fifteen days. I found it didn’t add to the plate in comparison with the default download manager. I when to the Extensions menu choice, deselected it and it was gone. That simple.
For Opera , not so simple. Opera is customizable to a point, but the ease of customization isn’t at all as simple as Firefox.
. As with any software designed to do a similar job, the similarities will always be greater in number than those features that make each program unique. The focus in comparison shouldn’t be on the bells and whistles, it should be on those features they share.
Starting quickly has always been one of Opera selling points. In this it is better than Firefox.
only if you have loaded Firefox down with a heavy theme and a truckload of extensions. Out of the box, it is as quick if not quicker starting up.
Time to go to the beach. Try them both, then choose Firefox.
because there are no adverts attached in the free version, in fact there is only a free version.
=30=
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Gmail is back up!!
It was like a pusher withholding a taste. I told that to the support people at Gmail from my backup Yahoo account. They seemed very understanding and quickly readdicted me to Gmail. It was kind of them and I feel much better.... whew!
=30=
=30=
SpellCatcher Plus is the one!
I run a dozen or so blogs in a series called Famous Grazing Blogs. The sole purpose of this series is to set up a blog in everywhich way an end-user may try. Each of the blogs has no other focus than their mere existence.
The blogs were not just created and left hanging. We do our best to keep each as up to date as possible. As you can imagine this take a lot of typing. Though each of is a trained touch-typist, when typing as quickly as possible, mistakes happen. There are spell checkers in some of the media, but not all. This is especially true for the hosted programs, such as Word Press and pLog.
Here is where Spell Catcher PLUS comes into the picture. I have tried several shareware and freeware spell checkers. Each seems to have a glitch in one or two of the various interfaces used. Spell Catcher PLUS was the only one that has proven itself worthy to each of them.
When I registered the software, I included a comment in the bill of sale and received an email form the program’s author allowing me to promote the product on the blogs. This I am doing as I type because this will be the exact copy found in each of them.
=30=
The blogs were not just created and left hanging. We do our best to keep each as up to date as possible. As you can imagine this take a lot of typing. Though each of is a trained touch-typist, when typing as quickly as possible, mistakes happen. There are spell checkers in some of the media, but not all. This is especially true for the hosted programs, such as Word Press and pLog.
Here is where Spell Catcher PLUS comes into the picture. I have tried several shareware and freeware spell checkers. Each seems to have a glitch in one or two of the various interfaces used. Spell Catcher PLUS was the only one that has proven itself worthy to each of them.
When I registered the software, I included a comment in the bill of sale and received an email form the program’s author allowing me to promote the product on the blogs. This I am doing as I type because this will be the exact copy found in each of them.
=30=
Gmail Shut me Down
They say it was only for 24 hours, but I am not sure why. We had to leave for an appointment and I left a pending message on the screen with Gmail open in another window. If that was all it took to get shut down, I will have to find another online email service because being slightly absent minded, I will probably do that again and again.
I will report here if there is any resolution to this.
=30=
I will report here if there is any resolution to this.
=30=
Blogger is Free Service - Back Up, Back Up!
After reading this article at Wired.com, I went to my Blogger page and said I really need to do something to back this up.
There are several years worth of mindless ramblings there that some student of the crazed minds of bloggers may want to examine in latter years. Then I thought, most of this is crap. The only thing I wouldnt want to lose are the graphics. I lost a good deal of them when a server crashed on me last year.
Now I know well enough to store them at GMail, oops, another free service...
Oh well, I guess when we put down our thoughts in a storage media that consists basically of rust glued to plastic and the whims of magnetism, we really cant expect anything close to immortality.
There is always the cuneiform on marble option...
=30=
There are several years worth of mindless ramblings there that some student of the crazed minds of bloggers may want to examine in latter years. Then I thought, most of this is crap. The only thing I wouldnt want to lose are the graphics. I lost a good deal of them when a server crashed on me last year.
Now I know well enough to store them at GMail, oops, another free service...
Oh well, I guess when we put down our thoughts in a storage media that consists basically of rust glued to plastic and the whims of magnetism, we really cant expect anything close to immortality.
There is always the cuneiform on marble option...
=30=
Saturday, June 04, 2005
A Celebratory Dilemma
It is a dilemma when news arrives that is good news, to a point. There was the distinct possibility that it could have been great news, but doesn’t qualify. On the other side of the stick, it could have equally been bad or even very bad news.
An extreme example would be lottery news. You could have got all seven numbers and won 150 millions of dollars. But you only had six and won $100,000.00. The $100,000.00 is good news, but it wasn’t the very good news it could have been. The opposite side of that stick would be if you lost the ticket. The bad news would be you lost a ticket worth $100,000.00. The very bad news would be you lost the ticket worth the full amount of the prize.
Nothing that extreme has happened here. After initial elation the realization of what could have happened has set in, putting a slight dampening on the celebratory mood.
Don’t ask for the details, they would only bore you.
=30=
An extreme example would be lottery news. You could have got all seven numbers and won 150 millions of dollars. But you only had six and won $100,000.00. The $100,000.00 is good news, but it wasn’t the very good news it could have been. The opposite side of that stick would be if you lost the ticket. The bad news would be you lost a ticket worth $100,000.00. The very bad news would be you lost the ticket worth the full amount of the prize.
Nothing that extreme has happened here. After initial elation the realization of what could have happened has set in, putting a slight dampening on the celebratory mood.
Don’t ask for the details, they would only bore you.
=30=
Thursday, June 02, 2005
The Day Being the Last Day.
This has been an odd week. Because of the holiday, the week started on Tuesday. Tuesday was also the last day of the month. So the first day of the week was the last day of the month and it wasn’t Monday. Deadlines happened and projects started at the same time.
It was a confusing configuration of a day. Before things could get started other things needed to be finished but because of the juxtaposition of the end of the month and the start of the week, the order in which things needed to be done required less than the normal automatic behavior seen at the workplace.
It all worked out, of course, but it had to be done at a higher plane of consciousness than I normally allow myself to attain in the drone status of workday. It was probably good for me. For clarification of this Google Gurdjieff.
=30=
It was a confusing configuration of a day. Before things could get started other things needed to be finished but because of the juxtaposition of the end of the month and the start of the week, the order in which things needed to be done required less than the normal automatic behavior seen at the workplace.
It all worked out, of course, but it had to be done at a higher plane of consciousness than I normally allow myself to attain in the drone status of workday. It was probably good for me. For clarification of this Google Gurdjieff.
=30=
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