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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