Welcome To GMail

A very good friend of mine has found Gmail.

My sister and Niece have found Gmail.

I Beta tested Gmail and now the entire world has found the best way to send, receive, archive and best of all share, share alike.

I have used 38% of my Gmail storage. I didn't think that would be possible.

A favorite phrase in Worcester County is "Back in the day."

Back in the day I was a sysop in a small California village called San Francisco.

Back in the day, email was for the elite. Now it is for the many.

Come the revolution, we used to say. The revolution has come and it's nothing like we thought it would be.

Where are the clowns?
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Booger Contemplating The Snow

Thoughts on a 90 degree day.

On a hot day, like today I like to think about this shot that I took two winters ago.

That's our cat, Booger. If you saw his nose you would know why we he acquired that name.

Booger thought it would be a good idea to go for a stroll in the garden. He's originally from Florida. What is in front of him is four of feet snow.

The impression on the snow is the imprint from the door.

Booger decided not to go for a walk.
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Heroes Like Bobby

There are heroes in this world who get medals. There are heroes in this world who get parades. Then there are heroes like Bobby here.

Bobby sees a wall and wants to know what's on the other side; how to get over it, under it, around it. If needed, knock it down.

Bobby thought he would take on the Hudson River. The river welcomed his attention. The people on the river welcomed his attention.

When you have heroes like Bobby, you can sleep at night.

When you have heroes like Bobby you know you live in the right country, on the right side of the country.

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Lots of Talk About Talk

Each morning I peruse the Google News Site.

Some stories, especially in the Tech and Celebrity sections can run on forever.

The one about a study that says women do not talk any more than men has been going on for three days. The latest on TIMESONLINE goes into more detail than most of the other news services. It brings up a reference to The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine that says women's daily word use is an average of 20K compared to 7K for men in a day.

If I was inclined to use more words, I'd explain why that confuses me.

The news is also telling me I should be upset about the pope bringing back the Latin Mass. Oddly enough, I can't get riled up about it, considering all of the rest going on in the world.

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Missing Months

If you look at the archive listing for this blog, you will see it goes back to the early days of blogging in May of 2004.

If you examine the list carefully, you will also note that February and March of this year are missing. This is because of two major reasons.

I was working so hard that I was diagnosed with clinical exhaustion. Secondly, Registerfly.com, the original registrar and server for this blog did a melt down. I had to change my URL's to other ISP registries.

This time I did not follow the advice of Mark Twain to watch the basket, but spread the names from here to there and back again.

If you were wondering what blog entries I did make during that two month hiatus from Bell Tower News, go to the Grazing Press Blog.
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See If You Can Pick the Window

Thirty eight years ago I spent the night in one of the apartments whose window you can see in this shot. We had attended a party of people who had worked on a failed political campaign.


I woke to the smell of coffee brewing and cigarette smoke.


I sat up and found I had been sleeping on a couch when my feet hit the back of the person who had slept on the floor in front of the couch.


That's the way it was in mid-town Manhattan - thirty eight years ago.

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Happy Fourth

This is a photo I took of the Statue as we sailed around it on the way to  Ellis Island.

On Ellis Island we saw the name of my son's great grandfather etched into plaque 122.


We also saw the parts of the building that look so well built from the outside, yet obviously rotting on the inside. Whether there was poetic symbolism here, or just a sample of things the way they are, I couldn't say. I took a few shots of the broken windows with feral plants reclaiming the land.


Whatever it all means, we still live in the greatest nation on the planet.


Now instead of trying to export that greatness though force and foolish evangelism, we do it by just living the good life and make people want to emulate or emigrate, the world may one day, a few lifetimes from now, but one day, get it.
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Hero Died Today

Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey died today. He was a great hero of World War II.

I just thought it worth mentioning.

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Back in Focus

Coming back to the first blog makes sense. For various reasons, some of the financial and some merely because construction and maintenance, even though almost wholly in my hands, wasn't worth it. It is no longer a toy, or a gadget. It is now something where I will get back to writing for the sake of writing.

Of course, my Moleskine takes care of most of that, internally, but there are just some things that need to be shouted from the rooftops, echoed in the valley and whispered in the check out line at Hanneford's.

This week should be called Limbo Week. Not for the Caribbean dance, but for the place betwixt heaven and Hades, or the time it takes to get an operator to fix the problem with the credit card. No, not that bad, but close.

Meetings are being canceled, moved, shortened,etc. Why don't we all just admit nothing is getting done and take the week off.The weather could be better for those who enjoy that airy thing you need to walk through to get to your car. I like it just like this.
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It's Monday Morning or the July 4th Weekend

As I sit here at my home desk getting ready to leave for work, the thought occurred to me, is this the July 4th weekend or is next?  I asked my wife and she, in her wise way, said "Neither.  This is the July 4th week."  Ah!

She may have something there.  It sounds suspiciously French, but still worth creating an Institute or at the very least, a congressional committee to study.  Instead of putting holidays on a Monday, to create the three day weekend; put them on a Wednesday to create the holiday week! 

Pure Genius!

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Look Into My Eyes

The last photo depicting the sock dumping was posted using the Live Writer Software. The problem with that is it can't upload photos to the Google server, except through FTP settings that are too complicated for this late at night.
I have been using the Picasa settings for uploading photos, but forgot that it was done from the installed software and not from the web album. The two have become so integrated that I am not sure if I am working online or on my own laptop.
The new Google documents have become part of my workday. I write all of my drafts on them, in Word style or using the spreadsheet software. I have several collaborators who also share the same workspace even though we are continents and oceans apart. =30=

Photo Post With Live Writer

This is an attempt at writing around a posted photograph of this sock dumping in   Croton-on-Hudson. Sock dumping is the traditional greeting god-daughters giver their god-mothers. 

It is believed this custom started with the Dutch settlers who adapted it from the local indigenous people's custom of dumping flowers.  Originally the Dutch tried it with their wooden clogs, but after a few unexpected fatalities, the switched to socks, clean socks.  This is the tradition that follows us today.  Though it was used in the City of New York until the late 17th Century, it is only in Croton-on-Hudson it is actively used.
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Okay, Now That We've Setup w:Bloggar

In a little side note in the help file mentioned in the last entry regarding w:bloggar, there was a comment regarding Windows Liver Writer.  Being always willing to experiment, I installed it. 
The only problem I was having was with the site URL.  It was totally my fault.  I was putting in the dashboard URL instead of that for the blog itself.  Once I corrected that line, the rest of the installation was automatic.

Let's see how it looks when published...
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Thanks to Samishra - w:Bloggar on Blogger

If this posts on Bell Tower News, it will because of Samisha at his website that explains how to get w:bloggar to work with Blogger Beta. Being that it is no longer beta, I would have thought this problem at been worked out at both the w:bloggar end and the Google end.

The only way to find out if the tip works is to post this message. Here goes.....
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End of Grazing Blogs

For now. The experiment of going to all the possible sources of blogging has come to an end. We will no longer support the many Grazing blogs that were created in the last few years.

Bell Tower News will now be our primary blog. We also have Rye Cake on Blogger and Artistic Grazing but have given them over to other users for specific topics. The broader range of blog topics will stay on Bell Tower News. =30=

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Wikipedia's Censors - High School Sophomores...

This morning's NYT has an article about Wikipedia's 'editorial staff' that anyone interested in how it works should read.

Don't read the author's credentials until you finish the article. =30=

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Scribefire High ASCII Test

I am writing this with the Scribefire WYSIWYG editor and then will view it in the HTML editor, both of which are included in Scribefire.
That was a non-breaking space and this's an apostrophe.
Let's see what all of this looks like in the HTML editor...

It didn't show up in the HTML editor.

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ScibeFire just upgraded

ScibeFire just upgraded itself.

I wanted to see if it was still adding a few lines at the bottom of each message and if it would retain the password for the blogs to which it can publish.

Uh, oh! I just noticed it's replacing the apostrophe and non-breaking space with the high ASCII abbreviation. Now I need to check the settings. It may be the laptop's keyboard, though it isn't doing it when I use the online Blogger editor. Hmmmm...

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We Only Have One Day

We only have one day off this week, but it is a glorious day.
We just returned from a nice picnic at the Rich Folks house.

Once a year they open their estate for us poor folk to visit.  Some take umbrage at this.

I say, if I only get the one day it's one more than those who don't take advantage.



A well know Town Politician didn't make it because he died last night. I had said good night to him a few weeks ago after a town meeting, but didn't know it would be the last time I saw him. He had lost a lot of weight, but I attributed it to his being healthier.



Impressions can be SO wrong. =30=

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Safari For Windows

The computer experts are putting Safari for Windows down as just another browser, late in the game, full of bugs, etc. |

I've been using it all day. It might be wishful thinking, but it is working very nicely for me. The only problem I have had is with my spell checker. It is not working well inside this message window. It is producing all sorts of weird results when I try to use the single quote. It is bringing up arbitrary words and putting double letters in the front of corrected words. That is a bug for the spell checker.

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