Vox Keeps Coming Back

The good people at Vox, where our Canadian branch keeps its now and again blog Trounce Alley, does something I haven't seen other blog hosts do as well.

It keeps its "neighborhoods" in good order. Perhaps that's why out Canadian compadres feel so comfortable there.

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Who Invented Tuesday?

I used to think Monday was my least liked day of the week. My mind has changed.

It is Tuesday.

On Monday you are still a little bit in shock, so the effect is lessened. However, on Tuesday morning you realize there is an entire work week ahead of you. Wednesday, the famous "hump day" foretells the weekend, Thursday might as well not be there and of course Friday, at Five, the weekend begins.

But Tuesdays are just not fun.

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What a Quiet Weekend

I watch and read the news and it looks like there is nothing but violence and religious turmoil all over the world. This is not true of course, but merely the focus of the News organization. It's the "man bites dog" syndrome.

At the moment the most annoying thing in this area is the sound of high powered lawn mowers.

The question to ask is, why shouldn't that be the most annoying sound in the rest of the world?

It may seem a naive even simple question, but if you think about it, what is it all of these people are fighting about? Simple: My point of view should be your point of view. If it isn't and you say so, you are my enemy. This is stupid.

Just so stupid...
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And no it's not about oil...

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Dreaded Blue Screen - Gaaaaah!

Do not install SoundTaxi if you have a machine running an AMD processor. I was going Blue Screen all over the place until I started uninstalling recently installed software.

It was SoundTaxi.

If you're in your sound software, in this case MediaMonkey, (THE BEST,) and you go blue screen, and you have been getting a weird message trying to install new hardware where you haven't added any hardware, and SndTDriverV32 is somehow involved, start

uninstalling software immediately.

I got Blue Screened twice. In the old days, that meant it was time to go out and get a new computer, new software and turn your old machine into a doorstop. This time it was just telling me something major was happening and I should fix it NOW.

Good night! -30-

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Creative Commons.

We just added this Creative Commons license to the site. If you click on the icon below, it will explain how this works.



This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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Politics

It is almost time to pay attention to politics in this country.

Most of the candidates I have looked at on both sides are talking heads to me, except Ron Paul.

Without taking into consideration his tenuous ties to the Republican Party, he seems to be the only one who actually has his own, not yet totally canned personality. He reminds me in many ways of Eugene McCarthy.

Again, not in political or philosophical beliefs themselves, but in that he actually has political and philosophical thought unique to him and not a party line. As with Eugene McCarthy, he has strong support in the individuals and not the masses. As with Mr. McCarthy as well, this will, I predict, lead to his not being nominated.

I was in Chicago at the convention that threw Gene in to the woods for the wolves to devour with not so much as a please or thank you.

It was there I became apolitical.

I saw the machine of the "party of the people" choose its representative against Richard Nixon. I also saw Mr. Nixon win in a landslide victory. In the broader picture, this was Karma paying him back for JFK's father stealing the previous election from him, and not Humphrey being defeated, in my elderly opinion.

Ron Paul - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog

This is not an endorsement of anybody. I am not even sure I will vote in the national election. These things are so fixed I don't want to waste my carbon footprint on the drive to the high school and back. There may be local issues on the ballot. For that, I will go.
I just put this here to get your attention. It's for those of you who scan blogs for pictures before you will read the entry. I am guilty of that as well. I believe we all are. I promise not to become a pundant and fill the entries with long winded attempts to influence you in any way. I am just here to speak my mind.
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Let's See if This Works...

Luciano Pavarotti sings

[via FoxyTunes / Luciano Pavarotti]

Still playing with FoxyTunes...

I should go to bed.

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Whoa, It's Amazing What Can Happen...

When you click on things in FireFox.

I have the FoxyTunes add-on. I was listening to the Traveling Wilburys Tweeter and the Monkey Man.

Just for the hell of clicked on the lyrics name traveling across the bottom toolbar. .

Bam!


Traveling Wilburys - Music on FoxyTunes Planet

foxytunes planet popped up with a copy of the album cover, links to You Tube and, best of all, a copy of the lyrics from LyricWiki.

With Bob Zimmerman singing, sometimes it's a good thing to have a copy of the lyrics handy.

There is also a link to Flickr, Google, somethings called Hype Machine, Rhapsody, Wikipedia and Amazon.

This is a very helpful feature.


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Another One Goes Down

A friend of mine, and fellow former Marine, died today suddenly from a blot clot dislodged from his leg. This was a man who loved to walk and has been known to do twenty to thirty miles a day. He was also almost exactly a year younger than me.

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One less Marine down here, one more guarding the streets of Heaven.

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A Headline That Sounds Good, but...

House panel approves legal shield for bloggers | Tech News on ZDNet
Further down the story reads: the revised bill attempts to exclude the "casual blogger" from reaping those benefits by stipulating the protections apply only to those who derive "financial gain or livelihood" from the journalistic activity, Boucher said Wednesday.

That broad rule could, however, include part-time writers who receive even a trickle of revenue from Google Ads or Blogads.com.

So, it might be a good idea to sign up for one of the advert links that you
can add to the side of your blog, as can be seen to the right of the
Belltower.com messages. A lot of money is not derived from these
links, but now, if the bill passes both houses and is signed into law,
these links may be buying you added protection.

Wait a second,
do you remember The Untouchables? Wasn't "buying protection" something
rackets did to increase the numbers of their bottom lines?

Hmmmm.

Time to go to actual work and earn a living. -30-

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Spoko's Brain Younger than Belltower News!`

But not by much. His first entry, using a very similar blog style, was in July of 2004. Ours was in May of that year. Because of connection problems, we had no entries in February and March of this year, but we did carry on at Grazing Press until we could get this blog back up.

For those of you who haven't heard of Spocko's Brain, it's a blog that has made International news, most recently on Al Jazeera's English version web cast. The report can be found on You Tube.

This report tells of a David and Goliath struggle between Media Giant ABC and this poor Blogger. ABC won the first battle, but that win became a Cause Internet when EFF picked it up and decided to defend the blog. It's a story all bloggers should read, whether they agree with the tactic used by the blogger to get advertisers to pull out of financing the talk radio the blooger found offensive.

There are enough links here for you to fill out the story. I need to go to bed.

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ScribeFire got better.

ScribeFire, the blogging addition for FireFox has become MUCH better.

There were a few glitches unique to the Blogger uploads that seemed to have disappeared in this latest version.(1.42)

It also isn't displaying the high ASCII code for double space when I do that out of habit between sentences.

This is a good thing.
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Did you see the latest?

Did you see the latest Dr. Who on SciFi? There is a scene allegedly shot from what was Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor. It is now called Liberty Island in New Jersey. If you saw the scene of New York Harbor in the 1930's I swear the boat in the picture I took from Ellis Island last month that caps this blog for now.

Almost as good as a Moleskine spotting...

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Hot weather sucks...

when the air conditioner in the bedroom breaks...

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Harry Potter Done!!!

Read The Deathly Hallows.

WOW!

Best book of all of them. She did it! (Zen Moment!)

That's all I will say.

One more WOW!

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Saw It!

I can say this is the worst of the Harry Potter films so far.

The editing was very choppy in places. It felt like the movie was trying either to get on with it, or these were the nasty bits cut out from the American audience.

Most of the main characters had walk-on rolls. The Minister who takes over the school has far too great a role and the actor who played her just didn't play the character as I imagined her to be. More like Chucky from horror genre.

The Ron character hasn't aged well at all. Either that or they should update his hair.

The House Elves were given short rift compared to their roll in the book. The Black family house elf was depicted as this grumbling floor sweeper with no connection to anything.

It reminded me of the total exclusion of Tom Bombidill from the LOtR series. Tom represented the only character in the series connected to Reality and therefore not effected by The Ring. All three movies together seemed to be a decade in length. He should've been included.

As for The Order of Phoenix, I wouldn't rent it to see it again. That about tells it all for this Potter film.

I can say of the books so far, The Order of Phoenix was my least favorite as well. At least the film is consistent with that.

Unless there is a radical change in Director, I don't think I will go to see the next one so close to its release.

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Harry Potter Movie - Ducking Spoilers

So I can safely browse the Internet, I have to go see the latest Harry Potter movie now.

It's the only way.

I know the story, but I don't know how it was represented on the screen. I can't look through any of my news indicia without seeing a little bit of Harry Potter this and Harry Potter that.

I never thought I would go see a film in self defense. -30-

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Superstitions

I waited until it was past midnight to talk about superstitions.

At a meeting in a hospital on Thursday something was said about something
surely turning out right. There was some subtle tapping on the table
with knuckles. Then one of the meetings members stood up and said to
the presenter that she had to find wood quickly on knock on it. This
was one medical professional to another.

The presenter thought about it for a moment, then walked over to the
wooden door and whacked it loudly a few times. There was a general
sigh of relief in the room.I would say knocking on or, as it is in the UK,
touching wood is probably to most commonly practiced supervision
immediately around me.

Contrary to the opinion of some, this does revolve around me. I write
about what I see, read, feel, touch, hear, taste and so on.

Most people I see knocking do it unconsciously and subtly.

Sit in a bar during a sporting event and say something good about the home team.

Then observe how many people, both men and women, will knock without saying
anything, or in the extreme, moan and knock.

Now what is the second most commons superstitious act around here? I’ll get back to you on that one

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Sat in an Un-airconditioned Meeting

Along with 47 other people we sat through a community meeting in a large hall with ceiling fans pushing the risen hot air down on our heads. The humidity was palpable.

The meeting was long, with many questions asked for the sake of the questioner hearing their own voice.

All the motions on the warrant were passed.

The one motion from the floor made to speed things up took an extra hour to be voted down. No wonder we all took the summer off before air conditioning and went home at night before electric lights. Now, before Blackberrys and PDA's, how did we function?

Amazingly well.
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