This 'N That

Macs crash?  I've had my iMac for almost four years and while certain programs may have given me the spinning beach ball of death (Firefox, but I have to admit I run the beta versions), never has the whole system crashed. 

Jobs said Flash is a closed proprietary technology that should be bypassed in favor of open standards such as HTML5, a new Web technology that Apple is promoting. He said Flash consumes twice the amount of battery life for video playback, is a security risk and is the No. 1 source of crashes on Mac computers. Jobs added that it's also not suited for the touch interfaces of many modern mobile devices.

Um, Steve?  People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, Apple isn't exactly known for sharing.  Not that this is a bad thing since your devices have always worked for me, but maybe you could phrase it a little differently.  What I've discovered is that I basically use my computer for email, to surf the web and to charge my iTouch so I should probably get an iPad and be done with it.  I would have room for dining room table after all that space was freed up.  Hmm, and the need for power strips would also decrease.  Win, win.

Not content with mucking up California, the Governator wants to run for president.

Not exactly a surprise.  Of course she's a liar, she slept with another woman's husband.  And it's pretty easy to see she isn't firmly attached to reality.

I am not a Madonna fan by any stretch of the imagination.  Business wise she is incredibly smart and managed to ensure that she received most of the profits from her work, unlike a lot of popular artists, but I still don't like her.  I do like Jane Lynch and because of her I now have a Madonna song on the iTouch.  A most spectacular cover version of Vogue.  I wonder why I can't get into Glee, it's a great premise and everyone attached to the project is extremely talented, but I can't bring myself to watch it on a regular basis.

Stoking The Wingnut Ire And Other Interests

Yippee!  Greasemonkey has finally been updated to work with FF 3.5b4 and a few other extensions I like to use have been updated as well.  I really missed Colorful List View for Google Reader, it makes it much easier on the eyes when you have a 166 feeds.  And now that Google Reader Subscriber Count is working again, I find that I have more readers than a few months ago.  Thanks guys, I really appreciate it.  I may not be one of the big boys in the blogging world but at least I don't feel like I'm yelling into a void.

Folk hero? Umm, no.  He's a cold blooded murderer.  I think I'm safe when a guy is lying on the ground bleeding from a bullet wound to the head.  I wouldn't find it necessary to get another gun a minute or two later and fire five more bullets into him.  But then, I don't scare easily.  And since it's Oklahoma if it had been a black guy who shot and deliberately killed a white thief, he would be in jail and no anonymous donor would have posted bail, as if bail would have been an option.

Box said that another person might have reacted differently, but he asked: "When do you turn off that adrenaline switch? When do you think you're safe? I think that's going to be the ultimate issue."

As much as I dislike the man this is ridiculous.  Obama has a date night on Broadway with the wife and the GOP goes nuts (rapidly becoming their default state) because the country is in economic freefall and Le Prez shouldn't be relaxing.  Meanwhile Bush spent 487 days at Camp David and 490 day in Crawford, several of them while the Gulf Coast was drowning during Katrina, and not a peep was heard.  Two and a half years on vacation in an eight year term is okay but a night on the town is a no no.  And let's not forget that Condi was buying shoes and enjoying a Broadway show while a major city was underwater and the GOP said...nothing.  IOKIYAR applies to more than sex crimes, wow what a concept.

If you are homeless you shouldn't have computer access because you should be focused on getting a job according to a good proportion of the commenters at the WSJ.  Totally missing from these holier than thou people is the fact that most jobs are posted online and that if you submit an application for a job and don't have a home address or phone number that if you have an email address you can be reached for a job interview.  And that out of a 24 hour day only eight to ten hours are good for job hunting and the weekends are useless.  But they must suffer because they are homeless, they shouldn't be watching movies or enjoying music.  Personally, if I was an employer (not that there are many nowadays) I would look for enterprising people like these who are determined to stay connected and have figured out a way to do it without a permanent roof over their heads or a reliable source of electricity.

Since arriving in Reno I sneeze every day, at least twenty times and usually more.  When I first got here I had to take Benadryl constantly but the last week has been a little better.  I'm still sniffly and my eyes itch but my asthma is back under control and I can breathe through my nose most of the time.  Although I'm not the only one suffering I wish I knew what it was I'm allergic to.  Or it could be that my body is reacting to breathing air instead of San Jose smog.  Whatever it is I hope it goes away soon, I've blown thru several boxes of Kleenex  and I haven't had an uninterrupted nights sleep in a long time.  Supposedly the pollen count is on its way down.

The suffering, the trauma. It seems that the Chosen don't like it when they don't get everything they want and the world doesn't bow to their wishes.  Their idea of construction is we take what you had, you go live in a ghetto that we won't let you leave so we can bomb you at will.  When I was growing up I was told you could catch more bees with honey than you could with vinegar, nowadays it's all about killing the bees instead.  And as we are now finding out bees are important to survival, maybe the Palestinians are too.

Oops, Needed A Title

You can always tell when I'm disgusted with politics as usual, I play with the blog design.  I went back to the Neo configuration, with a few mods on my part.  The mods took me most of yesterday and part of this morning, so I gave up on adding the header picture for the moment.  It just wasn't coming out right.  It's amazing how much you forget about playing with coding and RGBs when computing isn't your profession.

The best part about Neo, the template not the hero, is that the whole blog doesn't have to reload (only the top post, much faster for those in a hurry) if you click on one of the post links on the left hand side, which is currently set for the last 20 posts.   I realized that I had accidentally destroyed the posting function and hopefully it will nowwork for somebody besides me.  Let me know if it does or doesn't.

I also went back to the dark template because it's easier on my eyes.  I'm getting older and less functional as the days go by.

Rest In Peace Edition

Rocky Aoki is gone.  I started eating at the Benihana in Encino back when you had to point to what you wanted because nobody but the patrons spoke English very well.  And the chefs really put on a display, using knives and other implements.  Now, at least in San Jose, most chefs speak Spanish and bang the salt and pepper shakers a few times.  Whatever, it was a favorite restaurant for Mom and I and I hope that Rocky rests in peace.

As should Michael DeBakey.  His innovations have saved millions of people and he deserved every one of the 99 years that I hope he enjoyed.  Some people honestly do give more than they take.

Since he's no longer here to defend himself, all I can say is. Tony Snow, rest in peace.  One of my patients when I worked a shift at the San Diego Hospice died of colon cancer and it was the worst thing I'd ever seen in my life.  Incredibley painful and nobody deserves that.  We don't let animals suffer.

On a slightly lighter note, no more Fake Steve,  Ever since he was outed last year he hadn't been as funny, but I'll still miss him.   I hope Real Dan is enjoying himself.

Blowing In The Wind

Newsflash!  Republican's are in to recycling.   Who knew?  And spoken by the master flip-flopper McCain himself so he can try and distract the populace all the times he's changed his mind in his decades long pursuit of being master of the free world.   According to McCain, a politician's word can't be trusted.   I can't tell you how surprised I...wasn't.  Almost without exception, a politician's goal is to get elected.  Then it's to be reelected and the naive fall for it every time, believing that the the next guy who promises them change will be the "one", when in reality the change the politician is talking about is to turn the power of the position they are campaigning for over to themselves.

But since Obama dispatched Clinton, he has seemed rather more attuned to what the people want to hear or perhaps he has simply traded the wants of a liberal audience for those of a more moderate one. Either way, he is treading that reliably time-worn path every nominee follows to the political centre. And the question for Democrats is whether to applaud Obama as a cunning politician who knows how to win or fret that he's given undecided voters reason to think his 'politics of hope' are just politics as usual.

First, let us count the repositionings. This past week, Obama expressed surprising disagreement with a Supreme Court ruling that outlawed the death penalty for child rapists (he had previously questioned the rationale of capital punishment). He resisted criticising another high court ruling that affirmed gun owners' rights, even though he had previously seemed to support the gun-control measure at issue.

Obama also dropped his once-stern opposition to a Congressional measure, despised on the left, that would legally shield telecommunications companies that co-operated with extra-legal US government eavesdropping. To some, even the contents of Obama's iPod, recently revealed to Rolling Stone, smacked of political calculation, combining as it did Baby Boomer classics (Stones, Springsteen, Dylan) with highbrow jazz (Coltrane, Miles Davis) mindless top 40 pop (Sheryl Crow) and edgy-but-not-too-edgy hip hop (Jay-Z, Ludacris). Perhaps this playlist should be titled 'Majority Coalition'.

I almost feel sorry for the those who have swallowed this election's Kool-Aid.  McCain is dangerous but there is no guarantee that Obama will appoint judges that are beneficial to women.  In this regard he is just like Bush.  All talk (albeit much more intelligently) about changing America for the good, with  no actions to back it up.  In Obama's favor, at he hasn't signed any death warrants, but on the other hand  he isn't willing to defend the Fourth Amendment.   If for no other reason that that he is a black male, he should fight this latest attempt to remove all expectations of privacy in one's home.

The next few months should be pretty interesting as the base who got Obama where he is, is discarded in favor of a center that doesn't exist except to the pollsters.

I'm being brave.  Number one, I've taken a less than popular view on the anointed one and two, I'm trying out some of the new features from Blogger in Draft.

Food, Hopes, Money, More Food And Fun

As is usual with most people who can't read a complete article but still feel the need to express their uninformed and partisan opinion, what most of the commenters seemed to get from the article about the Senate dining room losing money for the last forty years, is that it's all the Democrats fault or that government can't do its jog. More likely it was all the lobbyist paid for junkets. As if Howard Baker, Bob Dole, Trent Lott and Bill Frist weren't in charge for most of the last fifteen of those years and had no problem privatizing the rest of America while they were in power. And like most people, if the food isn't good in one place, they go to another. The House cafeteria, which was privatized by a Democratically controlled Congress twenty years ago.

In the past 10 years, only 20 new items have been added to the Senate menus. So rare are new entrees that last year's arrival of daily fresh-made sushi was treated in some senatorial quarters as if a new Nobu had opened in the Capitol dining room.

Even revenue in the once-profitable catering division has been decimated, as senators have increasingly sought waivers to bring in outside food for special events with constituents and private groups.

Operation of the House cafeterias was privatized in the 1980s by a Democratic-controlled Congress. Restaurant Associates of New York, the current House contractor, would take over the Senate facilities this fall. The company wins high praise from most staffers and lawmakers, who say they are pleased with the wide variety of new items offered every few months.

Perhaps the chefs need to learn how to prepare the basics, like fish sticks, before adding things like sushi and Osso Bucco to the menu. Senators make enough money to pay for a decent meal or they can brown bag it like the rest of us. It's the Democrats, led by Dianne Feinstein (Chief DINO), who are actively doing something to lower the cost and improve the service. By doing what used to be the Republican thing. Force the people on the lower end of the scale to take a cut in pay and benefits while they serve their betters.

Can't wait until he does it here. Except that I don't care if we ever see or hear from him again. Better times. Indeed.

So the core U.S. economy is in better shape than it was in the 70s. Baloney! I owned a house in the 70s, vacationed at Disneyland and Magic Mountain and was able to visit the Sycamores Springs Hot Tubs in Avila Beach on a regular basis. Now I live in a mobilehome, haven't had a vacation in at least six years and haven't come into contact with a spa or outdoor hot tub in more years than I can remember. In the seventies I had the G.I. Bill to get me started, now I have a Masters and can barely pay attention much less pay my bills. Yup, things are better. From a demographic standpoint, not a day to day reality position.

Thank goodness I'm growing my own tomatoes so I shouldn't have to worry about salmonella. Even though Shadow has been trying to dig them up while I'm not here. I'm extremely grateful she can't lift her leg.

The Apple store is down, which is a good sign. I can hardly wait for ten o'clock and what El Jobso has in store for us this time. Supposedly Microsoft is going to try and one up him at nine o'clock by announcing that some player they have is going to play Blu-Ray. Remember when Microsoft was the king? Not anymore, now people prefer things that work and look good at the same time. If only I was Stephen Colbert and people sent me everything I asked for.

BBB

Random Thoughts

Who cares? That's not the point. We were promised dead or alive and so far we have neither. Which is typical of the crew without a clue, never finish a job while you can make excuses for why it doesn't need to be done. They must think we are stupid as they are deceitful.

Haloscan is having issues. Or maybe it's Blogger. Methinks it's Haloscan.

No kidding. Military tribunals aren't working? JAG has only been off the air for a few years, but these show trials have never been about justice, they've been about revenge. Against people who have already met their maker so there must be someone who pays.

Like this guy. Poor schmuck might as well be at Gitmo for all the justice he isn't getting. Wow, prosecutors can openly defy the Supreme Court and that bastion of conservatism seems to think he's innocent. The prosecutors are determined to have him die in jail, that way they won't have to find the real killer.

Waterpipe tobacco smoking isn't safer than smoking cigarettes. Are they sure the kids were smoking tobacco? That isn't the usual drug of choice for a bong waterpipe. Or at least it wasn't when I was that age.

Oh boy, another smoking gun. Too bad it isn't on an episode of CSI or Law and Order because someone would be going to jail. A lot of someones. I guess the big house is only for the little people.

Gee, I'm not alone. Being multi-racial is the way of the future, only designer babies will have all the recessive genes. While the almost never right worries about illegal immigrants, the natives are changing the landscape to a more colorful version.

Is It Friday Yet?

On the wrong track and headed over a cliff, another fine example of you get what you vote for. Unfortunately, the next election isn't going to change much.

And why are so many people unhappy? Well, 80K lost their jobs last month alone, foreclosures are up and with layoffs increasing that isn't going to change for the better, food and gas prices are up, Iraq (remember it, or has it gone the way of Osama been forgotten?) is nowhere near stable after five years of our money and what's left of our military, and everybody except the taxpayers on the bottom of the economic scale gets a helping dollar hand.

How about not arresting pot smokers and releasing the ones that are in jail? Murderers, rapists and robbers should not be released because of budget cuts, the releases should be for those who "committed" nonviolent crimes and using marijuana is nowhere near as serious as using a gun. Unless you're guarding the Twinkies.

Not content to just run Firefox in beta mode (I'm still using B4, in B5 none of my extensions worked, the most important being Adblock), now I'm trying Blogger in draft. If I had the money you just know I'd be one of those early adopters of most technological toys.

I'm against the death penalty for many reasons but when the original sniper shootings started in Virginia, I thought that the cop who found the shooters should have shot them on sight and said he was defending himself. Why not, they do it with innocent people all the time. My reasoning was that the snipers weren't human and should be put down as rabid animals. Trials, publicity and appeals would never have been an issue, and nobody would be enticed to do it again because there wouldn't be a positive payoff. Wow, I sound like a Republican. In other words, there wouldn't be any copycats. Now they are everywhere

Remember, you only get to read blogs because they let you. You have very few choices if you don't like your provider and if you want speed that approaches what Japan, Korea or Sweden have, you have to pay an exorbitant monthly fee.

BBB

There's No One Like You

OMG! Whatever happened to having a sense of humor? I've been reading (and starring) Stuff White People Like almost since it began. What a hoot! When he did the top 10 ten rap songs and I realized that I have a couple of them on my iPod, but Going Back to Cali by LL Cool J (this video is hysterical and helps to prove the point) didn't make the list I was so heartbroken I almost choked on my tea. I think I'm white but somebody forgot to inform the genes that determine how much melanin I display. As usual the commenters at ABC have gone off the deep end, proving that they come from the shallow end of the gene pool. Oops, Gato Barbieri just finished and the Scorpions are up, my German blood shows up occasionally.

Armchair warriors, indeed. On to the next milestone that people will ignore. The only thing that Cheney regrets is not being able to drop a nuclear bomb. He probably gets a stiffy just thinking about it. Noble, necessary and just. That would be my description of the war crimes that Bush and Cheney should both be charged with, not a description of an illegal and immoral war perpetrated on people who had done nothing and were capable (at the time) of doing nothing to us.

How can he go back to something he can't do in the first place?

I'm running the new Firefox Beta and while I like some aspects of it, I miss some of my extensions. Specifically Tab Mix Plus (just found a build that works), Colorful Tabs (now that one is working) and Forecastfox. There are a couple more that I wish were working, but I'll just have to wait.

Don't drink the water. Or bathe in it, brush your teeth or cook with it. No wonder people think that bottled water is better. If you live in Alamosa, CO, it is. Makes you wonder how many other city's community water systems are in trouble. Other than all the drugs and hormones that they admitted to a few weeks ago.

Selfish and stupid. Deliberately bringing a child into the world when one knows it will die shortly after it's born, usually painfully and completely unaware, is cruel. No matter what your religious beliefs, you are not putting the child's welfare ahead of your own personal interests. Purposefully having a child whose mental impairment means that someone will have to care for it for the rest of its life, is cruel. With the technologies of today, that child could outlive the parents by many years and then who is going to love them? Who is going to fight for the benefits that they will need? Because with the growing lack of compassion people have for those less fortunate, they will have a miserable and lonely life after the parents are gone. What kind of parenting is that? Maybe because I'm watching my mom lose her mind and realize that if it happens to me there will be nobody to make sure that I'm not living on the street that allows me to take the "cold" view.

I'm more than a little tired of the sexism/racism question in the race for president. For me it's empty suit against another dynasty. I can't and probably won't vote for Obama. I live in California so my vote really doesn't count. Otherwise John Edwards would be my candidate but the media made sure that wasn't an option for me.

Oh boy, another day, another stolen laptop with unencrypted patient data. No wonder people aren't as worried about their phones being tapped and their internet habits being tracked as they should be. With all the data that has been lost over the last five years it's no surprise that the average person doesn't care.

You don't say. Wow, a newspaper that states the obvious like it was a new phenomenon. Of course health costs are cutting into wages, Bush's plans have done so much to help the economy. Of his friends and cronies. Walgreen showed a profit for its second quarter, what a surprise. Not.

BBB

Flight Of The Bumblebee

Kiko's House reminded me that it's Bobby McFerrin's birthday and being the arbitrary person that I am, here is my favorite song by Bobby and it features Yo Yo Ma and a real bee.



Plus, it's my 3rd year blogiversary.

Rearranging The Deck Chairs

Uh-oh, people are starting to do math. And not liking the results. How many rats have to desert a sinking ship before it's officially sunk?

Data encryption so good that the government can't break it, what a concept. And it's only $200. Too bad businesses and the government don't use it to protect our information, but they prefer to use those kinds of tools to spy on their employees and citizens. In the name of public safety, of course.

As if anybody actually thought that the troops were going to come home. Something really bad happened to that "government of the people, by the people, for the people", I think it perished from the earth.

Maybe people eat more because they figure they've saved the calories somewhere else? Like having a diet drink to go with your cheesecake. That's a savings of almost 150 calories. Yes, I'm being sarcastic.

Hmm, Bank of America is being added to the Dow. I guess they've harvested enough of their customer's money to be considered industrious. Chevron gets to be added because of the growing importance of oil and gas. And the enormous profits don't hurt, I'm sure.

Gary Bauer endorses McCain. What can be said after that?

Big Brass Blog

Trampled Underfoot

For goodness sake, when is this country going to grow up? Once again, the ugly streak of puritanism raises its head. The FCC in all its wisdom has decided to fine ABC $1.43 million for showing the naked side and backside of a woman getting into the shower in a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue. Ooh, ooh, the people in the Mountain time zone who don't believe in Daylight Savings Time saw the episode at 9:00 instead of 10:00 pm. Since parents don't seem to control their kids bedtimes and viewing habits, the government must do it for them.

Indeed, FCC commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate suggested in a prepared statement released with the proposed fine that the commission would have assessed a higher fine, if possible. "Our action today should serve as a reminder to all broadcasters that Congress and American families continue to be concerned about protecting children from harmful material and that the FCC will enforce the laws of the land vigilantly," Ms. Tate said.

I am so tired of this crap. There is nothing wrong with the human body, dressed or undressed but we keep trying to make it dirty and disgraceful. And why is it that it's always referred to as Janet Jackson baring her breast when it was Justin Timberlake singing about having her naked by the end of the song and it was his hand that did the removing? That has always bugged me. His career didn't suffer but hers did.

Of course the technicians are never dorks. We all know to power down and restart before we call. Whenever I have to call tech support I always get someone who doesn't understand and has me repeat all of the things I've already done before they tell me that they can't help me and they finally kick me upstairs. Now that I have my iMac and don't use Comcast, that particular irritation never occurs anymore.

I'm an isolationist, I admit it. I believe that America should take care of America first and worry about the rest of the world after we have solved the problems at home. I do not believe in withholding medical care, food or jobs from those who are already here and contributing to our society, in whatever menial capacity that may be. That some states would enact such draconian laws in an effort to stem the flow of illegal immigration is stupid and shortsighted. And for a supposedly Christian nation, it's not very Christ like. Why do we hate people who are different from us? Do you think that if aliens (the space kind) came to this world that they would see a difference between us? No, they would think we were all equally barbaric.

It's nice to know that some people are still willing to help others out. Most people (especially those in Oklahoma) would have kept the camera and not made the effort that these people did to return it to its rightful owner. Finder's keepers, losers weepers is how most people act nowadays.

And I end where I started, with more puritanical hypocrisy.

So the game world has been ablaze with indignation since the Fox News program “The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum” said on Monday that Mass Effect, one of the most critically praised games of 2007, contains frontal nudity and explicit depictions of sexual activity. The assertions of virtual lasciviousness first appeared earlier this month among conservative bloggers incensed by brief YouTube clips excerpted from the 30- to 40-hour game.

Mass Effect, a science fiction game, includes a complicated romantic subplot that is no more risqué in its plot or graphic in its depiction than evening network television.

And 24 isn't one of the most violent television shows ever aired. Like the old MPAA joke goes: kiss a nipple and it's X rated, cut it off and it becomes an R. We are one messed up and repressed society.

3Bs

Fire, Food And Attitude

It looks like there was a bonfire near Cheney's office in the Executive Office building. That must have been a whole lot of secret tapes and memos that can now be officially classified as being lost in a fire. How convenient.

Good food is expensive and if you have a limited income or live by yourself, it costs less to eat at McDonalds or a microwave a frozen dinner than it is to cook from scratch. It's always interesting reading the comments. This time it's perfectly clear that those who have money and can afford to eat well don't understand what it's like at the bottom of the economic ladder. The choice between rent and food is a real one, one that the poor and elderly have been faced with for years. A loaf of bread and a gallon of milk are more than five dollars and are sold at a grocery store on the other side of town. If you stick to the value menu at a fast food joint you can get two or three meals for the same price and you won't have to travel far to get it. In the city there are more fast food places than there are grocery stores. Which means you don't even get the chance to buy apples.

Don't tase me, Bro' might be the most memorable quote of the year but Joe Biden made the top 10 twice.

I'm using a new extension called Personas. It changes the skin on the fly without restarting Firefox. Right now I'm using the Winter Green theme and it looks pretty good.

Lazy Sunday Morning

What a cool toy! When I was a kid, I always had a difficult time focusing binoculars and microscopes. The ability to have your television magnify what interests you by 200x is going to send a lot of junior geeks into nerd heaven. Since real chemistry sets (I spent hours with mine and had to promise not to try and blow anything up) are out of the question, it is going to be difficult to encourage budding scientific minds, but this should help. Where are our next generation of inventors going to come from if everything is restricted? And the really sad part is that we are still going to have terrorists and drug users, we just won't have scientists.

GreaseMonkey has some pretty useful scripts for Google Reader and one of them is the ability to view the original article in Reader. You can make comments or reorder your NetFlix queue without leaving the page.

The Economic Consequences of George Bush have been pretty clear to me for quite a while and unfortunately, are finally becoming clear to others. Whether or not it is in time for us to salvage our country is a matter for debate, but it doesn't look good.

Another interesting article on race and IQ. My question is this. Where do I fall in this theory? Dad was obviously black, but incredibly smart and yes he did have a big head, Mom is "white" but one of her grandmothers was of Mongolian descent and her father was Jewish. As multi-racial children increase, won't that change the IQ stats?

Two For Thrusday

No wonder this country is falling apart. 1500 students at NYU are willing to give up their vote for life, if they are paid a million dollars. 90% of those students also feel that voting is important and 70.5% of those feel that one vote can make a difference. What happened to logic? Oh yeah, most of those students came from high and upper middle class homes. They should have their right to vote taken away permanently. They also shouldn't be allowed to breed.

It's electronic recycle day here in Silicon Valley. Microsoft is collecting tvs, monitors, cellphones, etc. as gesture of good will. If you aren't here, remember that Costco will also do the same. They also give you a nominal amount of money.

This 'N That

Now that's not fair! Though I will admit that if I start researching recipes, I do get a little more creative.

For many cooks, the compulsion to add to the mash is irresistible. It starts with a few parsnips, some carrot and celery root, a little Web research. Next thing you know, fresh lavender and goat cheese are on the shopping list.

I've tried goat cheese in my mashies but I admit to preferring the taste of simple mashed potatoes. I do like to add spinach to the mashies for Thanksgiving. It tastes great and it's another way to sneak in a vegetable. Plus, it doesn't matter what kind of potato you use. And the lavender makes a nice herb butter to go under the skin of the turkey. I'm going to brine my turkey this year, the last time I did it, it was the best tasting turkey I had ever made.

Have you ever wondered what earth-rise looked like? In HDTV?

Pretty soon most Mac users will have upgraded and the furor will die down, but you have to love it when Apple kicks Microsoft ass.

I have to agree with Dr. Haig. Sometimes you have to know when to punt. I just don't know why he let it go on so long. Patients that want you to do all the work for them, while they tell you everything they want done, rarely get better. They're really not interested in getting better, it's a control issue for them and as long as there is a problem, they feel in control.

Comcast sucks. Fortunately I can't get it where I live and if I was forced to use it, I would do without. They charge too much, provide lousy service and I just don't like them.

Update: Fixed the Comcast link.

Barn Door Meets Lock

When I was a little girl, hospitals were sparkling white. Everything looked and smelled clean. It was a fresh scent with a rubbing alcohol backnote. Everybody wore crisp, clean clothing and stray hair was non-existent. How times have changed. When mom had her gallbladder out a few years ago I saw some things that gave me pause. One of the nurses was typing at the medical station and sneezed all over the keyboard. Then the next nurse came in, typed for a while, touched a few things at the nurse's station and then left to work on a patient. Mom's doctor was dressed in a pair of saggy pants that he had to keep pulling up, even after he had washed his hands. I couldn't get her out of there fast enough.

Now antibiotic resistant staph infections are on the rise and one of the proposals is for hospitals and other entities to clean more. Well, duh.

As the bottom line became more important to hospitals than patient care, they cut back on what they considered "non-essential" services. One of the problems with corporate thinking is that "non-essential" usually means those on the bottom end of the pay scale. The ones that do the dirty work. Literally. Unfortunately this has not just been restricted to the medical profession. This same short-sighted thinking has been applied to schools, stadiums and other places where large crowds gather.

Did you know that it's hard to type and sing at the same time? The sound is pretty good on the new iMac, but the screen is huge in comparison to the laptop. I haven't really played with Leopard yet, I still have to buy a Firewire so I can transfer the data from the PowerBook, clean it up and sell it to a friend of mine. I'll be back to regular posting soon, as soon as I quit playing around with the new toys. I sort of miss my car, but gadgets have helped to mitigate the sadness.

Played during writing of this post.

Queen - I Want It All
Rodrigo y Gabriela - Satori
The Guess Who - Clap for the Wolfman
Johnny Cash - I Walk the Line
Oingo Boingo - Weird Science
Climax - Precious and Few
Stealers Wheel - Stuck in the Middle with You
The Romantics - Talking in Your Sleep
The Romantics - What I Like About You
The Trammps - Disco Inferno (Single Edit)
Tone-Loc - Wild Thing
The Clash - Rock the Casbah
Exile - Kiss You All Over
via FoxyTunes

Justice Is A Wonderful Thing

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Geeking Out

An electric car with wheels that turn 90 degrees for easy parking, a body that swivels so you can change directions and a robot that can sense one's mood? The latter is supposed to be for companionship, but it's a little too close to "I'm sorry Dave, I afraid I can't do that", for me. Pivo, which is supposed to be short for pivot is pretty cute although its name needs a help.

See-through toilets. Fortunately they are talking about the tanks and not the bowls. They look a little busy to me, but you should be abe to decorate them any way you want.

Cosmetic chemical cocktails. Some women absorb 5 pounds of chemicals (such as arsenic in eyeshadow) through their skin and eat five lipsticks per year (over a lifetime that works out to 1.5 pounds of lard) in an effort to look and feel good about themselves. The sad part is that men are starting to use some of these products too. Maybe not the lipsticks or eyeshadow, but the marketing of creams, lotions and manly body sprays is definitely on the rise.

I hope so. Coral reefs are some of the most beautiful scenery on earth and if they can adapt to global warming, it would be a great thing.

Transparent plastic that is as strong as steel. Nice.


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Listening to: Deodato - Also Sprach Zarathustra
and Queen - I Want It All via FoxyTunes

I swear iTunes has a mind of its own. And a sense of humor, but it might just be my choice in music since all it gets to do is pick the order.

Back To The Past

Over 2.2 million Iraqis have fled their country, at least a million of them have died since 2003, the ethnic cleansing is almost complete, many people have disappeared without a trace and last month was a religious holiday in a country that is tearing itself apart over a difference in religion. Meanwhile back here in wonderland, every single news outlet is touting the story of the drop in U.S. military and Iraqi civilian deaths. The numbers still continue to differ depending on the source.

''There is no silver bullet or one thing that equates as a reason to the drop in Iraqi and Coalition casualties and deaths,'' said Col. Steven Boylan, spokesman for U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus.

But he credited increased U.S. troop strength, saying that has allowed American forces to step up operations against al-Qaida in Iraq.

If you say so. Even though al-Qaeda makes up a small proportion of people killing each other in Iraq, according to news report they seem to be doing the majority of the dying. Now everybody that dies is an al-Qaeda militant, at least according to the official line.

Kvatch (he's on vacation) pointed out that my feeds hadn't been working for the last few weeks. I was fiddling with them last week and discovered that something was missing from my template. Holy cow! I have readers! Thank you. I have no idea how long some of you have been on board or what it was that got you interested in my ramblings but I appreciate it. I really do.

The Supreme Court is back in session and contentious issues are on the agenda. Justice Kennedy's swing vote is rumored to lean left this year. Uncle Thomas was on 60 Minutes last night, continuing in his effort to make himself more likable. It almost worked until I remembered that they spent seven days with him which would give them enough footage to make him look reasonable. I kept looking at his eyes which were glassy and non blinking. He really believes what he's saying but I've seen that look before. Hopefully it's a thyroid problem and he isn't as shen disturbed as he looks.

According to John DePetro, white people only go to Harlem to buy drugs or visit prostitutes. Besides being racist on so many counts that it's difficult to count them all, it's also a nice little slam at our last president. The unspoken corollary is that the only time blacks go to a white neighborhood is to work as a maid or to commit a crime. These guys piss, whine and moan about their rights being restricted while they use abusive language, inappropriate contexts, libel and slander to maintain their position as mouthpieces of a bygone time. They feel perfectly comfortable spreading their prejudices over the airwaves and then cry about the mean people who pick on them by pointing out their stupidity. Life is so tough for them.