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10 things your IT guy wants you to know...

Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.

Bubble rich, karma poor

Are you using any of this software? Then go here ( this link ) and pony up for all the hard work that Steven Hudson has done to make your life a little easier.

TwitBox for Twitter

TwitBox is my Windows client for being able to view and post to the Twitter service.

Pulse for MP3’s

Pulse is just a simple littler program for cleaning up those screwy MP3 filenames you sometimes get when downloading MP3 for various spots on the Internet.

Scrappy

Scrappy is a simple drag and drop interface for creating and unzipping zip files

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(Disclaimer: I have known|collaborated with|laughed with|cried with Steven for many years. Unfortunately he writes for Windows so I cannot use his great programs.)

Confliction: Stuff

I am pacing. Unable to focus. Unable to sit still. I am pacing.

This is a sure sign of my conflictions.

I am conflicted about...

My owning and being owned by stuff.

The worst stuff in this respect may be stuff you don't use much
because it's too good. Nothing owns you like fragile stuff. For
example, the "good china" so many households have, and whose defining
quality is not so much that it's fun to use, but that one must be
especially careful not to break it.

To further complicate my confliction is the fact that I cannot seem to find a way to get rid of this stuff. I recently inherited the 'good family china'. Boxes and boxes of fragile and expensive plates, bowls and unidentified serving things. Oh, and did I mention the 'good family silver'?

Initially I thought I could make it 'live' so we unpacked it all. Gently washed and stacked it all. Counted pieces and even went so far as to photograph them. And we polished silver. The entire family polished until our fingers were blackened and the piles of flatware gleamed. We even set a table, once, to see just how it felt to use such finery. Then slowly the pieces went back into their respective boxes. As I type the flatware sits, nicely sorted, in its own plastic 'silverware' drawer insert on a table at my elbow covered unceremoniously with an old hand towel.

In an attempt to resolve this owner/owned situation I prompted one of my daughters to explore the possibility of posting select pieces on E-Bay. Her diligence paid off. She came to realize the value of the select pieces. And the cost of posting them. And the likelihood of actually selling them. And the real market value of the pieces. And, most importantly, that the likely 'buyers' of such pieces didn't really want them for their 'possession' value but for their potential resale value. It turns out that when it comes to 'stuff' people don't really want it, they want the value it represents - and the opportunity to sell it to someone else who unknowingly will be owned by their new stuff.

Folks let me tell you that some of this stuff is really very good, expensive stuff.

So, I don't know what to do. I have given some consideration to just giving the stuff away. Yet this resolution is not without issues. I believe that the recipient of such gifted stuff must value it. Must have some sense of what they are receiving and should be able to 'value' the gifted pieces as they are and not for their immediate resale value.

Another scenario is simply to destroy the pieces. In a sense releasing their value such that they can no longer own anyone. While altruistic I push back from this resolve. Something deep down inside is repelled by the thought of destroying valuable works of art and craftsmanship. I liken this feeling to the repulsion I feel about burning books. I cannot bring myself to consider destroying 'bad' books. (I won't go into 'bad' in this post but sufficed to say there are books that don't warrant reading the first time let alone a second.)

So ironically that which my father worked so hard at preserving for his heirs turns out to be the same burden that he paid so dearly for through the last half of his life. Looking back I can now see that he paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars to be owned by his inheritance. Prior to this newly found awareness I just assumed that he was 'old school' upholding values that he got from his parents. It never occurred to me that I might have been just as lost as I am now.

My real concern now is that I figure out a way to not burden my children with the legacy of my father's inheritance.

New Poet Laureate: Charles Simic

Charles Simic

Thanks to the WashingtonPost....

A Master's Verse

COUNTRY FAIR

If you didn't see the six-legged dog,
It doesn't matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,

One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the fair.

Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.

She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.

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Add-on:

The six-legged dog played well here in Kentucky and the girl that shrieked with laugher was his cousin.

Ain't gonna study war no more...ok, maybe just a little

I naively believed in peace. I believed that when candidates began talking about the mistakes that got us into and keep us in the Iraq conflict ... that they would not make those mistakes. The next round of candidates would not 'study war' but rather would celebrate peace... Golly-gee-whizzikers, I am naive.

BarackObama.com | The War We Need to Win

The time has come to turn the page on a failed approach.

We must stop fighting the wrong war and start fighting the war we need to win.

The next President of the United States must commit to getting our troops out of Iraq and taking the fight to the terrorists. We must reinforce our mission in Afghanistan with additional troops. We must press Pakistan and President Musharraf to close down terrorist training camps and stop the Taliban from using Pakistan as a safe-haven. If Musharraf acts, we will stand with him. But if Pakistan will not act against Osama bin Ladin and the terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans, we will. These are achievable goals, and when I am president we will wage the war we need to win with a comprehensive strategy

Oh well, guess we'll study war some more...

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87% of the people equals roughly an 'overwhelming majority'...

Of seemingly STUPID people?

Pew Research Center: Public Blames Media for Too Much Celebrity Coverage

An overwhelming majority of the public (87%) says celebrity scandals
receive too much news coverage. This criticism generally holds across
most major demographic and political groups. Virtually no one thinks
there is too little coverage of celebrity scandals, according to new
national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the
Press.

Emphasis mine! Let 87% of the public STOP BUYING TRASH and we will see how the media covers celebrity anything.

NEWS FLASH: Overwhelming majority of public are featherless bi-peds. Film at 11:00....

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Microsoft takes careful aim...at its own foot.

Mary Jo reports ...

» Ad-funded Microsoft Works pilot starting soon | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

The Works 9.0 SE (which isn’t an acronym for anything, according to
Senior Product Manager Melissa Stern) version will be a desktop-client
product. Ads — from vendors which Microsoft declined to disclose — will
appear in the Works task pane and task launcher. The ads will be served
up by Microsoft’s display-ad platform, Stern said.

So, my question is... didn't Microsoft learn the Opera lesson? People just won't sit still for embedded ads ... or they will find an alternative. Like FireFox, perhaps?

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Sure do miss him...

Was visiting a Cozy Shack and saw this...just pulls at the heart strings...

Feeping Creatures

Uh, Ken... Could you be just a wee bit more specific?

Digital Common Sense » ScribeFire - Dying from Feeping Creaturism

Except for 'working correctly with Blogger' I am not sure I see the feeping creatures to which you refer.

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