Federal Income Tax

So yet another Federal Income Tax wends its merry way to Andover, Massachusetts; certification #7004-2510-0005-8611-6820, return-receipt requested, snail-mail.
I held off until today (Tuesday, 4/18) because we owe them lackeys $219.01. New York went last week, since they owe us $396.30. It would have gone earlier, but that’s when I finished it. I usually do the fed first, because N.Y. uses many fed numbers.
As I turned it in, it made me wonder if the bluster-boy had finished his. Knowing how we Hugheses are, he probably did, but it may have required a late night.
No doubt every Flag-Out post has been read, and all mine noisily foamed at. (Like shooting fish in a barrel — somebody else posts something, I respond, and Jack goes catatonic.)
All I have to do is mention ‘pyooters of any kind, and it prompts an anti-MAC tirade. It’s such fun!
Mention Harleys (Harelys?) and he hits the ceiling — predictable as rain.
Meanwhile Boston Harbor is awash in sewage, and our boys in Iraq lack armor.
Taxes were a hairball when I worked at the mighty Mezz. I usually had no time to do them until the last minute. This time I began months ago.
Suggestion: 1040 online is a fillable pdf. Do that, and you don’t have to toss a hand-written 1040 at 3 a.m.
No doubt this will prompt “Welcome to the ‘90s;” but that’s all right — I expect sonorous posturing.
But he may not have known that. It sure saved me a lot of grief.

Excel

Last night (Monday, July 31), amazingly, totaling out my two Excel spreadsheets went without incident.
I keep two Excel spreadsheets in my ‘pyooter for income-taxes: income and deductible expenses. Income is aimed at 1040, and I probably don’t need it, since I’m sure I’ll get statements (pension income, Social Security, etc).
Expenses is aimed at Schedule A, itemized deductions. In fact, what it renders is the line-items on Schedule A. Schedule A is the main reason I defer from using Turbo-Tax. Turbo-Tax wants gifts broken up by each charity. Schedule A doesn’t.
I’ve had Excel for years. Appleworks has a spreadsheet function too, but why bother when I can use Excel?
My Excel came as a download, so no manual; part of “Office.” My Word was a download too; also part of “Office.” (Word is 98; Excel is 98 too.)
Excel is groovy — the grooviest thing for me was making cells sum up other cells.
Apparently it will do lots of other tricks I know nothing about: glitzy pie-charts and bar-graphs. They’re nothing to me, so I don’t know anything about them.
What I like is that it can add up cells, or some other function if you want.
I remember doing all this manually on a huge spreadsheet in the note-department at the Penfield Office (tanked) of Lincoln-Rochester bank. The contents of a cell would be a total transferred from an adding-machine.
Excel can do the adding in the background.
So totaling out at the end of the month is doing “sub-totals as of 7/31/06,” and making that cell be the sum of those above. The formula is ∑=D23:D30 (for example; :=through). Command-R from that cell extends the formula to all the other cells in the row; so that I end up with the July sub-totals for e.g. loan interest, charitable gifts, Doctor-charges, prescriptions, whatever.
I then do a grand-total for the year-to-date: e.g. “July Sub-Totals.” Here the cell sums up all the previous-month sub-totals. The formula is ∑=D8,D14,D24,D32, etc., etc. Again, Command-R extends the formula across the row.
Excel will compress the months, so the spreadsheet isn’t 89-bazilyun items long. “Select-All,” then “outline.” Modifying the outline makes the previous month compressible.
That’s all we know about Excel — it’s all we need. We figured it out by trial-and-error. No manual.
What happened most times when I tried to total out at the end-of-the-month, was it would lob some luscious hairball. What was supposed to take a half-hour took three.
I learned that you couldn’t copy/paste a formula; that Excel was doing something entirely different — we never have been able to figure out what.
But when things are done correctly (like last night), it doesn’t lob hairballs.

Directions

RE: Directions.......
The guy I bought the Husky from is a railfan — although I think more model-trains than the real thing.
I gave him the mighty Curve web-cam address, and he watches it all the time.
“I gotta visit that place,” he said to me recently.
I was giving him the Curve brochure, which has the NYC Hudson on the front (horror-of-horrors), and a map inside.
“I could give you directions,” I said, “ but they’d be too complicated.”
“Whatever; Altoona is divided into two halves, north and south of the Hollidaysburg Secondary, which was the Pennsy main in the 1840s before the Curve.”
“Just get yourself north of them tracks, and keep heading west. Eventually you’ll hit 40th St., although you may have to zig and zag around some.”
“40th St. is it. .....All the way to the mighty Curve. Just turn on 40th and head north. It zags all over creation, but eventually you’ll come to it on your right.”

Diesel Engines Do Not Throttle Up

This is sure to precipitate a mighty deluge from Boston. (I predict use of the words “clueless” and “history-major.”)

Diesel engines do not “throttle up.”
No matter what you see or hear, diesel engines do not throttle up.
I have been viewing a Powder River Basin video (the vast coal-mining region in northeast Wyoming, served [at that time] by the Burlington-Northern and Chicago & North Western railroads), and on a number of occasions trains leave sidings, and the narrator says they “throttle up.”
Negatory. A diesel-engine: car, bus, truck, or railroad locomotive, does not have a throttle restriction in the air intake.
Steam engines do, as do gasoline engines. Steam engines had a “throttle” that varied the steam output of the boiler to the drive-pistons. Early on it was in the steam-dome. Later it was incorporated into the superheater header — a “front-end throttle.” Front-end throttles worked better — primarily a SuperPower innovation (a few K4s had them).
Gasoline engines have “throttles” too, usually incorporated into the carburetors, or in “throttle-bodies” (for fuel-injection), so that if the throttle ain’t “wide-open,” the intake-charge (which is gasoline vapor) is restricted (“throttled”).
Diesel engines are always “wide-open” — there ain’t no intake-restriction of any kind. Often the intake air charge is “supercharged” (or “turbocharged;” wherein exhaust gases propel the supercharger — a regular [non-turbo] “supercharger” is driven within the motor by a shaft, belt or gears), so that intake-air might increase as supercharger output wicks up.
But there is no throttle. The revving up of a diesel engine is by lobbing in more fuel. Stomp the “exhilerator” on a bus, and you were lobbing more fuel into the fuel-rack. The fuel gets sprayed into the cylinder, where it self-ignites due to the extreme heat of high compression. Throw in more fuel, and the motor revs up.
Most railroad-locomotives vary fuel-use with a control-stand. Idle (least fuel-use) is “Run One;” full power (most fuel-use) is “Run Eight.” Climbing the mighty Curve the locos are in “Run Eight.” I always say “throttle-to-the-roof,” but it’s actually “Run Eight.” “Throttle-to-the-roof” is steam-locomotives. Wide-open on a steamer was to set the throttle-lever up to the roof of the cab.

Along these lines, I hear people at the mighty Curve say they can “hear the whistle” of trains climbing at Brickyard crossing.
Negatory. Only steam-engines have whistles. What you hear are the air-horns of the approaching diesel-locomotive.
When people misspeak this way I usually let it fly. I only corrected one lady once.

Similarly, we have the hoary argument about whether it’s “concrete” or “cement;” “asphalt” versus “bituminous concrete.”
Fiddle-de-deeee. So somebody uses the wrong terminology: “throttling” diesels, “whistling” diesel-locomotives, “cement” or “asphalt.” Or concrete being “poured,” for crying out loud.
Splitting hairs over correct engineering terminology is only elitism. I don’t do it.
So a diesel “throttles up;” so what? I know what they mint.

detox

Yesterday (Friday, July 7) the Physical Therapist, at the PT-gym where I work out, was telling one of her patients, a rather porcine false-blonde REPUBLICAN woman recently declared winner by a few votes in the hotly-contested Victor Town Supervisor race, she needs to detoxify.
“The fact you’re telling me you have pain all over tells me your body is full of toxins,” the therapist said.
Supposedly there’s more to “detox” than Linda and I have always considered. We always talk about getting off toxins after vacations or a trip to the mighty Curve.
This is because on the road it’s nearly impossible to eat what we normally eat at home.
Breakfast is impossible. Cereal is always the boxed kind made by Kellogg or General Mills, not the bulk-oats I pick up at Weggers, or Arrowhead Mills puffed rice or corn from the funky food market.
Kellogg’s Corn-Flakes, a restaurant staple, is unbearably salty, and General Mills Total like plastic or wood-pulp. Cheerios and Rice Krispies aren’t too bad, but where does one find skim milk?
Even 1% is too creamy, and the bananas are too small, too ripe, and/or once used as baseball-bats (“Hey John — toss that there pomegranate”).
For lunch we eat sandwiches, like tuna-fish salad on homemade whole-wheat bread.
Try to get that at a restaurant, and you get dried-out slabs of bakery-bread that have sat for days; and runny tuna-salad made with mayonnaise, not Miracle-Whip.
We put lettuce and tomato in the sandwich, but it’s not iceberg which is barely green. Restaurant tomato-slices are always unripe plastic, totally unlike what we grow or buy at Weggers.
It’s like they’re punishing us: “you should be pigging out on cheeseburgers, and feeding the excess to the ducks on the Pentecostal.”
Some days I eat an orange (like after exercise). Try to get an orange on the road.
Supper is nearly impossible too. We’ve deferred to seniors’ or children’s portions because adult-portions will feed a family of four plus the dog.
And every entré seems to include French-fries (“Don’t you mean Freedom-fries?”), deep-fried in hydrogenated oil (memories of the Hindenburg disaster — “Oh, the humanity!”). And the ketchup is always too salty.
So what we do is spaghetti the first night out, although this has only worked at the spaghetti-joint (Lena’s) in Altoony, since every place else the spaghetti-sauce is mud.
Breakfast, the next morning, is pancakes (a “short-stack:” three), sometimes with sausage, and then no breakfast from then on.
Tunnel-Inn supplies muffins, and they often suffice as breakfast; the pigeons get the crumbs. I have never been able to equal my morning citrus-juice intake. A large orange-juice costs 89 bazilyun dollars, and is half what I normally drink.
Plus everyone plies you with caffeine (coffee), or sugar and caffeine (Coke or Pepsi). Milk is almost impossible; skim-milk impossible.
No doubt the almighty Bluster-King will tell me I need a Snickers, a 55-gallon drum of ‘Dew to suck on, and a 36-ounce bag of salted Cheetos to glom.
I gave up TastyKake because, compared to Linda’s homemade chocolate-chip muffins, they’re like lead. We also gave up dessert at restaurants because it was too much.
It wasn’t trying to avoid toxins, or a weight-reducing diet. The stuff was just unbearable.
Linda always comes back from trips with inflamed joints. The inflammation goes away when we get back to eating what we normally eat.
So the Physical Therapist gave the REPUBLICAN a diet free of toxins, and suggested some milkshake brew that would flush toxins out of her system.
The REPUBLICAN then noted she’d burn out every day about 2. “I feel like I have to pull over and take a nap.” It’s called “aging,” honey! My 93-year-old nosy neighbor spends half his time asleep in his chair.

Day One

Today (Wednesday, 4/19) is Day One of Linda’s foray with the tiny West Bloomfield post-office; in other words the first day she has the place to herself.
She has to open up, open the safe, sort mail into 300 post-office boxes by 10 a.m., and then appear knowledgeable about the 89 bazilyun services the post-office offers.
(Quite a few of those 300 boxes aren’t rented. And a lot of what goes in them is junk. In fact, the customers are upset there isn’t a blue-box.)
She also has to file two extremely important reports online, into a ‘pyooter-system that is cantankerous at best (must be a PC). I think the system still hasn’t disgorged her secret employee password after numerous tries. (OHHHHMMMMMMMMMM.......)
And woe unto you if you don’t file those reports. Angry phone-calls ensue, and heads roll.
She’s hoping her first day will be quiet — and probably it will; since yesterday was tax-day.
Cue almighty Bluster-King. Even though Linda is collecting the same Social Security as me, and only makes $36 (yes, $36) a week, she’s not a freeloader. (That $36 a week makes her a viable contributor to the vast national economy; yes-sir-eee.)
And unlike mine, Linda’s Social Security is not a gumint handout.
No matter I contributed to S.S. for years, so that others could retire, I’m now a freeloader — utterly despicable as usual.
Perish-the-thought; I think the real freeloader is the one collecting a bloated six-figure salary for fiddling Flag-Out. —The one who zapped the entire Exelon database.

Mrs. Dager

Ah yes, a pocket dictionary of musical terminology from my infamous piano-teacher Mrs. Dager, who used to blow her nose with great flourish, and then stuff the soggy hanky into the cleavage of her dress.
I don’t remember it, but how could I possibly when my memory is so bad. I don’t remember the recent fabrications of my noisy brother from Boston, and have the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to remember a huge toilet-paper roll atop the Scott Headquarters (research-center/whatever) across from the airport (MayZ remembers that toilet-paper roll too), that was apparently removed by the time the pups passed.
I also have the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to remember that Foulk Road was spelled with an “A” when we moved to Oak Lane Manor in late 1957. (“Here comes that Hughes-kid. Quick; call the janitor! He needs to go outside and change the ‘A’ to an ‘O’ in the name of the school.”)
Mrs. Dager’s greatest joy was to get Elz and me to cry, which wasn’t hard to do, given the impossible Clemente arpeggios she’d challenge us with.
She dearly wanted me to become a Billy Graham pianist, rolling grandly up and down the keys with great flourish. But I was hornswoggled by Jerry Lee Lewis.
I’m sure Mrs. Dager is dead by now, probably buried among Revolutionaries in the ancient Haddonfield Cemetery, circled by woods overlooking Camden County Park, and the Kings Highway hill out of the Cooper Crick defile.
I reconnoitered that cemetery once; it had stones from the 1600s and 1700s.
“Arpeggios” defined: a difficult sequence of 16th- or 32nd-notes leaping all over the piano keyboard, elegantly designed to make little children taking piano-lessons cry — as championed by Muzio Clemente and F. Marie Dager, grand organist and music directress at Erlton Community Baptist Church.
Probably because of Mrs. Dager, and Houghton, I still appreciate classical music. (Mrs. Dager got up-front tickets for Elz and me to attend a Philadelphia Orchestra concert with Eugene Ormandy. —They played Dvorak’s “New World” symphony and Sebelius' “Finlandia.” [That music played in my head for years.])

Cycle World

My most recent issue of Cycle World (May 2006) had two columns I found interesting.
The first, by the head-honcho, was apparently prompted by the staff’s being blown away by the newly reconstituted Norton Commando for 2007, being brought to market by Kenny Dreer of Oregon, a restorer of old Norton motorcycles.
The Norton is the old Commando brought up-to-date: modern brakes and suspension, and a vertical twin motor that fires every 270°, instead of the matched pistons of the old Norton, 180°; a heavy vibrator. The new motor also has a balance-shaft.
The writer decried the most recent spate of hyper-bikes, since most riding is hardly done at 150+.
He then went on to say Harley has been playing that chord for years, building bikes that rode well at normal speeds.
The second column was their regular column from their techno-geek. He was decrying the styling of recent bikes: hard-edged and overdone.
Which is partly why I bought the Banana instead of the red Double-R. The red one had pointed black graphics on it; the yellow one didn’t. The red one was overdone.
He also talked about the rear tires on custom chops; that a bike that puts about 80 horsepower to the street hardly needs a tire that could handle 1,000.
My niece’s husband’s Big Dog is an excellent example. He loudly claims 152 horsepower for the motor — I figure maybe 90. Yet the bike has a gigantic 600cc rear; cool-looking, but sheesh!
The bike that turned me around was my FZR400; light, and very easy to ride.
Before it I had the RZ350, which I made a number of mistakes on.
Light as it was, it still wasn’t a bicycle. You couldn’t pick it up.
My mistake was trying to make it a Ducati: clip-ons, rear-sets, and engine-mods (primarily resonator pipes) that killed it below 6,000.
I traded it for the FZR, and was promptly blown away.
I remember navigating a car-lot in search of Bronco IIs, and was confronted with stones. I would have never tried it on my Norton or Ducati or RZ.
But the FZR made it easy as pie. It was light and easy to maneuver. It had incredibly good balance.
Part of it was the gas-tank was centralized under your crotch. What looked like the gas-tank actually shrouded an airbox.
So to me, the Harley is a throwback. The gas-tank is still between your knees, and it’s too heavy.
And of course the seat is wrong: bolt-erect and sit-up-and-beg, which to me means hang-on-for-dear-life. The common misconception is that the racing posture (much like the 10-speed bicycle, which I am used to) is uncomfortable; that a sport-bike is a 20-minute bike.
Well I owned the mighty Cow seven years, so rode that way for a long while. The FZR400 was the same way. And I would ride that way for way more than 20 minutes. (I rode the FZR all the way to Delaware in one afternoon; mighty Cow too — plus a four-day jaunt all over Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York City, and the Jersey Turnpike.)
Seemed Jack was getting off his GeezerGlide a lot on our way to the mighty Curve. I would ride the mighty Cow for hours on end.
The only thing wrong with the FZR400 is that the motor was so tiny it wanted 8500 rpm to do 65. But the mighty Cow scotched that by wanting only 6500.
The Banana is the same, and weighs about 375. Plus it’s the size of the FZR — the mighty Cow always felt too big.
By comparison, Jack’s Harley is a tour-boat; way too big.

Cycle World

My most recent issue of Cycle World (May 2006) had two columns I found interesting.
The first, by the head-honcho, was apparently prompted by the staff’s being blown away by the newly reconstituted Norton Commando for 2007, being brought to market by Kenny Dreer of Oregon, a restorer of old Norton motorcycles.
The Norton is the old Commando brought up-to-date: modern brakes and suspension, and a vertical twin motor that fires every 270°, instead of the matched pistons of the old Norton, 180°; a heavy vibrator. The new motor also has a balance-shaft.
The writer decried the most recent spate of hyper-bikes, since most riding is hardly done at 150+.
He then went on to say Harley has been playing that chord for years, building bikes that rode well at normal speeds.
The second column was their regular column from their techno-geek. He was decrying the styling of recent bikes: hard-edged and overdone.
Which is partly why I bought the Banana instead of the red Double-R. The red one had pointed black graphics on it; the yellow one didn’t. The red one was overdone.
He also talked about the rear tires on custom chops; that a bike that puts about 80 horsepower to the street hardly needs a tire that could handle 1,000.
My niece’s husband’s Big Dog is an excellent example. He loudly claims 152 horsepower for the motor — I figure maybe 90. Yet the bike has a gigantic 600cc rear; cool-looking, but sheesh!
The bike that turned me around was my FZR400; light, and very easy to ride.
Before it I had the RZ350, which I made a number of mistakes on.
Light as it was, it still wasn’t a bicycle. You couldn’t pick it up.
My mistake was trying to make it a Ducati: clip-ons, rear-sets, and engine-mods (primarily resonator pipes) that killed it below 6,000.
I traded it for the FZR, and was promptly blown away.
I remember navigating a car-lot in search of Bronco IIs, and was confronted with stones. I would have never tried it on my Norton or Ducati or RZ.
But the FZR made it easy as pie. It was light and easy to maneuver. It had incredibly good balance.
Part of it was the gas-tank was centralized under your crotch. What looked like the gas-tank actually shrouded an airbox.
So to me, the Harley is a throwback. The gas-tank is still between your knees, and it’s too heavy.
And of course the seat is wrong: bolt-erect and sit-up-and-beg, which to me means hang-on-for-dear-life. The common misconception is that the racing posture (much like the 10-speed bicycle, which I am used to) is uncomfortable; that a sport-bike is a 20-minute bike.
Well I owned the mighty Cow seven years, so rode that way for a long while. The FZR400 was the same way. And I would ride that way for way more than 20 minutes. (I rode the FZR all the way to Delaware in one afternoon; mighty Cow too — plus a four-day jaunt all over Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York City, and the Jersey Turnpike.)
Seemed Jack was getting off his GeezerGlide a lot on our way to the mighty Curve. I would ride the mighty Cow for hours on end.
The only thing wrong with the FZR400 is that the motor was so tiny it wanted 8500 rpm to do 65. But the mighty Cow scotched that by wanting only 6500.
The Banana is the same, and weighs about 375. Plus it’s the size of the FZR — the mighty Cow always felt too big.
By comparison, Jack’s Harley is a tour-boat; way too big.

Cue Bluster-King

Yesterday (Monday, August 14) we took the big dog (Sabrina) to be groomed.
Don’t know as we’ll do it again. Grooming is rather traumatic, and the poor dog was quaking and shaking. The groomer also stuffed her into a crate for holding.
Our dogs want nothing to do with crates; which to them are jail.
More precisely, I don’t know as we’ll use this particular groomer again. I’m sure Sabrina will need another haircut.
He didn’t do much ($42.80). We told him we didn’t want her shaved, and to not cut her toenails. Someone apparently cut her quick, so she fights. Enough with the trauma.
But the dog doesn’t look any different than before. I suppose he trimmed her feathers some, but the coat on her back looks as thick as it did.
He also trimmed her feet, which were a hairy mess. But he missed tangles under her legs.
Unfortunately I feel like we’re two months late. Last month was the hot month, and she was dragging a heavy coat.

The bluster-boy has taken to loudly claiming I dream up reality, perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve heard yet.
It’s apparently because I continue to dispute his saying there wasn’t a toilet-paper-roll shaped water-tower atop Scott next to the airport.
My recollection of that ain’t dreamed up. Nor is my recollection that the Industrial Highway I drove navigated a narrow passage between Scott and the airport — putting Scott north of the Industrial Highway when I drove it.
There also has been a noisy dispute over a mysterious Reading facility, claiming I forgot something I never passed.
His only valid assertion is that we crossed the Reading near the airport — which at that time I thought was a Pennsy spur.
Back then I wasn’t aware Reading had a Chester branch. I never saw any trains. I’m sure if I had actually seen any Reading equipment, I would have asked questions.
He also noisily insists we took some specific route past that mysterious Reading facility, failing to note there were 89 bazilyun other possible routes.
And the route we took did not (I say “not”) pass some mysterious Reading facility — which would stand out like a sore thumb. (I can’t imagine forgetting such a thing.)
What we seem to have here is a fevered desire to make me inferior to him; as if I were some sort of challenge to his fragile psyche (although I did have the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to dispute his recollection of where we got off I-80).
He keeps claiming my memory is failing — the same guy who can’t remember who he took to his prom, and forgot the LHMB, which he rode, for crying out loud.
What notable morning dreams I’ve had lately have been rather pedestrian; although this morning I was wandering a 600-type bus all over Rochester in search of Main St.

The S. Floridy aggregate question is a paper tiger (kind of like Dubya defending the war in Iraq). Of course he knows the answer, and the gallon-capacity of Porta-Johns.
But does he know the name of the theorist that pilloried the supposed good intentions of the American Revolution? Of course not — he doesn’t even know how to alterate depth-of-field in a photo.
Do I ask him who the theorist is? Would that be fair? No; his specialty is Porta-Johns, and aggregates, I guess. Not my specialty!
Boston Harbor is awash in sewage, Bubba. And your backhoes are taking out tunnel-ceilings in the Big Dig.
Too much Flag-Out! (Hup-hup!)

cryptic message

Here is why cellphones are great (and why we got one)......
More than anything else it frees you from the landline network, and how hard it was to contact my wife when I was on-the-road in some faraway place and had to use a landline.
One time I was traveling in Pennsylvania, and I stopped for the night at some motel that didn’t have phones. Like I’m going to go back on-the-road (out in the middle of nowhere; where motels were few and far between) to find a motel with a phone.
I patronized a truckstop diner, and noticed many truckers were checking-in via cellphones.
Viola! What a great idea! Independence from the landline network. If I had to use a motel without a phone, I could check in to home via cellphone.
And as far as I’m concerned, that’s ALL it’s good for.

I can check in from the Tunnel Inn, which lacks phones.

I can call from Weggers about food-choice clarification without using their dreaded payphones.

When the Astro crippled I called AAA with my cellphone.
And......
I ain’t fielding calls while I’m driving. I figure driving is more important than being distracted by a phonecall. (“Where are ya now?” “Driving from point A to point B.” “Wassa matter — doncha love me? Greatest generation that ever was; survived the Depression, made the world safe for democracy, and then scanned-the-skies for enemy bombers at the Bath Fire-Tower.”)
We’re at the Rochester airport once, waiting in a check-in line, and some guy rings up his significant-other via cellphone: “Well, I’m at the airport, waiting in a long line to check-in.” This is important? Do people feel more important just because they’re called via cellphone?
Which is to say, when I drive the phone is on, but I ain’t answering it. “Missed Call,” Bubba. Voicemall; plus a callback.
(Beyond that, you can print out a “boarding-pass” on your rig at home, well in advance, and thereby skip check-in — just get on the plane.)

Clocks

Now that we are supposed to be watching the grass grow, and counting raindrops (both of which activities we haven’t had time for......)
And now that we’re home when not at the so-called elitist country-club with our dogs, or running errands........
I’ve noticed certain things that mark the passing of the day. For example:

At 6:55 a.m. a school-bus pulls up out front to pick up kids from the bungalow across the street. We’ve sometimes been in bed past this; although any more it gets light before that, such that often we are up before the school-bus arrives.

At 10:30 or later the letter-carrier stops across the street at the mailbox of our 92-year-old nosy neighbor. She’s driving a navy Sube wagon.
In about five minutes she comes back down the street on our side, stopping at our mailbox.
When I was at the mighty Mezz I never saw the letter-carrier.

At 2:20 or so a clapped-out faded-white Grand Prix angles at our newspaper-tube, and delivers the mighty Mezz.
When I was at the mighty Mezz I often got home in time to see the newspaper-carrier, but not when running errands.
-Our furnace is also a clock of sorts. It has a programmable thermostat which I set at 68° during the day, and 64° at night (it falls back at 8:30 — and gets to 64° in a few hours).
Months ago I had it set to wick up at 7:00 a.m. But then it began getting light before that, so I reset it at 6:30. Now it’s set at 6:00.
And months ago the furnace would run constantly after it wicked up. Now it is warm enough to not run constantly.
So it’s not a noticeable clock any more.

Chinese Jockey-Shorts

My Chinese Jockey-shorts are being retired to the rag-bag.
They’re hardly worn out (in fact, hardly worn at all), but they fit so awful we’ve given up.
They were baggy and chintzy. It got so I was looking at the labels to see what was coming: Chinese or Costa Rican.
The Chinese Jockey-shorts were size-36. We ordered a size-36 two-pak from jockey.com, but they looked big too, compared to an earlier size-36, so we swapped for size-34.
I then decided to retire the Chinese Jockey-shorts and order more size-34. The new ones fit; the Chinese are baggy.
The Chinese came from a site different from jockey.com. We think they might have been a ripoff.

Browser follies

For whatever it’s worth......
-Or perhaps I should slug it “Netscape follies,” since that’s mostly what it’s about, although there is a comment about Firefox at the end.....

As I recall I upgraded to 7.0 two summers ago, mostly because my old NS (4.73) was becoming an antique. (There was apparently a 6.0; but reportedly it was horrible, so I passed.)
As you know, NS also has an e-mail function, but it was so old my brother in Boston couldn’t open anything without disabling his security-barricades.
I briefly considered switching to Outlook, or OE (the Messenger had Outlook), but as far as I could see the only advantage to that was Auto-Sign and “Out-of-Office.” I couldn’t justify 89 bazilyun dollars for bells and whistles I don’t need.
4.73 was also a browser, which would fire up if a web-site in an e-mail was clicked. I also was updating my famblee’s web-site with it, but that tanked when the web-site reconfigured for IE, making NS unworkable,
I also had IE (5.1 for MAC), so started fiddling the famblee web-site with that, but unlike NS it put in hard-returns as word-wrap at the end of lines.
With hard-returns my posts were showing up on the famblee web-site well short of the window.
I found I could get around that by HTML-ing my posts; but that was an extra step.
7.0 was free, so I downloaded and installed it. My first download also picked up my old address-book — others didn’t; see below*.
But there were other issues with 7.0 e-mail; primarily that it couldn’t send characters like apostrophes and m-dashes without defaulting to the Unicodes.
Well, no problem if you’re only e-mailing to a person — you can make sense despite the Unicodes.
But what I was e-mailing was stuff to print in the paper — my giant AppleWorks “Night-Spots” file.
I didn’t have time to fix all the Unicodes, even with a find-replace.
So I hung onto 4.73 — never threw it out. It didn’t Unicode stuff, so I e-mailed my Night-Spots with it.
*Later installations of 7.0 failed to pick up my address-book, which was another reason to hang onto 4.73. I didn’t have all day to set up a new 7.0 address-book, even with a copy-paste, especially when 7.0 was Unicode-ing my stuff.
Now we have switched my e-mail to MyWay, sort of like Yahoo without the pop-ups, so that it can be easily accessed from a ‘pyooter anywhere in the world.
MyWay doesn’t work with NS (a cookie issue), but does with IE, so it’s my IE home-page.
MyWay also has an auto-sign — I don’t know about “out-of-office;” although there’s apparently a “vacation” function. But it doesn’t do formatting, so I still have 4.73. I can access my Road-Runner e-mail with MyWay.
No doubt you could also access your e-mail from anywhere on the planet too — I could with Road-Runner. www.myway.com then “myEmail.” Fired up IE in Boston on the motel ‘pyooter, and then www.myway.com
I also transferred my 4.73 address-list into MyWay, and made up a new “ne’er-do-well” list (which you’re a part of).
I don’t know if it’s Unicode-ing stuff — maybe that was Outlook — but I’m retired; I ain’t e-mailing stuff for print.

Firefox:
I don’t think I have Firefox on this rig.
We’ve heard wonderful things about it. Apparently my brother in Delaware uses it, as does his ‘pyooter-engineer wannabee son.
Linda downloaded it and installed it long ago on her PC. But it was displaying web-pages half-screen, and we don’t have time to dick around in the preferences.
7.0 is also a browser, apparently based on most of the Mozilla code in Firefox.
The motel pyooter in Delaware last October had Firefox (I think) — although I think it may have been some generic part of its Red-Hat operating-system.
I found 7.0 was better than IE for what I needed to do. Copy-paste IE and it grabs all the formatting. 7.0 grabs just the text. IE copy-pastes have to be fiddled.
And 7.0, like 4.73, isn’t installing hard-returns as word-wraps. No extra step on the famblee-site.
So I use 7.0 as my browser-of-choice, although many Froogle-sites want IE.
I suppose now I’ll at least install Firefox, since I no longer have the motivations to use 7.0. But if Firefox wants dicking around, 7.0 it will be.