Three items

-1) “So Jake, ya gonna move with me to Canada when Hillary becomes president?”
“Well, I don’t think she can be all that bad. If she’s anywhere near as decent as her husband, he did pretty good.”
“Are you kidding? That guy was the worst prez we’ve ever had. He couldn’t keep his pants zipped.”
“So which is worse, Frank: unzipped pants or ballooning the deficit clear outta sight and slaughtering millions of innocents?”
Jake is in his early eighties; Frank in his late fifties.
“Now you look at what’s gonna happen when all these baby-boomers retire,” the gambler says to Mike. “Social Security will go bankrupt.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mike says. “I always thought Social Security was a pretty good idea.”
Mike is in his early seventies; gambler his late sixties.
“I been retired eight years,” gambler says. “All my healthcare was paid for by the county. Now they wanna change all that.”
“Ya know who I think would make the best president?” Frank says. “That senator from Delaware, Joe Biden.”
“Yeah, but both he and Richardson are doomed,” Jake says.
“That Giuliani guy only knows 9-11.” Frank says. “We haven’t had a president experienced in foreign policy for 30 years. The only one that was was Bush’s father.”
“Yet he blew it in Iraq,” Jake says. “His kid had to fabricate flawed intelligence to attempt to reverse that.”

-2) I ordered an HD-radio last night (Monday, November 19, 2007); ordered it online with FireFox.
Boom-zoom; no hairballs whatsoever.
I did some research; an HD-radio site had links to about 89-bazilyun manufacturers.
Probably not as much as the vaunted Steno-Queen might make. —But I couldn’t afford 89 bazilyun minutes to save five bucks, and had to fit a depression 6.75 inches wide.
So the radio is a “Boston Acoustics Receptor HD clock radio;” the radio with a speaker (four by seven by six), and a separate speaker-box (four by 4.5 by six). $305.55 from Amazon; $8.49 shipping & handling; ordered via Dubya-Hex-Hex-Hi — theirs was slightly less than direct from Boston Acoustics.
NOW FOR A NOISY TORRENT OF “I COULDA DONE BETTER!”

-3) Linda is attempting to order the one-gig memory-chips from Dell Computer for her laptop.
Lotsa “Now what” and “for crying out loud.”
Dell, of course, insists Linda order through her employee program, which she did when she worked.
Dell can’t seem to accommodate her retiring — this is a lot like Transit insisting Linda is a Transit-retiree.
Then they wanted a Visa-password — “Now what? No one ever asks for that!” It was set up about three years ago, so we have it in a password-folder.
Of course, the Visa-password was set up under my old e-mail; and the ordering from Dell (and log-in) was through Linda’s old work e-mail.
“Okay; give it a shot — to the moon, Alice.”
Lo-and-behold, it worked. Ain’t technology wonderful? The simple act of ordering memory-chips got turned into an hour-long wrestling-match.
“Thank you for your order, Linda!”

“Jake” and “Frank” and “Mike” and “gambler” are all members of the Canandaigua YMCA. I don’t know “gambler’s” name, but he bragged about winning $4,000 at a local casino.”

“Vaunted Steno-Queen” is my brother-in-Delaware’s wife; she is always correcting my grammar-and/or spelling, claiming she is all-superior because she once worked as a stenographer. She does purchasing research; and always points out that whatever purchases we make, she could have got for less.

“Dubya-Hex-Hex-Hi” is WXXI-FM, 91.5, the classical-music radio-station in Rochester we listen to. They are now doing three channels of HD-radio.

“Linda” is my wife.

“Transit” is Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, N.Y. For 16&1/2 years I drove transit bus for them. My wife never worked for them, but was listed (supposedly) as “spouse” on my benefits.

RE: “my old e-mail.....” was RoadRunner; a have since switched to an Internet e-mail.