Long-term Care Insurance

My financial-advisor, John Price of Edward Jones®, who I like a lot, think highly of, and trust, suggested I get long-term care insurance to protect my assets.
The guy who daycares my dog, also a good friend, concurs. Someone told him if anyone attains age-62, they’re probably in it for the long haul. So they should get long-term care insurance.
Prior to 62 it’s not worth it.
My wife attained 62, but died at age-68. She never needed long-term care, unless you consider hospice long-term care; that is, 24/7 health maintenance.
She only lasted in hospice one day. 24/7 health maintenance, but hardly long-term.
My financial-advisor suggested I was a perfect candidate for long-term care insurance, since my wife died, and I was subsisting on only pension-income and Social Security.
Plus I don’t have any debts. I even own my house free-and-clear.
I have two large IRAs, one that was mine, and one I inherited from my wife as beneficiary.
They are currently untouched, resting unused until I reach age 70 & 1/2, when the government requires I start taking income from them.
I get a small disability-pension from my employ with Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY.
I also get my wife’s pension for a few more years, since she named me to collect if she died.
So it was suggested I meet my financial-advisor to talk about long-term care insurance. And possibly get the wheels turning.
I did so last Monday (November 26th, 2012).
I was greeted by my financial-advisor, plus another advisor for the long-term care insurance proposed.
He appeared to be a salesman. A long pitch ensued.
I felt suspicious and manipulated.
Every response he made seemed choreographed.
Any doubts I had were manipulated positively.
I don’t like spending money.
So my concern was what it would cost.
The annual premium is almost $10,000!
My financial-advisor suggested my current IRA income, reinvested and therefore non-taxable, would meet the annual premium.
So my annual premium is not out-of-pocket in effect.
Offsetting this is the cost of long-term care.
Long-term care would clean me out, make me destitute in not long. That’s burning hundreds of thousands of dollars in no time.
I’m sorry, but the long-term care advisor made me feel queasy.
He reminded me of the door-to-door encyclopedia salesman I tried to become eons ago while in college.
Needless to say, I failed. I wasn’t viper enough.
A slick operator. Every doubt I had was parried.
He kept asking if I had any questions, as if this was gonna allay my fears.
I’m sorry I look like I do, that I instinctively protect my wallet.
So I looked like I was suspicious.
He probably came away convinced my financial-advisor made the sale, wondering why his well-oiled pitch failed.
Long-term care insurance also sells itself.
But at times like this I wish my wife was around.
Like me, she would be suspicious, but enough to do research.
Research seems to be beyond me; possibly a stroke-effect.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service in Rochester, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. (I’m pretty well recovered.)

Scarlett’s excellent adventure

Usually every day I don’t work out at the YMCA I take my dog to the park.
That’s usually Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I work out Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
The weather has to be really dreadful to not go to the park, raining or snowing hard.
The dog loves it.
I get harassed every morning. The dog wants to go to the park.
There are two parks I use: -1) nearby Boughton Park (“BOW-tin;” as in “wow”), and -2) Baker Park in Canandaigua.
Boughton Park is the most exciting to a dog. It’s mostly woods, so harbors lotsa critters, including deeries.
But Boughton requires a leash all the time. We lost the dog in there once. She disappeared chasing a deer.
Baker Park is fenced, although the entrances are open. And the fence ain’t perfect; there are a few gaps here-and-there.
But there’s a section where I’d let the dog run loose. There are no gaps there.
Yesterday (Monday, November 26th, 2012) was Baker Park, so I let the dog run loose where I usually did.
Outside one entrance is a doggy-attraction in someone’s backyard, squirrels or something.
Last week while I was walking along the unleashed part, she bolted at a dead run across a soccer-field toward some crows she saw far away.
She sent the crows packing, and then returned to me.
Our next visit (probably last Thursday) she bolted across the soccer-field again and out the entrance. Backyard checked, attraction checked, she ran back to me.
Yesterday I took the dog to Baker Park again, and let her loose where I usually do.
That was three times around without incident. I fully loop the park four times.
On our fourth lap she bolted across the soccer-field again, and out the entrance.
I didn’t see this. She disappeared.
I called her. No sign of the dog.
I’d already lost one dog years ago. I didn’t wanna lose another.
Fourth lap hardly started, I walked back to my car.
She recognizes the horn, or so it seems, so I blew it.
No sign of the dog.
After a while I drove out the entrance, and blew the horn between the attractive backyards.
Still, no sign of the dog.
I drove down to the other entrance, along the street that has the attractive backyards, tooting the horn.
Still, no sign of the dog.
I drove into the other entrance, and circled the park-pavilion up at the end of the parking-lot.
After a while I drove back out into the neighborhood next to the park.
I tooted the horn.
No sign of the dog.
Back into my first entrance, back into the park again.
There was my dog, trotting far away along the fence where I usually let her loose; obviously looking for me.
I blew the horn. The dog turned toward the car at a run.
What a relief!
Leaving that park without my dog would have been very depressing.
She’s chipped, and has my cellphone-number embroidered on her collar.
That collar has saved her twice.
But it’s cold. I would have been thinking about her all night, her suffering and lonely.
So do I continue going to Baker Park? Baker Park is 20-25 minutes away, and the only reason I went there was to let my dog run loose.
I can’t do that any more. She has to be fully leashed.

• “Scarlett” (two “Ts,” as in Scarlett O’Hara) is my current dog; a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s seven, and is our sixth Irish-Setter, a high-energy dog. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. [Scarlett was from a failed backyard breeder.] By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't bad. She’s our fourth rescue.)
• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit.
• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles east. —I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I am now alone with the dog.

iPhone5

An iPhone5 in white (similar to mine).

Yrs trly is now the owner of an Apple iPhone5.
You’ll notice I didn’t say “proud owner.”
That’s because after blowing two hours standing around in the store watching frenzied techno-mavens pull their hair out trying to open my phone photos in Photoshop-Elements on this computer, with no idea on my part what they were doing, I’m left befuddled.
I bought my iPhone for a number of reasons.
—1) I was due for an upgrade anyway, per Verizon, my cellphone service.
—2) My ancient Motorola DroidX, at least two years old, had thrown mysterious hairballs at me, and now had black marks on its display-screen that made it hard to read, and it couldn’t be repaired.
—3) My younger brother in northern DE has an Apple iPhone 3 or 4, and tells me it always works. (My DroidX could be wonky.)
—4) The Apple iPhone is pretty. My Droid seems like a clunker.
So it came down to Apple versus the Droid platform.
A supposedly reliable phone versus something I’m familiar with that also throws hairballs.
My problem with all SmartPhones is the virtual keyboard. My Droid was a challenge.
I could only drive it rotated with the keyboard across the length of the screen.
The iPhone is smaller than the various Droids. Could I stand it?
So I looked at an iPhone at the store. It looked bearable. Plus it’s not a clunker.
It had to not overwhelm my back pants pocket. The various Droids seemed too big.
So now the Apple iPhone5, in a protective hard case, resides in my back pants pocket.
Like my previous DroidX, it’s essentially a phone, that also displays my e-mail, and occasionally surfs the web when out somewhere I can’t carry this laptop.
—Like chasing trains in Altoona, PA. I need to access my weather-site to see if a shower is coming.
(I’m a railfan and have been since age-two. I’m now 68.)
So back to Apple’s elegant architecture, which this here computer is.
Like this MacBook Pro, my iPhone is nice to look at, as gorgeous as my 1980 Ducati SS motorcycle (“dew-KAH-deee;” as in “odd”), which I often parked in front of my house in Rochester (NY) just to gaze at it.
Pretty as it is, what I really do is drive it, and it hasn’t failed me yet.
Sometimes apps freeze, but with OS-X they don’t take down the whole computer.
With OS-X I can force-quit just the hung app.
I hope this iPhone is as reliable; my DroidX wasn’t.
But all I could think of as I stood there in the store watching the frenzied techno-mavens pull their hair out trying this and then that was: “Steve, Steve; where are you? It shouldn’t be this hard.”
USB-ed to this computer, my DroidX was seen as a device.
With an iPhone it’s engage iTunes = engage guile and cunning.
I found it interesting the virtual keyboard on this iPhone was much easier to drive than my DroidX.
Sensitivity on my Droid’s virtual keys was apparently much wider than the iPhone, so you were often keying mistakes.
I can even drive the iPhone’s tiny screen-width virtual keyboard. Sensitivity of its virtual keys is apparently a mere pinprick.
Although my relationship with my MacBook Pro is hardly elegant.
But at least I don’t have flame-paint on its case. The MacBook Pro at the store did, and spider-web decals surrounding a skull and crossbones.

• “Steve” is Steve Jobs, inspiration and one-time head-honcho of Apple Computer. He was obsessed with making computer-interface easy. Jobs died not too long ago.

Homage to “Boss-man”

Bob Matson.

A friend of mine suggested an “assignment.”
As a retiree I don’t normally take on “assignments.”
Anyone who follows this blog knows I just let let it flow.
My beat, as it were, is anything and everything; whatever comes to my head.
An “assignment” is to start “shoveling” — what I call writing, just slinging words together — with no phrases already in my head.
The assignment is to write a paean to the late Bob Matson, who died of a heart-attack last week.
Matson was Executive-Editor of the Messenger newspaper while I was there.
Yrs trly is a stroke-survivor, October 26th, 1993.
Prior to my stroke I drove large transit buses for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
It was a stupid, meaningless job that paid well.
It was supposed to be only temporary, but I did it for 16 & 1/2 years.
There also was the joy of mastering operation of large motor-vehicles.
Operation had to be just so.
I used to say you were always driving the back-end.
The front-wheels steered, but were 33 feet ahead on the unsteered back wheels, which crabbed outside the fronts in turns.
You were always steering your bus to make sure the back-end didn’t hit anything — like a curb, telephone-pole, or car.
Large trucks do the same thing; especially tractor-trailers.
A car isn’t like that. Its unsteered back-end crabs, but not by much.
The wheelbase is short enough you can get away with not obsessing about where the back-end is.
But not if the wheelbase is 33 feet.
During what ended up being my final year at Transit, I fell into doing a voluntary newsletter for my bus-union.
I did it on my computer with Microsoft Word®.
It was great fun, and read by local politicians.
Those politicians funded Transit. For once the employee story was getting followed by politicians, not just the Transit management sugar-coating.
After my stroke my rehabilitation wanted to get me a job.
They wanted to return me to bus-driving, but I suggested journalism based on the fun I had doing my newsletter.
So they arranged an interview with Matson at the Messenger to take me on as an unpaid intern.
“Seems normal to me!” said Matson, despite my being a sputtering wreck.
So Matson had the moxie to take me on, when anyone else would have probably deferred — some did.
I always thought it probably helped we both graduated the same college, Houghton College south of Rochester.
Matson in 1980, me in 1966.
No matter how wonky I was, I’d have Houghton’s values, namely get it right.
Recovery from my stroke became miraculous, although I’ve always felt it was Matson taking me on.
Eventually I was hired by the Messenger; that was February of 1996.
It ended up being the best job I ever had — although I was always comparing it to Transit, which was horrible.
I first was in “paste-up,” before the newspaper computerized.
This lasted a couple years, although I always was taking on technical challenges allied with computerization.
When the newspaper computerized I gravitated toward it.
I learned how to OCR-scan stuff.
An Executive Vice-President was fixing to lay me off, but Matson intervened.
“Why would I ever wanna do that?” he asked. “He’s giving me two or three Letters-to-the-Editor per day.”
All OCR-scanned.
Later Matson wanted me to work more, but I couldn’t afford it.
I was collecting Social-Security Disability, and they had an income-limit.
Increased hours meant no more SSDI.
“So how much more per week would it take to offset your SSDI?” Matson asked.
He was in effect doubling my wage-rate during a pay-freeze.
Matson eventually quit the Messenger, although after I retired.
He became Public-Relations head-honcho for Finger Lakes Community College.
And now he’s gone, a great tragedy.
I affectionaly called him “Boss-Man.”

• “Transit” is Regional Transit Service.
• “Paste-up” is pasting galleys of copy to cardboard page-dummies a large camera would photograph to make negatives a printing-plate could be “burned” from. Computerization replaced all that.
• “OCR-scanning” (optical-character-recognition) is to scan a text-document (like a letter). The OCR software then “reads” the document and converts it into a computer text-file. (Most Letters-to-the-Editor we received were off word-processors, and could be OCR scanned. Toward the end, Letters-to-the-Editor were e-mailed; quicker yet — but by then I was doing the Messenger web-site.)
• “Boss-Man” comes from Transit. Various bus-drivers called people in management “Boss-Man” as a put-down.

Response to CG e-mail

Well CG......
Good luck in Ann Arbor
Now that I’m all alone. a widower, I get the “What about Uncle Bob?” and “What about Bob?”
Of course, Thanksgiving never meant much to us anyway.
Occasionally Linda roasted a small turkey, and held a small Thanksgiving dinner for my niece and her husband and their daughter, my only relatives here in Rochester (NY).
Also my niece’s mother, the first divorced wife of Linda’s brother, now on his fourth wife.
They all live together in my sister-in-law’s house where she was brought up.
In fact, Linda roasted a turkey almost every year, a freebie from the supermarket, a product of the annual turkey wars.
About the only times Linda didn’t do a turkey is when Thanksgiving was held at my niece’s house, wherein -a) we were served a salad of rotting lettuce, and -b) my niece’s husband enthusiastically carved the turkey with a chain-saw.
We also were served a foamed Jell-O dessert filled with garbage.
So Thanksgiving for me is an invite to a Thanksgiving buffet near Rochester with my niece.
Their daughter’s birthday is tomorrow, Thanksgiving-day.
They decided to eat out at a buffet-restaurant. Thanksgiving dinner without the cooking.
And then another lady from a nearby church called and told me they were holding free Thanksgiving dinner for people like me who are alone.
The old “sing for your supper.”
I abstained, but she said they could do take-out.
That’s a Sunday meal without cooking.
I told her I’d show up.

• “CG” is Charlie Gardiner, a classmate at my college. He now lives in Massachusetts, and e-mailed me he was on his way to his son in Ann Arbor, MI for Thanksgiving.
• “Linda” is my beloved wife of over 44 years who died of cancer April 17th, 2012. Like me she was 68. I miss her dearly.

The most collectible car of-all-time is the ’57 Chevy

The January 2013 issue of my Hemmings Classic Car magazine arrived yesterday (Monday, November 19th, 2012).
It’s the 100th issue of Classic Car, so they suggested the 100 most collectible cars of all time.
Classic Car succeeded Special-interest Autos, also a Hemmings magazine, which I also have all the issues of.
—And I ain’t throwin’ ‘em out.
Special-interest Autos foundered when it began featuring foreign cars, first the Volkswagen Beetle, then the MG-B, etc.
Richard Lentinello, the head-honcho of Classic Cars, suggested the way to succeed as a classic car magazine was to avoid foreign cars. American cars were the true classics.
And there were many would-be readers out there interested in American cars — like me for example.
Like the cars of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Baby-boomers came of age during those years.
Classic Cars was founded eight years ago. Special-interest Autos is gone, and Classic Car is an astounding success.
Naming the 100 most collectible cars of all time is a hairball.
The magazine didn’t rank ‘em.
They went through the years naming collectible cars. As such we have the Model-T and Model-A Fords, the Stutz Bearcat, various Duesenbergs and Cords, and the Auburn Boat-tail Speedster.
Moving into the ‘50s we get the Studebaker Starliner Coupe, the mighty Chrysler letter-cars, the gorgeous ’56-’57 Lincoln Continental, and of course the Tri-Chevys, the ’55, ’56 and ’57.
Also the two-seater Thunderbirds.
Move into the ‘60s and we get the early Mustangs, the Corvairs, the first Pontiac G-T-O, the 1965 Buick Riviera, and perhaps the most beautiful ‘60s car of all, the 1961 bubble-top Pontiac Ventura two-door hardtop.
Also the Oldsmobile Toronado, the Z/28 Camaro, and the Dodge and Plymouth wing-cars at the end of the decade, the Daytona and the SuperBird.
They don’t rank ‘em, but they described the ’57 Chevy as “the most collectible car of all time.”
I agree with that, even though I prefer the ’55.
To me the ’57 Chevy makes various styling mistakes, but I certainly know enough people that desire a ’57 Chevy.
And the market for collectible cars reflects that; a brand-new ’57 Chevy probably cost less than $3,000 in 1957, but now commands a fortune.
A ’57 Chevy convertible in excellent condition will sell for over $100,000.
Classic Car didn’t rank the ’57 Chevy as the most collectible car of all time, but they suggested it.
Compared to some of the 100 cars they featured, I would say the ’57 Chevy is the most collectible car of all time.

Photo by BobbaLew.

My parents had a ’57 Bel Air wagon.
I thought the world of it.
We got it after my first year of college.
It was our first car with a V8 engine, the four-barrel 283 power-pak with dual exhausts.
It would do 80 in its automatic-transmission’s low gear.
It was our first non-turkey car, and it replaced our infamous “Blue Bomb,” a six-cylinder ’53 Chevy — the car I learned to drive on.

“Don’t hang up!”

.....bellowed the guy on the other end of my telephone-line.
It sounded like my friend in Texas, so I didn’t at first.
“Congratulations! Your home has been selected to receive a complete General-Electric wireless security-system installed for free!”
I hung up.
Back in 1989, while our new house was being built, our contractor wondered if he should install an alarm-system.
I refused.
“Best alarm-system I ever had,” I said; “has four legs and barks. When we lived in Rochester we were the only house on our block not broken into, and one night our dog scared a would-be intruder off our front porch.”
That was our first dog; now I’m on dog number-six.
I thought this most recent dog was less an alarm-system until she barked at my cleaning-lady, who has a key to my house.
I send my dog outside to greet the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
She puts the fear-of-the-Lord into ‘em.
She also had a few words to say to the guy from the West Bloomfield Volunteer Fire Department, who came soliciting a donation.
(I donated; I always have.)
My brother in northern Delaware has an alarm-system.
It goes “be-be-beep” every time a door is opened.
Okay, it’s working, but heaven-forbid if their cat sneaks out.
My uncle who died a few years ago had an alarm-system.
“Don’t go downstairs until I disarm that alarm-system. It thinks you’re a burglar and calls the police.”
Never any false alarms with my four-legged alarm-system, and I can depend on her.
She’s scared away trick-or-treaters.

• My current dog is “Scarlett” (two “Ts,” as in Scarlett O’Hara), a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s seven, and is our sixth Irish-Setter, a high-energy dog. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. [Scarlett was from a failed backyard breeder.] By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't bad. She’s our fourth rescue.)
• I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.

Hug-ee-poo

It’s ba-a-a-a-ack!
My grief-share ended a little over a month ago.
It ended October 10th; today is November 15th.
When I first attended in July, I was the most recent bereavement.
My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012.
I was devastated and heartbroken.
I felt different and out-of-it, like others in attendance weren’t in the same condition as me.
Another was fairly recent, January, but they all seemed in better shape than me.
Then toward the end a girl showed up who’d lost her young husband to a heart-attack in July.
Suddenly I was no longer the most recent bereavement. Obviously the girl was devastated and heartbroken.
I could imagine her pain.
As the grief-share ended I felt positive. I didn’t at first. We were a pretty good group.
The advantage to a grief-share is you’re among others who understand where you are. They know it themselves. Well-meaning friends and relatives, not similarly experienced, often miss the boat.
And so the grief-share ended. It meant I could go back to not abandoning my dog in my house for three hours or more on Wednesday-nights.
But the grief-share resurfaced as a “Hope for the Holidays” gig, one night a month November and December, proceeding Thanksgiving and Christmas.
These holidays can be very difficult for the bereaved.
A special grief-share program had been prepared.
I decided to go. There always is a perfunctory video to watch, which can be interesting, but is like going through the motions.
But we were a pretty good group, there seemed to be benefit in that.
“Holy crap,” I exclaimed when I first saw the group.
Rows of chairs had been arrayed in a small conference-room, and many therein were unfamiliar faces.
“There’s no Holy crap here,” a facilitator explained. The grief-share is church affiliated.
Among those present were newer faces even more recently bereaved.
They were obviously devastated and heartbroken.
“Please share your stories,” a facilitator said.
When they got around to me, like most I was speechless and lost.
Finally “my wife died in April, but compared to what I’ve heard I feel like I have it easy.”
I suppose this is a function of healing. Almost seven months had passed, and I no longer feel devastated and heartbroken.
I get depressed recalling my loss, and certain thoughts, especially if verbalized, can cause crying.
The lady who lost her husband in January was sitting beside me, and she had brought along her teenaged daughter.
“I feel like I’m going crazy!” the girl said through tears.
“Don’t worry,” I thought to myself. “It’ll go away over time. I can attest to that.”
“Three months ago I was a wreck,” I said to a facilitator as I walked out.
“Now I’m not.”
She gave me a grandiose hug.

PhotoBucket “improvement”

True to their e-mail notification, PhotoBucket, my image repository for these blogs, has indeed “improved” their site.
I always dread these changes, because -a) I have to figure out a new user-interface, although I usually can, and -b) their so-called “improvement” usually deletes some function I used a lot.
The new user-interface was not challenging; it was relatively intuitive. But their so-called “improvement” did indeed delete a function I made extensive use of.
Their old site gave an information-box about a picture I uploaded, and this info-box included the pixel-size, pixel resolution, etc.
I keep folders on this ‘pyooter of every picture I’ve ever uploaded to PhotoBucket — I can. I got gobs of storage.
That is, I still have the actual picture-file.
Not knowing PhotoBucket would make their so-called “improvement,” I trashed my picture-files from 2009 and 2010.
My 2009 and 2010 pictures are still at PhotoBucket, so what I did to determine the pixel-size of a reduced-size picture I was gonna reuse, was use PhotoBucket’s info-box to tell me the original picture-size.
But now I can’t, since that info-box is gone.
If I wanna reuse a PhotoBucket picture from 2009 or 2010, I have to screenshot it, open my screenshot in Photoshop-Elements, and then ballpark the picture-size.
I have to hope that picture was uploaded to PhotoBucket at blog-column width (403 pixels = 5.597 inches wide). After numerous calculations I come up with a ballparked picture-height. —If the picture wasn’t uploaded at blog-column width, my calculations lead me astray, and the picture displays vastly distorted.
So thank you PhotoBucket! Your so-called “improvement” isn’t helping me any.
Apple Computer did this a while ago.
They fielded what Windows calls a “service-pack,” a change (“upgrade”) to their operating software.
I dutifully installed it, as with all Apple system upgrades, and in so doing disabled some of my antique software applications, namely Photoshop Elements-4.0, my FineReader OCR software, plus my ancient Quicken 2003 would no longer print checks.
Apple had apparently removed the code that made these things work, their so-called “Rosetta Code.”
My wife, who was still alive then, determined this by Google-search.
Andrew, my Macintosh computer-guru at Mac-Shack, disputed this, but my three ancient applications no longer worked.
I had to upgrade to Photoshop Elements-10. a more recent FineReader, and Quicken-Essentials.
PE-10 wasn’t too bad, but it altered one of its tool-functions, not in my favor.
Upgrading FineReader cost me over $100, and now I have a killer app that will OCR scan books. My earlier FR (which came with my scanner) was all I needed.
Quicken-Essentials apparently hates MAC. It’ll print checks after much dithering, and that has to be just so.
Apparently QE didn’t print checks at first, since they mistakenly assumed everyone would be paying online by then. Users rebelled, and QE added check-printing, but that was before I installed it.
My credit-card is still in Quicken 2003, since I’m not printing checks from that.
Reconciling a QE account is beyond me. 2003 I can reconcile. All I can do with my QE checking account is verify the balance agrees with my bank.
Apple’s so-called “system upgrade,” and what it did, was totally unannounced. As always with Apple, you were on your own.
Things like this seem to always be clothed in secrecy (although PhotoBucket wasn’t).
Steve Jobs died not long after.
It was like this was his parting-shot: totally screw up his users.
Back to Reality. Things are more-or-less stable.
I use Photoshop Elements-10, Quicken Essentials, and occasionally FineReader.
I’ve developed workarounds to get what I want, but they are time-consuming.
Plus with Quicken Essentials I can’t reconcile my checking-account. But I can balance it. That’s compromise, not a workaround.
It’s like when AppleWorks® dropped its macro-function from 5.0 to 6.0. I developed a workaround, but it was nowhere near as fast as a macro.
(AppleWorks [previously ClarisWorks] no longer exists. It was replaced by Apple’s “Pages,” what I’m using as my word-processor now.)
I’ve developed a workaround in response to PhotoBucket’s deleting its info-box.
Although maybe it’s still there.
So I e-mail PhotoBucket a tech question.
I bet I get a “we’re deeply sorry” response from Richard in India.
(I bet his real name isn’t “Richard.”)

• RE: “I got gobs of storage......” —500-gig hard-drive.
• This computer is an Apple MacBook Pro.
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• “OCR-scanning” (optical-character-recognition) is to scan a text-document (like a letter). The OCR software then “reads” the document and converts it into a computer text-file.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. Like me she was 68. I miss her dearly.

Long trip to Mac-Shack

Yesterday (Thursday, November 8th, 2012) was an absolute killer of an errand.
I had skipped it the previous day, because I had already had my poor dog endure well over two hours in my van, and Mac-Shack might add 1.75 hours more.
I can no longer leave my dog home with my wife, because my wife no longer exists. She died last April.
So now it’s abandon the dog alone in the house, or take the dog with me.
I had taken the dog for a long walk that morning at Baker Park in nearby Canandaigua (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”). The walk took over two hours.
I had to go west from Canandaigua to Honeoye Falls (“HONE-eee-oy;” rhymes with “boy”'), a small village west of where I live. Canandaigua is east.
I had to shop a supermarket in Honeoye Falls. It’s the only supermarket that sells what I needed.
Canandaigua to Honeoye Falls is about a half-hour.
I then had to drive all the way north to the suburb of Henrietta south of Rochester (NY), a 45-minute trip.
In Henrietta I had to shop a natural-foods store, the only place that sold what I needed.
From there I was gonna drive all the way to Mac-Shack, another 35-40 minutes.
This computer, a MAC, has a system backup function. It’s called “Time-Machine.”
The computer backs up everything every 30 minutes or so, so if the internal hard-drive fails, everything is backed up to another hard-drive, external in this case. So I’m safe and everything can be recovered.
My system was no longer backing up. In fact, the external hard-drive’s icon was no longer on my desktop.
A trip to Mac-Shack, my computer-store, except Mac-Shack is in faraway Penfield, at least an hour going, and another hour getting back.
I had already made my dog endure well over two hours in my van. It wasn’t fair to make her endure almost two hours more.
So I skipped Mac-Shack and drove directly home from Henrietta.
That was two days ago. I still needed to go back to Mac-Shack.
I figured I would do it yesterday after working out at the Canandaigua YMCA.
When I work out, I hand over my dog to old friends at a grooming-shop. They daycare my dog.
Better for her to be in daycare than enduring a long ride in my van — plus the possibility of a long wait at Mac-Shack.
I could have skipped part of my workout to save time, but I did all of it.
My workout blows over two hours. I’d left the dog off at doggie-daycare about 10:45 a.m.
Workout finished, I began the long trek to Mac-Shack. It even included a short segment of the NY state Thruway.
Mac-Shack consumed about 15-20 minutes. They determined my external hard-drive wasn’t defective, and still had plenty of space.
If we USB-ed the external hard-drive direct to my ‘pyooter, the icon showed up, and backup resumed.
It looked like my USB hub, an antique, was defective. I purchased a new hub.
That external hard-drive had been connected through the old hub.
Problem solved, back to doggie-daycare to retrieve my dog.
But via Mighty Weggers, the only supermarket to sell calcium-fortified grapefruit juice, which I needed.
But not the Weggers in Canandaigua; that was the wrong direction.
I would pass two Weggers returning from Mac-Shack, so I would stop at one. Add 15-20 minutes to my return.
But of course the Weggers I stopped at wasn’t the Canandaigua Weggers, a store I know.
I found the grapefruit-juice, but little else on my list.
I figured I could shop the Canandaigua Weggers on Saturday, after working out.
I picked up my dog about 4:15, almost two hours later than usual.
It was already getting dark when I got home; 20-25 minutes just to get home.
So I barely had time to walk the dog out back.
Usually after working out at the YMCA, I eat an orange, some muffins, and I take a nap.
No time for any of that! I was getting home two hours later than usual.
Since it was getting dark, drop everything, walk the dog, and make supper.
Now that I live out here, 25 minutes from everything, I loathe the long trips to Mac-Shack.
This was true even before my wife died.
But Mac-Shack has “Andrew,” a really helpful techie, who I prefer to work with.
And now that my wife is gone, I always have the dog-problem.

• “Canandaigua” is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles east. —I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• “Penfield,” previously a farm-town, is now a suburb east of Rochester.
• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit.
• The “Thruway” is a toll interstate from New York City to the Pennsylvania state line west of Buffalo. It’s the main east-west highway through New York state. —It more-or-less parallels the Erie Canal, avoiding mountains. Across western NY it’s Interstate-90. South of Albany to New York City it’s Interstate-87.
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• “Mighty Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester I often buy groceries at. They have a store in Canandaigua.

Four more years of Obama-lama-ding-dong

The American people have spoken.
Not often do I find myself having voted for the winner of a presidential election.
The last time that happened it was Bill Clinton, who I noted was my first president younger than me.
I could say the honkies were defeated, the white guys who hated Obama and loudly declared him a Muslim.
I found it interesting the Mitt Romney campaign accused Obama of strident partisanship.
That instead of gridlock in Washington we should be reaching out.
I humblee submit John Boehner and his “my way or the highway” crowd.
As if that’s not strident partisanship.
Sure, toss all the advances of the Obama administration, and go back to the old ways that almost caused a Great Depression.
Coddle the fatcats and have them pay even less taxes, while the little guy forks over more to fund the Conservative agenda.
The old Conservative waazoo: “A rising tide raises all boats.”
But what if your boat is sinking?
Heaven forbid we limit the capitalist right to make a killing — rip someone off.
In Pennsylvania I saw signs belittling Obama for limiting coal.
What if burning coal pumps gobs of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere, enough to cause melting polar icecaps, and global-warming?
We live in a world where the ultimate freedom of the automobile has become an albatross. One sees that in southern California, very much an auto-culture.
Traffic chokes the highways, and smog chokes the atmosphere.
A few years ago, I was in deepest, darkest Hollywood at night, cheek-to-jowl with slowly lumbering behemoths, Hummers and giant Expeditions at 2 mph on chrome-spider alloy wheels.
Interstate-10 is at least 10 lanes, maybe 12.
Yet it was packed with madly cannonading behemoths doing 100 mph.
Is it even possible to govern such madness?
In Wyoming life goes on as if the Federal Government didn’t exist.
Yet Obama took it on. He saved us from a Depression even worse than the Great Depression — which would have been caused by greed.
He’s got four more years. Can he turn around America’s slide?
I doubt it.
As a friend once said to me, “This nation’s greatness is over.”

Election-Day

Photo by BobbaLew.

Today, Tuesday November 6th, 2012, is Election-Day, my first since my wife died last April.
Which meant I thought I had the sad duty of informing the election-clerks at my polling-place, the West Bloomfield Firehall, they would never see my wife’s signature again.
The county Board of Elections was on top of it. My wife’s signature wasn’t there.
“Probably because she died,” I said.
“I’ll look it up,” the clerk said.
She took out a book that had the names of voters who died.
There was my wife’s name.
Yrs trly voted for another four years of Obama-lama-ding-dong.
I’ve voted in every presidential election since I registered, probably in 1968.
I attained voting age in 1965, while in college, but didn’t register.
Voting would have been a hairball. Residency would have been at issue.
I was attending college in Western New York, yet was from northern Delaware.
Since I spent most of my time in college, I had no idea about local elections in northern Delaware.
Franklin D. Roosevelt would have been president when I was born in 1944, but the first president I remember is Harry Truman.
I came of age in the ‘50s, when Eisenhower was president, a time of wretched excess.
The assassination of President Kennedy was an extreme downer — as if our nation’s efforts to get back on track were also snuffed.
Lyndon Johnson was still president when I graduated college in 1966.
My first presidential election since graduating college would have been Richard Nixon versus Hubert Humphrey (also George Wallace) in 1968.
That’s probably the first I voted in. I got married in December of 1967 living in Rochester, NY.
I’ve always voted Democratic, although I declare myself Independent.
I can’t vote REPUBLICAN. I can’t agree with a party that coddles fatcats, which I’m not.
That makes me a so-called “liberal” (Gasp! —Cue slavering tirade from the OxyContin® King), trusting human nature.
My wife was a registered Democrat, which meant she could vote in Democratic primaries. I couldn’t, since I wasn’t a registered Democrat.
My wife always said she wasn’t a member of an organized political party; she was a Democrat.
in order to vote in the 1980 presidential election, I had to get absentee ballots. We had scheduled vacation to include Election Day.
The election was Ronald Reagan versus Jimmeh Cah-duh. I voted for Cah-duh. On that year’s Election Day we were probably in the Rocky Mountains on our way to the Pacific Ocean.
During my employ at Regional Transit in Rochester, I and another guy set up a voter-registration. It meant showing up at 4:30 in the morning; some buses pulled out at 4:35 a.m.
Hardly anyone at Transit was a registered voter.
Even management approved our efforts, and usually they were negative.
I think we registered a few.
Even when my wife was alive, voting was always done in passing.
We’d hook it up with some other errand.
Out here in West Bloomfield, voting took no more than 5-10 minutes.
Today I was on my way to the YMCA, and had my dog with me.
15 minutes at the Firehall; longest ever. About five were ahead of me in line.

• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. Like me she was 68. I miss her dearly.
• The “OxyContin®-King” is Rush Limbaugh.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
• My current dog is “Scarlett” (two “Ts,” as in Scarlett O’Hara), a rescue Irish-Setter. She’s seven, and is our sixth Irish-Setter, a high-energy dog. (A “rescue Irish Setter” is an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. [Scarlett was from a failed backyard breeder.] By getting a rescue-dog, we avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Scarlett isn't bad. She’s our fourth rescue.)

Back to Standard-Time

Last night at 2 a.m. (Sunday, November 4th, 2012): back to Standard-Time.
Fulfillment of the old “Fall-back” waazoo.
This was how my wife knew I’d had a traumatic brain-injury when I had my stroke.
I couldn’t reset my digital watch back to Standard-Time — my stroke was October 26th, 19 years ago.
Shortly after we got married we goofed the time-change.
My wife and I were doing bank-teller training, and showed up an hour late.
Marital-bliss, they surmised.
Some people don’t like Daylight-Savings. In eastern Indiana they don’t change.
Doing so would have it still dark at 7 a.m. and later.
“Tampering with God’s time,” they call it.
I object! “God’s time” is what your sundial reports.
The time-zones are compliments of the railroads. They were tired of different times in different cities, often only 10-20 minutes apart.
Scheduling trains through those cities was near impossible.
Noon on your sundial is probably not noon in your time-zone.
The time-change means the end of walking my dog about supper-time. It will be dark by then.
In order to avoid some possible hairballs, I reset various clocks.
First I synchronized my watch with this here ‘pyooter, which apparently gets its time from the atomic-clock in Boulder, CO via the Internet.
My wife’s computer did that too, but every time-change it would muck up the time. She always had to fiddle.
So now I wonder if my niece had the same problem. She inherited my wife’s computer.
Thus synchronized my watch would be the standard.
First I reset my clock-radio, so it wouldn’t be waking me an hour early.
Then I reset the clock in my DVD recorder, so I wouldn’t be auto-recording an hour early. (I record the news.)
I then reset the clocks in my cars, thereby avoiding what happened in the past, which was to not reset them until weeks later.
I can be precise with the CR-V, but not the Sienna.
All I can do with the Sienna is make its read-out agree with my watch.
The CR-V I can activate at the precise second.
The CR-V I can synchronize with the atomic-clock. The Sienna is only ballpark.
I have been pilloried for synchronizing all my clocks.
It’s true. Precise timing doesn’t matter that much.
But I can; so therefore I do.
It’s also a reflection of the madness I got with my wife’s mother, where all her clocks were different, and I was of-the-Devil for not knowing which way.
One was fast, and one was slow. Five different clocks all displaying different times. One was moderately fast, another was really fast, and yet another was slow.
And what a stupid idiot I was for not knowing what time it was — or more precisely, which was fast, and which was slow.
Another factor was timeliness at Regional Transit Service, where we went by the Mickey-Mouse on the wall.
That wall-clock might not agree with the atomic-clock, but it was our gold-standard.
Our watches had to agree with it, lest we get in trouble, or (gasp!) show up a few seconds late for work.
I then reset the clock on my programmable furnace thermostat, so it wouldn’t kick on my furnace an hour early, or set it back for the night an hour early.
This doesn’t make much difference in a superinsulated house. It might take all night for the inside temperature to drop back to 62 degrees.
Otherwise it’s set for 68. It triggers up at 5:30 a.m. I didn’t want it triggering up at 4:30; the bed becomes warmish.
I then reset the two electronic clocks in my kitchen, the stove and the microwave.
They aren’t that important, but I don’t want them fooling me in my midnight stupor when I let the dog out.
One clock was left, my bedside alarm, which resets itself per the satellite time-signal, the same time-signal cellphones go by.
I wouldn’t reset that; it would reset itself, I hoped.
When I changed the batteries in it about a month ago, it took a long time to get that time-signal. I had to keep moving it.
When I got up to let out the dog about 2:30, it had reset itself.

• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• RE: “Inherited my wife’s computer.....” — My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th of this year. I miss her dearly. When she died, my niece in Rochester (NY) inherited her computer.
• The “CR-V” is my 2003 Honda CR-V SUV. The “Sienna” is my 2005 Toyota Sienna minivan.
• RE: “Regional Transit Service.....” —For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.

Testing

And so begins the December Monthly Calendar-Report.

Anyone who follows this here blog knows I do a calendar-report every month, blathering about the pictures in my seven calendars.
They aren’t really calendars. That is, I only use one as a calendar. What they are is wall-art that changes every month.
As a railfan I have four train calendars. I then have two car calendars, and one calendar of classic propeller airplanes, in this case WWII warbirds.
(This reflects my interests.)
Doing a Monthly Calendar-Report takes time. Off-and-on all month.
I blog other topics as the month proceeds, but make time to fly my Monthly Calendar-Report when the new month starts.
I do it in a word-processor (Apple’s “Pages;” I drive a MAC), and what I’ve done in the past is do the entire report in that word-processor, and then fly it in totality as the old month ends.
This was okay, although it might throw an HTML error at me, usually a missing caret (“begin: ‘<’;” or “end: ‘>’”) that goofed up an HTML-tag.
I then had to root the whole document to find that error. Sometimes the blog-site highlighted the error, but often it didn’t.
And the calendar-report would be humungous. Finding that mistake might take hours, if ever. Sometimes the error would goof up my blog post. I’d have to print the blog to find the error.
Now with BlogSpot’s new user interface, I find myself flying as I go along.
That is, I might complete one calendar-entry, and then fly it. After it’s flown, and I looked at it, I delete it.
This narrows my error-search.
If it’s working one calendar at a time, an error will be in the calendar I just covered. I’m not looking for that mistake in the entire calendar-report.
Although I have to delete what I’m testing. That appears in the blog — it’s incomplete and too early.
I suppose I could have also done this with the old BlogSpot interface, but that didn’t occur to me.
So now you may stumble upon a section of my next Calendar-Report unless I delete before you get it.
Doing it this way makes it a little less difficult for me.

• “HTML” is Hyper-Text Markup Language, a background instruction system made invisible in text by surrounding carets (“<” and “>”). I use it only to embolden, underline and italicize text, although it can do other things. I do paragraph drops with it. My picture-inserts and links are also via HTML-tag.