When I was learning to fly, one of the techniques was a short field landing, where you have to come down slowly -- flaps down, throttle back -- and brake hard. You aim for a specific point on any landing, but particularly on one of those.
But not quite like this.
I found these, and more, at the Happy Otter web site.
...you don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now. --- Joan Baez
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing. --- Abraham Lincoln 1809
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. --- Ambrose Redmoon
This morning, I staggered to the table -- this getting up early because the offspring does it really has to stop; if we home schooled, classes would start at noon -- and flipped on the laptop, intending (hoping) to see that McCain had blown it big time, delivered a leaden... you know the drill. Instead, I got to futz with the computer.
At first, email downloaded a couple of messages, but the browser -- neither one -- would start. Then I shut down email and started it again, and it wouldn't start, either. There is a certain I can't breathe sense of panic when you want to connect to the net, and you can't. You almost need an OnStar for the PC --Sir, we've detected a lack of connectivity, are you all right? -- but of course there's an obvious flaw with that logic. So I took a gulp of coffee and rebooted. When it came up, I didn't watch it -- I have this superstition that, like a cat, if I watch it, then it will not do what I want, but if I dum-de-dum, golly, look out the window, it'll think itself unobserved, and go ahead its business. I tend to anthropomorphise the PC -- it wants to do this, it didn't like that. I know it's not really that way. And you know what they say: Don't anthropomorphise your PC; it hates that.
So I hummed and jittered, and it came up, delivering more emails (where did the first ones come from? What were they, stuck in a buffer somewhere?), one of which was from my bank saying that an automatic transfer from one bank to another had occurred. In fact, they sent me two non-identical notes, three hours apart, to announce it. Oh, man, did these idiots transfer it twice? I'd better go look.
So I sign into the receiving back and - password rejected? Eh? Now, I don't type my password. It's actually part of a sentence I keep in a text document, and I cut and paste it when I sign in. So there is NO chance that I typoed it -- but every so often, the C&P picks up the trailing space, and of course the damn receiving system reads that space as a hex gazattabit (thats a technical term), barfing on the signon. So I did it again, getting the same result. I did it again, this time typing it in, and it still didn't work. Finally, I trudged through their reset your password screen, reset it, and then I was in. Finally.
Then I get an email from them telling me that my PIN has been reset. PIN, I think. I didn't reset the PIN. I don't even know what the ATM card's PIN is. Then I remember: this bank called all security info 'the PIN'. So I ignore it -- yeah, I know, I reset it -- and then I think what if someone actually DID reset the PIN, the actual one, not the password I just did? So I sent them a note, and in a day or so, I'm sure I'll get a stiff worded response that essentially tells me nothing. They're good at that.
As for what started all of this, my wife made me promise not to freak out if I found anyone who said McCain did a good job. I'll try.
This has been an interesting afternoon.
First, I took the guinea pig to the vet, and got a financial reminder of why we don't do that all that often.
Second, my daughter told me that she thought Sarah Palin would make a cool president, and she liked her better than Obama. (I did not throw her from the car, although I did consider it.)
Third, I just got flamed by one person in the comments section of a blog for a comment I'd made there, and then here for a comment I'd made on a different blog.
And Fourth.... ah, the hell with it. Three's enough.
I think I'll turn on some quiet music and sit in the dark for a while.
In case you were wondering, 99901 is the zip code for Ketchikan, Alaska, which is the place where the Bridge to Nowhere was supposed to be built.
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"The overwhelming majority of the signs were professional ones with "McCain-Palin" on one side and "Prosperity" on the other. In Denver, Democrats displayed a greater variety of signs, with some coinciding with individual speakers, such as Sen. Edward Kennedy.
But there were also far less formal signs that appeared to be hand-painted, including one with the slogan "Hockey Moms 4 Palin." These were not necessarily made by die-hard delegates: convention aides could be seen handing them the same exact one throughout the arena."
To change that old slogan == Spontaneity -- if you can schedule that, you've got it made. Apparently, thats a slogan for both parties.
I wonder sometimes about the mechanics of being a politician. Do you create maps -- literally, maps -- of the issues, and chart out where you and your opponent(s) stand? Do you highlight where they're strong (here be draygons) or where they're weak? Do you make concise summaries of each point that you or they have as part their positions, and note where you're the same, different, or some blend? How do you keep track?
Just wondering. In my minimal exposure thus far, no one seems interested in that kind of thing, so I wondered if anyone was, up the political food chain.
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At my old company, one of the taglines was 'Eagles don't flock....You have to catch them one at a time.'
Like this?
If anyone happens to know if its possible to get a 'generic' card to plug into a Dell Dimension tower so as to provide wireless access, I would appreciate learning of it. Dell says they don't sell them any more.
Thank you.
Well, I'm impressed.
Apparently she can deliver a speech, and do so with style and gusto. If John McCain wanted a pit bull who can provide personal attacks and distraction, he's got one.
In the henchmen attacks of Giulani and Romney, he's got people who are willing to slam down their own brand of vilification, smears, and outright lies. So much for the integrity of the political process.
If they can just keep McCain wrapped in the flag long enough; if they can just distract people from the barren cupboard of thoughts that constitute their policies by focusing on personal attacks and sideshow hectoring; if they can keep folks from learning about real-world opposing opinons (whoops, more) from those who had to live with the results of those policies; and, most of all, if they can just rely on what they obviously believe is the mindless and memoryless stupidity of the American people -- then they can win.
In which case, may God have mercy on our country.
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Tonight we try 'chili dog chili'. I'm the cook, so it'll be ....interesting. Just wish I could actually have it on hot dogs....
From Ars Technica:
Google's new web browser Chrome is fast, shiny, and requires users to sign their very lives over to Google before they can use it. Today's Internet outrage du jour has been Chrome's EULA, which appears to give Google a nonexclusive right to display and distribute every bit of content transmitted through the browser. Now, Google tells Ars that it's a mistake, the EULA will be corrected, and the correction will be retroactive.
As noted by an attorney at Tap the Hive and various and sundry other sites, the Chrome EULA reads like a lot of Google's other EULAs. It requires users to "give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and nonexclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."
Oh. My.
