Posted inWeb/Tech

July 2018 DirecTV update changes user interface from bad to horrible

A few months ago DirecTV sent out an update to our Genie DVR receiver that sure wasn't an upgrade, because my wife and I found the user interface harder to use than the old version. But now, July 2018, DirecTV has managed to screw up the user interface even more. Last night, June 10, I fired up the receiver to see what was available for us to watch.  It took only a few seconds for me to realize that a bunch of our recordings had disappeared. The menu looked different, also. But there on the left side it said "All…
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Posted inArcimoto Home life

I’ve got both Arcimoto anticipation and anxiety

I've been following the saga of Arcimoto, a three-wheeled electric FUV (Fun Utility Vehicle) for a long time. So long, I can't remember when I plunked down $100 for a pre-order reservation.  I must have been among the first to do this, since my reservation number is #129, and I believe they total more than 2,700 now. Over the years I've gotten numerous emails from Arcimoto headquarters in Eugene, Oregon, which is just fifty or so miles from where I live, Salem. It seems like production for retail customers like me is always just around the corner, but that corner…
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Posted inBooks

I wish Bill Clinton had collaborated with Daniel Silva, not James Patterson

I'm a big fan of spy/thriller/espionage/solitary killer novels. Yeah, they fall into the category of "popular fiction" rather than literary fiction, but that's because...duh...they're popular.  I read lots of non-fiction because I want to learn something. I read popular fiction because I want to escape into an entertaining alternative world. Recently I've had two books sitting by my bed for nighttime reading: "The President Is Missing," by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, and "The English Spy" by Daniel Silva.  I tried to alternate reading each book on successive nights. But it didn't take long before I read Silva's book every…
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Posted inBooks

If you’re looking for a book design firm, I highly recommend ebookpbook

If you're an author who is looking for a competent firm to get your book self-published in both electronic and print versions, I highly recommend ebookpbook, and an associated entity, Newgen KnowledgeWorks.  Jason Pearce is the guy I worked with after finding ebookpbook listed as a resource on Amazon's CreateSpace web site. For quite a few years CreateSpace offered interior design and cover design services on a fee basis. But fairly recently CreateSpace stopped doing this, so publishing a book via CreateSpace's print on demand process now requires that an author find a way to get interior design and cover…
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Posted inPhilosophy Sports

Deep thoughts about Arkansas’ missed pop-up that cost a World Series championship

OK, I've put my philosophical reputation on the line with the title of this blog post. So I'll buy some time for my mind to come up with the promised deep thoughts by bringing readers of this post up to speed on the thoroughly mind-boggling play that cost the Arkansas baseball team the College World Series championship.  I live in Oregon, not far from Corvallis, the home of the Oregon State University (OSU) Beavers baseball team. So last Wednesday I was rooting for the Beavers to win the second game in the best out of three championship series with the…
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Posted inHome life Sports

Watching the Oregon State baseball team is better than reading a thriller

I've been hugely enjoying watching the Oregon State University (OSU) baseball team wend its way through the loser's bracket of the 2018 College World Series.  Now, I readily admit that I'm a "fair weather" OSU Beavers fan, since every year I only start watching them when the NCAA playoffs start. (I do have a good excuse, though, since I have DirecTV, and the super-irritating pissing match between DirecTV and the Pac 12 Networks shows no sign of being resolved. Thus it's only when OSU games show up on ESPN that I can record and watch them.) Back in high school,…
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Posted inSalem

Photos of what caught our eye at the 2018 Salem Tour of Homes

Yesterday Laurel and I visited the 2018 Salem Tour of Homes. Here's photos of what appealed to us when we visited seven of the more expensive homes in south Salem.  As much as we enjoyed the "eye-candy" of various architectural features, I end the Adobe Spark web page with these thoughts: So in the end, as happens every year we visit a Tour of Homes, we return home -- our minds filled with visions of what we'd like to have in our house, but also happy to know that what we do have has helped make us happy for the past…
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Posted inFamily

Regrets about the one hour I spent with my father

When Father's Day comes around I don't spend much time reminiscing about memories of my father, since I only spent one hour of face-to-face time with him in my entire life. (These are the only photos I have of my father. Obviously I don't remember these baby moments with him.) I wrote about this disturbing experience in an appropriately-titled blog post, "One hour with my father." Here’s a contrarian Mother’s Day story about the one hour I spent with my father. Note: the one hour, period. This wasn’t the best or worst hour, nor the happiest or saddest hour. It…
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Posted inHumor Living with a catheter

New life goal: be a humorous mindful Taoist stay-at-home

I find many things weird. Most of them reside within my own cranium. After all, that's really the only place weirdness resides -- in a human mind. Like, mine. One of my weirdnesses is that even though I'm an avid blogger, for the past year I've largely avoided writing about the Central Fact of my life since May 2017. Namely, my 68 year-old bladder deciding to call it quits during a visit to central Oregon, which led through a series of increasingly disturbing events to my current state of being an Old Man Who Has to Pee Via a Catheter. …
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Posted inCurrent affairs Health Living with a catheter

Between the black and white of suicide, there’s a gray area

The recent suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade have gotten people talking about the problem of taking one's own life. That's good.  But I don't feel like we're talking about an important issue that is almost a taboo topic: the gray area between (1) the black badness of people killing themselves when there are better options available to them, and (2) the white goodness of people taking control of their death when they are suffering and only have a few months or less to live. What I see as a gray in-between area is when a person considers that…
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Posted inSalem Strange Up Salem

Universe to Salem: “When in doubt, let it out!”

I rarely channel the Universe, because I'm usually dubious that it has a message for me, or anyone else. But the recent toxic algae water crisis here in Salem must have caused my cosmic connection to become more finely-tuned, since I'm picking up a communication for our city from the Universe that's coming in loud and clear. When in doubt, let it out! After all, the numero uno problem with how the folks at City Hall handled the cyanotoxin water tests was their mistaken decision to keep the initial positive test results to themselves, instead of immediately telling the public,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Trump passed 3,000 lies this month. That’s horrific.

Everybody lies. Sometimes. A little bit. But Donald Trump lies to a degree that far surpasses any other president, and indeed most human beings in general, aside from pathological liars such as psychopaths.  I have to give the Washington Post credit for having staff with the fortitude to chronicle Trump's lies since he took the oath of office. On May 1 the Post reported "President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims so far." In the 466 days since he took the oath of office, President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s…
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Posted inEntertainment Sports

U of O softball way more entertaining today than OSU baseball

I'm an end of season softball and baseball fan, because we have DirecTV and they still don't carry the Pac 12 Network after so many years, I've stopped counting.  But today ESPN showed important games for both the University of Oregon softball team, which needed a win over Kentucky to advance to the Women's College World Series, and the Oregon State baseball team, which needed a win over UCLA to have a chance of winning the Pac 12 championship, plus get a better seeding in the NCAA playoffs. My conclusion: women's softball is way more entertaining than men's baseball. Now,…
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Posted inEntertainment Salem

Shout! is a hugely enjoyable Enlightened Theatrics musical

Whether or not you were there in the 60's and early 70's (I was) to groove to tunes such as "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and "Son of a Preacher Man," you'll love Enlightened Theatrics' Shout! The Mod Musical at the Grand Theatre in downtown Salem.  I saw Shout! last night at a preview performance where the five women who sing, dance, and act with marvelous professionalism came back on stage after the show in street clothes to respond to questions from the audience, along with other members of the production. What blew my mind further, which was already…
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Posted inHome life Humor

Fred Meyer, free those organic bananas!

Having been a vegetarian for 48 of my 69 years, I'm attuned to the suffering of sentient animals. But of late my compassion has been expanding to insentient fruits and vegetables, perhaps due to the intense 10 minutes of daily morning meditation I do via listening to the Daily Calm on my iPhone (some of which I actually stay awake for). So the sight of these organic bananas I bought today at the South Salem Fred Meyer filled me with such sorrow, I could hardly wait to get home and pour out my feelings via a blog post. Now, Fred…
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Posted inHome life Recreation

We say hello to Paulina Springs, and sort of goodbye to the Metolius

One of the great things about living in Salem, Oregon is how close it is to Portland (north), Eugene (south), the Coast (west), and the Cascades/Central Oregon (east). My wife and I hugely enjoyed the 20 years we were 1/4 owners of a Forest Service cabin on the banks of the Metolius in Camp Sherman, near Sisters in central Oregon. After selling our cabin share, we bought a 1/4 share in a Black Butte Ranch house not far away. We're finding it easier to say goodbye to the cabin on the Metolius by the house being close to beautiful Paulina…
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Posted inHealth Home life

Regence MedAdvantage planning to ditch Salem Health doctors

Irritated. Pissed-off. Disturbed.  That's how I feel after getting an un-cheery letter from Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon letting me know that as of July 1, 2018, Salem Health Professional Services will be leaving their provider network. So if this happens, I'd have to pay out-of-network rates for (1) the primary care doctor I've had for 13 years, Michelle Rasmussen; (2) a mental health nurse practitioner in Rasmussen's office, Melody Klug, who has been overseeing medication for depression that hit me after I acquired a chronic bladder condition, and (3) Thye Schuyler, a doctor at the Salem Health Sleep Center…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Police need to give up the “21-foot rule” and other dangerous myths

It was great to see a recent story in the Portland Oregonian, Officers get new de-escalation training, which de-bunked the myth that police officers need to keep someone with a knife at least 21 feet away from them, because supposedly "a person with a knife within that distance can stab you before you can shoot." This never made sense to me, as I noted in a 2010 post, "Why I'm bothered by another Portland police killing."  The transient, Jack "Jackie" Collins, was intoxicated and threatening people at Hoyt Aboretum. After Walters knocked on the restroom door, Collins came out. Pretty…
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Posted inHome life

We just leased our third Chevy Volt, avoiding the games car salespeople play

My wife, Laurel, should be hired by General Motors as a Chevy Volt spokeswoman. She absolutely loves the car. Me, not so much, which is why I drive a VW GTI. So Laurel and I don't always agree on what makes a car lovable. But we do agree on this: it is super annoying when car salespeople give you the runaround, playing ridiculous sales-games rather than being up front and open with us.  This is why we've leased all three of our Chevy Volts through Kelly Stewart of Salem's Capitol Auto Group, even though Kelly is with the Toyota side…
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