Miscellany

Lifespan-wise, I had some good news and bad news today. After reading about the Eons web site in TIME’s “New tricks for living past 96” article, I answered the questions on their longevity calculator. The article said, “the longevity calculator is what has given the website traction.” It must be popular, as it took a long time for their site to bring up a new page. After I clicked on the final button I was left in suspense for what seemed like, well, eons. What if the calculator said that I’d likely only live to 58? I’m going to be…

I dearly hope that someone will take this idea for a “Follow Up” website and run with it all the way to Internet stardom. Wouldn’t you visit a site that kept track of stories that fall off the media-frenzy radar before the final chapter is written? (to mix metaphors) I sure would. Consider these “what ever happened with…” examples: --What ever happened with the investigation into the shelling of the UN observer outpost on the Israel-Lebanon border? At first Kofi Annan accused the IDF of deliberately targeting the outpost. The Israelis claimed it was an innocent mistake, notwithstanding repeated urgent…

[June 15 update: I just heard from Denise, the Lenovo customer service representative who has been considering my complaint. She agreed to send me $200, the amount of the rebate that I would have gotten if I'd bought my Z60m ThinkPad in June rather than May. That's great. I still believe I'm entitled to $250 but justice has been mostly served. Thank you, Lenovo. I still like the computer a lot. The IBM/Lenovo software and security package is excellent. Driver and other updates happen with a click of a button, and the built-in backup system is transparent and easy to…

Today’s Statesman-Journal has an article about what gripes people at exercise clubs. “Smelly, grunting, nude people are top workout offenders,” says the headline. I agree that they are offenders, but not the top. I have my own additional idiosyncratic gripes, based on many years of twice or thrice weekly visits to the aerobic and weight machine rooms of Salem’s Courthouse Athletic Club, River Road branch. Darters, the bane of circuit training harmony. I tread on delicate ground here, because my wife herself is a darter—a weight machine user who ignores the careful scientific positioning of the equipment (legs first, then…

It’s been quite a day for me on the fighting terrorism front. Two major accomplishments to report. (1) I discovered Al Qaeda’s headquarters in the United States. It’s in Indianapolis, Indiana. Got their email address too but haven’t had time to follow up on it. I’ve been too busy analyzing what certainly appears to be an Al Qaeda email message that somehow found its way into my Outlook inbox. Don’t know how it got there. Several pieces of evidence suggest that Al Qaeda isn’t using super-duper secret 2006 lock-the-door-and-toss-away-the-key email communication techniques. So the message I intercepted likely is authentic.…

As of today the recently-discovered serious “zero-day vulnerability” in Windows is still unpatched. I just checked Windows Update and was told “no high priority updates for your computer are available.” What gives, Microsoft? Are all of your programmers still on Christmas break? On December 28 the f-secure weblog said “We expect Microsoft to issue a patch on this as soon as they can.” A day later Microsoft issues a work-around until the patch is released (see the Dec. 29 posting on the link above). That’s great for people willing and able to mess around with the Windows registry, but for…

With less than 12 hours remaining in 2005, it’s time for me to clean out this year's link closet where I store funny and bizarre sites that strike me as possessing some sort of je ne sais quoi special élan. Thanks in general to my fellow ORblogs posters who led me to most of these links, yet now must remain specifically unthanked as I’ve lost track of the cyberspace bread crumb trail that led me to these gems. Our journey into the funny and bizarre begins, of course, with cats… --Whenever my feline mental illness starts to kick up and…

Recently I’ve made a new friend, our local pharmacist. I had gone fifty-seven years without needing a long term prescription. However, this year for my birthday I not only got my first prostate exam from a female doctor but also some Flomax samples (though peeing can be fun, I’d prefer to engage in this activity a bit less often). In addition, the week after my physical exam I got a phone call about my blood test results. “Your cholesterol is 212,” I was told by the nurse. “That’s crazy,” I said. “It’s always been less than 190. I’ve been a…

Congratulations to Bill Long, a friend and fellow Salemite, for placing second—once again—in the 2005 National Senior Spelling Bee. As Bill notes in his “Speller’s Diary,” the national winner, David Riddle, also won the 2005 Oregon Spelling Bee. Hey, what is a California attorney doing in an Oregon spelling bee? Isn’t there a state law against such a thing? If not, there should be. But Riddle does seem like a deserving champion. Anyone who can spell “mulligatawny” (a soup) correctly gets a bow from me. Well, Bill can take heart in being the poster boy for the 2005 National Senior…

Some enduring wisdom about coffee, chocolate, and men, passed on from St. Lucia by my sister and brother-in-law.

It looks like the Corporate Compliance Recorder scam described by the Los Angeles Better Business Bureau has made its way to Oregon. In the mail today I found this official-looking envelope addressed to the non-profit community association that I’m the secretary for. I believe this is the time our annual corporation fee is due, so at first I thought the mailing was for real. But the $95 fee was steep, and I’d never heard of a requirement to disclose annual minutes. Of course, there isn’t such a requirement. These scammers on Market Street are hoping that people don’t read the…

Thanks for Laurel's sister, Dee, for sending us these wonderful impostor bunny photos. They're pawsitively purrfect. Happy Easter to all.

Here’s a photo of Serena, our dog, modeling the official Firefox cap that I bought along with Firefox/Thunderbird CDs and manual from the Mozilla store. Serena doesn’t look too happy with Firefox, probably because Laurel and I were screaming “stay, stay!!” at her while I tried to get the right camera angle to show off the logo. But I am. I love the free (if you download it) Firefox web browser. The February 2005 issue of PC World gave it a “Best Bet” award in a battle of the browsers review article. It got 4.5 stars (out of 5) vs.…

Can you make money selling rain in Oregon? Apparently, yes. If this venture is a success, the company should branch out to sell sand to Arizonians and bullshit to those who live in Washington, D.C.

This is the season for over-shopping, over-eating, over-drinking, over-decorating, over-socializing, and over-warning about over-indulging. A picture emailed to us by a neighbor, Frank Haynes, wonderfully captures this over-the-top spirit. With equal abandon may we all throw ourselves into our own purrfect pleasures this holiday season. Postpone the guilt until January (2050).

Here’s a photo of Dave Jones (in the blue gi) and the rest of our motley Pacific Martial Arts dojo gang. Dave was awarded a well-deserved black belt by Sensei Warren Allen (in the middle) last Saturday. He’s expert at a variety of weapons and a highly skilled ground/jujitsu fighter. Plus, a great guy with a laid back personality and some cool tattoos. My description of ourselves as “motley” is a compliment. When I got home and looked at the photo of (from left to right) Bob, Dennis, Warren, Dave, me, and Mike (kneeling), I realized each of us is…

Jeez, after I installed Windows XP’s Service Pack 2 on Laurel’s computer and got to view the dreaded Blue Screen of Death on a restart, I cursed, “Who was that damn blogger who wrote a post called ‘Feel the fear and install SP2 anyway’? I’d like to wring his freaking neck!” Then I remembered: it was me. This brought the object of my rage wonderfully close to hand, but as soon as I started to strangle myself I felt a strong urge to forgive. Which I have. Anyway, it is Microsoft whose neck should be wrung, notwithstanding the difficulty of…

Here are some cartoons for carnivores to contemplate before devouring the turkey (or whatever other hapless animal is on your plate) tomorrow. Hey, there's still time to run out and get a tofu turkey! I recommend the Now and Zen Unturkey. Its crispy unskin and delightful stuffing make it our traditional Thanksgiving main dish. These cartoons were included in my book about why it makes good karmic sense to be a vegetarian. "Life is Fair" was published non-commercially in India in 1999. Over twenty-five thousand copies were sold around the world. I love the idea that a guy from the…

I ran into the daughter of a friend yesterday at the 10th anniversary celebration LifeSource Natural Foods was putting on. Her baby was happily mouthing one of the free pizza samples. The sight brought back memories of how much work our washing machine put in when my own daughter was that age. Pretty quickly—instantly, in fact—the conversation turned to what also, if I were the baby’s mother, would be the first words out of my mouth when I met an acquaintance with my baby in tow. Heck, they’d be the first words when I met a stranger too. “She won…

Thank you, o gloriously generous Internet! For today I received two great gifts from you: (1) a free download of the beta Google Desktop Search, which is so wonderful I would say I am speechless, if it weren’t for this posting; and (2) a link from a fellow Oregon blogger that led me to The Smoking Gun story, “O’Reilly Hit with Sex Harass Suit,” which contains marvelously explicit descriptions of the sexual fantasies Bill O’Reilly purportedly shared with an unwilling staffer. The Google gift seems to work precisely as promised. After this teeny-tiny (for what it does) 400kb download installed…