Friday, July 15, 2011

So, what are you working on?

49 comments:

  1. Dare I say it, Harry Potter is first.

    Susan, you're a braver woman than I! Patty and I aren't going till next weekend.

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  2. Howard Dean, real life wizard, is First!

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  3. Look out Japan!

    http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tracking/wp201108.html

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  4. Messages were left just now on the last thread. :-)

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  5. There IS the possibility that my mind has gone to rot, but I seem to recall party lines being the low-cost option with Pacific Telephone and Telegraph in the late 1960's.

    Most of the local foxes are San Joaquin kit foxes--very small. (There is an occasional red fox.) One night our previous cat (a small and non-aggressive house cat) was outside, and when we looked out to call it in, we saw that it and a kit fox were sitting on opposite sides of an upside down flower pot I had used to cover a couple of gopher traps! Our first thought was that the cat would be in danger, but they seemed to get along just fine.

    "listener
    I wish Howard were speaking more nationally, too. And running again." 11:03:22 PM PDT


    Well, yes; but Howard is very much the good political soldier, and is certainly a practical man, not a megalomaniac. I gather that his parents were very decent, level-headed people, and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Vermont was fortunate to have him as governor.

    I finally figured out that the problem I had been having with my home office fax/answering machine line was in the phone line itself. Repair person to come out tomorrow (Friday). I bought a new all-in-one printer etc that I probably didn't have to, but it wasn't expensive, is up to date, has some more features, and prints faster. Also the toner cartridges are about a third less for a little larger capacity. So that's OK. A newer model of the same brand, Brother. I've had good luck with Brother office machines.

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  6. Sadly, Alan, IMHO the good political soldiers are helping to lead us over the cliff. I think the country could use a little meglomania from the right person.

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  7. Frakking computers getting on my nerves!!

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  8. Big Sur's hazy forecast: Fall is the best time to visit - ABC News
    abcnews.go.com › Travel › WeatherSimilar
    You +1'd this publicly. Undo
    The area's lifeline, Highway 1, wasn't built until 1937. Electricity didn't arrive until the late 1940s. Telephone party lines lasted into the 1970s, ...

    http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/Weather/story?id=5785313&page=1

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  9. Bill, a lot of what we all had was prolly local: I remember operators, but we had party lines for years after the operators disappeared. . . . Big item in my mid-teens (circa 1955) was when we went from plain numbers to names plus numbers. We went from 6-5545 to Ingersol 6-5545. It was *thrilling*! Which may say something about how boring life was in Salt Lake City in the fifties, lol!

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  10. Today's my eldest's birthday. Kept thinking all day yesterday that 47 years ago, I spent the day into night in a labor room at Providence hospital, hoping like hell that there'd be no problems: Providence was Catholic, and in a pinch would let both mother and child die rather than pick one to save. . . . The 22 1/2 hour labor wasn't putting my mind at ease. Changed doctors and hospitals before the next one.

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  11. Well, my computer doesn't frak, but I getcha! Hugs!!

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  12. Bill Thomasson7/15/2011 01:43:00 PM

    Yes. What I know about is two places. In Pine Bluff, in the mid-1950s, you simultaneously saw dial come in, party lines disappear, and replacement of four-digit numbers (or four digits + letter) with JE(Jefferson) 4-xxxx. And when I got my own phone in Chicago about that same time, there were no party lines. I'm still not sure how it's technically possible to combine party lines with dial.

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  13. Bill Thomasson7/15/2011 01:47:00 PM

    What I am mostly doing today is working on a rather unusual journal article. It's basically a "surround" for a video shoing how to perform certain experimental procedures. The researchers will be doing the description of the procedures, with my editing, but I am doing the introductory abstract and the concluding discussion.

    I'll also be seeing how much of the book to be discussed tomorrow I can get through. No hope at all of finishing it.

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  14. Back from the Harry Potter movie. I won't spoil it for anyone, but if you were planning to go, GO! It's most excellent. I do not know the superlatives to do it proper justice.

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  15. I also wish Howard would run again.

    Yesterday evening I had my first call from the president's reelection committee and, of course, made a contribution. But I'd much rather contribute to Howard's campaign.

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  16. That could turn a person against Catholics!

    However, the attitude sounds very male to me, begging the pardon of our own enlightened, evolved menfolk.

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  17. Bill, that sounds like a most interesting writing project. Good luck with the reading.

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  18. Wow, Susan. We're gonna go next weekend. Opening weekend didn't seem like a very good idear. But now you've got me champing at the bit. 8)

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  19. Dean lovers...take heart! Just now on Vermont Public Radio I heard a clip of Howard Dean speaking today about his run for the presidency, saying he made some mistakes such as not realising the difference between the Vermont press and the mean national press, and in changing his speeches on the fly.

    I had a flutter of hope as I heard the clip. Why is he mentioning this now, if not as a precursor to another run...?

    Be sure to listen in at http://www.vpr.net at 7:00pm when the entire conversation with Dean will be played on Vermont Edition tonight!!

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  20. Bill Thomasson7/15/2011 04:25:00 PM

    I got my first call from the Obama campaign a couple of weeks ago, just when I was totally overwhelmed with everything. I am still making the monthly contribution to the DNC I started when Howard was chair and am also making a monthly contribution of Organizing for America, which is basically committed to feet on the ground. (Although Organizing for America is an offshoot of the 2008 Obama campaign, it is actually part of teh DNC.) I didn't add a contribution to Obama air a couple of weeks ago, although I suppose I will eventually.

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  21. This is good to hear!! THANKS!!!

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  22. Hmmm...Jo*in*Vermont posted this:


    8 Years Later, Dean Reflects On Presidential Primary

    Friday, 07/15/11 12:44pm

    Former Governor Howard Dean draws on his own experience in the Democratic presidential primary eight years ago to assess the frontrunners in the current Republican field with VPR's Bob Kinzel.

    http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/91395/



    Well, it's a start, I guess.
    Today, 16:49:39
    – Reply – Delete

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  23. Sooo glad you both made it through the "passage perilous"!

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    ~~~~~~~~~~♥ H A P P Y ♥~~~~~~~~~
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  24. I was just prompted (by Firefox) to download Firefox 6.0. Did they just skip an entire, whole-number, digit there?

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  25. Beautiful, moderate, quiet day with only a tiny wind, about 70ยบ and at three o'clock the power blinks, blinks about ten times and dies. I wait half and hour and me and the kids go up for a nap. Get up about five thirty, go outside and play fetch with the puppy, when it occurs to me that it may not be area wide, and I may be the only one. So come in, find the old fashioned phone, pull my couch out so can hook it up, call 411 to get the power company's phone number because it's so dark I'd need a flashlight to read the tiny print in the phone book. Frontier operators are very nice, but nobody can find the electric company's phone number. Used to be Allegheny power, but it merged last year, and while my phone bills still say Allegheny, the envelopes say MonPower. But the phone company has neither. So I get my flashlight out, and my glasses, and check the phone book, which has neither, nor is it listed in emergency numbers. So I go looking through my stack of old bills, find one from MonPower/Allegheny with their 800 number and call it. Tis area wide, and will be up at 7:15, they hope. So quit, and go fix dinner in the dark, it comes on at seven. I vacuum the power strip and the back of the computers (Beau), hook the computer back up, turn it on, move the couch back, get on line, and here I is!!

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  26. Howard Dean will be on after the commercial!


    http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/91395/

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  27. Howard said he regrets that he didn't win.

    Oh my, he has no idear how much we're with him on that!!

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  28. [The national press] was much less ethical than the Vermont press.)

    Sooo true.
    And the Dems too, IMNSHO.

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  29. Welcome back, mountain woman! ♥

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  30. I wonder if an animal chewed through a cable. It's usually a very dumb coon.

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  31. Bill Thomasson7/15/2011 09:11:00 PM

    As I person who has worked in PR, I don't blame the press. I blame Dean's Director of Communications. As Howard notes, it was a given that once he was a front-runner, the other candidates were going to gang up on him. And it was the press's job to print what they said. But in post-mortem videos we see the Director of Communications sitting around complaining about how unfair the press was without demonstrating the slightest clue that it was *her job* to give them something positive to say. Or, alternatively, something negative to say about the others.

    And then there was the "scream" debacle, where a video existed showing what things actually looked like on the floor of the hall -- and she made absolutely zero effort to get that video into the hands of the press.

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  32. 'Twas a very pretty day here too. We got up over 80 for awhile but it settled down nicely and the humidity was low. Deep blue sky with a few perfect puffy clouds. Felt like the good ol' days. About 3:00pm I started to walk over to a neighbour's the cross lots way, but just as I got up near the birdbox with the Swallow's nest, at the corner of our yard, one of the foxes scooted by in front of me...! Broad daylight! I think these two are gray foxes, not red. Gotta look that up. And I'm thinking their den is nearer than I realised...!

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  33. I agree, Bill. But in addition to that, Howard was pretty awkward in his early TV interviews. He kept improving, but wasn't good at first.

    I have always thought that once he said on camera something about dissolving the media giants he doomed himself. From that time on I think they (and the bigwig D's) did their best to present him in a poor light. I think that is part of the reason they ran away with the "scream" video and too late and too quietly admitted that it gave a skewed view of what happened.

    If Kerry is the Democratic Party's idea of the best they can give us, well.... there's not much hope for them. He was the candidate they clearly wanted, the one they pushed, and he lost.

    I wish Democrats would learn to fight instead of hunkering down and waiting for the kerfluffles to "die down". They have mostly answered false statements from the R's too mildly and too late.

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  34. Yikes! Yeah, I think so. Firefox wanted me to download 4 not that long ago. Still haven't done so, but may have to. Browser keeps crashing. Though it's not as bad as the new Thunderbird I just downloaded a few days ago. It has crashed several times today. I'm beginning to find my faith in Mozilla just a trifle shaken.

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  35. My goodness, Puddle! That's quite a saga. Very glad you're OK and that you once more have the power.

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  36. "I wish Democrats would learn to fight instead of hunkering down and waiting for the kerfluffles to "die down". They have mostly answered false statements from the R's too mildly and too late.
    "
    I agree, Susan. The Dem leadership including, I'm sorry to say the President, allow the Repubs to direct every conversation. Why can't they ever be proactive? Why can't they ever, pardon the tired phrase, frame the discussion. All they do is sit back and react.

    On FB a few months ago I saw a phenomenon that aptly illustrates what I mean. When the Tea Party movement started getting national press, a thingy started making the rounds on FB, the Coffee Party. Appallingly lame and reactive! They could at least have called it the Coffee Clach(sp?), for Pete's sake. Absolutely typical.

    Now, when Howard was chair... *sigh*

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  37. Sounds like they're bold as brass.

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  38. What is the name of the Director of Communications, to whom you refer?

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  39. Wow, we're getting awfully close to page 2!

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  40. I like the way you said that, Cat! LOL!

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  41. Bill Thomasson7/15/2011 11:43:00 PM

    Listener: Started to say I didn't remember the name, then realized that is what internet search engines are for. It was Tricia Enright.

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  42. Thanks. I never met up with her at Dean HQ. I also think significant onus lies at the feet of Joe Trippi. But Howard Dean has taken the high road in saying the buck stops with him, and that is true given that the candidate needs to call the shots.

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  43. Looks like we're going to see Harry Potter 7.2 on Sunday night, since we'll have Granddaughter*in*VT here tomorrow evening.

    I need to start getting ready for tomorrow, since I open the Library in the morning and we're having THREE groups come through related to starting Kindergarten this Fall. It's gonna be a wild day!

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  44. Bill Thomasson7/15/2011 11:54:00 PM

    Susan: I'm not sure who you mean by "the Democratic Party." We all remember the Democratic Leadership Council (now defunct), but tend to forget that their candidate was Joe Lieberman. It was only after his campaign failed to gain traction that they discovered Kerry and Edwards weren't so bad after all. I think the point there was that Dean threatened their power simply because he was outside the Beltway network. Although backing a losing horse destroyed them even more effectively.

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  45. Bill Thomasson7/16/2011 12:05:00 AM

    Cat: I don't think you're being fair to Obama. If the Republicans have directed every conversation, how come we have a law that when it becomes fully effective in 2-1/2 years will provide health insurance to almost every man, women, and child in the country (my #1 political priority for the past 15 years)? How come we now have a second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (my #2 or #3 priority)? How come we got a stimulus package that at least put a bottom on the recession?

    And you'll recall that Howard said Obama has been providing effective leadership recently. I'm not totally enamored of the way Obama has handled the deficiet debate, but he has brought things to the point where the Republicans know that if they actually force a default (pray it doesn't happen!) they will ensure their defeat in 2012. Even as he has resisted all of their more extreme demands.

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  46. I disagree. Obama talks a good game, but gives away the store in private. I don't think the health INSURANCE bill was so great when what we wanted was health CARE. And the mandate still sucks!

    We're still in Afghanistan, Gitmo is still open, we still do rendition and torture and Obama has deported more people than Bush did. AND he won't stop threatening Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Plus, remember how he cut funding for cold weather heat relief for the poor? Yeah, he's raised big bank for 2012, but from Corporations, not his "base" 'cause his base has largely left the building.

    Obama is the PRESIDENT. He has the bully pulpit and the Veto. But instead of being strong he wants to be "liked", so he caves and "compromises" (which means giving up to the R's who *never* "compromise".

    I believe he's weak and ineffective. Of course Howard would say he is because Howard is a good political soldier and puts party first. I do not. Party loyalty and ideology is tearing our country apart. The coddling of the rich and the corporations at the expense of the poor is ludicrous and extremely poor long-term planning. Where will tax revenues come from when the Corporations aren't paying taxes, the rich aren't paying anything but minimum taxes and the rest of us don't have any income????

    He's the best Republican President we ever had.

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