Post  #2465.   I had to share this with you.      You all know that I spent my working career in the hotel business. I've probably cleaned a thousand rooms, inspected many thousands, remodeled who knows how many and, in fact, lived in hotels for about eight years. So, the sister-in-law goes to the warmer realms for a few days and sends me a whole multi-megabyte file of pictures, all of the same thing:


her hotel room. Well, a few of them were pictures out the window - of her hotel room. This is how she thinks, that I would appreciate the fabulousness of the hotel. But I do love her anyway.

Earlier to day I was explaining to Brother how Social Security and Medicare are really just colossal Ponzi schemes and that it took America 40 to 70 years to discover it, and the new Health Care Fix is more of the same and .. I noticed he was staring intently at my shirt pocket. I paused the monologue for a moment and asked him if he was listening and what was he looking at. He replied, "Look how your cell phone is all crooked and makes a pokey-out of your pocket. It's funny. And yes, something about ponzo-things." But I love him too anyway.

There was a movie on the other night, Take Her, She's Mine, starring James Stewart and Sandra Dee. Back in 1963, lightweight, lighthearted romantic comedies like this one actually went into theaters (lots of drive-ins) and people paid to watch them, instead of straight-to-video, then cable. I noticed it was rated TV-PG (S-some sexual situations, D=some suggestive dialogue.) Can you believe it? Compare that with some of the stuff that gets snuck into tv sitcoms these days. My grandmother is gone now, so I don't have to worry watching television with her and having her ask, "Why are they laughing? What was funny about that?" and then trying to make up something real quick to avoid getting into anal adventures, female self-gratification or whatnot.

Want to see something amazing? This lady ..


climbed to the top of our tallest building to help raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's an annual event. She is EIGHTY YEARS OLD. I'm speechless. Here is a picture of the building:



and, yes, it looks every bit that tall in person, though the race to the top "only" used 69 of the 76 floors. By the way, in today's paper, the people who own the building fell behind on their mortgage. There are all sorts of ironic things one could type about that .. big shots missing a few payments on a $380,000,000.00 loan vs. Mr and Mrs America with the same problem, but I won't.Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 10:31 PM

Post  #2464.   GEPlugin what is it? What is GE Plugin?      Several people have asked. Look further down the list of Googles and you'll find some way better answers than mine. Like I would have any earthly idea. However, if you want to know how I feel about the GEPlugin by Google GE Plugin, scroll down to my Entry #2461. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 9:53 PM

Post  #2463.   2012.      I finally saw it. Let me back up first. Brother just happened to mention the movie, and I asked him if he'd like to see it. He replied that he sure wished we could get it. Now, our mother really instilled him with thrift, and he almost never asks for stuff. So, I jumped at the opportunity and told him to go over, log onto Amazon and buy it. Really? he exclaimed. I replied, Of course. That's what it's for. In about three clicks and one password type-in, he had it. And he was totally stoked for the rest of the day. So worth the 18 bucks, and it arrived in less than 48 hours! According to "My Account," I've placed 108 orders with Amazon since 1998. I should really buy some of their stock.

To the movie. He watched it first, so I had a chance to quiz him on a few things: Any bratty kids? Divorced co-stars with continuing issues? Child disobeying and putting self in danger at worse moment? Any utterly improbable elements just to justify cool a special effect? No .. no .. no, he fibbed. Didn't want to spoil it for me (he knows me sooo well.)

I watched it on my regular tv, remember the ones before digital, with square screens? Bratty kids, divorce, disobeying, improbable .. all there. Even at that the effects were cool and, honestly, the story and believability issues weren't that bad. I didn't throw anything at the set. Even a 25,000 foot tidal wave was okay, letting go with the physics and geology of it. The best thing of all, it was only a John Cusack vehicle instead of a Will Smith, thank God. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 9:31 PM

Post  #2462.   Existence (I know, needs work)      As you might remember my mentioning before, I don't care for the takeover by Machines and especially the aggressive move toward digital everything. Anybody who thinks about it for a bit can see that digitization is nothing more than accommodating the machines, making things easier for them. And someone ought to ask, why should we? Unbelievable - we type meaningless, unnatural code into a little box just to make it more convenient for them! Digital insists there are just TWO. Two of everything. On or off, that's it. So much for unlimited depth of art, music, reason or anything else that makes us ... not machines. What appears to be there is truly all that there is, take it or leave it. I'm not happy with any of this and assert that the very foundation of a Digital Universe is flawed. Consider this,

There is nothing here. STATE
There is something here, (but nothing is happening.) STATE
The thing that is here turns on. EVENT
The thing that is here remains on. STATE
The thing that is here turns off. EVENT
There is still something here, (but nothing is happening any longer.) STATE
There is nothing here anymore. STATE

That's at least seven, not two. And people who have taken medication will be able to find many, many more. So, what will the machines make of that, I wonder? Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 10:15 PM

Post #2461.     More searching fun.     I just found a news article which claims that I scored two points and committed one foul in a basketball game played in a sweaty gymnasium in Tokyo almost forty-nine years ago to the day. The sweaty part I remember.

GOOGLE has a new popup - it wants to add GEPlugin. What to do? Microsoft is quick to warn you with that infuriating blinking yellow line. So naturally, you do a GOOGLE search, look up GEPlugin and this is what it says:

The GEPlugin is the Google Earth Plug-in's main object, and this is the object that is returned to the JavaScript application when you first create a plug-in instance. GEPlugin provides factory methods for ructing other objects (placemarks, and so on), and is also used to retrieve the root document objects.

Ructing? What-the-ruct is ructing!? As for the little google turd who wrote that and then went all high-fivey and nerdy with his google geek gang, I'd like to do something really rude to him. Like sneeze a teeming nose and mouthful of Jell-O all over his keyboard. Something like that. Ruct that, you twerp.

Of course I never would. Violence never solves anything. Wait, what am I saying? Violence generally solves just about everything if properly applied. Still wouldn't do a Jell-O sneeze over something as mundane as a popup. Besides, after reading the first paragraph, realistically, how many visitors to this site are going to get this far into it? None? That's about right. Old people are irrelevant. Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 10:07 PM

Post  #2460.   I'm having mental problems today.      I don't know if it's me, or the world. Realistically, when one goes insane, does one know which it is? Of course not.

Just today, the phrase, "Redistributing Health" came to me. Ah, clever topic for a blog typing session, I thought. Just in case, I checked Google to see if anyone else had used those words, a play on "Redistributing Wealth." Yeah, we got it. Over two million entries!! I'll tell you, that caused me some serious self-re-evaluation. I even went so far as to remove the URL to a site where I have typed for over two years, annoying people to distraction I now realize. They'll think you died. Good

I'll be 65 tomorrow. That's the real problem .. not happy about it. I discovered something about old people now that I'm about to become one. They do still think the same way they always did; they're (we're) simply unable to turn those thoughts into words or actions. Hard to explain. You'll see. Just keep it in mind next time you encounter some ancient wrinkled slowpoke. Inside, there is the same goofball that existed maybe fifty years ago who would dearly love to jump in your car and take off on a wild joyride (if the vehicle wasn't so ridiculously fugly - which he would tell you if he felt there was any chance of comprehension.) Rick Macherat

posted by Rick at 11:35 AM