Gadget Man

Sorry about the lag in getting back to you. I finally got fed up with the BlackBerry and went for the new iPhone. Why? I bought two different add-on programs, testing to get something that would clean up the headers in E-Mail, so that it could be read without slogging through garbage. Nothing seemed to work. I tried iPhone last week, and the e-mail on that one is clear, no addresses unless you want them, no line after line of forwarded names etc. Just the facts. Beautiful. Since I seem to have gathered a number of folks who don’t know much about mail, they tend to forward messages with every name that has had access to the topic back to the beginning of the internet, leaving line after line of stuff with no interest to me or anyone else, followed  by a mail message of one picture or two lines of text.

It’s taken a few days to figure out how to work with iPhone so if you get something off-the-wall from me it’s because of my fumble fingered typing proficiency.

Everything I had on the MAC laptop transferred over with SYNC along with some I didn’t intend to move. 214 songs to music, 400 plus photos, half of which I didn’t want sent. Oh well, the little thing accepted it all and I still have mostly free space to work with.

Is the BlackBerry bad. No. I bought it before RIM caught up with Apple and added the touch screen system. I looked at the new BB but iPhone beat it, hands down, for what I wanted. Anyway, I’m happy now, spending way too much time thumbing around with all sorts of new things. Once a “Gadget Man” always a sucker for new gadgets.

For those who didn’t get the new phone number try this one.

                         (478) 396-2166

I carry the iPhone with me most of the time and calling this number will avoid getting busy signals on our home phone. The “E” likes to talk on the phone, and anywhere else someone will listen.   

The result.

Sidewicki works but I don’t know when or where I could use it. The little blurb I wrote earlier, previous post, went as advertised so I now have a new toy to confuse myself.

In the “I can’t win” category I submit the following.

        I have turned into the Couch Potato that I’ve been dreading but it’s all my own fault. Background: I spent over three decades as a skinny person. As a youngster I was into all sports and stayed active as I aged. I played high school ball at 175 pounds and when I retired from the Air Force 25 years later I weighed 185 pounds. Last weekend I screwed up enough courage to waddle up to the scales after the Thanksgiving binge and looked down at 240 pounds. The most I have ever weighed. I accept my fate, months of starvation, denying myself the pint of Rocky Road, the pain and suffering of actually exercising the body.

Yesterday I hit the Super market and brought home apples, oranges, cauliflower something’s, watery tea, and a big twelve can carton of “Slim Fast” to curb the hunger. I ate nothing yesterday. Today I had a Slim Fast for breakfast, and another when I got hungry around noon. Now, the irony of my destiny.

As I was playing with the Sidewicki thingy the “E” comes in, sits down at her computer, and checks CNN for news. The first thing she sees is the 10,000 can recall of Slim Fast by Unilever because of a bacteria something or other. Their advice: “If you have it at home throw it out and call in for a rebate”. My first vision was of a slow, painful death from some alien organism. My second vision was of all that strawberry and cream gurgling down the drain. What do I have left? Starvation is near, cauliflower and apples by candle light? Life ain’t fair!

Sidewicki

I use iGoogle as my home page and the Google folks just sent me this, SIDEWICKI.

OK. I clicked on the button and I'm adding something. I have no idea what it's all about or what I am actually accomplishing here. It says it's going to tattle on me and send this to my blog. I'll go there next and see.

in reference to: iGoogle (view on Google Sidewiki)

Time flies

Novembers shot, December is rushing in reminding me that I’ve been a slacker. I had a routine going there for a few weeks until Thanksgiving arrived, and I took the day off to eat, and watch football games. Now I can’t get started again. The “E” opened up all of the closets in the house and began sorting, checking, fixing, and putting-up the Christmas stuff. A lot of Christmas stuff. This began the day BEFORE Thanksgiving and she was finished the day AFTER. She has it down to assembly-line precision and my job is to just stay out of the way. Works for me!

Last year I tried to get creative and bought a mile (it seemed) of outdoor blue lights to string in the Dogwood trees in front of the house. I soon discovered a mile won’t hack it. After climbing the ladder, swinging from limb to limb, I had what I thought was a lot of lights in the three trees, but when I finally turned them on that night it was obvious it presented a puny display.

This year I’ll use the blue lights to cover the small bushes near the big windows and forget the rest. I still have the three-foot snowman that the “E” refers to as Mr, Tacky to fill in gaps. Even with this meager display we have the brightest house in the neighborhood, otherwise know as “Dark Passage”. Once in awhile one or two make an attempt, as I do, but we would never win a ribbon for cheerfulness. Works for me!

Kid’s stuff and progress

A few weeks back, I wrote in this blog about the new Winnie the Pooh book that was authorized, and written, 80 years after the release of A.A. Milne’s last one. I had to have it of course, and placed the order that included the collectors boxed set of the other four original  Pooh books. I spent (or misspent) a week reading them which cleared my mind of all things current and opened new brain cells with a six year olds outlook on life. Refreshing, it was totally refreshing! I’ll have to do this more often. Has anyone seen my copy of Alice through the looking glass.

It all must have helped. I’ve knocked out four new chapters in the book, formed the characters to play mind games with a nasty old County Commissioner, with a bad comb-over, and had the Chief moved north to take over the Sheriff’s job. Things are getting interesting in Southwest Georgia. Now, all I have to do is keep things straight and find some way to pull it together for a big ending.

Stay tuned. The world is turning in mysterious ways and I’m about a hand-hold short of getting on the train. Faster man, faster. 

I’m back

It’s taken a few days but I finally got around to adding “Windows Live – Writer” to my network so I can update this blog on any of the Windows 7 machines. Live Writer is easier to use to update the Blog than Word, which requires the copy and paste routine, since it is all in one basic word processor and can eliminate the fumble-finger errors that I am prone to make.

I have all of the machines talking to each other now, with the exception of a few add-on programs for reports, which really means I can do the writing from the office or the sun room, depending on what’s on TV. It’s mainly a sports thing, I can watch a Braves game while messing around with the book but the baseball season is over now so I don’t have much excuse to use the wireless set up on the porch rather than the desk top in the computer room.

Everything is working like I want it to so, for now, I’m going to stay away from all of the distractions and diversions to concentrate on getting Powers Trace III, The Live Oak Tree finished. October is gone. That deadline crashed. Now, Maybe December.