Awarded April 12, 1997
Old Lloyd's
April Ramblings
"A man is walking across a railroad bridge spanning a river. When he is seven tenths of the way across, he hears a train coming. Fortunately for him no matter which way he runs at top speed, he can just make it to the end and jump clear as the train misses him. The train is traveling 60 mph. How fast can the man run?"April 30th 9:50 pm
"What isn't at all fair though is when Clinton is compared with a Used Car Salesman. I mean after all, Used Car Salesmen have feelings too, just like you and I."
[ unknown, but well stated ]
We are going to have to buy another car some day. I hope that day is not near. Our '84 Oldsmobile Delta 88 "bro-ham" has over 93,000 miles on it. We got a notice that it is due for emissions inspection. If it doesn't pass, I'm not sure how much money we should spend on getting it fixed. I know that the tail pipe needs repair so I'll get that done before the test. I'm thinking about buying a used Lincoln Town Car because they are big and relatively safe. Our "bro-ham" has been a very good car, it's comfortable and reliable. I'll hate to see it go so I'll keep it until it doesn't make any sense to keep it. I don't care about style or what the neighbors think. I think it is the oldest car on the block but it still looks good. If Slick Willy had a used car lot, I would avoid it. But, I'd bet he would make a heck of a good used car salesman.
You Know You're Getting Old When: 1) In the coin toss between the desire for sleep and the desire for sex, you fall asleep in the middle of the toss.2) The minute you think how goofy your kids look now, remember that you had a closetful of bell-bottomed, funky-striped, platform-healed junk. Keep them out of the attic ! The evidence is still up there !
3) You begin to argue with clerks and salespeople...... just like YOUR parents!
4) You were going through some old boxes, came across your favorite one-of-a-kind 8 track recording, dusted off your player, chucked the tape in there, played it gloriously for a minute and then while you were grooving... IT BROKE !
5) Your medicine cabinet is starting to look like Walgreens!
6) You already grew all the big hair you were ever going to grow, back in your teens. Your head is as reflective as the mirror you're now looking into.
7) There is no dignity in owning a CD. What happened to vinyl?!
8) You remember everything about your first car, but little about your first wife (or husband).
9) Kaopectate doesn't taste that bad , does it?
10) Your kids found your high school yearbook and are laughing at it hysterically.
11) You go to an antique store and you see all the toys that you played with as a child.
Wouldn't it be great if congress would obey the Constitution? If they did they would have to stop passing so many bills which are prohibited. I would like to impose additional restrictions:
- Congress shall pass no law that discriminates against or favors any US citizen based on their race, sex, age, national origin, religion, geographic location, occupation, or economic status. In other words, the laws apply equally to every citizen.
- Congress shall pass no law that sends cash or in kind money to any state.
- A 60% majority of both houses of congress shall be required to raise and tax or to cause the US citizens to pay additional fees, fines or other cost to the citizen.
- Congressmen's salaries shall be decreased by 10% for each year when the national debt is increased.
- If during a congressmen's entire service in congress, the national debt is increased for any 7 years, they are disqualified for running for re-election.
- Congress salaries shall be determined by referendum on each state's ballot at the time of national elections. The increase shall not be larger than the COLA allowed any other government worker.
If I could magically just get one of the above, I'd pick number 1. (That's why I made it number 1.)
The US elementary school age children scored 38th out of 41 industrial nations on an international math test.
The state of Utah ranks 50th (least) on the amount of money spent for each childs elementary education yet their students ranked 2nd on the SAT test scores. The District of Columbia spends over $10,000 per pupil per year and is at or near the bottom. $10,000 per year is outrageous. You could go to most colleges for less than that.
WELCOME TO THE GOLDEN YEARS Seniors are the nation's leading carrier of AIDS
- Hearing AIDS
- Band AIDS
- Roll AIDS
- Walking AIDS
- Medical AIDS
- Government AIDS
and most of all
- Monetary AIDS (to the kids)
MY CATCH OF THE DAY
- Mega Vegetarian Index
- Estate Planning.
- Joke of the Day
- How to be an Effective Domestic Engineer
- Cristi's Bread Recipes
- The Vibe: Sleaze
- Build.com: Search the Database
- Time Line
- Declaration of Independence (Rough Draft): American Treasures of the Library of Congress
- Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents
- The Tombstone Tourist
- How far is it?
April 29th 11:20 pm
"The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it."
[ Doug Larson ]
When Mary brought the kitty over yesterday she tried to trade it for one of my fresh cinnamon-rasin bagels. I talked her into a better deal. I gave her two bagels and she kept the kitty. That's a variation of the old "Cleveland" joke. First prize: 1 week all expense paid vacation in Cleveland. Second prize: 2 weeks all expense paid vacation in Cleveland.
I got a truck load of free mulch from a tree hacker. It's a big pile about 5 feet high and 12 feet across. Karen is going to help me spread it around when she comes home on Mother's Day weekend. It's really ugly but you can't argue about the price.
Jo sent me this one. Another clean one for a change.
THREE ELDERLY GENTS Three elderly gents were talking about what their grandchildren would be saying about them fifty years from now."I would like my grandchildren to say, 'He was successful in business,'" declared the first man.
"Fifty years from now," said the second, "I want them to say, 'He was a loyal family man.'"
Turning to the third gent, he asked, "So what do you want them to say about you in fifty years?"
"Me?" the third one replied. "I want them to say, 'He certainly looks good for his age.'"
Some of the catches of the day:
The Oregon Observer: America's Hardest Hitting Newspaper
Riddle du Jour
THE 'LECTRIC LAW LIBRARY'S ENTRANCE
3D riDDle - Home Page
I couldn't see anything 3D here. It must be my eyes are too poor or my brain is too weak.
The Valley of the Shadow: Living the Civil War in Pennsylvania and Virginia
The Nine Planets
Welcome to MegaMath!
This Is Mega-Mathematics!
Grayfox sent me this story. I related to number 1 and number 4.
FOUR BRAGGING MEN Four men were bragging about how smart their dogs are. The first man was an Engineer, the second man was an Accountant, the third man was a Chemist, the fourth was a Government Worker.To show off, the Engineer called to his dog. "T-Square, do your stuff."
T-square trotted over to a desk, took out some paper and a pen and promptly drew a circle, a square and a triangle. Everyone agreed that was pretty smart.
But the Accountant said his dog could do better. He called his dog and said, "Slide Rule, do your stuff."
Slide Rule went out into the kitchen and returned with a dozen cookies. He divided them into 4 equal piles of 3 cookies each. Everyone agreed that was good.
But the Chemist said his dog could do better. He called his dog and said, "Measure, do your stuff." Measure got up, walked over to the fridge, took out a quart of milk, got a 10 ounce glass from the cupboard and poured exactly 8 ounces without spilling a drop. Everyone agreed that was good.
The the three men turned to the Government Worker and said, "What can your dog do?"
The Government Worker called to his dog and said, "Coffee Break, do your stuff." Coffee Break jumped to his feet, ate the cookies, drank the milk, dumped on the paper, sexually assaulted the other three dogs, claimed he injured his back while doing so, filed a grievance report for unsafe working conditions, put in for Worker's Compensation and went home on sick leave.
This has been a very hectic day. I'll try to do better tomorrow.
April 28th 4:40 pm
"It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off."
[ Woody Allen ]
In the Parade section of the Washington Post there is an article called "Ask Mayilyn." She answers reader's questions. Some one sent her the following "word problem.":
It looks like there is not enough information to solve the problem but there is. You might like to know the length of the bridge or the direction of the train but it is not necessary to solve the problem.
I found the answer after about an hour using simultaneous, linear equations. Her solution involved simple logic that you could do in your head. Can you figure it out? If you want the answer just email me and I'll send it to you. If you don't care about the answer or whether or not the guy gets across the bridge then don't email me. But....if he get killed it's your responsibility!
Daryl Green of the Washington Redskins signed a 5 year contract recently. He is over 35 and can still run 40 yards in 4.3 seconds. I could never run that fast even if that gorilla was chasing me.
Jo sent me several jokes lately. This is the only one fit to use on my homepage:
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To which she responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, "No, I won't sleep with you tonight!" Everyone in the bar is now staring at them. Naturally, the guy is hopelessly and completely embarrassed and he slinks back to his table. After a few minutes, the woman walks over to him and apologizes. She smiles at him and says, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. You see, I'm a graduate student in psychology and I'm studying how people respond to embarrassing situations." To which he responds, at the top of his lungs, "What do you mean $200?"
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My middle daughter, Mary who lives across the street, brought over one of her 4 weeks old kitties. It is solid gray. It looks like a big rat. Pat wasn't even tempted in wanting it. The kitten has its eyes open and they are small and beady like a rat. It's mother loves it though and that's all that matters.
Anne told me that now that she has NS Gold 3 it takes so long to load that she sometimes gets disconnected from her ISP before it's loaded. She needs a new computer and an new internet service provider. Here's a web site that tells How To Select an Internet Service Provider. The List has a list of ISPs. I use Erol's but it is only available in a few areas on the east coast. Erol's now has over 200 thousand customers and is the 8th largest in the country.
The Global Quotation Service has lots and lots of information about the financial markets. I added it to my left sidebar.
I know that at least one of the readers of my homepage likes motorcycles. Have you seen a 1947 Harley-Davidson FL - 74 cu. in. "Knucklehead" in mint condition?
I found a long list of MIDI sites. You know how I love lists.
Do like to play games? Another long list.
I was really disappointed with King of the Hill last night. It was about smoking. Perhaps since I have never smoked I couldn't appreciate it.
There will be a big scandal before long about Janet Reno. The charges are made by Jack Thompson a Florida attorney who ran against her for public office. She has been accused of using Mafia connected call-girls and being a falling down drunk. Clinton was informed of this prior to her nomination. He said that Clinton wanted a "dirty cop" as head of the FBI so he could control her. I've never liked her because of Waco and Ruby Ridge. Maybe I'm too willing to believe bad things about her. I didn't find her name on the "Out List".
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"Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity." [ Albert Camus ] |
I believe that "mandatory volunteerism" and "paid volunteerism" are misnomers if not oxymoronic. Here in Montgomery County, Maryland all public high school students must complete 72 hours of "mandatory volunteerism" as a requirement for graduation. Clinton and his "concern for the children" is sponsoring a volunteer program to help grade school kids to learn to read. He plans to use his Americore Volunteers as part of this program. These people are paid volunteers, another oxymoron.
As an aside...When I was a freshman in college the fraternities had done away with "Hell Week" and replaced it with "Help Week." One weekend the pledges had to help the poor with some project to help them fix up their homes. I never thought about it before, but do "the poor" own houses? I'll never forget I helped lay linoleum in a kitchen. The owner watched over my shoulder all the time. I made the wrong measurement and cut it too short by an inch. She about flipped out! Boy was she hopping mad. You get what you pay for in this life...another example! (I fixed it...with a little ingenuity.)
This week Ford, Carter and other bigwigs are meeting in Philly for "The Summit for America's Future." Colin Powell is heading it up. There will be 20 governors and 90 mayors and other dignitaries there too. The big push is to help "the children."
If the kids in the 3rd grade can't read, why don't we examine the teachers. Why can't they teach. Maybe they can't read! Why not have summer school for all the kids that don't have at least a "C" in each subject? I would suggest that the teachers who don't teach do the teaching at no extra charge...but they can't teach. Select the teachers who are successful and who want to earn extra money and have them paid by the parents of the kids who didn't learn! That provides a positive incentive for most parties, kids, parents, and teachers. The only ones that have no incentive to change are the teachers who can't (or don't) teach and they are protected by the NEA! That is the best case for school vouchers....no NEA!
President Clinton gave a very funny speech at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last night. (I wasn't there. I saw it on C-SPAN this morning.) He had some great lines.
Some poor comedian named Jon Stewart had to follow his act. The guy stank! (stunk?) I suspect that he was reading the jokes prepared by Clinton's joke writer. . . . . another conspiracy! He made a joke about Madeline Albright taking her bat mitzva (sp?) since she just found out that she is Jewish. She didn't crack a smile. Then he made a sick joke about Kenndy and drinking. He added, "No...I like Kennedy...but he as an enormous head. In fact it doesn't even look like a head. It looks like a container for a head." He wasn't funny. Most there didn't think so either judging my their expressions. He also cracked on Ralph Reed. He said that he left the Christian Coalition because he found out that he was jewish.
Slick Willy is suckering the Republicans like Lucy and the football. They will try to kick the ball later and it won't be there. I wonder how many times he can to it. Charlie Brown always is suckered. I'm concerned that the "stupid party" will too.
Fuzzy Zellor spoke out and Ellen Degenerate (sic) came out. Both in the same week. What a week. He was kidding. She wasn't. He will suffer financially. She will prosper. What a week! What a country! He was wrong. So is she. What a week! What a country! ....whatever.
On the news this week I heard that some bar advertised for topless waitresses. A 65 year old woman applied. So did her 85 year old mother. Also did you hear about the 63 year old woman who gave birth? She must be nuts!
The Baltimore Orioles had a great game yesterday. Pat was thrilled. They won 15 to 4. One of their players, I think it was Alomar, got 3 home runs. This morning she told me that the O's would lose bit time today because that always seems to happen after a big win. She was right again.
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"A boy can learn a lot from a dog:
obedence, [ Robert Benchley ] |
My dog Senneca and I took a long walk yesterday after the rain. She walked through every puddle she could find. It is very, very beautiful here in Rockville, Maryland now. The azaleas and flowering trees are in full bloom. I don't think Senneca enjoys the beauty but she enjoys the walks. We met another person walking her dog. It was a big white dog and Senneca didn't like it. She growled and barked. The woman was more afraid than her dog.
My hit counter turned over 30,000 this morning when I checked it. I remembered that I had commented about it hitting 20,000 so I checked back and it was on November 24th. That makes about 65 hits per day on average for the last 5 months. For the last year it has been 50. For the last 6 weeks it has been 75. It's picking up. I'd like to get it to 100 hits per day. Not for any particular reason it just seems like a nice round number. Tell a few of your friends about my homepage and let's see if there is a noticeable difference.
C-SPAN had a four hour special on Tocqueville this morning. It was an interesting show but too long. It took a very long time to download this web site earlier. Maybe when you try it will be less crowded.
Nifty50s homepage is very nice. I finally got to see what all the extra numbers generate in the newer versions of mIRC. I'm still using mIRC4.1. Colored text adds another dimension but it may be a distraction. I recall saying the same thing about color TV before we bought one. Black and white is ok if you don't know any better.
There is a new channel on EFNet called #50+friends. There is one with the same name on Dalnet too. Dalnet has a #50+friendship. It gets confusing sometimes.
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"What catch?" asked the man, eyeing the Genie suspiciously. The Genie replied, "For each of your wishes, every lawyer in the world will receive DOUBLE what you asked for." "Hey, I can live with that! No problem!" replied the elated man. "What is your first wish?" asked the Genie. "Well, I've always wanted a Ferrari!" POOF! A Ferrari appeared in front of the man. "Now, every lawyer in the world has been given TWO Ferraris," said the Genie. "What is your next wish?" "I could really use a million dollars..." replied the man, and POOF! One million dollars appeared at his feet. "Now, every lawyer in the world is TWO million dollars richer," the Genie reminded the man. "Well, that's okay, as long as I've got MY million," replied the man. "And what is your final wish?" asked the Genie. The man thought long and hard, and finally said, "Well, you know, I've always wanted to donate a kidney...." |
The Liberal Democrat Party candidate (In England has a goal to reduce the time from diagnosis to treatment to 6 months within 3 years. Their National Health System must be absolutely horrible. We don't need anything like that here in the Unitied States.
Have you heard they found another survivor of the Hale Bopp cult. He was under the sink behind the comet.
Infoseek has some good stuff. I particularly like the "Street Maps."
Watch for "Take Our Daughters to War Day." It's coming up soon.
Pat and I just got back from the grocery store. Senneca was on guard and watching us from the front window. Pat thought that Senny might be wondering where I took her for her walk. Senneca had a long walk earlier today.
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"Don't abandon old friends [ Ollie North ] |
Ollie North was on C-SPAN this morning. It was a re-airing of his speech at Farmington, CT to the Young America's and Freedom Alliance. The audience was mostly college students. He is obviously not going to run for public office ever again because he spoke openly and honestly about subjects that politicians try to avoid and side-step. His speech held them spell-bound. After he finished he took questions from the audience. They all asked good questions and he gave them his honest answer except for the last questioner. He identified him as being from the University of Maryland at Baltimore and said that he didn't really have a question but wanted to have a chance to speak to him. He then said that he appreciated and wanted to thank Ollie for his lifetime of defending the ideas of the founders of our constitution. That brought a round a cheers and applause from the crowd. Ollie beamed!
One of the topics Ollie addressed was social security. He told them not to rely on it for their retirement because it won't be there for them. The money is gone. My analysis of the social security system is that it was a great pyramid scheme (Ponzi) that was a great benefit to the ones who got in early and very expensive to those at the end of the line. The government takes the 15% social security tax and buys government bonds with the excess calling it a trust fund. If I take my money and spend it, then write myself an IOU and stick it in my pocket and claim that I still have the money...that would be a joke! That is what the government does and it is a joke.
Once I get online each morning, I check my email then look at my homepage hits counter. I enter the data into my analysis program. Then I go to IRC to chat with my friends. This morning when I went on DalNet my name was already in use. I changed my nickname ("lloyd_old") to see who was using it. No one has ever used it besides me before. I found that it was me! How could I be there and still not be there? After about a half an hour and lots of help (especially from Dot who solved the my problem) I got it back. For a while I thought my nickname was lost in cyberspace. I was a ghost.
Often I find list of lists on the web. I love lists. I longed for a "list of list of lists" or a list that contained all other lists. This morning I found a "list of list of lists." Check it out. Now, I guess, I'll look for a "list of list of list of lists."
One of my IRC friends is visiting Maryland now. I chatted with her the other day about how long she has been online. She said that she has been online for 7 years and on Prodigy for 4. (I'll bet she is getting tired.)
Our state of Maryland is a beautiful state. It has much to offer for the tourist. There are mountains in western Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay, the Shenandoah Valley, and high taxes. There was talk in the state legislature about lowering taxes but I really doubt that it will happen.
Oral communication was the way news was spread just a few hundred years ago. Writing was left to scribes and rich folks. Can you imagine an old scribe being transported in time and space and sat down beside me as I prepare my homepage ramblings? He would be dazzled by seeing words formed on my monitor in response to my keyboard. How could I explain how these words could appear within minutes to other computer monitors all over the globe? The scribe would find it hard to believe.....so do I. Can this all be just a hoax? Some people still think that the moon landing was a hoax. I had some small part to play with the moon landing and I have a very, very small part to play with Internet. But it is amazing. I also worked as a fireman on a steam engine one summer. Fireman-rocketry-Internet ... transition, transition, transition.
One more great MIDI from John Roache: The Maple Leaf Rag. This was written by Scott Joplin and published in 1899. I play this song but not nearly as well as John Roache does. He has taken some artistic liberties with his variation. Fine work, especially the very last part.
Once in a while I start all the sentences on my daily ramblings with the same letter...just for the heck of it. I just noticed that the "O's" look like my cinnamon-raisin bagels. I think I'll go have a second one. Have a nice day...or whatever kind of day you want.
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"Honest criticism is hard to take, [ Franklin P. Jones ] |
Pat loves baseball; the Baltimore Orioles in particular. She talked me into going see a game years ago when the O's won the World Series. Since I didn't enjoy the game, I was delegated to make the runs to the concession stand. The lines were very long. I managed to miss 3 innings of the game!
Pat hates it when the O's loose. If they are playing badly and are behind, she will record the game and head off to bed. If she finds out they won, then she will watch the game the next day. That way she seldom sees them lose. Last night she did and they did. She said they had some minor league pitcher who pitched his first game in the majors. In the first inning he allowed two home runs. He gave up 7 walks. Two runs scored on walks. That's funny when it happens to the other team but it wasn't funny to Pat when it happened to her O's.
About 8 months ago we received a notice that our street was being considered as an alternative to building a new highway just north of us. The alternative was to widen our street to 6 lanes and increase the speed limit from 25 MPH to 50. That would require them taking about 1/3 rd of our front yard. We all fought to have our street preserved as a residential street. At last we succeeded. They dropped plans for our street. The main plan of building a "cross country connector" has been in planning for 50 years. If they decide to build it, it will probably take another 50 years. I figure we have little to worry about.
I made some more of my cinnamon-raisin bagels yesterday. I ran out and didn't have one for breakfast. I really missed it. The last 4 years before I retired from the USPS, I worked at headquarters in DC. I rode the subway to L'Enfant Plaza. Each morning I bought two cinnamon-raisin bagels at a little shop on the way to work. I've been eating them ever since. That's 8 years and about a jillion bagels. I only eat one now...but they are BIG suckers!
Senneca had some of Pat's leftover sweet potatoes. That dog will eat almost anything. I got her some more dog biscuits today. She was very grateful. I threw one outside for her to "go find it!" After she got outside, she turned around and gave me a dirty look. I saw that she was drolling from both sides of her mouth. I went outside and showed it where I had tossed it. She was grateful.
I surfed the web today. I'll share my catch with you:
My cyberpal GrayFox has started his own email humor service. He sent me one that is a little racey this morning about a preacher in Arkansas. I found it on the web. There was also a preacher from Texas who had the same things happened to him. What a coincidence.
"Politicians, like underwear,
[ unknown ]
Politicians are so predictable. Their only goal in life is to get re-elected and they will do almost anything to achieve that objective. I've watched the special committees investigating the elections in Louisiana and Orange County. Woody Jenkins lost to a woman so did Bob (B1) Dornan. Both claim that their elections were invalid because of various voting irregularities. Perhaps they are correct but there is no way that the elections will be over turned by politicians. If the winners were white men and the losers had been women there might have been a chance. White men are about the only non-protected class in our country now.
This morning I met a guy on IRC that grew up in my neighborhood in Kansas City, Kansas. He lived less than a mile from me. His brother was in my graduating class although I don't remember him. (It was a large high school.) I've lost touch with all my classmates from high school. It was fun talking to someone from the old neighborhood. A few minutes later a guy from Jakarta came on the channel. Jakarta is half-way around the world.
We lived in the Quindaro district. Within a 4 block area there was a small group of stores that were the heart of our lives. It contained:
should be changed often,
and for the same reasons."
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I met a guy from the Phillipines who's inlaws live two blocks from me.
Four days ago was the one year anniversary of my page's hit counter. Over the entire year there were an average of 50 visits per day. For the last 6 weeks I've been keeping track the daily average was 75. The most visits were 101 and the fewest 39. The daily average for each day of the week were:
| Sunday | 67 |
| Monday | 80 |
| Tuesday | 83 |
| Wednesday | 68 |
| Thursday | 86 |
| Friday | 65 |
| Saturday | 77 |
I suspect there are a few readers who read my ramblings at work during lunch. I hope it doesn't give them indigestion.
When I was a kid there was a radio program on Sunday afternoon called Piano Playhouse. It was moderated by Milton Cross who had a very distinctive voice. Every week they had two piano players on. There were two pianos. Each played a few songs and then they would always play a duet or two. They were usually jazz, boogie woogie, or pop musicians. I remember Art Tatum as being the best. He sounded like he was playing a duet with himself. That guy played more notes per second than any I had ever heard. Art died when he was only about 45. John Roache plays Art Tatum's arrangement of Fat Waller's, Ain't Misbehavin with dazzle. Art Tatum recorded this song in 1954 on the Pablo label. John Roache has another version in Tatum style of Tea For Two. If you would like to get sheet music for Art Tatum's arrangements you can get them at The Internet Music Shop for $17.95.
Grayfox sent me this list of how different people would hunt elephants.
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King: "Are you afraid of prison?" McDougal: "No. If it gets too rough, I'll just die on them and look at all the paper work that will cause!"
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James McDougal, Clinton's partner in Whitewater, was on the Larry King Live show last night. Jim is down but not out. He maintains his sense of humor while facing a 3 year prison sentence. His doctors give him 5 years to live. He has had a severe stroke, a major heart attack, and is a recovering alcoholic. Not only that he is broke, owes his lawyers $4.5 million, and his wife divorced him (He suspects that she was sleeping with "Slick."). He has no family and lives in a house trailer in a friends driveway. Maybe he will be better off in his medical prison environment.
He said that Slick Willy lied about the meeting with Hale and himself when they discussed the $300,000 illegal loan to his wife Susan. So what else is new? Slick is a very good liar. Of course, McDougal is a liar too because at his trial he said that Slick wasn't there. The only thing I have to say about all that is that he told the truth and he lied. The question is: when did he lie and when did he tell the truth?
A young man named Kevin who lives in Singapore has some unique information.
A few days ago I got my Medicare card from the Social Security Adminstration. I don't look forward to being in Medicare. I've heard that it will cost me more and my benifits will decrease. That is typical of any federal government program. I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield now. I'll be forced to continue to carry it because it covers Pat. I think the Part B coverage of Medicare is about $47 per month....money down the drain as far as I can tell. I'm being flooded with advertising for "medi-gap" insurance and I suspect it will get worse. One was made to look like an official Medicare document. That is outrageous.
When I was a kid no one I knew had medical insurance. I had never even heard of it. A doctor's visit was only two dollars....and they made house calls! Of course, two dollars was worth a lot more then than now.
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A new forestry graduate receives his first 5-year posting way out in the middle of a huge forest with no people around for miles. Included in the survival gear that they give him, much to his surprise, is a martini kit. When he asks why he's receiving a martini kit, he is told, "Sometime, a few years down the road when the solitude *really* starts to get to you, you're going to remember your martini kit. You're going to get it out and start making one and before you know it you're going to have somebody looking over your shoulder saying, 'That's not the correct way to make a martini!'" |
About a month ago I changed the format on this page from two columns to three. I also moved the MIDI selection to my MIDI page. Unfortunately, I forgot to upload the revised MIDI file to my ISP. I corrected the mistake today....nobody's perfect...doah!
I added some of my banjo tunes from my MIDI page at the bottom of this page.
My cyberpal dwarfie sent me this one:
Young Irishman goes up to his girl friends father and says, "I would like to marry your daughter sir." The father reply's, "Have you seen her mother?" " I have, sir; but I still want to marry your daughter."
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"On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does." [ Will Rogers ] |
There is a real trojan horse virus on the web. Read about it on CICA. CIAC is the U.S. Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability. Established in 1989, CIAC provides computer security services to employees and contractors of the United States Department of Energy.
Their advise:PROBLEM: A Trojan Horse program called AOL4FREE.COM that deletes all files on a hard drive is circulating the Internet.
PLATFORM: DOS/Windows-based PCs
DAMAGE: When the AOL4FREE.COM program is executed, all files and directories on the users C: drive are deleted.
SOLUTION: DO NOT execute this program. If the program starts executing, quickly pressing Ctrl-C will save some of your files.
My advise is the same as that my mother gave me: "Don't take candy from strangers!" If you don't know and trust the person, don't run anything they send you. Trojan horse programs are not detectable by anti-virus programs (or so I'm told).
Tyger told me about the trojan horse this morning. I checked it using my "HOAX" ULR at the bottom left sidebar. It didn't have anything new on it. I checked the CIC homepage and found the alert. The alert was dated 4/17/97. I checked the "Hoax" page and found that it was also updated on 4/17/97. They must assume that people are only interested in the hoaxes and not the real thing! What idiots! I emailed them and told them they are idiots. I also changed my reference from their "Hoaxes" page to their homepage.
I sometimes copy files from my Netscape bookmarks to my homepage. The only problem is that the Netscape HTML includes some extra information about dates accessed. To avoid wasting valuable space (and time) I have edited them out. It is tedious and time consuming. This morning I wrote a program to do the editing for me. I spent a couple of hours writing and debugging it which is probably longer than is warranted. It was fun doing it and I woke up some of my brain cells that were loafing.
I saw a Kodak digital camera on sale this week for $199. Someday someone will make a camcorder that has 1,000GB of memory and a serial output to a computer. It will cost less than two dollars and be a throw away.
Last night's episode of on Fox's "King of the Hill" tickled my funny bone. I'm getting so that I don't even notice that the characters are cartoons. I am even beginning to understand Broomhauer when he mumbles. Perhaps the "adult" cartoons are the wave of the future. You don't have prima donnas like the cast of "Seinfeld" who want a million dollars for each episode. I understand the father who THINKS he is king of the hill. I can relate to him.
I just received an answer to my email to CICA. It must be a "form" email. I'm sure no one is working at this time of night. Thanks, Rose. (I'll bet Rose is the name of their auto-answer software.)
No walk today. It was raining this afternoon. I did managed to get the grass mowed this morning. That is equivalent to a short walk.
I have been known to take a nap in the early afternoon just after lunch. Senneca often puts her nose up next to mine to attempt to wake me up. She used to smell so bad that I would wake up almost immediately. Now she smells like a lady and I have sometimes have "good" dreams. Since I don't wake up as easily now, she has started to growl gently, deep down in her throat. It sounds like angry bees. She did it again this afternoon because she wanted to take her "walkies." I think she would go for a walk in the rain and she hates rain. She loves to swim but she hates rain.....go figure!
COMMUNISM: State takes both of them and gives you milk.
FASCISM: State takes both of them and sell you milk.
NAZISM: State takes both of them and shoot you.
BUREAUCRACY: State takes both of them, kill one and spill the milk in system of sewage.
CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
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"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." [ Winston Churchill (1874-1965) ] |
Pat likes yogurt. I call them bacteria cups. Here's why:
From Trader Joe's FAQ:
"Does your yogurt contain live cultures?Yes, that's an incredible number. A half pint is about 50 grams so one cup is about 1.5 billion of those little critters. I wonder what they do when they get inside of you...don't you? I know that there are lots of yeast critters in bread but at least they are dead!Yes. Bacterial cultures are added after pasteurization, so the heat of pasteurization does not affect them. The amount of culture varies from batch to batch, but averages 10 million Lactobacillus acidophilus cultures per gram, 10 million Bifidus cultures per gram, and over 10 million Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus cultures per gram. (Yes. The mind boggles. That is an incredible number of microorganisms.)"
My dear mother told me the story of Old Dog Trey. It was about a dog that go into trouble by running with some bad doggies. "You are known by the company you keep", was the teaching. You can learn alot about a person by their Netscape bookmarks too. I stumbled upon Patricia Rathbone's Bookmarks. I think I have a pretty good idea of who she is by where she likes to visit on the Internet.
A few months ago I thought about putting my bookmarks on my homepage. After trying to get it organized for about 2 hours, I lost the entire file. Enough of that idea. It was too large anyway.
Pat just told me she saw the first fly of the season. I told her yesterday that I saw my first two robbins of the season. Maybe the robbins can catch the fly. That just reminded me of an old Burl Ives song called, "I Knew an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly." The really funny part of the song is that it ends unresolved.
Senneca and I took a very short walk today. We crossed the street and Richy and Chris were outside. Senneca was so glad to see them. She watches the kids from our living room window but has never gone to visit them at their house. She was really tickled...I could tell.
Economics is called "the dismal science." If engineers were wrong as often as economist we wouldn't have any civilization at all. I found the following at the Economist Jokes web page. Lawyers are disgusting but economists are dull, dull, dull.
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A mathematician, an accountant and an economist apply for the same job. The interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks "What do two plus two equal?" The mathemetician replies "Four." The interviewer asks "Four, exactly?" The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says "Yes, four, exactly." Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question "What do two plus two equal?" The accountant says "On average, four - give or take ten percent, but on average, four."
Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question "What do two plus two equal?" The economist gets
up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says "What do you want it to equal?"
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"The Chicago Cubs won their first game of the season after 14 losses!"
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"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." [ Albert Einstein (1879-1955) ] |
When I visit the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) I always visit the "oldbies" channels. Most have "50" or "60" in their names, e.g., DalNet: #50+porch or #50+bunch or #50ageless or #60+bunch. There is a list of the "oldbies" channels on my IRC Help page.
Subway has the highest fat content fast food item. That surprised me. I guessed it would be Burger Death's Double Whopper with Cheese. Of all things it is a Tuna Fish Salad. I think tuna is cat food. I won't touch it. The wonderful search engine for fast food restrauants is called Fast Food Facts - Interactive Food Finder. The Whopper contains 63 grams of fat while the Subway Tuna Salad contains 68. I try to limit our fat intake to 20 grams a day.
Sites for tight wads:
Fish story:
A drunk decides to go ice fishing, so he gathers his gear and goes walking around until he finds a big patch of ice. He heads into the center of the ice and begins to saw a hole. All of sudden, a loud booming voice comes out of the sky. "You will find no fish under that ice." The drunk looks around, but sees no one. He starts sawing again. Once more, the voice speaks, "As I said before, there are no fish under the ice." The drunk looks all around, high and low, but can't see a single soul. He picks up the saw and tries one more time to finish. Before he can even start cutting, the huge voice interrupts. "I have warned you three times now. There are no fish!" The drunk is now flustered and somewhat scared, so he asks the voice, "How do you know there are no fish? Are you God trying to warn me?"
"No", the voice replied. "I am the manager of this hockey rink." |
Chris' clean humor:
One more bean joke:
Senneca and I took a long walk today...over a mile. We walked by the golf course and saw old men hitting little white balls and then chasing them. The farther then hit them the farther they have to chase. They seemed to enjoy it. They all rode in electric golf carts. I'll bet if they had to walk they wouldn't like it so much. I could train Senneca to chase the balls and retrieve them. She would like that and they would never catch her....(or me!).
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"The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened." [ Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) ] |
This morning I heard a report about a man in Baltimore that out lived his wife and his kids and his entire family. Then he out lived his pace maker's battery. He had an operation to have it replaced. He is 115 years old....Way to go!!!!
As Pat and I were in the car on the way to the beauty parlor we were listening to Rush. Pat asked why the democrats were upset with Newt about the loan from Bob Dole. I told her they will keep after him unless he commits suicide. Just a few second later Rush said the same thing. I'm reading his mind..or he is reading mine.
While browsing this morning I found that my homepage is qualified for 20 more web awards. This is a funny site but don't go too deeply into it. It gets raunchy the deeper you go. It's called the Bottom of the Net Awards.
Ginny sent me the obituary of Pop 'N Fresh. I knew Pop very well. I had him for dinner several times.
Another food joke:
Two carrots were walking down the road when a huge transfer truck slammed into one of them. An ambulance was called and they rushed the little fellow off to the hospital where he immediately went into hours of surgery. Finally the doctor emerged and approached the other carrot who had been anxiously awaiting in the waiting room. "Tell me Doc, how is he?" The doctor replied, "I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is he's going to live. The bad news is we're pretty sure he's going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life.
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It's rather cold and windy here in Rockville, Maryland today. About 42 degrees this morning and hasn't warmed up much at all. I think I'll take Senneca for only a short walk. I'll write more when we get back.... We're back! It was cold. We walked out with the wind at our back for about 2 blocks then turned around and came home again. It felt twice as cold with the wind in my face. Senneca barked at a big truck, ate some grass, got tangled in her lead and frightened some woman so bad she crossed the street to avoid us....or was it me!? This was not a good walk.
Boogie Jack and I have been corresponding by email the last few days. He has a great page. Check it out.
Jo told me about Al Roker's homepage. Al is on the Today show. I haven't seen him but judging from the cartoons on his page he must be black or a dark shade of brown.
I received a warning about two computer viruses (or is it virusi?) yesterday. One is called PENPALS and the other is aol4free.com. I checked them at the CIAC Internet Hoaxes page. They appear to be hoaxes...but why take a chance? Just ignore them.
MisTaken aka ^^Angel^^ has a homepage now. It's quite a good one for her first attempt. She should be very proud of it. One of her links is to The Inter.Net where you can get a "free" homepage. It also has over 1000 personal homepages listed. If they can do it - so can you!
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"Thought: Why does man kill? [ Woody Allen ] |
You all know by now that I love food. I also love my wife and family and my dog Senneca. I like lots of other things but I love those (though not in that order).
When I find some good low-fat food I like to share the recipes with you. So here is another....two days in a row.
I made some soup using "12 Beans" from Ham n' Beens. It is a pound package of 12 different kinds of dried beans. I followed the recipe on the package except that I didn't use the little ham seasonings package that came with it. I used a slice of honey ham chopped into small pieces. I also added a pound of black beans. It was great...and relatively low-fat.
Today I took a pint of the soup, heated it and added about 2 teaspoons of corn starch disolved in 1/4 cup cold water. This thickened it. I spooned 1/5th of the thickened soup on 5 burrito sized flour torlillas. I added 1 teaspoon each of Chi-Chi's mild salsa and salsa verde (green salsa). I sprinked on about 1/2 teaspoon of Alpine Lace shredded Parmesan cheese and 2 tablespoons of Healthy Choice Fat-free Motzorella cheese. I rolled them up into a buritto and heated each for about 2 minutes in the microwave. I served each with a big blob of fat-free sour cream (I like Breakstone) and some more salsa verde. It was great. I ate two. A Miller's draft beer made them go down much easier.
I opened a strawberry yogurt for Pat last night. It had a protective band around the top of the lid. It also had a plastic seal over the top under the lid. This is to make sure that it is not tampered with. This morning I opened a new tube of Crest. The box wasn't sealed. The lid wasn't sealed. Why the difference? Maybe it's because we are not supposed to eat the toothpaste....but it still goes into our mouths. If someone wanted to poison us it would be easy. How about fresh fruit and vegetables? They get pawed by anyone who wants to touch them.
Newt Gingrich just addressed the House. He stated his ethics case and he stated it well. He said that he will pay the $300,000 from his personal funds. But....he will borrow the money from Bob Dole. That is unbelievable! I suspect the terms will be very good and may even include $300,000 gift to Newt in Dole's will. I personally think it would have been better for him to establish a legal defense fund and use that money. Slick Willy did it!
Some recent finds on the web:
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The local bar was so sure that its bartender was the strongest man around that they offered a standing $1000 bet. The bartender would squeeze a lemon until all the juice ran into a glass, and hand the lemon to a patron. Anyone who could squeeze one more drop of juice out of the lemon would win the money. Many people had tried over time (weightlifters, longshoremen, etc.) but nobody could do it. One day a scrawny little man came in, wearing thick glasses and a polyester suit, and said in a tiny, squeaky voice, "I'd like to try the bet." After the laughter had died down, the bartender said OK, grabbed a lemon, and squeezed away. Then he handed the wrinkled remains of the rind to the man. But the crowd's laughter turned to total silence as the man clenched his fist around the lemon and six drops fell into the glass. As the crowd cheered, the bartender paid the $1000, and asked the man, "What do you do for a living? Are you a lumberjack, a weightlifter, or what?" His reply: "I work for the IRS." |
I found this ASCII graphic at the bottom of an e-mail I received recently so I borrowed it for my own. What do you think?
_ ______________________________________ _
/ )| Bob aka Old Lloyd |( \
/ / | bigo@erols.com | \ \
_( ( | http://www.erols.com/bigo/ramble.htm | ) )_
(((\ \ |_/ )______________________________( \_| / /)))
(\\\\ \_/ / \ \_/ ////)
\ / Love makes the world go 'round. \ /
\ _/ Maybe that's why my head \_ /
/ / is spinning. \ \
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"I often quote myself. [ George Benard Shaw ] |
Today I made some cider-cinnamon-raisin-nut bread. It is really good. It is even good cold and that is the true test of bread. It is low-fat (only the nuts have any fat). Here is the recipe:
Procedure:
Cider-Cinnamon-Raisin-Nut Bread Ingredients:
1 T commercial dry yeast (or 2 packages of dry yeast)
1 T cinnamon
4 t brown sugar
2 T applesauce
2 T dry sherry
1 cup raisins
1 t salt
2 cups of apple cider (beer or water could be substituted)
1/3 c sugar
1/4 c toasted pecans
Bread four, as required
Someone asked me what kind of dog Senneca is. We don't know for sure. She looks like a black lab so that's what we say when asked. She doesn't say. We don't care. We love her whatever she is. She didn't ask us for our pedigree.
Heat cider in microwave so that it feels very slightly warm.
Add yeast
Add 1 1/2 cup of flour
Add 1/3 cup sugar
Mix for about one minute
Drizzle sherry on raisins then heat in microwave for about 15 secs.
Take a break for about 30 minutes
Chop pecans and put in small dry skillet.
Heat on medium high stirring often...don't burn
When lightly brown add to mix.
Add everything else and mix.
Add flour about 1/2 cup at a time to make medium stiff dough.
I use a dough hook on a big KitchenAid mixer.
If you use a normal mixer, add the last flour by hand.
Knead for 8 to 10 minutes.
The dough should be flexible. The raisins should shine through the dough.
When you poke your fingers into the dough it should bounce back leaving little or no impression.
Place in lightly greased bowl (I use Pam).
Spay some Pam on a piece of waxed paper.
Place to cover the bowl.
Drape a kitchen towel over the top and place dough in a warm place to rise.
Let rise until 2 to 2 1/2 times volume (about 90 minutes)
Punch down and let rise again until doubled.
Form into two loaves.
You can use loaf pans but I prefer free-form because it is crustier.
Place on teflon coated cookie sheet.
Let rise about 30 minutes.
Bake in preheated over at 375 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes.
Oven temperatures vary quite a bit.
Check after 30 minutes. It should be brown.
A good test is to thump on the bottom. It should sound hollow.
When done, place on wire rack.
Allow to cool about 15 minutes.
Slice. Spread with butter or margarine. (I used Fleishman's no-fat from squeeze bottle.)
Eat and enjoy.
When cool put in zip lock bag or cover with foil.
Senneca has been really good on her walks. Yesterday she passed two mailmen (she hate's the mailman), two busses, several kids and a big yellow dog and didn't bark once! I never told Senneca that I worked for the USPS. She might bite me!
I was going to put on some ragtime music today but I found a site that is so good and has so many great songs I'll reference that instead. It is called Warren Trachtman's Ragtime MIDI Page. He sequenced these rags himself and did a great job. This is a must visit site. If I could find my "Check" gif this would be a 4 checker. John E. Roache's Ragtime MIDI Library is very good too but you can only hear the first part of each song. To hear the entire tune you have to download it.
You Can - 50 Questions has some answers to 39 challenging questions like "why is poop brown?"
Science Stuff is a bookmark for a billionaire's homepage.
Silly question of the day: "If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?"
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"Be careful about reading health books. [ Mark Twain (1835-1910) ] |
This morning of C-SPAN they had a doctor showing a new web site called Health Finder. It seems pretty good for government work. (It was probably subcontracted to the private sector.) Al Gore and Donna Shenannigans took credit for it!
Al Gore is making a speech before some labor organization. He said that during the last inauguration he was sworn in at noon. Clinton was sworn in 5 minutes later. He claims he was president for those 5 minutes because Clinton's term had expired. He went on to brag about all his accomplishments during those 5 minutes. Crime increase was the lowest, etc.
Pretty funny stuff. He must have new speech writers...probably some Hollywood type. He was also less wooden. Someone must have sprayed WD40 in his arm pits!
He closed with: "Early to bed. Early to rise. Work like Hell and organize." He got a big round of applause from the labor bosses for that.
Search-It-All searches it all. It has many good links on a great variety of subjects. It is another list of lists. I love them.
Karen encountered snow flurries going over the mountains to Pittsburgh Sunday evening. She said that Pittsburgh had hail on Saturday. She was glad to have been "down South." It is much greener here she said. I think if I were rich I would have two homes-one in Vermont or Maine and one in the mountains of Tennessee. I'd stay in Maine until it got cold and then head south. When it got too hot in Tennessee, I'd head north. If I could find a reliable couple to take care of my house in the "off-season" that would be a good deal for both of us.
I was unsuccessful in downloading Go-Get-It. They must have someway to detect that I had already downloaded it. I wrote them a nasty email.
PC Computing Magazine Homepage has 1001 web sites. I looked and couldn't find any good ones. Of course, I didn't look at all of them.
If you look down near the bottom of this page you will see a new section of MIDI music selections. Just click on the title. I'll try to update frequently and have them contain a common theme or style. Today's is piano solos and piano trios of old standards. I really like these. This is how I like to play the piano. Tomorrow I plan to put on "rags." Then banjo music. Hope you like them. If not, just don't play them.
A little gambling humor:
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A man approached an acquaintance in a gambling casio and asked, "Joe, can you give me a hundred? My wife is dying and needs medicine that can save her. WIthout it, she'll be dead by morning." Joe said, "Sid, I'd give you the money right away, but I'm worried that you'd just gamble it away." Sid answered, "No, you don't understand. Gambling money, I got..." |
I did my taxes early this year (yesterday). I hate paying taxes. Taxes are too high. If the government would stick to it's constitutional duties we would be much better off.
If you pick Peter's pocket to give it to Paul, you'll be sure to get Paul's vote! If there are more Pauls than Peters you are likely to win election.
Here is the trick:
You can't take from Peter and gived to Paul if Peter and Paul are equal. Peter wouldn't stand for it! Make sure Peter is "rich." That way you can take from one Peter and give to 100 Pauls. That's leverage. No one but Peter will be hurt and why should Peter complain he has too much anyway. Even if you don't get some of Peter's money (i.e., you are not a Paul) you can see the "fairness" of it. The 100 Pauls will love you. Peters can't compain because they will look greedy and miserly. Pretty slick, huh? The Democrats have been doing this since 1933.The tax laws give congress a way to be evil. A national sales tax would put an end to all that. What would lobbyists do if congressmen couldn't help them? "Get honest work", is the answer.
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"A friend is someone who will help you move. [ Unknown ] |
That quote sounds like something Slick Willy (Der Schleiktmeister) would say. There are 26 people who have died under mysterious circumstances that were some how connected with him. The most well known was Vince Foster who went for a walk in a park and got no dirt on the bottom of his shoes, then shot himself with his right hand (he was left-handed) and there was no blood on the ground or powder burns. Recent reports indicate he was shot twice in the head.
Senneca and I went for a long walk today. Our house backs up to an exclusive area of million dollar homes. We like to walk down their street like we own the place. Their yards are beautiful this time of year. The gardeners do a good job. Dogwoods and azaleas are starting to bloom. Senneca is a good girl on our walks. She loves them. For some strange reason she likes to bark at buses.
Go-Get-It seems like a good program. I downloaded it today. I'm not sure what it is but it seems to be a combination web searcher and browser and it is FAST!!!!! You can get a free 15 day trial version. I think I messed mine up because I kept getting GFP errors. I deleted the files and tried to download it again. I've had no success. Maybe they are just busy. I'll try again tomorrow morning.
Swope Park in Kansas City is where I played my first round of golf. It is a city park and at that time (1957) they had two 18 hole golf courses. One had a par 6, 605 yard hole. The tee was on top of a cliff. I've never seen another par 6 hole. I believe the green fee was only a dollar or two. I used to play very early in the morning when the dew was still on the greens. The ball would often throw up a little rooster tail of water behind it when you putted. I play Links386 computer golf now. It's even cheaper and you don't lose your balls.
These are the answers to the trivia quiz yesterday:
1. Yes. 2. One. 3. All of them (12)
4. The beggar is her sister. 5. He can't be buried if he isn't dead.
6. Six. 7. No - because he is dead. 8. They aren't playing each other.
9. 70 10. White. The house is at the North Pole so it is a polar bear.
11. Two. 12. A 50 cent piece and a nickel. (one is a nickel, the other is not)
13. The match. 14. Half way. Then he is running out of the woods.
15. 1 Hour 16. Nine. 17. None - Noah took them on the ark, not Moses.
18. Meat 19. Twelve. 20. Same as it is now.
Here is an oldy/moldy golf joke:
| Joe played golf with the same 3 guys every Sunday morning for 25 years. One day his wife noticed that he seemed very tired when he got home from his round. She asked him what was wrong. He said that when his partner, Harry, got to the first hole he chipped in for an eagle 2. He got so excited that he had a massive heart attack and died. She said that it was no wonder he looked so tired.
He said, "No. That's not it. How would you like to play 17 holes of golf....swing the club...drag old Harry...swing the club...drag old Harry........." |
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"Playing golf will keep you humble." [ Old Lloyd ] |
Tiger Woods made it look easy. He won the PGA Masters with the biggest margin and the lowest score in history. The kid is only 21 years old! Congratulations, Tiger. Pat got so emotional about it, she cried.
The greatest golfers in my day were Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Byron Nelson, Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead. Ben Hogan taught me how to play golf. I studied his book. I have Gene Sarazen irons. They must be antiques or collectables by now. My favorite golfer of all times was Slammin' Sammy Snead. He had the best swing of anyone I have ever seen. It was so smooth and easy it looked like he was just waving at the ball.
My other award is "The Golden Cross" award. It has a nice graphic:
I found a great web site called Foreign Languages for Travelers. It has words and common phrases that are pronounced in any one of several foreign languages.
Brain Teasers which lets you use you mind. I knew most of these already. There are a few new ones.
Law is a dictionary for legalize.
SchoolHouse Rock has some nice graphics and things of interest. The name is misleading.
Foreign Signs in English losses much in translation. I liked, "In a Copenhagen airline ticket office: We take your bags and send them in all directions."
Here is a Brain Teaser I got from Randall Woodman today (I'll put on the answers tomorrow):
1. Do they have a 4th of July in England?
2. How many birthdays does the average man have?
3. Some months have 31 days; how many have 28?
4. A woman gives a beggar 50 cents; the woman is the beggar's sister, but the beggar is not the woman's brother. How come?
5. Why can't a man living in the USA be buried in Canada?
6. How many outs are there in an inning?
7. Is it legal for a man in California to marry his widow's sister? Why?
8. Two men play five games of checkers. Each man wins the same number of games. There are no ties. Explain this.
9. Divide 30 by 1/2 and add 10. What is the answer?
10. A man builds a house rectangular in shape. All sides have southern exposure. A big bear walks by, what color is the bear? Why?
11. If there are 3 apples and you take away 2, how many do you have?
12. I have two US coins totaling 55 cents. One is not a nickel. What are the coins?
13. If you have only one match and you walked into a room where there was an oil burner, a kerosene lamp, and a wood burning stove, which one would you light first?
14. How far can a dog run into the woods?
15. A doctor gives you three pills telling you to take one every half hour. How long would the pills last?
16. A farmer has 17 sheep, and all but 9 die. How many are left?
17. How many animals of each sex did Moses take on the ark?
18. A clerk in the butcher shop is 5' 10'' tall. What does he weigh?
19. How many two cent stamps are there in a dozen?
20. What was the President's name in 1950?
Tufts University has developed an artificial nose (smell detector). I can't wait for Smellivision.
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"The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf." [ Will Rogers ] |
Taxes, taxes, taxes. We have federal taxes, state taxes, county taxes, real estate taxes, sales taxes, energy taxes, excise taxes, inheritance taxes, sin taxes, gift taxes, luxury taxes, social security taxes, medicare taxes, gas (not flatus) taxes....I'm surprised there is anything left for us! Maryland taxes are very high. After you pay them the county demands that you give them 60% of what you gave to the state. It's no wonder that some people don't want to work. They don't want to pay taxes!
I got another award today. I'll post it tomorrow. I don't know why awards are so popular on the web. It may be for honest recognition or it may be a scam to get free publicity on people's homepages.
I decided to create a new section of awards that are really more meaningful to me. My Comments section contains emails from readers of my homepage. They are much more dear to me that a logo from a total stranger so I want to share them with all of you. Thanks folks. I hope you enjoy them only half as much as I do.
Grayfox sent me this email story. It is a little raunchy so skip over it if you might be offended.
| 50th ANNIVERSARY |
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This couple was celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary so they took a
second honeymoon at the same hotel that they had their original one. She says to him as they are about to have breakfast on the balcony, " Remember how we had breakfast here in the nude just after we had finished making love on our honeymoon?" "Yes" he said, "Let's do it again!". So they go inside and make love and come back out, nude, to have their breakfast. As they are sitting having their food, he says "How was that?" "Wonderful" she says "and my nipples are still hot." He says "That's because one is in the coffee and the other one is in the oatmeal." |
I put on a new dictionary link on yesterday called "OneLook." It is just over in the left side-bar. It has 106 different dictionaries. Amazing!
Karen came home this weekend. She had a list of 12 people with our last name who live in or around New Orleans. I was shocked because I have searched for years and found only one other in the entire country (and I knew about him). None of my search engines found them so I decided to do a reverse search on their phone numbers to see if I could verify their names. They all had an extra letter at the beginning of their name. So they probably weren't relatives of ours. This is the reverse phone directory I used. It is called Be Your Own PI - Phone Number Reverse Search. I added it to my People section.
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Bud Abbott:
" If you have 50 cents in one pants
pocket and a dollar in the other,
what do you have?" Lou Costello: "Some body else's pants!
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Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were very popular in the movies when I was a kid. Their most famous routine was "Who's on First." I remember seeing almost life-size cardboard cutouts of them at our neighborhood "Home Theatre." Bud was skinny and Lou was a short fat guy. I always remembered him as a "tubbo." Recently I saw one of his old movies and he didn't seem to be as fat as I remembered. Neither did Ethel Mertz, Lucy's side-kick. Perhaps we judge other's fatness based on our own.
It cost 7 cents to go to the movies back then. If I could find 2 empty pop bottles and a milk bottle I could return them to the store for 7 cents and go to the movie. I'm surprised that the theatre manager didn't take them as barter.
When I went to the store today I bought eggs. At first I was going to buy "Eggbeaters" but found that they cost more than eggs. So I thought I'd buy fresh eggs and give the yolks to Senneca. (She insists that they be cooked.) I looked for "small" eggs. There weren't any. I looked for "medium" eggs. There weren't any. Eggs came "large", "extra large", and "Jumbo." How's that for inflation. That's grade inflation. I've heard about that before.
The US auto companies used to play similar tricks. Chevy called their top of the line mode the "Deluxe." Later they added a new top of the line model, the "Impala." People might think that the "Deluxe" was still top of the line.
My favorite marketing story is about bitters. Angustora (spelling???) had the corner on the market with over 95%. They still wanted to increase sales. After much study, some smart guy came up with the idea of making the hole in the bottle larger. Since people just gave a shake or two, they used more and didn't even realize it. Sales increased proportionally to the diameter of the hole.
Another interesting story is know as the "Hawthorne Effect." Some industrial engineers were trying to increase the productivity in the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric. One of the engineers thought that increasing the light level would improve production. They got a baseline and then increased the lighting. Production increased. They increased the lighting some more. The production increased some more. They kept doing it until it was very, very bright. Finally, someone said had the idea to decrease the lighting to see if the production would drop off the same as it had increased. As the lightning was decreased the production instead of dropping, increased! They were dumb-struck. That didn't make any sense. They finally realized that production increased not as a consequence of actual changes in working conditions introduced by the plant's management but because management demonstrated interest in such improvements.
My cyberfriend, Moatzi, emailed me yesterday to talk about old times on #Shannisplace. I emailed Shanni and told her she was missed. She wrote back and said that she can't get on AnotherNet and sometimes comes on EFNet late at night. She sent me a .wav file that I believe was a recording of her voice. It was so long that after downloading for 30 minutes my email halted on an error.
Murphy's Laws and Other Observations has more fundamental laws. Nice graphics too.
Joanne sent me this funny story about the Efficient Waiter. (Don't pull my string!!!!!)
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[ The Peter Principle, Dr. Lawrence J. Peter ]
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My youngest daughter, Jeniffer, just stopped by for lunch. She usually has lunch with us one day a week. We talked about my homepage. She said that she tries to find time to read it each day. Jenny is an editor for a publishing company here in Rockville. She kids me about my poor grammar and lousy spelling. (I misspelled her name just to get her goat!). Jenny has agreed to edit my ramblings just to show me how bad they really are. I know that my dog can't spell either. She spells her name "Senneca" and it should be "Seneca" but she says she's no Indian.
My cybergalpal, Jo, notices that I frequently get the dates wrong. Usually I just forget to update the date when I cut and paste. Lately, I've messed up because I set my watch wrong. It is 12 hours off. The date changed at noon. So if I updated before noon I get the wrong date. I've fixed that problem.
I don't spend much time writing or editing my ramblings. I just say what's on my mind or what is happening around our place. I do care about spelling and grammar...but not much.
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I found some more Fundamental Laws. I also found out who Murphy was. He was an engineer. Why am I not surprised? I thought Murphy's Laws were ficticious.
Misc. Links:
"Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose
your rest home."
Phyllis Diller
"To attract men, I wear a perfume called ``New Car Interior.''"
Rita Rudner
"Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you
can get rid of him of the entire weekend."
Zenna Schaffer
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Bennett's Laws of Horticulture:
(1) Houses are for people to live in. Blore's Razor: Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier. Boole's paradox: There are 3 types of people in this world....
(1) Those that can count
Boren's Laws: Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in. Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man. Colvard's Logical Premises: All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it won't. Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary: This is especially true when dealing with someone you're attracted to. Grelb's Commentary Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
Committee Rules: Conway's Law: In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired. Eagleson's Law: Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is an optimist, the real number is more like 3 weeks.) Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it. Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts. Finagle's Third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
Corollaries: First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary. Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not almost one, it is damn near zero. Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
(1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction. Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2. Hartley's First Law: You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back, you've got something. Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases. Hildebrandt's Observation: Murphy was an optimist. Hlade's Law: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they will find an easier way to do it. Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. Horngren's Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a special case. Jenkinson's Law: It won't work. Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted. Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false. Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats -- approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less. Leibowitz's Rule: When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you hold the hammer with both hands. Lewis's Law of Travel: The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to anyone, ever. Maier's Law: If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
Corollaries: Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book. Corollary: If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live. Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American: The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the cork makes when it is popped. Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it. Mr. Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing. Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory. Naeser's Law: You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof. Peter's Law of Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves.
Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Shaw's Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor): That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have gotten. Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
(1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check. Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers: If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him. Steele's Law: There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer than 100. Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible. Van Roy's Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys. Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
(1) If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once. Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library. Wiker's Law: Government expands to absorb revenue and then some. Will Volker's Negative Work Theorm: Don't do more work in the morning than you can erase in the afternoon or else you will have done negative work.
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I couldn't decide which "Fundamental Law" to use for my quote of the day so I'll let you pick your favorite. I added the Volker one. I knew this guy! He was a friend of mine. And I'm no Will Volker.
Jo sent me this funny story about Beethoven. My search for this joke on Internet led to some others:
Misc. Links:
Karen got us a new kitchen waste basket because our was old and ugly. She found a RubberMaid on sale. I put the old one (temporarily) outside on the terrace. It has a lid that pivots in the center. The new one has a different lid. One that Senneca can't get in as easily. The wind caught the lid and it was spinning around and around like the paddle on a stern-wheeler. Finally it tipped over and the lid came off. This evening I threw Senneca her a dog biscuit into the basket. She gave me what looked like a dirty look but went to get it. She didn't want to go in because it was a tight fit. She nuzzled the waste basket and rolled it around. Every once in a while she gave me that dirty glare. Like "why did you do that, Daddy?" She finally got desperate and crawled into the basket. She was half-way inside and then backed out chewing her puppy treat and looking proud of herself. I knew she could and would do it.
"Misery no longer loves company.
Nowadays it insists on it."[ Russell Baker ]
Last night I watch "Misery" on TMC. James Caan is looking old but not as old as Walter Matthau or Jack Lemmon in Grumpier Old Men. I enjoyed both movies but I really liked Grumpier Old Men better because I could relate to it. One bad thing about watching premium channel movies is that they run without breaks for commercials. I need breaks more often than every hour and a half.
No MIDI Playing provides help on setting up your MIDI files. Why are things so complicated? When I was younger I liked complicated things because they were a challenge. As I got older they became tedious. Now they are a pain in the *ss!
Some of you may have heard this story about otosan who I met on IRC. For some reason I thought otosan was a woman and I sent cyber-flowers everytime I saw otosan join an IRC channel. It wasn't until about 2 weeks later that I learned that otosan was a guy and that otosan meant "grandfather" in Japanese. I asked him what he did with the flowers I sent him. He said he gave them to his wife.
Otosan sent me Project Vote Smart. You can look up how your congressmen have voted and where they get their campaign contributions. My congressman, Connie Morella, is a very, very liberal Republican. The only time I see her on C-SPAN is when there is a woman's issue or a government worker's issue. I almost wish she would lose and election so I could vote for a real Republican.
The US Supreme Court just ruled that it is constitutional for California not to discriminate against people because of race, sex, national origin, etc. Isn't that reassuring!? I don't know why they even had to think about it for 5 minutes. Der Schlieckmeister disagrees.
My grandson Richy caught 16 rainbow trout this week. The largest was 16 inches long. He cleaned them. Mary cooked them. Richy, Chris and Andy ate them. Richy loves to fish more than anything else. Just wait until he discovers girls!
The attachment of people to their pets is marvelous. It is always very sad when the attachment is ended. This usually happens because of the death of the pet. My son-in-law Richy was really attached to Candy. It was the first dog that he had that ever loved him. His mother had dogs. They were the little terrier yappy kind of dogs and always were his mother's dogs. He loved Candy and she returned it.
Candy became mean and unfriendly which is very unusual for a golden retriever. She bit one of the kids in the face. The bite didn't break the skin but it could have. The dog had to go! It broke Richard's heart. I hope he bonds with their new golden retriever Jake.
That reminds me a true story that Pat's father told about his neighbor when they lived in Dallas. The neighbor led a terrible life. His wife was a nag and ignored him. His children were rotten and ignored him but he had a mutt of a dog who loved him. My father-in-law overheard him talking to his dog in the backyard. He said, "Pete, you're dumb and ugly and full of fleas but your the only one that's glad to see me when I come home at night and, damn-it, I love you!"
I'm sure my father-in-law laughed out loud. He always loved to tell that story. I often wondered if his neighbor hear him laughing at the time. Probably so.
"This country has come to feel the same
when Congress is in session
as when the baby gets hold of a hammer."[ Will Rogers (1879-1935) ]
Congress is back in session. Grab your pocketbooks. They are pompous, buffoons who squander our money. We would be better off if they were in session a few weeks each year like in the colonial days. But I would miss watching their antics on C-SPAN.
A few days ago I mowed my lawn for the first time this year. My faithful mower started on the first pull. Last year it started on the first pull each time. I must admit that I give it a good pull! I put down some epsom salts with my fertilizer again this year. Will I never learn. If you feed grass it grows. It it grows you must mow it. Why make work for yourself?
mIRC version 5.0 was released on April 2nd. Laurence Simon has some tips and tricks that are very useful.
Strangers continue to email me to tell me that they read my homepage. I'm honored. I love to hear from strangers and always try to email back promptly. It still is awesome to think that people all over the world can read it. I haven't received any email from anyone overseas yet.
My real life friend Mase sent me a good site for TrueType fonts. It is called !FONTASTIC! I was tempted to download some but I resisted. My hard disk is almost full.
Yesterday I made some of my no-fat cole slaw. It is truly delicious. Here's how:
1 medium head of cabbage (green or white)Procedure:
1 large onion
1 carrot
2 c Kraft No-Fat Mayonnaise
1 c white wine (Rhine, Chablis, etc.)
1/2 c cider vinegar
1 c sugar (more or less to your taste)
(optional) 1T plain old yellow prepared mustard (if you like mustard)
(optional) 1/2 t Italian seasoning or 1/4 t dill salt and pepper to taste
Put all the ingredients except the cabbage, onion and carrot in a food processor and mix well.Gets better with time.
Taste. If it is too sweet add vinegar. If too sour then add sugar.
Empty into large bowl.
Slice onion using food processor.
Grate carrot using food processor.
Add to dressing and mix well.
Remove all old tough leaves.
Remove thick ribs (they have a strong flavor).
Cut and core the cabbage.
Slice with food processor.
Add to bowl and mix with each batch.
Taste and adjust seasonings.
(Make it taste good to you!).
Mary just brought her golden retriever puppy over for a visit. They are going to name him Jake or that is the current name. They had to sell Candy because she wasn't gentle enough with the kids. Candy found a new home in Poolsville, Maryland at a fancy house that has a barn, horses and stables. She will be better there because she will have more space to run and play. Jake is about 8 weeks old and looks like a little golden bear. He is as fat as a butter ball. Puppies are so cute and adorable. I picked him up to hug him and he got so excited he p'd on me. I didn't even care.
"A man with a watch knows what time it is.
A man with two watches is never sure."[ Segal's Law ]
We lost an hour this morning at 2am. Where did it go? Maybe it went into the "time bank" where it will earn interest until we draw it back out this fall. That may be the explanation for why we have an extra day each leap year. I reset all 17 of our clocks today. Pat's stereo is so complicated that I always need the manual to figure it out. We couldn't find it for a while. But Pat found it. She is a good looker and good looking.
Why don't the local power companies put out a signal so that all the electric clocks can be automatically synchronized and never need to be reset. The technology certainly exists to make all electronics capable of doing it. Of course, it would take a study committee and a jillion conferences to determine the standard. We could call it the "T" chip. (Isn't it wonderful that life has become so easy that some old coot complains about having to set his clocks twice a year!)
Pat is thrilled that the O's have won their first 4 games. The O's are in first place. I remember one season when they lost their first 23 games.
I received a CD in the mail yesterday from Bell Atlantic (my local phone company) with a 30 day unlimited use trial offer for their new Internet service called Bell Atlantic.net. It was a nice package so I read it. When I found that they required my credit card number I quickly lost interest. No way would I send my card number over the phone. I looked for a web site listing so I could read more about it. They got it wrong in their advertisement. They said it was "www.bellatlantic.net" when, in fact, it is "www.bellatlantic.com." Some how I just can't imagine Bell competing with my local Erol's service. They may last longer the Erol's but they won't provide the service as well or as inexpensively. Bell wants $17.95/mo for unlimited service. I paid only about $12 with Erol's.
Just for the heck of it, I called Bell Atlantic's "24 hours a day, 7 days a week" 1-800 phone number to ask why they wanted for my credit card number. After 3 auto answering sessions I got this message: "Do to technical difficulties, we are unable to take your call at this time. Please try again later." Ha. I won't happen!
I lost my Netscape bookmark file again this morning. Fortunately I had backed it up a few days ago so I recovered 99% of it.
Here is a humorous list I got from Grayfox who got it from Randall Woodman who got it from Jim Price who got it form "who knows":
"Few things are harder to put up with
than the annoyance of a good example."[ Pudd'nhead Wilson ]
My dog doesn't have fleas. I gave her a bath yesterday with a new flea soap called "Releve." She looks good. See smells good. And she feels good. Senneca is a good dog but she is getting gray chin hairs like her master.
By way of explanation for my somewhat twisted and crude wit. I'm from Kansas and a master of cornography. Sad but true and I cain't hep it.
This morning I woke up early and turned on C-SPAN. They replayed a speech by Gingrich who spoke before a group of Atlanta business men Friday. Newt seemed rather down. He just got back from an official trip to Asia. Maybe he was just tired. I hope so. He got his best laugh when he talked about the 110,000 IRS employees and their new 4 billion dollar computer system that failed to operate. They finally scrapped it. He said,"With 110,000 people you would think that maybe one of them would figure out that it is not the computer that's the problem it is the tax code. The tax code is so complicated that even 4 billion dollar computer systems can't figure it out."
The American Spirit Corporation outlines some alternatives to our current tax system. Their Tax comparison chart shows the advantages and disadvantages of our current system, a flat tax and a national sales tax. They obviously favor the sales tax. My objection to a national sales tax is that it could be raised too easily. Also I have already paid taxes on the money I've saved and now I'll be taxed again when I spend it. UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR!
The Radio Archive offers audio tapes of old time radio shows for $2 each in lost of 10. You send them blank tapes and they will record your selection and send them back in the same box. Great idea and a reasonable price. I loved just looking thveght their catalog to see the names of many, many shows that I had forgotten all about. OTR Tag Lines is fun. I think I remembered 12 of the 20. If you know them please email the answers to me. I'll share mine with you.
Wayne's Old Time Radio Web Page has a similar catalog list except he has them arranged by categories. If you want to see them all in one list they have that too. It is 212K bytes.
The keeper of The Dead People Server wanted out. Someone else took it over recently. There is also a Friends of Dead People Server. Another nice dead people site is Dead Presidents which has some interesting things to say about them.
Flags of the World (and elsewhere) is a wonderful place to visit. There are flags from countries I have never heard of before.
American Authors has a wealth of information about great writers.
"A friend who offers help without asking
for explanations is a treasure beyond price."[ Robert A. Heinlein ]
My cybergalpal Choc helped me with my mIRC when I lost all of my popups, alias, and remotes. Thanks, Choc.
I received several comments about my comments about flatulence yesterday. Here are a few plus some I found by searching the web. F*rts are a popular subject. Maybe it's because it is something we all have in common and understand....plus the element of surprise.
- Club Methane (I didn't join because of my feelings of inadequacy.) Be sure to read "1601". It's a hoot (or is it a toot?).
- DIET TIPS (F*RT, F*RTS, f*rt, f*rts)
- www.farts.com (F*RT, F*RTS, f*rt)
- THE SQUEEK OF THE WEEK F*art fun in audio.
- Farts Special Interest Group Even the Brits do it!
Some others:
- OLD WEST KANSAS Great site.
- The Kansas Heritage Server Another great Kansas site.
- Calcium may lower risk of kidney stones That's typical. Why can't they get it right the first time?
- This Day in History I added this one to my sidebar.
- Signs of Intelligent Life
- Great Speeches Audio of famous speeches. "...a day that will live in infamy!"
- The History Hotlist
- What A 'BAD DOG'! Don't look for my Senneca here.
Spring in the Washington DC area is beautiful. The magnolias, cherry trees, forsythia and dutch bulbs are in their splendor. A few of the azaleas are in bloom. I planted about 20 last year. It looks like 10 survived the winter. Delicate new leaves are forming on trees everywhere. Signs of life and renewal. I love the change of seasons. I missed them when we lived in Florida and California. Maybe they were there...but I missed them.
"I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either." [ Jack Benny (1894-1974) ]
One of Jack Benny's gags was his constant reference to his blue eyes. I tried to make the background in his quote to match his eyes. At least as I remembered them from watching him on TV. He made only one notable film which was called Charlies Aunt.
The actor that plays Frasier studied and copied Benny's style. You can see it in his pregnant pauses and other mannerisms.
My coveted "Critical Mass Award" for outstanding web page design came through today. Check it out!
Hi Bob! Congratulations!!......Your site definitely qualifies for the "Critical Mass Award". Great job, good content and presentation and nice graphics plus easy to navigate. A positive contribution to the Web. The Award logo is being sent as an attachment to this note. Your site will be posted on the "Winners List" in a day or two. A *very* nice site!! Good design and tasteful graphics and your information is presented well and easy to access. A worthy enterprise! Thanks for helping make the Web a more interesting, *fun* and attractive place to visit. I really enjoyed my visit to your site and will return again when time permits :)
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Thanks Bill
My cyberfriend Close sent me a list of 60 fun things to do on an elevator. I searched and found about 20 listings of it. It appeared to grow from about 10 to 60 things. I guess people just kept adding to the list. On was "just one word.....flatulence." Why are f*rts funny? I got an email today that was a serious treatise on them.
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 1997 06:50:39 -0800 (PST)
From: podtrst@isomedia.com (Michael M. Rosenblatt)
Subject: Shall we talk about gas?
Message-Id: <199704021450.GAA01577@mail3.isomedia.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"A reader wrote that his VLF diet produces much gas, particularly TVP. I have found that some brands of TVP produce more in me than others. I think you just have to experiment. For me and my wife the worst offender is cabbage, which we both love.
We had tried Beano, which never worked very well, and the new Beano tablets are made with (can you believe it) hydrogenated fat! I'm sure there's not much in each tablet, but after all, we're all trying to avoid saturated fats, aren't we? Why take them if it doesn't do any good anyway?
I have read books about beans suggesting that when you soak them in preparation for cooking them, you change the water at least twice. That takes away some of the nutrition, but also takes away some of the undigestable polysaccharides, so I've been told.
Also, putting a little sodium bicarb in the bean pot is supposed to help, as well as VERY thorough cooking, enough so that the beans are able to "fall apart" against the roof of your mouth.
My wife doesn't care for beans very much so I don't make them for her, except as vegie chili.
Theoretically, as your system gets used to legumes, you are supposed to "develop" the enzymes necessary to digest them more easily. But sometimes, I just cannot step in an enclosed space (like an elevator) with other people. I think it has been getting better though, and the tofu I eat no longer makes me as gassy as it used to.
I'd also suggest chewing your food very thoroughly, as that is the BEGINNING of digestion. I think most of us eat too fast anyway.Also we should try not to drink too much liquid with a large dinner, because it tends to dilute our digestive enzymes--maybe...
For now, I'd suggest keeping the volume of TVP you eat at once to a minimum. Try not to eat it just before an important meeting when you are trying to sell somebody a car, for instance...or a long meeting with your boss' best clients, who have no sense of humor.
For now, I'd only associate with people who have no sense of smell. That's what I do.
Mike Rosenblatt
If you want to join this fine group, here's how:
If you have a friend who would like to join the FATFREE, have them send email to fatfree-REQUEST@fatfree.com with the Subject: subscribe
The official FATFREE web site is at http://www.fatfree.com
If you haven't done you taxes yet (like me) you can still get a free tax program called "Tax Mate" from Parsons Technology Online. I used part of it to figure my taxable part of Social Security. I found the program I wrote several years ago with Excell easier to use because I was more familiar with it. Tax Mate is about 2.7M so it takes a while to download.
Several readers of my homepage have identified themselves by email. Thanks folks. It was nice of you to write.
"If a gigantic corporation sets its sights
on a goal, and is willing to do
whatever it takes to achieve it,
chances are it will."[ Taylor ]
Web Monkey's HTML page has some good words to say about MicroSoft Internet Explorer 4.0. That's unusual. In my humble (hehehe) (I hate it when grown men go..."hehehe") opinion web designers will not be satisfied until they can be directors like in the movies or on TV.
EPSON has a new color printer that has 1440x720 resolution. Back in 1969 when I first joined the USPS Research Dept. we had a contract with AB Dick (makers of the Teletype machines) to work on an ink jet printer to cancel and postmark stamps on letter mail. The AB Dick work was based on the research done by SRI. Ink drops were formed then charged and deflected to form characters. The new ink jet printers are much better. The bar codes for the PostNet code, that are printed in the lower right hand corner of the mail, were printed using the old style ink jet printer.
At that time Epson was a big manufacturer of dot matrix printers. Daisy wheel, letter quality printers were just becoming popular. Now daisy wheel and dot matrix printers are almost obsolete.
Our grand daughter Tricia sent Pat a small pin that has 4 foot prints (from the story "Foot Prints in the Sand"). Pat is so thrilled with it. She wears it every day.
I made some more of my cinnamon-raisin bagels today. I gave some to Mary. She sent Chris over to pick them up. I gave him one....he beamed. I wonder how many got over to Mary and how many went in his pocket.
A few days ago I heard a logical explanation on why the price of a 3 packet of dry yeast jumped in price from 21 cents to $1.65. Bread making machines is the answer. When people began buying bread machines and paying one or two hundred dollars for them, they were committed. The sellers of yeast could raise their prices and get away with it. I can buy large loaves of bread for 50 cents. That's about the cost of the yeast if you buy it in the small packages. Of course, homemade bread tastes better although Pat likes that soft, damp, pastey, white bread.
For the past month I've been keeping track of the number of daily hits to my homepage. There are an average of 75 per day. Since I don't update at the same time each day some people may access it more than once a day. I access it several times when I generate the page. So I suspect there are about 30 to 40 people who read my ramblings. I know from chatting with people on IRC and from my email the names of about 15. Who are the rest of you discriminating web surfers? Write to me, I'd like to get to know you.
"You can fool too many of the people
too much of the time."[ James Thurber ]
Finally my homepage is getting world recognition. Check these headlines out: (These sites are very busy. You may have to try often.)
Before we got Senneca we had Candy (golden retriever) and Molly (beagle). When Molly was about 6 she got outside and ran into the street. She was hit by a car and died the next day. A few days later, Candy (age 11) got very sick and we took her to the vets. She died that night. It was a sad time at our house.
Jenny and Candy grew up together. Candy used to grab Jennifer by the diapers and pull her down. She hated that. Everyone loved Candy. Molly was my dog. She had a bad disposition and didn't like people. Candy had a typical golden disposition and loved everyone.
A few months later Karen was working at an archaeological dig near Seneca creek here in Maryland. She had a little black puppy follow her around for several days. Karen took special dog food for her and told us about her. One day she brought her home. "Daddy, Daddy, can we keep her?", went up the cry. I refused to even look at her and turned my head away because I knew if I looked at her I couldn't refuse. After a few hours she came up to me and demanded attention. She was so cute I feel in love immediately.
Senneca was obviously abandoned. I would guess she was about 8 weeks old and was so cute. She had a soft, pink belly and had that lovely "puppy" smell. She was lucky Karen founded her and so were we.
Terry and Pam bought a male golden retriever a few years ago. They named him "Rebel." When Mary got her golden retriever she asked if it was alright with us if she named it Candy. Mary loved our Candy. She likes Senneca but has an unusual "loyalty" to Candy. It's not that she doesn't like Senneca...she just doesn't love her. Her love is saved for Candy. To love Senneca would somehow diminish her love for the memory of Candy...or so it seems.
I watched a TV show called Pinnacle about the head of Habit for Humanity. They build homes for poor people. Jimmy Carter and Newt Gingrich support that organization. Carter has for years. During the interview the president of HFH said that they made an experiment to see how fast they could build a house. With 300 professionals who volunteered their time, they started at 6 am and finished a few minutes before noon the same day. That would have been fun to watch.
Back in the "smoked filled room" days of American politics some politicians played poker with lobbyist. The lobbyist always seemed to lose. That was an obviously sneaky way to "buy" crooked politicians. Now, there are other ways to do it on a grander scale. I heard recently that Teddy Kennedy put one of his houses on the market for $4.5 million. Within a few days a Chinese Lobbyist made a cash offer of $6 million for it. Pretty slick, huh?
This overweight guy saw a big sign in front of a health club that read, "LOSE 5 POUNDS IN 5 MINUTES FOR $5 OR DOUBLE YOUR MONEY BACK." Seizing the opportunity he went inside and paid his $5. He went in to a large room and saw a beautiful blonde woman who had a sign on her back, "IF YOU CATCH ME IN 5 MINUTES, I'M YOURS." He gave chase and ran as fast as he could for 5 minutes but didn't even come close to catching her. He left weighing 7 pound less. He decided to get in shape and try again. For 3 months he worked out at home. He came back to the health club and the sign now read, "LOSE 10 POUNDS IN 10 MINUTES OR TRIPLE YOUR MONEY BACK." He decided to give it a try so he paid his $10. He went though the same door and heard it lock behind him. This time he saw a huge male gorilla with a sign on him that read, "IF I CATCH YOU IN 10 MINUTES, YOU'RE MINE!"
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We had a scattering of snow here in Rockville, Maryland last night. It was just enough to cover the ground. I thought it was "March came in like a lion" ....not April!
Today was to be the opening day for the Baltimore Orioles. Pat was so looking forward to it. They cancelled the game this morning because of the cold temperature and high winds. This afternoon at 4pm it was warm and sunny with gentle breezes. Figures. She found another ball game to watch so she was satisfied.
By the way, Happy April Fools' Day.
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