1984

Guess what I found......the Acer user's manual!

Well, there you go!  It makes sense for the manufacturer to forego printed manuals; digital documentation can be updated much more quickly than a printed product.  But they shouldn't hide it like Acer did with your box.  There should have been a giant icon on your desktop titled "Read Me First!" which would have saved a lot of time and grief.

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I've seen a squiggly red line under words that Blogger thinks I've misspelled, and most of the time they were correct in pointing out my errors although I think their vocabulary is limited.  I'm not sure if any of the editing features are browser dependent; it seems possible.

Outlook is still a Microsoft product, if Google is to be believed.  I have two email accounts and they use different clients; they both work well enough but I'm not fussy.  I still like the old school, monospace type fonts, like Courier, which remind me of a typewriter.  One of my old computers had a dandy little program that sounded like a mechanical typewriter when you entered text, and a little "ding" sounded whenever you did a carriage return.  Pointless, but fun to listen to, like you were clacking away in the bullpen of the Daily Planet.

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Short bios don't appeal to me, but Uncle Ken's suggestion of a particular year sounds interesting, and 1984 was a very good year.

That was the year I rode out to Missoula, Montana for an annual BMW motorcycle rally.  A nice ride, but US Highway 2 got to be very dull, a straight line facing the afternoon sun, until the mountains slowly came into view.  I don't recall the exact route, but there was a jog south to reach Missoula.  Since I failed to tweak the carbs for the increased altitude the bike ran like a pig for a while as I crossed the great divide, but later it was okay although top speed dropped to around 80, which was more than good enough for those mountain roads.

Met a local cutie, too, so I extended my trip a few days after the rally.  Later that summer I popped for airfare so she could come to Chicago for week or so.  Good times.  Since she was only 19, a bartender friend of mine offered her ID to use so we could hit a few nightspots.  The ID picture looked close enough but she was never asked for any ID, at any time; it was the thought that counted.  I've never heard of a bartender offering her ID to use, but those were different times.

A big highlight of the trip was seeing George Carlin at the Park West.  Probably because she was a cutie we were seated very close to the stage, maybe twenty feet.  If I was by myself I would've been stuck way in the back, I'm sure.

But all good things come to end.  She returned to Montana, we phoned and wrote each other for a few months afterwards, but then things just petered out.  Last I heard she got married, had a kid (not necessarily in that order) and was living in Orange County, CA.  I may have been a forgotten diversion, by my memories of the Mountain Girl still endure.  Indeed, a very good year.

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As I was reviewing Hindu deities to keep up with you guys, I was reminded of Ganesha, the god with the elephant's head, who was a staple on The Simpsons.  One neat thing about Ganesha is that he is "widely revered as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences and the deva of intellect and wisdom" which seems oddly appropriate for the Institute.