There's a fb page called Forgotten Chicago where people post old photos of Chicago,and one day I went there, and there was a photo from the fifties of the brand spanking new High Low (High quality, low prices). Progress had come to 57th and Kedzie! Used to be there were these little stores where Mom would send you to get a loaf of bread or a quart of milk, there was one on 55th and Homan, and another on 57th by Christiana, and I was going to say that they were both gone justlikethat, but now I recall that the one on 57th lingered into the 70s, but that doesn't serve to prove my point, so I'll just take a little stroll down memory lane.
I knew that supermarkets (which that little High Low was considered in that day) were a big deal. I know that because Mad Magazine ran a feature called Sooper Dooper store about it. It certainly had a big effect on me, I had never seen doors with electric eyes before (I don't think they call them electric eyes anymore, I don't think they call them anything anymore they are just everywhere and you don't notice, until they are not there. How often have you been in a public bathroom and held your hands under the faucet or the towel dispenser and been surprised to realize that nothing happened and you were going to have to actually turn the faucet or pull down a towel, like it was the stone age or something.). And back then all cereal boxes contained some kind of toy so going to the cereal aisle was like going to a toy store, and the aisle seemed to stretch for miles.
There are no box boxes in Chicago, well maybe on the outskirts. I guess probably property values are too high and there is competition from smaller discount places all over. There was a big battle over Walmarts coming to town. The unions and good liberals such as myself hate them. Well there is the fact that they don't pay a living wage. What would happen if Walmart raised their prices say five percent, in order to keep their employees off welfare? Would people say I don't mind paying that extra nickel on the dollar knowing that all those employees, many of them my friends and neighbors can now put good shoes on their kids' feet, and send them to a four year college. Well we remember those Buy American campaigns, in fact I believe that was one of Walmart's boast back when they were just a discount store, and we all know where that went.
That part about sucking the life out of small towns, doesn't seem to have happened in Cheboygan, but I hear reports about other towns where it has. Particularly towns where the Walmart drove local retailers out of business and then closed down that store and now they have nothing. Well that is anecdotal too, I don't have any statistics for that, and I don't know what form those statistics would take, but just thinking it through logically it seems like when the Walmart comes to town the local stores die out,
And then there is just the power of Walmart because they are so big, and of course one of their goals is to stamp out competitors, Didn't we used to be against monopolies? Didn't we break up the phone companies? But I don't recall how that came out, not so well I think.
When I first moved to Marina City in 1992 I had to walk about a mile to get to the Jewel, but it was nicer when they put one in a few blocks south on State Street, even easier when they put in a Target a few blocks north on State Street where Carsons used to be.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Competition is Good For Business
I think the stuff they put on your computer to get you to buy stuff is called "crap-ware". I have gone through my desktop display and deleted all the icons for stuff like that. If any programs try to interfere with what I'm doing, I uninstall them. There is one, though, that I can't get rid of. It comes on every night and asks me if I want to update my Java program. I have tried to uninstall Java, since I never use it, but it won't uninstall. I asked my local computer guy about it and he said that I can't get rid of Java, and that I shouldn't anyway. He recommended that I accept the update because it might come in handy someday. I tried to do that, but the update didn't work either, so now I just click "no" when it asks me to update. It's a minor annoyance, I'm just glad that I don't have more stuff like that. I don't think that I have any apps. If I do, they must not be intrusive or it seems I would know that I have them. I don't think I'm connected to The Cloud either.
I have heard bad things about Walmart on the internet, but our local one seems to be different. Of course they don't pay their help much, but neither does anything else around here since the paper mill closed. Sometimes it's hard to find a clerk when you need help but, once you do, they are always happy to be of service. Before I took over the grocery shopping, I only went to Walmart when I wanted something that I couldn't find anywhere else. Now, since I go there once a week anyway, I pick up some of my own stuff while I'm there. Since our town is so small, Walmart is no farther away than anything else. There is another supermarket right next door to Walmart, it's had several name changes over the years and is currently called "Family Fare". The prices are higher, but my hypothetical wife says that their milk, meat, and produce is of a better quality. There are also a few items that Walmart doesn't carry, so I get them at Family Fare too.
When Walmart first came here, and when they later expanded to include groceries, people were predicting that all our other stores would shut down, but the opposite has happened. Some of the family businesses have close over the years, but that's only because the owners were ready to retire and their kids didn't want to take over. We've got more stores now than we've ever had, in spite of the fact that our population hasn't increased in decades and actually decreased a bit in the last census. Now they are planning to build a great big Meijer complex just south of the city limits. I went to one of those in Petoskey once, and I think you could fit the whole town of Cheboygan in there. I hadn't been through that neighborhood in some years and was surprised to see that it's now all shopping malls as far as the eye can see. Petoskey is a bigger town than Cheboygan, but not enough to support all those stores. I have no idea where their customers come from.
I remember in Chicago that it was not uncommon to see a gas station on each of the four corners of an intersection. Then there were all those car dealerships lined up on Western Avenue for miles. My father, who knew about stuff like that, said people like to shop in places where there's lots of the same kinds of stores. I suppose they figure that, if one store doesn't have what they want, another one will.
Back in Cheboygan, right across the street from the Walmart and the Family Fare, is a Walgreen. When they first built it I thought they were nuts. Who is going to go there when there's two stores selling the same merchandise right across the street? Well, they've been there for a decade or so, and they seem to be doing fine. Their specialty is cheap prescription drugs, and now the other two stores have lowered their prescription drug prices too. Family Fare will even give you some prescriptions for free. That's right, for free! I asked their druggist how they can make any money that way, and he said that it was an incentive to get people into the store, where they will hopefully buy something else.
On the other end of town we have a K-Mart. It's been there longer than the Walmart, and their prices are generally a little higher. We go there only when we want something that we can't find anywhere else. There are so few customers in there that it's downright spooky. It's so quiet that you can hear your own footsteps when you walk down the aisles. For the life of me, I don't know how they stay in business. Some years ago, when the parent company went bankrupt, they were shutting down K-Marts all over the country but, for some reason, they kept ours open. Some time later, Sears bought K-Mart, but it hasn't seemed to have effected out local store. I have advanced the theory that the place is a front for some nefarious activity, but my hypothetical wife says that I'm just paranoid.
I have heard bad things about Walmart on the internet, but our local one seems to be different. Of course they don't pay their help much, but neither does anything else around here since the paper mill closed. Sometimes it's hard to find a clerk when you need help but, once you do, they are always happy to be of service. Before I took over the grocery shopping, I only went to Walmart when I wanted something that I couldn't find anywhere else. Now, since I go there once a week anyway, I pick up some of my own stuff while I'm there. Since our town is so small, Walmart is no farther away than anything else. There is another supermarket right next door to Walmart, it's had several name changes over the years and is currently called "Family Fare". The prices are higher, but my hypothetical wife says that their milk, meat, and produce is of a better quality. There are also a few items that Walmart doesn't carry, so I get them at Family Fare too.
When Walmart first came here, and when they later expanded to include groceries, people were predicting that all our other stores would shut down, but the opposite has happened. Some of the family businesses have close over the years, but that's only because the owners were ready to retire and their kids didn't want to take over. We've got more stores now than we've ever had, in spite of the fact that our population hasn't increased in decades and actually decreased a bit in the last census. Now they are planning to build a great big Meijer complex just south of the city limits. I went to one of those in Petoskey once, and I think you could fit the whole town of Cheboygan in there. I hadn't been through that neighborhood in some years and was surprised to see that it's now all shopping malls as far as the eye can see. Petoskey is a bigger town than Cheboygan, but not enough to support all those stores. I have no idea where their customers come from.
I remember in Chicago that it was not uncommon to see a gas station on each of the four corners of an intersection. Then there were all those car dealerships lined up on Western Avenue for miles. My father, who knew about stuff like that, said people like to shop in places where there's lots of the same kinds of stores. I suppose they figure that, if one store doesn't have what they want, another one will.
Back in Cheboygan, right across the street from the Walmart and the Family Fare, is a Walgreen. When they first built it I thought they were nuts. Who is going to go there when there's two stores selling the same merchandise right across the street? Well, they've been there for a decade or so, and they seem to be doing fine. Their specialty is cheap prescription drugs, and now the other two stores have lowered their prescription drug prices too. Family Fare will even give you some prescriptions for free. That's right, for free! I asked their druggist how they can make any money that way, and he said that it was an incentive to get people into the store, where they will hopefully buy something else.
On the other end of town we have a K-Mart. It's been there longer than the Walmart, and their prices are generally a little higher. We go there only when we want something that we can't find anywhere else. There are so few customers in there that it's downright spooky. It's so quiet that you can hear your own footsteps when you walk down the aisles. For the life of me, I don't know how they stay in business. Some years ago, when the parent company went bankrupt, they were shutting down K-Marts all over the country but, for some reason, they kept ours open. Some time later, Sears bought K-Mart, but it hasn't seemed to have effected out local store. I have advanced the theory that the place is a front for some nefarious activity, but my hypothetical wife says that I'm just paranoid.
walmart sux
The reason they put a lot of stuff on my computer is that the vendors of those products pay them to put it there so that they can make money off of you. They hope you will buy their stuff and sometimes they will give you stuff because then they can collect information on you and sell that, or something. Some people are outraged that if they express an interest in buying a lawn mower in their email the very next day ads for lawn mowers will be all over their fb pages. Myself I don't care about that, there's going to be some kind of ad on fb anyway, it might as well be for something I want. What I hate is that it gets in the way, I'm always being asked if I want to sign up for this and that, and it's always implied that if you don't you won't be able to use whatever app you want to. And that's another thing, we don't have programs anymore, we have apps. I got on the computer bandwagon because I liked to program. Programs were manly. Apps are what valley girls download onto their pink phones.
And vendors pay to get shelf space on supermarkets. Coca Cola pays Jewel so much every month or year or whatever, for like six feet of space, more if they want more space. This not only gives Coca Cola some space, but it means less space for Pepsi Cola. Walmart is notoriously hard on its clients, telling them exactly what they want and how much they want to pay for it, and if the companies don't meet their standards, fine, they can sell their stuff somewhere else.
As a good liberal, of course I hate Walmart. One reason is the way they pay their employees so little that they are dependent on government assistance, and then the fat cats who got fat on Walmart stock vote down every form of government assistance they can so that they can pay lower taxes. And the other is the way they suck the life out of the small towns, so that now you have to drive twenty miles to buy a hammer, and the guy who would have sold you that hammer last year, who used to have that nice store where you could hang out and talk hinges or whatever, and whose kids were fed and clothed and schooled by the profits from that store, is now making peanuts working at Walmart, and is on government assistance which is being cut because the new right wing governor who was elected by the fat cats who got fat from paying their employees peanuts bought the election,
The cloud means your data and your software is not on your hard drive. It is on some server farm far away, and only appears to be on your computer. What's nice about it is that when your old computer dies you can buy a new one and hook into your data and be up and running just like that. The bad thing is that it's easier to hijack in the cloud than on your computer.
About this personality and stage presence vs issues, let me say this about it. They are all liars, so they are going to lie about the issues, and also maybe the guy has the issues you like, but they can never be implemented because most people hate them, or that your candidate is too incompetent to deliver them. I'm going to substitute character for personality and charisma for stage presence, and of course I hate charisma. I think character is good because than the guy is more likely to do the reasonable thing, and not get carted off to the hoosegow. Of course character is a lot like sincerity in Hollywood, if you can fake that, you have it made.
We may have more to say about that, and about Walmart maybe, but I am done for the day.
And vendors pay to get shelf space on supermarkets. Coca Cola pays Jewel so much every month or year or whatever, for like six feet of space, more if they want more space. This not only gives Coca Cola some space, but it means less space for Pepsi Cola. Walmart is notoriously hard on its clients, telling them exactly what they want and how much they want to pay for it, and if the companies don't meet their standards, fine, they can sell their stuff somewhere else.
As a good liberal, of course I hate Walmart. One reason is the way they pay their employees so little that they are dependent on government assistance, and then the fat cats who got fat on Walmart stock vote down every form of government assistance they can so that they can pay lower taxes. And the other is the way they suck the life out of the small towns, so that now you have to drive twenty miles to buy a hammer, and the guy who would have sold you that hammer last year, who used to have that nice store where you could hang out and talk hinges or whatever, and whose kids were fed and clothed and schooled by the profits from that store, is now making peanuts working at Walmart, and is on government assistance which is being cut because the new right wing governor who was elected by the fat cats who got fat from paying their employees peanuts bought the election,
The cloud means your data and your software is not on your hard drive. It is on some server farm far away, and only appears to be on your computer. What's nice about it is that when your old computer dies you can buy a new one and hook into your data and be up and running just like that. The bad thing is that it's easier to hijack in the cloud than on your computer.
About this personality and stage presence vs issues, let me say this about it. They are all liars, so they are going to lie about the issues, and also maybe the guy has the issues you like, but they can never be implemented because most people hate them, or that your candidate is too incompetent to deliver them. I'm going to substitute character for personality and charisma for stage presence, and of course I hate charisma. I think character is good because than the guy is more likely to do the reasonable thing, and not get carted off to the hoosegow. Of course character is a lot like sincerity in Hollywood, if you can fake that, you have it made.
We may have more to say about that, and about Walmart maybe, but I am done for the day.
Monday, March 16, 2015
Bells and Whistles
I don't think you paid extra for all those bells and whistles that you will never use. They put all that stuff in there just because they can. In the old days, hard drive space was limited, but now they have more space than they know what to do with, so they fill it up with everything they can think of. It's kind of like the way they stock the shelves in the supermarket. Empty shelf space puts people off, it gives them the subliminal impression that everything has been picked over and they're getting the leftovers, so they try to keep the shelves full to make people think they are living in the land of plenty, or something like that. Our local Wal-Mart has carried this to extremes. They not only have full shelves, but they have pallets of stuff in the center of the aisles. Most of that stuff can also be found someplace on the regular shelves, so I'm not sure why they have to stack it in the aisles. Their marketing research people must have told them to do it, thus justifying their own jobs. Truth is, it makes the aisles hard to navigate. There is only room for one customer to pass on either side of the display so, if somebody stops to look for something or chat with somebody, you have to go around to the other side of the display to get by. Then, like as not, you meet somebody coming the other way and one of you has to back into a side lane so the other can get by. I hate to think of what would happen if there was a fire or something and everybody had to evacuate the building in a hurry. "Oh, the humanity!"
I have an HP with Windows 7 too, but I have one of those old fashioned desk tops. I like it just fine, and have no desire to go to anything smaller. I heard that the companies would like to stop making desktops and go completely mobile, which would suck. Remember when the auto companies wanted to stop making stick shifts? That's one of the reasons they lost so much business to the foreigners. There will always be people who like the old stuff and, if one company doesn't give it to them, another company will. I understand that vinyl records have even been making somewhat of a comeback. What exactly is "the cloud" anyway? My daughter tried to explain it to me, but I'm not sure that I got it.
You know what's wrong with politics? There is too much emphasis placed on personality and stage presence and not enough on the issues. When they do talk about the issues, they tell you what the other guy will do if elected, not what they themselves will do. What are they, a bunch of mind readers?
I have an HP with Windows 7 too, but I have one of those old fashioned desk tops. I like it just fine, and have no desire to go to anything smaller. I heard that the companies would like to stop making desktops and go completely mobile, which would suck. Remember when the auto companies wanted to stop making stick shifts? That's one of the reasons they lost so much business to the foreigners. There will always be people who like the old stuff and, if one company doesn't give it to them, another company will. I understand that vinyl records have even been making somewhat of a comeback. What exactly is "the cloud" anyway? My daughter tried to explain it to me, but I'm not sure that I got it.
You know what's wrong with politics? There is too much emphasis placed on personality and stage presence and not enough on the issues. When they do talk about the issues, they tell you what the other guy will do if elected, not what they themselves will do. What are they, a bunch of mind readers?
finding fulfillment late in life
Well you know, a computer, especially a new computer is like a big mansion. There are vast sections of it where you will never go, and never want to go. I have like my functions, the email, a little writing, editing my photos, my web page, fb, and that's about it. I would love to buy a computer that had just those functions, so I wouldn't have to pay for all that other crap, and so I wouldn't risk hitting the wrong key sometime and finding myself in wonderland without knowing how to get back to civilization.
I bought a Hewlitt Packer. I guess I would rather have a Dell, but this one was cheaper, in fact it was the cheapest in the place, and what the hell do I know anymore. Way back I would pick a computer based on the chip, the internal memory, and the hard drive. But who knows what either of those first two are anymore, and they all have a gazillion gigabytes or terrabytes or whatever, and it really doesn't matter everything goes to the cloud. My stuff is going to the cloud. I didn't mean for that to happen, but when I was trying to get it up I kept getting asked all these questions which I wasn't sure what they were asking, but it seemed easier to say yes to everything in order to go forward, so I did, so probably I said yes somewhere,
Oh and I never did like the laptop so I got what they call an all in one where the cpu is in back of the screen so that all you have is the screen and the keyboard (Oh, and I got a nice keyboard with real keys that go click and not those awful chicklet things), so it takes up less space, but the downside is that after every session I want to pull the screen down, which could lead to some trouble down the road.
I got Windows 7, but it has an option so that it looks like previous windows instead of like a cellphone.
I used to wonder about the great hate Bill Clinton aroused in much of the Republican-o-sphere. He was a little sleazy, but so are a lot of politicians, and as dems go, he was more rightward than most. And after long thought I came to the realization that it was because he won the primary and the general election and became president. Any democrat that was president would be hated by the republicans. If some other democrat had won they would hate him just as much.
I have to admit I hated George Bush, but not from the start. I had reluctantly come to think his dad was not such a bad guy, and that compassionate conservative crap had the wool pulled over my eyes. I could put up with his cornball crap, because again, most politicians do that, but when he invaded Iraq, that's when he lost me, and that's when I began to hate him.
But back to Clinton. Even though she was the wife of satan, she was looked at a bit favorably by the reps when she was running against Barack Hussein Obama, mostly because she is a bit of a hawk, whereas he ran as a peacenik, though once in office he became too damn hawkish for my taste.
But the reason they hate her now is that unless she gets run over by a truck she will be the democratic nominee, so it never hurts them to throw dirt on her. But the reps have no self control, once one of them has a zany idea they all sign on as fast as they can, lest they be branded with that shameful tag of moderate. And now that whole email thing has become complicated and with all the rep screaming she is beginning to appear a victim, and the reps may,as they have done so often with the Clintons, snatched defeat from victory.
Well I was discussing this with an old Champaign buddy on the phone last night, and he got a little exasperated and told me the election is still a year and a half away.
So it is I suppose,but politics is my sports and I think about it all the time.
As a kid I was always told that the way I loved to argue I should be a lawyer, but that was too much work so I was a bum most of my life, and in my golden years I hold forth on the Beaglesonian Institute.
I bought a Hewlitt Packer. I guess I would rather have a Dell, but this one was cheaper, in fact it was the cheapest in the place, and what the hell do I know anymore. Way back I would pick a computer based on the chip, the internal memory, and the hard drive. But who knows what either of those first two are anymore, and they all have a gazillion gigabytes or terrabytes or whatever, and it really doesn't matter everything goes to the cloud. My stuff is going to the cloud. I didn't mean for that to happen, but when I was trying to get it up I kept getting asked all these questions which I wasn't sure what they were asking, but it seemed easier to say yes to everything in order to go forward, so I did, so probably I said yes somewhere,
Oh and I never did like the laptop so I got what they call an all in one where the cpu is in back of the screen so that all you have is the screen and the keyboard (Oh, and I got a nice keyboard with real keys that go click and not those awful chicklet things), so it takes up less space, but the downside is that after every session I want to pull the screen down, which could lead to some trouble down the road.
I got Windows 7, but it has an option so that it looks like previous windows instead of like a cellphone.
I used to wonder about the great hate Bill Clinton aroused in much of the Republican-o-sphere. He was a little sleazy, but so are a lot of politicians, and as dems go, he was more rightward than most. And after long thought I came to the realization that it was because he won the primary and the general election and became president. Any democrat that was president would be hated by the republicans. If some other democrat had won they would hate him just as much.
I have to admit I hated George Bush, but not from the start. I had reluctantly come to think his dad was not such a bad guy, and that compassionate conservative crap had the wool pulled over my eyes. I could put up with his cornball crap, because again, most politicians do that, but when he invaded Iraq, that's when he lost me, and that's when I began to hate him.
But back to Clinton. Even though she was the wife of satan, she was looked at a bit favorably by the reps when she was running against Barack Hussein Obama, mostly because she is a bit of a hawk, whereas he ran as a peacenik, though once in office he became too damn hawkish for my taste.
But the reason they hate her now is that unless she gets run over by a truck she will be the democratic nominee, so it never hurts them to throw dirt on her. But the reps have no self control, once one of them has a zany idea they all sign on as fast as they can, lest they be branded with that shameful tag of moderate. And now that whole email thing has become complicated and with all the rep screaming she is beginning to appear a victim, and the reps may,as they have done so often with the Clintons, snatched defeat from victory.
Well I was discussing this with an old Champaign buddy on the phone last night, and he got a little exasperated and told me the election is still a year and a half away.
So it is I suppose,but politics is my sports and I think about it all the time.
As a kid I was always told that the way I loved to argue I should be a lawyer, but that was too much work so I was a bum most of my life, and in my golden years I hold forth on the Beaglesonian Institute.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Jesus Saves
I have forgotten the details of this story, but I remember that it was about Jesus and Moses having some kind of contest with their computers. The power went out right in the middle of the contest, Moses lost all of his work, but Jesus didn't lose any of his work. You know why? Because Jesus saves!
I hardly ever back up text anymore, but all my photos go onto a disk right after I have saved them to my files. I only use three passwords, and they're all the same except that two of them have numbers at the end. A few yeas ago, when I had to install a new operating system, the guy who did it transferred all my files and settings for me, which was nice, but I don't have a lot of text files, and none of them are very important to me or they would already be on a disk.
What kind of computer did you buy, and what operating system came with it? I have heard bad things about Windows 8, and my guy recommended Windows 7 instead. I don't suppose you can buy Windows 7 off the shelf anymore. Has Windows 9 come out yet? I was happy with Vista, but Microsoft quit supporting it and my new email wouldn't work with it, so I had this guy install Windows 7.
There was a column by Gene Lyons in our paper today about Hillary Clinton. He says that the scandal mongers have been after Hillary for over 20 years now. He calls it "The National Bitch Hunt". It seems that they've never been able to make any of it stick, but that doesn't stop them from trying, generally making fools of themselves in the process. Why do you suppose that is? Lyons says, "This is what happens when the Heathers at the Cute Girls lunch table suspect you're smarter than they are." I think what he's trying to say is that some people are resentful of Hillary's intelligence. I don't know much about Hillary myself. I would never vote for her, but that's no reason to go slinging mud at her. It seems that her record should speak for itself. I guess the same could be said about Obama. He seems to be pretty smart too, but you don't get to be President of the United States by being stupid. I can understand why some people would resent it if one of their peers was a lot smarter than they were, or thought that he was. But isn't a high level government leader supposed to be smart? There are lots of reasons not to vote for a politician, or to not like him once he gets elected, but it doesn't seem like one of them should be that he's too intelligent.
Maybe that's why you or I never became president. You think? Mrs. Jordan told me that I would make a good politician or lawyer, but I told her that I was too honest for that. Without a moment's hesitation she came back with, "So what else are you interested in?" She acknowledged that honesty might be a liability in politics, but she didn't say that intelligence was.
I hardly ever back up text anymore, but all my photos go onto a disk right after I have saved them to my files. I only use three passwords, and they're all the same except that two of them have numbers at the end. A few yeas ago, when I had to install a new operating system, the guy who did it transferred all my files and settings for me, which was nice, but I don't have a lot of text files, and none of them are very important to me or they would already be on a disk.
What kind of computer did you buy, and what operating system came with it? I have heard bad things about Windows 8, and my guy recommended Windows 7 instead. I don't suppose you can buy Windows 7 off the shelf anymore. Has Windows 9 come out yet? I was happy with Vista, but Microsoft quit supporting it and my new email wouldn't work with it, so I had this guy install Windows 7.
There was a column by Gene Lyons in our paper today about Hillary Clinton. He says that the scandal mongers have been after Hillary for over 20 years now. He calls it "The National Bitch Hunt". It seems that they've never been able to make any of it stick, but that doesn't stop them from trying, generally making fools of themselves in the process. Why do you suppose that is? Lyons says, "This is what happens when the Heathers at the Cute Girls lunch table suspect you're smarter than they are." I think what he's trying to say is that some people are resentful of Hillary's intelligence. I don't know much about Hillary myself. I would never vote for her, but that's no reason to go slinging mud at her. It seems that her record should speak for itself. I guess the same could be said about Obama. He seems to be pretty smart too, but you don't get to be President of the United States by being stupid. I can understand why some people would resent it if one of their peers was a lot smarter than they were, or thought that he was. But isn't a high level government leader supposed to be smart? There are lots of reasons not to vote for a politician, or to not like him once he gets elected, but it doesn't seem like one of them should be that he's too intelligent.
Maybe that's why you or I never became president. You think? Mrs. Jordan told me that I would make a good politician or lawyer, but I told her that I was too honest for that. Without a moment's hesitation she came back with, "So what else are you interested in?" She acknowledged that honesty might be a liability in politics, but she didn't say that intelligence was.
new computer sweeps clean
I'll tell you when I get the gumption up and fill a big bag up with stuff, and take it out to the hallway and toss it down the garbage chute, or even better, when it's such a big bag that it won't fit into the chute and I leave it in the stairwell, I get a feeling almost as good as when I get myself something spanking new. I have a general rule that if I haven't used something in twelve years I probably can safely get rid of it. But there are always exceptions. And the thing is, you can't just throw it out, you have to decide to throw it out first and that means you have to think about it a little, and you know, it isn't taking up that much space, and maybe I could just leave it there for now and make the big decision the next time I am on a purge.
Speaking of getting myself new things, I just got a new computer. The old one conked out. Bad hard drive. Shit, It had been creaky for the last few days and it was in my mind to back it up any day, and this last time once I coaxed it back to life, I was going to back it up for sure, but then I never got it back to life, and so I never got stuff back. Stupid, Stupid. Stupid. There are still a couple things to try to get the old computer working again, but I don't have much hope.
The good news is that you can get up and running almost right away. There was an awful fifteen minutes when I was trying to remember my wifi password, and then I found it on this scrap of paper in this box of old computer crap that I should have thrown out years ago. But once I got out to the web and in the arms of Google, who handles my mail and my browser, and this very blog, I was up and running in less than an hour.
One bad thing though, is that I lost my personal little spelling dictionary that I have built up over the years, there are all my peculiar words and words that I like to spell as one word rather than a hyphenated word. Not a fan of the hyphen myself. I would not be caught dead using the semi colon, though I may use a colon every now and then when it occurs to me and I feel like being spiffy. I like the parens, but I am always a little uneasy with quotes, when to use double or single, and then does the period or question mark at the end go inside or outside?
Speaking of getting myself new things, I just got a new computer. The old one conked out. Bad hard drive. Shit, It had been creaky for the last few days and it was in my mind to back it up any day, and this last time once I coaxed it back to life, I was going to back it up for sure, but then I never got it back to life, and so I never got stuff back. Stupid, Stupid. Stupid. There are still a couple things to try to get the old computer working again, but I don't have much hope.
The good news is that you can get up and running almost right away. There was an awful fifteen minutes when I was trying to remember my wifi password, and then I found it on this scrap of paper in this box of old computer crap that I should have thrown out years ago. But once I got out to the web and in the arms of Google, who handles my mail and my browser, and this very blog, I was up and running in less than an hour.
One bad thing though, is that I lost my personal little spelling dictionary that I have built up over the years, there are all my peculiar words and words that I like to spell as one word rather than a hyphenated word. Not a fan of the hyphen myself. I would not be caught dead using the semi colon, though I may use a colon every now and then when it occurs to me and I feel like being spiffy. I like the parens, but I am always a little uneasy with quotes, when to use double or single, and then does the period or question mark at the end go inside or outside?
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