Ups and Downs of the decade.

It’s been a tumultuous decade for sure. It feels like more bad than good happened, which has many folks glad to see it end. For me personally it’s been no worse or better than previous decades. Some very good things have happened and some very bad things have happened. Such is life. But let’s take a cursory look at the decade past.

 Terrorism – If I had to pick one paradigm that has had the worst effect on the decade I would say it has to be terrorism. It started out bad with the 9/11 attacks and got worse from there. Those attacks led us into the two wars we are still fighting. They have taken from us many freedoms and rights we had long taken for granted. They have made airline travel miserable. They caused widespread economic chaos which snowballed into the mess we have to deal with now. And contrary to the sick, twisted logic of those perpetrating terrorism, these incidents have done nothing to improve the state of humanity in general or Islam in particular. In fact, they’ve made things far worse all around.

 Technology – This one may come with a small caveat, as not all the technology advances bode well for the future, but by and large technology has moved us closer to that vision of the 21st century we all marvelled at in the 60’s and 70’s on sci-fi TV shows. We have the ability to instantly communicate with people around the globe by flipping open the communicator in our hand. We can see folks in distant lands and speak to them in real time on our little desktop boxes. We can watch the sun rise live in Europe from our living rooms in the US. We can buy virtually anything  by typing a few things on the laptop while sitting in front of our fireplaces. We can watch the human heart beating in 3D while we look for anomalies which would have remained hidden and killed us in years past. We can walk away unscathed from car wrecks which would have once been fatal. And we can watch movies in our own homes on screens that would have been the envy of all theatre-goers not so long ago. I’m currently thinking of buying a device about the size of a piece of bubble gum which will hold 2000 songs and play them back at CD quality or better. Now I just have to think of 2000 songs to load on it.

 Politics – Still the same con game it’s always been. Whoever coined the name “public servant” never really knew a politician. 

 Boston Sports -Ok, this one’s a little less profound than the rest, but this has been the decade for the Boston teams to shine. Sox, Pats, and Celtics have all brought us championships. Even the Bruins looked decent the last few years. It’s been a good decade to be a Boston fan.

 Natural Disasters – Hurricanes, earthquakes, and a particularly nasty tsunami cost the lives of countless people. The earth can be a very unfriendly place to live sometimes.

 The Economy - While my personal economic situation has improved nicely this decade, the economy in general took a beating. For the most part the blame lies with the greedy and power-hungry. The shift of wealth away from the many and into the hands of a few has been staggering. For several years we were getting soaked by the oil companies. Then the banks and investment houses played their ponzi schemes with our savings while the real estate market conspired to raise housing prices into the absurd range. And now the government is spending us into the poor house for the next century while promising us fair and equal health care is soon to be a reality. Anyone believe that one? 

This past year in particular has been hard on me with some health issues and the death of my father. I gladly say goodbye to 2009 and look forward, albeit cautiously, to 2010. Any improvement over this past year will be a welcomed relief.

Merry Christmas to all. Enjoy and be safe.

Ups and Downs of the week.

 Red Sox -Picked up some nice talent this week. Hope Mr. Lackey proves to be worth the high price they paid.

 Weather – Looks like crappy traveling weather before the holidays.

 Rescued cats – Between my wife and two of her co-workers, five cats found homes this week. 

 Tiger Woods coverage – Enough already. Let them work this out in peace. I fail to understand why people find joy in the misery of celebs.

 Photoshop - Fun to play with.

They’re getting used to us now. Much less shy. And they’re beginning to be fun to watch.

Ups and Downs of the week.

 Netflix – Great service. Can’t believe I’m just catching on now.

 Red Sox – They trade Mike Lowell for a second (or third) rate catcher and $3million in savings? I don’t get it.

 Christkindlesmart – It’s on again. The live cam isn’t as user friendly, but it works.

  Illinois State Legislature – The chickenshit morons failed to pass a relatively minor tax hike, so now they aren’t paying the bills. Accordingly, state employees may be forced to take furlough days as early as January. I can handle the days off without pay, but many folks making less will really take a beating. How much sense does it take to realize that the state is about to go under and something needs to be done?

New Kitties – They all checked out fine at the vet today. Looks like we’ll be keeping them. Now we need to come up with names.

Sarah came home for lunch and found one of the outdoor cats we feed waiting with her two shivering kittens. It was barely 9F here today. She brought all three in. They all have an appointment at the vet tomorrow, and if they all check out ok it looks like we’ve just doubled the cat population in the house.

This has been a week where the little things have been piling up. Nothing worth pulling hair out (especially since I have little hair left to pull), but just things that shouldn’t be.

1. My Dell Latitude Z laptop – Overall I’m happy with it, but the trackpad seems to just fade out every now and then, as does the keyboard. I’ll type a word and two or three letters in a row will be missing. For a $2500 laptop, this is inexcusable.

2. My LG EnV3 phone – It’s supposed to be compatible with the BMW bluetooth system. It’s listed on both Verizon’s site and on BMW’s site as an approved BMW bluetooth phone. It does send and receive calls as it should, but the phonebook won’t upload. LG’s Contact app has non-standard contacts like “In Case of Emergency” and “My Name Card” (whatever that is) that cannot be deleted. I believe it is these entries which are screwing things up. Bluetooth has been around long enough for all BT devices to conform to standards. LG needs to get with the program.

3. BMW’s Voice Recognition – This feature is supposed to enable you to speak a few commands to the car and have it do simple things like dial a number or name or change the scale of the Navigation map. But every now and then it seems to fixate on a name. For instance, to make up for not having my contacts uploaded into the system’s phonebook via bluetooth, I attempted to load them in manually via the voice recognition program. It worked fine until I entered my friend Dana’s name and number. After that, any name I attempted to enter was “recognized” as Dana, which prompted a warning that the name had already been entered. I lost my cool and told the system to go to hell, only to have it say “Dana” and “That name already exists” back to me. I guess in the “Ultimate Driving Machine,” little things like voice recognition working properly are overlooked.

4. ABC – I don’t watch much TV, but I do like to catch the evening news and I like (or did like) ABC Evening News the best. But tonight they had a completely gratuitous “news” item on Tiger Woods. Ok, I can see reporting that his mother-in-law got taken to the hospital. Personally, I don’t think it qualifies as news, but I can see how ABC would think it is. But then they went on to discuss his current loss of respect among his fans and even showed quotes from Twitter and other blogs or websites. They actually showed one where a kid supposedly told his mother that Tiger now “makes me sick.” Is this really news? Is it at all acceptable to broadcast the nasty things people have to say about someone just because that person is a celebrity? The “reporter” said at one point that the same thing that catapulted Woods to the top of his profession is now causing his downfall. I would have thought it was his golfing talent which put him at the top of his profession. That is certainly not what is causing his current problems.

After the news ABC showed A Charlie Brown Christmas. Yes, this show has been around for decades, but I still like to watch it every year. I consider the show a classic and as such it should be sacred and protected from the bean counters who chop shows apart to squeak out a few extra minutes of advertising. Sadly, ABC has decided that several scenes from the show could be scrapped in order to cut the run time and add more commercials. Making it even more frustrating, the sound was poorly sync’d, which is a common issue with ABC. It could be a cable issue, but it only happens with ABC, and a Google search shows there seems to be many, many people with the same problem on their particular cable system. ABC is quickly losing my respect.

5. MS Office 2007 – I sat down at a PC with Word 2007 for the first time and it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to access a print menu. There is no intuitive way to print from Word, which is the primary thing people do after they’ve created or edited a document. Trying to figure out how to Save As is just as frustrating. This is a clear example of change for the sake of change.  It actually makes the application more difficult to use, which is the very essence of failure in programming.

Ups and Downs of the week.

Marco Scutaro – Welcome to the Red Sox, Marco.

  Patriots – What an embarrassment against New Orleans.

 Positano – Another webcam with awesome images.

New Laptop – Dell Latitude Z600. It’s light as a magazine but has a 16″ screen. So far, pretty impressive. I’m liking Windows 7, too.

And Miss Cal is enjoying every minute of it.