Ups and Downs of the week.

Olympics – Glad to see American athletes doing so well. But NBC’s coverage is pretty lousy. No surprise there.

Red Sox – Spring training begins.

Bureaucracy – The tune is the same. The lyrics have changed. Now “It’ll save money” will get almost any idea accepted with little or no thought and no real proof of savings. Just like speaking out against our loss of freedoms was “unpatriotic,” speaking out against ill-conceived “money saving” plans is now considered “irresponsible.”

Weather – Yet another storm coming this weekend.

Ups and Downs of the week.

Michael Schumacher- Back in Formula One. It’s going to be a good year to watch.

Homework – I swear, no more classes for me after I’m done with this program. Ever.

Video-calls – Got it set up on my laptop. I’ve had a few very clear face-to-face conversations with my friend Dana back in MA.

Weather forecasting – Still a best guess scenario. Hard to even call it a science.

All Wheel Drive (AWD) – Sure was nice having it today.

Ups and Downs of the week.

In-car iPod – Got the aux input installed in the X5. Love having 200+ songs at my disposal in the car. Next up, the Z4.

Illinois politics – For years both sides have been making a mess out of this state’s economy. Now everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else. Pitiful.

Photomatix Pro 3  – Very cool HDR software. Stay tuned for pics.

The NFL – Do they really think they own the phrase “Who dat?”

Internet forums -More than once I’ve been saved by info found on these various forums. The wiring diagram for the aux input in my X5 was wrong, so it didn’t work. But someone on the X5 forum had endured the same problem and had figured it out and posted the solution. Saved me a trip to the dealer.

Ups and Downs of the week.

Another year older -Ah well, better than the alternative.

 Weather – Brrrrrrr. I’m really beginning to hate the cold.

 Red Sox – Building a nice team for next year after all.

Illinois politicians – They’d gladly see the state go bankrupt if it would benefit their own careers. Losers, all of them.

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.

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.

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.

  Reality TV – It seems to bring morons out of the woodwork. First the Balloon Boy’s family and now the White House party crashers. What a bunch of egotistical losers. And on a related note… 

 White House security – Talk about a major screwup.

 Runflat Tires – Had a tire blow out this week. I must have hit a piece of metal or glass and it sliced the edge of the tread and sidewall. I heard a muffled pop, but felt no change on the handling of the car. Only the tire pressure warning on the dash alerted me to a problem. I drove another 15 miles to a tire dealer.

  Runflat Tires – These things are seriously expensive. It cost me $489 to replace the blown tire, plus another $45 for a rental car because the tire had to be ordered. If I had been using regular tires, I would have needed a tow. But in the end, it may have been cheaper.

Ups and Downs of the week.

 Adobe Bridge – Neat program. You can batch rename images, add copyright info, and do a ton more. Very handy.

  Ft. Hood/Orlando shooters – Why can’t these pathetic souls just take their own lives and leave others alone? 

 Weather – Finally some decent autumn weather. Mid-60’s today, 70’s for the weekend. Lots of sun.

  Yankmees – The Steinbrenners finally got their money’s worth.

Ups and Downs of the week.

 Vacation – Our ten days in Germany and Austria were excellent. I have a million pictures to post later, but for now, here are a few pics and a video from the Dom zu Salzburg in Salzburg, Austria.

You may recognize the background in this next pic from the webcam stills I post every now and then. It was great being there in person.

I’ll have many more pics later after I’ve done some editing and uploading. Below is a video I shot inside the Dom zu Salzburg during a program called LichtNacht (Light Night) on our second night in Salzburg, Austria. Salzburg is an amazing city with history everywhere you turn.

  Weather – Second wettest October in history here. We may even set a new record. So far 19 days of rain this month. 

 Phillies – They took one game in the Bronx. I hope they take all three at home and send the Yankmees off to play golf for the winter.

Sixt Car Rental – We returned our rental car on Tuesday evening. The attendant there walked around the car meticulously inspecting it for damage, even going so far as to wipe off some road grime to check for scratches underneath. He found no damage. Our receipt clearly states there was no damage on the car. But now, several days later, Sixt is claiming there is a dent and scratches on the trunk and bumper. This despite the fact that the attendant and I stood at the rear of the car while he finalized the inspection and neither of us saw any such damage. It should also be noted that upon picking the car up initially, the car was a long walk from the rental desk at the airport and there was no one around to inspect the car with me then. I did, however, look the car over and saw no damage. This is an entirely bogus claim. Still, I checked with Visa services about coverage and they said they’d cover any claims and that this type of claim was not unusual. It seems that Sixt knows they can make a few extra bucks off bogus claims when the car is covered under the credit card insurance. I would advise Americans traveling in Europe to avoid Sixt car rental as it appears that they will make claims after the car is returned despite the client having a receipt verifying no damage.

  Home – Good to be here after a long trip.