Sacred Music Friday: Open Your Ears, O Faithful People
Posted: April 29, 2016 Filed under: Music Leave a commentOpen Your Ears, O Faithful People, First-Plymouth Church Lincoln Nebraska, the congregation, Doane College Women’s Chorale, and women of the Plymouth Choir.
the typewriter
Posted: April 28, 2016 Filed under: Photography, Writing Leave a commentI don’t miss my typewriter. I’m a terrible typist. I always have been. And it’s infinitely easier to correct errors on a computer than it is on a typewriter.
Still, the typewriter was an essential part of my life for many years. My first typewriter was a gift from my parents and grandparents before I was even in high school. It was, of course, indispensable when I was in college. And I used a typewriter for many years after college. The first computer I had where I could actually compose and print things out was my Apple IIe in 1986 or 1987. That pretty much spelled the end of my using a typewriter.
Still, it’s fun to look back. This photo essay of writers at their typewriters was actually published in The Guardian in 2011, but I only recently came across it. It’s a lot of fun to scroll through. What is interesting is how modest most of the typewriters are. Only Hunter S. Thompson is shown with a powerful IBM Selectric. (And by the way, the spell checker in my blog tool didn’t recognize that once well-known brand name.)
I managed with a typewriter for years, but I much prefer the technology I have today.
Broasted Chicken
Posted: April 27, 2016 Filed under: SoCal Life Leave a commentWhen I was growing up here in Hemet Broasted Chicken was an important part of my childhood.
Broasted Chicken is deep fried under pressure using proprietary equipment made by the Broaster company. It is not a chain or franchise, but rather individual shops buy the equipment and use the recipe provided by the company.
Hemet Broaster was located in a small strip mall, the same one that was occupied for a time by the barber shop that my dad, brother, and I used. It was strictly take-out. There was no seating for dining in. We gave them a lot of business. Sometimes it was just a Friday when Mom didn’t want to cook. Sometimes it was a special occasion. I had many, many birthdays with Broasted Chicken. Perhaps even all of them, from the time we returned to Hemet from Barstow when I was in the fourth grade up until high school.
When Terry and I returned to Hemet last year my brother informed me that a pizza place on the East side of town had Broasted Chicken. We wasted little time in checking it out. It was just as we had remembered it. And it was hotter, since we ate it as soon as it came out of the broaster rather than taking it home.
Recently we learned that the place had a new owner, but the new owner’s ad still featured Broasted Chicken. And the fellow working there was the same guy as before. All was well.
It’s good to take time to be grateful for those smaller, familiar things.
doing the right thing
Posted: April 26, 2016 Filed under: SoCal Life Leave a commentWhen we were in Gilroy we had a combined yard waste and food waste Toter. While we were told that all that would be turned to composed I read in a newspaper item that it really went to a landfill. Sad.
Here in Hemet our trash and recycle company just informed us that we can now add food waste to our yard waste container here. With the company’s state of the art facility they tell that they now can generate natural gas and fertilizer from food and yard waste.
For us, it’s a bit more work to save food waste separately and put it in the yard waste container as opposed to the trash. But only a bit. And we’re used to doing it anyway. Easy enough to get back into the habit. If we’re reducing what goes into the landfill then it’s well worth the effort.
Besides, they gave us this cool new food scrap container!
scratching my head
Posted: April 25, 2016 Filed under: Web/Tech Leave a commentLast week I needed the catharsis of posting a rant here about my struggle with one of the better known defects in Windows 10. The Start menu and Notifications were inaccessible. Where I left things was that a reinstall of Windows 10 solved the problem for the time being.
That lasted a few days and the problem recurred late last week. I used my go-to attempted solution of reverting to a restore point from two days earlier. It worked, I was happy to discover. Until this morning, when my Start menu and notifications were once again inaccessible. I started to try the restore point solution again, but then decided that I was tired of this. I set up a new account and was prepared to begin the slow process of moving everything over to that account.
I went off to take a shower, fix lunch, and watch a recorded episode of Sara’s Weeknight Meals. When I came back, the Notifications pane was open and displaying on the right-hand side of my screen. The Start menu was working fine.
Who knows how long that will last, but I will leave well enough alone for now.
As I said last week, if Microsoft were liable for lost productivity it would be a bankrupt company.
But I’m not prepared to spend the money on an Apple desktop and I’m unwilling to use a cloud-based Chrome thin client. Linux does not have the applications I need. Therefore, Microsoft is what I have to work with.
And so it goes.
Folk Music Friday: Somos El Barco
Posted: April 22, 2016 Filed under: Music Leave a commentI’ve shared this song before, but I really enjoyed this particular version. I’ve never been able to find video online of Pete Seeger doing this, only YouTube videos made from audio recordings. These folks, however, seem to have a film of Pete singing the song running behind them. If you have a link to actual video of Pete performing this song please send it along.
admitting when something doesn’t work
Posted: April 21, 2016 Filed under: SoCal Life Leave a commentSince we live in a gated community we need a transponder to get back inside the gate. Two transponders came with the house. One had never been used. One had. I took the former, Terry took the latter. Terry put new Velcro on hers. Mine being new there was no need to.
Now here’s the odd thing. Terry’s has always been fine in her windshield. Last summer the adhesive on my Velcro would come loose in the heat. Then it started happening this spring when the temperatures were mild but when the sun was shining bright. Aggravating.
I began looking around and I observed that most residents didn’t have their transponders attached to their windshields.
So I decided to take the advice from the Hawaiian song “Just Hang Loose.”
Don’t try to fight it,
there ain’t no use.
I removed the transponder, cleaned the adhesive off the windshield, and put the transponder in what would be the ash tray, except that I have a non-smoking car without a cigarette lighter.
Now I simply pull out the transponder when I approach the gate.
It works.
1980’s television
Posted: April 20, 2016 Filed under: Television Leave a commentI’ve always been a 1970s kind of guy. I have never had a lot to say about the 1980s. The 1980s began with the Russia
n invasion of Afghanistan and ended with the death of both my first wife and my mother in April 1989. We had to put up with Reagan throughout. You’ll notice that this blog has a category for the 1970’s but not for the 1980s.
The other day, however, Terry was watching an episode of the CNN series on the 1980s and they were discussing the television of the decade. There was a lot of good TV in the 1980s.
- Golden Girls (1985-1992). Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, Estelle Getty. What fun.
- Family Ties (1982–1989). I loved being annoyed at Michael J. Fox as the stuffy, Republican Alex Keaton, who caused his formerly hippie parents great consternation.
- Murphy Brown (1988–1998). Candice Bergen was great at the lead of a marvelous ensemble cast.
- Cagney & Lacey (1981–1988). I never watched the show, but it was groundbreaking in that it centered around a team of two female police detectives.
In the 1980s David Letterman came into his own on late night television and we got the SCTV (Second City Television) comedy show.
I have to admit the 1980s was a good time for entertaining television.
a rant
Posted: April 19, 2016 Filed under: Web/Tech Leave a commentThis is a rant. About Microsoft.
If you are not in a mood to read a rant (and I don’t blame you) please skip today’s blog. If you enjoy reading about how our major tech companies are totally uncaring, or if you have experienced pain on account of Microsoft (or another technology company) and are in a “misery loves company” mood, please read on.
Last fall I upgraded my Windows 7 desktop and laptop to Windows 10. Perhaps that was a mistake. Terry justifiably insisted on keeping her computer on Windows 7.
There is a known problem in Windows 10 in which the Start menu does not respond. You can’t access it. I resolved the problem on my laptop by creating a new user. It’s been fine since.
On my desktop the issue would sometimes arise, but going back to a restore point of a couple of days ago would always solve the problem. Last week the problem recurred but that did not solve the problem.
I therefore jumped through all the hoops posted in response to people with the same question on answers.microsoft.com. None of them worked. So I posted my own question listing everything I tried and asked what to do next. The response I got was to download a system image, burn it to a DVD, and the run a particular repair option. Problem was that particular repair option was not there.
Now one of the things I tried was to create a new user account, but the utility specified in one of the answers told me that it did not work with my version of Windows 10. Digging further, I saw that I could create a new user account from the command prompt. I had, in fact, done that for my laptop, but I had forgotten that. I did so. Everything was functional, so I went to a tab in the control panel as one of the instructions stated to use the use copy profile function. The Copy To button was grayed out. Turns out it only works for the default user profile. So I manually copied my files to the new account. The Start menu then failed to work in that new account.
Sigh.
The next recommended option was to do a Reset. That would keep all of my data but delete all applications. Not optimal.
So I had that DVD which I burned. I could do a complete reinstall of Windows 10. “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” I put it in my DVD drive, clicked install, and held my breath. After the complete Win 10 reinstall the Start menu was working again. At least for now.
If Microsoft were liable for lost productivity it would be a bankrupt company.
End of rant.
don’t rely on hymns for your religious education
Posted: April 18, 2016 Filed under: Episcopal thoughts, Music, Religion Leave a commentIn the Episcopal church the gradual hymn is the one sung before and after the Gospel reading. On Easter 3 the gradual hymn at Good Shepherd Episcopal was not one in the hymnal but was printed in the bulletin. It conflated the disciple John, the author of the Gospel of John, and the author of Revelation.
The disciple John was a Galilean Jew who was in his prime about 30 AD and spoke Aramaic. The Gospel of John was written about 90 AD by someone who was very literate in Greek. We don’t even know that his name was John. That name was assigned to the book by the early church, though some commentators like to say the phrase “the disciple whom Jesus loved” was the author’s own autobiographical reference. Most scholarship does not accept that, however.
The book of Revelation was written by John of Patmos about the same time as the Gospel of John or perhaps a few years later. It was almost certainly a different individual.
Then there’s the Christmas carol:
The snow lay on the ground,
The stars shone bright,
When Christ our Lord was born
Snow? In the Holy Land? And in any case if we accept Jesus being kept in a manger and shepherds watching their fields by night, Jesus would have been born in the spring or summer. December 25 for Christmas was a fairly late adoption.
Don’t rely on hymns for your religious education.
my point being 