cemeteries and taxes

I had an odd dream in the early hours this morning.  I was in a cemetery, and I was distressed that my parents were, for some reason, buried there in separate graves, some definite distance from each other.  I pictured their spirits looking for each other, but sadly not being able to find each other.  It was quite disturbing.

I woke up to remind myself that, indeed, they are buried side-by-side, in a little cemetery on the other side of the country.  My father joined the crowd there a long time ago, my mother arriving a couple of years ago, having survived without him for over 25 years.

They are surrounded by their own parents and contemporaries - the folks that comprised my little Upstate New York home town. The people who paid their taxes to educate and protect me, back in the 50's and 60's, before I, like so many of my schoolmates, moved away.

They paid for the public library where I spent countless hours exploring, discovering everything from H.G. Wells to the Tao Teh Ching.  The library where I was so well-known that the librarian gave me free-range in the stacks, and let me poke around in boxes of unfiled books in the back, since there was not enough shelf-space for them.

In my public school, there was an abundance of music classes - singing, band, music theory, choir. I gravitated to all of them. Most remarkable of all, my town paid the salary (how much could it have been?) for a wonderful, curious woman named Miss Ewing (this is long before 'Ms.'), who arrived in our classrooms regularly, wheeling in her record-player, for a class called 'Music Appreciation'.

She made sure we knew our 'Nutcracker', 'Hall of the Mountain King', 'William Tell Overture', and other obvious classical kid-pleasers, but she also made sure we could identify each statement of the main figure in the Bach 'Fugue in G Minor'. Can you imagine, in today's world, a school deeming this to be an important, essential part of 'education'?

I'm not going to assert that the folks of my parent's generation happily paid their taxes, fervently believing that our little town would be a better place if all the kids knew how to spell Tchaikovsky (I didn't have to look that up) or that the Lone Ranger theme was actually written by an Italian guy named Rossini.

And that's the point of taxes.  It's a simple notion, to pool our resources for the Common Good without knowing exactly what the long-term benefits will be, but trusting that investing in the future is better than starving it.

And, make no mistake, we are starving the future by continuing a system where obscene amounts of money are devoted to shallow politics, coming from shallow Military, Petroleum, and Financial interests whose only concern is to buy shallow people to promote their narrow, short-sighted, highly profitable goals, while the bridges and roads are crumbling, the public-school education of my generation is passe, and the media fog is determined that serious questions about who we are as a society are pepper-sprayed into silence.

If today's Republicans had been active in Elmira, New York in 1955, perhaps the title of this blog would be 'just an aging slob'.

Instead, I am humming Bach as I remember public-school heroes like Miss Ewing, Mrs. Ripley, Mr. Holmes, Mrs. Chatfield, Mr. Bentley, and Mr. Thayer (who, I see, is still at it, 43 years after I tried to understand why so many of his choral choices mentioned Jesus).

8 am on an October morning

I was down in my cellar office early this morning.  I had finished the routine stuff: my overnight email, my traditional bowl of cereal, and cup of coffee. 

I was scanning my frequently-read blogs for any interesting news or opinions.  I was putting off getting on with some database programming that I hope to flesh out this morning, when I heard Sasha, our surprisingly-large black cat, upstairs by the back door, asking to be let out.

I walked upstairs, poured a second cup of coffee, and noticed the clear bright sunlight streaming into our yard, opened the back door and, with Sasha, stepped outside, still in my bathrobe.

We live less than five miles from the heart of downtown Portland, but in an old house built in the 1930's, in what realtors would call a 'park-like setting'.  As Adrian Monk would say, "it's a blessing, and a curse."

Right next to the house is an enormous old maple that we recently had thinned out, so, for the first time in years, it now has an open, visible, fractal structure.  The sun, still quite low, had just cleared the line of trees to the east, so the tree was bathed in that wonderful light that happens this time of year, and is especially obvious when, unlike the past few days, the morning sky is clear and blue.

I paused.

As the sound of Sasha's collar bell receded as he headed off to survey his territory, I noticed the bird-song and the swirling birds criss-crossing the scene every few seconds.  I sipped coffee.

I felt the sunlight on my face, and marveled at the power of nuclear reactions 93 million miles away being able to be felt here. This led to a cascade of thoughts, ending with the marvel that those same nuclear reactions made possible all the green things and animals (including me) in the scene, not to mention the ancient fossil fuel that had been extracted, refined, and delivered to my house, to warm the water in my coffee cup.

Yes, I thought, the Sun is the source of all Life on Earth, and it's entirely sensible that the first religion should be to honor the Sun. I feel this is how religions got started - one Sun god.  Humans being as we are, we then have the inevitable development of some men (or women, but I bet it was men) who convince others that they know how to insure that the Sun will definitely return to its summer strength, as it appears to be dying every mid-December. There is nothing like a priest(ess). 

But I digress.

It's a lovely morning, after several very damp, grey days.  I have work to do, clients to visit, and chores to tick-off my list.  It's mid-October already and I am approaching my 60th birthday next month.

I genuinely enjoy coffee.  I genuinely enjoy my cereal in the morning.  I appreciate the Sun and don't feel the need for an earthbound perspective on how it got there.  The Universe is, apparently, a very large place and our local star is apparently located on the outer fringes of a very large galaxy, that is only one of a zillion others. That's OK.

We have cats and birds and trees and each other, and miles to go before we sleep. We've had Kurt Vonnegut and George Carlin. I'm happy to be here. Nothing lasts. 

times have changed

Remember back in High School Civics class (for people born after 1970, that was a mandatory class where the fundamentals of American Democracy were explained - things like 'promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty' - you know, that charmingly antiquated stuff, but I digress...), when you were taught that the US Senate is the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body”.

Heck, that phrase “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” is right there on the US Senate's official web site.  Yessir, that's my Senate.

I think we can safely retire that moniker (which now can be spoken only with utter cynicism), now that 100% of Senate Republicans voted to not even bring the Obama Jobs bill up for discussion/debate.  The bastards.

The US Congress, both houses, have been taken hostage by a hostile force, that has committed itself to subverting the President (even this wishy-washy one) as well as the People, in order to protect its benefactors from any attempt to undo the damage done to this republic since the days of St. Ronnie, of blessed (and utterly distorted) memory.

Shame, shame, shame on them, and shame on us for letting it happen.

It all boils down to this:  November 2012 is our last chance to rid ourselves of these traitors, and, frankly, given the compromised integrity of the electoral process, the only way it's going to happen, short of violent revolution, is for a vote turnout so massive that its mandate cannot be stolen away, again.

In the meantime, millions of suffering Americans are not going to get any reason to hope for any halt to the downward national slide into desperation, for another year, and, long before then, there should be an 'Occupy' encampment in every town, filled with angry people looking for someone to blame. 

Haven't we seen this movie before?

more techie travails

So, after working a whole bunch of hours yesterday, did I take the evening off and relax? Of course not.

After dinner, I went down to the computer dungeon and tried 'one last thing', and disaster ensued.

I have an Access app that links to another Access database (trivial) but it also uploads data to a SQL Server database. I am using SQL Server Express on my development PC, and it works great.

However, I am using Windows Authentication, so no Userid/Password is required for the data access - it just works. In the morning's conference call, one of the attendees envisioned a scenario where the app would need to connect to a SQL Server database over the internet, requiring Userid/Password authentication.

Fair enough, I thought it would be 'interesting' to create a 2nd System ODBC DSN for the same local database that I'm already testing with, but this time specifying password authentication, just to see what would happen. Not only did it not work, but, suddenly, my entire SQL Server instance was throwing error messages and the original stuff was no longer working. In fact, SQL Server Management Studio could no longer connect to SQL Server.

YIKES!!!!!!! I broke it.

Believe me, ladies and germs, when I tell you that I spent the next 4 hours screaming (silently) as I tried everything I could think of, uninstalling, downloading fresh install packages, installing them, failing, uninstalling them, etc. In utter defeat and total failure, I shut the computer down and went to bed.

This morning, as I awoke from uneasy dreams, I did not find myself transformed into a giant cockroach, thank goodness, but I did come downstairs, try again, hit the Google, and found one guy on one site that recommended checking whether TCPIP was enabled within the SQL Server configuration. Huh?

Needless to say, that worked, but my databases were not showing up. Another 15 minutes of messing around and, lo and behold, everything got restored, and I am now back where I was at 6 pm last night, when I prepared to 'try one little thing to see if it works'.

Is there a lesson in all this? Probably not.

In the meantime, does anyone have any experience writing an Access app that connects to a SQL Server database that was set up with 'Mixed Mode' authentication? Anyone? Hello?

The fun never ends.

UPDATE:  In case you are unsure exactly what 'travails' means, here is the precise definition:

Definition of TRAVAIL. 1. a : work especially of a painful or laborious nature : toil b : a physical or mental exertion or piece of work : task, effort c : agony, torment ...

occupy portland - lead-off rally

I arrived at the rally site around 11:30, with a hot Vietnamese coffee (with condensed milk) warding off the chill.

There were maybe a couple of hundred people milling around, but, by noon, there were thousands, with more pouring in by the minute.

In short, it was a lovely, HUGE crowd, all cooperating and interested in a safe-but-loud statement. There were lots of creative signs, and folks of all ages.

I took a few photos - here's one, showing just one tiny portion of the crowd, which extended on all sides and behind me:

The plan was to have speeches for over 2 hours before marching thru the streets of downtown. I left after a bit, not ready to wait until 2:30 to get moving.

All the local media was there - here's hoping that nobody causes trouble, and that the coverage captures the energy and scope of the crowd.

geeky tip-of-the-day

Some months ago, I built a project for a client that pushes Access data into a SQL Server database. For development, I installed SQL Server Express and it worked great.

Now another client needs something quite similar so I went to start up the SQL Server Express service and Windows said "sorry, I can't start it." A check of the Event Viewer revealed a couple of files that had been compressed, the last time I ran the 'Disk Cleanup' function, and SQL Server could not deal with those (critical) data files being compressed.

So, the problem is how to decompress files that have been compressed by Disk Cleanup. No, you can't use WinZip!

It took 20 minutes of internet searching until I found a thread discussing this, where one guy casually posted the following in a long list of comments:

1). Click Start
2). Click Run and type “cmd” to open a command prompt
3). Type “cd \” at the prompt to goto the root directory
4). Type “compact /u /s /a /q /i *.*” to decompress all files in all directories
You can run that command in ANY directory and it will decompress.

It took a while to use the DOS window to drill down to the appropriate directory (I always have to lookup the parm for showing the 8.3 names (dir /x), but I pasted in the above command, there was a heart-stopping pause of about a minute, then an 'all files decompressed' message.

Voila - the Service started up as normal and I am off and running. It's weird things like this that suck up an hour here and there, when you're trying to get real work done.

adventures with the cable guys - moving forward

The specialist recommended by the Xfinity guys stopped by this morning, as promised. He was the quintessential grizzled old guy, who has seen everything.

He walked thru the house and listened as I explained the two routes into the basement that I had discussed with the young guys (who threw up their hands and said they didn't know how to make either work, guaranteed).

45 Minutes later, he was done, having taken a 3rd path, entering the basement a couple of feet from the aborted one that they explored the other day. Labor + materials + 30 years experience = $55. Such a deal.

So, now we're back on track for the full install, which is scheduled for next Tuesday. For the record, the guy's name is Ken Taliaferro, at 503-453-5025. Call him for any kind of custom wiring problems - glad I did.

adventures with the cable guys - the saga begins

So, an Xfinity (i.e. Comcast) guy came to the door the other day, and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse, for cable TV and high-speed Internet. We've been pretty happy with Qwest DSL for over 10 years, so this is a big change.

It wasn't too hard to figure out where the cable needs to enter the house, to connect to the TV. The problem is where I ideally want the modem and wireless router to live, down in the basement, so I can connect my main PC directly to the router via ethernet, and have the WiFi centrally located in the house.

I've spent MANY hours thinking about various alternatives, and believe I had a scheme that involves only one risky hole-drilling, up from the playroom ceiling and, hopefully, into an enclosed cabinet a few enclosed feet from where the TV box will live.

Also, we are a far distance from the street, so just getting the line from the street to our house is a challenge, to comply with the many regs they need to follow.

The Xfinity guy arrived, we spoke about the complications, and he immediately called for reinforcements.

After an hour, we all agreed that there were three possible routes to get the line into the basement, and, of the two that did not involve destroying the clean look of a (relatively) freshly-remodeled room, both had difficulties.

Eventually, they gave me the name of the local wiring guru, and he's coming over Thursday to assess the situation. They apologized and left.

End of Phase I. Phase II tomorrow!

fun with Microsoft (the never-ending saga)

Many of my clients have upgraded to Office 2010 and several users have reported that SOME forms do not display correctly (as they do in Access 2003 and Access 2007). Clearly, Microsoft changed SOMETHING in Access 2010 in how Tab controls are drawn (in 2010, tabs are sometimes invisible, preventing the user from switching from one tab page to another).

But, before I could begin to delve into this, I had to install my (totally legal) Office 2010.

I spent many hours trying to get Office 2010 installed, while leaving intact my Office 2003 apps as well as Groove 2007. I was never able to do this, without the install obliterating Groove (my workspaces were unaffected, but the GROOVE.EXE program and associated stuff was removed).

At one point, I had both Access 2003 and Access 2010 launchable, but, alas, Groove was gone and my Groove install CD said it couldn't reinstall until I uninstalled it, and there was nothing to uninstall. I ended up uninstalling Office 2010, then reinstalling Groove, and, after many hours, I was back where I started.

That was yesterday. Hours of fun.

This morning, I bit the bullet and told Office 2010 to REPLACE all existing Office apps. The Office 2010 install appears to hang indefinitely once the progress bar is entirely filled in, but I patiently waited (almost an hour?) until it actually finished normally.

The Office 2003 apps are indeed gone, and Groove 2007 is replaced by its rebranded successor ('Sharepoint Workspace', which, ironically, is still launched with GROOVE.EXE). Best of all, it had no trouble communicating with the Groove 2007 install on my laptop. This was a major relief.

All programs now appeared to work and I finally got into the guts of Access 2010 to find out why SOME of my forms were not displaying correctly.

Turns out that Microsoft made a small change between Access 2007 and 2010. In a 2010 Tab control, apparently, at least one tab page MUST be defined as Visible = True. I sometimes use the technique, when the tabs to be displayed depend on the context in which the form is opened, of defining all Tab pages as Visible = False, and programatically turning on the page(s) I want the user to see, during Form_Load.

Again, this works great in all versions of Access PRIOR TO 2010. Making the first tab page Visible = True (and then adjusting the code accordingly) permits everything to function exactly as expected.

Thanks again, Microsoft.

android - final hurdle resolved!

So, to recap, connecting the Captivate to my Windows 7 laptop via USB easily mounted it as a drive, and permitted browsing folders, creating new folders, and copying files.

However, kept getting 'USB device not recognized' on my XP desktop. Uninstalled and reinstalled all relevant drivers, but no change.

One commenter in one thread somewhere out there suggested changing USB cables. I knew the cable worked OK on the laptop, so it definitely was OK. Another guy said to try a different USB port.

'What difference could that make?', I asked myself.

Plugged the computer end of the USB cable into a front panel port, and everything worked great, soon bringing up a normal window onto the phone's file system. If you have a rational explanation for this, I'd love to hear it.

This concludes the Quest for New Phone saga. Here's a recap:

Step 1 - issues with my old WM 6.5 phone

Step 2 - let's try a Windows 7 phone - oops!

Step 3 - maybe Android will come to the rescue

Step 4 - Captivate is promising, but major setbacks cause anxiety

Step 5 - maybe everything will be OK, after all

This post - everything may actually be OK, after all.

android - break on thru to the Other Side!

Thanks to Dave for suggesting two things:

1) Before I get totally frustrated about the Captivate NOT being unable to be seen by my main (Windows XP) Desktop as a drive (for copying files), why not try it with Windows 7?

I connected the phone via USB to my Win 7 laptop, and it just worked. Not only was I able to copy an Excel file to the phone, but, when I opened the 'QuickOffice' software on the phone, it instantly saw the Excel file and opened it as normal. This is a big thing.

2) Before I get totally frustrated about issues syncing with my USA.NET email account, and having the UCWeb browser not able to do a Send when accessing that account via WAP, why not just attach to my gmail account (that I have automatically picking up USA.NET mail). That worked great for offline reading, and the UCWeb browser displays gmail wonderfully, when connected via WiFi.

One gmail feature worked great on mail sent from the phone, that I was sure would fail. When I send mail from gmail on a computer, I want the sender to show up as 'blavine@usa.net', my primary mail service. I sent mail to myself from gmail on the phone, and, sure enough, the sender was stamped as I want, not as my gmail address. This was, for once, a pleasant surprise.

So, after a lot of teeth-grinding and imprecation-muttering, I popped my sim back into the Captivate, and will work with it for a few days.

Now I need to find out how to get Android to see the MP3 file, that I copied to the phone, as a selection as my ring-tone. How hard can it be?

All absolutely-critical functions are now working, and I can tinker with getting my XP computer to recognize the Captivate at my leisure, of which you must be thinking I apparently have far too much.

android - trouble in paradise

I had gotten so many things working on the new Android phone, that I decided to pop in my sim and start using it as my main phone, since there were only a couple of functions I had not yet tested.

This morning, I set up the connection to my POP3 email account, and it started downloading messages (over WiFi). So far so good. Unfortunately, it proceeded to download ALL messages in the entire mailbox, not just the current Inbox.

I had to keep downloading and deleting messages, going back to 2007. That was cumbersome, but I eventually got to the point where it downloaded two new messages, that had just arrived. This was exciting, especially since it was clear that, unlike the unfortunate Windows Phone 7 POP3 client, this did NOT cause messages to be deleted from the Server (there is a visible switch controlling this in Android). I even replied to one, saw it in the Outbox, and successfully sent it. This was big - the POP email client was fully functional.

So I thought.

But wait - a couple more messages arrived in my server Inbox, but the phone email client was UNABLE to see them and bring them in. This is bad, but I figured I could resolve it later. Onward...

Next, I wanted to connect the phone to my computer (Win XP) via USB, and see if I can drag and drop files. No go. A quick Google search brought up this unfortunate news. I assume it's true, and I will have to, once again, wipe the phone clean, resync my Contacts, configure POP3, add the couple of apps I've installed, etc.

This is a hassle, and I am not amused.

Finally, I had previously tested using the UCWeb browser to access my web email, using its great implementation of the WAP interface. I had previously read mail, but had not done a 'Reply'. Everything else had worked great, but imagine my surprise when I hit the Send button, but the cursor highlights the address line (which is correct) and the Send does not happen.

Why would it fail at that point? Grrrrrr.

So, where I am now, two days into the Android phone, is a phone that almost but not quite does everything my old Windows Mobile 6.5 phone does. I have not been able to connect to my PC, the POP email client isn't picking up new messages, and the browser interface to my email won't do a 'send'.

The camera is great, though, BUT my sim is now going back into my Tilt 2, and it's back to Square One with the Captivate. If this continues, I will have to dump it and, finally, try a (wait for it...) iPhone.

Of course, I could probably get a great deal on a different WM6.5 phone, but is horizontal progress really progress? Nothing comes painlessly in these modern times.

the phone fun continues

So, having concluded that the Windows Phone 7 Samsung Focus just wasn't going to work for me, I went back to searching craigslist.

Yesterday afternoon, I saw an ad for the other phone I've had my eye on (Samsung Captivate). One popped up at 3:30 pm for a reasonable price (I've been watching), I called the seller at 4, was at her house an hour later, and bought it.

It's running Android 2.2. Maybe it was my time spent with the Focus, but I found the interface pretty intuitive, once I figured out how to invoke the Settings menu.

I wiped it and proceeded to play around with it a little, this morning. In record time, I had brought over all my Contacts, had synced with my Google Calendar, and had downloaded from the Android Marketplace both a free widget for turning off Cellular Data AND my favorite WAP-compliant browser, that I had been using under Windows Mobile 6.5.

The first thing I checked on the Captivate is that it's easy to configure the email sync function to NEVER delete server mail when you delete it on the phone. This option is present in Windows Mobile 6.5, but NOT in Windows Phone 7. Why? Did the WP7 development team decide that the 6.5 guys had given users too much power, or did it simply never occur to them that this option is critical for some of us (there have been many online complaints about it).

Unfortunately, my email service is currently down for maintenance (quite unusual), so I didn't complete the mail account creation. That's the last unknown essential function that, if successful, means I am good to go with this phone.

This morning, I posted a new craigslist ad for the Focus and, 10 minutes ago, sold it for $10 more than I had paid.

At any rate, I believe all my show-stopper difficulties with the Focus will disappear with the Captivate. If this is misplaced optimism, you'll read all about it here, and see another craigslist ad shortly thereafter. Stay tuned.

Windows Phone 7 - the Verdict

So, I've had a Windows 7 Phone (Samsung Focus) for four days, with the goal of getting it set up to do everything my old Windows 6.5 phone did, and more.

Let me say that there are certainly many features that I liked. The interface is cool and very responsive, and options offered for most functions were logical and easy to configure. Installing applications from the Marketplace is totally simple.

But, to spoil what little suspense remains here, I'm not going to keep this phone.

There were three deal-breakers for me:

* The POP/IMAP setup certainly connected to my web email without any difficulty, but (unlike the Winddows 6.5 mail client), there is no option to leave email on the server when you delete it on the phone. This is a killer for me - good thing I tested it with one deleted message before I accidentally purged my entire inbox! Strike one.

* My email service provides a VERY lean, cool WAP interface, and the free UCWeb browser does a masterful job of presenting that interface, under WM 6.5. Alas, the developer does not yet have a WP7 version, and Internet Explorer for WP7 is confused by the WAP instructions. Furthermore, viewing my email's normal web interface with IE on WP7 was unusable. Strike two.

* No Google Maps for WP7. The 'Maps' application that is included is OK, but really lacks a lot (no links to restaurant reviews, satellite view, etc.). I love Google Maps. Strike three.


I have a couple of other quibbles, and some things were certainly extremely nice (SkyDrive/Windows Live integration is excellent, not surprisingly). Phone call quality was excellent, and the Focus attaches to my home WiFi two seconds after turning it on.

Final verdict on Windows Phone 7: for me, sadly, it's a thumbs down.

Next up: an Android 2.2 phone.

adventures in phoning

So, after watching craigslist cell-phone ads intensely for the past couple of months, I leaped into the unknown two days ago. Here's the setup:

I have been on AT&T since my Enron days (my first cell phone). We have 4 phones on our family plan, so that makes switching to another carrier a challenge, especially with Dylan living in Ashland (we pay for his phone, in the curious hope that he will call us often - ha ha).

Furthermore, since I have been a customer so long, I am grandfathered into a situation where I am NOT required to purchase a data plan, UNLESS I buy a phone from AT&T and renew my expired contract.

I am generally quite happy to rely on WiFi for internet access on my phone (have had a 'smart' phone for several years). If I am somewhere where I absolutely need to get on the internet, I either find an open WiFi site, or ask one of my ubiqitous iPhone friends to look it up for me.

There are two significant benefits to this: I save $300/year on Data Plan charges, and email I send from my phone does not have the highly-annoying 'Sent from my iPhone' signature.

I was extremely happy with my Windows Mobile 6.1 HTC Tilt - it did everything very well, including taking pretty sharp photos and videos. It was set up exactly as I liked it, and was stolen in Costa Rica last December. No identify-theft took place, but I lost a bunch of photos and videos of Zacky.

I replaced it with a Tilt 2, running Windows Mobile 6.5, purchased from a craigslist person for an amazing $65.

Over the course of the past few months, I had it set up exactly as I liked, with effortless Calendar sync (using a 3rd party tool), a free WAP-enabled browser for my email service's very-lean-very-nice mobile interface, the (free) Freda eBook reader (populated with many free epub files, both downloaded from Project Gutenberg and created myself, using this wonderful web service which permits you to convert Word files to epub), and a cool Task Manager, to easily kill background processes that were consuming memory.

Really, I like Windows Mobile 6.5 on the Tilt 2 a lot. It also has an FM Radio and Google Maps, not to mention Word and Excel. Moving files to it (using ActiveSync via USB) is trivial. Managing files and editing the registry is easy. Vertical scrolling via a finger-swipe is smooth. Using a stylus to tap the keyboard is pretty fast and accurate. All in all, a pretty darn good phone.

The only drawbacks to the Tilt 2 are:

1) lousy camera - photos always out of focus
2) decreasing battery life over the last month
3) unable to see my home WiFi from places in the house where the original Tilt worked great
4) increasing problems with AT&T phone signals here at the house - did they change something?
5) beat-up case and somewhat-scratched glass cover (my fault)

So, moving to a new phone went onto my To Do list a couple of months ago - no hurry. I just knew I wanted a good craigslist deal, to maintain my don't-need-no-stinkin'-Data-Plan cheapness (and minimizing my internet-data-consumption footprint, unlike all you folks out there who are using the internet to listen to the freaking radio and continually update the current temperature, for God's sake, but don't get me started).

I knew I didn't want an iPhone, since, on principal, I must resist Apple fascism, no matter how good their products are (as you all keep telling me, ad nauseum).

That meant either an Android or another Windows phone. Since Microsoft is getting props for Windows Phone 7's innovative interface, I figured it would be nice to go that route, rather than get another Windows Mobile 6.5 phone.

So, as I said, I've been watching craigslist obsessively, and, on Monday, spotted The Deal. I met up with the guy Monday night, and bought his Samsung Focus for a pretty-darn-reasonable $100. It's running Windows Phone 7, with the Mango beta installed (the guy is a hacker).

What I like:

* I can now see my home WiFi from the in-front-of-the-TV couch, which is a mixed blessing.
* totally easy to sync my Google Calendar with the phone's calendar. This was absolutely essential. No need for a 3rd party sync tool (which they haven't ported to Win Phone 7 anyway).
* Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (can't imagine ever using this) are included
* two-finger pinch-to-zoom works great
* camera seems fine, with flash
* Win Phone 7 Marketplace seems full of good stuff, and installing stuff is easy - this is how it will be on all phones from now on.
* the interface is 'interesting', very responsive and seems well thought-out
* integration with my SkyDrive is, naturally, excellent.
* telling AT&T to not do any data-pulling is controlled by an easily-accessible switch, which I will leave turned off until I break down and sign up for a Data Plan, someday.
* word suggestions when typing text are amazingly-apt

Less than cool:

* it was easy to import my Sim Contacts, but Contacts that had multiple phone numbers (i.e. Home and Mobile) generated separate Contact entries, rather than one entry with multiple phone numbers. Dumb!

* the POP3/IMAP setup for my email was easy, but there is NO OPTION to leave mail on the server when you delete it on the phone. Grrrrrrr. So, I have my Gmail account set up to pull mail from my usa.net account, and the phone pulls in Gmail, which I can delete as I wish, without impacting my main mailbox.

* I miss the ability to mount the File System as a drive on my PC. I no longer have the ability to drag-and-drop files, and haven't quite figured out the best way to move files to the phone, short of emailing them to myself (clunky).

* My WAP-enabled browser (see above) has not released a Win Phone 7 version yet, although I understand it is in final beta now. Internet Explorer does not display my email very well, which is a genuine bad thing, for now.

* no 'Message Sent' confirmation when sending a text message. Anyone know how to turn this on?

* the 'Maps' program included is pretty good, but I'd like to get Google Maps installed (love the ability to tap a restaurant and get reviews). Does anyone know if this is possible?


That's where I stand, two days into the new phone. I am writing this to record my first impressions - let's see if my gripes are ever resolved.

In the meantime, call or text me anytime: 503-860-4514

the recession gets closer

A friend we've known for MANY years called Saturday morning, to tell us that his (or her) home has been foreclosed, and he (or she) needs to move out of the house immediately. We were truly shocked, as we had had no inkling that this person was in trouble with (did you guess correctly?) Bank of America.

This person just found out last Thursday that he (or she) had to get out NOW.

Anyway, we spent MANY hours yesterday helping with the move. We are storing in our garage a fridge, washer, dryer, oven, dishwasher, couches, bookcases, tables, chairs, boxes of books, etc. etc. etc. A giant garage sale is planned.

After moving all that stuff here, we ended up the long day moving bed and other necessities into the spare bedroom of another friend. It was 12 hours I had planned to spend in other ways.

This is the first person we personally know who has been directly affected by the double-whammy of drop in home values and loss of job. He (or she) is admirably philosophical about it, accepting the loss and preparing for the next phase in life.

All we can do is stand by and help as we can.

are they stupid or shameless?

First thing every morning, I run thru my list of Favorite web sites, to make sure that I get my initial dose of correct (i.e. non-GOP) thinking.

At the top of my list is Talking Points Memo. This morning, here are two stories (the links are live) that grabbed my attention:

Romney Backs Away From Climate Change Support

and

Rubio: Social Security Harmed America

So, are they simply pandering, to curry favor with their financial supporters (who certainly have agendas contrary to the Public interest), or do they actually, totally, believe these positions (i.e. stupid)?

The only alternative is even more horrifying: perhaps, it is a complete synthesis of both.

'Compassionate Conservatism' will go down in History as one of the most clever marketing slogans of All Time (or is that End Time)?

my clever son

It's great to see that my son has managed to be his own friend. The question remains, how the heck do you do that?

good-bye, Mitt

The gaffe about 'Corporations are People' is fascinating, for many reasons. Obviously he didn't mean it in the sense of the Citizens United decision (which, in effect, declared virtually exactly that). However:

1) The Media that seeks a good story ignores that context and piles on, ironically stoking the Progressives (as if we need any more reasons to roll eye-balls at Mitt). This is unfair to him, of course, but nobody cares since 'knocking off the Front Runner' is the chief sport at this phase of the race.

2) It reveals the world in which Mitt lives, where he honestly does hob-nob with fellow Rich Guys, who all own corporations. He just simply sees them as the People who make up Corporations. Ergo, Corporations ARE People.

3) Didn't John McCain use the 'my friend' rhetorical gimmick a lot, too? Just sayin'.

4) Either Mitt was oblivious to the consequences of such an off-hand statement (which calls into question his qualifications to speak as a President), or he knew what he was saying and didn't care how folks reacted (which calls into question his qualifications to speak as a President), or he honestly subscribes to the notion of Corporate Personhood in its fullest sense (which calls into question his qualifications to speak as a President).

I don't see any way he can escape being branded with this for all eternity. This is Mitt's 'I can see Russia' event, and this fodder for ridicule will scare supporters.

He obviously has enough personal wealth to pursue the goal, but once the common meme is that you are a doofus gets established, your political prospects are in jeopardy. Think Steve Forbes.

Of course, there are exceptions - a former Texas governor comes to mind, although I believe there was eventual consensus reached on him (unfortunately, much too late).

I gotta go.

obama's sinking poll numbers

Let us remember.

During his first two years, when there was a 'kinda' Democratic majority in the Senate (but not the magic '60'), the GOP Senate launched a record number of fillibusters, intended to deny Obama any of his progressive measures (had he taken the trouble to fight for them).

Thus, he was 'forced' to cripple the Stimulus bill, by accepting a ridiculous amount of 'tax-relief', which was certainly enjoyed by the folks who benefited (hint: not you).

The Health Care overhaul that, from the start, was missing a Public Option is another story - don't get me started.

Then, after the 2010 elections, we see the crackpots in the House dominating the show, preventing any reasonable compromises (except for the ones Obama made - that's another story).

So, do I blame Obama? Kinda, but let's keep in mind the reality that the GOP decided from Day 1 of his administration that nothing meaningful (i.e. counter to the GOP philosophy that 'give good stuff to the Rich and everything will be OK) will pass Congress.

Add to this toxic mix the corrupt, utterly disgusting Supreme Court majority, and this explains why an argument can be made that the Obama Administration failed.

Oh yes, there's the unpleasant memory that the GOP ran on 'jobs, jobs, jobs', but I've heard nothing but crickets from them, on this issue. And yet, the media (ah, the Media) covers the Horse Race as if it mattered.

Very sad. Our Republic is in bad shape, and I know where I place the blame.

The Backmann candidacy is the one bright spot in all this. I am hoping that the seemingly-endless bamboozlement of the American public will reach a tipping point with this. Certainly there can't be enough Evangelical idiots to actually propell this woman to the White House. You read it here.

I gottta go.