What's New?

I wrote this at the end of 2005 and not much has changed, except I spellchecked it this time:

Another New Year. I guess we all share a universal sense of optimism when a new year rolls around. Even those jaded cynics among us who (perhaps like me) who have begun so many New Years with a list of resolutions and the hope of peace and prosperity, and then witnessed the dissolution of those hopes in the fire hose of reality.
It  was another one of those years when the idea of World Peace seems like a childish aspiration. Threats - real and imagined - abound. China and Russia are drifting back to totalitarianism.

None of our old friends likes us anymore. Perhaps Randy Newman (Let's drop the big one and see what happens) should be the next president. We need someone with a sense of humor.

We don't even like each other! The Dems are calling the Republicans liars and corrupt. The Neocons seem to have patented a new definition for patriotism which sounds to me too much like nationalism. I recall that the Nazi's came to power by focusing the people's attention on the internal and external threats and then ruthlessly punished eliminated any form of dissent or opposition. As a country, we have polarized to the extremes. There is no middle. The bell curve is now a statistical pucker when it comes to politics. Each side says "Either you are with us (and shut-up). or you are helping the enemy." Good old-fashioned compromise is out of the question. How can you find common ground with traitors, socialists, Nazis?

Amazingly, after centuries of barbaric warfare (much of it over differences in religious beliefs), we have learned nothing. Some of us have distilled (or should I say, "dumbed-down") our political philosophy down to a few defining issues.  Unfortunately it will take another national tragedy for the sides to come together.

But, despite the gloomy assessment for the prospects of peace, I look ahead to a new year with a sense of renewal and optimism, just like the rest of the naive children.

More Humbug Notes

Electronic Season's Greetings
Oh yeah, Don't let me forget to mention how annoying those electronic E-vites and E-Greeting Cards are.  (If you have sent me one, I probably deleted it instead of reading it.)

Do you people think the rest of us are just sitting around grumbling in our porridge, wondering why our lives aren't more cutesy -- so you think you can warm our spirits with an animated cartoon of a dog wearing a Santa hat?  Cripes, why don't you just send us an email that says:

"Hi, this is probably an afterthought or perhaps I am too lazy or cheap to actually put any effort into this greeting, I only send real cards with holiday themed postage stamps to my A-list people, and well, you know..."

Humbug!


Giving toCharity

Oh, and could that annoying person ringing the Salvation Army bell just give it a rest for a few minutes? Better yet, Go away!  I hate having to walk around you to get through the door at the supermarket every time I go there.  Stop making eye contact like I was some kind of cheapskate, trying to make me feel guilty while you are ever so smug standing there freezing your ass off for a noble cause.  The bell is just annoying! Stop it!   

Anyway, I already gave.  I sent a check when I got the solicitation in the mail just before Thanksgiving. Not a huge amount, I admit, but did that make them happy? 
No, since I sent the check I have received no fewer than 4 more solicitations in the mail.
But no acknowledgement for my donation.  

Mailing isn't free.  Why are they wasting contributed cash on marketing?  I conclude that it is unlikely that any of my donated money will make a difference in any needy person's life.  The Salvation Army has become another one of those charity machines that use small donations to fund an ever-expanding marketing campaign.  This is rewarding, I'm sure,  for list-processors, mailing companies and executives, but I do not feel that my contributions are being well spent.

A news item the other day, repored that some "charities" are spend more than 50 cents of every dollar received to pay off the marketing firm that made the calls and sent out the solicitations.  Such schemes and scams go on all the time.

For the record,  the only charity I am giving to in future us The Boston Globe Santa which uses 100% of the donated funds to buy necessities for the poor kids in Boston Area.  You go Globe!

There are more things that annoy me at this time of year, but that's enough for now.

Christmas Shopping notes: Humbug

Like most executives, ship captains and other sensible adults, I don't like surprises.   Most people would agree that unforeseen circumstances are the bane of good plans, the downfall of the mighty, and the spoiler of sleep. 

Yet when it comes to gift giving, the consensus is that the recipient must be surprised by the gift -- As if the sudden delight of seeing a matching pen and pencil set somehow makes the mundane thing more magical.    Well,  I don't like surprise gifts.

To people who don't understand this point of view, it seems like a challenge.  They will go out of their way to prove to me that I was not sufficiently surprised in the past, because as everyone knows, "everybody loves surprises".  

I really don't like giving gifts or getting them.  I am too picky to let other people choose things for me.  It just creates stress.  Relatives yell at me, "You are so hard to buy for, you are so fussy!"  Hey, don't get me a gift; it's OK.  If I want something that I can afford, I just go and buy it anyway.   I don't need gloves, ties or screwdriver sets made in Korea.   
Bah!

Some people think its fun to do Secret Santa.  I always receive some useless $10 gift card to some place I never go.  What can you buy for $10 anyway?  No wonder 40% of all gift cards are never fully used by the recipient.  This amounts to a $1.8 billion rebate to retailers.


 Needless to say, I hold the idea of a Yankee Swap to be a naked exercise in greed and disapointment.  Who decided that it would be fun to steal someone elses gift?  One person gets what they want and everyone else gets crap.

OH, and let us not forget the "Gift of Disapointment" the Lottery scratch ticket.  99% of the time You end up with nothing but green wax under your fingernails.
So in my book Christmas gifts and surprises are fine for the kiddies, but once you realize that Christmas is just another excuse for retailers to embrace large portions of your net worth, the wow factor is kinda fading after the first fruitcake you get in the mail from Aunt Matilda.

I hate to pile reindeer poop on your oatmeal, Virginia, but there is very little chance for peace on earth, much less goodwill towards your fellow man.  No matter how many cards you send or receive. 

Hey, enjoy your holidays in your own way.  You may get a big kick from the mystery of a wrapped gift under your holiday tree waiting for the big morning.  I don't -- Unless the package looks like a bottle of 18 year old single malt scotch.  

 Then I'm all Ho-Ho-Ho! 

No Excuses

Now, faithful fans, you all know that I am not one of those whiner bloggers who make excuses for not writing more often.  I have no excuses. I prefer to spin my excuses as "priorities". Sometimes it happens that there are so many more interesting things to do than logging on the computer and imparting sage thoughts and observations to a largely anonymous audience, for free.



Well, the other day one of the neighborhood mothers accosts me as I am innocently returning from my daily 5 mile walk. She is standing, gabbing with the other doting moms who are waiting for the 3 O'clock school bus to disgorged their pampered kids who can't be trusted to to walk home without getting into trouble.  She practically grabs me by the shirt and demands to know why I don't update the Blog more often.  

I wonder if this so called working mom really understands what being "busy" means.

Heck, she has probably has  nothing to do all day while the kids are in school.  How hard is it to do the laundry and clean house when you have HD TV's in every room?   And, when the kids come home from school you can get them to do all the work you couldn't finish because you were on the sofa watching The View and Dr Oz. 

Whereas, on the other hand,  I have a day of challenges.  On a typical day, I am rousted out of bed shortly after 9am.  I go downstairs, have my breakfast and coffee, read two papers and by then it is 11am.  If I have lunch scheduled, I need to get ready - often this involves a search for relatively unwrinkled clothes and possibly a shower.  If there is no lunch scheduled  then I go through all the take-out menus to see what I feel like and then send out for lunch.  After lunch, I generally spend some time working around the yard  or calling friends and chatting or shopping for dinner.  Perhaps I will have time for an afternoon walk or a nap.  I also cook on the days when my wife is working.  

On the days when the cleaners come, I have to straighten up everything. This includes:

•  Putting old magazines and newspapers away. 
•  Discarding all the junk mail that has been collecting for the past two weeks on the kitchen counter,  
•  Picking up scattered socks and other clothing items that have been tossed on the closet floor and putting them in the laundry hamper.
• Taking empty beer bottles out to the garage.
• Putting music CD's back in their cases and in storage.
• etc.

  I usually go over to the nearest Irish pub when the cleaners arrive - to give them room to work.
 When I get back home, the place looks great, but I am more in the mood for a nap than blogging.


So, you see I have lots of priorities that trump blogging, so get off my case.  OK?

"Turn Out the Lights, The Party's Over''

Any football fan who is over 55 can probably idenitify the source of the quote "Turn Out the Lights, The Party's Over.''  It probably wasn't from the Willie Nelson tune.  You most likely heard it from "Dandy" Don Meredith on Monday Night Football back in the good ol days.

Meredith ventured into that dark night last Sunday at the age of 72.  

Good Santa

I bumped into this guy yesterday.  He was all "Ho ho ho." 

I asked him to bring me a case of single malt scotch for Christmas. 

He said, "No problem."

Should I believe him?

My new software

Well I thought I would report on the status of the Dragon speech to text software.
Yesterday, I purchased a 1 GB upgrade memory stick for $45 at Staples,  and installed it
Finally,  I was able to install Dragon software and I'm using it to dictate this blog entry.

 It's pretty freaking good if you asked me. It's amazing that  even after a few minutes of training I can speak into the microphone and have the text printed out on the screen as if I was a very fast typist.

Okay, I did need to do a little editing. But not as much as I would've thought.

I don't think I will ever type again.
===============================

Fixed Income and Unfixed costs

For the past several years I have dutifully scanned the various job listings Internet for a good part time job.  I think I have wasted enough of your time griping about the seemingly nonexistent demand for skilled professionals who are only willing to work 20-24 hours per week. 

So it is that I remain on a fixed income (SS) plus the few occasional shekels I receive from oddball projects and selling my original works of sheer genius, humor and pathos as fillers for mass media.  The additional income barely covers my Starbucks and bar bills, so I am relegated to funding the bulk of living expenses against the SS pension.  I call myself a FFIY  (Frugal Fixed Income Yankee).

"What about your nest egg?"  you are probably asking.  You assume that I have stashed away a couple of mil against the future.  Or maybe you think I have a hidden trust fund like Paris Hilton. Well, dear reader, we are Irish, so instead of inheriting a trust fund, we had to chip in to bury my widowed mother a decade ago.

As for the nest egg, well some [expletive deleted] is probably living in Rio de Janeiro sitting on a beach surrounded by semi-naked young women, with an ice chest full of Sierra Nevada, puffing on a Cuban Presidente on the money we had invested in AIG before the big crash.   I am not jealous. 
I am confident that the Almighty has a plan for me too.  That's why I dutifully buy Powerball tickets, every week.

=========
Unfixed Prices.
Americans are not accustomed to haggling over prices.  Somehow we have been instilled with the idea that it is insulting to the seller for us to offer a drastically low price for a product or service.  We tend to think all prices are fixed.  Well, honey, they aren't!

At the Mall a few weeks ago, I happened upon a kiosk that was selling Dragon Software.  For those who aren't familiar, this software lets you talk into a mike, and the computer types out the text into a document that you can store and save. Pretty cool stuff for a writer, eh?  Especially one who types with two fingers, who has twenty years' worth of handwritten journals to transcribe...  

Well, I decided I needed this software.  The list price for the basic home edition is normally $99, but they were selling it on a holiday special for $75 (plus 6% state sales tax).  I resisted the urge to buy it n the spot, mainly because I am a frugal fixed-income Yankee who needs to check out all the details before I buy something.  There were questions:  will it play on my operating system? how much training is needed, yadda yadda.  Can I run it on more than one computer? What if I want to write in french?
I checked out a few of the usual internet sales outfits, and found various prices for the same item.
 Last week I ordered a copy of the software online at Amazon for $39 free shipping, no tax.  It was delivered three days later. (I haven't loaded the disk yet. Stay tuned for my product review.)
The point is that the price of things is so relative as to be shockingly disparate.  I checked today, and Amazon has raised their price to $49 plus $4.99 for shipping. 

I wonder what the price will be tomorrow.
*******
UPDATE:
I attempted to load the software, but the disk could not be read.  My DVD plays music disks so I think it still works for data.  I called the help desk, and did not have to wait.  The Tech Support guy (Rod) gave me a link to download the installation files via internet.  This failed, the error message says I do not have enough RAM to run the software.  Fine tiime to tell me.

Humph!  Now I will have to spend hundreds to use my new $40 software package.  Time for a new Laptop? 
******