Windows 8 RC coming soon - 1st week of June

It's mostly in the can, says the man.

You can read the latest scuttlebutt right here! 

The wags and home-grown 'experts' (an expert being anyone more than 10 miles from home) are as usual predicting alternatively 'game-changing new improvements' and 'an end-of-the-world scenario' for the future of Mighty Microsoft, and again as usual, most of them don't know enough to come in out of the rain, but they deserve honorable mention for their creative writing.

The truth is that nobody knows for sure whether Windows 8 and its heavily touch-oriented format can either save the company from oblivion or capture market share from Apple. Time will tell, and time marches on, trampling everything underfoot. But in about five weeks, we will have a look at most of the Windows 8 finished product, we are being told.

Pardon me while I yawn. Like some of us have already discovered, Windows 8 isn't the cure-all it's cracked up to be for us traditional PC users of the mouse and keyboard variety - which includes the vast majority of business clients and enterprise users. No matter how much fun a touch system might be to use while 'letting your fingers do the walking' there's still going to be a whole lot of real work on your computer that requires a keyboard and mouse to do properly and
conveniently and quickly, without expecting you to become a contortionist or
learn Braille or the Kamasutra.

That being the case, the vast majority of us will likely find Windows 8 to be a 
less-user-friendly version of Windows 7, which does it faster, easier, and better,
without introducing three steps where one was before. It took ten million of us nagging the hell out of Microsoft to get them to clean up Vasta Vista into Windows 7, and now they've reverted to complexifying the damned thing again because they can't remember the old acronym KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Think of Windows 8 as being Windows 7, Service Pack 2.  And let's start thinking about Windows 9, shall we?

This one's for Chet, wherever you are

As Chet might say, "This is so good, I can't hardly stop..." so here's another:

 

Our Spring blooms.....

DNS cache information - Windows 7 and 8

Windows doesn't always keep all its dots connected in an up-to-date fashion, meaning that sometimes, if web address information or I.P. numbers change,
and the website you are seeking is no longer found with the data saved by your Windows, you can force Windows to update all that by flushing its cache. This shows you how. It's quick, it's easy, and it works for both Win-7 and Win-8.
 

'Old Faithful', my ZX-10, came home today....

And it didn't cost me a fifty dollar cab ride over to the dealership across town to go get it, either. Maybe I'm finally getting smarter in my old age. I asked my neighbor, Don, if I could take him for a little ride over there, and have him drive the car home, while I rode the bike and played in the traffic. He agreed, and so I saved the fifty bucks. A penny saved is a penny earned.

This year's lineup of new Kawasakis looks wonderful, and I'm struggling with the usual annual case of "bike fever", but I really don't need another bike just now. I'm still working at getting my money's worth out of the renovations we did on this old one last season. And now that the leaky gas tank has been rebuilt, and holds gas once again without soaking my jeans, it's running very well, thanks.
There isn't a whole lot goes past me if I'm paying attention and not wanting it to.
So a new one wouldn't do any better than that for me. And this one's paid for.
That's not all bad, either. But none of these arguments works when I'm standing in the showroom looking at the new stuff, and calculating the budget to see if one fits into it. So I have to stay out of that showroom. It's a man trap.

Mambo #5 - Peter Appleyard

'Old Faithful' isn't coming out to play today....

It's been in storage all winter at the dealership, because they have a nice plan for storing them, keeping them insured, and providing a Spring Tune-up which is included in the deal, before you take it out to play in the traffic again.  Today was supposed to be the day I got it out again, but the weather's the pits here today.
Most of the seagulls are walking, it's so dull and foggy out. And being the old-timer that I am now, I'm not passionately fond of a wet ass the first time out for the season, so I'm waiting and hoping for a dryer day tomorrow or Saturday.

Their elevator shaft roof is leaking...

But when it's raining, it's too wet to fix, and when it's not raining, they don't need it fixed. Ain't life grand? Plug the drains and let's stock it with trout....
 

Daffodil Day is coming

I should add here that I am not living with cancer, but I was until I received a prostate cancer brachytherapy on the 13th of April, 2010. That procedure took
less than an hour to perform, and the radioactive implants completely destroyed the cancerous portions of the prostate, as evidenced by follow-up testing which
shows no sign of a recurrence, two years afterward. I can't say enough good things about Dr. Mira Keyes and her team at the Cancer Clinic downtown, and I am now a monthly donor to help them help others. 

A little rant about Windows 8 and Google and etc.

If you're wondering what Windows 8 might be like in its retail incarnations, then you can read all about it here.

I was looking for some of those critical reactions to it all after almost two months of using the consumers preview, but the usual suspects aren't saying a whole lot just now. Maybe I should.... It's reliable, it's pretty, it's not as user friendly as Windows 7, it has a lot of fluff that traditional keyboard and mouse PC users will find superfluous and or annoying, and it isn't any faster that my Windows 7, even after cleaning out its Prefetch, Windows Temp and User's Temp folders, and rebooting to regenerate only the essentials of those, followed
by an Auslogics Defrag to get all its little ducks in a row again, and that's all contrary to the hype you've seen about it, proving once again that you can't believe everything you read or hear - even from me. My opinions are almost never objective, but rather subjective because I calls 'em like I sees 'em, and I see this operating system as being 'too little and too late' for its intended purpose of grabbing market share from Apple. There! I've said it.

Moving right along, what the hell's with Google? They are still screwing around with changes to the Blogger format and bringing out a 'new' one, but they still can't get the goddamned thing to let you select a font and then stay on that one until you're ready to change to something else. Every time you pause to add a picture or a video or scratch your ass or pick your nose, the damned font reverts to some god-awful crap you wouldn't be caught dead using in real life.
So today's Question Everything, Mr. Google, you pinhead, is "Why the hell can't the font be left where the user selects it until that user selects some other one from your pitiful list?" And why can't I use the whole range of Windows fonts in this blog?  And why do I too often find it necessary to go back over the text line by line to manually re-format the blocks of text into complete lines without gaps or half lines of sentences? Doesn't anyone over there understand the concepts of word-wrap? My point here being you should finish one job properly before going off on another half-assed project because you got bored with the first one before it was finished completely. If you've got the attention span of a stoplight, you should be directing traffic, not writing code! Get the picture?

Everything old is new again

Red Nichols and his Five Pennies, from 1929, doing a medley of standards.

I've always loved great Dixie, and it doesn't get any better than this.

And here's 'Can't We Be Friends' by Red Nichols and his Five Pennies again.
Some of those guys were famous in their own right later on.

And lest we forget our Classical side, here's Anitra's Dance from Peer Gynt by

the Perm Ballet. I've listened to this many times, but this is the first I've seen someone dance to it, and it's very nice....
  

Most of my readers can't handle the truth apparently

Judging by the Sitemeter counter in the margin here, posts with topics like pollution aren't nearly as popular as mindless bullshit with pretty pictures.
So I have to conclude, like Jack Nicholson said in that movie, "You can't handle the truth!"
 

Now that Earth Day is history for another year......

Hong Kong

 Somewhere in China

Los Angeles

 London, U.K.

It's still "business as usual" because saving the planet costs too much, so we're 

all going out with it. The best this world had to offer was all decades ago, and we shouldn't try to pretend otherwise.

Appropriately on Earth Day, our Spring is springing

Today is Earth Day, for apologizing to Mother Earth for the other 364...

So let's take a look at one of the places where civilization began, millennia ago......

 This is Egypt at night from a space shuttle, showing the concentration of people along the Nile valley and the Delta, just like back in 3,000 b.c. and these lights make a picture resembling a flower. In ancient Egypt, there were two official flowers: the Lotus and the Papyrus, one for Upper Egypt, the other Lower Egypt,
and this flower-like pattern of lights might easily represent either of those. If any
of those ancient Pharaohs could have flown in one of our shuttles to see their land they might have truly believed they really were gods.

Now, for a look at a few of Earth's inhabitants:-

 The Blue-Footed Booby of the Galapagos Islands. And you thought you already knew all about boobies, didn't you? See? There's always something to learn!

 Like whatever happened to Jimmy Durante anyway? No, seriously, this is the Proboscis Monkey of Borneo, but there is a similarity as some of you will notice.

 Unlike those many animated cartoons of The Taz, this one's the real Tasmanian
Devil of Tasmania, Australia. Cute little Devil, he isn't. This looks a bit like our Wolverine, which can chew through the aluminum siding on a mobile home and
wreck its kitchen looking for food. That's happened up in our Yukon Territory.

Ending this on a happier note, this is The Rocky Horror Flower Show.... Nah! Not really. It's the Hot Lips Plant of Costa Rica's rainforests, possibly named after
Hot Lips Houlihan, beloved of MASH fans everywhere. But I still think it would have made a hell of a graphic for the Rocky Horror Picture Show even if it couldn't compete with Susan Sarandon in her unmentionables. And that concludes our little bird's eye view of the Third Rock from the Sun, so enjoy your Earth Day, everyone.
 
 

The Not-So-Lone Ranger Rides Again.....

From this morning's USA Today.

 

The March flowers are finally blooming

More about friends, after one or two of mine saw a previous post here

The following is from an old friend of mine that I've known for over half a century, and after he saw that one about the friends and how many we can handle, he wrote me with this. So Tommy, if you're still there, here's another person's thoughts about 'friends'.......

Hi All,

A old friend for 55 yrs. or so brought up a very interesting subject.

When you die you are a lucky person if you can count 5 friends on one hand.

Lucky ones have 5.The rest are acquaintances.

Say you can only ever have a few true friends that stays with you

most your life.It really varies from person to person. Some have

one, some may have 3 or so. Some don't even have any...

I only have the ones I want and choose to have.

Social media sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter, have long

been criticized for being vehicles for meaningless relationships.

In terms of a trusting, true friendship, I can think of just a few

and have accepted the fact that I think that is a very common thing

so I am not necessarily sad or dissatisfied with it.

Many of my blogs are “lessons learned” or have sort of a “moral of the story”

tone to them. I do not really have any answers or profound

wisdom in this one, and that’s okay. Perhaps you the reader can

relate and would like to add a thought or comment, perhaps not.

Maybe someone could care to share some truth or shed some light

on why it is that most of us can count our really true friends on one hand?

Any ideas? I will bet 99% of you will not answer.

Spring Cleaning....

I've often thought that operating a cute little Bobcat would be a lot of fun. They can go almost anywhere, and they turn on a dime.
 

Today's Question Everything: How many friends do you need?

According to recent scientific research, our brains can only handle about 150.
So 'friending' hundreds of people on Facebook is a waste of time, they say.

Here's the story from the Vancouver Sun today. 

And women have better social skills than men do, in case we weren't already aware of that. We hunt, fish and fight while the gals stay home and talk about it. Or something like that. Gals would rather have beauty than brains because guys can see better than they can think.
 

Tonight's sunset - sort of

Dawn creeps over the hill.....

That's the southern slope of Mount Seymour Provincial Park on the horizon with
some of our local media transmitter towers visible on it. Looks like it may be a nice day. I hope so. We could use one.
 

It's all in your jeans - er, I mean genes......

This just in from the Vancouver Sun newspaper today..... an intelligence gene!

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Intelligence+gene+discovered/6464844/story.html 

This explains why some of us are smarter than others who can run faster.
Or, as old Uncle Albert once said, "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."

He was also credited with saying "The commonest element in the universe  is not hydrogen but rather stupidity."
 

Which is easier? Why is Win-7 saving files to Win-8 folders?

I created the first of the above using the Windows 7 operating system on this computer, which also has another partition containing Windows 8. I then did a  reboot to change into the Windows 8 partition to create the second of these.

When I went looking for the Windows 7 file in its own Windows 7 Documents folder, it wasn't there. Checking in the Windows 8 Documents folder I found it in there, along with the file I'd made in Windows 8 later. 

Let me say first that I think the Windows 7 user experience using files and folders is more convenient and thus more user-friendly than the Windows 8 experience, which I'm told is copied from the 'ribbon' method use in Microsoft Office. I don't know, because I don't have the Office program. 

All I need at the moment is a system that doesn't file my Windows 7 files into Windows 8 folders on another partition of my hard-drive where they should not be going. This may have something to do with the sharing features of these two operating systems, and I'm checking into that, as well as deleting those public folder copies in the Libraries, which as far as I know are empty, but which can automatically share whatever's in them with anyone who has access to the computer. Is this a bug in Windows 8? Or a bug with the dual-booting? Or a little of both? Or did I not set it up properly? I'm trying to find out. 
 

Better late than never, some new leaves ....

Above that timbered retaining wall, lower right, the little piece of highway showing above that dark patch of shrubs is the eastbound lanes of Highway 1,
the Trans-Canada Highway, at a point about seven and a half miles from where
it terminates at the ferry terminal in Horseshoe Bay, West Vancouver.  We don't see the westbound lanes, because this spot is on a curve in the roadway
and the westbound lanes are on the inside of that curve and slightly lower in
elevation. And that's probably more than you wanted to know about it.....

The neighbor's tree is finally blooming

Some background on that F-35 flying money pit......

There's a couple of good articles on Wikipedia that provide more insight on it:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II 

And this one, about Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin 

The F-22 Raptor was probably a better aircraft, if its avionics were updated
to present technology. 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/crash-or-burn-the-conservatives-f-35-dilemma/article2389570/ 

And all of this ignores the fact that fighter aircraft cruising around looking for targets to shoot at is basically a very expensive trip down Memory Lane. 
Today's technology leans more toward ICBMs and unmanned drones and cruise missiles, and other forms of remote-control warfare, because we hate to look our enemies in the eye while killing them. And they feel the same about us.
So we've developed what's basically very lethal video games with which to do all that while never looking anyone in the eye. There'd be a hell of a lot fewer wars if we had to revert to the old hand-to-hand combat methods of actually besting our opponents in physical combat. Maybe, we ought to think about that. The human race is going to self-destruct soon enough anyway. Our numbers and our pollution are taking care of that already. 

Those F-35s, one more time.....

A couple of days ago, I asked my favorite columnist at The Globe and Mail in Toronto to take a whack at this F-35 controversy, and she did!

Here's her article about the F-35. 

I've called it a very expensive flying video game - here's why.....

This instrument panel looks more like a video game screen than any instrument panel I've seen before, and it probably works like one too. The difference being that when you shoot at something with this one, it actually gets shot if you hit it.
And of course it can shoot back if you miss.

And Margaret, if you happen to read this, thank you again for taking a whack at the F-35 for us. We need all the help we can get to try to debunk the bafflegab.

Another 4:00 a.m., another bathroom visit..... and a Win-8 snag.

I now know why old folks go to bed early. It's so we can get some rest before we have to get up halfway through the night to make sure the bathroom's still there. The good news is, by this point in our lives, we're long ago retired, so we can take a nap after lunch if we start nodding off, except, of course, if we happen to be on the freeway going half the speed of sound at the time....and
I have to tell you, all the bending metal and flying glass can really be a most unpleasant way of waking up. No matter what time of the day or night you do it, it's something you never get used to. And you should just take my word for that. Don't try this yourself. The last time I did, in 1996, I wrote off a perfectly good 1992 minivan, and got a broken collarbone and other injuries from it.

But I'm digressing again.... The above picture is the opening screen of Windows 8, and was taken with my camera, because this precedes the log-on screen, and therefore you can't do a screen capture of it, because Windows isn't officially running yet. If you look closely at the picture, it looks like there are some sheep grazing in the middle distance. And all that blacktop running off into the distance means that this was considerably later than when John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara made 'McLintock!' with Yvonne De Carlo and a cast of thousands (if you count the cows) back in 1963. John Wayne probably wouldn't approve of those sheep in this picture, but he won't see them.

And I still miss that little 'Feedback' icon we had in the test version of Win-7
with which we could instantly connect to Microsoft to report a snag in the program, or send them our bouquets or beefs. It was the latter they got tired of, and why they didn't repeat it with Win-8, I'm fairly sure. I could use it now
to ask them why 'Homegroup' in Windows 8 can't see 'Homegroup' in Windows 7, on two computers which each have both Windows 7 and 8 on them, and the two Windows 7s have no problem seeing their 'Homegroup'. If Homegroup is Homegroup, then it ought to be the same thing in both Win-7 and Win-8, wouldn't you think? Win-8 is very good at running programs from previous Windows incarnations, so why not this? Yesterday, I wasted so much time on trying to link up one PC's Win-8 Homegroup with the other PC's Win-7 Homegroup, I finally resorted to making a DVD of the files I wanted to move,
and that turned out to be a hell of a lot faster and less frustrating than trying
to link Win-8 to the Win-7 Homegroup. I think maybe this could be improved.

What's with my dual-boot setup?

Before I got Windows 8 beta working on here, I split this hard-drive into two partitions, so that I could keep Windows 7 on one, and put Windows 8 on the other. It took me a couple of attempts to get everything just right, but I did get both operating systems sharing this hard-drive, and working just fine - or so I thought.

I've discovered there's a few peculiarities about having a dual-boot setup, and
some are an advantage, while at least one may not be. The good news is that I can now be working with one operating system while accessing and using the files and folders of the other one. That's 'cool'..... But yesterday, while working in the Windows 7 side of the drive, I noticed that the files I thought I was filing into Windows 7 folders were actually being filed into similarly-named folders of the Windows 8 system. I don't know what's going on there, and it's probably a fault in the operating system, but which one?  Is it a Windows 7 problem? Or is it a Windows 8 problem? Or is there something wrong with the Boot Sector? I don't know, and I'm not into this deeply enough to figure it out. That's not my job anyway. I just use these things, I don't build 'em. And I don't use them if they aren't working right.

Moving right along here, it must be Spring - I saw four girls wearing short-shorts yesterday; one real 'cookie' and three 'dog-biscuits'. Sometimes, I'm glad that I'm no longer 'young and horny and desperate'. 

And I signed up for an account with our Income Tax people yesterday, following which they informed me that my tax return has been assessed and my refund will be deposited into my bank account next week. If they've concluded that the numbers were correct and they owe me the refund, I can't help wondering why they're waiting until next week to deliver it. Is the government going broke? Do they have to wait until they collect a few more payroll deductions from the rest of you before they can pay me back my interest-free loan? 
Questions that I won't get answered.....
 

Are computers frustrating? You bet your sweet bippy they are!

It's a good thing I've mellowed in my old age, or I might have thrown this computer right out my 16th floor window about two hours ago, when it decided not to start up properly.

I was using the Windows 7 section on it, and during startup the mouse cursor would not activate. I immediately punched 'Reboot', but the anti-virus was at that moment in the midst of updating itself. That resulted in an error in the anti-virus program, and I couldn't reset it, and it wouldn't time out or otherwise release that error message, which kept blocking any further updating of it.

So I had to completely remove the now-faulty anti-virus program, and then get a fresh version from its website, install that, register it, update it, and then try to get on with starting over on whatever I had planned to do in Windows 7. All of which wasted about an hour while I responded to questions such as "Why are you uninstalling this anti-virus?" or "Why don't you want to install Google Chrome along with the anti-virus?" 

At times like that, I really wish I could send a quick message back to the source of those questions, telling them in X-rated four-letter words exactly what I think of their stupid questions and their unwanted and uninvited add-ons to something I do want to install. I hate having to deal with those unwanted other programs that people these days think are a smart way of promoting their other products or programs. If I want Google Chrome, I know exactly where to find it. I use several other Google programs, but I do believe Google is too damned pushy when it comes to promoting other Google items. We don't need our arms twisted and it doesn't improve our receptiveness - it just annoys us. If, on the other hand, Google is trying to annoy us, then they are doing one hell of a fine job of it. 

That F35 controversy - the howling goes on....

There's a lot of discussion and criticism and just plain objections to this whole program, mostly because these aircraft are ridiculously expensive - so much so that nobody seems absolutely sure what the final costs actually will be. It's very difficult to decide if we can afford it, when we don't know the real costs.

Here in Canada, as elsewhere, there's a lot of debate about this, and various factions are lining up for and against it. Our Defense Minister, Peter MacKay,
says we simply don't understand a difference in accounting procedures which results in a ten billion dollar difference in total costs. Peter seems to think we're all idiots or something similar. Personally, I think he's sounding more like a two-faced lyin' bastard every day. If everyone had been completely honest and up front about costs from the beginning, we wouldn't be having these problems, and we probably wouldn't be arguing about buying these glorified flying video-game machines, which, in almost 30% of their test flights, have required according to one authority "more than routine maintenance to restore them to flying condition afterward". If these things are getting bent or broken almost one third of the time while being tested, and are so expensive many nations can't afford them, why aren't we opting for something more reasonable, more proven,
and less controversial? Here's the Wikipedia article. 
 

Why does the date for Easter change each year?

Here's an explanation, so prepare to be bamboozled, and if this leaves you confused, all I can say is "Welcome to the club! You are not alone."

 Please click here.
 
If we don't have an exact date for the birth of Christ (it wasn't December 25) and we don't have an exact date for the resurrection, what does this suggest to you? Were his followers just careless about the facts, or did these events actually take place at all? Have any of you studied the Ancient Egyptians and their religious beliefs and practices? If so, you may have noticed that there's quite a lot of similarity or parallelism between that and various aspects of modern Christianity. The names of the gods have been changed, but their family associations remain more or less the same, and the special days have fresh explanations, but there's a lot of the same liturgical pomp and circumstance and mystagogic psychobabble.

Why would that be? The easiest explanation would seem to be that at the time that Ancient Egypt and soon afterward the Roman Empire were dying on the vine, something new and fresh was needed to energize the population, but
the establishment evidently believed "If it works, don't fix it" so they didn't throw out all the old system, but simply revised it to give it a fresh look and a new lease on life, because after all, it worked for several thousands of years, so it probably could continue working for thousands more.....and it is! Since then, it's been working for 2,000 years already. And before you decide to come down on me over this, do your homework. You may learn something.

Today in the hills

The almost daily snowstorm ....

So, how do you spell climate change ?
 

Haven't written about Windows 8 lately because.......

I'm presently waiting for a call from my friendly local computer sales and service man, to tell me that he's got in the new multi-touch monitor I asked him to order for me. 

Windows 8 being mostly about its improved touch features, it stands to reason that I can't test it very effectively without having a touch-enabled screen to use,
so that's what I'm impatiently waiting for at the moment. When it arrives, you will be among the very first to know. 
 

Winter continues...

My semiannual visit to the Cancer Agency....

This is a Google Street View image from May of 2009, but it hasn't changed. And my test results are still very good, thanks to the prompt care these folks provided two years ago this month. These people are life-savers and I'm proof.

Another Google Street View image, this time the parking garage entrance on Ash Street, just around the corner from the front entrance on West 10th Avenue. I'm delighted to see the fellow inside the booth is still there, unlike his counterpart at the parking garage of Lions Gate Hospital here in North Vancouver. They got rid of him some months ago, and I think that was one of the stupidest acts I've seen in recent years. When we go to a hospital, we have enough to worry about without having to worry about our car being towed and impounded for overdue parking fees. The fellow in the booth at the Cancer Agency today told me that they've had lots of complaints about that, and I told him that I'm very glad to see that he's still in his usual spot. I mentioned all this to my radiation oncologist too, and she says "They're getting rid of people everywhere these days." To which I replied, "And where's the taxes coming from, if everyone's unemployed? - they obviously haven't thought this through." She agreed. I asked her to put in a good word for the attendant in the booth of their parking garage, in case anyone tries to eliminate him too. And that's how I spent about half my afternoon.  And why I haven't done a rant about Windows 8 lately.....but I'll get back to that a little later.

It's 4:00 A.M. again, and I'm up......

And sometimes, like this morning, I'm damned glad to be awake and in the present, rather than still dreaming, and stuck in the past of a quarter of a century ago or more, in a bad dream created around some old work situation. I know some of us don't find our work to be the greatest joy of our lives, but having nightmares about it 25 or 30 years later verges on the bizarre and ridiculous, for sure. My psychiatrist, if I still had one, would probably have a real 'field day' with that one. I can almost imagine some of his probable comments.

I don't think I ever did discover what it would be like to spend a full hour's visit with him just discussing my own problems and what to do about them. That's because his phone kept ringing, and he kept answering it, and on the other end apparently were a grand collection of nuts, bolts, and twinkies in need of urgent reassurance that the world in fact was really not ending, it only seemed so from the other's perspective of the moment, which, obviously, was more than a little distorted, for any number of the usual common reasons, such as bad habits, bad sex, bad mates, or insufficient habits, sex, or mates. 

Along with all those sad cases, there were a few more interesting ones from other doctors calling to ask our expert what to do about some patient they had, and what they'd tried already, and not achieved the desired results from it. Those were a little like being a fly on the wall while two professionals are discussing what to do about flies on the wall when those are caught in a bottle and attempts are made at behavioral modification of the little bastards, with or without their own co-operation.

Sometimes, I got bored with listening to all that, and opted instead for playing psychiatrist myself, by attempting to analyze my analyst. I learned, for example, that he prefers blondes because he thinks they are more open to having fun; he likes sailing, and usually rents a sailboat for about a month each year, usually near Tahiti, where he decorates its deck with one of those aforementioned blondes of the fun-loving variety, and sails around the islands there, doing his damnedest to forget all those screwballs he left behind in Canada, needing his continued attention. Until one day, his month is over, and reality kicks in, and it's back to good old Obscurity, and that full calendar of cereal - (whatever isn't fruit or nuts is flakes!) - for another eleven months. 

But it isn't all doom and gloom. He had a very comfy office, complete with a black leather sofa, and he drove a recent-model Jaguar sedan, and he was just handsome enough that perhaps half the gals in town would go all soft and mushy whenever he walked into a room..... and I never did decide whether or not he really was as smart as he claimed, or was just a hell of a good actor with a prescription pad, and a nice line of patter with which to bamboozle the rubes and boobs who ended up on that sexy leather sofa across the room from his elegant and highly-polished desk. Maybe, I was just jealous. I couldn't even catch the kind of women he discarded, in case that's how we're scoring the game. But wherever you are, Dominic, I hope you live long and prosper. And if we ever meet again, I promise I'll leave the motorcycle and the Superman T-shirt at home......because I've already proved 'There's more than one way to skin a cat.' 
 

The snow line today on the hillsides

Nothing I could say about these would cheer you up, so I will resist the urge.

 

I'm trying to ignore the date today......

I've never been a big fan of April Fool's Day, because most of the gags that are used are really childish or else just plain silly. So I try to ignore the whole thing and just wait for it to go away.

While doing that, I got comparing notes with an old pal in New York, talking about some of the very earliest Playboy Playmates, including one who was the Subscription Manager for the magazine for a while in the 1950s, Miss Janet Pilgrim. We found a couple of websites that have lists of (they say) all of the girls who have been Playmates of the Month. Some lists are more complete than others. One I found is in Spanish, but of course the girls' names are not, and if you click on a name, her centerfold picture appears below the list of names. Or there may be more than one picture, if she appeared more than once as a centerfold. Here is that website. Please Note that the images are adult-oriented, and not for everybody.

Taking a trip like that down 'Memory Lane' sure makes a guy feel old. Those sweet young things we all admired back then are now wrinkled old prunes just like us, because time marches on, trampling everything underfoot.