My laptop computer's in the shop. The iMac that I'm on is so loaded down with stuff and seriously old that I can take naps between opening a browser window and a Word document at the same time. Plus I'm teethered to a desk.
Me no likey being tied to a desky.
I can't seem to get anything done without the computer (pay bills, send out invoices, add people to my contacts or appointments to my calendar, get photos off my camera or my phone, chat with friends in foreign lands...) and it's making me realize how dependent I am on a computer. Can you say completely? I can.
Now I must stop typing this because the Wells Fargo browser page finally loaded and if I don't get back to it soon I'll be logged out for inactivity. And I'm leaving soon to go have a drink with friends. I'm sure one of us will moblog it.
I thought it would be a simple matter of taking the back off to see where the problem was. It's easy on an Apple. There are little arrows where all the screws come are. If I lay them out on a napkin in the same pattern I take them out...
AB says to me, with a smirk that says she knows I'm not going to like this, "shouldn't you have a man around the house for things like this?"
Yeah, well...bite me. He's not here right now thankyouverymuch. Besides that, I have always had an over-developed sense of personal resourcefulness.
Looks like I'm out a computer for awhile. Bummer.
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The pay dirt is the George McGovern quotes at the end. Like the Dixie Chicks, the rest just makes me ashamed to know that he's still our President.
There's one thing Americans do with more class than Europeans: for the most part, we don't smoke. Or we don't smoke in public anymore.
I can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke; especially when I'm sick like I was most of this trip to Germany. But pretty much any time the smell of smoke makes me physically ill. I hate getting it on my clothes, in my hair and mostly in my lungs.
I grew up in a house with parents who were two-pack-a-day smokers and later with two older sisters who smoked at home, at the dinner table, in the car with the windows rolled up, anywhere and everywhere. I had pneumonia several times as a child and my lungs can't take it anymore. I vowed never to smoke myself and I never did.
I also grew up in a state that was one of the first to have No Smoking sections of restaurants and one of the first to outright ban much public smoking. My parents and sisters later quit smoking and as time went on and smoking became less and less socially acceptable, my world became and remains pretty much smoke free.
So I was surprised on both recent trips to Europe to find myself face-to-face with smokers everywhere. I guess some places have banned smoking in public places, but not all and the laws don't appear to be well enforced in any event. (Just found an article that says that Germany is backing off their recent ban on smoking in public places.)
I saw smokers everywhere and they seemed not to care one bit about offending anyone or hiding their habit. At Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig (restaurant established in the 16th century and made most famous by Goethe in"Faust") I had to leave abruptly because between the smell of saur kraut (another childhood trauma story for another time) and cigarettes I thought I was going to pass out.
Oddly, when I was going through the duty-free shop at the Frankfurt aiport I noticed the 96 point font on warning labels on cigarettes and thought, apparently the message that smoking is bad for your health and the health of people around you hasn't sunk in over there.
I read that nearly a third of all Germans smoke regularly (as opposed to just socially) and close to 140,000 die every year from tobacco-related illnesses -- far more than from traffic accidents, alcohol, drugs and AIDS combined.
It seems there's some history behind their defiance of common sense too. Germans fiercely defend their right to smoke at least in part because the anti-smoking lobby is perceived to be tainted by the legacy of Nazi hostility to smoking. After World War II, lighting up became a sign of tolerance.
Tolerance and freedom?!? I guess my tolerance of people's right to ruin my lungs and my "cafe experiences" is very low. Such a rude American!
Sujatin shared this with video with me on Facebook and now I'm sort of obsessed with finding out more about this little electric car made in Canada called the ZENN (zero emission no noise)
If you want more detailed information, here's a little infommercial below with the company's CEO.
What looks like the deal breaker on this car is that it doesn't go nearly fast enough and it doesn't go very far on a single charge. Okay for commuting round the city perhaps, but not at all practical for most of the driving I will be doing next year. Another issue is where do you plug it in away from home? Pirating a power outlet to charge your cell phone is one thing, to charge your car...well, I think that's pushing it.
It's ridiculous that here in Europe almost ALL the cars get better gas mileage than ANY of the cars in the US. I'm passively in the market for a new car and there's just something really wrong when you can't find any car that gets more than 30 miles to a gallon, even some of the hybrids are in the mid 20s.
There is a ZENN dealer in Berkeley. Maybe when I get back to California I'll test drive one. I have a pre-order in on a SMART car too. Who knows, I might just stick with what I have until someone comes up with something that's functional, effecient and looks good.
