TRYING to help you

I noticed this sign this afternoon in the pharmacy at the southside Walmart.

Apparently this became an issue with the pharmacy staff trying to communicate with morons who just had to have a cell phone conversation while picking up their prescriptions.

The fact that the words are underscored suggests the pharmacy staff was getting kinda pissed off about the problem, but the message would have been more readable without the underscoring.

Oh, and I used my cell phone camera to take the picture. Other than that, the pharmacy lady had my undivided attention.

Another reason to like rural/small town life

I found myself with a CD to mail while in town yesterday, so I went to the Post Office on Race (pronounced "Rice" if you're from here) Street.

There were two people working the counter and the line was backed up to the door. As I stood and waited, I noticed a lot of patrons seemed to have problems with literacy. One of the clerks had to call a patron back from just outside the door when she realized he had paid her with a $10 bill and she gave him change for a $20 bill. The ensuing confused conversation took several minutes longer than it should have if we were dealing with alert, intelligent people.

After what seemed like an eternity, I got to the head of the line and transacted my business efficiently and decisively.

Fast forward to the afternoon and I have another CD to mail.

This time I went to my small rural Post Office where I am on a first-name basis with the postmistress.

"The charge card machine is down. Do you have cash or a check?" she asked.

Nope. Just plastic.

"Alright. You can pay me the next time you come in," she said, scribbling my name and the $1.85 I owed on a slip of paper and putting it into the cash drawer.

I"m headed there now with another CD to mail and will settle my bill when I get there.

That, my friend, is small town service and convenience.

Doctor, Doctor, give me the news…

Hello from Hastings, where I’m netsurfing and enjoying my morning coffee.

I went to the doctor for my annual checkup this morning and, pending the results of the blood work, I’m doing just fine.

He’s pleased that I’ve lost about 6 pounds since last fall.

It’s a glorious sunny spring day here and I’m giving some serious thought to a long motorcycle ride. I really want to ride over to Eureka Springs to visit friend Sean Franklin’s CycleGadgets store, but it’s too late in the day to undertake that trip. Besides, I want to go early enough that I can have lunch at the Oasis Restaurant that Sean touts in his latest cyclegadgets.com newsletter.

I’m stuck with a mid-day dental appointment tomorrow, so maybe Friday will be Eureka Springs day. So far, the weather forecast looks good through the weekend.

And 18 months is about as long as I can put off going for a ride in northwest Arkansas where the state’s really good motorcycle roads are.

Happy Earth Day

Global warming, particularly the notion that human activities are causing climate change, is bogus.

No, there's nothing wrong with behaving in an ecologically responsible manner, but letting this idiotic notion drive the national agenda is insane.

Go to www.globalarminghoax.com and see how this ridiculous eco-religion stacks up against the facts.

Gonzo

I watched Gonzo, the 2007 Alex Gibney documentary on Hunter S. Thompson the other day, courtesy of Netflix.

It’s a pretty thorough account of Thompson’s life and lifestyle and I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about HST.

On a personal note, it’s curious how much I shared his perspective back in the 1960s and early ‘70s and how little we had in common philosophically by the time he killed himself four years ago. I like to think that I matured and grew over the years, while he was so invested with the culture and values of the ‘60s that he couldn’t break free and reconnect with the realities of post 9/11 America.

Regardless, I still consider him the best writer of our generation and will make another pilgrimage to the Woody Creek Tavern the next time I’m in Aspen.

Wifi Chronicles (continued)

It only took about six weeks, but Hastings finally got a new wireless router and restored their free Wifi.

I’d like to think my phone call to their corporate offices and two emails were a factor, but I have no way of knowing. I drove past yesterday and noticed the “Wifi is down” sign was missing from the Hardback Cafe door, so I parked in the lot, whipped out my Mini 9 laptop and confirmed that there was a Hastings Wifi signal present.

Now, I’m back at my favorite table with a large post-lunch cup of coffee, blogging again.

It’s almost as if my planets came into some harmonious alignment today, what with getting our storm debris hauled and the Hastings Wifi issue resolved. It takes to little to make my day.

Another reason to be glad I took early retirement

Fellow Indianapolis News veteran and now Indianapolis Star/Gannett wage slave Mike Ellis posted to Facebook today that he "filed for unemployment for the first time in my life earlier this morning."

It's all part of Gannett's program of forcing employees to take unpaid furloughs, despite the fact that Gannett is still showing a profit - $77.4 million in the first quarter of 2009.

"I figured it didn't hurt to try," Mike said. "I know of some others who filed the last time."

I suppose it might cause some permanent resentment if he were to hang a "Furloughed" sign around his neck and sit on the sidewalk in front of The Star Building with a tin cup.

Gannett's most recent "offer" to the Newspaper Guild at The Star is a 12 percent pay cut - 8 percent on July 1 and another 4 percent on Oct. 1.

84 days after it fell, the brush is gone!

Our humongous brush pile is gone. Gone!

A crew from the Craighead County Highway Department was here shortly after 7 a.m. with a big John Deere piece of equipment with a grabber thing on the front and three dump trucks.

I knew something was afoot late yesterday afternoon when I noticed the John Deere machinery parked next to the brush pile.

The crew did a splendid job and got it all over the space of about an hour. It took four dump trucks to haul away the debris from our yard in the wake of the Jan. 27 ice storm.

I added to the pile over the weekend and put three wagon loads of limbs onto it yesterday. We still have limbs to chainsaw and haul out of the west side of the yard, but we figure we can burn what's left.

Cutting and hauling wood

It's a beautiful day in the Neighborhood, so I'm cutting and hauling wood. The end is in sight, at last!

Sun Senior Classic 2009

The Sun Senior Classic Basketball Tournament was today, so Maria and I spent the afternoon in the Jonesboro High School gym - her doing whatever needed doing and me shooting photos along with James Byard.

The event features the 40 best players - 20 boys and 20 girls - competing in an event that raises money for the Sun's Newspapers in Education program.

Hey, that adds up to 217%

I'm mostly Hoosier, more than a little Arkie after only 18 months, and remarkably Coloradan as a result of spending at least a week there every year since the late 1980s.

You are 93% Hoosier!

 

You take your Hoosier heritage seriously! No one will confuse you with a Buckeye, a Wolverine, a Kentuckian, or an Illinoisian.

How Hoosier are you?
Take More Quizzes

You are 54% Arkansan!

 

It's a better than average bet that you live around Little Rock or somewhere west of it. You're somewhat Arkie, but not all that much.



How Arkansan are you?
Take More Quizzes

You are 67% of a Coloradan!

 

You live either in Colorado or a surrounding state! Or, you are from Colorado and you belong back in this state!!!

How Colorado are you?
Take More Quizzes

Aha! Just as I thought!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The Inland North
The West
The Northeast
The South
Philadelphia
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Spring comes late to the high country

It's a balmy, drizzly spring morning with cardinals singing their bright song here on Crowley's Ridge, but friend Tim Balough in Alma, Colo. has a different view from his chalet at 10,600 feet.

More evidence

This was posted Thursday on a Baylor University sports fans forum.

I can't vouch for its accuracy, but it has the ring of truth to it. Also, did anyone else notice that Capt. Phillips did not include Obama in his list of people to thank for his rescue?

Subject: The real story of Obama's Decision Making with the hostages.
Subject: AH, now it comes out
Having spoken to some SEAL pals here in Virginia Beach yesterday and asking why this thing dragged out for 4 days, I got the following:
1. BHO wouldn't authorize the DEVGRU/NSWC SEAL teams to the scene for 36 hours going against OSC (on scene commander) recommendation.
2. Once they arrived, BHO imposed restrictions on their ROE that they couldn't do anything unless the hostage's life was in "imminent" danger
3. The first time the hostage jumped, the SEALS had the raggies all sighted in, but could not fire due to ROE restriction
4. When the navy RIB came under fire as it approached with supplies, no fire was returned due to ROE restrictions. As the raggies were shooting at the RIB, they were exposed and the SEALS had them all dialed in.
5. BHO specifically denied two rescue plans developed by the Bainbridge CPN and SEAL teams
6. Bainbridge CPN and SEAL team CDR finally decide they have the OpArea and OSC authority to solely determine risk to hostage. 4 hours later, 3 dead raggies
7. BHO immediately claims credit for his "daring and decisive" behaviour. As usual with him, it's BS.
So per our last email thread, I'm downgrading Oohbaby's performace to D-. Only reason it's not an F is that the hostage survived.
Read the following accurate account.
Philips’ first leap into the warm, dark water of the Indian Ocean hadn’t worked out as well. With the Bainbridge in range and a rescue by his country’s Navy possible, Philips threw himself off of his
lifeboat prison, enabling Navy shooters onboard the destroyer a clear shot at his captors — and none was taken.
The guidance from National Command Authority — the president of the United States,
Barack Obama — had been clear: a peaceful solution was the only acceptable outcome to this standoff unless the hostage’s life was in clear, extreme danger.
The next day, a small Navy boat approaching the floating raft was fired on by the Somali pirates — and again no fire was returned and no pirates killed. This was again due to the cautious stance assumed by Navy personnel thanks to the combination of a lack of clear guidance from Washington and a mandate from the commander in chief’s staff not to act until Obama, a man with no background of dealing with such issues and no track record of decisiveness, decided that any outcome other than a “peaceful solution” would be acceptable.
After taking fire from the Somali kidnappers again Saturday night, the onscenecommander decided he’d had enough.
Keeping his authority to act in the case of a clear and present danger to the hostage’s life and having heard nothing from Washington since yet another request to mount a rescue operation
had been denied the day before, the Navy officer — unnamed in all media reports to date — decided the AK47 one captor had leveled at Philips’ back was a threat to the hostage’s life and ordered the
NSWC team to take their shots.
Three rounds downrange later, all three brigands became enemy KIA and Philips was safe.
There is upside, downside, and spinside to the series of events over the last week that culminated in yesterday’s dramatic rescue of an American hostage.
Almost immediately following word of the rescue, the Obama administration and its supporters claimed victory against pirates in the Indian Ocean and [1] declared that the dramatic end to the standoff put paid to questions of the inexperienced president’s toughness and decisiveness.
Despite the Obama administration’s (and its sycophants’) attempt to spin yesterday’s success as a result of bold, decisive leadership by the inexperienced president, the reality is nothing of the sort.
What should have been a standoff lasting only hours — as long as it took the USS Bainbridge and its team of NSWC operators to steam to the location — became an embarrassing four day and counting
standoff between a ragtag handful of criminals with rifles and a U.S. Navy warship.

Learning who we can trust

The coverage of Wednesday's Tax Day Tea Parties tells us a lot about who in the media we can trust to be objective and who has become the American version of Pravda.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ignored the event to the extent that their main front page art was an AP photo of a painting being rescued from the earthquake rubble in Italy. Other dominant p-1 art was a 2-column AP photo of the French Navy seizing a pirate skiff and a 3-column local photo of a pile of drawers (no humans in sight) accompanying an absolutely riveting story about the Pulaski County coroner wanting his own morgue. The closest thing to demonstration coverage they gave readers on p-1 was a tiny picture at the top of the page teasing a story about Afghan women rallying against marital rape.

I'm proud to say the Jonesboro Sun had an accurate account of the local tea party with a 3-column headline and photo placed above the fold on page 1.

I'm also pleased to notice that my former paper, The Indianapolis Star, gave the Indianapolis event prominent coverage on page 1. Ditto, the Lafayette (Ind.) Journal & Courier.

Readers of the Chicago Sun Times and Tribune and the New York Times weren't so well served. No page 1 coverage of tea parties.

And then there's the quality of the coverage. Here again, Michael Wilkey of the Sun got it right. His story is an unbiased, concise account of what happened.

Any journalist worthy of the title understands that when you cover an emotionally charged public event like this, your credibility is on the line. The people who are there will read or view your efforts and compare your report with what they saw and heard. If you spin it to suit your own views, or even if you just miss the point, they will know and they will never trust you again.

That's what happened with CNN's Susan Roesgen at a Chicago Tea Party in what is the most egregious example of journalistic malpractice I've seen in a long, long time. Her biography on the CNN web site claims she graduated from the University of Montana with highest honors. The university apparently doesn't teach journalistic ethics and objectivity.

How hard is it to just stick a microphone in front of a protester and let him state his point of view? What kind of loon thinks it's a reporter's job to lecture the person being interviewed? What kind of news organization would tolerate this kind of unprofessional behavior?

In a rational world, Susan Roesgen would return to her office and find herself fired with all of the stuff from her desk in a cardboard box.

But then maybe CNN really stands for Crazy News Network.

Check out Jon Stewart's thoughts on Roesgen's and CNN's work covering the flood in Fargo, N.D.

 

Who would think the day would come when Comedy Central has better news judgment than CNN?

The Wifi Chronicles (continued)

I’m back at the Mall at Turtle Creek on their free Wifi, but I feel like going home and taking a nap after a generous lunch at the best Italian restaurant in town.

I noticed the “Wifi is down” sign is still on the door at Hastings’s Hardback Cafe today. I finally got a response on Tuesday to my two emails and a phone complaint about the protracted (more than a month) outage:

We apologize for the inconvenience this causes you.  I have contacted our helpdesk team and they have been working to get this back up and running as soon as possible.   We have been working towards a more stable WiFi environment for all of our Hastings stores/cafe's.  We have been testing a new solution in a couple of other locations and are very close  to getting this resolved so we can get the WiFi up and running again for our customers.   Our plan is to send the new equipment needed to resolve this issue in the Jonesboro location in the next week or so.
Thank you for taking the time to contact us and we hope to have this resolved soon.
Thank you,

Customer Service
877-427-8464

So we should expect to see Wifi restored here in the next week. Or so.

Whatever. The food court in the mall is starting to grow on me – something I probably never would have checked out if Hastings had kept their Wifi up and running.

Jonesboro Tea Party

 

I went to the Jonesboro Tea Party last evening with our BMW rider friend Deb (that's her with the bumper sticker).

Maria doesn't go to political stuff because it would represent a conflict of interest for a newspaper editor. I, on the other hand, am no longer hampered by that consideration since I'm retired.

The Jonesboro affair was better attended than the one in Paragould - bigger city, bigger turnout. I estimated the crowd at 300-400. It was also more structured with more speakers, most of whom made their points concisely and eloquently.

The exception was an older guy who spoke first and got off on a rambling tangent about the "green" movement as it affects our economics and lifestyles. While his points about making better use of our coal and oil resources were well taken, I thought his ridicule of wind turbines was ill-informed and ill-considered, since the German wind turbine firm Nordex is building its U.S. manufacturing plant right here in Jonesboro. Insulting what will soon be a major employer and huge economic force in the region is hardly good judgment.

And, he missed the basic underlying point that human-influenced global warming is a hideous lie, based on repeatedly discredited junk science, that is being used by the Obama crowd and other moonbats to drive their agenda. Developing alternative energy sources is the right thing to do because it's a step forward, not because the uninformed think the planet will turn tropical if we don't.

Rightwing Extremists!

The Department of Homeland Security released a report the other day that expressed grave concerns over "rightwing extremists."

Here's a passage from the report:

(U//LES) Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers.

I spent an hour or so with about 200 of these dangerous radicals in downtown Paragould, Ark. as they tried to whip passersby into a frenzy of racist and political rage.

Here is the face of terroristic rightwing extremism in the American heartland:

Yes, Janet Napolitano's Department of Homeland Security needs to keep a watchful eye on these dangerous revolutionaries who actually believe in the Constitution, and especially that seditious 10th Amendment, not to mention all of that bilge about free speech and the right to peaceful assembly.

With any luck at all, these people will be in concentration camps by winter.

(And if you can't tell this is heavy sarcasm, you're a brain-damaged moonbat.)

Happy Birthday, Morgan!

Today is my stepdaughter Morgan's 24th birthday.

Morgan is finishing up a master's degree at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. and we're very proud of her.

Happy Birthday, Morgan!

An ad for Steve's band

These are the people my son Steve spends his evenings with, playing various venues in Las Vegas. Steve is the second from the right.

Check out their web site here.

Here's their schedule through the end of May:

Apr 19 - 10:00P - Margaritaville
Apr 22 - 8:00P - House of Blues
Apr 28 - 9:00P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio Hotel & Casino
Apr 29 - 8:00P - House of Blues, Foundation Room
May 4 - 9:00P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio Hotel & Casino
May 5 - 9:00P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio Hotel & Casino
May 8 - 6:15P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio Hotel & Casino
May 9 - 6:15P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio Hotel & Casino
May 10 - 10:00P - Margaritaville
May 11 - 9:00P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio hotel & Casino
May 12 - 9:00P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio hotel & Casino
May 15 - 6:15P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio Hotel & Casino
May 16 - 6:15P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio Hotel & Casino
May 17 - 10:30P - Margaritaville
May 19 - 9:30P - Bally’s
May 20 - 9:30P - Bally’s
May 21 - 9:30P - Bally’s
May 22 - 9:30P - Bally’s
May 23 - 9:30P - Bally’s
May 24 - 9:30P - Bally’s
May 29 - 6:15P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio Hotel & Casino
May 30 - 6:15P - Fontana Lounge - Bellagio Hotel & Casino
May 31 - 10:00P - Margaritaville

Don't mess with Texas

Obama's handlers hand-picked the crowd, issued digital cameras

This is from moonbattery.com:

Stung by the contempt in which their figurehead is rightly held by the military, Comrade Obama's handlers set to work trying to prove that even the leftist punk who denounced our troops in Afghanistan as "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians" can be made to appear as if he is loved by our protectors in arms.

Macsmind received an email from sergeant who was present at Obama's pre-announced "surprise" visit to Camp Victory:

"We were pre-screened, asked by officials "Who voted for Obama?", and then those who raised their hands were shuffled to the front of the receiving line. They even handed out digital cameras and asked them to hold them up."

Take a look at the picture at AP and notice all the cameras are the same models? Coincidence? I think not.

Via Hot Air:

Maybe Obama should get some help staging phony photo ops from his friends out in Hollyweird. But this farcical event was authentic enough to pass for real in the mainstream media.

Avast there!

I decided the other day that I’m asking for trouble using my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 on public Wifi connections without some antivirus protection.

But with such limited computing resources, a machine like this needs a very lightweight antivirus program – nothing on the order of Blink or Norton.

After a little research, I decided to try Avast from avast.com. it’s small and free and has good reviews from user forums.

It slowed things down noticeably when I installed it, but I’ve since turned off several features that I don’t need and now it’s unnoticeable.

Topix.com

The local TV station had an editorial this morning about kids bullying each other on the Topix.com website.

My wife offered that this is a big problem in some schools. I had to admit, I’ve never been to the site.

So I just checked it out. I went to the local city page and read comments about a current news story I happen to know a few things about. With a few exceptions, it’s just Morons on Parade – a bunch of uninformed dimwits with very limited reading comprehension, most of whom have failed to grasp the central issues of the story and are focusing on irrelevant details and insulting each other.

I won’t go into the issue in question, but it only took me a few seconds to conclude that Topix.com is a forum for the ignorant and a complete waste of time.

Tea time

The Jonesboro, Ark. Tea Party will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Craighead County Courthouse.

I'll be there.

License plate non-drama

It's time to renew our Arkansas license plates.

I tried to do it online the other day, but discovered that I can't because they need proof of our 2007 personal property tax payment, which doesn't exist because we moved here late in '07 and don't owe it.

Sooooo, I get to go to the Revenue Office in Jonesboro (no DMV or BMV in Arkansas) and have them call the county tax collector to confirm that we don't owe any '07 personal property tax, so I can keep our two cars and two motorcycles street legal.

This should be fun. With any luck, I'll be home by dark.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Well, I misjudged that task.

I spent a grand total of 15 minutes in the State Revenue Office, largely because I came prepared with my insurance cards for each vehicle and the odometer readings for each. The total cost of renewing the registration for two cars and two bike: $66.50.

One more thing to like about Arkansas.

ESL

How would you pronounce this child's name:  
"Le-a" ???   
 
Leah??                NO 
Lee - A??            NOPE 
Lay - a??             NO 
Lei??                  Guess Again.  
  
This child attends a school in Detroit. Her mother is irate because everyone is getting her name wrong.  

It's pronounced "Ledasha." When the mother was asked about the pronunciation of the name, she said, "The dash don't be silent."  
 
SO, if you see something come across your desk like this, please remember to pronounce the dash.  
 
If they ask you why, tell them the dash don't be silent.

Happy Birthday, Doreen!

Please join me in wishing a Happy Birthday to my friend Doreen Tracey, one of the original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers.

Doreen now works at Warner Bros. and still lives in Burbank, Calif.

Easter

It's a cool rainy Sunday afternoon and I'm chilling at the bookstore listening to John Coltrane while Maria shops next door at Kroger.
This is the kind of Sunday afternoon that's made for napping, which is what Maria and the dogs did earlier.
We did some token yard work this morning, planting some honeysuckle along the fence and raking and burning a pile of leaves and sticks near the future site of our fire pit.

Capt. Phillips rescued from pirates

Like I said, Navy Seals.

The ignorance and naiveté of the media types in covering the sniper action is stunning.

They’re acting like a 25 meter shot for a trained sniper is a huge deal. As the FOX guy outside the captain’s home just pointed out, these guys can hit an apple at 1,000 yards. Making a shot like this is like a layup, he said, regardless of the pitching and rolling of the USS Bainbridge and the lifeboat.

This is, of course, not meant to diminish the importance of today’s events, just to put things into the proper perspective.

Yeah, how does Radio Shack survive?

And speaking of RadioShack, I'm reminded of this brilliant piece at TheOnion web site back on April 23, 2007:

FORT WORTH, TX—Despite having been on the job for nine months, RadioShack CEO Julian Day said Monday that he still has "no idea" how the home electronics store manages to stay open.

"There must be some sort of business model that enables this company to make money, but I'll be damned if I know what it is," Day said. "You wouldn't think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must, or I wouldn't have this desk to sit behind all day."

The retail outlet boasts more than 6,000 locations in the United States, and is known best for its wall-sized displays of obscure-looking analog electronics components and its notoriously desperate, high-pressure sales staff. Nevertheless, it ranks as a Fortune 500 company, with gross revenues of over $4.5 billion and fiscal quarter earnings averaging tens of millions of dollars.

"Have you even been inside of a RadioShack recently?" Day asked. "Just walking into the place makes you feel vaguely depressed and alienated. Maybe our customers are at the mall anyway and don't feel like driving to Best Buy? I suppose that's possible, but still, it's just...weird."

After taking over as CEO, Day ordered a comprehensive, top-down review of RadioShack's administrative operations, inventory and purchasing, suppliers, demographics, and marketing strategies. He has also diligently pored over weekly budget reports, met with investors, taken numerous conference calls with regional managers about "circulars or flyers or something," and even spent hours playing with the company's "baffling" 200-In-One electronics kit. Yet so far none of these things have helped Day understand the moribund company's apparent allure. 

"Even the name 'RadioShack'—can you imagine two less appealing words placed next to one another?" Day said. "What is that, some kind of World War II terminology? Are ham radio operators still around, even? Aren't we in the digital age?"

"Well, our customers are out there somewhere, and thank God they are," Day added.

One of Day's theories about RadioShack's continued solvency involves wedding DJs, emergency cord replacement, and off-brand wireless telephones. Another theory entails countless RadioShack gift cards that sit unredeemed in their recipients' wallets. Day has even conjectured that the store is "still coasting on" an enormous fortune made from remote-control toy cars in the mid-1970s.

Day admitted, however, that none of these theories seems particularly plausible.

"I once went into a RadioShack location incognito in order to gauge customer service," Day said. "It was about as inviting as a visit to the DMV. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything I wanted to buy. Finally, I figured I'd pick up some Enercell AA batteries, though truthfully they're not appreciably cheaper than the name brands."

"I know one thing," Day continued. "If Sony and JVC start including gold-tipped cable cords with their products, we're screwed."

In the cover letter to his December 2006 report to investors, "Radio Shack: Still Here In The 21st Century," Day wrote that he had no reason to believe that the coming year would not be every bit as good as years past, provided that people kept on doing things much the same way they always had.

Despite this cheerful boosterism, Day admitted that nothing has changed during his tenure and he doesn't exactly know what he can do to improve the chain.

"I'd like to capitalize on the store's strong points, but I honestly don't know what they are," Day said. "Every location is full of bizarre adapters, random chargers, and old boom boxes, and some sales guy is constantly hovering over you. It's like walking into your grandpa's basement. You always expect to see something cool, but it never delivers."

Added Day: "I may never know the answer. No matter how many times I punch the sales figures into this crappy Tandy desk calculator, it just doesn't add up."

Fun with electricity

Our electricity failed at 7:10 p.m. yesterday, about the time Maria plugged in the electric skillet.

Given our prior experiences, we supposed that meant the entire neighborhood was blacked out.

So I fired up the grill to cook the Italian sausages Maria had taken out for dinner. But then I decided, "Screw this! We're going out to dinner."

We were halfway out of our little subdivision when we noticed several neighbors' homes had lights burning.

Uh-oh, that meant it was just us.

I rechecked the circuit breaker panel in the garage and confirmed none of the circuit breakers were tripped. I also noted the absence of a master circuit breaker. How odd, I thought.

Then I called the Craighead Electric Co-op outage number and reported our problem.

We phoned in a pizza order to Papa John's Pizza in Paragould and I went to pick it up, with Maria staying behind to deal with the electric utility guy.

The garage carriage lights were burning brightly when I returned about 35 minutes later. Maria said the repair guy identified the problem as a master circuit breaker that we were unaware of - situated on the outside of the house under the electric meter.

She didn't ask if there would be a charge for the service call, so I can only guess what we'll pay for that bit of information about our home's electrical system.

A short time later, I flipped on the kitchen lights and one of the recessed floodlights blew in a blue flash.

And when I restarted the computers, I discovered that the D-Link wireless router was dead.

I determined the problem was a fried power brick and resigned myself to shopping for a new wireless router today.

This morning, however, I rooted through a box of computer-related cables, wires, power bricks, and remote controls and found one that was a close match. The D-Link power brick had a + core and an output of 5.0 volts and 2.5 amps. The one I found was identical except that its output was 5.0 volts and 2.8 amps. I reasoned that .3 amps shouldn't make a big difference and, even if it fried the router, a new one isn't that expensive and a new router would be sure to give better performance for my money, since the D-Link is more than 5 years old.

So I threw the juice to it and, voila! I was back online.

Oh, and the first replacement floodlight bulb I tried in the kitchen was dead.

I'm curious to see what new electrical surprise awaits me.

My first laptop - the TRS-80 Model 100

This is the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100, considered the world's first laptop computer.

It was announced in 1983 and I had one in March, 1985, when I launched the Metro North Bureau of The Indianapolis News.

The Model 100 retailed for $599 in 1983. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $1,280 in today's dollars, so the three of us who received them to run our suburban bureaus handled them with extreme care. I remember the IT guy at The News telling me, Mike Ellis and Jerry Graf to treat them like we would a pet, don't leave them in hot cars or freezing environments.

The basic model came with 8K of RAM, but ours were increased to a whopping 24K, and an 80C85 CPU that ran at 2.4 MHz. It had RS-232 parallel ports for a bar code reader and an internal 300 baud modem. The LCD display was 40x8 characters and it ran for 16 hours on four AA batteries and also came with an external 9 volt DC power supply.

For data storage, it had a connection for an audio cassette recorder.

You could also buy an optional Disk/Video Interface that made it possible to connect a TV for a monitor and save data to a huge 5¼" floppy disk. I couldn't get the paper to spring for the D/V I, so after about a year in the bureau, I bought my own.

I remember how incredibly high-tech I felt whipping out my Model 100 in courtrooms, school board meetings, city council meetings and interviews. The reporters for the smaller local papers were positively awe-struck, equipped as they were, with pens and notebooks.

The keyboard had a nice feel to it, but it was a bit noisy, so our IT guy put little dental rubber bands under each key to muffle the sound.

Even though 24K seems like a pathetically small memory capacity, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I ran out of memory while taking notes. In those cases, I just started deleting files that I had already backed up to tape or disk to free up memory for more notes.

The Model 100 weighed 3.8 pounds.

Compare that with my new Dell Inspiron Mini 9, that has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of solid state memory, weighs in at just 2.28 pounds and cost only $250 (about $125 in 1985 dollars).

Check back in another 24 years and see how pathetic the Mini 9 looks.

Today's fortune cookie message

My amazing daughter-in-law Ruth Greenberg

I just got an email from my son Sean with a link to the Oregon Public Broadcasting site where they have a Fabulous 7 minute 20 second feature on his wife Ruth Greenberg's amazing mosaic work.

It's very gratifying to see Ruth's work starting to get the attention and praise it deserves. She really is a pioneer in the mosaic medium.

She has pieces in private homes and public places all over the United States - everything from a Manhattan office building to a Catholic church baptistry to an rural Oregon yurt.

She does a lot of custom commission work and also produces patented decorative tiles that can withstand the heat of a fireplace firebox.

You can view the video here and click here to see her web site.

Barry and the Pirates

This was posted today over at www.americanthinker.com:

By Lance Fairchok

It is the stuff of movies, a high seas drama, where for the first time in 200 years, pirates attack an American vessel, the Maersk Alabama. In the best traditions of America's merchant seamen, its brave crew fights back and regains control of the ship. To ensure the safety of his crew from the pirates, and at great personal risk, the noble Captain offers himself as hostage. The freighter is filled with humanitarian relief for Kenya, not weapons, cars, electronics, or luxuries. Luckily, an American warship, the USS Bainbridge was nearby. It is a moment for leadership and resolve, where America asserts her might and dignity, where she takes the lead against lawless marauders, and our President stands up full of pride and righteous anger and says.... Well, what he said was, exactly, nothing.

Oh, his administration mumbled, made half-hearted condemnations, and pandered a bit. John Kerry called for hearings, Hillary Clinton voiced her "concern" and cackled uproariously about the situation during a press conference with the Moroccan Ambassador, whose country ironically was once a pirate power that seized American ships and enslaved our crews in the late 1700s. Hillary botched the details, but did decisively state: "We think the world must come together to end the scourge of piracy."

There was a measured and nuanced press conference by a State Department spokesperson, Robert Wood, as Secretary of State Clinton was otherwise engaged. "Our militaries - the U.S. military and the militaries of other countries are cooperating, trying to see what we can do to prevent these types of piracy acts from happening. But, this is going to take time. We are all working very closely to try to do what we can." He further stated: "We've been trying to provide support for the transitional government there (in Somalia); we've encouraged others to do so...but this is a question for the entire international community to deal with..."

This is what we have come to. Unilateral action, even if it is as clear cut as defending US interests against pirates, must be avoided. Murderous Jihadist terrorists get civil rights and government lawyers while US taxpayers pick up the bill. Pirates, who board US shipping and threaten American seamen, get treated like simple criminals that do not warrant so much as a mention by the President. One would have thought it was a no-brainer for the Manchurian President, a populist win-win to paint Obama as a decisive leader, a chance to inspire confidence that he was up to the challenge. It was a chance to warn aggressors, pirates or otherwise, away from international shipping. It was also a chance, now squandered, to reassure friend and foe alike that America had not lost her nerve or reneged on her exceptional role as a world leader.

But no, it's all just a distraction from the greater work of wealth redistribution, "social justice," and remaking America into the utopian vision of a narcissistic socialist academic with a nice speaking voice. No pompous speeches and meandering lectures this time, the implications of piracy on trade and sovereignty are beyond Obama.

When asked by a reporter about the Maersk Alabama during a White House event, President Obama responded to the question with: "Guys, we're talking about housing right now," translated as "don't bother me with trivialities." Obama has no clue what is required of a world leader and his advisors less so. A mere three months into its first term, the Obama administration is turning out to be just the embarrassment and bumbling disaster, we feared it would be.

I've already noticed people taking Obama stickers off their cars. They can only pad the polls so long. Pirates are easy, what's going to happen if we are attacked again, or Iran, Pakistan, or North Korea use a nuke?

Maersk Alabama hostage situation

Two words: Navy Seals

The quest for free Wifi continues

Well, well, free Wifi at the mall. The Mall at Turtle Creek, to be specific.

I went to the Barnes & Noble Starbucks to ask about the Starbucks card that presumably gets you 2 hours of free Wifi a day at any Starbucks. But they don’t sell the Starbucks card there. Instead, they push a Barnes & Noble card that has no Wifi perks.

However, the friendly barista offered, there is free Wifi in the food court.

I figured that was way too good to be true, but I had to check it out to be sure.

Damned if there aren’t two unsecured mall wireless networks: turtle-creek-1 and turtle-creek-2.

So who needs the Barnes & Noble ambiance at $2 an hour when I can buy my coffee there and walk about 60 yards to the food court to drink it and surf for free?

There is a downside, of course. There always is. I don’t see any electrical outlets, so I’m on battery when I’m in here. Fortunately, the Mini 9 has about 4 hours of battery life.

Blowing smoke or taking me seriously?

I got this response from Books-A-Million this afternoon from my email of this morning suggesting they seize the opportunity to snatch Hastings customers here by offering free Wifi.

It reads like a stock reply, but I remain guardedly optimistic.

Thank you for your email to feedback@booksamillion.com.

I have passed your suggestion to our home office for them to review.

I hope that you will continue to provide such feedback, as it is the only way to know whether we’re succeeding or failing in meeting your expectations. If I can ever be of further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Our Customer Relations Hotline is (800) 876-4510.

Sincerely,

Ouida Johnson

Customer Relations

Doggy drama

Not our dog, not our cupcakes.

Rain, yardwork, and free Wifi

The Weather Channel radar shows the rain has reached Jonesboro and will be here soon, so it looks like my yard work is done for the day.

I chainsawed several tree trunk segments last night and hauled them away with the lawn tractor/wagon in a couple of loads this morning.

Since we got the wagon last weekend, I've been able to make some serious progress in clearing the debris from our yard, but there is still much to do.

I also lodged email and telephone complaints with Hastings's corporate offices about the month-long free Wifi outage at their Jonesboro store.

At the same time, I fired off an email to the corporate offices of Books-A-Million, which has a bookstore and cafe a block south of Hastings, suggesting they have an opportunity to capture those of us set adrift by Hastings if they offer free Wifi. I also suggested they could make a dent in the customer base of the Starbucks at the local Barnes & Noble, since the Wifi there is free only to AT&T cellular customers and users of Starbucks cards.

That said, I don't really expect anything to change at Hastings or Books-A-Million. I've probably used up my luck for influencing businesses with the change I affected in our Weather Channel Local on the 8s listings.

But it never hurts to try.

They're still keeping the faith

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr headlined a concert the other night at Radio City Music Hall to raise money for scholarships so at-risk people can learn Transcendental Meditation.

I know because an old TM friend, with whom I recently reconnected on Facebook, was there and waxed ecstatic about it on her Facebook page.

I know her from my TM days in Indianapolis. I learned TM on the first course ever offered in Indianapolis back in November, 1969. I threw myself into the TM program and our house was the first real TM center in Indianapolis. We hosted weekly meetings and introductory lectures and initiations on a regular basis for a couple of years until the TM movement got big enough to rent half of a duplex two doors down from us. That was the center for a few years until the movement ponied up $100,000-plus for a mansion in the 3400 block of Washington Boulevard. That was big money in those days - the mid-1970s - and it was a pretty deluxe place. There was even a carriage house out back where the sidhas did their flying program. (Go look it up. I don't feel like explaining it here.)

Anyhow, I drifted away from the TM program in the mid- to late-1980s and every now and then I run into someone from those days who is still on the TM bandwagon - like my friend who went to the concert.

I can't decide who's the fool here - me for moving on or them for keeping the faith. All I know is that by all measurements that I can think of, TM failed to live up to the promises Maharishi Mahesh Yogi made for it. He sent packs of sidhas to prop up failing dictatorships in Iran and the Philippines and promised world peace. They failed anyway.

He promised "Cosmic Consciousness" to anyone who meditated regularly for 5-7 years. I know of no one who achieved that goal in 20 years.

Those of us who took the sidhi course were led to believe that we would be able to levitate. As far as I know, nobody has ever gotten past the hopping stage.

That said, TM kept me and millions of other people drug-free, because recreational drugs and meditation are not compatible.

But I gave up the belief that it is destined to solve all of the world's problems a long time ago. The world has too many crazies and hate-filled loons who won't let that happen.

Maharishi was from the Kshatriya (warrior) caste, and he surely knew that.

And as far as raising money for TM "scholarships" goes, Maharishi always said the reason he charged for the technique was to make people value it and feel a commitment to it. If you give it away, people don't take it seriously and don't stick with it. The idea of "scholarships" seems to undercut that principle.

Why the New York Times deserves to die

I can't top this

I've been thinking about blogging something about this situation for several weeks, but Bob nails it with this rant:

More ice storm expense

We stopped at Lowe’s on the way home from the Memphis Airport yesterday and bought one of these 17 cubic foot dump carts.

I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon assembling it and was pleased to find it’s even better at hauling tree debris than I had hoped.

Steve was a huge help on Saturday morning, chainsawing and helping to haul debris to the growing brush pile in front of our house. Now that it’s just Maria and me, the daunting task of clearing our yard of the Jan. 27 ice storm debris seems much more do-able now that we have the cart to pull behind the lawn tractor.

Maybe I’ll paint it John Deere green after it accumulates some scrapes and scratches.

Grandparenting

Steve and Lisa have gone home to Las Vegas and we miss them already.

This was their first trip to Arkansas, so now it’s time for us to return the favor and visit them in their new home in the West.

Considering that Lisa is only 4 years and 10 months old, she has an astonishing amount of emotional maturity and poise. She has that rare ability to step outside of herself in emotional situations and recover her equilibrium. I’ve been blessed with it, so has Steve and, happily, so has Maria.

The top photo was shot Saturday morning as I worked on the laptop in the kitchen and Lisa came in to greet me.

The bottom photo was shot Friday afternoon at the big public park on the south side of Jonesboro where we exchanged high-fives after Lisa scaled the big climbing rock in the lakeside playground.

I think I like this grandparent thing.

At O'Charley's

Coloring on the kids' menu. She rode here in the del Sol with the top off, so her hair is a little disheveled.

Lisa goes Arkansas

  Lisa tried on a camo flotation vest at the Crowley's Ridge Nature Center yesterday.

She had a great time at the nature center.

Hey, they fixed it!

I sent an email to the Weather Channel back on March 17, pointing out that the regional observations list in my Local on the 8s included Blytheville and Eaker AFB.

I noted that Eaker AFB ceased to be a U.S. Air Force installation in December, 1992. It's now a civilian airport. Most of the time, it was listed as having "no report." It's also at Blytheville, which makes its data mostly irrelevant.

I got an email reply within 24 hours and a couple of days later I noticed that Eaker AFB was gone and there was a new listing for "Arkansas Intl"  for its current incarnation as Arkansas International Airport.

Thanks, Weather Channel!

Lisa arrives today!

My granddaughter Lisa and son Steve are coming for a four-day visit this evening.

They're arriving at the Memphis Airport, a place I've not yet been, so I have the route laid into my GPS and have studied maps of the airport parking and terminal areas, so I'm good to go.

Since the airport has free Wifi, I'll leave a little early and take my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 for entertainment.