It’s Morning in Frankfort

Posted on 09/10/2010 by Grumpa Joe

The opportunity clock rang at 6:15 this morning for the second day in a row. Normally, I just sleep until nature wakes me. Yesterday and today were special. It was Lions Candy Day weekend. We Serve is the motto of the Lions club and I take that seriously. In spite of the fact that I was tired this morning, I dragged my sorry butt out of bed at 6:30 and dressed. I left without breakfast. Peggy thought I was crazy, because I am never awake for more than ten minutes before I’m shoveling food into my mouth.

I met my fellow Lions at Starbucks. We got our candy, collection buckets, and assignments from Lion Sue and took off. I went to Burger King and had breakfast. As I ate, I watched the intersection that I would be manning and realized that Saturday morning is a loser. The morning before, I was a target from three directions. The number of cars, trucks and UFO’s coming at me was voluminous. This morning things were kind of sleepy, like me. I called Lion Sue and asked for a new corner. She assigned me to route 45 at Nebraska. Okay, anything would be better than 45 and Colorado. I stood at the intersection for an hour and collected about ten bucks. As I stood there I had the chance to see things that struck  a chord. It was Frankfort waking up. I saw people jogging and walking dogs along quiet village  streets and trails. The roar of trucks and heavy traffic was not there. In fact, the singing tires of a car speeding along on U.S. 45 was predominant. A garbage truck turned onto Nebraska and pulled into the Creamery parking lot to empty the dumpster. I hummed a tune to keep my mind active, and remembered President Reagan‘s essay It’s Morning In America. Normal people were going about their business oblivious to the effect of big government taking over their lives. They went about the affairs of life that they had control over.

Lion Sue bailed me out and sent me to the Jewel. I couldn’t believe the action there either, Jewel was slow. If Peggy and I were shopping on a Saturday, Jewel would be having grocery basket accidents in the aisles. Even so, collections were a tad better than at the last corner. I collected about twenty bucks  in a half hour.

My next assignment was at White and Nebraska. There was no one at the corner from the Lions. I took up the post and within ten minutes had collected more than I had in the previous two hours. There was a charity run in town, and the traffic it generated was crazy. It was non-stop cars for the next two hours. It was a  Candy Day Salesman’s dream. The money collected is a necessary commodity to keep our Camps open for kids with blindness. Selling candy is secondary to the notion that the end result serves a higher purpose.

People saw me standing there and approached cautiously with the window rolling down. A dollar bill emerged and dropped into my bucket. I handed the driver a roll of candy and got a smile and a thank you in return. I have to admit, people were giving generously and cheerfully.

I returned home at 12:30, ate a sandwich, and collapsed into a deep sleep on the couch. I dreamed about the next challenge coming in two weeks, the Strides Walk.

Filed under: Conservative, family, Government, Lions Club, Motivation, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Crash, Crash, Crash

Posted on 27/09/2010 by Grumpa Joe

I have lost all of my confidence in computers. In the last twenty seven days, I have had to reload the operating system on this miserable lap top three times. Each time, I began to recover and make forward progress when it would happen again. Needless to say, I’ve lost a lot of stuff. I have a back up from before the first incident, but have you ever tried to recover data from a Microsoft formatted back up? I thought all I had to do was to perform a restore function, and all would be sweet. I learned that restore only restores the program stuff. Data is excluded.

After a month, I found my contact list with all of my friends e-mail addresses. Yesterday, I worked for four hours to learn how to recover them. After that amount of time, I had successfully recovered ten contacts. Because they were entered in Windows Vista, and I am now on Windows 7 there is a problem. If I still had Vista loaded on my PC it would have gone smoothly, but I don’t even want the Vista disk in my house any more. Windows seven does not know how to accept data from a Vista back-up file.

I found a work around and can now transfer the addresses, but it might still be easier to retype them all. Has anyone figured out how to print a list of contacts from the Windows Mail Contact List? If so, I would like to know how to do it. I need a paper back-up to circumvent another dilemma.

1.)    My problems began immediately after I downloaded several security updates. The key board began skipping characters. I spent six hours on the phone with a nice guy from Dell computers in India. It cost $130 to learn that I had to reload the operating software. The pc began to work good again.

2.)    A week later, after I had begun to rebuild my e-mail contact list and learned that restore does not recover the data, I turned on the computer. I left as I usually do to have breakfast. On my return, the machine was downloading updates. I had forgotten to turn off the automatic update feature.   The key board began sticking again. This time I made up my mind not to spend another $130.00 to fix the problem. I read web site after web site trying different approaches to fix the problem. There are hundreds of reports about this defect since Vista first came out. After a week, I was really demoralized when it came to me in a dream.  I would simply uninstall every update since all the trouble started. It took over an hour of continuous button pushing to do it, but I uninstalled one hundred and twenty five updates without restarting the computer. That is a mistake, a very big mistake. When I restarted, the pc began starting up, and shutting down automatically. I figured this to be normal since I did uninstall 125 updates, and it needed a restart to activate each one. I just thought it would have to do this routine one hundred and twenty-five times to take effect. I let the machine run over-night. It was still looping in the morning.  I let it run another ten hours before I killed it.

3.)    I restarted the machine, thinking the problem would resolve itself with a reboot. No such luck. I performed all the diagnostics I could through DOS. All the components were sound.  The machine kept booting up into the start-up, shut down loop.

I called my son Mike for help. He confirmed all the same things I did. He tried re-loading the operating system from my original disk. It wouldn’t boot. Then, the disc would not eject. Mike played with it until he finally got the disc to come out.

Mike talked me into installing Windows 7. We did, and I lost my e-mail list, and what little work content I produced, again.

That is the story of why I haven’t posted or cartooned very much in September. One of my cartoons is titled “A Very, Very, Very, Sad Song.”  The gypsy is playing the violin for me now.

Another old problem has returned with Windows 7. I had a problem with the touch pad in Vista which I fixed by downloading a new driver which allowed me to disable the touchpad. The problem is back. Does Microsoft or Dell learn anything? Ever?

I know why Bill Gates is being so charitable. He is feeling pangs of guilt about creating Window

Filed under: Hobbies, Motivation, Satire, Science, Society | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Thank You Microsoft

Posted on 09/09/2010 by Grumpa Joe
QWERTY keyboard, on 2007 Sony Vaio laptop comp...

Image via Wikipedia

 

Well, the last twenty four hours have been pure delight. I don’t know what made me do it, but I chose to update my pc with the latest Microsoft security updates. It has been several weeks since I last did it. There were forty nine of them to download. I consciously chose to do it.

Immediately after the download, the keyboard began skipping letters. I type fairly fast and my thoughts became even more gibberish than they normally are. What normally took a few seconds to type now took several minutes because of all the corrections that I had to make. Then there were corrections to make on the corrections.

I spent six hours searching for solutions. Have you ever tryied searching with a skipping keyboard?  One solution was to restore the software to a point before this event. I did. The keyboard stopped functioning. After much more fiddling, I got the keys to respond the way they did before. At least they worked sometimes.

I decided to seek serious help. I called Microsoft Support fully intending to pay for the fix. I explained the call to a rather rude service attendent and was told to call Dell because this was a hardware problem. I tried to use some logic with the technician and she cut me off.

My first call to Dell was with their hardware expert. I agreed to the charges and proceeded to diagnose the keyboard problem. It seems obvious now, but all he did was check if the keys functioned while the machine was in safe mode. They did, except when I typed very fast. The technician declared that thie keyboard needed replacement. I presnted my argument that a download of updates from Microsoft surely wouldn’t cause the keyboard to fail. What would the odds be of that coincidence occurring?  I argued thaat the updates had most likely corrupted some drivers and caused the problem. He finally admitted that he was only qualified to handle hardware. He asked if I wanted to be transferred to a software tech. I did.

The software guy started by quoting the cost of his services. It would be $70 on top of the $59 dollars I paid for the hardware check. I agreed. It was still a bargain compared to spending untold hours by myself lookiing for the needle in the haystack.

The call began a six hour adventure with a nice young man who worked with me to correct the problem. After he satisfied himself that the keyboard fuctioned well he tried restoring to a previous point with out luck.

The computer had to be reformated to the factory specifications.

The job is not finished yet, because I have to reload data from back-ups. My e-mail address list is gone, yet to be found, and my drive to do anything on the machine is waning.

Woe is me for becomming addicted to this infernal machine.

This too shall pass.

An Apple today keeps Microsoft away.

Filed under: Funk, Motivation, Society | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

The “Show Me State” Does

Posted on 07/08/2010 by Grumpa Joe

I am reading a book called American Insurgents, American Patriots, the Revolution of the People by T.H. Breen, a professor of American History at Northwestern University. The account is about America in the years prior to the American Revolution. He tells about the conditions of the colonies and their attitudes about Liberty. They were already thinking about independence, but not from King George. They were very loyal to the King, and to England. Yet, they had lived in a society of freedom and liberty that had become very important to them. When the Boston Tea Party took place, it kicked off a series of events that solidified the colonists into a singular entity willing to die for liberty.

They had formulated an idea about liberty long before 1776 and the Declaration of Independence. By the time the Founding Fathers took control of the situation, the majority of the population was set to fend for their rights.

As I read this chronicle, I see the current state of America unfold in my mind. It is scary, but right at this moment in our history, events similar to those that took place in 1774 are happening.

We see a general unhappiness about the direction the President and the Administration are taking the country. We are upset about the losses of liberty as we secede to big government. We are unhappy about the arrogant way in which the leaders fail to hear our complaints.  We are unhappy about the new laws they put into place to punish us for their sins of stupidity, and their immoral refusal to accept responsibility. I have not finished this book yet, but I see the future in the past.

The colonists were not organized when it  started. They formed small local groups of citizens to defend their towns. Very similar to the Tea Party Organizers forming local small groups of unhappy people into a voice.

The colonies needed a vehicle to communicate the happenings in Boston, and of government. Astute patriots established newspapers to spread the word. Still, the word spread slowly, so they organized a postal service to spread the newspapers from town to town quickly. Today, the government works feverishly to use newspapers and TV media to spread their propaganda. Modern day patriots use the internet, cable news, and blogs to keep the government BS from taking hold.

When King George punished the population of the Colonies for dumping tea into Boston Harbor, he started events that solidified the citizenry. When a rumor spread that the governor ordered the bombardment of Boston, towns all the way from Maine marched to save their fellow citizens. The march in total was disorganized, yet each town unit was an organized effort.

The colonists realized that the bombardment was only a rumor, and Boston did not suffer. What did happen, though, was a realization that collectively they were a huge singular force that could take on the Redcoats.

This week, an event occurred in Missouri. It was a simple act, an election on a referendum regarding a loss of liberty. Obama-Care contains language that requires the purchase of health care insurance. I wrote about this a while back and recommended forced purchase, similar to car insurance, as an option to take care of the problem. At the time, I was not aware that the Constitution does not allow the government to make us buy anything.

Missourians spoke loudly and clearly. They turned out in record numbers to make their voices heard that they do not condone any law that steals their liberty. The Missourians are like the colonists of 1774 who acted positively to protect their liberty. This one event may be the one that solidifies the colonists of 2010 into a cohesive force that will take on the Red-Feds.

There is still hope for AMERICA, let us pray that I am right.

Filed under: Cartoons, Conservative, Election, Government, health care, liberals, Motivation, politics, Society | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Cloud Gazing

Posted on 16/07/2010 by Grumpa Joe

There are days when all I want to do is to sit and gaze upon the clouds. They make me want to dream. Sometimes, they put me in a stupor, and at others a state of euphoria. At other times, they make me sad, and depressed.

It is fun to search for something to see in the shape of clouds. That one looks like Mickey Mouse, or gee, today they are strips of cotton floating along in rows to infinity. Yesterday, they were massive mountains of white billowy gobs of whipped cream sitting on top of a blue sky reaching for heaven. This morning they were a shapeless gray cover blanketing the earth.

Clouds are scary when they are green, dark grey, black, and swirl around from place to place in a fury. Sometimes they unleash their swirling energy and sweep the countryside in a rage. Other times they are generators of electrical charge that release energy in a giant flash of light that zigzags to mother earth to explode anything in its way.

Ah yes, clouds, they are many things.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Filed under: Memories, Motivation, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »