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Ill wind blows in Information Technology

I sent the following letter to every presidential candidate at the beginning of the campaign…when there were about 100 of them.  I also sent it to each of my Senators and my Congressman.

Two of the campaigns sent me a letter solicting funds.  My Democratic Senator responded with a form letter letter.  My Republican Senator and Democratic Congressman ignored the letters. 

With the letter I attached an article from a prominent magazine.  I’m trying to find it on the Internet now.  The hardcopy I have is packed away.  The article detailed how H-1B was not in the best interest of the American worker.

In interest of full disclosure, Continue reading “Ill wind blows in Information Technology”

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Bad jokes wanted

Well not bad jokes, but jokes that make you laugh and other folks groan.  Those are the ones that tickle “me fancy”.

Just add a comment to this posting to share your “bad” joke.  After review they will appear on Bad Jokes page.

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Your Curmudgeon story, please

The following comment was posted to this site:

I can’t find a way to send a suggestion, so I’ll post here, since it seems to have the floor at the moment. (Teach me the right way!)

You are not legitimately a Curmudgeon until someone calls you one. You can’t (won’t) assume that title by yourself. We all know this.

But how about a topic where we tell the others who did the deed to each of us and under what circumstances?

Sounds like a wonderful topic for discussion.  Does anyone out there care to share their story of how they came to have the appellation of Curmudgeon?? Continue reading “Your Curmudgeon story, please”

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Slumdog Millionaire

slumdogAs a movie critic I might not be your first choice. I venture to the cinema on average about once every two years at this point in my life. And I do not rent a lot of films, maybe a couple a year. I do watch the occasional movie on TV.

I just came back from seeing Slumdog Millionaire, and if you are any sort of movie fan I would put this movie in the “must see” category.   It was rightly nomimated for Best Picture for the 2009 Academy Awards.

First, it is an excellent story. It intertwines episodes of the India version of Who wants to be a Millionaire with the story of 3 Mumbai (Bombay was the colonial name of this city) street orphans. Both story lines kept me on the edge of my seat. Continue reading “Slumdog Millionaire”

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Let your kids play

Article in the Feb/March 2009 edition of Scientific American Mind reports that there is a correlation between lack of unstructured play time for kids and crime, “By age 23, more than one third of kids who had gone to play-free preschools had been arrested for a felony as compared with fewer than one tenth of play-oriented preschool alums.” Continue reading “Let your kids play”

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Memes, is there a self?

memeI just finished reading a book by Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine. 

Meme may be an unfamiliar term to you so I will attempt to explain to the best of my limited ability.  All of us are familiar with DNA and genes; these can also be termed replicators.  It is how the blueprint of a species is passed down the generations.  Modifications/mutations of DNA are the backbone of evolution.

Memes were not first proposed by Ms. Blackmore, but she explores the concept deeply.  It is her contention that what separates Homo sapiens from other species is our ability to imitate.  Continue reading “Memes, is there a self?”

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3 Buck Chuck

My lady friend has a childhood friend that is an opera singer and lives mostly in Milan, Italy and spends some time in New York City. 

Recently for health reasons she was in St. Louis for an extended stay.  Her Maestro was flying from California to New York, and decided to stop in St. Louis to visit one of his sopranos and a friend.  My girlfriend opened her house to them and had a small dinner party with the Maestro cooking.

I had asked about one of the wines that was brought that I especially liked.  It turned out it was an inexpensive wine from one of the local Italian grocery stores.  The Maestro then told how he bought 3 Buck Chuck aka Charles Shaw wines from Trader Joes 3 cases at a time.  Continue reading “3 Buck Chuck”

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Papa Deo / Papa Day-o?

Back in the day when I was married, my wife “bedopted” a little girl, Lindsey, almost from birth.  We really did not have custody of her, but her mother had issues she was working through.  The child was in our home nearly as much as she was in her mother’s for several years.

We also had a cassette tape (remember those) of children’s songs by Raffi.  Lindsey loved Raffi and we would play it for her whenever we were in the car.  Me being who I am loved to sing along on the Banana Boat song, probably because I could bellow “day-o” at the top of my voice.  Lindsey began to call be Papa Deo.  Continue reading “Papa Deo / Papa Day-o?”

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Press 1 for English – a little progress

If you read my early post “Press 1 for English, NO Thanks” you might remember my frustration at calling to activate my credit card and being forced to select 1 for English or 2 for Spanish.  I did neither and called the Customer Service number to get my card activated.  While I had them on the phone I gave them an earful about the activation line not defaulting to English after a set period of time.

Well the card expired and they sent me a new one.  Again I had to have the card activated.  I was prepared to go through the whole scenario once more.    When the automated process picked up it told me to “Press 1 for English or Prensa dos a continuar en espanol.”    I did neither again, but much to my delight after a short pause the automated process continued in ENGLISH.

I do not know if my complaint was the impetus, or maybe several complaints, but I do know it is changed.

Sometimes the little man does win a small victory.

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I miss Windows 98

I’m running XP Professional and recently defragmented my hard drive.

It had me thinking about Windows 98 that seemed to need defragmenting about every other day. Watching the defrag process run under Windows 98 was my introduction to meditation!