POTPOURRI

Well, as expected Willard Mitt(ens?) Romney won the Florida primary.  Leroy Newt Gingrich was a distant second.  Which just goes to prove one thing about American politics: the dirtier your campaign, the more success you're likely to have.

After watching CNN project the winner the instant the polls closed, we quickly lost interest.  Tried a show on the Comedy Channel but it was too obscene for SWMBO and I wasn't paying attention.  Switched over to PBS and watched an entertaining program on Annie Oakley and a second one on Jesse James.  SWMBO is related to the Missouri outlaw but this program didn't make her feel proud.

Had seconds of Chicken Piccata and Fettucini Alfredo tonight and it was just as good as the other night.  SWMBO cleaned up a loaf of white bread I made the other day by turning it into excellent garlic toast to accompany the meal.  Butter pecan ice cream for dessert.  Damn!  We just eat too good.  Which may explain why we're both constantly nattering about how to lose weight.

My friend, Tom, was on his horse again today about Facebook and how we, the contributors, should share in the wealth the company is making because we provide the content.  I didn't get it when we went around about this awhile back and I still don't get it.  I seriously doubt if anything I or Tom might contribute to the conversation could be worth a sou.  But we have agreed to disagree.

I hear the Indianapolis Colts absent quarterback Peyton Manning has said today that he is not ready to retire.  That kind of statement usually means he's about to retire.  We'll see.  Thank goodness baseball season is only a few weeks from beginning.

The Stupor Bowl is Sunday.  I'm picking New England over New York.  But, as I have said often, I don't really follow professional football.  Tom Brady just looks to me to be unbeatable.

My computer has been running erratically slow since it was last worked on last Friday.  I found some instructions to change the size of virtual memory and did that tonight.  We'll see what happens.  I may need more RAM (random access memory - you didn't think I knew that, did you?  'Course I have no idea what random access memory means.)

Oy ve.  I think I'll call it a night.

TECHNICAL BREAKDOWN

I had a bit of a breakdown with my desktop computer yesterday.  It shut itself off several times, wouldn't re-load Windows when I turned it back on and finally presented me with only a black screen.  So off it went to the guy who built it and maintains it.  As I watched and waited, he fiddled with it.  Finally he got it back to normal.  (supposedly).  I took it home, got it on, then it turned itself off again and I was back to the same problem.  I took it back to my man and he said he'd have to observe it for awhile.  So, I patted the top of it and left it with him, sadness writ large on my face, I imagine.

I waited as long as I could stand it, then went back this afternoon.  He said one of the memory cards was going out so he'd switched the slots around and it had been working fine ever since.  (By the way, I have no knowledge that leads me to understand what he was talking about.)  But he didn't charge me any more than the 30 bucks he hit me for yesterday.  And it's home in it's accustomed spot and working fine.  So far.

It used to be that when my computer went into the shop I went into severe withdrawal.  But a year or so ago I bought my wife a laptop for Christmas so that's available as a back-up.  And this year she got me a Kindle Fire for Christmas.  So I've really got two backups.  So this vacation wasn't as bad as those in the past.

SWMBO suggested that the next time the desktop crashes and I need to get a new computer I should get a laptop also.  I'm not convinced of that yet.  I'm not happy with the display or the keyboard on hers.  But we'll see.

There was another customer in the store and he was told his 20 megabite hard drive was so full there's not even a line on the display.  Tom (my genius) said 20 megabites is a really small hard drive.  I commented that I remembered when that was considered a huge drive.  He agreed.  But times . . and the myriad worlds of the Internets . . have changed.

I also remember that we once were led to believe that computers would simplify our lives.  HA!