Ideal for singalongs at nursing homes, senior residences or just at your own home. Bound in a loose-leaf binder of durable vinyl, unsnaps for access to pages. (To see a photo of the book, click 
Thoughts from my CPU
I need a laptop computer, but shopping for one reminds me of a theory proposed by some astronomers that the universe will expand to an apogee, then come slowly shrinking back on itself. Because that’s what’s happening to us.
Fifty years ago, we couldn’t wait to get that bigger car with its bigger swept wings, that bigger house with the bigger family, that bigger job with its bigger paycheck . . . yes, even that bigger hamburger. Now, of course, there are still some idiots consumers who yearn for a big SUV, big muscle car or Big Mac and think that ingesting the latter while watching the former endlessly circle a track is harmless fun. But their day is fading along with the oilmen in the White House.
The rest of us are trying to make smaller footprints on the Earth until somebody realizes there are too many feet.
I suppose I should be thinking about something else — like exactly what I need in that laptop — but it’s too damned confusing. The more compact our technology becomes, the more complex its specifications. I can barely understand this big desktop computer I’m working on right now.
Do I need Dell’s Inspiron 1520 laptop — of which there are three models with various Intel Pentium microprocessors ranging from a 1.73GHz / 533Mhz FSB / 1MB cache to a 2.0GHz / 667Mhz FSB / 2MB cache and prices ranging from $649 to $1,208, not counting the rebates? Or would the Inspiron 1525 be more to my liking with its Vista rather than XP operating system, a similar variety of caches and prices ranging from $499 to $1,253, not counting other rebates?
Are they kidding?
Well, I’m not kidding about needing a laptop. Because at the end of this month, my wife and I and her parents are taking our first extended trip since this website-weblog began. And we’re going where there are numbers that I can understand and appreciate.
For example, 90. That’s the birthday my wife’s Aunt Maxine will celebrate on June 2 in Huntington, Ind. She’s the benign sovereign of a family of six siblings, and a nicer woman you won’t find. Second in that line is my father-in-law, Glenn, who’ll be 88 a few days later. My mother-in-law, Virginia, will be 84 before then. So the four of us are going to pack into the smallest van we can find and head for Indiana on a nine-day trip.
I can’t pack up this desktop, so it’s going to have to be a laptop if I hope to continue posting entries twice a week on our weblog.
Like technology, large families also are shrinking, but there are four other footprints on this Earth that I’m glad of — my wife’s two sons, Todd and Brett, who grew up smart about computers and who just may have bailed me out.
Todd gave me general information about laptops, and Brett helped me review some of the offerings on the Internet before noticing that I didn’t seem to understand much of what was being said, then diplomatically mentioning that he and Todd have a laptop they haven’t used for a while. A little slower than the new Dells, but plenty for what I need. A lot less expensive, too.
What this world needs is not more people but more smart people. Thanks, guys. Now I’ve got to learn how to use the damned thing.
More new offerings today in Works:
• A new short story by James L. Fox called ‘Lonesome Charlie,’ the tale of a grizzled old prospector who has an unusual way of finding people to talk with in his remote desert existence.
• Chapter 16: Conversations of Steve Karmazenuk’s science fiction novel The Unearthing. Scientists have their first communication with an alien spaceship in the New Mexico desert, a craft that seems to have its own life qualities, including an intelligence that dwarfs that of humans.
• Chapter 10: 45th Avenue of Gerard Jones’ nonfiction novel Ginny Good. Gerard goes to his first date with Ginny but runs into a few pitfalls — she apparently has forgotten the date, the battery runs down on his borrowed car, and later, when he’s finally making headway at her house, she is called away by another boyfriend.
Talk to you later. I’ll be the guy wrestling with the laptop.
– Sid Leavitt
Posted in Uncategorized |
May 8, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Good luck with that~!
I was born in Kokomo.
May 8, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Ah, another Hoosier. My wife and her parents are from the Huntington-Roanoke area, barely 50 miles northeast of Kokomo. I myself, although a native of northern New England, am an apprentice Hoosier — for example, I know all the words and chords to ‘Back Home Again in Indiana.’ In fact, we may sing that song to Aunt Maxine when we join her at her birthday party.
For our other readers, we should say that Jenny Weber is author of the excellent weblog I’m Having a Thought Here.
May 10, 2008 at 8:20 am
It wasn’t a “borrowed” car. It was a new car…well, a new used car. G.
“Then my new car didn’t start. I’d been counting on my new car to impress the pants off her on our big date. It was an off-white 1955 Lincoln with turquoise and cream-colored leather upholstery, power steering, power brakes, push button windows and a push button antenna. I had just bought it. I’d traded in the pink ‘53 Ford convertible that had more than adequately served its purposes with Bonnie and Cyndi and the girls from the shoe store. This was the Lincoln’s first real test. Nor can I say it completely flunked. It didn’t start, I can say that, but who’s to say that not starting wasn’t the best thing it could have done?”
May 10, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Uh oh, sorry, Gerard. (I told you guys this laptop thing had me distracted.)
May 10, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I truly agree with your comments on being green and all that, but I pose to you that your statement about suv’s being bad is not fair. I wish people would quit blaming suv owners and think about the bedamned diesel trucks moving stuff all over the place uneconomically and with pure wastage of fuel. People who live in really rural areas and who buy suv’s because their mileage is better than a pickup truck use them six months out of the year to drive in really bad weather. An AWd vehicle has kept me alive, just so you know. And mine gets over 25mpg, which is better than a lot of cars. Rant over. I just had to overshare.
May 10, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Your point is well taken. I was too general in condemning SUVs, and that wasn’t fair. Since I see from your blogger profile that you live in northern Maine, I understand how valuable a large, all-wheel-drive vehicle can be in a rural area.
However, I do condemn auto manufacturers for marketing these vehicles to people who don’t need them. I mean, exactly why does someone in the suburbs of southern New York — or for that matter, southern California or anywhere below the Mason-Dixon line — need an SUV? It’s prestige advertising — bigger is better.
And I condemn Congress and the White House for allowing these large vehicles to be exempt from the same gas-mileage standards that apply to other general-use vehicles. If that loophole were closed, Detroit (and Tokyo) would be forced to make your AWD do much better than 25 mpg.
Finally, I agree wholeheartedly with your point about diesel trucks. We should be shipping much more by railroads, which are far more economical than trucks. The trucking companies know this — that’s why you see truck cargo boxes piggybacked on freight trains.
By the way, I recommend your weblog to anyone interested in writing — or in reading good writing.
Thanks for your comment.
May 20, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I was originally going to comment that you could do worse than switch to an Apple for your laptop, but the SUV discussion…
Detroit/Tokyo is to blame for SUVs? The customer might be a moron, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t always right. The left has continuously tried to enforce its dubious environmental agendas on the auto industry and everything else.
Car manufacturers, on the other hand, can’t settle for feel-good BS, they have to move units or die. Best way to do that is sell vehicles people actually want.
When cars got small, people switched to buying trucks and vans. All the mini-van is, really, is a station wagon by a different name. Because people want big cars that will cart their families where they’re going, and get them there alive. A Honda Fit looks a lot less attractive when you think about the rush-hour morons murdering you in it for want of a half ton of cheap steel.
May 21, 2008 at 1:19 am
I appreciate your comments, Rod, but I do hold auto manufacturers responsible for marketing big vehicles to people who don’t need them. Bigger vehicles mean bigger profits, part of which is then used to advertise images of macho vehicles that macho idiots in southern California (and Sacramento) will buy.
By the way, I don’t think an extra half-ton of cheap steel makes a vehicle any safer, especially if it is prone to rollovers. But that extra half ton uses up a lot of extra gas.
And finally, I don’t think an environmental agenda that asks for more efficient and cleaner use of gasoline is dubious — certainly not as dubious as going to war in order to strengthen our hold on the Middle East and its supplies of crude oil.
If manufacturers can’t produce vehicles that meet responsible environmental standards, maybe they should die and make way for companies that can.
Anyway, I still love your weblog, Midwest Rock Lobster, and appreciate your different points of view.