Ah. That's because you were looking for some actual art appreciation rather than this lame bigotry. (Or I found it to be lame bigotry. The message seems to be that geeks are buffoons and clods who can't appreciate anything past the next release of Software X or Hardware Y. It's OK for me to make fun of them.) Head out to your nearest art museum some free afternoon, pick up a couple of brochures, maybe follow a tour around. You'll begin to find works that appeal to you, and you'll certainly be able to explore why that might be so. You'll probably also find that everybody is welcomed and treated with respect. The idea of a survey that looks at particular works of art in light of math or color theory or proportion or other geekly perspectives is a surprisingly good one. Too bad the site's creator took the low road instead.
The old wisdom was that it took more energy, and caused more wear and tear on the drive's mechanics, to power down and then spin up a hard drive. I suspect there was some merit to this 'way back when, and people were encouraged to leave their desktop computers running. However, on the really old Novell networks, people had to be encouraged to log out at night--or else there would be problems backing-up their network directories. Running around enforcing/explaining was a real time waster for network administrators. I suspect that the whole "leave it on" thing is nothing but a mindless continuation of those antiquated policies; certainly they're no longer relevant. When I left IT to start up my own business, I continued to leave my system running all the time. What has finally cured me has been my new Mac, which has a wireless keyboard and mouse. Fiddling with and replacing the batteries once a month, remembering to put them on the charger, or using up a few expensive AA's when I forget, is a lot more trouble than shutting everything down at night.
Have you not had adverts blaring at you while taking care of business in a public washroom? Or is that form of torture reserved for the female of the species, since we're confined to stalls while we're in there? Of course, the possibilities for wide-screen above a row of urinals do come to mind, so they'll get you eventually if they haven't already. First time I saw this was in the ladies' at a beachfront bar--actually a pretty respectable establishment--where they blared commercials for waterfront properties. That was a couple of years ago. Most recent sighting was a couple of months ago at a favorite Chinese restaurant in a city 200 miles inland. It gives new meaning to the term "captive audience."
Conventional "old-fashioned" wisdom was that the hand-cranked ice cream was always smoother. The motorized churn and dasher turned at a consistent speed throughout the process, while the hand-cranked churn turned more and more slowly as the ice cream thickened and it got more difficult to handle. The idea was that this made for smoother ice cream with fewer crystals. LL Bean has a very intriguing human-powered ice cream maker that looks a bit like a soccer ball with a canister inside. The ball gets filled with salt and ice, the canister holds the ice cream ingredients, and you "roll, pass, or shake" it around for twenty minutes or so until it's ice cream. My experience of handcrafted ice cream is that it's less solid than commercial products, and I prefer it that way.
For pure unadulterated camp, you can't beat the display on the 700 block of 34th Street in Baltimore's neighborhood of Hampden. Each traditional row house is decorated to the owner's own taste and vision, and while they aren't particularly technical, they certainly do make a splash. They've been lighting up that block for so long that realtors feel it's mandatory to warn prospective home buyers that they'll have to light up, too. There's a pretty good sampling here.
Maybe not, but the software was initially free and had some parts that could be tinkered with. They went to a commercial model with a scaled-down free single user version and a pricing structure for licenses for larger installations. Wordpress came in with their open product and pretty much took over--in terms of prevalence as well as quality and flexibility.
I'm especially interested that the company involved is Constellation Energy. They're the parent company of Baltimore Gas and Electric, which serves my hometown. BGE recently railroaded through a 72% rate increase for electricity. That took effect in July after much controversy. The utility now wants 25% more. This more recent increase is supposed to enhance their profits; the previous increase was supposed to cover the cost of energy they purchase from Constellation. Actually, they sell electricity to Constellation, then they buy it back at inflated prices and pass the cost on to their customers. There's no shortage of technical talent in Maryland. I suppose it's too much to expect that Constellation would pay fair wages to Maryland-based programmers.
It might be helpful to you to know that there's an opt-out list for physical junk mail. Do a hunt for the Direct Mail Marketing Association. Their mechanism has been in place for years, and I have read that it actually does work, though it takes a while. If you're longing for more dead-tree stuff, you can also opt in. As for the credit card offers, begin reading the tiny print before you shred. Somewhere on there is a phone number. You can call it and demand that they quit sending you the offers. If it's not there, call whatever number is on there. I believe (though I am not sure) that they're legally required to comply with your request--simply because every time they mail you one, it means they've checked your credit, and credit reporting agencies keep track of the number of times that happens.
Rather than hanging, I'd say put the guilty in a room for fifteen minutes with a group of e-mail administrators, network managers, IT security pukes, and assorted other sufferers. These folks would be drawn from a pool of all available qualified persons. (We'd have to work out the details of the selection process, but that shouldn't be too hard.) The only rule would be that the spammer couldn't be killed. I have occasionally wondered what I would do if introduced to a notorious spammer. Leap out of my chair and attempt to claw his eyes out? Aim a well-placed kick at some sensitive area? Find some weapon to use to bash his skull in? Or just sit there and say, "You idiot! Why?"
(I didn't think your post was offtopic. I thought it was funny.)
I can look out of my window and across the Inner Harbor to "Tide Pointe," which is supposed to be Baltimore's pride-and-joy "technology incubator." We also have a new "technology high school" somewhere in the city; a sexier term, I guess, than the old "Polytechnic" of yore. I guess the technologies--and the technologists-- will now be incubated in Delaware. Some friend sent me a list of fifty appropriate new state mottoes. Maryland's is now even more appropriate: "Maryland--if you can dream it, we can tax it."
If this isn't a strong argument that blacklisting systems are unethical, I don't know what is. Imagine being targeted by vigilantes because you bought a house which was previously occupied by a sex offender and so the addreess is listed on the local sex offender registry. That's essentially what's happening here.
Yeah, they're unethical and sleazy, and yeah, I held out for as long as I could, but I'm only one person. I'm part of a small group of like-minded business people, and when we got fed up with "hosting providers," we arranged to share the cost of a "semi managed" Linux/Apache Web server. For my past sins (which involved a lot of servers, none of them running Linux) and for a bit of extra cash, I get to manage the damned thing. I watched in despair as more and more resources, and more and more time, became allocated to processing the mail. Peoples' mailboxes filled up so regularly that it was taking me more human-time to deal with the mess than was worth it to me. Yes, I had qualms, and yes, I gave it some thought. But on the morning when the previous night's backups didn't run til 9:30 a.m., I went in and changed my rules
The result has been six weeks (so far) of relative peace and quiet. The torrent has slowed to a trickle, easily and quickly managed. All those mundane little necessities like the backups are now proceeding when I set them up to proceed. The mail queue is always caught up. The untrained among us are now better able to deal with their own mailboxes. Best of all, the server has plenty of horsepower for now and the foreseeable future. I actually thought we might have to upgrade it. Think of that: Having to upgrade one's server so that it can cope with more and more unwanted, unrequested junk. I'm not willing to pay for that, and I doubt anybody else is, either.
Did you "walk" the rope up and down, or how did you actually get the cables together? Does MIT now need a "Street of the Ropemakers" as is found in so many ancient cities? I'm asking because in a burst of insanity a number of years ago I learned how to spin woolen thread from raw wool--first with an ancient-style "drop" spindle, then with a distaff, and finally with a spinning wheel. It is...tedious. My understanding is that before the burst of technology that developed the drop spindle, thread or yarn (for weaving clothes) was made by twisting bits of fiber in the hands and then against the leg--and that rope is fabricated in much the same way only on a larger scale.
(Or, start on page 1 of the ABCs of Systems Programming five-volume set IBM publishes.... You won't be productive any time soon.)
Or, (looking at the, umm, bright side) it could provide years of additional productive employment for all those about-to-retire early Boomers who didn't plan too well for their retirements.
But Dr. Tanenbaum's book on operating systems, which still seems to be in print, came equipped with its own version of Minix on a floppy disk, and you could easily get it going on your 808x-based PC--which was just about all anybody had when I was first reading the book. That would have been mid-to-late Eighties, but it had been around for a while even then. I'd have to go along with people who say Minix is an uncle of Linux--or maybe an auntie. If I could save only two vintage computer books, that would be one. The other would be my treasured old edition of "Oh! Pascal!"
I suppose the steers are what the Victorians would have referred to as "gentleman cows," while the females are engaged in having calves and providing milk. I suspect that if you had an enterprise going where providing power and eventually becoming meat were a priority for your male cattle, you wouldn't want more than one of them to be intact. Bulls have always seemed to me to be a bit...well, testy I suppose. I laughed at myself because when I RTFA I immediately thought of an ox treading out the corn by walking round and round, while harnessed to an arrangement of horizontal and vertical shafts. More creative minds here came up with the treadmills and hamster-wheels. I live in the city and so can only imagine what it would be like to have a few steers as neighbors. It doesn't surprise me at all that they would be used to generate electricity in addition to all the other useful functions they can perform.
I think what they may be referring to is the cows' better-educated cousin, the ox. People have been using oxen for just this sort of purpose for millennia. The person who described the ox as being hitched to the vertical shaft of the generator was fairly accurate, as arrangements for ox-powered grain processing are set up in just that way, with the ox or oxen harnessed to a horizontal bar that is in turn attached to the vertical bar and the millstone. The ox then simply walks around in a circle, doing the heavy moving. This was certainly the arrangement back when the Hebrew scriptures were being written, as there's a specific provision for oxen in the book of Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." Or, "if he's working for you, you should allow him to eat." So I suspect OOPC would be a more accurate term. I also believe (but am not sure) that oxen are generally males.
You know, this afternoon I got a hastily-sent email from some close colleagues who were preparing to abandon their home and business to the fire in San Diego. One of these days something equally bad will happen to you. When it does, you're going to think back on just how inane your post really is. The really sad part about it is that you've swallowed, whole, the concept of "value" that the robber-barons want to foist on you. You're to be pitied.
I don't think you're a troll, and until recently I would have agreed with every point in your post. Now I'm not so sure. Anything that preserves the written word from future loss, and makes books and literature available to more people, is a good thing. Freeing this activity from commercial restraints is a good idea; somehow the commercial route would make me think my choices might be somehow limited by what the commercial software "wanted" to show me.
It's the quiet library...dusty books part that has me a bit concerned at the moment. My city recently built a brand-new neighborhood "anchor" library within striking distance of my house. That eliminated the need for a tedious drive or bus ride downtown to the main library, the expensive necessity of finding scarce parking, and the tyranny of downtown "business hours." The branch is convenient, has good parking, and is open for people who have to work during the daytime. It's bright and attractive. Endowed with an outdoor "reading garden" for good weather, it will shortly boast an indoor coffee area. It has banks of computers to be allocated to either youngsters or adults, a pretty good periodicals section, and a pretty good reference section. It also manages to cater to our increasing Hispanic population. The kids' section, which takes up half of the main floor, appears to be excellent. There's a huge section of fairly current DVD films. Tables (and to my surprise) comfortable easy chairs are invitingly scattered throughout.
I guess the problem is that with all the beautiful amenities, there's actually not much room for books. To be fair, they are just starting out, and their holdings will certainly increase. I'm just not sure where they will locate a collection that's much larger. I would divide my reading into "work-related," "feel like I ought to read it," and "just for pleasure." It's not easy to find new or interesting titles in any of those areas. They're trying, but there's just not enough space.
I've resolved that, to an extent, with a nifty little Mac utility called "Library Books." By entering my online access information, plus the library's catalog system (iBistro/Sirsi), I suddenly have complete, convenient access to the entire city and state library system. I can browse, search, and reserve. I could do all of that simply by going to the library's main Website and logging in, but the utility does me little favors like alerting me to the arrival of reserved titles and putting a big, red star up on days when books are due. It's a convenience that makes online browsing just a bit easier.
I've thrown myself into the new anchor library, in tandem with the simplified online access of the Library Books utility. I've become an evangelist, of sorts, for requesting and reserving books. It's amazing the number of people who don't know you can do that. The sheer square footage required to hold a large collection isn't feasible for neighborhood libraries, and I feel as though this sort of system gives one the best of both worlds. No yellow markers, though . . .
You don't get what you pay for, but you're required to pay anyway. As in:
1) You pay for homeowners' insurance only to find that your particular disaster isn't going to be covered. Just ask the people on the Gulf Coast.
2) You pay for a utility, like phone or cable, only to find that when you've got a problem or outage, you're without your service--not for hours, but for days or possibly even weeks. (Ever try to get a rebate from, say, your phone company when they take four days to send out a "technician" to spend twenty minutes fixing your trouble?)
3) You pay ever-increasing costs for your health insurance only to find that a catastrophic illness or accident leaves you in debt for years.
4) You pay for what is termed "unlimited" Internet services only to find that your ISP is cutting you back because they have a different idea of what constitutes "unlimited."
5) You earn your money, but you are required to pay the bank ever-increasing "fees" so that they can use it until you need it. In some cases, you even have to pay to speak with a human being (as opposed to an automated system) to receive an answer to your question.
We're all part of a vast pool of money to be tapped into at will, and the game is to return the bare minimum of value for what we're all willing (or able) to pay. Why should the airlines be any different? An interesting article appeared on CNN a couple of days ago. It seems the "working poor" are having increasing trouble making that paycheck stretch from one payday to the next--and the term "working poor" is now encroaching more and more into the "middle class." The Big Box Marts are starting to notice an impact to their bottom lines.
The airlines will find that fewer and fewer people can afford to fly, so they'll focus on ways to wring more out of the people who can still afford to fly. It's not surprising.
I think you've stated it. With a head injury there can be improvement. Treatments, therapies, care--all of these will differ in many respects and will have different outcomes. There's also plain old dementia, and it has a whole 'nother set of treatments and outcomes. The doctors wanted to consign my mom to a nursing home two years ago. Her care provider is a unique woman with unique insights. Our joint objective is to keep Mom as active and as engaged as possible, providing her with some sort of quality of life. We seem to be succeeding at that, though it is a lot of work. We don't get a lot of help from the medical establishment.
Your comment will, hopefully, be modded up. What you are saying is true and accurate
My own mother was eighty and growing a bit frail physically, but she still had all her intelligence and mental capacity. She was the target of a "home invasion" type robbery in which she received repeated blows to the head and face. Within a few short weeks she had become far advanced in dementia, and she was battling extreme anger and depression in the bargain. That was three years ago, and it's an endless struggle not to have her lumped in with "Alzheimer patients." Clearly what she has is a traumatic brain injury, aggravated by psychological feelings of anger (justifiable) and depression (understandable). Anti-depressant medications keep her docile, but nobody is particularly interested in looking for ways to treat her. There's no history of Alzheimer's in our family.
We've been extremely fortunate in locating an assisted-living care provider who understands the distinction and is willing to work with her. Same goes for her adult day program, though it took three tries to find an appropriate setting.
I believe the medical community is somewhat guilty of stereotyping. Every elderly person with symptoms of dementia gets lumped into the same group, and not every individual belongs there. It's frustrating and heartbreaking!
This reply has no other purpose than to tell you what you already know--that you are doing a good thing. Your next-to-last paragraph contains the truth: Somewhere, in some part of her mind and brain, she still does love you.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to hunt it down this evening. Hopefully somebody with points will come along and mod your interesting suggestion up.
Ah. That's because you were looking for some actual art appreciation rather than this lame bigotry. (Or I found it to be lame bigotry. The message seems to be that geeks are buffoons and clods who can't appreciate anything past the next release of Software X or Hardware Y. It's OK for me to make fun of them.) Head out to your nearest art museum some free afternoon, pick up a couple of brochures, maybe follow a tour around. You'll begin to find works that appeal to you, and you'll certainly be able to explore why that might be so. You'll probably also find that everybody is welcomed and treated with respect. The idea of a survey that looks at particular works of art in light of math or color theory or proportion or other geekly perspectives is a surprisingly good one. Too bad the site's creator took the low road instead.
The old wisdom was that it took more energy, and caused more wear and tear on the drive's mechanics, to power down and then spin up a hard drive. I suspect there was some merit to this 'way back when, and people were encouraged to leave their desktop computers running. However, on the really old Novell networks, people had to be encouraged to log out at night--or else there would be problems backing-up their network directories. Running around enforcing/explaining was a real time waster for network administrators. I suspect that the whole "leave it on" thing is nothing but a mindless continuation of those antiquated policies; certainly they're no longer relevant. When I left IT to start up my own business, I continued to leave my system running all the time. What has finally cured me has been my new Mac, which has a wireless keyboard and mouse. Fiddling with and replacing the batteries once a month, remembering to put them on the charger, or using up a few expensive AA's when I forget, is a lot more trouble than shutting everything down at night.
Have you not had adverts blaring at you while taking care of business in a public washroom? Or is that form of torture reserved for the female of the species, since we're confined to stalls while we're in there? Of course, the possibilities for wide-screen above a row of urinals do come to mind, so they'll get you eventually if they haven't already. First time I saw this was in the ladies' at a beachfront bar--actually a pretty respectable establishment--where they blared commercials for waterfront properties. That was a couple of years ago. Most recent sighting was a couple of months ago at a favorite Chinese restaurant in a city 200 miles inland. It gives new meaning to the term "captive audience."
Conventional "old-fashioned" wisdom was that the hand-cranked ice cream was always smoother. The motorized churn and dasher turned at a consistent speed throughout the process, while the hand-cranked churn turned more and more slowly as the ice cream thickened and it got more difficult to handle. The idea was that this made for smoother ice cream with fewer crystals. LL Bean has a very intriguing human-powered ice cream maker that looks a bit like a soccer ball with a canister inside. The ball gets filled with salt and ice, the canister holds the ice cream ingredients, and you "roll, pass, or shake" it around for twenty minutes or so until it's ice cream. My experience of handcrafted ice cream is that it's less solid than commercial products, and I prefer it that way.
For pure unadulterated camp, you can't beat the display on the 700 block of 34th Street in Baltimore's neighborhood of Hampden. Each traditional row house is decorated to the owner's own taste and vision, and while they aren't particularly technical, they certainly do make a splash. They've been lighting up that block for so long that realtors feel it's mandatory to warn prospective home buyers that they'll have to light up, too. There's a pretty good sampling here.
Maybe not, but the software was initially free and had some parts that could be tinkered with. They went to a commercial model with a scaled-down free single user version and a pricing structure for licenses for larger installations. Wordpress came in with their open product and pretty much took over--in terms of prevalence as well as quality and flexibility.
I'm especially interested that the company involved is Constellation Energy. They're the parent company of Baltimore Gas and Electric, which serves my hometown. BGE recently railroaded through a 72% rate increase for electricity. That took effect in July after much controversy. The utility now wants 25% more. This more recent increase is supposed to enhance their profits; the previous increase was supposed to cover the cost of energy they purchase from Constellation. Actually, they sell electricity to Constellation, then they buy it back at inflated prices and pass the cost on to their customers. There's no shortage of technical talent in Maryland. I suppose it's too much to expect that Constellation would pay fair wages to Maryland-based programmers.
It might be helpful to you to know that there's an opt-out list for physical junk mail. Do a hunt for the Direct Mail Marketing Association. Their mechanism has been in place for years, and I have read that it actually does work, though it takes a while. If you're longing for more dead-tree stuff, you can also opt in. As for the credit card offers, begin reading the tiny print before you shred. Somewhere on there is a phone number. You can call it and demand that they quit sending you the offers. If it's not there, call whatever number is on there. I believe (though I am not sure) that they're legally required to comply with your request--simply because every time they mail you one, it means they've checked your credit, and credit reporting agencies keep track of the number of times that happens.
Rather than hanging, I'd say put the guilty in a room for fifteen minutes with a group of e-mail administrators, network managers, IT security pukes, and assorted other sufferers. These folks would be drawn from a pool of all available qualified persons. (We'd have to work out the details of the selection process, but that shouldn't be too hard.) The only rule would be that the spammer couldn't be killed. I have occasionally wondered what I would do if introduced to a notorious spammer. Leap out of my chair and attempt to claw his eyes out? Aim a well-placed kick at some sensitive area? Find some weapon to use to bash his skull in? Or just sit there and say, "You idiot! Why?"
(I didn't think your post was offtopic. I thought it was funny.)
It's contained in this little verse, whose author escapes me:
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be --
I had a mother who read to me.
(Hint: You can easily substitute "father" for "mother" in the above.)
I can look out of my window and across the Inner Harbor to "Tide Pointe," which is supposed to be Baltimore's pride-and-joy "technology incubator." We also have a new "technology high school" somewhere in the city; a sexier term, I guess, than the old "Polytechnic" of yore. I guess the technologies--and the technologists-- will now be incubated in Delaware. Some friend sent me a list of fifty appropriate new state mottoes. Maryland's is now even more appropriate: "Maryland--if you can dream it, we can tax it."
If this isn't a strong argument that blacklisting systems are unethical, I don't know what is. Imagine being targeted by vigilantes because you bought a house which was previously occupied by a sex offender and so the addreess is listed on the local sex offender registry. That's essentially what's happening here.
Yeah, they're unethical and sleazy, and yeah, I held out for as long as I could, but I'm only one person. I'm part of a small group of like-minded business people, and when we got fed up with "hosting providers," we arranged to share the cost of a "semi managed" Linux/Apache Web server. For my past sins (which involved a lot of servers, none of them running Linux) and for a bit of extra cash, I get to manage the damned thing. I watched in despair as more and more resources, and more and more time, became allocated to processing the mail. Peoples' mailboxes filled up so regularly that it was taking me more human-time to deal with the mess than was worth it to me. Yes, I had qualms, and yes, I gave it some thought. But on the morning when the previous night's backups didn't run til 9:30 a.m., I went in and changed my rules
The result has been six weeks (so far) of relative peace and quiet. The torrent has slowed to a trickle, easily and quickly managed. All those mundane little necessities like the backups are now proceeding when I set them up to proceed. The mail queue is always caught up. The untrained among us are now better able to deal with their own mailboxes. Best of all, the server has plenty of horsepower for now and the foreseeable future. I actually thought we might have to upgrade it. Think of that: Having to upgrade one's server so that it can cope with more and more unwanted, unrequested junk. I'm not willing to pay for that, and I doubt anybody else is, either.
Did you "walk" the rope up and down, or how did you actually get the cables together? Does MIT now need a "Street of the Ropemakers" as is found in so many ancient cities? I'm asking because in a burst of insanity a number of years ago I learned how to spin woolen thread from raw wool--first with an ancient-style "drop" spindle, then with a distaff, and finally with a spinning wheel. It is...tedious. My understanding is that before the burst of technology that developed the drop spindle, thread or yarn (for weaving clothes) was made by twisting bits of fiber in the hands and then against the leg--and that rope is fabricated in much the same way only on a larger scale.
Or, (looking at the, umm, bright side) it could provide years of additional productive employment for all those about-to-retire early Boomers who didn't plan too well for their retirements.
But Dr. Tanenbaum's book on operating systems, which still seems to be in print, came equipped with its own version of Minix on a floppy disk, and you could easily get it going on your 808x-based PC--which was just about all anybody had when I was first reading the book. That would have been mid-to-late Eighties, but it had been around for a while even then. I'd have to go along with people who say Minix is an uncle of Linux--or maybe an auntie. If I could save only two vintage computer books, that would be one. The other would be my treasured old edition of "Oh! Pascal!"
I suppose the steers are what the Victorians would have referred to as "gentleman cows," while the females are engaged in having calves and providing milk. I suspect that if you had an enterprise going where providing power and eventually becoming meat were a priority for your male cattle, you wouldn't want more than one of them to be intact. Bulls have always seemed to me to be a bit...well, testy I suppose. I laughed at myself because when I RTFA I immediately thought of an ox treading out the corn by walking round and round, while harnessed to an arrangement of horizontal and vertical shafts. More creative minds here came up with the treadmills and hamster-wheels. I live in the city and so can only imagine what it would be like to have a few steers as neighbors. It doesn't surprise me at all that they would be used to generate electricity in addition to all the other useful functions they can perform.
I think what they may be referring to is the cows' better-educated cousin, the ox. People have been using oxen for just this sort of purpose for millennia. The person who described the ox as being hitched to the vertical shaft of the generator was fairly accurate, as arrangements for ox-powered grain processing are set up in just that way, with the ox or oxen harnessed to a horizontal bar that is in turn attached to the vertical bar and the millstone. The ox then simply walks around in a circle, doing the heavy moving. This was certainly the arrangement back when the Hebrew scriptures were being written, as there's a specific provision for oxen in the book of Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn." Or, "if he's working for you, you should allow him to eat." So I suspect OOPC would be a more accurate term. I also believe (but am not sure) that oxen are generally males.
You know, this afternoon I got a hastily-sent email from some close colleagues who were preparing to abandon their home and business to the fire in San Diego. One of these days something equally bad will happen to you. When it does, you're going to think back on just how inane your post really is. The really sad part about it is that you've swallowed, whole, the concept of "value" that the robber-barons want to foist on you. You're to be pitied.
I don't think you're a troll, and until recently I would have agreed with every point in your post. Now I'm not so sure. Anything that preserves the written word from future loss, and makes books and literature available to more people, is a good thing. Freeing this activity from commercial restraints is a good idea; somehow the commercial route would make me think my choices might be somehow limited by what the commercial software "wanted" to show me.
It's the quiet library...dusty books part that has me a bit concerned at the moment. My city recently built a brand-new neighborhood "anchor" library within striking distance of my house. That eliminated the need for a tedious drive or bus ride downtown to the main library, the expensive necessity of finding scarce parking, and the tyranny of downtown "business hours." The branch is convenient, has good parking, and is open for people who have to work during the daytime. It's bright and attractive. Endowed with an outdoor "reading garden" for good weather, it will shortly boast an indoor coffee area. It has banks of computers to be allocated to either youngsters or adults, a pretty good periodicals section, and a pretty good reference section. It also manages to cater to our increasing Hispanic population. The kids' section, which takes up half of the main floor, appears to be excellent. There's a huge section of fairly current DVD films. Tables (and to my surprise) comfortable easy chairs are invitingly scattered throughout.
I guess the problem is that with all the beautiful amenities, there's actually not much room for books. To be fair, they are just starting out, and their holdings will certainly increase. I'm just not sure where they will locate a collection that's much larger. I would divide my reading into "work-related," "feel like I ought to read it," and "just for pleasure." It's not easy to find new or interesting titles in any of those areas. They're trying, but there's just not enough space.
I've resolved that, to an extent, with a nifty little Mac utility called "Library Books." By entering my online access information, plus the library's catalog system (iBistro/Sirsi), I suddenly have complete, convenient access to the entire city and state library system. I can browse, search, and reserve. I could do all of that simply by going to the library's main Website and logging in, but the utility does me little favors like alerting me to the arrival of reserved titles and putting a big, red star up on days when books are due. It's a convenience that makes online browsing just a bit easier.
I've thrown myself into the new anchor library, in tandem with the simplified online access of the Library Books utility. I've become an evangelist, of sorts, for requesting and reserving books. It's amazing the number of people who don't know you can do that. The sheer square footage required to hold a large collection isn't feasible for neighborhood libraries, and I feel as though this sort of system gives one the best of both worlds. No yellow markers, though . . .
I guess I should clarify on the homeowner's. I was thinking of wind damage that somehow magically transmuted itself into flood damage.
You don't get what you pay for, but you're required to pay anyway. As in:
1) You pay for homeowners' insurance only to find that your particular disaster isn't going to be covered. Just ask the people on the Gulf Coast.
2) You pay for a utility, like phone or cable, only to find that when you've got a problem or outage, you're without your service--not for hours, but for days or possibly even weeks. (Ever try to get a rebate from, say, your phone company when they take four days to send out a "technician" to spend twenty minutes fixing your trouble?)
3) You pay ever-increasing costs for your health insurance only to find that a catastrophic illness or accident leaves you in debt for years.
4) You pay for what is termed "unlimited" Internet services only to find that your ISP is cutting you back because they have a different idea of what constitutes "unlimited."
5) You earn your money, but you are required to pay the bank ever-increasing "fees" so that they can use it until you need it. In some cases, you even have to pay to speak with a human being (as opposed to an automated system) to receive an answer to your question.
We're all part of a vast pool of money to be tapped into at will, and the game is to return the bare minimum of value for what we're all willing (or able) to pay. Why should the airlines be any different? An interesting article appeared on CNN a couple of days ago. It seems the "working poor" are having increasing trouble making that paycheck stretch from one payday to the next--and the term "working poor" is now encroaching more and more into the "middle class." The Big Box Marts are starting to notice an impact to their bottom lines.
The airlines will find that fewer and fewer people can afford to fly, so they'll focus on ways to wring more out of the people who can still afford to fly. It's not surprising.
I think you've stated it. With a head injury there can be improvement. Treatments, therapies, care--all of these will differ in many respects and will have different outcomes. There's also plain old dementia, and it has a whole 'nother set of treatments and outcomes. The doctors wanted to consign my mom to a nursing home two years ago. Her care provider is a unique woman with unique insights. Our joint objective is to keep Mom as active and as engaged as possible, providing her with some sort of quality of life. We seem to be succeeding at that, though it is a lot of work. We don't get a lot of help from the medical establishment.
Your comment will, hopefully, be modded up. What you are saying is true and accurate
My own mother was eighty and growing a bit frail physically, but she still had all her intelligence and mental capacity. She was the target of a "home invasion" type robbery in which she received repeated blows to the head and face. Within a few short weeks she had become far advanced in dementia, and she was battling extreme anger and depression in the bargain. That was three years ago, and it's an endless struggle not to have her lumped in with "Alzheimer patients." Clearly what she has is a traumatic brain injury, aggravated by psychological feelings of anger (justifiable) and depression (understandable). Anti-depressant medications keep her docile, but nobody is particularly interested in looking for ways to treat her. There's no history of Alzheimer's in our family.
We've been extremely fortunate in locating an assisted-living care provider who understands the distinction and is willing to work with her. Same goes for her adult day program, though it took three tries to find an appropriate setting.
I believe the medical community is somewhat guilty of stereotyping. Every elderly person with symptoms of dementia gets lumped into the same group, and not every individual belongs there. It's frustrating and heartbreaking!
This reply has no other purpose than to tell you what you already know--that you are doing a good thing. Your next-to-last paragraph contains the truth: Somewhere, in some part of her mind and brain, she still does love you.