#133 January 15, 2010 from http://www.don-guitar.com Online version: http://www.don-guitar.com/currentissue.html Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/ First word, from Don: We got new stuff y'all. I've long wanted to be able to easily interact more with our readers (am I not always harping about how I want to hear from you?) so I set up an email group for any of you who wish to participate. What's an email group? Well, you subscribe to it, like you did to this ezine, but you can also send mail to the group. When you post to the group address, your post is forwarded to all members of the group. You also receive everything posted by other members of the group. What's the point? Whatever you want it to be. You can use the list to ask or answer questions about whatever interests you. Like this ezine, it's non-topical but loosely focused on computers, the internet and how they affect our lives and lifestyles. Would I be getting a lot more email? Probably not but if the list did get busy you could switch to the digest mode and cut it down to about one email per day. Ok, where do I subscribe? Ah, there's the rub. We're security freaks and we don't want people using our email group to send advertising. Like our ezine, our email group is strictly non-commercial. If you want to join, go to our contact page and send us an email telling us you'd like to subscribe to our email discussion group and say a few words about why you'd like to join (we just want to ascertain that you're a real person) or you can just tell me the the opposite of 'left off' and I'll subscribe you. Don't forget to tell me the address under which you wish to subscribe if it's different from the one you use to contact us. http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html --- Lisa's been spending most of her spare moments (and a few that weren't spare) playing with google wave and she's set up a google discussion group for her waving buddies but that's a 'whole nuther thing' and she'll tell you about that in her closing statement. I sure hope a few of you are willing to give our email discussion group a try. Remember, you can always unsubscribe if it doesn't suit you. Call me Scrooge but this year all I wanted for Christmas was for the holidays to be over so I got just what I wanted. How about you? See you next time, Don Our feedback form and contact info: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html Don on... myspace: http://www.myspace.com/donguitar facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Crowder/1321324044 twitter: http://twitter.com/eldergeek blogger: http://don-guitar.blogspot.com/ Lisa on... myspace: http://www.myspace.com/81825549 facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Lisa-Miller/100000537499890 blogger. http://thedirtgoddess.blogspot.com/ Section One by Don. A fellow on aarvark.com asked how he could lower his 'bundle' cost for TV, internet and telephone. I've mentioned all of these things before but I 'bundled' them to answer the fellow's question. I told him: 'Lose the bundle amigo.' Start by building yourself a digital antenna... http://uhfhdtvantenna.blogspot.com/ http://lifehacker.com/5138746/build-your-own-dtv-antenna ...and settle for whatever you can get off-air on the TV. Get a basic telephone package with basic DSL and no long distance. Then get an account with pioneer telephone for long distance. http://www.pioneertelephone.com/ ...since we switched to pioneer for long distance our bill has averaged two dollars a month. This month it was $0.84. Also, request a google voice account... https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/ ...which will enable you to make free long distance calls to anywhere in the US and Canada. Calls to other countries aren't free but are very reasonable. Google voice works with your regular land-line telephone, has many other features which you may find useful and, more importantly, is free. Check it out. http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html Digital photography and taking better pictures. http://www.supermediastore.com/article/u/sanoftentipf http://www.wikihow.com/Take-Better-Photographs http://tinyurl.com/leany [hp dot com] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnJ8pPSEW6k (cute video) http://lbguides.com/ http://tinyurl.com/ba97ey [kodak dot com] http://www.imaging-resource.com/BETTERPICS.HTM In tight times it's always good to do it yourself. http://www.diynetwork.com/ http://www.doityourself.com/ http://www.instructables.com/ http://www.diyideas.com/ http://www.5min.com/ http://www.diylife.com/ http://www.diyonline.com/ http://www.diyplanner.com/ http://dailydiy.com/ http://www.diyhappy.com/ http://www.diybride.com/ http://diydrones.com/ http://www.designspongeonline.com/category/diy-projects http://tinyurl.com/m2dh2a [energysavers dot gov] http://www.diylounge.com/ http://www.bobvila.com/ http://www.diyaudio.com/ http://www.passdiy.com/ http://diyaudioprojects.com/ http://www.diychatroom.com/ http://www.refdesk.com/doitself.html (portal) Google Chrome bug (say what?). http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31482 Possible explanation... http://tinyurl.com/cgq7y9 [blogspot dot com] Nuther (more plausible?). http://www.farmafricapresents.org.uk/buy/item/2 Now this is just silly, um, isn't it? http://www.goat-trauma.org/ End of Section One. This publication is only mailed to verified double opt-in subscribers, and is brought to you by me, Don Crowder, my wife, Lisa Miller, and //www.freelists.org Section Two by Lisa The key to finding information on the web is a working knowledge of how to search. Here are some resources. http://snipurl.com/ty78i http://hanlib.sou.edu/searchtools/ http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/bones.shtml http://www.pandia.com/goalgetter/ http://www.monash.com/spidap.html Don't you hate to sign up or register just to get the info you want? Tell 'em to 'bug me not'. http://www.bugmenot.com/ How to do lots of things. http://www.findhow.com/ Great reading delivered to your inbox. http://www.dailylit.com/ I think of Digital Inspiration as my daily updated library of cool things digital. http://www.labnol.org/ 50 ways to never waste food again. http://snipurl.com/ty78s Some things to do if your Gmail account is hacked. http://snipurl.com/ty7ji You can listen to podcasts on your phone. http://www.podlinez.com/ Scientific questions and answers applied to everyday life. http://www.newscientist.com/ Social commentary through graphic images. http://www.graphicwitness.org/ http://www.thegraphicimperative.org/ http://www.cwluherstory.org/CWLUGallery/graphcoll.html People do nice things every day. I can prove it. http://www.thanks-o-meter.com/ Great meals made easy. http://www.notakeout.com/ An easy way to plan events. http://whichdateworks.com/Editor.aspx Birdhouse for your soul. http://www.eod.com/blog/2009/11/birdhouse-for-your-soul/ Free school stuff. http://freeology.com/ Paul Hogan was an accomplished comedian long before he was Crocodile Dundee. http://snipurl.com/tyb5y A masterful and disturbing short film; Alma. http://almashortfilm.com/ Add, review and learn about thousands of types of beer. http://tincorporated.com/projects/97-bottles/ Create your own podcast, or at least see how it's done. http://huffduffer.com/ Finding Evan Ratliff. http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/ How to access some of the enormous potential of the deep web. The Deep Web is thousands of times bigger than than the Surface Web. Access some of it's hidden potential. http://brightplanet.com/ http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm http://infomine.ucr.edu/ End of Section Two. At the time this issue was posted, the current subscriber count for this publication was 380. This issue's collection of online news, blogs, magazines, videos and/or other informational sites. These are chosen for maximum diversity regardless of 'spin' and in some cases may have offensive or questionable content. http://www.scopeknowledge.com/ http://www.informationweek.com http://searchengineland.com/ http://paidcontent.org/ http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/_new/ http://ebling.library.wisc.edu/rss/ http://www.myfavoritejournals.com/ http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk/rssjnllist.html http://www.myjournals.org/ http://www.terkko.helsinki.fi/feednavigator/ http://www.tictocs.ac.uk/ http://www.citeulike.org/journals/ http://www.scifeeds.com/ http://www.cochrane.org/multimedia/colloquium_2009/ http://mashable.com/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/ http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/ Section Three by Don. Sometimes I want to read the news, sometimes I just want to look at pictures. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/ Yet another large collection of recipes. http://www.evernewrecipes.com/ A search engine for shopaholics. http://morastore.com/ A blogging catalog and resource. http://www.blogcatalog.com/ Still another social networking concept. http://friendfeed.com/ These guys make their hobby sound more like a sport. http://lumberjocks.com/ This is supposed to be a social bookmarking site but, to me, it more closely resembles an infomercial on steroids. http://www.jumptags.com/ Can't get enough email forwards? This seems to be where they all wind up. http://www.kingofforwards.com/ Interesting images. http://www.lifecultural.co.cc/ Once in a rare while the bad guys take one on the chin. http://tinyurl.com/yangcby [pcworld dot com] By now I'm sure everyone has heard about Firefox and Thunderbird but how much do you know about the organization behind them? http://www.mozilla.org/ How much does Leo Laporte weigh today? His scale posts daily results to twitter. http://twitter.com/leos_scale How much do you know about triobites? http://www.trilobites.info/ Fossils online. http://www.fossilsonline.com/ Clear answers for common questions. http://www.wisegeek.com/ This really bugs me. http://www.cirrusimage.com/ I think question answering site is aimed at small devices like iphones and such. http://www.chacha.com/ Lots of earthy things to explore. http://www.earthlife.net/ End of Section Three. If you'd like to help promote this non-commercial publication, please forward this ezine to anyone you know who might appreciate it. To spare them the forwarding carets (>> these things) I suggest you copy/paste the ezine to a new email window, or save the ezine as a text file to be inserted, or copy/pasted to a new email. If you've received this publication as a forward and wish to subscribe you may easily do so from online forms in either of these two locations: http://www.don-guitar.com/subsmanager.html //www.freelists.org/list/donspatch Section Four by Lisa. Art is everywhere. http://artinmycoffee.com/ Create your own fonts. http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/ Need to know detailed information about a nonprofit? http://www2.guidestar.org/Home.aspx The art of m.s.hove. Different and amazing. http://www.mshove.com/index.htm Informative and fun info from USGS. http://www.usgs.gov/ We can learn lots of kitchen basics from the pros. http://www.chef2chef.net/learn-to-cook/ http://www.learntocook101.com/ Graphics talk, tips and tutorials. http://www.graphics.com/ Media in information literacy for young people. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/index.cfm Literacy, once in decline, has made a serious comeback with the Internet. http://snipurl.com/tyfd2 Webmonkey is one of the premier web resources. A look around will show that they have something for nearly everyone, from web pros to the rest of us who would an explanation or tutorial about what we see on the web. http://www.webmonkey.com/ Stephenie Myer, the author of the 'Twilight' series. http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/index.html We just love favicons, little bits of web goodness. http://www.genfavicon.com/ http://www.favicon.co.uk/index.php http://www.favicon.cc/ This Week In Google-videos about Google and Cloud Computing. http://snipurl.com/tyfk8 Cloud Computing, pure Internet-based computing, has been workable and available for a couple of years. http://www.thinkgos.com/ America's farmers fueling America's truckers. http://www.biotrucker.com/ Resources for students and educators. http://www.readwritethink.org/ Free and legal music downloads by new and established artists. http://www.jamendo.com/en/ The #1 Vincent Van Gogh site for good reason. http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/bio.html Create or search for a database. http://www.factual.com/ YouTube is a great educational tool, too. http://snipurl.com/tyft1 Once in a great while, a doctor has to perform surgery on him/herself. Hard to imagine... http://snipurl.com/tyftr Videos on how to do things. http://www.howcast.com/ End of Section Four. We welcome all comments, suggestions, or criticism. The form doesn't access your email client (it's a CGI form), so your privacy is assured. If you know of a website that would be a good candidate for this ezine, please pass it on via our online feedback form. http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html Section Five by Don. More icky bugs. http://bugguide.net/ Once again we're flirting with the concept of losing weight (seems to be a perennial proclivity) and have discovered Jorge Cruise, who makes it seem doable (if not painless). http://jorgecruise.com/ http://www.youtube.com/user/jorgecruise http://twitter.com/jorgecruise The DIY version of this non-lethal weapon is considerably less lethal than the US DOD version. http://www.ladyada.net/make/bedazzler/index.html The concept is to download phsysical objects... http://theproductbay.org/ ...but it's still in um, I'd call it pre-beta and it's a sort of conceptual spin-off of this site. http://www.thingiverse.com/ Is this ever-cool, or over-kill? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGYedBMmmzY Interesting photos, great music on the right-hand side-bar or scroll down for some nice videos. http://www.kimock.com/multimedia/ Used stuff. Imagine a cross (I think the hip nomenclature is 'mashup') between amazon and craigs list. http://www.cheapused.com/ A sort of online shopping portal for pet accessories. http://www.flealess.org/ Pets on the edge. http://tinyurl.com/y9lpmjl [itworld dot com] Learn to do noisy stuff. http://audio.tutsplus.com/ Commercial networking for starving musical artists. http://www.reverbnation.com/ Jason Shadrick is one of the fellows I follow on twitter, mainly so I won't miss stuff like this Joe Henderson interview. http://tinyurl.com/yckv4qo Images from and videos about NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). http://tinyurl.com/yexeuxr KDE is the Linux desktop that convinced both me and Lisa to switch to Linux. We may never have switched if this project had come along a little earlier. KDE for Windows. http://windows.kde.org/ (It's open source too.) This one seems to be more of a concept than a reality but the notion is fascinating... http://socialdesktop.org/ ...and is conceptually connected with the openDesktop project. http://opendesktop.org/ I looked at the website and asked myself 'what the heck is openDesktop. It took me a while to find the 'about' page. http://opendesktop.org/help/about.php I don't recall what I was searching for when I stumbled across teacher Colette Cassinelli but I was very impressed by her ed-tech blog... http://edtechvision.org/ ...her google tools for teachers... http://sites.google.com/site/colettecassinelli/ ...and her Tech Tip Tuesday collaboration with Mary Fran Lynch. http://sites.google.com/site/techtipstuesday/ End of Section Five. Archives for this ezine are available online here: //www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/ The current issue is also available on our website. http://www.don-guitar.com/currentissue.html RSS feed is available via this link. //www.freelists.org/archives/donspatch/feed.rss Section Six by Lisa. Six very unusual artists. http://snipurl.com/tyfyl Guard your Facebook privacy. http://snipurl.com/u1h03 Why email was invented. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLb14MnIbtw Super User is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for computer enthusiasts. http://superuser.com/ Guide to money’s influence on U.S. elections and public policy. http://www.opensecrets.org/ As much as I love Google products, there are plenty of effective alternatives. http://snipurl.com/u1hbv The amazing transient art of Jim Denevan. http://www.jimdenevan.com/ Your New Year's Resolution Tracker. Simple, personal, private, effective. http://resolution-tracker.appspot.com/ Directory of Open Access Journals. http://www.doaj.org/ An updated version of the Facebook privacy article mentioned previously. http://goo.gl/5jxf Pysanky, Ukrainian Eggs, by Barbara Novak. An excellent site, an exquisite art form and a wonderfully talented artist. http://graphicoriginals.com/pysanky.html If you lose your wallet, you need to call and cancel your cards quickly. But wait...the numbers are on the cards. Wallet Garden is an answer. http://walletgarden.com/ Join the fight against phishing. http://www.phishtank.com/index.php Want your computing to be more mobile? Try an online OS. http://snipurl.com/u1hec Wouldn't it be nice if someone could remember all your warranty info so you could forget it? https://www.warrantyelephant.com/ Travel Ephemera from the 1920s and '30s. http://www.travelbrochuregraphics.com/ And now for some timely advice on beating colds and flus. http://quanta-gaia.org/health/coldsAndFlu.html Recover lost data or image files with DiskDigger. http://dmitrybrant.com/diskdigger The story of Marla Olmstead. http://snipurl.com/u1hgn http://www.marlaolmstead.com/home.html A cool online picture book. http://www.bemboszoo.com/ I enjoyed this TED talk by Stefana Broadbent. http://snipurl.com/u1hhg Need to write a nice letter? http://www.niceletter.com/ End of Section Six. The Linux Corner. Yet Another Linux Blog. http://linux-blog.org/ Helpful Linux tidbits (a blog). http://linuxtidbits.wordpress.com/ There's a lot of controversy going on in the Linux community over this lawsuit. http://tinyurl.com/yck78rb [informationweek dot com] 10 operating systems you've never heard of. http://tinyurl.com/ybn32nj [techradar dot com] Wine has become a surprisingly functional platform for running Windows apps on a Linux system. Of course there aren't many Windows apps I use anymore but I'm still fond of one or two Windows freeware apps from my friend Johannes Walroth... http://www.programming.de/ ...and installing them couldn't be easier because they're stand-alone executables which simply open in wine when you double-click on their .exe files. Still, there are a few popular Windows apps which are a bit more complicated and one good way to install them is to use a spiffy little Linux app called wine-doors. http://wddb.wine-doors.org/ To find out whether or not your favorite Windows app will run on Linux, under wine, check the wine wiki. http://wiki.winehq.org/FrontPage Frank Hendriksen's site also offers a lot of info on how to run Windows apps on Linux. http://frankscorner.org/ Just lately it seems that reading about what's new in Linux is becoming more and more interesting. http://www.desktoplinux.com/ Adios Mr. Gates. http://www.goodbyemicrosoft.net/ A Little Humor. A Texas Joke from web-sibling Norm Koeckritz. Near Fredericksburg, Texas, where there is a large German-speaking population, a farmer walking down a country road notices a man drinking from his pond with his hand. The farmer shouted: 'Trink das wasser nicht. Die kuhen haben dahin gesheissen.' (Which means: 'Don't drink the water, the cows have messed in it.') The man shouted back: 'I'm from New York and just down here campaigning for Obama's health care plan, I can't understand you. Please speak in English.' The farmer replied: 'Use two hands, you'll get more.' ~~~ From our web-sibling Terri Lanoue. A man with a gun went into a bank and demanded their money. Once he was given the money, he turned to a customer and asked, 'Did you see me rob this bank?' The man replied, 'Yes sir, I did.' The robber then shot him in the temple, killing him instantly. He then turned to a couple standing next to him and asked the man, 'Did you see me rob this bank?' The man replied, 'No sir, I didn't, but my wife did.' ~~~ A wise quotation sent by our web-sibling Gordon Milligan: 'When you wake up in the morning, Pooh' said Piglet at last, 'what's the first thing you say to yourself?' 'What's for breakfast?' said Pooh. What do you say, Piglet?' 'I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?' said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. 'It's the same thing', he said. A. A. Milne --- My old and dear friend Dee Jordan says: 'My dog sleeps about 20 hours a day. She has her food prepared for her. She can eat whenever she wants, 24/7/365. Her meals are provided at no cost to her. She visits the Vet once a year for her checkup, and again during the year if any medical needs arise. For this she pays nothing, and nothing is required of her. She lives in a nice neighborhood in a house that is much larger than she needs, but she is not required to do any upkeep. If she makes a mess, someone else cleans it up. She has her choice of luxurious places to sleep. She receives these accommodations absolutely free. She is living like a queen, and has absolutely no expenses whatsoever. All of her costs are picked up by others who go out and earn a living every day. I was just thinking about all this, and suddenly it hit me like a brick in the head, Good grief, my dog is a Democrat!' To which I replied: Not at all, your dog firmly believes that other folks, who're far less well off than she is, are supposed to foot the bill for her excesses as if she had some sort of divine right to a free ride. Your dog is quite clearly a Republican. To be honest, I know next to nothing about politics but I couldn't pass up a chance to contradict Dee. She was born and raised in Coventry (England) but has lived in Texas for a number of years and fancies herself politically astute which, for all I know, she may be but I tend to agree with our Australian web-sibling Michael Harding who pointed out to me that, based on the best understanding he could get from Australian media, he couldn't tell one U.S. political party from another. Tips for This Issue. How to download youtube videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4lmuFGzKYM Solid advice for any Windows user. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQNtNlo7nrE What is a web browser? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrXPcaRlBqo Editor's note: We recommend you install and learn to use several different browsers. All of the following are available for Windows, Mac and Linux: Firefox. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ Google Chrome. http://www.google.com/chrome Opera. http://www.opera.com/browser/ Seamonkey comes as a suite of apps but is still worthwhile if you have sufficient disk space. http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ Contributions From Our Readers. Links from readers are always welcome and you can even write your own link descriptions if you like (just tell me when you send them if that's what you intended). Guidelines are available here: http://www.don-guitar.com/descriptivetext.html From our web-sibling Patrick Barden. ( http://lookeewhatifound.blogspot.com/ ) A weather site I have been using a lot lately. The site has a much cleaner, faster loading interface that is not muddied with too much stuff. The site seems to be able to auto detect as when I first visited it went straight to my local forecast. http://www.foreca.com/ One of my favorite puzzle types and sites. Griddlers consist of a grid with numbers and colors along the top and left side. By matching them and filling in the main grid a picture is made. Think of them as paint by numbers mixed with a bit of a logic puzzle. http://www.griddlers.net/default.jsp Hate going to a favorite blog or other site and not being able to comfortably read it because of small text, bad color choices, or tons of flashy ads and graphics? Readability sets up a bookmarklet (a program that sits in your bookmark folder) and lets you take almost any page and have it converted to a plain text page with large readable text. For the visually impaired it is a godsend. http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ From our web-sibling Jo-Ann (Jo) Burton: ( Jo's site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sharinglinks2/ ) A nice collection of online games. http://play.escapegames24.com/ Cute nonsense. http://sendables.jibjab.com/ Heavy stuff. http://www.shegoddess.com/ Assorted interesting videos. http://www.chilloutzone.to/en Reducing a high-tech cleaning appliance to a low-tech robot. http://hackingroomba.com/ Book reviews. http://www.bookforum.com/ Mad magazine's chief competitor. http://www.cracked.com/ From our web-sibling Jerry Fox. The sort of soldier I'd want to share a foxhole with. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ7968BbMnU More on the health care controversy. http://tinyurl.com/yaep2hh [blogspot dot com] From our 'other brother' Bill (Beeyil) Lanoue. ( Bill's blog http://ncvietvet.blogspot.com/ ) It's what's for dinner. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnywDA8VJZM From our web-sister-in-law Terri Lanoue. This guy is so picky. http://www.toothpickcity.com/ From our web-sibling John Lepse. ( John's blog: http://hucknjim.blogspot.com/ ) All you need, anywhere in the world. http://tinyurl.com/ydhqgdk [flixxy dot com] There oughta be a law. http://tinyurl.com/lntts4 [smithsonianmag dot com] From our friend Lee Parmeter who is also the mind-behind our local Highland Lakes Linux Users Group. http://www.hllug.org/ How social networking works. http://tinyurl.com/yz99z3x [itworld dot com] From our web-sibling Bob Tegner. ( http://bobtegner.wordpress.com/ ) Assorted media presentations, some of which are large. http://supertremendous.com/ Thank you Patrick, Jo, Jerry, Bill, Terri, John, Lee and Bob. Last word from Lisa. Google Wave has been my obsession of choice for the last couple of weeks. For those of you who have a Wave account and are beginning to play with it, we've changed the name to Our Patch, which reflects our focus a little better. I'm attempting to adapt our ezine to the new Wave technology, keeping up with progress. It's written by Don, me and the participants in that particular wave. That's what Wave is, among many other potential uses-a collaborative communications platform that will transform the way we communicate and interact. Here is our address on Wave, if you already have an account: googlewave.com!w%252BSs4wQ2DEA Editor's note: This isn't a URL and can't be used as such. It's a google wave ID that can be pasted into the Wave search window. If you'd like to request an invitation to Google Wave, we were issued invitations to give out. Please go to our Contact page and write us a short note telling us you'd like an invitation and why. It's not a test, we just want to make sure you're a real person. http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html We've also started a Google Group for Wave discussion, help, collaboration and hangin' out. It's called Our Patch Wavers. You can request an invitation from us by going to our Contact page and writing a brief note about why you'd be interested in joining. Again, it's not a test, we just want to make sure you're a real person. http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html Generally speaking, I'm not an early-adopter of anything. If aspirin were discovered today, I'd wait 10 years and let several million people pre-test it for me. But in my opinion Wave will change the way we do so many things, to me it's worth the steep learning curve and annoyingly slow loading. In the meantime I've had to learn to set up and manage a Google Group and a Freelists mailing list, among many other horribly tedious and geeky tasks. Surely this will pay off in the long run...right? --- Here in Texas, it's been cold, cold, cold. Does anyone remember hot water bottles? Oh, my... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_water_bottle They're a bit hard to find but nothing beats them for getting to sleep if you have cold feet. Once in awhile I'll wake up and mine is still warm after 3-4 hours. I love my hot water bottle. From October until March I'm not allowed to touch Don with my feet. Life is good, love is wonderful and Texas is cold. 'Til next time, Lisa Our feedback form and contact info: http://www.don-guitar.com/contactme.html Lisa on... myspace: http://www.myspace.com/81825549 facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Lisa-Miller/100000537499890 blogger: http://thedirtgoddess.blogspot.com/ Don on... myspace: http://www.myspace.com/donguitar facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Don-Crowder/1321324044 twitter: http://twitter.com/eldergeek blogger: http://don-guitar.blogspot.com/ Don Crowder and Lisa Miller Thursday, January 14, 2010 6:30 PM CST - Buchanan Lake Village, Texas, USA Served by the U.S. Post Office in Tow (rhymes-with-cow), Texas Privacy: We will never share, sell, or otherwise compromise your email address. Privacy Policy on our website. http://www.don-guitar.com/privacy.html Freelists.org Privacy Policy. //www.freelists.org/privacy.html The most important people on the Internet, for you and I as computer users, are software developers. The world's coolest computer, without software, is like a car without fuel. It might look great, but what can it do? It doesn't matter who produces the software you love and use regularly, the developers of that software need and deserve your support. A bit of advice from Internet veteran Bayard J. Fox: New computer users are often in awe of the things you can get without cost on the Internet. There can be hidden costs for the unwary. Use a 'throw away' email address to register, and be constantly on guard against giving away personal information. Use a firewall, and provide only the barest minimum of information on questionnaires. ___________________________________________________________ Subscription management for this publication is available online here: http://www.don-guitar.com/subsmanager.html or here: //www.freelists.org/list/donspatch