OK, So I Lied.

I didn't leave for a day or so: I'm back on the same day, but I hope with a good purpose.

At the end of August I "went off the air" with an internet problem that gave me fits. I swore it was the local phone company's DSL function that was the problem, but they swore it was my computer that was at fault. I am disgusted to acknowledge that they were right. A new utility program I installed to help my computer run better had tweaked my browser settings so that it would run faster but it didn't work like it should and wound up making my internet connection intermittent and then flat out dead. It took me a lot of work to find the problem, but now all is well.

I should explain that I regularly place a lot of stress on my computer because I like to see how far I can push its performance levels. I also love to try out new programs I find interesting and useful. What this means is that I regularly crash my machine. Sometimes it's easy to get it going again, and sometimes I have to wipe the hard drive clean and start over, depending on how much the "test" program screwed things up. On the good side, I regularly back up my data, music, photos, etc., so I don't lose much if my homebuilt system crashes. I, of course, urge everyone I know to back up his/her stuff regularly, which for me is the first day of each month. I have a DVD burner and it takes three disks to get it all backed up, but I have a lot of music (all legally obtained), photos and short videos to save.

I make two copies of each backup disk: One copy stays in my emergency tornado bag and the other stays at my daughter's house across town. I should state that my emergency tornado bag used to be my emergency earthquake bag before I abandoned the wilds of Los Angeles for the metropolis of Alma, Nebraska. I would urge everyone who backs up his/her computer to make two copies and stash one copy with a friend, relative or safe deposit box (as I know one friend has done). If just one backup copy exists for any of us and our place is burglarized and the thief for whatever reason grabs the disks around the computer, the backup is gone. Likewise, if a fire roars through a home and burns the backup disks, nothing good has been accomplished by the backup. Protect your photos, music, data, whatever. Make two backups and store one in another location - and backup your computer on a regular basis.

For those who like to use their computers but are not necessarily very computer savvy, please be careful of the emails you answer. In particular, a thing called "phishing" can really put a dent in your bank account. In phishing, we receive an email from what seems to be ebay, Amazon, Citibank, Bank of America or whatever and it tells us that some kind of personal information must be verified to solve some kind of problem with our account. If you look at the web page it looks exactly like the web site for that company, but it is a fake and once you follow their instructions and enter the information (social security #, credit/debit card number, address, etc) you are screwed. Normally the legitimate outfits will never ask for more info by sending you an email, and if you get one and think it might be real, do not, do not click on the link they provide you in the email. Close the letter, leave your email program, open your browser and use your bookmark or you favorites entry to go to the website for that company. If it's legitimate, you'll be able to navigate to the part of the website you need.

Another current danger is the invitation to make money by taking surveys, and if you do take the survey (which asks lots of personal questions)you will probably not enjoy the experience. One of my daughters is several hundred dollars poorer after having gotten involved in such an exercise.

The fake websites, those that are "phishing", seem to have one trait that can be a dead giveaway - they usually don't use good grammar, and that's because they don't come from the U.S and they were not put together by native English speakers. I got one supposedly from ebay recently and the page was a dead ringer for a legitimate ebay web page. In reading the explanatory text, however, it was obvious that whoever wrote it had an excellent command of the language but made a couple of grammatical errors that a native English speaker would never make. So, read everything on such a page word for word with a critical eye. As an example, I found one that used the word "irregardless". Wrong, wrong, wrong. No informative text from a legitimate organization will ever use that word. It is in the dictionary as an improper form of "regardless" and should never be used. Actually, I learned that lesson on that word many years ago in college English when I turned in a typewritten, double spaced six page assignment. In the third paragraph of the first page I used the word, "irregardless". The instructor read that far, circled the word in red and gave me an "F" for the entire assignment. Needless to say, I have been extra sensitive to the use of that word since then, and when I saw it in the fake email all my alarms went off.

Enough lecture from professor Brown. Have a good day.

Heat Wave

Got a call from my friend Jean in Duarte, CA, today. She's been hearing about all the super cold weather in the plains states and wanted to make sure we in Alma are all OK. We are super OK because all that cold is well north of us. Sure, it's not California weather here, but it has been an unseasonably warm winter with a few days of true cold and snow. The high temp today is about 50 degrees F, which is much better than the high of 10 degrees to the northeast in Omaha. Most of the snow here is gone except in the shadier spots where old, dirty snow can be seen. In fact, pictures can tell the best story.


Standing in my front doorway, this was the scene on Christmas day. Mother Nature had been kind and gave us all a two inch coat of fresh snow for the big day, which was nice because on December 26, the high temperature in beautiful downtown Alma, NE, was 68 degreees. Go figure.








This is almost the same view taken this afternoon. As you can see, it ain't summer but it's not bad. I went walking along the trail by the lake today and most of it is free and clear of ice and snow. In a couple of shaded gullies, the trail is covered with ice, so I walked on the grass shoulder to get through. No problem at all. Got in my standard 2.25 mile walk in about 45 minutes.

It's certainly not bikini weather at the lake here, but we are not catching weather hell like the people in northern Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota, where the wind chill approached 60 degrees below zero today.


Did you know that UCLA has a women's rugby team? Neither did I until someone posted a video of the team's annual "prom dress" game, which is a promotional stunt to publicize the team. If you want to seem some hard tackling by women in formal dresses, here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoG5duF1N64

On that spectacular note, I will leave for a couple of days.

The Vacation Is Over

I've been off the blog for four busy, busy months. As most of those reading this know, I spent a month of that time back in Duarte, CA, helping to care for our friend Jean Moore, who took a nasty tumble down her condo stairway. She seems to be doing quite well and is almost back to her old self.

For me, I'm still happy to be in Mayberry, or should I say, Alma, Nebraska, winter notwithstanding. In fact, it has been an extremely moderate winter. We had four days in December when the high temp was six degrees F, but for the most part we have had no evil winter weather. Today our high will be 48 degrees F and by Thursday we'll be at 55. It was that temperature last Saturday, so I took my trusty Mercury Sable to the local car wash and gave it a badly needed cleaning. Why do cars seem to run better after they have been thoroughly washed and vacuumed?

Winter fishing has not been available here. The ice out on the lake is simply too thin to support a person and the ice around the shoreline has made it impossible to cast out. Northern Pike and Walleye are available in the winter here, but getting a lure out to them is next to impossible. Of course, I've got to get my 2009 fishing license this week. Being both a veteran and a senior citizen, it costs me only $5.00 for the year.

Both my girls are doing fine and my granddaughter, Enchantra, will graduate from high school in May. I'm not saying that the school is small (as is Alma), but the graduating class consists of 18 seniors. She has taken her ACT exam and passed with flying colors and plans to attend Concordia college in Seward, NE. She likes the school's computer graphics reputation and wants to be a professional in that field. Seward is a bit south of Lincoln, NE. so she will about three hours away if we want to visit. Concordia is a Christian college operated by the Lutheran church's Missouri synod, which means it is a serious place and is not known as a "party" school. Of course, if kids want to party, they'll find a way to do it regardless of their location. Enchantra has been awarded a scholarship which will pay for part of it and she has applied for a Pell grant as a result of her ACT score. She is a talented artist and I am delighted that she wants to use her gift of art to build a career. She fits right into that old saying, "Get a job doing something you enjoy, and you'll never work a day in your life".

I am relieved to be back on this blog. I've been jotting down some notes on things I want to write about and I have finally broken through the logjam of inertia. More a bit later.

A Hitch In The Gitalong

For those faithful friends who keep up with this blog and send me emails, Pls be patient. My Internet connection at home has been down for a few days and shows no promise of coming back up soon. The phone company (Frontier) says my computer is the problem. My computer, however, says that the DSL modem supplied by Frontier is defective. Frontier will not replace the modem, and I cannot get on the internet. I am writing this from the library in beautiful downtown Alma while having a conversation with the Librarian, LaDonna, about the vagaries of local telephone, cable and satellite TV services. I'm going to borrow my daughter Valerie's laptop and plug it into the DSL connection. If it goes on line, then my computer is the problem. If it can't get on line, then the modem is obviously the culprit. Stay tuned for further details.

Here, There and Everywhere

The fishing from shore is slowing down as the water warms up and the fish move to cooler water in the bottom center of the lake, which is the old Republican River Channel. Even though it has been a moderate summer, the fish want cooler water, which means those fishing from boats will do much better than those (like me) who fish from the shore. My buddy, Steve, did hook up with a six pounds or so gar the other day, which we left on the bank as raccoon food. The gar is a prehistoric fish that, like alligators and crocodiles, have changed little over the past several million years. They are essentially inedible, although I've heard of a couple of hardy souls who do find some good meat on the gar. It is really an ugly fish and is generally not found in the western United States. Below is a picture of an Alligator Gar caught in Florida. While Nebraska has the Long Nosed Gar, they also have a formidable set of teeth, and you do not want to stick your fingers in its mouth to dislodge the hook. Cut the line. That thing looks like something prehistoric, that's for sure.
I read recently that a small Alligator Gar was caught in a lake in California, which has a lot of the fish and game people sweating. They hope someone put it in the lake because it got too big for their aquarium. Like the Northern Pike, if there are lots of them out there, it will turn fishing upside down in the Golden State because they feed voraciously on trout, bass, crappie and you name it.

Remember the puppy, "Prince Dude"? Well, he's growing and coming along nicely. When my daughter got him on July 4, he had just been weaned. Now is a high energy bundle of black fur that is into everything and has chewed up a couple of towels, a cell phone charger cord, and uncounted pieces of paper. This week he has been accompanying Eva and I on our morning walks and has turned the walking into an exercise in amazement at his energy level.
















The first picture shows how much he has grown in a few short weeks. In the second, I can only say that on the end of that leash is an overly exuberant black puppy. He loves to go bounding into the high growth and thrash around. He's too young to realize that there are other creatures who also like tall grass and will not appreciate his energy level. I keep expecting to see him come running from one of his tall grass forays with a badger in hot pursuit. Badgers are everywhere out here and they are nothing to mess with. Even a bear will run from a badger.
I have come to the conclusion that the way to solve this nation's energy crisis is to corral every black Labrador Retriever puppy in the country and hold them in one massive pen. The collected energy would power America for a year.

My doves have flown away. Both the little guys have reached flying age and off they went. It didn't seem long enough to me, but when I looked it up on the net I found that doves go from hatched to airborne and on their own in just two weeks. If only teenagers could grow so quick.

It appears that my walking discomfort has nothing to do with my hip. The MRI exam shows that I have a perfectly normal left hip with minimal arthritis considering my age. The same cannot be said, however, for my lower back, where the doctors believe considerable arthritis has affected a couple of nerves. I have an appointment with a neurologist on September third. Stay tuned for further results.

Birds, Cheese And Other Trivia

The two little doves are coming along just fine. Got two pretty good pictures of them today. Please understand that I do not shoo or frighten mama off the nest to get these shots. I can hear her leave the nest (probably to go food shopping) because dove wings are really noisy and whistle when they take off.














They obviously have feathers, now, and in about a month or less will be flying away to take up their own lives. Hard to believe how fast it all goes. Shouldn't be hard for them to find food around here; I see big, juicy night crawlers struggling on the ground every morning after the sprinklers have been on. It looks like paradise for the early bird. (I have grabbed a few of those worms myself on occasion so that I can bait them up on a hook and look for catfish in the river or in the lake).

One of the minor league frustrations I have encountered as a result of my move to Nebraska is the lack of availability of Monterey Jack cheese, especially for sandwich slices. In L.A. every market carries Monterey Jack sliced for sandwiches on its deli racks. No such luck here. A person might find Pepper Jack or Monterey Jack mixed with Colby, but no plain Monterey Jack sandwich slices. The local grocery store carries a small, narrow block of Jack which can be sliced at home. It takes two slices side by side to fill a slice of bread. Occasionally, at a major store in Kearney, I find fairly large blocks that can make wonderful sandwich slices. The price, however, usually makes me put it down and walk away. I usually wind up putting ordinary "American" cheese slices on my sandwiches, which is somewhat less than thrilling and has all the flavor of grade school paste.

In my life, a sandwich is a small meal. I know some who are quite happy simply slapping a slice of bologna or whatever between two slices of bread. That might do in an emergency, but on a given day when I want to make a sandwich for lunch, it involves two slices of potato bread, mustard (or mayo) on one slice, and horseradish on the other. I then stack lettuce, a slice of meat, tomato, a slice of meat, onion, a slice of meat, and then the cheese. It's not really a "Dagwood" sandwich, but it gets close to that. It's delicious, filling, and easily holds me til dinnertime. Currently the lettuce, tomato and onion come from my daughter's garden. After the second frost, she will harvest the horseradish.

The weather here has not been ugly this summer. I know it has been brutally hot in L.A., but we have only had eight or nine days total of truly broiling weather. Last week we had three days of +100 degrees and 40% humidity. Those days make Nebraska the world's largest outdoor sauna. McCook, Nebraska, which is directly east and very close to the Colorado border, recorded 110 degrees last week. Ugh. But that's what air conditioners are for. It's interesting to note that most of the newer pieces of farm equipment (tractors, combines, and other man driven machinery) have enclosed cabs with air conditioning. What would the pioneers have thought?

My MRI examination scheduled for last Saturday morning didn't take place. The best laid plans....... In 2002 I had angioplasty on the major arteries leading into my legs, and the doctor inserted a stent in each artery. A stent is a small coil which forces the artery to stay wide open. Some are made of metal, some are not. If my stents are metal, I cannot have an MRI. The tremendous amount of magnetic energy used by the machine could cause problems with the stents that could kill me. So, this morning I called the office of the doctor in Pasadena who performed the vascular surgery to get information as to the material involved with the stents. Apparently it is in my file which is now in their archives. I should have the info I am looking for tomorrow or Wednesday. If they are metal, then some diagnostic tool other than MRI will have
to be used.

So life goes on. At least the fishing is still good. You betcha!

Well, my efforts to keep mama dove on her nest have played a part in a happy result. There are two little "squabs" (as baby doves are called) in the nest. While doing something on my computer, I heard the characteristic whistling of doves wings, which told me that mama had left her nest. I grabbed my camera and got the picture. First is the picture I couldn't load the other day, which shows the two eggs in the nest. Next is today's picture of the little guys.























It may take some careful study to differentiate the two young birds, their feathers aren't in yet so they kinda look like hairy blobs. I would guess that they were born just before noon today. It is now 2:00 PM Central Time. Later, I'll get a picture of mommy on the nest. I am not feeding them or anything other than just observing. Mother Nature has done a good job of keeping the species healthy and thriving for millennia - she doesn't need my help.

Zounds! I have discovered that this is "National Simplify Your Life Week". I really don't know if there is a whole lot I could do to make things simpler for me. Let's see now- I don't work any more; that's pretty good. I try to stay out of my kids lives unless they ask me in; that has worked very well. I have zero debts to pay off; that's incredible. I go fishing whenever the mood strikes me; I have died and gone to Heaven. I hope all my friends are simplifying their lives.

Every morning I read CNN, the L.A.Times and the Omaha World Herald, all on line. I am learning the sports situations here in this plains state, but had to sit back and take stock when I realized the the Omaha Royals, a triple A baseball club (that's one step down from the major leagues) is in the Pacific Coast League. Huh? Let me look outside again just to be sure, but I don't think Nebraska is anywhere close to the Pacific Coast. If it has to reach to Omaha for a team, the league is not nearly what it used to be. Of course, most of the cities that fielded teams for the PCL in the old days, now are home to major league teams.

The San Francisco Seals, the old Los Angeles Angels, and the Hollywood Stars disappeared when the Giants and the Dodgers came west in 1958. The old Triple A San Diego Padres, Oakland Oaks, and Seattle Raniers were replaced with major league teams in the 1960s. Do the Sacrament Solons and the Portland Beavers exist anymore? I'll have to look that up.

As a young teenager, I used to travel with my buds by streetcar (remember them?) to L.A.'s Wrigley Field to watch the PCL Angels play. I remember names like Cecil Garriot, Rube Novotney, Bob Muncrief, Gene Baker and of course, Steve Bilko, who could hit a fastball fifty miles but just couldn't deal with the curve ball. The Dodgers' Jim Gilliam used to call the curve ball, "Public Enemy Number One". It separated minor league hitters from the big time. Chuck Connors, of "Rifleman" fame, was a first baseman for the minor league Angels for a couple of years and at one time I had a picture of me with him taken on a "Picture Day" before the game at Wrigley Field. Over time the picture has disappeared and I sure miss it when I have moments like these.

Holy Mackerel. I just took time out to do a quick Google on Today's Pacific Coast League and it bears absolutely no resemblance to the old. Not only is Omaha in the league, but so is Memphis, New Orleans and Houston, not to mention Oklahoma City, Nashville and Albuquerque. The Albuquerque team is called the "Isotopes", probably to take advantage of its proximity to the Los Alamos atomic proving grounds. Question: After playing there for a while, do the players glow in the dark?

I don't think I want to find out.