Tuesday, December 26, 2006

The Wrapper

Wrap, wrap, wrap
They call me the wrapper.
Wrap, wrap, wrap
You know what comes after.

Sorry, I slipped back to the 70's. There was a song back then where the lyrics were Rap, Rap, Rap they call him the rapper. Back then rap was slang for talking. Today it's a music form. But I digress.

One of my jobs at Christmas time is wrapping the presents. This year, I was using the "Wrap similar" method. That's where all the gifts to one individual was wrapped in the same paper as much as possible. Ooops. Barb's a "Variety wrap" kind of woman. So I had to change my method so there was a wide variety of wrapped presents under the tree. I also like to "Personality wrap" as well. This is where you use paper that reflects the receiver in some way. I had use the manly paper for the son's-in-law, kid paper for the grand-kids, festive paper for the females. Then I found out that Barb did not like the paper that I had used to wrap her presents. Double ooops. I had wrapped all hers in the same paper. Oh well. The paper didn't stay on long and in a day or two the trashman will be by to pick it all up.

So, what wrapping style do you use?

Monday, December 25, 2006

Christmas With the Grandchildren

Holiday's are special times. Times when family comes together. It's wonderful the cycle of life where we've experienced the innocence of youth with our children. Then later with our grandchildren and someday with our great-grandchildren. This first image is a cartoon version of our grandchildren. I've included the actual photo below for those who prefer reality.



Saturday, December 23, 2006

Can't See th TV for the Trees (part two)


I had decided that I would give Comcast another shot at rectifying my problem before I cut them loose and had the Dish installed. My problem was that on one channel, TV5, the picture would shudder occassionaly and at times the sound would drop out. I have a hard time understanding how the problem could be here at my home since it only occurs with that one channel. I let the technician replace all the connectors and even run a new cable to the house. To bad, so sad, it still has the same problem. The bill was due today, and I paid it yesterday. It may be my last payment. Today I went out to the fence row with my ladder and saw. Down came the limbs to clear a line of sight to the two satellites for the Dish. The clock is ticking. I'm waiting for them to bury the new cable before I cancel. Once it's buried and the problem is not resolved...Dish Network here I come.

(Dad. This post was created using copy and paste. I had typed the post in Microsoft Wordpad. While that was open, I logged into my blog and started a new post. I then went back to Wordpad, highlighted the data, did a Ctrl-c to copy, came back to the post and then clicked in the box as if I was going to type. I then pressed Ctrl-v to paste the copied data in. You should be able to do the same. You could copy it from your e-mail or some other program.)

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Grape Road Gridlock

Christmas is 9 days away and the residents of Michiana are realizing that they need to do their holiday shopping. The Grape Road / Main Street corridor has reached gridlock. It's worse than a parking lot. Parking lots don't have a car directly in front of you and directly in back of you. At least you can move around in a parking lot. Parking lots have aisles you can move around. The intersection of Edison and Grape was particularly problematic. Cars heading east on Edison and turning north onto Grape would back up and cars would be left in the intersection while the light turned green for traffic on Edison heading west. It wasn't until the light turned red that the traffic on Grape would then move and then the cycle would repeat while traffic on Edison stood still. I should have known that it would be bad when traffic heading toward the mall was backed up to Capital Avenue and State Road 23. Somebody take my car keys away.

Can't see the TV for the trees


I've had Comcast Cable for some time now. I'm able to get TV5 Monde a French station via vable. But...I'm not happy with the reception of that one channel. It looses sound, blacks out and shudders. This generally happens during evening viewing. So, I thought I would go Dish. I have a number of challenges for the dish:
  1. There's a fence row behind my house. (Trees along the edge of a field)
  2. I have a finished basement making it almost impossible to run new cable in the walls (Okay, I'll run it on the outside of the wall. Maybe I'll even buy those plastic channels to run it in.)
  3. I have two phone jacks in my house. One in the kitchen, one in the bedroom. Neither in close proximity to where the receiver will be. (Either I install a wireless phone jack or pay $6 a month for not having the phone jack.)
Well, I was getting desperate and called a local installer. He told me as he was looking for the house that he saw mine and said to himself "I hope it's not this one". That was due to the fence row. So we decided that we would need to locate the two dishes (one for domestic and one for TV5) in the fence row. But...They would need to be located about 50 ft from each other and a few small trees (mulberry) and some branches (about 25 ft up some trees) would need to come down or I wouldn't be able to get the signals from the satellites.

So, I guess I get to play lumberjack today.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Rough Blogging

It's been a few days now that dad and I have set up our blogs. Initially signing into the blog gave us some frustrating times but I believe we have those issues calmed down. Now we get to begin making entries into the blogs. I anticipate some challenges, but I don't think it's anything we can't get through. Right dad?

(still have to use post options to change the post time. arrrggghhh.)

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Too Busy for Thank You

I'm not too busy to say thank you. I'm too busy to read your e-mail saying "Thank You". This applies to work and the volume of e-mails that I receive on a daily basis. You know it's bad when you open the e-mail and it says Thank You and you're thinking that you've just wasted 5 seconds reading that e-mail.

Does anyone really know what time it is?

"Does anyone really know what time it is?
Does anyone really care?"

Lyrics from McArthur Park by Chicago

The time stamp on my posts seems to be an issue. It must be a setting somewhere that I have overlooked. Perhaps it's my location in my profile. Well the time really is somewhere around 2:30pm although blogger thinks it's 11 something am. I know that I can change the Post time and date by using the Post Options. But why should I have to do that?

Sunday, December 10, 2006

My first Blogger post


It's amazing how technology has changed the way we communicate. In many cases, it has improved communication. Once upon a time long long ago, the primary method of communication was the letter. This method took days to occur. Later, it was the telephone. Immediate communication, but costly if the individuals did not live in reasonable proximity to each other. This method was in use for a long time and shared the communication world with the letter. Not so long ago, computers ushered in e-mail. It had many of the benefits of the letter, (thinking out what you said before you said it), and it had a much favorable turn around time provided the recipient checked his mail frequently. More recently IM, instant message, has become popular and it has the immediacy of the phone provided both individuals are logged in at the same time.

My parents have managed to adapt to the newer forms of communication and enjoy the benefits that e-mail and IM provide. The next step for them is "The Blog". I believe that much of what my parents send via e-mail to a small group of friends could also be done via the blog. The benefit with the blog will be:
  1. Photos can be a part of the blog
  2. Friends will be able to go back to previous entries and see the larger picture and perhaps catch up on what has been happening
  3. Friends will be able to provide feedback to different parts of the blog
  4. You can edit it later if you notice you've messed up
I don't see this as replacing their e-mail, but supplementing it and allowing for more content to be shared.

At this time, I am intentionally not completing my profile information due to the fact that my intended audience is friends and family who already know me.

I can direct family and friends to my blog by having them point their browser to HaroldRodgers.blogspot.com which is the name I gave my blog address when I created it.

To add additional posts, all that needs to be done is to "sign in" with the login and password that I created my account with.

For some reason, the Post time and date seemed to default to a time zone that I'm not in. Therefore, I had to click on the "Post Options" when working on my post to give it the correct time.

I couldn't recommend that they get into blogging without my testing the waters. So, here it is, my first blog post on Blogger. Come on in, the water's fine. We'll learn to swim together.