We Are All Connected

We are young and old, energetic and tired, happy and sad.
And we are all connected.

We are aunts and uncles, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters.
And we are all connected.

We are married and divorced, newlyweds and old married couples, together and estranged.
And we are all connected.

We are friends and neighbors, management and workers, partners and associates.
And we are all connected.

We are competitors, opponents, and members of a team.
And we are all connected.

And when we die...

We are all alone.


My grand-nephew, Danny, was 20 years old. A tall, bushy haired, lanky kid who loved to play golf, drive around in his truck, work and play like any of us did when we were that age. He was just starting out as an adult, finding a place for himself in Tennessee with a new job and friends.

And early that Sunday morning, he lost control of his truck, just for a second, enough to go off the pavement and then back on, too quickly, the truck rolled over and hit a tree, and now Danny is all alone.

And his family mourns him.

Where I Live

This is the state of Florida. As you can see, it strongly resembles a large, flaccid... wait a minute, this is a "family" friendly blog. The big hole in the lower half is called "Lake Okeechobee". The lake's name was taken from two Hitchiti Indian words "Oka" for water and "Chobi" for big or large. Not exactly colorful, though it is descriptive. It is a very shallow lake considering its size, averaging only 9 feet. It is the source of water for all the farming to the south, east, and west of it.

If you find the northernmost point of the lake and look northwest, you will see another somewhat smaller lake. This is Lake Istokpoga, another large shallow lake (this one averages 4-6 feet and only 9-10 foot at the deepest). "Istokpoga" is Seminole for "our people died there", a more colorful name. Both it and Lake Okeechobee are fishing destinations for people from all over. Since I don't fish, that means little to me. People around here look at me oddly when I reveal that.

Continue in that WNW direction from the north tip of that lake and you can see a small red dot. Ok, you will have to click on the Florida picture to see a large enough image before you will find it.

That, my friends, is where I live. An odd fact: It is the farthest inland from any ocean I have ever lived. All my life, I have lived within 30 miles of the ocean (either Atlantic or Pacific) except for an 11 month stay in Orlando when I was just within 50 miles "as the crow flies." Sebring is at least 65 miles from any salt water. Measuring by that same weird crow travel method.


The lake you see in the picture above is called Lake Jackson. It is considered two lakes; Lake Jackson and Little Lake Jackson. Little Lake Jackson is actually a small cove attached to Lake Jackson on the south. They are separated by US Highway 27, a once major artery to the north. I live just to the southwest of Little Lake Jackson. Behind a golf course.

Golf is one of the more important recreational activities in Sebring and surrounding communities. We have a lot of golf courses and that is one of the main reasons I chose the area to retire in. Fishing is probably the most important activity here, though (which is why I get those odd looks I mentioned). As I wrote once before, it is mostly a retirement area. People come here to escape the harsher winters of the northern states and Canada each winter and an awful lot of them eventually come to live here year round. Not all of them, mind you, because it is hot and muggy in the summer.

The Neocounter over on the right gives me some idea where my readers live but I know it is less than precise since it (and others like it) show me originating from places nearby and, sometimes, not so nearby. So I would like to know... if you don't mind... Where do you live?

[920/921]

"Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies"

"Lie to me" or when we ask for the truth, do we really mean "tell me the 'truth' I want to hear at the moment"?

I just finished reading an opinion piece on Marketwatch.com by Paul Farrell. I normally do not agree with this writer. However, in this instance I am definitely in his camp. People do want to be lied to. Maybe more so in bad times than in good. The opinion piece is fairly long (he's wordier than even me) so budget 5 minutes to read and digest it if my synopsis below isn't enough for you.

Basically, what he is saying (as I see it) is that people know they are being lied to, accept the lies at one level, reward the liars, and then complain that the lies aren't true. Let me quote a specific part of the article:

In early 2009 BusinessWeek and Kiplinger's reported on lies fed to us last year as the meltdown spread: Bernanke, "I don't anticipate any serious [failures] among large internationally active banks." ... Barney Frank, "Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are fundamentally sound" ... Madoff, "In today's regulatory environment it's virtually impossible to violate the rules" ... Barron's, "Home prices about to bottom" ... Ken Fisher, "This year will end in the plus column ... so keep buying." ... Worth, "Emerging markets are the global investors' safe haven." ... Cramer, "Bye-bye bear market, say hello to the bull." ... and in late 2008 even Kiplinger's said, "Stock investors should 'beat the rush to the banks."

Bad calls? Grow up. Stop the "political correctness" whining. They're "lies." And we're all trapped in this new disease we're calling the "lie-to-me" syndrome, a cultural malaise.

I would take exception here because there is only one provable lie in the above and that would be Bernie Madoff's. The others could easily be hyperbole, wishful thinking, poor judgment, etc. However, those are equally dangerous because we want to believe "experts" who tell us things aren't as bad as they appear and that things are about to (or have started to) turn for the better. It's why I stopped giving credence to brokers and, especially, the business experts on TV.

I have even taken to doing the opposite of what they advise in many cases. When they recommend moving into Bonds, I take a closer look at investing in them. When they say certain companies or sectors are poised for recovery, I steer clear of them. To a great extent, either through luck or cleverness, this has panned out for me. I suspect it's the former but I am willing to take that... so long as it holds out.

By the way, things are getting better... Trust me.

[917/918]

What's in a Name?

There was a woman I came across on the internet some years ago who had a pet peeve. She didn't like that people from the United States of America were referred to as, well, Americans. She seemed to think it was arrogant and that it somehow insulted other people who live on the two continents. I thought she was being silly. I still do.

I recently had occasion to recall my conversations with her about the subject during an exchane with Argentum of Nether Regions of Earth (I and II) on his Tomas Arcanum blog (see the blog roll on the right side of this blog). It seems it bothered him a bit also. I cannot understand why. What difference does it make what someone identifies himself as?

In any case, it does seem to bother a number of people that we, US citizens, call ourselves "Americans" and I thought it might be interesting to explore the subject.

I don't believe we were the first to think of ourselves as "Americans". We thought of ourselves as members of whatever colony we lived in; Virginian, Georgian, Carolinian, etc. Or we identified by region; New Englander, for example. We might even reduce our identity to city; Bostonian, New Yorker, Philadelphian. It was likely those in England who started calling us "Americans" after we freed ourselves from King George. And then the French likely did also. Much later, during World War I, we were known as "Yanks". An affectation that was not exactly affectionate most of the time. That nickname sprang from a song popular during the American Revolution.



Yankee Doodle went to town
riding on a pony.
Stuck a feather in his hat
and called it "macaroni."

Yankee Doodle went to town,
Yankee Doodle dandy.
yadda, yadda, yadda.

Well, that's how it is sung today. There were some different lyrics back in the mid 1700s. Some of them weren't all that nice since they were made up by the British.

In any event, that song was probably where the term "Yankee" came from and it normally referred to a person from the northeastern colonies (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, etc).

I suppose it became a common name for those of us living south of Canada and north and east of the Spanish and French colonies because there was no other commonality available. We were a mix of various European ethnic groups so we had no common country beyond England. Most of our industry and commerce came out of New England so the nickname seemed appropriate, I suppose.

Now, as we moved out into the world, across the seas, people might have asked where we were from. We'd likely have said "the Americas" and it would be easy for those folks to see us as "Americans" because of that. Not so in South America, I suppose, but they call us "Norte Americanos" (North Americans) anyway. Or "Yanquis" (Yankees). It's odd to me that Mexicans often call us the former since they are also in North America. In fact, anyone living north of the Isthmus of Panama would be in North America. Contrary to popular belief, there is no Central America. That is a region. To be honest, there is no separate North America or South America. It is one large continent separated by a man made canal.

I really think anyone complaining about our usurping the name "Americans" is making much a do about nothing. If anyone not a citizen of the US but living on this continent wishes to call himself "American", I have no problem with it. He might confuse some people who have accepted the term as meaning citizens of the US but that would be his (and their) problem.

After all, what should we call ourselves? "United Statesians?" How about "USians?" Nah, the latter would sound too much like "Russians".

We are routinely called a lot of names and "American" no longer has a favorable connotation, if it ever did. Why worry about such things anyway? As long as I don't call you something you don't want to be called, what do you care what I call myself?


[913/914]

More Adventures With Tech Support

I like my computer. Really. It's a nice computer even though it has this quirk. It loses icon images for internet shortcuts from the desktop and replaces them with default Internet Explorer icon images. It's annoying. Frustrating. I have managed, however, not to get to the point of throwing the computer through the conveniently placed window to my right. Instead, I did the mature thing. I contacted Microsoft's support and dumped the issue on them.

This is what a normal icon looks like...

This is what the affected icon looks like...

It only took 4 or 5 exchanges to explain the problem to them so that they understood the following:

1. In all cases, it is custom images that are affected (images I applied through "Change Icon" under Properties for the shortcut file).

2. I do not use Internet Explorer for browsing, I use Firefox and it is my default browser.

3. The problem is intermittent and quite random. I have many icons on my desktop, many of them are internet shortcuts, not all of the internet shortcuts have been affected (though most have at one time or another), it is not only internet shortcuts which get affected. I don't think they really get this item but they are close to understanding it.

4. When I view the Properties of the affected icon file, I see the proper image displayed, not the one I see on my desktop.

5. I can reset to the desired image by finding a copy of the original image file (.ICO) and Applying that. I cannot simply Apply the original image file. Therefore, I have two copies of each of my custom .ICO files so I can switch back and forth when the problem occurs.

A few days ago, Shalley (this is the name of the support tech... whom I have begun to suspect is a "bot" of some sort) suggested I rename the Iconcache.db file in my \Users\Local folder and reboot. Then try changing my screen color resolution from 16 bit to 32 bit or vice versa (thus forcing a reset of the screen images). So I did. A strange thing occurred while doing the latter... Here is what I related to him:

"Re-booted and tried the Display Settings changing. And here is where I got the interesting results:

My normal is 32 bit so I changed it to 16 bit. The display prompts for a 15 second delay then reverts. I noticed no changes and allowed it to revert. Then I tried again. This time, I got a change (two or three icons -I am not sure- changed to default IE types). I accepted the change. Then went back in and reset it to 32 bit. The affected icons reverted to what I had set them to. I did this a couple of times and the results were the same; Go to 16 bit resolution and lose a few icon images, go back to 32 bit and the icon images return."

Is it fixed? Will the problem return? Why is the 16 bit color setting still broke?

Why am I pulling my hair out?

[909/910]