Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Grab Bag

El Jefe has been up to his ample posterior in work of late, and distracted anyway, and just generally hasn't felt like posting.
Okay it's a lame excuse. But as every fourth grader understands, better a bad excuse than none at all. A bad excuse, if nothing else, allows a little extra time to find somebody else to blame. . .In any case, I'm sure the present posting funk will pass. God knows, I'm not short of opinions.
I see that the Dow Jones is up like a rocket today, apparently because Citigroup actually reported a profit for the first of this year, and because Barney Frank thinks the SEC will re-impose the "uptick" rule against short-selling. But that hasn't happened yet. Wonder if the shorters will appear today, before closing time maybe? No matter: the markets appear to be fundamentally irrational at the moment, on the floor or the ceiling as the mood suits.
Oh bag that. For today anyway. Not for nothing is economics called the dismal science. El Jefe has been busy with other things -- playing with Facebook, and his impending birthday.
My dear friend T had SWMBO, the Heir and I to dinner last Friday evening. T is a good cook, and among other things, she had a super-wonderful chocolate cake and all kinds of other yummy food. All this food was exceptionally good for reasons not limited to taste -- we started on Cosmos at six-o'clock, and moved on to red wine at dinner, and wound up (sometime in the wee small hours) drinking champagne. As if that were not enough, T, knowing one of my many failings, gave me some uber cool books. Fortunately, T lives not far from the palatial residence of El Jefe, who, despite drink taken, managed to be-bop back to the Palace without any untoward incidents. Thanks to the food, and scads of water, even though I was pretty trashed, I was in good shape the next morning, although I didn't deserve to be.
This was a good thing, because on Saturday, El Jefe and family entertained the Great One's friend L, her hubby, and their two-year old son. SWMBO was such a really good sport, and, even though she had a really long week, she cooked all day, making super yummy steak pitas (very elaborate recipe) with Greek salad, interesting sauces for chips and the pita sandwiches, and key-lime pie (one of my fav things). L and family came all the way into town to see us, and it was lots of fun to have them around for the evening. Our guests also played to another El Jefe weakness -- bringing him a bottle of very good scotch.
On a less happy note: my home computer appears to have died. I've lost some pictures, a bunch of documents (most are backed up, but not all) and the whole business is just generally a mess. I can afford to replace the computer, but I don't want Vista, or the new post 2007 Microsoft Office.
In any case, I'm trying to figure out what to do. Any ideas? Is a second-hand machine practical? Available? Totally turned off by Vista -- but more especially by the re-design of Word. Probably too old a bunny to go to Apple, but I'm thinking about it because of the mad I've got on towards Microsoft. SWMBO's machine has the new version of Word, and every time I fool with it, the thing makes me mad enough to spit. Probably, I will have to give up and accept change at some point. . .but not quite yet.

6 comments:

The Kitchen said...

It was a pleasure and a treat to cook for you, EL Jefe!! You rock!

Anonymous said...

I'm with you on the new design of Word. I HATE it! If they keep "improving" things, none of us are ever going to be able to work anything! My daughter and I spent the better part of two hours last night just trying to do an outline for her research paper in the teacher's format, which appears nowhere on the standard Word formats. Very frustrating! Vista works fine. Just takes some getting used to.

Anonymous said...

All that's wrong with your computer might just be a power supply, or some other replaceable component. There's a good chance the data can be retrieved off the hard drive. Don't do anything drastic with it. Have a good computer nerd check it out. If I was in HOU I'd gladly do it for you. CVN76 - KH

Anonymous said...

Also, point of clarification ... C did not report a profit. Leaked memo stating that revenues were strong and yet no mention of write down liabilities. FAIL (not you ... C)
CVN76 - KH

hank_F_M said...

Poor microsoft, they used to make a good operating system.

Be sure you post what you find out, my computer is slowly dying.

I think if you ask enough you can get one with XP or buy the computer sans operating sustem and a separate XP license. Microsoft may let you use your old XP license since your computer is dead, you have to ask and be persistant.

Candidly Caroline said...

I thought your dog had eaten your posts? ;)
Everyone always tells me to go mac.