So-called Apple tax the latest ploy by Microsoft but it won't work

I read an article on ZDnet today by Ed Bott discussing the latest Redmond ploy to criticize Apple by calling the higher price of Apple machines the "apple tax".

Bott details his experience using a MacBook for a couple of weeks and then delves into the cost of hardware and software for the Mac compared to a typical Windows machine.

I made the switch from Windows to an iMac last year. I am not the typical power user, just an ordinary end user. I switched because I went through two long-labored processes of removing viruses that my anti-virus software didn't prevent. I spent about 5 weeks posting what was going on with my pc (made by Dell incidentally) to a virus help website, getting instructions, following them and then posting the results and going through subsequent instructions, step by step until I got rid of the virus.

It would have been bad enough on its own but it was the second time I had gone through the process. The first time I got a virus I was using Norton Anti-virus software that was updated daily. The second time I was using Trend Micro's PC-cillin that was updated daily.

I am an average user. I have never visited a porn site and have been around long enough not to click on any link without trusting the purveyor of the link implicitly.

Add to that experience the fact that I used a friends laptop in the interim that had Windows Vista and I made the switch to the iMac. I know the TV commercials show some ostensibly clueless people using the Vista software and saying how much they like it before knowing it's really Windows Vista but I'm not buying it, figuratively or literally.

My experience using Windows Vista reminded me of the experience I had when I had to upgrade my 3.1 Windows to Windows 95. The problems seemed to outweigh any neglible improvements.

I bought the iMac thinking I could get Windows and run it on my iMac for programs I missed or needed. As it turned out, I never loaded Windows on my iMac. I found out I didn't need to. The only program I would like to use that is Windows based is my Family Tree software and I didn't see the point in getting Windows for one program. Instead I put the program on my husband's PC. I only use it once in a while anyway.

At this point, it would take a lot to get me to go back to using a Windows machine. For me, it's worth the extra cost to have a reliable operating system that doesn't freeze and isn't nearly so susceptible to viruses.

It took me about a month to truly get used to using an iMac after 20 years of using MS DOS and then MS Windows OS software.

I am not one of those people who feels any particular loyalty to some giant nameless corporation or the CEO of such a corporation (read Gates vs Jobs here). I buy what I think is best for me and at this point, the Mac is best for me, not because I think it's cool and not because I for some arcane reason dislike Bill Gates. I like the iMac because I never have any trouble with it. You wouldn't believe the cartwheels and backbends it took to get the Gateway PC sitting next to my iMac to run wirelessly. And yes, I called the Linksys help desk. What a joke. The four or five phone calls I made to them were a waste of time and I finally figured out how to get the wireless card working through dumb luck and trial and error.

But getting back to my point, the iMac is easy to use. And like I said earlier, I am not a power user, I'm your average computer user. I shop online. I email. I play Boggle online. I check Facebook. I research information online for my blog.

My husband and I own our own small business (used book store) that is online. Slowly but surely all of the business stuff that we do on a computer is shifting to my iMac because everything we do is easier on the iMac. And that is surprising because we always had the impression that the Mac was supposed to be for hip artsy types while the PC is for working class slobs like us.

We have found that it's easier to print out a Delivery Confirmation label on my iMac. It's a whole lot faster and we can modify what is being printed because the label is on the local machine as opposed to being on the post office website (the only way to do it on a PC).

What I'm beginning to notice is that every program for the PC that we use for business that is made by Microsoft is huge, unwieldly, cumbersome and is probably perfect for huge corporations but much more than what we need for a used book business.

The only thing left on my husband's PC at this point is the credit card processing software (that we have been told is being discontinued) and a text in tabs file in Microsoft Excel that contains our inventory data. Since my iMac can reproduce the text in tabs inventory file we have on Excel, after the credit card software is obsolete, I can see no reason to have a PC for our small business.

Ed Bott wrote about the cost of upgrading the RAM. The thing to do is what I've been doing for years with my Windows machines - upgrade the Ram yourself. It's easy to do. And a whole lot cheaper.

Interestingly, I've noticed that my iMac runs a whole lot faster with 2g of ram than my husband's PC does with 4g of ram. To be fair, his machine is older than mine by a year.

The number one reason the Apple iMac is worth paying more for than a Windows machine is reliability. For me, it was worth the extra cost. The article referred to at the beginning of this column doesn't take into account the costs associated with downtime, virus software, and the ensuing panic attacks. I will stick with Mac to avoid those costs.

Madoff mails $ millions to friends and family

Madoff's bail should be revoked and he should stay behind bars. Republicans don't want more regulations for SEC even though Madoff swindled investors to the tune of $50 billion.

read more | digg story

Mitch McConnell could be a shape shifter

Has anybody else noticed that Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky has no smile wrinkles? He could have played the part of Odo on Deep Space 9 without any makeup.

I'm beginning to think he is an alien sent here to investigate the human species on our planet.

All joking aside, McConnell could be said to be the ranking Republican in the Senate. Yesterday, when President-elect Barack Obama talked about some of the details of his stimulus plan, McConnell posited that he (McConnell) and other Republicans had pressured Barack Obama and that as a result, part of Obama's economic stimulus package contained tax cuts for the middle class. Excuse me, shapeshifter McConnell, but this is the plan that Obama touted all during his campaign in the last two years. But if it makes you feel better to think that you have had something to do with the attempts to raise our nation's economy out of the quagmire that you and your fellow Republicans have sunk us into, go ahead and think it. But for God's sake, don't say it out loud. We, well, those of us who have been paying attention, are well aware that Obama has had the middle class tax cut in his economic plans for about two years now.

McConnell is taking credit for Obama's economic stimulus plan but when asked about the election counts showing that Al Franken would be the new senator from Minnesota, McConnell was quick to return to his usual persona of Senator "NO" saying that Franken will not be senator until he is certified.



If McConnell is the ranking Republican, we Democrats are in good shape. Between McConnell and Chip Saltsman, famous now for sending RNC members a CD with offensive Christmas songs like, "Barack the Magic Negro" for Christmas presents, the Republicans are imploding.

California may be the next Alabama

I've been reading about the voters in California voting in favor of Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in the state.

The feelings this news evokes in me are paradoxical. On the one hand, I'm outraged that voters in California want to take rights away from gay people. I live way across the country in Alabama, one of the reddest states in the country, the state in which the fewest number of white people voted for Barack Obama. I was one of those 10% and am proud of it but I am used to being in the minority (a liberal in Alabama).

But I am also the mother of a 21 year old gay man. My best hope for him is that he will find someone to love who will love him back, so that they can cherish each other and share their lives as my husband and I have done, by getting married. And in my day dreams about this parents' dream, I always saw my son moving to California so he could do just that.

Alas, now that California has voted to abandon some of its best citizens, by voting for proposition 8, my dream has faded into outrage. Who are these people who think they deserve more rights than other people?

And now for the paradox. The only good thing about California's faux pas on this issue is the fact that for once some other state besides Alabama or Mississippi is in the media's attention for being bigoted and provincial. Thanks for that, California, but I liked you better when you were the liberal hippie state of my dreams.

Yes, we did!

I was glued to the television Tuesday night. My husband was too nervous to watch and went to his computer and played Scramble on Facebook. My 21 year old son sat with me in the den. While I constantly changed the channels between BBC America, MSNBC and CNN, Ryan had his macbook open and was cruising the New York Times, CNN, Facebook and other sites. We were elated but extremely nervous. When I saw Kentucky had voted for McCain I was upset. Silly, I know but I was afraid that we were about to watch a repeat of 2000 and or 2004. As the night went on however, I realized Kentucky wasn't going to decide the election.

We also started flipping back and forth to Comedy Central so we could watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert covering the election live.

It was an electrifying night. My two cats knew something was amiss and they were on the alert just as we were. They sauntered between the kitchen and the den, presumably thinking with all the excitement that we would surely soon give them treats. After all, the kind of excitement their humans were feeling is usually reserved for Thanksgiving or Christmas and they always get to eat turkey on those days.

The relief in the room was palpable when Pennsylvania was declared for Obama. We discovered that Ohio had gone for Obama while on the BBC network. They were a few minutes ahead of MSNBC which we then changed to.

First we got to hear Jon Stewart say the magic words.

Ryan sat up very tall on the sofa and I saw his face turn red. He turned his beautiful little macbook towards me where Safari revealed the BBC website showing California and the rest of the west coming in and we watched as the number of electoral votes started rising exponentially. Then I heard Keith Olbermann say, "Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States."

I wept. I screamed. Ryan wept too and Jim finally quit pacing and joined us. We were laughing and crying at the same time. When MSNBC switched to the crowd at Grant Park in Chicago, we knew, along with the crowd, that we had changed the world for the better.

Yes, we did!

Vice Presidential Debate

I've been looking forward to the vice-presidential debate for weeks now. I confess that I was more interested in this debate than the presidential debates.

I was very disappointed. First, I was disappointed with Governor Palin. She didn't answer a single question posed to her. Secondly, I was disappointed with Gwen Ifill as moderator because she didn't seem to notice that Palin didn't answer any questions.

Tonight's debate wasn't really a debate. What I saw was Joe Biden answering the questions Ifill asked of him and Sarah Palin nattering on and on in a sadly obvious attempt to seem like someone who would be married to Joe Six-Pack and how she and McCain are mavericks. What is Joe Six-Pack? Is she talking about the guy who drinks a six pack of beer every night? Why is she reaching out to Joe Six-Pack? Is Joe Six-Pack supposed to represent the average American? She says she's a maverick, shouldn't she be reaching out to mavericks? I'm confused. Maybe Katie Couric should ask Palin who Joe Six-Pack is and if he's a maverick too.

Governor Palin's way of talking grates on my nerves. She seems to add random words to overly long rambling sentences in what seems like an attempt to sound homey, or Joe Six-Packy. The way she speaks reminds me of the way the Pillsbury doughboy or Aunt Jemimah speaks. Maybe she should be doing commercials. She could probably sell insurance if this job doesn't work out.

For me the best thing that came out of the vice-presidential debate is that I no longer feel sorry for Sarah Palin. Let me explain. After watching Katie Couric's interviews with Sarah Palin I had found myself feeling sorry for Palin as she was so clearly out of her depth. I had been feeling genuinely angry with John McCain for putting a simple woman through an ordeal she clearly has no business being involved in. Palin showed tonight, however, that she can memorize a script as well as any soap opera actress. And more importantly she showed that she can dodge a question as well as any of the Washington insiders she seems to hold in such contempt. So I no longer feel sorry for her. I realize she will survive all this and she can always do commercials instead.

Amazon Buys ABE: Antiquarian Books Sellers Beware

We just had official word today that Amazon has bought ABE or American Book Exchange. ABE's CEO sent us an email today telling us that Amazon has acquired ABE. President and CEO Hannes Blum assures ABE sellers that Amazon is dedicated to maintaining ABE as a "stand-alone business" and that all things will remain the same for ABE sellers and buyers.

Don't believe it for a minute. The last time Amazon bought out one of the major venues for selling out of print, rare, antiquarian, and used books, they gave the same speech. They said they would maintain Bibliofind.com as a separate stand-alone business and that nothing would change. We believed it then. Maybe it was because it was the 90s and we were giddy with the potential of the internet.

The first thing Amazon did was incorporate Bibliofind.com into the Amazon website. It then came up with Amazon Z shops and put all the Bibliofind listings in there. We sold a lot of books through Z shops the first year it was open. But then Amazon decided to open "Marketplace". Anyone with an Amazon account could now list any book with an ISBN there simply by putting in the ISBN for the book in a drop down box from a link on the Amazon home page. This way everybody who read a John Grisham novel and wanted to sell it could then sell it on Amazon as a used book. Soon there were so many individuals selling a few of their previously read books on Amazon that Amazon buried Z shops where all the fine and rare books were listed.

Remember Z shops? That is where the professional used books sellers who had listed their books on Bibliofind had listed their fine and rare books. Z shops disappeared. First Amazon took Z Shops off of its home page. It became more difficult to find rare and antique books. Then Z shops disappeared altogether. Most of the books in Z shops (originally Bibliofind) were rare books, first editions, antique books that were published before an international book numbering system was incorporated in the last quarter of the 20th century and so had no ISBN.

Z shops disappeared and so did the rare and antiquarian books including rare editions of books because Amazon's marketplace didn't (and still doesn't) differentiate between a first edition of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and a ratty torn up underlined paperback edition that is three years old. If you are really determined, you can put in some work to find one of these rare or first edition books but then there is no description. Book collectors want to know details. Amazon is not about the details. It's about the numbers.

Amazon's decision to have a Marketplace where anyone can sell any books has been great for the millions of people who decided to resell their Nicholas Sparks books. And it has worked out great for the thousands who wanted to buy them for a dollar or two on Amazon and didn't care what condition the book was in or what edition it was.

Amazon decided they were making more money or could make more money from the people who were reselling their Jan Karon books than actual professional booksellers so they started encouraging anyone who sold a book on Amazon to price it lower than anyone else. As a result, you can now buy books for a penny on Amazon (minus shipping of course).

Strangely enough, Amazon's marketplace venue spawned a whole new breed of book sellers. These are the people who come to used book sales armed with ISBN scanners who scan a number from a book directly in to Amazon's website to see whether or not it worth buying to resell on Amazon. These aggressive and irritating scavengers don't know anything about books. They don't love books and they don't care about books. They are Amazon people and like Amazon, all they care about are the numbers.

Amazon is all about the numbers; it cares about the masses of people who buy and sell a few books a year, books that have been assigned numbers (ISBNs). If you are a professional used, out of print and antiquarian books seller, the chances of someone buying your rare first edition "Carrie" on Amazon is very slim. Any collector wanting the rare first edition will want full details about the book and Amazon doesn't allow that. The book has an ISBN but it's the same number assigned to all editions of the book published since the original first limited run. As the bottom-feeders with scanners can tell you, Amazon promotes the lowest prices on its website.

For those of us who consider ourselves professional antiquarian books sellers, it is time to mourn ABE. If we are to learn from history then we should know that ABE is going to go the way that Bibliofind did. Amazon would be quick to point out that if you go to Bibliofind's website, you will see that it is indeed maintained by Amazon. But just try finding a rare book there. Put in a search for "To Kill a Mockingbird" published before 1970. There aren't any. And as any bookseller worth his salt knows, there are thousands of book club editions of the title to be found any day of the week. So technically, Amazon can still say they maintain the Bibliofind website but it's a farce.

Now we must look to Alibris, and Biblio.com (not to be confused with Amazon's closet skeleton, Bibliofind. ABE is surely going to drown in Amazon's ocean of marketplace items as Amazon slowly creeps closer to becoming the global flea market. And like flea markets, the old and rare and unusual stuff is fast being replaced by rows of socks, cheap knock-offs, poorly constructed imported furniture and horrible smelling incense. I salute you ABE and may you rest in peace.

GOP vs. DNC

Today I was asked by the AARP to send a note to both parties about health care insurance plans. Yes, I'm now old enough to be on the AARP's list.

I decided to go to both the GOP and DNC websites to see how easy it would be to contact the parties there in order to send each a personal note about my thoughts about health insurance instead of some mass campaign that's easier for them to ignore.

I went to the GOP website first, looking for a "contact" link. But that's not what I'm writing about. And here is why.

On the GOP site homepage, all I found were links to articles written about Obama and various smear campaigns about Obama and anyone he is connected with. I couldn't find a single bit of information on the Republican home page about their candidate for president.

Who is running for President on the Republican ticket? Honestly, if you didn't know and went there to find out, you still wouldn't know. You would know all about Obama though.

Like the years when Bush smeared John McCain, the Republicans are still very good at deflecting any attention to their lackluster below par candidate by their usual smear tactics against the opponent.

Remember how America used to abhor propaganda? Well the Cold War is over and apparently the Republicans have figured that propaganda wins them votes. I was very disappointed.

Even though information on McCain wasn't what I initially went to the website for, I was interested in what his thoughts were on several issues and wanted to check for myself instead of relying on word of mouth. But I couldn't find any information about John McCain on the GOP home page.

I did find a link to write to the GOP at the bottom of the page and wrote to them voicing my concerns. I got an impersonal canned reply instantly.

Then I went to the DNC website thinking that maybe they would have their whole website devoted to McCain the way the GOP has theirs devoted to Barack Obama. I was wrong. The DNC website is all about guess what? Barack Obama. Hmm. I was able to find out what he believes in and stands for on the issues that concern me.

I wrote to the DNC outlining my health care concerns. I haven't gotten a reply yet. I fully expect it, like the one from the GOP will be a canned message but I understand that both parties are busy.

After visiting both websites I spent some time thinking about the differences between the two. It really surprised me that the whole GOP (Republican) presidential campaign is based on smearing the opponent rather than talking about their candidate. I am basically an independent voter. The first year I was old enough to vote for president was 1980. I voted for John Anderson. Now if that made you laugh then you are at least as old as me and remember he was the independent running that year.

I voted Republican a couple of times over the years when I thought they had the best candidate for governor, president or whatever. I am not narrow minded. But today's Republican party is certainly not the one I grew up with. I find myself feeling that no matter who ran on their ticket today, I would have to vote for the opposition even if they were able to resurrect Abraham Lincoln. But of course if Lincoln were alive today, he wouldn't be a Republican, would he? If he had run against GW Bush, I'm quite sure Bush would have won.

My impressions from looking at both of the major party websites is that the Republicans are like the overgrown 6th graders on the playground who by sheer size and meanness do whatever they want to do and get away with it because everybody else is afraid of them. On the other hand, the Democrats appear reasonable and thoughtful about the issues and though they don't meet all of my concerns, they will at least talk about them and perhaps more importantly, they won't beat me up if I don't agree with them.

Germany, Bush, Neanderthal and Marx

I read an article on ZDnet today. The article reported that the Germans had been depicting Bush in editorial cartoons as a chimpanzee but just today, German officials had referred to Bush as a Neanderthal because of his lack of ehrm, well, judgement on environmental issues that face the entire globe.

The author remarked that he thought Neanderthal was further advanced than Chimpanzees.

I thought I would put my degree in anthropology to use for once and answer his question for him. So I went to the "Talk Back" portion of his article to reply and before replying started reading some of the things people had posted there.

I confess that I got completely caught up in answering the ignorantsia who had posted there. By the way, I just made up the word, 'ignorantsia' to combat the anti-intelligence, anti-science, anti-environment, etc., masses who call anyone that is smarter than them the intelligentsia. Please feel free to use it and pass it on.

I should know better than to get into online arguments with the ignorantsia but I couldn't help myself. One guy was equating Marxism and socialism with the issue of global warming. How could I not respond to that? He thinks that the environmentalist movement is all some evil plot hatched by anti-capitalists, anti-American Marxist types. Huh?

Another guy in California was posting six year old like arguments, basically if someone didn't agree with him, his answer was, "if you hate America so much why don't you leave?"

I wasted at least an entire hour posting replies. At first I attempted to use reason to make these crazy paranoid people realize that not everybody is out to get them. It didn't help that one of the people I agreed with was a British citizen with an inelegant fondness for the term, "fat-sucking Americans".

One reasonable and compassionate person was getting bombarded with hate replies because he used Al Gore in one of his posts. It makes me sick that the neo-conservative machine has somehow managed to make a Nobel prize winning American into a goon.

But back to the original content of the article. Apparently the Germans have regularly been depicting Bush in their cartoons as a chimpanzee like character. But after the frustrations of his unbending unrelenting policies or lack of policies on the enviroment, one German official was said to have referred to our little Texas president as a Neanderthal.

Now I take issue with that. Homo sapien neanderthalis was not the brute that science museums of the 60's created. HSN (or Neanderthal) was thoughtful, intelligent and this has been proven. HSN buried his dead. HSN took care of the elderly and the sick. Unfortunately by referring to Bush as a neanderthal, the Germans have once again relegated the hard working, caring HSN to uncaring brute and I for one, am mad about THAT.

Windows Vista made me switch to Mac

Actually that title is not wholly true because it was more than just Windows Vista that prompted the switch. There was also the troublesome fact that I spent about two months trying to remove a mutated virus that had invaded my Windows XP operating system despite my daily updated virus removal program. I was using Tred Microcillin's Internet Security program. When I got the virus, I had to go to a volunteer driven website that you post your problem to and when someone has time to answer (and they ARE volunteers after all), they would ask you to do something and post back your results. I went through this for two months and finally was able to remove the virus but my computer was never the same.

There were actually three factors involved in my decision to get the iMac. Number one reason: VIRUSES, number two reason: Windows VISTA, number three reason: my old hard drive was getting full and it was time to buy a new computer.

I don't regret the switch at all. I bought the iMac in February while I was out in Seattle visiting my sister who is a Mac Genius at a local Apple store. I was able to get the family discount which helped.

It has taken me a short while to get used to things but so far I love my Mac and can't imagine going back. My husband is using my old computer because his Windows XP machine's hard drive failed. Another sign that it's time to move on from Windows.

I've been using IBM compatibles since the early 1980s.

The only thing I miss about my Windows machine is a little program called Irfanview. But I've learned to live without it and have found a lot of great features about the Mac that I had no idea existed.

There is this cool workflow automator program that allows you to record frequently used actions so you can automate them. Okay, I admit, I haven't gotten this down to an exact science yet but I'm working on it. It's a lot of fun.

I am still of the same opinion I was earlier, that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have nothing to do with me and I could care less about who they are, their history, who did what, etc. In fact, I find the legendary Steve Jobs followers who hang on his every word with something akin to cult followers, well, just plain creepy. It's the only thing I don't like about having become a Mac owner. And I just try to distance myself from it. I bought this iMac because I felt it would better serve my needs as a computer owner and that is the only reason.

Is it finally time to switch to an Apple Mac ? YES

Nothing has more neatly divided the five siblings that make up my family than the old Mac/Mike debate (Mike being short for Microsoft). Over the years the political lines have been drawn, erased and redrawn, along with other issues that cause debate. But the division between those of us who own Mikes and those of us who own and swear by Macs has always been clear and unchanging.

The two oldest siblings, perhaps wiser, have been Mac owners and have, to ad nauseum degree, reminded the rest of us at every family gathering of the Mac's (and implicitly their own) superiority. I learned to tune them both out years ago when it came to the Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates history because, no matter how often I explained how little I cared about either man, I was regaled with the same old story of how poor Steve Jobs had been taken advantage of by Bill Gates way back when. Whatever. I didn't care.

My reasons for owning machines that operated Microsoft Windows had nothing to do with misguided loyalty to some huge corporation who could of course, care no less about me than they already do. For my purposes (let's be honest here...my purposes = inexpensive + capable of surfing the web and word processing), Mike machines comfortably fit my needs. Okay, I suppose we could assign the word cheap to this story somewhere.

And then as my children became teenagers, it actually almost became important to own the Mike version of personal computers available to us today because of gaming needs. What 17 year old wanted a Mac when they could immerse themselves in the World of Warcraft for 12 hours straight on a Toshiba laptop (except for all those times we had to send the Toshiba off to get the power fixed yet again).

For the first time in twenty years, the lines that divide my siblings and I most definitively are about to shift. As I said, I harbour no illusions that loyalty to any product will somehow be in my best interest.

Just recently it has become abundantly clear that my Mikes are more problematic than their cheapness, excuse me, their inexpensiveness warrants. That's right. I'm ready to switch to the Mac. What has finally pushed me over the line?

Microsoft, in their persistent lack of trust in their customers, has gone one step further in trying to weed out the unpaid for copies of their software and as they encourage, nay invasively push customers to constantly update their Microsoft software, ostensibly to keep Mike machines running properly because of the inherent system flaws, most Mike owners feel they should update to avoid the vulnerabilities that plague Mike machines. And so.....this shouldn't be a problem if you own a legitimate copy of Windows, right? WRONG.

My laptop has Windows XP on it that I installed from a properly paid for disk. But recently it was tagged by Microsoft as being an invalid version of Windows. Because of that, I was unable to update my virus software. Because of that my laptop has a virus. Go to Microsoft's website and you will be told that you need to purchase a "real" version of Windows. Ehrm, I have the legitimate copy of Windows XP that I paid for myself in person. I didn't go to the flea market and buy the Korean version. Too bad; according to Microsoft, I am not trustworthy. My laptop has been, for all intents and purposes rendered useless.

My brother (another Mike user) has the same problem with his computer and bless his heart (as we say in the south to soften the blow), he went out and bought a new version of Windows XP and still has the same problem.

So in order for me to keep running Mike machines, I am going to have to bend over backwards to get my legitimate copy of Windows to work. Since I first got a pc with Windows 3.1 on it, I have never loaded any copied Microsoft software on any of my computers. I have paid for Windows through 3.1, 3.11, Win95 (remember the headaches?), Win98, Win2K and finally Windows XP. I won't even go into the headaches of trying to load my office software on new computers, etc. That's another story. But suffice it to say that I am now officially fed up with Windows by Microsoft.

I can't help but wonder if this latest assault on Microsoft customers by Microsoft is an effort to get people to go ahead and move to Windows Vista. If so, I can only hope that I'm not the only one who has decided to say no.

When Apple asks me who they can thank for sending me, a new customer, to them to buy my new computer, I will be happy to tell them they can thank Microsoft.

Yellow Jackets at Moss Rock Nature Preserve

Yesterday Jim and I set out to hike our usual mile or so through the woods of the Moss Rock Nature Preserve with our dog Annabelle. Moss Rock is a lovely place and much more interesting than walking on the sidewalk in our neighborhood. Moss Rock Preserve is only a mile or so away from our house.

We were on the blue trail just off the power line when suddenly I was being attacked by a swarm of yellow jackets. I felt just like a scene out of one of those made for TV SciFi channel horror movies. I am not a girly girl but I started screaming nonetheless and Jim came rushing back and so did Annabelle. Jim took his hat off and started beating me with it...actually not beating me, but killing the yellow jackets that were on me. Annabelle got stung a couple of times too.

I had never been stung before so didn't know if I was allergic to them or not and we had to walk about a half mile back to the car or longer and I was hurting but trying not to panic because I had a ways to go before getting back to the car. I ended up with about six stings, two on my hand, three on my arm and one on my leg. As it turns out I am allergic to yellow jackets but not as allergic as some people. I've been up all night long with painful welts, throbbing and a low grade fever.

If this post isn't very literate, I have a good excuse.

Stay or Leave

I'm listening to Dave Matthews' "Some Devil" CD and the song, "Stay or Leave" is making me weep. I've always liked the song but today my sister is leaving the East, heading out to Seattle to live and even though I know the song is about lovers, I feel exactly like that...

My sister Suzanne is five years older than me. We grew up in the 60s and 70s in Nashville and Lexington, KY and later Nashville again. When we were moving to Kentucky from Nashville my friends gave me a surprise going away party (I was 12) and Suzanne took me all over our neighborhood that day to all the places she hung out with her friends. I was bewildered but very happy. She helped me put on makeup and get dressed up without ever hinting I was going to be fete'd by my own 12 year old friends. Funny but I remember very little about the party. What I remember is running around with my big sister.

One time she decided to teach me how to drive. When I ran into a drug store (with the car) it was Suzanne's car and I felt guilty for the next twenty years. It became one of those family stories, you know the kind....the story that seems to get dragged out at every family gathering for all the rest of eternity.

Suzanne was the big sister who did things with me and taught me how to survive the world. Funny, my other big sister who was a year older than Suzanne was the oldest in the family but our relationship is completely different. Suzanne is the one who was my big sister, the one I could tell all my secrets to, the one who could tell me when I was being stupid when nobody else could have.

And now she is leaving. Moving from Cincinnati to Seattle. I feel just like I'm 12 again and this time my sister isn't around to show me how to act. This is a day for weeping and joy because I am weeping for my own selfish reasons but somehow feeling joyous for her and only pray to whatever gods there might be that she will find the fulfillment that has so far eluded her. She is the only person I've ever known who has done all the things you are supposed to do, worked hard at everything and excelled in both art and teaching without being recognized for her accomplishments. Maybe Seattle will be more amenable to an artist than is Cincinnati.

Good luck Suzanne. I already miss you. My heart hurts.

Take me back take me back take me back in time

Dear Santa,

Please bring me a Cello.

Judge Roy Moore believes Alabama Democrats will elect him to governor?

Apparently the state's Republicans have finally decided they shouldn't allow crossover voting in the primary elections. In an Op-ed peice I read in the Birmingham News recently, the Alabama Republican party wants to prohibit crossover voting and is proposing legislation to that effect.

When I moved to Birmingham in 1994, I was surprised to learn that as a Democrat I was allowed to vote in the Republican primary if I wanted to.

Now, leaders of the Alabama Republicans want to change all that. Ousted Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore thinks the proposal for the legislation is aimed at keeping him out of office. It may be, but if it is, they haven't thought this thing through.

Here is where the irony comes in. Roy Moore is worried that without me and my fellow Alabama Democrats, he can't win his bid to become governor of Alabama. He thinks that way because way back in the old days, say ten or fifteen years ago before we crossed into this alternate universe, a Democrat voting in the Republican primary would have voted for the worst possible candidate for governor in an attempt to aid the Democratic candidate. Hah! That was then. This is now. No Democrat in her right mind would vote for Roy Moore in the primary because in this alternate universe we are living in, he might actually get elected.

I'm afraid! There was a time when I would have deemed such a thing impossible. Even after the 2000 presidential election I still believed I was living in the right universe. I just thought it was all a colossal mistake that would be easily remedied in 2004. That was then. This is now.

In the last gubernatorial election, I voted for our former governor, Don Siegelman, a Democrat. The Republican candidate, Bob Riley scared me when he said things like, 'God wanted' him to win.

One of the first things Riley did as governor was try to raise taxes. He pushed for slightly higher taxes to aid Alabama's poor and Alabama's children (ala education). I have to admit that I was amused by the outrage voiced by the Republicans who had elected him but was quite disappointed when the proposal was voted down.

Though Riley is a TheocRepublican I have confidence that he is sincere (unlike the vast majority of Theocrepublicans). He actually shows signs of having a conscience and worries about poor people, even the ones who don't vote. That's unusual.

I'm realistic. I live in Alabama. The chances of us having a Democrat serve as governor anytime in the near future seems infintesimal (sp) and so the days when I might have used the Republican crossover primary voting to try to get my Democratic candidate elected by voting for a buffoon (such as Roy Moore) are long gone. If I vote in the Republican primary this year in Alabama, Bob Riley will get my vote.

If I can only vote in one primary this year, it will be hard for me to decide which one to vote in. Former governor Don Siegelman plans to run in the Democratic primary but I wish he wouldn't. Too many accusations against him have been spun in the last few years and even though so far, all claims of wrong doing have been proven false, the damage is done I think.

Lieutenant Governor, Lucy Baxley, a Democrat, has announced her intention to run for Governor and I think she has a better chance than Don Siegelman does. Yes, she has two things going against her in this alternate universe we are living in; she is a woman and she is a Democrat. But I recently had a conversation with a friend that has given me a glimmer of hope.

I won't name my friend but she comes from a very conservative background. Just to illustrate how conservative, her parents actually believe that Nixon was framed. Yeah, Richard Nixon. My friend is a tenured professor at a local Baptist university and she is not particularly political. She's active and busy with her work and her children. She rarely even mentions politics. It is usually me that introduces political topics into our conversations.

She shocked me recently. I asked her if she knew anybody that she thought would vote for Roy Moore. I was thinking of her conservative parents. She told me she wasn't sure but that she thought she would vote for Lucy Baxley. "The Lucy Baxley?????" I asked her if she knew Baxley is a Democrat and she (my anonymous but wonderful friend) raised her chin in defiance and a stubborness I've come to recognize over the years and replied, "Yes."

And suddenly a small glimmer of hope beckons from the horizon that could be the real universe, you know, the one where we used to live back when it was okay to question the doings of the folks in the White House and not be accused of being a "Communist who hates America, God and our troops overseas"

But here is where the real decision making comes in. If I have to choose between voting in the Republican and Democratic primaries, how will I decide? To choose between Lucy Baxley who I think has a tiny little chance of winning the general election by voting in the Democratic primary and voting against Roy Moore in the Republican primary is going to be exceedingly difficult.

The choice may be made for me if the Alabama Republican party gets their way. I'll have to wait and see.

More Crazy Religious Right Wingers

My mother took in strays. She started doing this when I was still in high school. She believed she could help people. It was her calling. Her degree was in English but that didn't matter.

She believed that if she let someone talk enough and she kept on mothering them, they would be healed. It didn't always work but often it did. The last stray she took in was a disturbed young woman named Dawn. Dawn Jones had been through a terrible divorce and mom took her in to try to save her from herself. The first time mom took Dawn in, she thought she could help her. But the second time she took Dawn in, mom told me she thought Dawn was "disturbed". If someone was "disturbed" in my mother's book, they were pretty well down the road to real craziness but my mother felt she couldn't turn her back on Dawn now.

She took Dawn in and gave her free room and board and the use of her car. Dawn was grateful and helped cook and clean the house a bit. But when mom got sick with pneumonia, so sick that she was literally out of her mind, Dawn was too unwell mentally to recognize my mother needed immediate medical care.

Both of my parents (divorced) had suffered some serious illnesses in the last year or so and I was driving to another state once a month to spend the weekend with one or the other of them. That weekend, I had been seeing about my father and phoned my mother to make sure she was home before driving to the city where she lived. She sounded normal on the phone but a bit out of it. She was after all, getting older.

When I got to her house, I could see she was seriously ill. She couldn't walk to the bathroom by herself. I took her. She was talking out of her head. My brother and I had her hospitalized of course but she never recovered. Apparently mom had been that sick for several days and Dawn hadn't seen the need to tell anyone or take my mother to the hospital. We didn't blame Dawn who was living on the 'kindness of strangers' and not responsible for herself much less my mother.

Mom was diagnosed with MRSA (Methycillin resistent staphylococcus auerelius ) or what is commonly known as staph pnuemonia. She had contracted it at the hospital when she had been in a couple of weeks before for some sort of treatment.

To make a long painful story short, my mother never recovered.

It is two years later and for the last two years I've been getting mass emails from Dawn, my mother's last stray. They aren't frequent but just when I think she's finally forgotten me, I get some crazy ridiculous email forwarded to me from Dawn.

What she sends en masse are the type of emails that most people would call spam. During the 2004 presidential election, she sent me a torid email outlining what horrific torture should be inflicted on all Democrats and or anyone who disagreed with the right wing agenda. I was shocked and asked her not to send me any more emails like that. I told her I was surprised that she would advocate violence that way. She told me I should find Jesus.

I haven't received any mail from Dawn in a while (thank goodness) and thought I had finally gotten taken off of her list of people to send mass emails to but was wrong. Today I received one from her asking me to sign a petition to send to the president to ask him to reinstate the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.

Ask me what's NOT wrong with that petition and I'd be hard put to find anything. I tried to rein in my temper but apparently used no tact when I wrote back to her explaining that the Pledge of Allegiance is still being said in public schools and that the email was a scam that goes around every few years (I've seen it before of course).

I didn't even mention to her that I couldn't possibly care less about the Pledge of Allegiance. I defended my son's right not to say it in the sixth grade when he was learning to question authority. What I did say in the email to Dawn was that as people who have children in public schools know, the Pledge of Allegiance IS still being said and that instead of spreading the ignorance, why didn't she give a donation to St. Jude's Research Hospital to help children with cancer. I then asked her to take me off of her list of people to send mass emails to.

I suppose I could have been more tactful. But I am tired of being tactful with ignorant right wing people. My mother was a liberal but obviously she never talked politics with Dawn.

Or maybe I should have explained to Dawn that after watching my son's dearest sweet friend Caitlin die of cancer at 16, that sending bandwidth eating spams about the stupid Pledge of Allegiance irritate me. Maybe I should have explained that I was tired of chain mail asking me to send soda can ring pulls to the American Cancer Society or chain mails asking me to pray for so and so when the truth is that none of those things ever accomplish anything more than consuming my time and the internet's bandwidth. If you really want to change the world, give money to St. Jude's Hospitals. I guess that is what I should have said but instead I just wrote that : "

This is a scam that goes around every year or so. The pledge is still being said in public schools as anybody with children in public schools knows.
So instead of passing on the ignorance, why don't you give money to St. Judes Hospitals to help support children with cancer and do something constructive?

And Dawn, Please please take me off of your email list. I don't like spam.

Deeply Disturbed Dawn didn't take what I wrote very well. Something in those words just above really chapped her ass because the following is what she wrote to me and forwarded to the hundred or so other people on her mass email list:

You know what? You are a real treat, Karen. I like to call people like you pseudo-intellectuals...folks with no REAL education and certainly no people skills...you just like to feel superior and look down your nose at other folks just because they may not be as "well read" as you are and you have to service your feelings of inferiority. Your mother would be ashamed at your attitude. I remove you from my mailing list with pleasure.

I'm not the only one who thinks of you the way I do.

You have no idea how much you and the rest of your family other than Frank hurt your mother. She was one of the most giving, wonderful people I have ever known and I miss her everyday. How she raised someone like you is beyond me. I stayed with her not because I "needed" a place to stay but because I loved her as my own mother and friend. More than I can say for you.

And just for the record, I am not in the practice of forwarding emails very often and I do send my apologies for that.

Find Jesus. Your mother would have liked that.

Have a good life.

Luckily for me, my mother and I had a very strong and loving relationship or I might have been hurt by what Dawn wrote. I wasn't hurt, I was alarmed that Dawn is so much more disturbed than I had realized.

I just don't understand people who proclaim they are Christians and walking with God and Jesus and yet live a life so far removed from anything purportedly said by Jesus in the bible. Extremism is scary in all its forms, whether it shows up in Christians, Muslims or any of the big religions followers. Give me religious apathy any day.

Is the Ridgeback the Right Dog for You?

[Very informative page for anyone considering getting a Rhodesian Ridgeback.]

Read more at www.geocities.com/~kala...

Gatwick, the other London airport

I thought that flying directly from Atlanta to Gatwick was a fabulous idea. Don't let anyone tell you Gatwick is in London the way Heathrow is in London. Gatwick is out in the middle of nowhere. I didn't discover this until I explained to Linda, my cousin with whom I had reserved a free bed that I would be arriving in London via Gatwick.

I started researching options for traveling from Gatwick to my cousin's house. A cab from Gatwick was way out of my budget. Linda suggested I take the Gatwick Express train to Victoria and then ride the tube or take a cab from Victoria to her house. It started sounding rather complicated but I 'm talented at denial or is that optimism?

In an effort to rationalize why it was good I was flying into Gatwick, I decided Gatwick would be faster to get through than than the sprawling Heathrow. After all it's smaller and out in the suburbs, right? The last time I'd been through Heathrow, it had seemed to take forever and that was before the 9/11 travesty occurred.

Well, Gatwick is smaller and Gatwick is out there. But getting through security checkpoint and customs at Gatwick took over two hours and even though it was October it was a blistering 90 degrees F in the airport.

We foreigners were told to queue up one way and then another airport representative came and had us reshape our queue so I ended up losing my spot. The Gatwick personnel didn't seem to understand the unwritten rules regarding line or queue breakers.

There were hundreds of us and the line wasn't moving for over an hour. They had us queued up in Texas cattle corral formation and when the line finally began moving, I spotted the infamous 60something Atlanta trio and thereafter every 100 feet or so that we we inched along I met them again. We weren't the only people fanning ourselves. It was unbearably hot there. I was ploughing through Gatwick with a huge peice of brand new luggage from Proffits (or was it Macy's?) that was jam packed with as much clothing as I could stuff into it plus my carry-on, my laptop computer and my purse. Being a packrat ensures an automatic talent for getting more things into compartments than other less evolved humans. My point is that I was carrying a huge load. Did I mention I was insane enough to be wearing new shoes and had a sprained ankle?

After paying £14 for a train ticket for the privelege of a ride to Victoria station, I had originally planned to take the tube to my cousin's house but I had been traveling for well over 12 hours and was exhausted and took a cab. The cabbie had trouble understanding American even though all I was trying to translate from American to real English was my cousin's address.

It was four hours after I was expected that Linda finally opened the door to my knocking. I had never been so glad to see a relative in all my life. Funny thing about it is that we hadn't seen each other in 26 years since our grandfather's funeral. Linda is a year younger than me. When we were growing up in the 60's and 70's, her family would visit ours every summer. Her mother is my father's younger sister. Linda's sister Donna is a year older than I am. All those summers the three of us spent together must have counted for something because as Linda welcomed me into her home, the years fell away and our relationship fell into the comfortable realm it always had, affectionate and humorous.

Linda told me she had begun to worry about me. She tried my mobile phone but I never heard it go off which is very usual for me. I explained the problems I encountered at Gatwick.

Even though it was October, London was warmer than Atlanta was when I left. I was wearing autumn attire and all I wanted was to take a shower and fall into a bed for an hour or two nap.

That's my cousin Linda and her son Daniel at the top. I was trying to figure out how to get the picture somewhere down here but I'm too lazy to worry about it. Just remembering the Gatwick experience, I'm forced to admit that fatigue has conquered my intention of working on my belated travel diary and so I'm going to bed.

A Trio of 60somethings at the Atlanta airport

Right after establishing my blogspot, I left the country for most of October.

Jim drove me to the Atlanta Airport. The drive from Birmingham was excruciatingly tedious because all the way through Atlanta we kept getting stuck behind FEMA's houses on wheels on their way to Mississippi and New Orleans.

I got to the British Airways gate after going through the cattle corral, ehrm, I mean, the security checkpoints at Atlanta's International Airport. I deposited all of my accoutrements (laptop plus carry-on and purse) on the seat next to me. I was early enough that very few seats were filled in the gate area but 15 minutes after settling in and beginning to peruse my mother's journal of childhood memories, a small troop of retired Atlanta ladies surrounded me. They were wearing tour badges that would identify them to their guides and to each other. The three ladies were somewhere in that nether region of age that is impossible to pinpoint but they reminded me of my mother and Aunt Eleanor. Their obvious excitement about the trip was contagious and they were fun.

They engaged me in conversation and we became quick friends the way only southern women can. When they went purse diving looking for change for one of the ladies to call her daughter from the pay phone I offered her the use of my mobile since I have free roaming and long distance. The lady let her daughter know she was safely delivered at the airport and then had to explain why she was calling from a Birmingham number. Then another one of the ladies liked the novelty of using my mobile and called her son and so of course the other lady did the same.

I was enjoying the trio and even showed them photos of my cats when they started talking about their cats. They liked that I had photos of my cats on my phone. Yeah, I know, having your cats' pictures in my mobile phone practically sentences me to spinsterhood but I'll have you know I'm married (for the second time) so there. Anyway, back to my story. Just when the BA folks started calling rows to board, the jolly lady sitting to my left leaned over to whisper in my ear, "I was as scared as a negro at an election..." as a footnote to the just ended discussion regarding the first time she flew. Then they were gone and though I caught a glimpse of them at the Gatwick security corral, I never saw them again.

1978 Hobbit Desk Calendar

The passion with which one feels things in youth never really leaves us, we just learn to suppress the yearning, disappointment and bliss in an effort to repel the inevitable pain that is left in the wake of time's regardless passage.

Traveling backwards down through time and visiting my own past has as usual, been both painful and giddy. Painful because the vague air of trauma that clings to certain memories and giddy for the passion that hails from my heart long ago.

Thanks, Rusty.