keeping with the blog's theme

Windows Vista sound mixer

Ok, I'm no fan of W.H.Gates, but some things on Windows Vista are pretty cool, while other things really annoy. For example, if you have less than 3 Gigabytes of main memory, for-get about even trying to run Vista, imho.
Mrs. Beisbolfan and I were discussing the lack of warning when the battery is running low. Use to be that you could set some sort of alarm to tell you when the battery is low or critical and what low or critical means. Now, when the battery is low, the monitor just shuts off. No warning or anything. Ok, there may be a warning, but all we can figure is it's a sound and not an alert dialog popping up. We usually have the sound off to avoid annoying each other with the Mahjohg and other noises.
Which leads me to one really clever feature of Vista. The volume mixer, you know, when you click on the little speaker in the systray and click on the link marked Mixer, shows the normal Device setting, the headphones or the built in speakers or whatever, but it also shows sound by application. So, if you have a web page up that has sound, you can mute only that web page. The other sounds aren't muted. You have to try this to understand how absolutely cool that is. It's not something that I would have thought to do or even that you could do, but these designers are well paid for a reason.

Red Red Wine

After you drink the wine, you make things out of the corks!

Not as much fun when it's a screw top...

Red, red wine

Go to my head

Make me forget that I

Still need her so

Red, red wine

It's up to you

All I can do, I've done

But memories won't go

No, memories won't go

I'd have sworn

That with time

Thoughts of you

Would leave my head

I was wrong

And I find

Just one thing

Makes me forget

Red, red wine

Stay close to me

Don't let me be alone

It's tearing apart

My blue, blue heart

Ok, my opinion and I could be wrong. When someone does a great version of a song - like the above done perfectly by Neil Diamond - and someone elstes does a version - like UB40 - I usually really, really, really don't like it. I'm conservative - don't like change - but UB40 does a pretty great version

Grandfather (and Grandmother)'s clock

When I was little, I would hear the "Liberty" clock in my grandparents' dining room start to strike. It struck once on the half hour and the number of the hours on the hour. I would always race in and sometimes made it (when it was after 6 or so) to see it strike the last couple of times. Forget it on the half hour or early in the afternoon. I don't know why I was so fascinated by it. It was just that the little mechanism would pull back and then boing! Simple things for simple minds. The funny thing is, all I would have to do is wait for 1/2 hour and sit there to watch the whole process, but I could never remember that long. (Reminds me of always forgetting to bring home the pieces of the locks display-remember that?)

So, we brought it back from my folks' house and now it sits atop the buffet like an antefix. Looks nice there, I'm thinkin'. What do you think?

Oh, by the way, check out Goldena's plate in the lower right!

Goldena's painting on a plate (detail)

Liberty clock (detail)

Yikes!

As I was taking out the trash, I was thinking about how it was that we hadn't had any of those darn little rattlesnakes in the carport for a few years. I've been able to take care of them with a hammer and a quick strike. Of course, we had the one in the back yard. Penny took one for me then.
Tonight, I came back inside and told S3 to come inside, called Rural Metro and waited for what seemed like 20 minutes for them to come 2 1/2 blocks.

Gotta love the desert!

Aroma Therapy Candles

Funny guy! Off The Mark

Happy 200th Birthday Abe!

Looking forward to the new Pennies!