...Rain... --and yes, we need it.

By now, I'm SO stinkin' TIRED of so many people b*tchin' about all the rain we've had. Yes there's been some flooding in some areas, but that comes nowhere near to overshadowing the horrible drought we had last year (and many years previously). After watching 1/2 my trees die, my lawn crust up, having to drill a back-up well, &c. last year, I'm still thankful for every drop we've had lately. I wonder if these people have no idea WHERE our FOOD comes from??? --Maybe they think it materializes like magic on the shelves of the grocery store ("Heeeere's yer SIGN"); who knows.. Rain is the Water of Life. We're just now actually receiving what used to be normal rainfall (used to be 70+ inches per year) again, since the droughts begain in 1977. Before then, farmers never worried about having enough water for their crops & livestock, and I can easily remember when irrigation systems were "novelty items", seen only in photos of the Progressive Farmer magazine.

From BLOATware to BROKENware: Windows 7 'Starter' Ed.

MicroSquish has done it again: After building up high hopes for a new streamlined OS to replace that pile of BLOATware they dubbed Vista a few years ago, they’ve hornschwoggled us again. The beta & RC versions of Windows 7 were amazingly stable, but just recently I had the dubious pleasure of evaluating the much-anticipated OEM release on the latest “net-book” line of lap-tops, specifically Windows 7 Starter Edition: a version streamlined for this particular type of hardware. Unfortunately, it’s quite a bit TOO “streamlined”. Get this: there is NO way to change the desktop background (or wall-paper)! <--DUMB @$$ED IDEA. There’s no “Personalization” feature for modifying the desktop, and even right-clicking on any picture/image/photo brings up a pop-up menu that LACKS the “Set as desktop background” command. Here’s Microsoft’s explanation: LAME!! Even Windows 3.1 allowed wallpaper modification. Of course, they’re more than happy to include very-conspicuous links to an “anytime upgrade” to a much more expen$ive version that allows such. Very ironic that this restricted ver. of Windoze 7 is only available as OEM on net-book computers –-which happen to be available in almost every color in the candy store (ours is a nice luminescent purple, much better than those hideous pink ones that look like Pepto Bismol!).