My tweets

• Thu, 18:50: today's basket http://t.co/XZfwFnQB
• Thu, 19:40: Medgar Evers Pool (Check-in) http://t.co/3nQEQeQ9
• Thu, 23:25: i have the slowest rw drive on the planet. i should have sucked out the iso contents with a 3rd party tool. http://t.co/EjXAzxJX
• Fri, 05:00: one more House of Cards episode left. i'm penciling it in for tomorrow night. http://t.co/pemYn9Ok

Morning ritual of retiree...

This morning I realized that I have a distinct routine these days...

The alarm is the radio which goes off at 7 (except on Saturdays when it goes off at 6 for swim class) and I listen to NPR news until I have to pee so badly that I have to get up.  I get coffee and feed Betty and go back to bed and pull out the computer.

Today as usual:

I checked email.
I checked my bank account.
I checked Discover.
I checked ASUS (no sign of my laptop yet)
I checked Regence (no sign of health insurance change yet)
I checked LJ.
I checked G+.
I checked Twitter.
I'm updating LJ and then I'll play a computer game until I get bored with the news and then I'll get up and get dressed.

Not a bad way to start the day actually... 

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My brother is going to start sending out a newsletter to his customers every month. He's got a template he gets from somewhere that has some content in it and then he adds stuff.  It's actually a nice little piece.  Anyway he sent it to me yesterday for proof reading.  It had about 45 different fonts so I asked him if he'd let me work on the formatting and he said GREAT.

Turns out it's in Microsoft Publisher. I don't have Publisher. So he sent me a link and a key.  The link was to an ISO.  The drawer on my RW DVD drawer sticks and I could not get it open. So I dug out my portable RW drive and started the burn.  It took for.ev.er and then after an age, it failed.  Then I downloaded an ISO extractor and ran it (which too less time than digging out the portable DVD drive!) - doh.  I clicked on setup and got an error message to uninstall the 32 bit Office. ???  There was a never used Office 2010 trial.  Which took forever to delete.  FINALLY I got Publisher installed.

I was able to fix all the fonts and the links and got it looking nice except the masthead which was graphics.  My old PC just choked. I finally got it done but whew.  This is a desktop machine which has some age on it.  But it's a beautiful machine that I do not want to die.  I don't think reloading Windows will do much but I can double the memory and I'll do that.

My brother is going to let me fix his newsletter every month which will be fun and interesting. And a lot easier if I don't have to wait 30 seconds between clicks.

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Today, I need to get to JoAnn's Fabrics. I have a coupon and I need bear suffing. Then on to swim class.  

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I know everyone is dreading the blizzard but I really have serious snow envy.  We barely got cold again this year.  Sigh.

today's basket

Their back!!

The LJ spam trolls seem to have taken January off but are now making up for lost time.  This week they are working in bulk. I get 6 or more at a time - same message (please, guys, Ugg boots are so last decade) commenting on various entries.  

Hopefully this wave will be short lived.