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Sunday, May 28, 2006

Fading Fast Tonight

It's not even 10:00 p.m. here yet but it feels like midnight.

And it was a good day, all things considered. Most of us made it to church this morning. Our pastors will be leaving in two weeks for separate churches in San Jose. At least they're in the same city. I wonder which Sunday School their little boy will attend. He's a cutie - extremely bright and loving.

Finally got the girls to the big park around five this afternoon. (Had to wait for the Giants to finish losing and Barry to finally hit 715). Elcie and I hung out and let the two little ones do their thing while we had a long "facts of life" talk. She can come up with some interesting questions. You should have heard me trying to explain the X & Y chromosomes in language a 13 year old can understand. They'd been studying genes in school but she hadn't heard any of that.

It started by my saying that men who blamed their wives for not having baby boys were incorrect. I don't remember what prompted that. Our conversations have a way of veering off suddenly.

Then we went for Chinese food. All but Ray - he stayed home with the peace and quiet. Except for the girls eating grapes by spearing them with chopsticks, all went well. They remembered "please" and "thank you", and had a great time. Elcie even learned a little bit about the chopsticks by the time she was done. They're intended more for a bowl than a plate so I brought her a little chow mein in a bowl and she did much better.

Didn't care too much for the baby octopi though. Ewww, they said. Me too.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a small ad about "net neutrality" without explaining what it is. Here's a link to the New York Times today explaining it fairly well. Basically the www will no longer be free if ATT and others have their way. Those of us who now access for just the price of our connection (expensive already) will either have to pay for access or receive slower service (or possibly none at all). Two tiers of service. Not unlike cable t.v.

It has nothing to do with porn on the net and everything to do with greed. The porn sites would be the first to cough up the extra bucks but people like me might have to think twice.

Anyhow, not a lot more going on today. Tomorrow we plan to walk down to our Courthouse Square park and stop for a few minutes at the war memorial there. Maybe take a few flowers. I'll check the paper first. They might be doing something official there.

The girls need to know that Memorial Day is something more than an extra day off.

Talk to you tomorrow. Thanks for the comments and the help with the blogroll. Anvilcloud and whoever else said it should be at the end were right. I missed it on the ones I actually typed instead of copying and pasting.

Take care everyone.

14 comments:

Janice Seagraves said...

Hi Ann,

It sounds like you and the girls had a good day. I hope Elcie understood what the Y's and the X's, it can be hard to understand at fist.

Cop sticks can be fun albet messy to learn, but it's a good skill and helps with dexterity.

I hope Ray is still doing well, and have the doctors decided what is wrong as yet?

Janice~

ipodmomma said...

I have to pay more attention to just who is signed in!!

I don't like octopus either...

karrie said...

mmmm, octopus!

Let's hope the charge for access to the net is just hype. And if its not, let's hope the techies would stage a revolt and set up a parallel system for free. :)

Yondalla said...

Goodmorning Granny!

Just in case you are wondering, comtemporary surveys show that there is no longer a preference for boys over girls in America!

People who adopt actually prefer girls.

Of course it is really, really hard to find anyone who will give foster care to teenage girls!

Dem Soldier said...

Hello Ann....Hope Memorial Day is going well for U and kids...Male heir has always been the choice for humans for many centuries. I think this thinking has been changing lately....

Anonymous said...

hey grannster, i'm back in business, see you round the bend

Sarah Elaine said...

Sounds like a full day!

JBlue said...

Hope you had a good Memorial Day, Gran.

Jenn said...

Happy Memorial Day, Gran. Thanks for the linkies!!

Meow (aka Connie) said...

Happy Memorial Day, Granny. Hope the weekend was great.
Take care, Meow

Missy said...

I agree with karrie up there in thinking the techies would come up with a parallel service. It would be better, faster, less buggy and people would flock to it.

Unless ATT is talking about charging for the service and bandwidth, which totally went out of favor, like, a decade ago when people were finally getting on the 'net in huge numbers.

In a market driven society, the information will always become free. Always. People need it and will only pay for things that bring it to them with more whistles and bells, not just to bring it to them.

Sothis said...

The whole thing about the Internet is annoying--AT&T fails to mention that a lot of that cable was laid for the DARPANET--a DOD project. But that was long, long ago (in Internet years).

As a techie who has worked supporting this stuff, I can tell you--it ain't cheap. Gigabit routers costs tens of thousands of dollars. Fiber optic cable is expensive, breaks easily, and requires highly qualified (i.e. expensive) technicians. A good sysadmin to configure and manage this stuff costs over $60K/year plus benefits (much more in hot markets).

It's nice to think that the "techies" will just come up with a parallel system. Unless someone with the deep pockets of a Bill Gates is willing to fund it, I doubt that is possible. The backbone of the Internet works on harware. Expensive hardware. And lots of people babysit it. The "Internet" (a net of many nets) is run many different providers who do have to pay to maintain and upgrade the thing. Unless techies can get Cisco to start handing out backbone routers and they start digging trenches for cabling themselves--don't think so.

As Richard Heilein wrote in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"--TANSTAAFL. There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.

Sothis said...

Oops, make that Robert Heinlein. My brain was too focused on someone named Richard today.

The Rainbow Zebra said...

Grilled octopus is pretty good ;) But then again I love fried calamari, so I'm weird LOL