Well, I guess Blogger is happy with me again. It published my little rant on the frustrations I had on Monday because suddenly, without any kind of warning, they wouldn't save or publish without a blog title. I don't often put in a title because I have never been all that creative in that department. On other matters, the garden is doing well. I cut oregano, grapefruit mint and a bit of pineapple sage that are now dry and waiting for me to grind them. I am finding little tomatoes through out the gardens. I also cut the plantlets from the strawberries and have them in soil to root. We'll see how they do. There isn't much to do in the gardens right now besides cutting herbs. Until more plants like the hibiscus, zinnia, and cypress vine bloom I don't have much to show either.
Blogger hasn't been the only tech irritation here. We haven't been terribly happy with our cable TV and I am somewhat disenchanted with my Nook e-reader.
Over the last several years we have seen programs we enjoyed end but nothing new as replaced them. Instead, on all of the networks, we saw the proliferation of "reality" game shows--things like Survivor, Dancing With The Stars, Exit and others. We don't mind the shows themselves and, if people enjoy them, that is fine with us. But what about us? We laugh at all of the ads for the various services that promise subscribers they can record four shows while watching another or that family members can watch different shows in different rooms at the same time. We can't fine more than one show we want to watch at any given time so the ability to record any shows while watching another does us no good. Often we can't find anything we want to watch--at all. And we have only the one TV so watching in more than one room isn't any inducement to sign up.
But even those shows we enjoy and want to watch are much less enjoyable. The number of commercial breaks have multiplied and expanded. They cut up the flow of the story so following along is harder. And the programmers schedule most of the commercials toward the end. Mom remarked at the end of one show how annoyed she was by the commercials. I suggested that we might put Pandora on instead of the TV shows. No commercials and much more enjoyable.
And then there is the Nook. I finally yielded to temptation and bought one about three years ago. Right now I have 215 books and several magazines between the archive storage and on the device itself. That uses about 70% of the total available storage. Frankly that isn't very impressive. It amounts to about four bookshelves. At one time my book collection occupied about 80+ shelves. I have since reduced the number of books and the number of shelves by at least half. I am still reducing the number of books. But physical books I donate to our local library for their sales room and someone else will be able to enjoy them. All I can do with the virtual books is erase them if I don't want to keep them myself or if my storage capacity gets too tight. That has always rankled. The price for e-books is about a third of the physical copy but I am only renting and I don't like that at all. In addition, I find that going between sections of a book (for example in cookbooks or such) isn't as easy as with a physical book. It is easier in some books than others depending on how they are set up but none are as easy as with traditional books. And I find reading on the e-book is harder on my eyes. Bottom line--I am going back to the paper versions.
I wish the mother in this case had been awarded more--enough so that the hospital and the child welfare agency involved would think seriously about double checking the results of drug tests and using the most accurate tests available. At least the hospital is changing its procedures a bit. However, this isn't the only case and poppy seed isn't the only consumable product that can cause false positives. Take a look at the list on this Yahoo! Answers page.
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