Weighing in on Occupy Wall Street: 60s wannabes or what is the message?

I firmly support the right to freedom of assembly.  The OWS supporters have just as much right to be heard as the Tea Party.  I don't have to agree with the message of either. but they do have the right to assemble.  Having said that, I do not agree that they (OWS protesters) have the right to camp out in areas where camping is not allowed, and for which they have not paid a user fee.  In Baltimore, the mayor has tread very carefully. She did cut off their access to electricity (occupy campers were plugging in heaters & coffee pots to the outlets on the light poles). I drive by the tents every morning, & they are an eyesore.  A legitimate charitable group that paid their fee was denied access because the Occupy group refused to move.  There has been at least one incident of sexual assault & drugs/paraphernalia found among the tents.  Still, there have been very few arrests here, and the protests have remained peaceful.   They conducted a positive march & demonstration at the Howard St. Bridge this past week.  But I don't really get their message. I understand the 1% vs 99% part, but the protesters offer no solutions. Neither the solutions of the 40s (jobs through public works) nor the solutions of the 60s (end the war) seem to apply to the current situation. Do they want socialism?  Do they want corporations abolished?  To pay higher taxes? To be regulated? To limit profits? To abolish bonuses for CEOs? I agree that these individuals (OWS protesters) need jobs, but who will hire them if there are no corporations?  Who will hire them when they have an arrest record (charges of loitering, trespassing, fail to obey, vagrancy or even assault - takes very little to be charged with assaulting police)?  Who will hire those who are unwilling to start at entry level and establish a work record worthy of promotion? At best, they are engaging in civil disobedience, which is a time-honored method of bringing about change.  At worst, they are a nuisance and an eyesore, with a negative effect on tourism & increased potential for crime.

Weighing in on the Penn State sex abuse scandal: Why people fail to act

I posted something like this on another board and got slammed, so first let me preface:

1. While the theory I present provides explanation for certain human behavior, it in no way condones or excuses such behavior.
2. Those involved in the cover up deserved to be removed from positions of power and influence
3. The public, and particularly those who work with youth, needs to be educated & trained about how to act in emergency situations and how to report abuse

Most people think they would act in an emergency situation; however, here is a known psychological phenomena called the bystander effect.  The more individuals present to witness an emergency, the less likely any one individual will act.  The witness will hesitate for the following reasons:  1) they will question & minimize what they saw, 2) they are afraid for their own safety, &/or 3) they believe someone else will act, usually an authority figure.  The bystander effect in the Penn State case did not involve group witness, though the individual witnesses of the abuse hesitated in much the same manner.  Several witnesses, at different times, questioned/minimized what they saw.  One witness went to an authority figure.  Each time the abuse was reported up the ladder & removed from the actual witness, it was minimized.  Anal sex with a 10 year old became "inappropriate behavior", then "horsing round in the shower".   The primary difference is that those involved were apparently concerned about reputation, rather than personal safety, and ignored grave harm and injury to the victims. 

I have attended various "youth protection" training in the past.  Each time, I was informed of the duty to report suspected child abuse, but never told how to make a report. As a counselor, I have a duty to report when abuse is disclosed, even if the abuse happened in the past; but again, no direction on how to report.   If I were to witness something as horrible as as child sexual abuse, I would hope to be someone who would act immediately.

Seacrets

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Restaurants
Cuisine:	Caribbean
Location:	Ocean City, MD

I don't normally go to "night spots", but this on the "don't miss this" list, so when my sister suggested Seacrets for dinner, I wanted to go. First, they start charging a "cover charge" at 5:00 pm for dinner. I can understand charging a cover at 8:00 for the bar & band, but at 5:00? I guess they do it because they can, and people probably come for dinner, then stay for the night life. Too many drunk people, but there were a lot of bouncers called "peace police" Beyond that, I enjoyed the place. Dining is outdoors on the sand, with tropical decor, palm trees, etc. There is even a dining on the water section. The food was very good. My sister suggested that if we go again, the lunch atmosphere is much better.

Crown

I was away for the weekend when the molar I had the root canal on in April cracked and I lost the filling.  They really should have put a crown on it in April, but they said it wasn't necessary. Thanks to my sister, I did not have to cut my weekend short. She gave me "brace wax" to put over the tooth so I wouldn't bite down or get food stuck in it until I could get to my dentist today.  Not much of the tooth was left to save. I had to choose whether to get it pulled (less expensive) or get a crown.  I decided on the crown, because  think it is better to keep your own as long as possible.  If I have to get it pulled later, I will need to get something to fill the space.

Kudos to Wal-mart customer service

Yesterday, I bought a few groceries & several other assorted items. When I got home, I only had 2 of my 3 bags,  I had left the bag (with the most expensive items - printer ink, batteries, etc) either on the turnstile or in the cart.  I went back, and the cashier remembered me, but she did not recall whether I had forgotten a bag, and it was not there at her station. She thought it was possible that the next customer wound up with an extra bag and might return it. The manager was unable to check the video, so he just had me "re-shop" for my items.  Thank you Wal-mart.

Syncing Yahoo Bookmarks & IE Favorites

 When my Yahoo Bookmarks disappeared for several hours the other day, I decided to sync the Yahoo bookmarks with my IE favorites & clean up outdated links.  They are still not perfectly synced between the laptop & desktop, but I don't have to worry about losing the Yahoo Bookmarks.

IE 9; Firefox 4 and Google Chrome

Firefox has been my preferred browser for some time.  I appreciated the built-in pop-up blocking and tabs, though IE also added these features starting with IE 7.  Firefox also has some useful add-ons such as Ad-block Plus and my Yahoo toolbas.  My laptop came with IE8 and Google Chrome pre-installed, so I tried out Google Chrome and I appreciate its simplicity.  Now it seems like both IE and Firefox wish to emulate the simplicity of Google Chrome.  Firefox 4 posed a problem with the Yahoo toolbar.  I avoided downloading Firefox 4 until a "Yahoo optimized" version became available.  My toolbar is now compatible.

Bad experience with www.furniturefix.com

Husband asked me to order the slats for sagging furniture as seen on TV.  I went to the website to order.  You have to click through multiple additional offers, and each page is so similar that it appears you didn't move on to the next page.  This entices you to click yes instead of no in order to proceed.  Then, you are not given an opportunity to review your order before it is processed.  I wound up ordering way more than I intended to.  My order does not yet appear in the web based customer support, and the phone base support is not open until Monday.  I intend to cancel on Monday.  This is highly unethical business practice and I will not deal with this company.

Root Canal

Other than a few fillings and an ongoing battle with gum disease, I've had very little problem associated with dental care.  This past Saturday, I had some irritation on the upper left side of my mouth, which I attributed to food particles getting stuck in my gum.  I used the water pik, floss and the proxy brush, but still had the irritation.  On Sunday, I used the water pik full blast and the pain got worse.  On Monday, I went to the dentist for x-rays.  They did not find any cavity, sent me home with instructions to brush gently and rinse with warm salt water, skip flossing & water pik for a few days, and if the pain didn't go away, call them Thursday.  The pain got progressively worse, both hot and cold made it worse, and I couldn't bite down on the left at all.  I went back to the dentist this morning and he did a root canal.  Resting now. 

Tax Software

Once again, I let the Federal and State governments use way too much of my money over the past year.  I am getting a nice refund. Last year, we went to an accountant.  I had used software since 1996; first Turbo Tax, then Tax Cut.  Since we had a major change in our status after mom passed, we thought it was a good idea to use a professional preparer.  Our return is pretty basic, and though we usually itemize, the standard deduction was better for 2009.  This year, I had to decide which software I wanted: Tax Act, Turbo Tax or HR Block at Home (formerly Tax Cut). Each offered a free basic edition, but charged a fee for the state return. In the past, I have used the basic or free online software for the federal return and did the state return by hand.  Several people had recommended Tax Act, which has the lowest cost for the state return.  I found that I could not retrieve any of the Tax Cut returns I had saved on my hard drive without installing the actual program for the year I wished to view (#fail); however, the year I used the online version of Tax Cut, I was able to save a viewable  .pdf version. I won't bother to purchase software again.  HR Block at Home gave me an error that I was not able to correct and would not let me e-file (#fail). Tax Act worked fine until I made some changes, and it would not remove a deduction I knew was incorrect (#fail).  Finally, I used Turbo Tax, which I have not used for years.  I was very pleased with it and I will most likely use Turbo Tax next year.

I'm in a Diet & Exercise Funk

I was doing really good with my tracking & exercise, but not this week.  I want nothing to do with the Wii Active Trainer, and I am tired of tracking my food on Spark People.  But I don't want to gain weight.  Spark People has a mini-tracker, where you just count the fruit/veggie servings, glasses of water, and fitness minutes.  I'm still OK with using the Gazelle, and maybe I will play a fun sport on the Wii like Bowling or Frisbee Golf.  No trainer this week.

Remte control

I got a Wii for Christmas and it is still not hooked up!  The living room TV only has one auxiliary port in the front & the husband did not want to unhook the DVD player.  He almost never watches any DVDs, so I convinced him to hook up the Wii.  Now, the remote that changes the input from TV to video game is lost.  The menu button *should* do that function, but it does not.  I found a replacement remote on eBay, though I might hook up the Wii in the bedroom.

Roller Skating

As a child I had the metal skates that clamped on to your shoes with a skate key.  We had a tiled basement floor and spent many hours skating there, or outside on the sidewalks in our neighborhood.  I was in my teens the first time I went to a roller rink with my cosmetology classmates. I fell a few times, but eventually got the hang of it. I think that rink was in Oella, Md and no longer around. Many roller skating rinks have closed.  In my area, we had 2 roller rinks at one time.  One closed years ago and is now a catering hall (Michael's).  The other one is a classic rink with wood floors.  My younger brothers went there to skate, and I used to go a couple of times a year when my kids were in school and in scouts.  I tried roller blades outdoors on the hiking trail, but did not have a very good pair of outdoor skates and falling outdoors seemed much worse than falling indoors at the rink.  Today, my grandson had his birthday party at the roller rink.  I donned my rented skates and gave it a whirl.  Though it has probably been 15 years since I roller skated, I did just fine.  This grandma can still skate!

Formatting a hard drive

The last new hard drive I bought was a Seagate 80 GB for my P3 in 2003 or 2004, and it came with installation software. Recently, I purchased a used/refurbished Maxtor 250 GB IDE/PATA drive to replace the 80 GB drive in my IDE/PATA to USB external enclosure. The disk was not formatted, and I had no idea how to format it without installation software. I could see it in the device manager, but not in "my computer". After some searching (and a call to my brother in WV) I found the download for the Seagate tools (Maxtor is now Seagate) and the Computer Management function in Windows 7 (Control Panel/System and Security/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management). I used the Computer Management function, and I now have a 250 GB external storage drive for back-ups.

Open Office problem with labels solved

I generally like Open Office, once I figure out the differences compared to using Word & Excel.  I encountered a peculiar problem with creating & printing the address labels in OO.  When I printed the labels, only the Canadian postal codes appeared on the printed label.  I posted the problem on the OO forums and found out that v 3.2 has a bug that doesn't recognize mixed text & numbers from a spreadsheet in a data source.  The forum tech provided a fix, which once I applied it correctly, worked like a charm. 

RIP Microsoft Works

I've had Microsoft Works on every computer I've owned since 1994.  It was pre-loaded on my first computer and I learned to use the various features.  It was easy to use, but unfortunately,  not compatible with any other office suite. After I got Office 97, I didn't use Works for much anymore, but I kept it so I could view the items I had saved in Works.  I have not upgraded it since Works 99, which included Word 97.  The current version, Works 9, claims that documents and spreadsheets can be viewed and edited in MS Office. Works is still available for purchase, but my new computer came with a pre-loaded starter version of 2010 Word & Excel rather than Works.  Though I can use Works 99 with  Windows 7, some of the features no longer function, but I see no reason to purchase the upgrade.

One thing that Works did extremely well was address labels.  I tried several times to convert my Works address book into Office, but never quite made the transition.  I eventually learned to create mailing labels in Word from an Excel spreadsheet  I found a program to convert my address book to Excel; however, it was an obnoxious little trial version that put their plug to purchase the program in about 25 cells that I had to edit. Now that I have my address book in Excel, I can finally put Works to rest.  I also saved the Excel spreadsheet in O-O, and can make address labels in O-O.  RIP Microsoft Works.

Windows Live Essentials 2011

I was prompted to install an update for Windows Live Essentials on my new laptop.  Since I do not have Outlook on the laptop and OE is no longer included with Windows 7, I decided to give Live Essentials a try.  Advise: don't bother with the 2011 version.  I might try the 2009 version or just get Thunderbird for a default mail program.