Refreshed

Well, we're back from vacation, refreshed and regressed, and just catching up on the news. We tend to zone out on vacation at the beach- no newspapers, tv, radio, etc. There is actually both a radio and a satellite tv there- we just ignore them. We did watch the All Star game and the Wimbledon finals, and bought a pair of Boston Globes earlier in the week so we could read about our Guv'nor, the "Mittster", running around making an ass of himself ovet the 1-90 Tunnel roof collapse.

It's disheartening- in my memory of better times, folks like governors tended to try to provide a steady, calming influence in the face of potential disaster and emergency, but not our Mitt. He's running for President, and has his own political axes to grind, so he didn't miss a beat in stirring up panic and hysteria for his own political ends, actually declaring that he didn't see how anyone could feel safe driving through any of the tunnels that are the main highways in downtown Boston. Paint me green and call me a cabbage, but I think that in actually trying to cause a public panic to promote his own political career he's crossed the line, violated his oath of office, and should be impeached. Of course that's going to happen about the time Madonna changes her name to Olestra and retires to a nunnery in Guam to teach blind children how to knit tube socks for deaf, orphaned goats, but it's my opinion. As I said, the man is running for President- watch out for him, America, he's tricky.

In other news that caught my eye this morning, Ebay, the owners of Paypal, have just banned Google's newly-launched electronic payment system as a method of paying for Ebay auctions. On the one hand, I suppose they have a right to do it, on the other hand, it's pretty tacky. I'd also watch out if I was Ebay- a move to ban one electronic payment service when you own the other one comes dangerously close to being an anti-Trust violation. Ebay is rapidly moving into Microsoft territory, being the only game in town and controlling all the means of business from start to finish. That's called a monopoly, and it can be illegal. Not that the current political hacks in Washington will do anything about it, but we may have new hacks come November, and they may not look so benignly at anti-competitve actions such as this one by Ebay.

Speaking of Microsoft, they've announced that they are dropping all support and updates for Win98, which still is used on an estimated 48 million computers, including the computer I'm typing this on. A Microsoft spokesman said "he anticipates the percentage of users running the antiquated operating systems to drop to 6 percent of total Windows users by the end of 2006." Well, you bet it will. We're all gonna go out and replace our Windows 98s with those spiffy new Macs.

I sure am.

In final news, June Allyson died last week, which is a shame.