I have to prove that I'm approaching 50, unlike a lot of men my age, who can't look any younger even if they use the best anti wrinkle cream that money can buy. When people see me in person for the first time, they can't believe I'll be 48 in a month or so. Whenever my age is guessed, it's always within the 30 bracket (30-39), although I have a receding hairline.
As you see this phrase, "shiitake happens", feel free to insert your own colorful metaphors for "shiitake". I don't like using bad words, especially in a post title, and this is my way of getting the same meaning across. The shiitake (lentinula edodes) is a very edible mushroom native to East Asia, while the word I replaced is not edible in any way (unless you're a swine).
It looks like I'll have to dive into my monitor sooner than later. There are now three vertical lines, the two pink ones on the right and a new yellow one on the left. They're all equilaterally (is that the right word?) divided as far as proximities go. It's an all or nothing deal. If it's not a cable or the inverter at fault, my days of watching any kind of video on this laptop are over. Writing (with a white background) will be all I'll be able to do without being extremely annoyed.
Maurizio of Nafurai informed me that he received spam indirectly through Blogging to Fame. The "display email" option was set to yes by default. Frankly, I don't remember whether it was or not. If it was, I changed it when I updated my profile. That kind of thing should always be set to no by default. If you have a profile over there, take a minute and check to be sure.
Every once in a while, I get stung by a flashback of some kind. I blame Agent Orange (just kidding, I was too young for Vietnam). Still, my early days in the military haunt me every now and then. Just a few hours ago, a running cadence chant popped into my head. It starts off with "I want to be a Remington Raider, I want to kick back in my chair…" For those of you that aren't old enough to remember, Remington was a brand name for a typewriter as well as a rifle.
A good friend of mine back in metro Phoenix, a Filipino-American with US Army service under his belt, has asked me to do a write-up of some sort for his business website, TheFilipino.com. He also wants me to write an article about living in the Philippines, from an American's perspective. I'm hem hawing about both. I'm sure I could do a good job; I'm just not in the mood for some reason. Perhaps I'll do something in a week or so.
I've been working on the theme Chris Lodge uses for Blog-Op, off and on, so that the content displays first. Well, I hit a brick wall with the CSS part of it. I'm going to do something different; I'm going to edit the theme files themselves. It simply has to be easier than mucking around in the CSS. If I can't get it working right within this coming week, I'm going to give up and let Andy Beard take a crack at it (he offered once). If I fail, however, it won't be because I didn't try.
I'm heading to the SM mall in San Fernando, Pampanga province, sometime either this weekend or the next to look at computers. I have to go to San Fernando for other reasons, so the SM trip is just a bonus. I don't have the money to spend on a new computer yet but it doesn't hurt to see what's available. I'm waffling between cheap, getting the bare minimum, or a more expensive model. A cheap model would be 256 or 512 megs of RAM and a standard CRT monitor (I anticipate heat annoyance) whereas a more expensive model would be 1 gig of RAM or more and an LCD monitor of some sort, preferably widescreen. I'm not too concerned with the memory, though, because I refuse to buy another copy of Windows (they sell it separately, not as OEM). Linux for me, baby, yeah!
Relatives have spent two days doing surveillance (at my expense). No luck in finding the guilty party so far. They know where the mother lives, but she's never there. I'm crossing fingers, toes, etcetera that she'll be caught soon. That lady needs to be in jail, not running around free like nothing happened. For those of you who haven't read my posts on it, this lady and her two sons committed murder in 2001, killing two of my brothers-in-law and critically injuring a third. The legal system in the Philippines sucks, literally.
That's enough randomness for now. I just wanted to get that stuff off my chest.
This post is directed at people younger than I, many much younger. I'm only going to list things that I lived without at some time during my 46 years of age and I'm only going to list those things that I can remember. If they're already obsolete, I won't bother to list them. Here we go and in no particular order:
I could go on, but I won't. Many of these things existed while I was young but were not affordable to the average family. If you're young, you probably can't imagine what life would be like without all of these advances. In my opinion, life was simpler and more fun.
Edit: Are there any items on the list that I failed to mention and you would like to elaborate on? Feel free to add them to the comments. The base date I used was the year of my birth, 1960. Anything prior is digging too far back.
