If you live in Saltillo, MS, please remember to vote tomorrow and VOTE FOR PAUL TURNER IN THE MAYOR's race. Let's get that goof Bill Williams up off his dead butt and put a good Christian in that office that will help our community. Paul Turner is the man. He's far more qualified than someone that is sponging off the community after retiring from sitting on his duff in a bank. Paul is a business man and will help our city grow in the right direction. Good family man and all around good guy. If you are a Republican like me, crossover and vote for Paul Turner, the Democrat. I am personally proud to endorse Mr. Turner and hope he wins by a landslide!
Just upgraded my Linux machine to Kubuntu 9.0.4. The KDE module is 4.2 and I think I'll leave it that way until 4.3 comes out of beta. It's really slick so far. Picked up all my devices, including the G5 laser mouse and jumped right on the internet. Looks like great fun to play with all the new goodies included in this version. Hoppa and Ty Roneus, y'all need to take a lookesee if you haven't. They have made great changes to desktop structure. And finally made changing the homepage a breeze! Am posting this with the Linux machine and can tell it does not like the keyboard. We'll change that. Also some of the blogger tools are missing but I bet that changes. Heck I should go back to layout format anyway. We'll see.
Gosh, the past few weeks have been tough. Not all was bad, but several foolish incidents on my part created havoc at times around the beach house. I think most of my friends are speaking to me again, LOL. Seems the rain has subsided for a few days. It's not officially Summer until June 21st at 12:45AM CDT. In Mississippi it's hot. It'll get hotter too. According to the witch-doctors at the Weather Channel we will be blessed with temperate nights, say mid to upper 60s. It's afternoon and I hear the weed eater calling my name. In response I checked to make sure the front door was locked. About dark-thirty I may sneak out to pick up some ingredients for Tex-Mex. I have a movie that I've tried to watch for over a week now. Need to deliver some computer parts to Ashy, but think that's a good thing to schedule for tomorrow. So goes a lazy day at the beach house.
In the course of conversation last night it was mentioned that I had stated that nothing political would be mentioned here. Sorry, that's just not the way the beach house ball bounces. I didn't want Obama elected and campaigned for McCain. Yet, he is my President now and my citizenship dictates that I support his efforts. I do. I hope he does a good job. It will be extremely pleasing if he can guide us through the worst economic upset seen in my lifetime. 
This all leads to a major decision about the upcoming mayoral election in Saltillo, MS. I am an avid supporter of the Democratic candidate, Mr. Paul Turner. The present mayor (IMHO), Bill Williams is a jerk and a liar. He claims to have made major changes in our city water. He indicates they are positive changes. Folks, stop by and have a drink of tap water. I'll be surprised if you finish it. He sat on his dead butt in a bank for years, retired and beat out Paul who was serving on the city council and had great support from within. I thought Paul would beat this guy by a tremendous margin. Well, this time around it may happen. Bill has all these goofy cars, trucks, etc., all over town and stickers, banners and other promos thick throughout the city. So he's running scared. And should. I feel Paul Turner is a better man than Bill Williams. I think Paul will help this city too. 
There are several sites available to help with Google, Picasa and other things used by Google-ites, (or is it Googlers?). The sheer depth of Google is overwhelming at times. Beyond any doubt, IMHO, the best search engine from here to the Oort Cloud. GMail is the absolute bombdiggity, Google Earth is fun, Google Maps are helpful, Blogger (a Google property) is used to write this page, YouTube (also a Google property) is great, Picasa 3 is awesome and this list can go on and on. There are many help sites for Google. Try Google Guide. Want an up to date breakdown of the many Google areas and vast information? Take a look at the Usability Views page named Simply Google.
Many people use the free photo managing software Picasa 3. You can read several recent reviews and download the software at CNet. There are many help sites for Picasa 3 and Google's Picasa Basics is a VERY good place to start. If you have important photographs and are like 98% of the computer users of the world that don't back up ANYTHING!!?!?!!?, then build an online album with Picasa. That way you can always download photos needed. If you are a newbee please take the time to study some of the tutorials. This is by far the easiest photo editing software I've found. Want the hardest? Spend the big bucks for that horrible Adobe Photoshop and learn how to pull your hair out in one easy lesson. Yes, yes, Photoshop is very powerful and can do marvelous things, but for the average user is it too expensive and a downright bitch to learn and use.
One Google tool used at the beach house more frequently is Google's browser, Chrome. It's fast. The layout is simple enough and it is well worth downloading. They have a different look. I am still an avid supporter and user of Firefox, but Chrome is my second choice. Internet Explorer needs to stay your default browser. Trust me, don't change it. Just don't use it. Use Firefox or Chrome. I simply don't like IE8 as well as the other browsers mentioned. It's okay. It's just not Firefox. I haven't looked at Opera or Sea Monkey lately, but will eventually download them again to see what they are doing. Anyway, click on the links and try my two favorite browsers and let me know what you think.
Hope everyone is spending time with family, friends, loved ones and grilling some type of beast. The weather here is so iffy it's hard to make plans. Just turned down two different invitations to see Star Trek. My head hurts and left ear is minimal hearing level at best so it'd be senseless to attempt that unless a miracle hits. Thanks out to all you evil Vietnamese Chuck SOBs for that permanent hearing loss and 24/7 ringing. God bless all our fallen brothers and sisters in arms. I do believe in miracles, but not really looking for one around the beach house today. Enough whining.
Riding mower is working again. Finding the battery charger did the trick. Finished a few spots I told Mudslingr to leave. Have to weed eat the ditch, which is nothing. Mudslingr trimmed up for me and there's a stack of clippings to be picked up that are 6 to 8 feet tall. The lawn looks much better. And I don't hear that Serengeti type growling in the tall grass anymore. We finished just in time since rain is headed this way. It's traveling north from the coast which usually means heavy rains. Oh well, the grill is on the veranda.
Yesterday ended up a good day. Mudslingr, my son-in-law, came by and mowed the yard. YES! Thanks for helping with something way past due! Found the lost battery charger and the mower is charging. Filled the dumpster which they picked up yesterday. Worked on several online projects and made some headway. It was great to see Neal, my fellow Tishomingo County friend who is like a true brother to me. Congrats on the really cool 9mm. 
Lusting over notebooks at the beach house. Dreams unreachable give me hope and the desire to strive towards monetary reward. Of course I won't even consider anything but a Toshiba. Got my eye on one that is loaded with a discrete 1GB graphics card. Now there's a LAN Party Machine! Also researching MacBooks for some of my friends. Right now the only way to go is MacBook Pro. Either the 15" or 17" seem okay. One nice thing about the 15" is it does have a removable battery. Apple is due to make some major changes, but they aren't scheduled to show up until sometime in the fall of this year. They all come with only 512MB of RAM and that really sucks. I wouldn't have one of those silly Airbooks if they gave it to me. Please my fellow Windows Nazis, don't diss me about checking on Apple. This unit is going overseas and is required by the learning institution that will be attended. For the same money spent for an Apple I can build a gaming machine that will knock your socks off. But, to each his or her own...
Over that past few days Spybot Search & Destroy has had several updates. Most people need to check for updates manually (I do) so it may behoove you to hit that update button. Be sure and immunize. Hit the green + sign at the top of the immunize page to start the immunization process. There's also a virus making its rounds disguised as a UPS or DHL shipping notice message. Don't do it! Do a check before opening. Just scan that particular email with your anti-virus. BTW, have you defragmented your PC lately? Might be a good idea to check that too.
After the outrage at Notre Dame due to President Obama delivering the commencement address, all the protesters and the fact he had NO business at a Roman Catholic University given his somewhat shadowed religious beliefs, it was refreshing to read about another person addressing a graduating class. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, addressed the attentive gathering at the University of Pennsylvania. He actually told them to turn off the computers for a while and look around in the analog world. Schmidt said. "Nothing beats holding the hand of your grandchild as he walks his first steps." Wow! Go Eric! Read about it at the Associated Press. Normally these things bore me, but this is an awesome article. Check it out.
No grumbling today. Some friends helped my plight by being good listeners or offering aid, some ignored me and others hung up. Thank you MJR for the offered Plaintain Cure, thanks Hoppa for the kind ear, thank you Verdana, Beagle, Felecia (edit: sorry about your rear end car accident while we we talking!) and Ashy for listening. Thanks to all my clients for their patience without pressure. Ahhh, so goes the way of the world. Have problems and friends tend to show true colors. God willing, today will be a better day. Lord-dee I was grouchy yesterday. Repairing the riding mower is the inside (or would that be outside?) beach house priority. You can bet your sweet bippie I'll be watching for those red wasps, lol. Nice to have my half full glass back. Have a casual day.
I like dogs. I like cats too. But dogs are special because when I grew up we always had a dog. Mother likes cats too, but I don't think Dad was especially fond of them. Seems like there was always an outside cat around and I know he fed the ones that lived around the barn. So maybe he did like cats just not in the house. Dogs were permitted inside if it was extremely cold. I think I remember a cat or two sharing that warm respite too. Oh yes, the title to the pix of the puppies is 'WASSSUP!!' 
My two daughters are animal lovers. My youngest, net-name Beagle, has dogs and cats. They are cool. My oldest daughter has 3 cats. They are cool too. I have no pets since frequent road trips would leave them abandoned. Animals need their humans. Beagle takes pictures for the Tupelo-Lee Humane Society and works with them as a volunteer. By the way, they can always use donations. It can be money, food, food bowls, etc. Since my oldest daughter, net-name Verdana, has a 2 year old daughter and a two month old daughter, needless to say, she stays busy. I envision the day when she will aid their local humane shelter.
