Dumb Rat

Werner Erhard used to tell a story about the difference between human beings and rats. Take one of each and show them cheese at the end of a tunnel. Then the next time you put them in the maze, remove the cheese. After a few unsuccessful tries, the rat gives up and gets on with some other project. The human being will keep looking forever.

DailyKos was off line most of the day for some unscheduled unannounced maintenance. Rat that I am, I probably tried a half dozen times to log on, only to be thwarted ("connection to DailyKos refused"). Thank God it's back up so I no longer have to keep checking down that empty tunnel...

Meanwhile, I bought a DVD recorder w. VHS - my goal is to dub the pile of home movies, etc onto DVDs so I can preserve them better, distribute them to the kids and in general get rid of the heap of video cassettes. The manual needs a decoder ring, so I'm still working up to the burning of a DVD. BUT, for some unknown reason, I can now get a whole bunch of TV stations I never had access to before, including the Weather Channel, Comedy Central (The Daily Show!), A&E, History, Discovery etc. So that is very cool. Will this make me entice me to watch more than one hour of TV a month?

Toenail fungus

Even the thought is ugly. My deadline to finish an article on onchomycosis is tomorrow, and don't you know I procrastinated as long as I could before writing it. That's why I washed all my windows last weekend. That's why I ripped a whole bunch of CDs to my hard disk. That's why I saw THREE movies in the past week. That's why I decided to knit a scarf (done!) for my friend instead of buying a birthday gift.

But the story is done and on its way, with hours to spare. Now I can knuckle down to considering how complex I can make Christmas THIS year. I prefer spending time to money, so home-grown projects are my specialty, but they take a lot of thought - not to mention execution effort. Halfway into it I wonder if I'll ever make it out the other side. Tune in December 26.