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Jim Bacon

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Gaining more software technical prowess [Jun. 28th, 2008|03:16 am]
I did my first screen capture a couple of minutes ago. I wondered for 20 years how to use the Print Screen command ("Prt. SCR Sys Rq" onthe teeny-tiny key). It was always one of those mysterious keys that stayed from the old DOS days. I still don't get the Pause Break key, another holdver from the old days. What does it pause and why would I need to? Last week my boss in the bookstore showed me how to do Print Screen. It's Control+Print Screen. He does this to document error messages on our computer system to show tech support what happens when something doesn't work as they say it should. He saves the image in a Word file and stretches it to enlarge. Nifty.

Last night I also figured out how to do mail merge in Microsoft Word and created a set of three form letters with different addresses. Pretty neat how it replaces field commands with name, address, city, state, etc., Only trouble is, to print all of the letters I can't print "All" pages at once. I can preview all of them, but apparently my printer doesn't like the "Section Break" Word inserts between each letter in the file. The troubleshooting light flashes. If I press it, the printer prints one page, then the light comes on again. I press it and the printer prints the second page. Repeat for the third page. Same issue whether I save the merged letters as a Word document or send directly to the printer. Might be a printer compatability issue. This could be annoying if I needed to print 50 different form letters.

I tried and failed to do mail merge for e-mails. Apparently I need something called MSRI or similar initials to do this. Not that I'll ever need the e-mail thing at home, but it's a good skill to put on a résumé or mention in an interview. Besides, with e-mails it's just as easy to make one and BCC the entire mailing list. (BCC meaning 50 people might get it, but you'll see only your address in the "TO" line and the other 49 won't have to worry about their privacy being exposed.)

I also made a table of contents and a simple index in Word. Only annoying thing is the TOC in Word automatically has hyperlinks. Great if you are reading the file on screen because you can go right to the age from the contents. The links aren't underlined so when printed will look normal. Still, I'd like to get rid of the links.

Next up: trying my hand at Word macros, using the auto-record method. I made and updated some macros at the newspaper I used to work for, but I generally started with existing macros because I had to type the codes and the syntax is very particular. I was very slow at it.

One thing I did figure out last night was how to add SAVE AS to my File menu in Word. Very odd because SAVE AS is a standard feature. I don't know why it wasn't there. We inherited the software as a gift. It came with our first computer. Anyway, I figured out how to do it.

I'm pretty intuitive about figuring out things with software. I'd be lost If I had to explain it in highly technical language, but I can generally figure out what the manual or Help menu is saying and find my way around menus and options.

Now I am going to find my way around a dish of ice cream and go to bed.

Goo'nite
linkWhat do you think?

[Jun. 26th, 2008|03:21 am]
 


"Michelle" by The Beatles is playing on the cable music radio station. I still can feel the winter chill and see the gentle snow flurries outside my bedroom window as I listened to "Rubber Soul" for the first time on Christmas Day 1965. Santa was good to me that year, yeah, yeah, yeah.

linkWhat do you think?

STRESS RELIEF [Jun. 26th, 2008|02:56 am]
I was all wound up and tense yesterday and last evening over finances and skimpy income at the wrong end of the month. I know it all will work out, eventually. Not going to divulge more in this journal.

I'm feeling better now after transcribing some recent short poems from my pocket notebooks. Writing makes me feel better. It's something I'd like to make a living doing. Not as a journalist any more, and most likely not as a novelist. Maybe writing short stories. Not something I've done. I need a lot of practice at that, but I'm game. I consider myself a poet. Just not in the conventional sense, but I like my style and how I write. I like that I recognize consistency in that style, even as I look back on very rough and clunky pieces I wrote in the late 70s. I write "prosetry" -- that's what I call poems that are structured like poems but could as easily be written out as paragraphs -- a little jazzed up and sparkly, but still could be paragraphs. I want to play more with haikus. I like them: they are like snapshots of life. A smattering of stress relievers follows, composed between Christmas Eve and April and fine-tuned:


Mobius Strip

Everybody’s got an opinion.

Everyone of them is wrong.

Everyone of them is right.

How can this be?

Right and wrong are concepts

based on perception,

based usually on the perception

conception that the perceiver

is the only one who is right.

Unless I am wrong about that.

In which case I was right

if I declare myself wrong.

But whether I am right or wrong

at least I am,

and I will be long after I am not.

 

 

(12-24-07)

 

Winter Haikus

Fall leaves barely gone,

and the branches are covered

with fat buds for spring.

 

                 *  *  *

 

Rain, three months of rain,

til spring’s dawn dries sky and land.

Then, April showers.

 

                 *  *  *

 

Cold, with hints of snow,

and fear spreads through Seattle

Where rain is the norm

 

                 *  *  *

 

Cold, wet, rotting, dead,

leaves lie piled against my fence,

— spokes in the Life Wheel

 

 

December 2007-January 2008

 *      *       *

 Spring, Day 1

My plum tree wears a coat

of cream-colored blossoms

to ward off the chilly breeze

of the first day of spring.

Tiny bursts of life shimmer

in the hazy sun, prophesying

the green leaves and purple fruit

of summer, and their inevitable

slow death in autumn,

as the cycle of life

rolls around again,

never ending, despite

appearances to the contrary.

 

 
link4 thoughts expressed|What do you think?

FREEBEEEEZZZZ (4 now) [Jun. 25th, 2008|05:55 pm]
I see my Web site is still up, two months after the hosting guy said he's getting out of the hosting business. I ought to e-mail him and tell him, "Feel free to shut 'er down; I never found another host cuz I'm not gonna do a site for awhile" But at least I've still got the links in this journal to some of my pix. And I'm not payng for two months of service he wasn't intending to provide. It's his choice to not unplug his server.
linkWhat do you think?

THINGS I DID NOT DO TODAY: [Jun. 21st, 2008|08:09 pm]

I did not go to the Fremont Solstice Parade or Solstice Fair. I was going to but stayed up all night typing and organizing poems for an eventual collection of my writings.

I did not buy a Saturday newspaper. I thouht about it, but I've got a lot of library book reading to catch up on.

I did not invade Iran. I don't plan to invade Iran, and I hope the Bush Administration will refrain from doing the same.

I did not get much sleep because of sentence two of the first paragrah. I got to bed about 10 to 6 this morning, then woke up about 10:15 to return a phone message after I used the toilet, and then had trouble getting back to sleep.

I did not torture prisoners at Gitmo and I hope the Bush Administration will see the light and close the place down. I also did not call the White House and demand that President Bush order the arrest, on sedition charges, of the five Supreme Court members who voted for habeas corpus rights of Gitmo prisoners to challenge their detention. Thus I also disagreed with Michael Savage, the angriest man in conservative talk radio today, who insisted during his June 12 show that Bush should order those arrests. Savage questioned the patriotism and mental competence of the "liberal" justices who made up the 5-4 majority in the decision, then he called the day one of the darkest in American history. 

I did not plan to post anything in this journal today, but here I am, writing and posting.


On the other hand, happy SUMMER, everyone.

link2 thoughts expressed|What do you think?

MICROSOFT! JUST SAY MICROSOFT ALREADY! [Jun. 16th, 2008|03:49 am]
One of the job agencies from whom I get e-mailed listings never comes right out and says the name of the companies advertising the positions. Probably at the request of the companies. But really, whom do they think they're fooling with the following company description? 

"The Software Giant, a well known Software Development Manufacturer, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, is committed to the long term mission of helping their customers realize their full potential. They are motivated and inspired every day by how their customers use their software to find creative solutions to business problems, develop breakthrough ideas and stay connected to what's most important to them."

When I worked for the daily newspaper that covered the Eastside of Lake Washington, darn near every locally-generated and Associated Press wire story referred to Microsofty as "the Redmond software giant." It became an annoying cliché, like always refrring to road maintenance workers as "crews." As in "Crews will repave Lake Washingtn Boulevard between the arboretum and East Madison Street next week." Nope nary a worker hired for the job, just some crews. The other cliché that springs to mind is "looks on" in photo captions. "Tiger Woods sinks a 12-foot put on the final hole Sunday as his opponent, Arnold Palmer looks on. Why not "watches"? "Looks on" sounds like Arnold is gazing off into space, tuned in to his own world.

But really, just say Microsoft already job people. Anyyone who lives within 100 miles of Redmond can decipher the obvious. There is no other "Software Giant" in Redmond!

END OF RANT I AM GOING TO BED GOODNIGHT
linkWhat do you think?

She looks pretty healthy for a woman about to die [Jun. 15th, 2008|11:44 pm]


Ashley Fights Back

Ashley Tisdale's parents deny that their daughter is dying from AIDS and has 6 months to live.

— headline and teaser from the Comcast Web site, June 15, 2008.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

I'm not going to follow this up further, except to say, if Ashley Tisdale truly had AIDS and only six months to live, she wouldn't still  be looking in tip-top shape in "The Suite Lfe of Zack and Cody" and certainly not performing. Common sense take a back seat to rumors. No, common sense is stuffed in the trunk while rumors ride in the front seat. Yikes! Think, people.

linkWhat do you think?

Eighth anniversary [Jun. 15th, 2008|11:33 pm]
My Live Journal started with this one:  http://jimmiebeeee.livejournal.com/2000/06/15/, in which I wrote about Sad-Eyed Charlie, Quiet Steve, Joke-Minute-Jimmy and me and late nights discussing Dylan, "The Young and the Restless" and the meaning of "highway blues." Now on my eighth anniversary (which, technically, was 22 hours ago), a three-year-old poem about Quiet Steve:

To One of the Three Wise Men(tors)

 

We talked for hours
knowing that our leave-taking
was just around the corner,
but the corner never came.

 

“I need to get going,” I said,
adding a quick thought about
Jack Nicholson and The Monkees, flashing
into his cameo appearance in “Head,”
The Monkees’ film, and
“Little Shop of Horrors” (Jack’s first flick).

And, oh yeah, Carole King songs, Marilyn Monroe,
Kurosawa, French mysteries, old girlfriends
and girls we wished had been girlfriends.

“All right, I’ve got to get home,” I said. “Oh, that was
Eli Wallach in ‘The Misfits’; he was the pilot.”

 

Ninety-nine percent of those movies
and writers you mentioned I’ve never read.

Yes, Frank Gallop hosted “Lights Out” on TV
in the early 1950s, but do you know his
big claim to fame? A novelty record
in the 1960s: “The Ballad of Irving”
(“The 142nd fastest gun (bang!) in the West”).

“I saw the first half of ‘In Cold Blood’ and the end
where Robert Blake dies,” I said.

“You’ve just spoiled the ending!”

“Well, they all die; it was a true story.”

Oh, our aching backs from standing
by the car outside the record store.
We talked for hours. We always talk for hours:

30 minutes become 60, 90, 132, 183 — by phone
or face-to-face.

And, OK, I bemoaned that
you are talking of writers and
movies and songs of which 99 percent
I know only by name or not at all.
And now it’s eight hours after we
finally ended our confab
And I am psyched to whittle
the 99 percent down to 89, 79, 62, 32,
and on and on and on.
Let’s talk again and this time
I’ll take notes and when I
return home I will start looking up
the culture that I let pass me by.

 

We talked for hours instead of minutes
but I believe I gained a lifetime
to explore mysteries,
to find clues and turn them into
keys to unlock unlimited
boxes of Mind Treasures.

(3:33 a.m., August 24, 2005)

linkWhat do you think?

Cashed in but almost cashed in [Jun. 13th, 2008|08:20 pm]
My favorite headline today (on the Comcast Web site home page):

Girl Hit by Lightning, Then Wins Lottery

Read the story here.
linkWhat do you think?

Let's play Tigeroni! [Jun. 12th, 2008|09:53 pm]
I see in the news today that Exxon-Mobil is getting completely out of the retail gasoline business. "Already, about 75 percent of Exxon Mobil's roughly 12,000 stations in the U.S. are owned by branded distributors, who buy Exxon Mobil products and pay to use the name," says the Associated Press story. (http://finance.comcast.net/www/news.html?x=http://absorigins.comcast.net/data/news/2008/06/12/984966.xml)

Back in the early 1960s, decades before Exxon and Mobil merged, Exxon stations in the U.S. were called Enco and one year the company ran a contest called Tigerino. I remember us kids insisted that we get Tigerino game cards whenever we stopped for gas on our vacation travels from Washington to Colorado. One of my sisters always called it "Tigeroni." I don't remember what the prizes were. I'm not sure I knew then, but we just had to play Tigerino. 

Years later, perhaps a decade before Enco statons became Exxon, Paul Harvey explained on his newscast that Enco didn't go over well as a brand in Japan because, he said, in Japanese means "stalled car." I don't know if Harvey was right, but I can see why Enco would be a bust. (In Canada they were called Esso.)

(Paul Harvey also misread the digits in a "Rest of the Story" story about the Apollo 11 moon flight as roman numerals. Every reference was to Apollo 2. The story was something about how the astronauts could have been stuck on the moon because one accidentally broke the knob of the launch switch on the lunar module. But, Harvey said, resourcesful Neil Armstrong stuck a pen into the hole where the knob used to be and was able to reach the switch. Yay, Neil! for saving the space program.)

(I used to wonder about Paul Harvey sometimes. During the first Gulf War he suggested that Iraq be punished by dividing and/or renaming the country "Palesraq"  -- supposedly to punish the Saddam Hussein regime and provide a homeland for the Palestinians, I suppose.)

PAGE 2:
What is with this HTML option for writing posts? I like that I can easily italicize and boldface text and change the size. (But non of the sizes match the default size in my text box.) It's easy to insert and resize pictures and insert linked LJ users. But what's with the hyperlink option that doesn't allow me to insert my own linked text? I wanted the link above to be in the words "Associated Press story" but I had to settle for the long-winded URL. Am I missing something obvious in the function buttons? The hyperlink button is clear about options available.

JIMMIE BEEEE!!!! ...... Good day!
linkWhat do you think?

Gimme a head with HAIR ..... [Jun. 11th, 2008|03:45 am]
"Hair" -- my favorite Cowsills record; it's playing on the cable music oldies channel right now. Ah, the spring of 1969 when the song rose to the top of the charts, back when I had a head with hair. Darned hair-edity, it skipped my father's generation. I sometimes look like my maternal grandfather these days, especially with my big round glasses on.

********************************
Tis June Eleventh, four days to my LJ anniversary. First post was a stream of consciousness memoir of nights at Sad Eyed Charlie's house in 1973-75 with Charlie and Quiet Steve listening to folk and folk/rock mid 60s dissecting meaning of Highway Blues among other thingsand cringing when Joke a Minute Jimmy showed up uninvited always "on" and shattering the mood.

********************************
Mrs. Beeee is on a business trip until Friday night and I am Mr. Bachelor until then. This means I have the computer all to myself for three more days to play and teach myself new software and decide if I truly want to redesign my Web site and if so, play with ideas for the look.

********************************
"Ruby Tuesday," one of my Top 5 favorite Rolling Stones records, is now playing on the above-mentioned TV-music channel. My favorite lines:
There's no time to lose I heard her say 
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams and you will lose you mind
in lfe unkind.

My fave RS record is "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" -- the mono mix -- and my second fave (or third, I forget) is "She's A Rainbow" which features, I read or was told years ago, John Lennon and Paul McCartney singing harmony vocals. ("oo-la-la, oo-la-la la la, oo-la-la, oo-la-la la la-ah! oo-la-la, oo-la-la la la, oo-la-la, oo-la-la la la la!")   Sure sounds like them.

********************************
Now playeth "Flowers On the Wall" by The Statler Brothers, a great song that made the long rides on childhood ski trips to Spout Springs, Oregon, in early 1966 seem a lot shorter. It's one of my Top 10 list of records that sound as fresh today as when they first rode up and down the charts.

********************************
OK, back to the tasks at hand: printing stuff and editing the last of the "keeper" poems from the "Dog and Cat Journal" collection. (Title refers to the name of the pocket journal I wrote poems and observations in last year and later transcribed and edited copies of.)

********************************
I used "refers" in the above item. Unlike most people in the English-speaking world of lazy word usage, I refuse to use "reference" as a verb. Neither will I ever "text" anyone, even if I one day get a device that includes a text messaging feature. I will send a text message. I also will never "google" anyone, whether or not I use Google.
linkWhat do you think?

I'm suspending my campaign, or not, or maybe [Jun. 5th, 2008|10:33 pm]
[Song playing in my head ... |"Mama Told Me Not to Come" | Three Dog Night (Randy Newman wrote it)]

I don't know how long pictures in the previous and other posts will be up. I see my website is still running five weeks after my hosting service guy said he is getting out of the business. I haven't contacted him to tell him to pull the plug if he wants to. He said he would wait until I found someone else. They guy had only two customers, but was focusing on other computer work, and I usually had to remind him when it was time for me to renew service. Anyhoo, he hasn't asked me how my search for a new host is going.

I might pull the plug on this Journal after eight years as well. I let my paid subscription expire this week. I'm in no hurry to renew. (I don't have access to LJ's photo storage anymore without my subscription, so I can't use it as an alternative to my website.) The weekend after this wll be my anniversary (my first post: http://jimmiebeeee.livejournal.com/2000/06/15/). I've been thinking about starting a new journal, with a concept or theme rather than just random writings and the occasional photo. I might tie it in to a revamped and renamed website, also with a new concept, after my current domain name runs out a year from now. "Beeee" would still be part of both Journal and webbysite.

I still feel a strong pull toward WORDS, particularly writing, as I have explained here previously, but feel like lying low online for awhile and refocus. Frankly, doing this has grown stale and boring. I might copy the text from a few favorite posts before I hit the DELETE button (mainly from my first year, when the venture into cybercommunicating was fresh and exciting). I wrote similar entries in my paper journals, however. Feel free to check in from time to time and see if I am still here. If I am and I start a new journal I'll post a link to it.

link1 thought expressed|What do you think?

What Hillary was talking about a couple of weeks ago [Jun. 5th, 2008|09:51 pm]
40 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK


WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1968


THURSDAY, JUNE 6, 1968


FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 1968

I was 16 plus 5 weeks when RFK was assassinated. I had gone to bed, not really aware of the California primary (or much else about the 1968 election). For some reason I woke up, probably to go to the bathroom, and I walked out to the familiy room and saw the news of the Kennedy shooting on the TV. I watched it for five or ten minutes. Goofball that I was I didn't go back to my bedroom for my glasses so I could see the TV in focus. I eventually did put them on and grabbed my 8mm movie camera and filmed some footage off the TV screen of  the ambulance pulling away to take Kennedy to the hospital. The pictures on TV weren't live. Kenndy had been taken away before I got out of bed.

I don't remember reacting too much other than surprised that another Kennedy had been shot, only five years after JFK. I don't recall reacting much two months earlier when Martin Luther King was shot. I knew they were famous, but I wasn't as aware of them as I am today.

One thing I still remember during the RFK shooting coverage were references to his condition: not just critical, but "critical as to life." The only time I've heard that term was when they were talking about RFK.

A year later Ted Kennedy was involved in tragedy. The same weekend as the first humans landed and walked on the moon, Ted Kennedy was involved in the infamous Chappaquiddick (not sure of spelling) incident in which a young woman in his car drowned after he drove off a bridge. I had forgotten until one day I saw a newspaper front page trumpeting the moon landing ("THE MOON IS OURS") and in a bottom corner was a small headline about Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick.

A sidelight to the RFK shooting: A photo spread in this week's New York Times magazine of people watching RFK's funeral train pass by mentioned that he had not entered the 1968 presidential race until March 23 of that year. The 2008 candidates started campaigning more than a year ago.


(THE NEWSPAPERS ARE FROM MY COLLECTION, WHICH GOES BACK TO 1907)
*************************************************************
linkWhat do you think?

[May. 31st, 2008|12:33 am]
 
The self-designed COVER of my not-yet-published exercise in enlightenment
(written 2004-05, compiled spring 2006)
(Photo of me by me, at childhood streetcorner, hometown, 2K5)

EXAMPLES:

Untitled 6


Nosferatu the Vampire

haunts the TV.

Bloodsucker of 1922 silent epic

creaks from brainsucker box

before me.

Beat Buddha Kerouac in my lap

got Mexico City Vampire Blues:

“We’re all taking shortcut

Through Death Valley

The Volcanic Mountains

And the Lizard Ice. …”

 

I’m going to bed, to the deathlike

astral trip thru Dreamville.

(TV’d Nosferatu rises like a cartoon for his 

midnight stroll around the deck. 

“The Ship of Death has a new captain.”)

Visions of the other world await me.

Set sail, Captain Dreamer.



Untitled 9


I used to imagine God sitting

on the edge of His Bed pondering

the dream He just had.

And poof! we’re all gone,

only dimming memories

in the Big Guy’s morning Mind.

 

Because in grade school sister told us

we’d all cease to be if 

God ever, ever blinked

 

(So if God’s sittin’ on His bedside 

ponderin’ the Mystery, 

how come I’m still writing down 

this question?)



Untitled 22


I got an orange shirt for Christmas.

Paired it yesterday w/blue V-necked sweater.

Now I see blue & orange everywhere

 

We perceive what we perceive 

when we perceive it, which is always, 

but we don’t realize till the mind 

is good and ready to tell us.

Like finally noticing, clear as if you’d 

written it yourself, the bass line

melody of that Led Zeppelin song

(“Ramble On”) you’ve heard

regularly for 35 years.

(Bm, Bmmm, Bm, Bm, Bm, Bm, Bm

Bm, Bmm, Bmm, Bmm, Bmm, Bmm 

B-B-B-B-B-Bm)

 

blue orange

blue orange

blue orange

blorange, bloh-ranj

 

All the world’s a flickering neon sign

And we all but the shadows cast.

********************************************************

Good morning!

I like the Rich Text editor, but I wish it allowed me to change fonts. The only way I could get out of Times (from the poem samples) back to Arial was to paste a piece of Arial text from the Word file from which I copied the poems. Also, I wish I could change font size visually with keyboard commands instead of guessing and choosing a size from the menu. Oh, well. It's done.

The Shirelles are singing "Baby It's You" (1962) on the cable music channel near my right ear. The Beatles covered the song on their first album, "Please Please Me" (recorded Feb. 11, 1963). I think John sang lead, but he had such a bad cold he sounded a lot like George.

Did I say Good morning! already?
Good morning!

linkWhat do you think?

PDF writing at last [May. 30th, 2008|11:01 pm]
I downloaded free PDF writing software from http://www.cutepdf.com/. It doesn't do much more than create a PDF of another file using my computer's Print function, but that's all I need for now. I'm teaching myself PageMaker 6.5 (I know, it's ancient, but I got it free for my birthday) and I want to save page designs as PDFs for potential employers (and anyone else interested) to see on a CD or download from my Web site. If I find a larger need for making PDFs I'll invest the $50 to $100 needed for proper software, one that compiles multiple pages into one document, for example.

Meanwhile, www.jimmiebeeee.com was still alive and well even though my Web hoster aid he was getting out of he hosting business. He said he would keep my site up until I found someone else, but I haven't followed through yet. I am considering a company based in Shoreline (on the northern border of Seattle). I've been balking a the nearly $400-per-year cost for 1GB of space. Their advertised services are 10MB, 100MB and 1GB, at different rates. I'm paying $84 a year now from the soon-to-be-former hoster and I recall he allowed me 500MB of space for that price. 

I've been saying I can't justify paying five times more for service for the little attention I've been giving my site the last couple of years. Right now I'm using just over 100MB of server space, half of that for loose links to photos in this journal. (I found it quicker to upload pages and individual photos to my site and link them than to mess around with LJ's photo upload system. Is it still as clunky as it was two years ago?) So that tells me that I can fil a couple hundred megabytes with photo pages if I spent the time to organize them. Plus I want to add an "ART" section of my abstract "messes" -- splash and drip paintings, scans of my paper journal covers and misc weird drawings I've made. And to expand my poetry section and add prose if I put enough of that together. My main writing focus is free-form poems. 

I compiled a collection three years ago call "Karma Dharma" that I want to post online. I decided to keep a pocket notebook of observations like Jack Kerouac used to do in his "Blues" period and see what I ended up with. His style was to compose spontaneous "choruses" as they fit onto the pages of his pocket notebooks, essentially one-take verses, each poge being a different chorus. (See what I mean; read excerpts from "Mexico City Blues" at this Amazon.com link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0802130607/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link) Anyway, I wrote as the mood struck me over about nine months in 2004 and 2005 and compiled it into a book. I reread it again yesterday and today and wasn't totally embarrassed by it. In fact, I liked that it has a consistent tone in its unintended theme of spiritual searching and exploration and enlightenment throughout. Unintended in that I didn't plan to write a book of enlightenment and comic observances, but that's what happened. That period was a time of deep introspection and releasing of deep seated fears and angers and ancient hang-ups.

So, point of all this sidebar hopping into poetry is that I decided I can justify paying five times the cost. The 1GB service is intended for professionals and I believe I ought to hold to that mindset, whether I become a professional writer/artist or not. I can justify the cost, even though the physical-world reality is that I don't have that kind of cash money now to throw at a Web site, nor to buy the art-creation software/camera/scanner set-ups I want, but instead of whining about it I am going to invoke the Law of Attraction and set the intention that the money for the stuff will show up without my incurring long-term debt (more than 6 months) to pay for it. Also the intention that the audience to see and buy my creations will show up as well.

A thread in all this is I feel a strong calling that has to do with WORDS. Specifically what I am not clear yet, but it had been in mind and circumstances since at least February 25, 2005, when I opened a fortune cookie and I read the message as a command: "You've got a way with words. Maximize on it." Three weeks earlier I started volunteering in my church bookstore and I took to it immediately. I bonded with the experience. I am now working there temporarily eight hours a week in addition to my monthly volunteer Sunday gig (where I am the team leader). Seems like every time I turn around my life comes back to WORDS. But I don't feel it's in the newspaper business anymore and maybe not journalism at all. I am laying myself totally open to the adventure and how the calling presents itself. I started seriously reading my Chicago Manual of Style this week and am totally digging it, from the basic word, grammar and writing style guides to the particulars of printing, production and cataloging of books. I've always loved the printing and production process in particular.

And so now I can at last write PDFs! I see this as an opportunity to move me closer to resolving the mystery of the calling to WORDS, now that I can more quickly share my writings and page designs now.

Speaking of words, these words are ended and I will go play with PageMaker for awhile.

When I began this post Bobby Dylan was singing "Like A Rolling Stone" and nw  Joey Powers is singing "Midnight Mary." It is almost midnight. Joey wants her to meet him at midnight. If they meet anywhere around her I'll let you know. But maybe they're going to meet at a Starbucks somewhere.

Goodnight. 

(And As I finish up spell-checking this entry, Steppenwolf is playing/singing "Magic Carpet Ride" (the album version) -- it fits with the theme.)
linkWhat do you think?

[May. 9th, 2008|02:04 pm]
I will be off in the next couple of hours to visit my mom for Mothers Day over in Richland. Mrs. Beeee!!!! and Maggie the boy cat will hold down the fort here in town for a few days. (Apparently Maggie's previous owner thought he was a she.)

My Web site is still up. I'm considering switching to a particular local host that I wasn't sure still was in business. It still is and the prices have come down by half, to reasonable for the amount of attention I give my site. (thanks to  [info]shannonkringen  for the tip.) My current provider, who used to be local but moved to Minneapolis a few years ago, is getting out of the hosting business. If www.jimmiebeeee.com goes down over the next few days, this will only be brief until I can make the transfer. I will take care of it next week.
linkWhat do you think?

My God's bigger than your God, nyah, nyah, nyah -- Oh, shut up! [May. 3rd, 2008|04:21 pm]
Everyone is up in ams about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his incendiary comments about America, racism and the so-called government creation of the AIDS virus to destroy minorities. But when will the media seriously look at the apocalyptic views of John McCain's spiritual advisors and supporters, the Revs. John Hagee and Rod Parsley? Hagee repeats the common Christ-is-coming-back-real-soon interpretation that the Whore of Babylon in Revelation, chapter 17, is the Roman Catholic Church. I first heard this in 1972. The logic seemed to be a reference in Revelation to seven hills, that Rome is built on seven hills and the church is headquartered in Rome (technically Vatican City, but that is in Rome). Therefore .....

Parsley has written that he believes the United States was formed in part to destroy the "false religion" of Islam. He calls it an "anti-Christ religion" based on "deception" and says that Mohammad, its founder, "received revelations from demons and not from the true God."  Parsley says that "Allah was a demon spirit.". He wrote all this in a book called "Silent No More," which I shortly will look for in my local library branch. I got this information from an article in Mother Jones magazine. Here's the link:
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-rod-parsley-spiritual-guide.html

Friday on his TV show Parsley attempted to draw a distinction betwwen the radical "islamofascists" such as Al Qaeda and maistream Islam, but I don't buy it. I've heard plenty "Jesus is the only way rehetoric" for 36 years to know that the common evangelical view is Us (followers of the Truegod & Jesus Christ) versus Them (deceived by Satan).

Fair is fair. If we're going to report heavily on one candidate's spiritual adviser's or mentor 's or ex-pastor's incendiary remarks, then I say check them all out.
linkWhat do you think?

I'M LOOKING FOR A NEW WEB HOSTING SERVICE [May. 2nd, 2008|05:56 pm]

My Web site may shut down soon for awhile until I find a new hosting site. My current Web host decided to get out of that aspect of the business.

Anyone know of good and reliable, but inexpensive companies, preferably in the Seattle area? 

I am paying $7 a month right now, which is about right for me now. My site is pretty static. I'm devoting little time to it except to upload photos to link to this journal. (I found the LiveJournal photo storage feature too cumbersome and that I could upload pix to my site and link them faster.) I want to redesign my Web site and add more content, maybe rename it, but right now I don't feel motivated. I get excited about it for about  week then lose interest. I don't want to abandon the site either. My domain name is still paid up for another year.

The guy who hosts for me has only one other customer (who recommended the guy to me) and it has been an informal arrangement. He lived in Seattle but moved to Minneapolis four or five years ago. The other customer lived in Seattle but moved to Maryland a couple of years ago.My host sent me a link to an inexpensive site ($3.95/month if I sign up for a year at a time, $7.95 month-to-month, and 1gb of storage space, much, much more than I'll ever use), but it is in New York State.

 

That is all. PLEASE STAND BY.

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No, we didn't mean THAT 'Mission Accomplished' [Apr. 30th, 2008|07:16 pm]


"White House admits fault on 'Mission Accomplished' banner" -- oh, now you tell us. After reading this
http://www.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2008/04/30/Bush.Mission.Accomplished/ 
I declare the B.S.-o-meter is stuck permanently on overload.

linkWhat do you think?

Second childhood, part 11 [Apr. 28th, 2008|04:10 pm]
It's my birthday and I decided to be 11 again this next year.


This is me the first time I was 11, surrounded by my beloved real bowling pins. 
The pins were banged-up, beat-up castoffs from the local bowling alleys in Richland that were destined for the scrap heap. I would bring a bunch home and bowl on my back porch. I used another pin as the "ball" because the lane was only about 10 feet long and because I couldn't afford my own ball. I used to go Dumpster diving outside Atomic Lanes for used scoresheets. Then I'd take them home, erase the previous scores and use them again. (One day I did find a banged-up ball in the Dumpster, but the holes were the wrong size.) I was a bowling nut from fifth grade on. I hung out at Atomic Lanes all the time during summer vacations, cleaning ashtrays and taking out the garbage in return for free games. I mellowed on the bowling nuttiness out by high school -- girls and photography captured my interests then -- but still bowled in a league every Saturday morning. After graduation I pretty much abandoned the sport except or an easy physical education credit in junior college. Last time I bowled was in 1985. Now that I am 11 again, may I will give it another try. 

The first year I turned 11 (1963) was when I fell in love with newspaper printing. I hung out at the Tri-City Herald plant in nearby Kennewick on summer days, standing in the back of the pressroom watching the presses run (it was an afternoon paper) until someone kicked me out. Then I'd sneak in again. My dad knew Ernie Carlson, the circulation manager, and so I think that's how I started hanging out in the pressroom and taking tours of the press and pre-press areas. I even gave a presentation about printing methods to eight graders at my old Catholic school after I had "graduated" up to ninth grade. I also gave a presentation about The New York TImes, holding up a typical fat Sunday paper and comparing it to the skinny Tri-City Herald.

The next year, June 1964, the family drove to North Dakota for a vacation. We visited the Fargo Forum one day and took a family tour of the pressroom and mailroom. The guy who gave us the tour was impressed by how much printing-press lingo I knew and understood.

I worked some 30 years on newspapers, including my college days, plus a couple of years taking pictures for my high school paper. I was a reporter, photographer, editor, news editor and copy editor, but in all that time I always liked the actual page production and printing parts best. I think I am getting too old to climb around large newspaper presses, but 30 years ago, well just maybe ...

But back to bowling: There are still one or two bowling alleys left in Seattle (another venerable one, Sunset Bowl in Ballard, shut down two weeks ago, to be replaced by condos) so there is still a chnce I can get in a few "lines" — as they used to call games and maybe still do.

***********
Why 11? Because This year I turned 56, and I decided to add the digits together and have some FUN!
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