This Is My Tangent - Electric Companies, PCs and Basil

Good Morning,

I'm beginning to rue the day that I was attuned to the necessity of electricity. Over the number of years that I have lived in this house, I believe that there is some sort of conspiracy, one that includes a series of concentric red circles with the number 4216 emblazoned at the middle. It is a devious plot by our electric company to sway power, sorry about the pun, over me. Concurrently over the last two days there has been power spikes, or surges, or interruptions, call them what you will, that have zapped my house, all my appliances and electronic equipment. Yes and including my PC.

Over the last number of years I have lost four PCs because of the strikes. And I have the latest, supposedly, and greatest, supposedly, of all protections. (I can't think of any polite expletive at this point that may convey my frustration... so please bear with me.) And now I have to take my PC in to the PC repair shoppe on Monday morning to determine the damage. Praise be that everything is backed up. And I do have my Notebook. The spikes just never seem to faze the Notebook... (I wonder if there is a message there someplace.) And I can't believe that I pay for the privilege of electric power... Some bloody privilege!

I know I have to pay for the product... otherwise I could move to a log cabin somewhere in some hinterland and then I would be chopping wood on a regular basis. But I do NOT appreciate having to listen to and be forwarded through by 12 automated answering idiot-bots to be told to please call back during working business hours. The sexless sounding automated voice then instructed me to, by my choice of either voice or keypad, to report my problem. And of course my problem was not one of the choices... I have always hated multiple choice tests. And so I said "Yes"... to what I do not know... but that I had had an outage. Half-an-hour later a real human called me and she told me that there had been a power outage in my neighborhood. No shit! She was astounded that I asked where, when, and why? I told her that I needed the info for the surge insurance company. She was a bit shocked. (Sorry, pun.) The astounding thing is that it was her company that sold me the serge protection insurance.

My issue with my Notebook is that the arrows, the Page Up and the Page Down and the Delete keys are too, too near the Enter key. The little finger on my right hand is always accidently hitting, touching one of the neighboring keys, which of course, throws my typing in all directions. I just need to complain.

I was out this morning checking the farm with Mr. Green Jeans. Zucchini and tomato plants seem to be doing okay. There are a number of eggplants from the last planting that need to be harvested. (Boy do I sound like a farmer.) Two of the new pepper plants and some of the cilantro have wilted in the unseasonable heat. The culantro, brussel sprouts, and cauliflower appear to have found a firm grounding, and I hope the papaya tree likes the location where I planted it. The new basil, I forget the type, is doing fine, and the other basils, planted before, are still flourishing. Maybe we won't be eating a $500.00 tomato this season.

I was invited to give a talk yesterday at a mini-conference in Lutz about working on foreign documents without having to speak the actual language. It seemed to have been received well by the attendees. Feedback was good.

Well that's all for this morning, and maybe today. Gonna spend some time playing the piano. My audience this morning - six soundly snoring quadrupeds.

Jim