December 1, 2004
Dear Everyone:
Tomorrow night is our monthly ARMA (Association of Records Managers and Administrators) meeting, so I’m writing this week’s Letter early. And it sort of makes up for not doing one last week. Not that I was busy cooking a great, big, traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
“Jeannie” and I had more or less agreed to “blow it off” and that was before she got sick. She came down with a cold the weekend before and was still feeling lousy on Thursday. So she was “grateful” that I wasn’t insisting on holding an enormous feast that she would be “obliged” to attend regardless.
On the other hand, if I had prepared dinner, “Jeannie” might not have been up sick all night Thursday. As it was, she called me Friday morning to ask that I come up and “take care of me”. By the time I got there she was feeling better, to the point of giving me a shopping list of foods she wanted.
“Jeannie’s” “new” computer is also feeling a bit under the weather. (By “new”, I mean 3 years old, but much newer than the antique that she still uses for business.) It is suffering from an attack of “adware” and/or “spyware”. Her home page has been usurped and things like “7 days of porn” added to her list of favorites.
She had already bought several “repair applications” over the Internet, but I advised getting the “real” virus protection of the same application that we use at work. That was ultimately able to remove two actual viruses, but not the pernicious adware. So she’s going to contact a friend of our hairdresser’s who can clean the hard drive and set up a firewall for a modest fee.
In other news…
I spent pretty much all day Monday last week waiting for the installer from the cable company. I had finally decided to upgrade to digital. The cable company offered to send him that Saturday, but that was the day “Jeannie” and I were getting our hair done (and learning about the friend who could clean up “Jeannie’s” computer), so I opted for the following Monday, since I was going to be off work that week anyway.
My appointment was for “
What took the installer the longest was programming the remote control to be able to talk to both the TV and the VCR. It actually only takes one button on the remote to turn all three on. So now I have a total of five remotes: TV, VCR1, VCR2, Cable, and the fan, which I really don’t use much these days. I went to an office supply store and found a couple of desk organizers to handle all the remotes.
As for being “digital”, about the only extra channel I’ve watched in the past week has been the Sci-Fi channel, but that was one of the main reasons for upgrading. It’s also one reason why I only saw one movie last week.
Before “Jeannie’s” cold got completely out of hand we went to see National Treasure. Benjamin Franklyn Gates (Nicholas Cage) is the next in a long line of patriotic men who were entrusted with a special secret. Each generation has tried to discover the meaning of the secret and it’s Ben’s turn, especially since his father (Jon Voight) has turned against the “quest”.
It seems that there is a vast treasure of gold,
silver, gems, artwork, statuary, etc. that somehow became amassed and
was smuggled out of
Ben’s forbearer was the recipient of one of these
clues: “The secret lies with
One clue leads to the Declaration of Independence and it looks like Ben will have to steal it before his ally-turned-enemy can do it. It’s all a roller coaster ride, so don’t worry about the details. “Jeannie” complained that the obscure historical references meant that the audience couldn’t figure out any answers before Ben. Unless you happen to know the original name of Wall Street.
But who cares? If you want substance you read something like Proust. If you want a roller coaster ride, don’t read Proust.
As for stealing the Declaration of Independence,
back in 1971 Michael
York starred in a movie called,
Zeppelin.
He played a British agent sent to
It’s this kind of detail that can trip a movie up, if you care about details.
Love, as always,
Pete
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