Cat under the Table Cloth

Rusty gets under the table cloth

Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Carol

An old article for the season

Salvation Army Barbershop Christmas choir

Salvation Army Barbershop

Ubuntu AMD64 and flash

If you have a computer with a  AMD64 processor you can install a free Ubuntu operating system and get the benefit of 64-bit processing (basically it's faster) without getting a Windows Pro OS.
One mistake I made was when I installed Adobe's flash for AMD64 was not  removing the nspluginwrapper which let 32 bit flash, which I had previously installed, work with a 64 bit system, as suggested by Softpedia.
Not removing made it hard to click on the play and volume buttons using youtube and other video sites.
All you need to do to fix it is run Synaptic Package Manager, look for nsplugin and remove it and the other programs that work with it. Youtube now worked fine and I didn't need to reinstall anything.

Winter Gear

Winter Clothing

It was about - 20 this morning, with a wind chill. The face mask is thin neoprene, so it doesn't absorb water from your breath and turn into ice.

Why is there a cowbell on the desk of the speaker of the Irish parliament?

Recently, Paul Gogarty, a Green Party member of the  Dáil, the Irish Republic's parliament, said "F**k You" to fellow member Emmet Stagg.
 Lots of commentators thought it was quaint and compared it to James Joyce - it wasn't and bringing up someone's Irishness whenever they behave like a jackass in public is stupid. (Saying 'dat' and 'witdraw' instead of 'that' and 'withdraw' is just an Irish accent, not a sign of feeble mindedness, and doesn't excuse misbehavior!)
I was wondering why there was a cowbell on the speaker's desk - it isn't a cowbell, according to Edward Canavan, spokesperson for the Irish parliament, who said it was the Ceann Comhairles Bell,  a half-size reproduction of a bell that was found at "Castle Island, Lough Lene, Castlepollard, County Westmeath in 1881", and presented to the house in 1931 by the widow of Major Bryan Cooper, a former member.
(Image of Ceann Comhairles Bell taken from homepage of the oireachtas, (Irish Parliament))