It's been a while

I have been watching the world go by, and deliberately holding my fingers (which seems to be a metaphor for tongue) in order not to become strident, shrill, or outright nasty.

This may turn into a rant, I'm not sure yet.  Then again I may save the rant for late at night when nobody is listening.

It is now part way into February.  February is usually a BFD month for us - Already we've lost a couple of days to snow (although that was never a part of the plan.)  In not too many days I will turn 72 (or 28 by Grandpop Rudolph's reckoning....) and I am not liking it.  I don't feel like I'm 72 (most days) and I try very hard not to behave like someone that old - but some days I just can't escape it.  On the day after my birthday I will have been married to my first wife for 46 years - something many people (including ourselves from time to time) would never have believed possible - and I find that it is all good.

And of course I still go to work every day.  Some days I'm actually worth more than I cost - other days they should make me pay to let me in.  I've been having a good deal of fun with code lately, finding new ways to do things with fewer instructions, less messy code - it keeps my head either on straight or shaking.

I discovered Google Hangouts, and resolved to set up an area for my brothers and I to get together in a video chat, since apparently that's the only was some of us will see the rest of us.  Looks like a nifty tool - be interesting to see if it works as I impute that it does, and if it doesn't it will be interesting to see how long it takes me actually to figure out precisely how it does work.  Either way, I won't get bored.

My Kindle library is growing - I may not live long enough to read everything that's in it - I get emails every day from a couple of places that keep track of what's available, and Amazon puts out a fair amount that is free, and I try to get as much of that that looks interesting as I can.

I think in a separate piece I'll talk about the new stuff I have discovered that works so well.

Google amazes me - I have switched to Chrome as the browser of choice, and have discovered various apps and extensions for it that make it more useful - nearly an entire working environment is available from the browser itself including rudimentary office applications (and, truth be told, it is all I really need - Word has over the years grown into everything for everyone, and has so many buttons, widgets, fladgets and such that I can't use it whout looking for stuff that I used to know where it was....  With Google Docs, there's a lot that I can't do - but over the last several months I have not found most of what it won't let me do to be all that useful.

There are things that work with Chrome and Android devices that work so well that I finally have a place to stick important stuff that I can reach from my office, from any PC, and from my android devices (Phone and tablets.) Now, whenever I start up Chrome, whether it be on my phone, a tablet, a laptop or a desktop, it knows who I am and presents me with whatever environment I left last.

Listening to Ray Bryant playing  Slow Freight and enjoying it.  I keep music here at work, and happily the folks around me like it (or they just don't want to tell me I have no taste....)  Music makes life better, don't you know.

Last night I met a group of German speakers that meets each week somewhere nearby, and I have been enjoying the social evenings with them, although to my chagrin I find I don't speak as well as I once did (or as I think I once did) and most of the folks there are not from the area where I lived, so my accent and dialect cause interesting misunderstandings - but it sure is fun!

Well, I just talked to a nephew I have not seen in at least 20 years - and got a video chat on my tablet by dumbing into how it works. Now I have to get a desktop working with that.  Looks like Google Hangouts is more useful than I would have imagined.

I gotta go home.  I may pick this up later, or I may decide it's rant time later.  You'll be able to figure out which has happened.