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The day before yesterday I received my latest order from Amazon which was a new computer keyboard and a new mouse. Yesterday I managed to manipulate my creaky old body down on to the floor and crawl under my computer desk, and plug the two items into the available USB ports.
Windows 7 automatically installed my two new accessories and they both work fine, right out of the box.
My old mouse had been malfunctioning from time to time. At unexpected moments when using the center scrolling wheel, it would flash a momentary display of a minimized window over top of the window I was using. It was annoying and I figured it would probably get worse instead of better. That's why I got the new one. The old keyboard was working but some of the keys were starting to stick and the M and the N symbols were wearing off from use. The new keyboard and new mouse cost less than ten dollars each.
My only problem was brought about by the packaging. The keyboard and mouse are quite small and should have required a commensurately small package. But whoever did the packaging stuck the items into a huge box and then filled it with great gobs of filler paper. The box was a foot tall, two feet wide, and three feet long. I'm not kidding. What a waste of space. And the USPS delivery driver could not fit that big of a box into the apartment complex's large parcel lock-box at the letterbox bank. So I was left a
large parcel - could not deliver slip in my box.
I went online to the U . S. Postal Service website and filled out the form notifying them to re-deliver the parcel the next day, and to deliver it to my door (since it would not fit into the Parcel Lock-box.) So the next day the carrier walked it over to my apartment and delivered it to me. A minor snafu but it caused a two day delay in delivery.
Anyway, I am now all set up.
Last Wednesday night I watched a TV program from Nova, on PBS, titled
Earth From Space. I was dumbfounded by all the new information that was provided, most of it gained from orbiting satellites. There is so much I did not know. So much I still don't know. So much I will never know.
The video can be viewed online, without charge at the present time. It's almost two hours in duration. I was fortunate enough to have both sufficient time and interest to watch it all in one sitting. But that's not necessary. You can watch a measured portion, stop or pause, then come back and resume when time permits.
This is a fascinating presentation.
Really!
Here is the
LINK
According to
NASA, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have solved a 40-year mystery on the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around our Milky Way galaxy.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, are at the head of the gaseous stream. Since the stream's discovery by radio telescopes in the early 1970s, astronomers have wondered whether the gas comes from one or both of the satellite galaxies. New Hubble observations reveal most of the gas was stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud about 2 billion years ago, and a second region of the stream originated more recently from the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Wow! This happened about
2 billion years ago? That's a while before I was born.
NASA News Release Number: STScI-2013-27
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TRIVIA
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
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HISTORICAL EVENT
On this day,
August 11,
1965 in the predominantly black Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, racial tension reached a breaking point after two white policemen scuffle with a black motorist suspected of drunken driving. A crowd of spectators gathered near the corner of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street to watch the arrest and soon grew angry by what they believed to be yet another incident of racially motivated abuse by the police. A riot soon began, spurred on by residents of Watts who were embittered after years of economic and political isolation. The rioters eventually ranged over a 50-square-mile area of South Central Los Angeles, looting stores, torching buildings, and beating whites as snipers fired at police and firefighters. Finally, with the assistance of thousands of National Guardsmen, order was restored on August 16.
The five days of violence left
34 dead,
1,032 injured, nearly
4,000 arrested, and
$40 million worth of property destroyed.
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WORD FOR TODAY
misogyny
noun
hatred of or hostility toward women
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Misogyny can be manifested in numerous ways, including sexual discrimination, denigration of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification of women. The male counterpart of misogyny is misandry, the hatred or dislike of men
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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS
(born August 11, 1950)
Steve Wozniak is an American inventor, computer engineer and programmer who co-founded Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne. Wozniak single-handedly invented both the Apple I and Apple II computers in the 1970s. These computers contributed significantly to the microcomputer revolution.
(born August 11, 1965)
Embeth Davidtz is an American actress. She is best known as her role as Miss Jennifer Honey in the film Matilda. Her screen roles include movies such as Mansfield Park, Bicentennial Man (opposite Robin Williams), the crime drama Fracture (as screen wife of Anthony Hopkins) and the television series Mad Men. Davidtz spent much of her early life in South Africa.
(born August 11, 1953)
Hulk Hogan (born Terry Gene Bollea) is an American semi-retired professional wrestler, actor, television personality, entrepreneur, and musician. After filming his scene for Rocky III, Hogan made his debut in the American Wrestling Association, Hulk Hogan became the face of pro wrestling, pushed the WWF into a pop culture enterprise with The Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection on MTV, drawing record houses, pay-per-view buyrates, and television ratings in the process.
Hulk Hogan's crossover popularity led to several television and movie roles. Early in his career he played the part of Thunderlips in
Rocky III (1982). He also appeared in
No Holds Barred (1989) and starred in
Suburban Commando (1991),
Mr. Nanny (1993),
Santa with Muscles (1996), and
3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998). He starred in his own television series,
Thunder in Paradise, in 1994. He is the star of
The Ultimate Weapon (1997), in which Brutus Beefcake also appears in a cameo. He also starred in a pair of television movies, originally intended as a pilot for an ongoing series for TNT. The movies,
Shadow Warriors: Assault on Devil's Island and
Shadow Warriors: Hunt for The Death Merchant, starred Hogan alongside Carl Weathers and Shannon Tweed.
(born August 11, 1925)
Arlene Dahl is an American actress and former MGM contract star, who achieved notability during the 1950s. Dahl began her acting career in 1947. She reached the peak of her popularity and success in the 1950s. Some of her films include: Reign of Terror (1949), Three Little Words (1950), Woman's World (1954), Slightly Scarlet (1956), and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). She is the mother of actor Lorenzo Lamas.
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When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!
--Yuri Gagarin
NASA TV
