Thursday...UPDATED

Blogger has reverted back to the limited-functionality of editing features that I ran into last month at times.  I didn't notice it when I was using the iPad from the road, but with my desktop computer, I have no mouse capability.  I'll try to spool-up the laptop tonight to see if I'm dealing with a machine-specific situation.  This is another of the 15th's of a month that I'm counting toward a total of 60...the countdown now to 44.  On the 4000 Days calendar, this is in the 2830 range, depending on leap years in the sequence.  Just saying...

This is also the Catholic Church's feast of the Assumption of Mary.  A holy day of obligation.  I hope you all made it to Mass.  My guess is that this is one of the least-technically-supported beliefs in Catholicism.  Not that that deterred the Holy Cross fathers from establishing a university in her name in South Bend.

Not to get political, but hasn't this business with the Big O mask with the clown at the Missouri rodeo got a little out of hand?  My recollection is that for years, in the list of Top Ten Halloween masks, were those of the current or previous presidents.  Tricky Dick Nixon was at the top of the charts for years.  Reagan, and Clinton and Bush were all similarly portrayed.  Heck, you could hang/burn Bush in effigy in the town square and it wouldn't even make the local news.  The President, whomever he/she is, is no King or Saint.

I'm going to publish this now, and will log back on from Maplecrest later this evening to see if I can spiff-up the presentation.  Stay tuned.

NOW LATER...

Okay, Houston, we have a problem...on my desktop.  Pretty sure that it is related to the filters and extra servers that my business email must traverse for compliance purposes; SEC, FINRA and all that stuff.  The world is safer for it.  Or at least the attorney's will have an electronic trail to travel to prove the errors of my ways.

Two years ago today, 4 and I spent our first night in the Pyrenees.  At this Old World hotel.  I'm not saying it was a dump.  But "quaint" might be generous.  Ah, the memories, eh, Kiddo?

Lastly for tonight, a thought on the long reach of technology and how it forces businesses, governments and institutions to adapt to an ever-changing environment.  2 pointed out in a discussion across the wine-table last weekend that colleges are being forced  to figure out how to acquire and retain students when the application process has been largely mechanized, homogenized and universalized.  Elementary-high school systems are trying to figure out how to engage students who just want to socially network (rather than "study").  And in my area, the IRS won't even accept paper returns in many standard situations.

Expand those, and other similarly challenging fact patterns, with questions like, "How secure is my information?"  And the landscape gets pretty scary.

Thanks for reading.  Make it a Good Friday in your neighborhood.

BCOT

BCOT