some news

1. To my amazement, when my anti-virus program finally expired today, I was able to re-load and register it with the help of only one quick call to customer support. I'd thought my renewal had been canceled, but somehow I now have it for four years instead of the offered two.

2. On my trip to the wildflowers, my cell phone died. Not exactly: it was still on, I could still make calls on it, but the screen was totally dead. I took it to a repair shop and they said it could actually be fixed, for $90. I judged that, since I could buy a new one for $50 (I'm still sticking with clamshell dumb phones), I'd be willing to go through the hassle of learning a new model.

The one that the AT&T store is selling these days is from a company called LG, which they claim stands for "Life's Good." Yeah, well, it would be better if your cell phone weren't so irritating for its lack of options, like one to silence the on/off tone without also silencing the ringtone. And boy did I struggle to write my first text message on the thing, because instead of putting in what you type it changes it to what it thinks you mean, and it's always wrong. At one point it thought that "home" was "gooe" and asked me to add that to the dictionary, so I had to inform it that "home" is a word. Then I lost the whole message while trying to figure out how to put a period at the end of it.

3. Review later, but this will probably not go in it, so:
Dear parents, When you take your small son to the symphony, even if you dress him up for the occasion, if he spends the whole concert squirming, rattling his program, whispering in your ears, and so bugfck restless that he chews up the end of his tie, then he is bored and he is not appreciating the music. I don't blame him - I wouldn't have gotten much out of such advanced stuff as this when I was his age, either - but please put him, and yourselves, and me - the innocent bystander you chose to sit right in front of at this open-seating concert - out of our collective miseries and let him play outside or something.