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Thursday, March 31, 2005

"Chess is mental torture."

--Garry Kasparov



Again... where has all the time gone?

Garry Kasparov, perhaps the greatest chess player of modern times has retired. An interesting page for the avid chess player at http://www.chessgames.com/player/garry_kasparov.html gives a brief bio and breaks down his style of play (pertaining to over 2100 games that may be accessed listed in the database).

Weather: Record high temperature in Sacramento of 84° (Fahrenheit) on March 10th with a cooling trend started. Rain followed a week later staying off and on for some time with significant amounts including one brief cold snap... where we did received our frost on the dogwood blossoms. The last days in March back to warm sunshiny days.
My eyes were/are terribly dry and itchy from the outbreak of this early spring. I have a good supply of samples of "Nasonex" that I was given from my health care provider , but I needed to get some more allergy medicine purchased to the tune of $35 USD total for: generic "Claritan" or Loratadine (180 tabs), "Sudafed" (96 tabs), and Bausch and Lomb's "Opcon A" eye drops (small bottle). This should tide me over through the 'season', with the exception of the eye drops.

New (used) steering column ($180 USD) and spark plug wires ($48 USD) for Gail's van. We were "taken" in the purchase of the first steering column. The sale went down pretty smarmily, Gail having gone to the wrong shop... the salvage person not letting on. After determining that we had the wrong shop and wrong part for Gail's model van the part was returned and another trip was made to Sacramento for the correct shop and part. This is in addition to the $50 USD ignition keylock and $20 USD ignition switch already purchased, and the replacement of another part, which I can't recall, that was accidentally broken during repair. My father-in-law Larry was finally able to get 'things' right and we were only without a vehicle for a week, able to get oot and aboot Friday the 18th. I'll add car mechanic to the list of things I should have become in my professional life.

I checked my Google AdSense dollar tally... $0.75 USD total. That means that at this rate in about 33-34 years I should get my first check of $100.00 USD... Cool!!!

Our ward hosted the "1st Annual Inter-Faith Easter Cantata performed by choir members from our "Georgetown Divide" area by Sally DeFord titled "I Stand All Amazed", about our Saviour Jesus Christ. I attended the Sunday performance, sans Gail, and was pleasantly moved by the experience. The performances were splendid. Even after Easter the music is with me in my mind where'er I wander "... wonderful to me."

I thought I had Gail's computer downloaded with Windows XP SP2... but it kept aborting. I did manage to get the smaller updates accomplished, but the large SP2 file (32 MBytes or so) just kept choking on our pitiful dial-up connection. I ordered the free SP2 CD that Microsoft has available... said it takes 4 to 6-weeks for delivery (ugh!!)... received it in the mail in 1-week !!! Installed in Gail's computer and running smoothly.Good SP2 page: "Windows XP Service Pack 2 Spotlight" by Tech Republic.

Anti-spyware (freeware versions all): "AdAware" and "SpywareBlaster" and "Spybot Search and Destroy" all updated and run with their new definitions and/or new versions of their prog's on my Win 98SE box... AdAware SE being a new version of LavaSoft's anti-spyware prog. That explains why if one tries to update previous versions of AdAware - no updates are available. Gail's 'puter to follow... done and done and done.

Firefox 1.0.2 Update for vulnerability found in legacy code... done and done.

From an Earthlink tip: Free online college courses courtesy MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)... learn at your own pace. Also available en Español and em Portugues.

Gail's dog 'Maddie' or 'Poop'

From a TuDogs tip: Web Design Group... HTML 4.0 and CSS reference guides.

And just what triggers depression?... he asked his imaginary psychiatrist, Dr. Liebschitz. The web page referenced was noted after "Googling" the key words ("mental torture") in the quote by Garry Kasparov (he not being the 'he' in the interrogatory).

My cats 'Figaro' & 'Taffydoodles'

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I watched recently the PBS documentaries on "Cascadia" (Cascadia referring to the subduction zone(s) from Vancouver B.C. down the coast into Oregon... a zone similar to that off Sumatra, Indonesia) and the Tsunami of last December 26th.

Interesting seismic events offshore near Vancouver, Canada as "Scientists search for seafloor eruption." March 9, 2005 (Phys.org)

NBC miniseries "10.5" Questions & Answers

BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:

A magnitude 6.6 earthquake in Kyushu, Japan has occurred at:33.85N 129.98E Depth 10km Sun Mar 20 01:53:42 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

  • 40 km (25 miles) WNW of Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan (pop 1,284,000)
  • 115 km (70 miles) N of Nagasaki, Kyushu, Japan (pop 438,000)
  • 130 km (80 miles) NNW of Kumamoto, Kyushu, Japan (pop 650,000)
  • 915 km (570 miles) W of TOKYO, Japan

A magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Salta, Argentina has occurred at:24.93S 63.36W Depth 558km Mon Mar 21 12:23:52 2005 UTC... followed by a magnitude 6.4 earthquake nearby:24.68S 63.43W Depth 562km Mon Mar 21 12:43:11 2005 UTC... both preceded by a 5.8 Richter event 5 hours earlier.
Location with respect to nearby cities:

  • 210 km (130 miles) E of Salta, Argentina
  • 215 km (135 miles) ESE of San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina
  • 280 km (175 miles) NE of San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina
  • 1155 km (720 miles) NNW of BUENOS AIRES, Argentina

A magnitude 8.7 earthquake, and a 6.7 magnitude event nearby two hours later in northern Sumatra, Indonesia has occurred at: 2.08N 97.01E Depth 30km Mon Mar 28 16:09:36 2005 UTC
and 0.90N 97.80E Depth 30km Mon Mar 28 18:30:43 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

  • 205 km (125 miles) WNW of Sibolga, Sumatra, Indonesia
  • 245 km (155 miles) SW of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia
  • 535 km (330 miles) WSW of KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
  • 1410 km (880 miles) NW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
The estimated loss of life, I fear, is said to be about two thousands. These quakes apparently in the same fault system - south and east of the mammoth 9.3 event the day after Christmas last. Thankfully no significant tsunami action was observed.

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My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "... & Haiku daily contests:





~~~~~~~
Raindrops


Raindrops glisten
Their crystal moment
spirited softly fallen
through the light
verily in sway


:Bobby Nichols
3-30-2005


@Peace

At peace
Patiently waiting
Our Heavenly reward beyond
a certainty...
but do his will

:Bobby Nichols
3-31-2005




~~~~~~~




~~~~~~~
The Firefox

My attention piqued
I rest in wildflowered field
waiting your pleasure

:Bobby Nichols
3-31-2005

" Raindrops "... I wanted to title the poem Rainbow, but I've been there and done that. A Glory, or rainbow glory, was another choice, but just didn't 'feel' right. A quick edit 4-18-2005.

" @Peace "... but do His will. Terri Shiavo has passed this day, 3-31-2005.

" The Firefox " a Haiku: ... A photo of a resting red fox in a field for inspiration. My original thought was thus:

Mozilla Firefox !
Not Microsoft's IE6
You foo, you foo, you !

... not my best effort.



Görüsædæk !!!


C'ya.  
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