09.15.2006

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Don says:

If a picture is, as we've all heard said, worth a thousand words then why is it that every web junky who finds a cute set of images insists upon setting them up in a powerpoint, MS Word, or elaborate HTML page with a political and/or religious message and an in-your-face insistence that you forward the silly thing?   I got such an email recently and decided that the images themselves are more than worth passing on, so I liberated them from the text and put them all together into a single image.   What do you think, is it worth passing on?

I'm finally, for the most part, finished setting up Linux computers for my friends and have gotten back to tweaking mine.   I'm using Debian Linux with the Xfce windows manager.   There's a toolbar at the bottom of the screen and a bar at the top which shows open applications but I have both of those set to auto-hide (meaning they disappear until the cursor is hovered near them).   You can barely see a bit of the toolbar the lower center of my screenshot image.   With Xfce, to get to the applications menu (like 'All Programs" in Windows) you just right-click anywhere on the desktop.   That menu is showing in my screenshot image.   My screen resolution is 1024 X 768 but I reduced the screenshot to a manageable size and added a little compression so it would load more quickly.

In case you're wondering about the wallpaper, it came from Gardens-to-go.org.uk.

Lisa and I are about as apolitical as it's possible for anyone to be and we don't have any opinions about how to end the violence in the world.   We acknowledge it exists and feel that it's deplorable but haven't any idea at all what could, or should be done about it.   That being said, once in a while we see something that strikes us as meaningful.   This is such an image.   We both felt that this image has something meaningful to say while neither of us felt like adding any superfluous commentary to it.

Who do you care about?   Who in the world matters to you?

Somewhere along the way, as I stumbled through life looking for a clue, I found myself with kinfolks who weren't officially in my familty tree.   No, I'm not taking a poke at Darwin, I'm talking about people who're close enough to be indistinguishable from family.

I've got brothers, sisters, kids and even a grandchild who aren't related to me by blood but they're family all the same and I love them like family   Sometimes we lose touch for a while, or our lives draw us in different directions but when we connect again, we find that we're still family and all is well.

I call them 'relatives of the heart' because I'm bonded to them by love and mutual respect rather than blood.   With blood relatives you just have to take potluck but you get to pick your own relatives of the heart and that is way cool.


My poor sweet wife feels awful.   She modeled one of her new t-shirts because she knew I really wanted her too but you can see in the picture that her nose is all red and she looks a little pale.   She has a terrible 'code in her node'.

Lisa says:

Our daughter needed to find a notary public on short notice to witness the signing of her house papers but it seems that can be a challenge.   I had been interested in becoming a notary for some time so I did some research on the web and it's really not that difficult.   Nowadays, you can do it all online.   Several national organizations have information and packages you can buy that include everything you need to get started.   In some states you must take the training course--available online--but in Texas you don't.

I decided on the National Notary Association.   Included in the package I purchased for $154.00 was the Stamp, a Texas Notary Primer, $10,000 Notary Bond for 4 years, an Errors and Omissions Insurance Policy for one year, a Journal, Acknowledgment Certificates, State filing fee and membership in the National Notary Association for a year, which gives you unlimited access to their hotline (hope it's toll-free).   I think it's a pretty good deal, considering the accumulated costs of startup.   Attempting to sort out the various and sundry forms and applications seemed daunting to a novice so it's great that these packages are available.   They have an online training video, but it costs $51.00 and I just didn't want to spend that much more.   What I did was go to the Texas Secretary of State website and look at the educational materials available.   They have a free video that you can request and hopefully they'll send it to me.   I can order it from the library if that doesn't work out.

On the Secretary of State's website in the section about notaries public, you can search for active notaries anywhere.   One of the search options is to type in a zip code and it will find all the notaries in that area.   Turns out there are 13 active notaries in Tow, but it's kind of hard to find one on short notice.   It's quite possible most of them are the notaries at their workplace, so finding one in the middle of the day to witness the signing of a document that evening can be interesting.

Just for grins, check out your Secretary of State's website (Google your state name, then Secretary of State).   It's packed with information that may not be of use to you now, but it's real interesting stuff that may come in handy sometime.

We did a fun thing this week.   Don wanted to see some of my artwork on T-shirts so he went to hanes2u.com, bought 3 Hane's Beefy-T's and a package of transfer papers.   We downloaded the free T-ShirtMaker Lite software, followed the instructions and came up with some pretty good-looking T's.   Here's our favorite, B.B.King, and how could we resist plugging our own website?

          
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