I ♥ Hearts

After getting a new computer, I've had to d/l my favorite games again. When I was younger, I used to be an arcade freak, but now that I'm older I find I don't care all that much about those sorts of games, even though there are PC versions of most of my favorite ones. No, I have come to love my computer card game versions, such as Hearts.

I've previously posted my best games from my Hearts games on my last computer - I'm sure they were thrilling posts to this blog's readers. I probably won't do that again, but I'm going to post a couple of screen shots from this new version of Hearts. Sorry. This will most likely be a one-time deal.  Maybe not.  I might do an update of my win/loss record after a thousand games;  that will probably be in five years or so.

I really like this new version; I didn't think I would because it, like this computer, was different and I'm getting to the age where I don't really like new things, preferring the things I'm familiar with...broken in and comfortable, like a favorite pair of sneakers. It didn't take long to get comfortable with the new Hearts game and I'm of the mind that it's programmed to be more "fair". (With the last Hearts game it seemed as though I didn't just play the three computer opponents individually, but that they ganged up on me!)

What's really cool about this new version are the sound effects: a little "doom" sound (for lack of a better word) when the queen of spades is played and a breaking glass sound when Hearts are "broken". It also keeps a running tab of how many points you've taken during the trick and you also get a congratulatory message if you catch all the tricks. "You've shot the moon!"

The neatest thing is when you win a game and get all the little floating hearts which explode when they float upwards:

The only thing I wish I could change in it is my player name; it goes by what I named the computer when I first booted it up.  It did allow me to change my computer opponents to Huey*, Dewey and Louie - not from the Disney ducks, but the names of the robots in the old sci-fi flick Silent Running. I really liked that movie and so did my British friend Elle.  It makes me think of her when I play the game.  I also think of my good online friend Barb's dad when I play the game, even though I never met him, but she once told me he loved to play cards and esp. Hearts. 

* I need to change that to the proper spelling.  I always get that wrong when I spell it.

It's also cool that you can save a game and also that it keeps a running count of games played/games won.

I've already played more games than that shows, though, and have won half of the games played.

Yep, getting old. I used to get enthused about going out to the bars and getting drunk or making a road trip on the spur of the moment. Now? I'm happy to play Hearts and listen to online radio.

Monday Monday - The Mamas & The Papas

A Crock of Kroc

This was the Today in History entry from the widget in the right-hand column:

























I've been to McDonalds less than half a dozen times in my life.  A couple of times was when I was with my sister and her then-husband when we were in Amarillo. He loved the franchise and I never understood why.  OTOH, he thought macaroni grew on trees, so.... Another time was after work and a co-worker asked if I wanted to go eat breakfast and that he'd buy.  I jumped at the chance, but would have turned it down if I had known he wanted to go to McDonalds.  Another time was when I was going to go the the movies but knew I didn't have time to eat anything but fast food.  The McDonalds was just a few hundred yards from the theater so I got a burger there and wolfed it down in time to catch the flick. 

I also ate there a few months ago when I got a craving for french fries and a chocolate milk shake.  (I like to dip the fries into the shake - better than ketchup!)  They DO make good fries and shakes, but I prefer burgers from just about anywhere else. Pampa has a couple of locally owned hamburger joints that make MUCH better burgers than McD's.   I stopped at Sonic the other day and asked the girl who brought me my food if they were always that busy.  She mentioned that McDonalds hadn't finished their new building - I then remembered they had torn down the "old" one (probably ten years old or so) and was building another one.  It looks like the same size as the last one.  Hmmm....

It wasn't the quality of their food that kept me away from  McDonald's, though, but rather a political reason.    It was the early 70's and I was becoming politically aware.  Nixon was President and I was starting to work my first real, paying jobs.    When I first started working, the minimum wage was $1.90/hr. then it was raised to a whopping two bucks an hour.  Whoopie!  I worked for the county mowing the graveyard and courthouse lawn- we were allowed to put in 50 hours/week, but the county, being a govt. entity, was exempt from having to pay overtime.  That meant we could make a hundred bucks a week.   Even back then that wasn't a lot of money. (At least it didn't seem that much then, but it could probably buy as much as three times that amount now.  Gasoline was .28 cents/gallon and you could rent an apt. in my home town for fifty bucks/month)

I was in the school library during study hall and was reading the paper and read an article about Ray Kroc having Nixon on his yacht.  The article said it happened quite often and questioned their relationship.  It made me question it too and made me do some more research. 

This was long before the Internet, so I had to dig through all sorts of periodicals, but I eventually found that Nixon had vetoed several minimum wage increase bills sent to him by Congress.  I also found out that the largest employer of young people was McDonalds...young people who also comprised the vast  majority of minimum wage workers.   It didn't take a genius to figure out that there was more to the Kroc/Nixon connection than appeared on the surface. 

Since that time, however, I've come to conclusion that the min. wage isn't necessarily a good thing.  A free market should set wages, not Congress or unions or Presidents.   Even if there has to be a minimum wage, I think there should be a provision for training wages and an exemption for the youngest workers.  (the young me would be furious at the me I am now) The best thing of all would be for government to stay completely out of regulating prices or wages or subsidizing any industry.

A Helluva Lot Smarter

Are You Smarter Than an Atheist?

Me? According to the quiz I am. I've read posts by atheists who seemed to be smarter than me, but what always struck me about most atheists is how hateful they sound when accusing organized religion being full of hate.  I always found it amusing how self-righteous most atheists were in regards to their superiority over the righteous, how hypocritical they were when speaking of religious hypocrisy and their unwavering faith that religious faith is foolish.

From the quiz:

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups in a 32-question survey of religious knowledge by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. On average, Americans got 16 of the 32 questions correct. Atheists and agnostics got an average of 20.9 correct answers. Jews (20.5) and Mormons (20.3). Protestants got 16 correct answers on average, while Catholics got 14.7 questions right. How will you do on the quiz?










I think I did fairly well ; here are the questions I missed:

When was the Mormon religion founded?

I didn't know, so I took a guess.   I did mull it over for a while and started to choose the correct answer, but didn't.  I'll admit I don't know much about the Mormon religion, but I suspect we'll all learn more about it if Romney gets the Republican nomination for President.

Which one of these preachers participated in the period of religious activity known as the First Great Awakening?

Totally clueless about this one.  Took a guess and was wrong.

Which of these religious groups traditionally teaches that salvation comes through faith alone?

I was annoyed that  I missed this one but what the hell? (pun intended)

Are You Smarter Than an Atheist?

Free Clocks for All !

Oh wow, a double-goody! Lots of hosted clock scripts for a blog or website and they're free!

One of my personal favs:

Many more at their clock gallery.

Visit CSalim.com

New Computer

The day started out as usual; checked email, reader, Facebook...the usual. I bumped the cord to my desk lamp and it went off, so I checked the plug and when I did that, I bumped the PC power cord and the computer just quit. I tried and tried to get it to come back on, but no joy. I figured I must have triggered a power surge and fried the power supply.

The thing was getting pretty old - over five years - so I bit the dust and went to WalMart and bought a new one, another HP. This one is great as far as hard drive capacity and memory, but it's Windows 7 and there's a steep learning curve for me on new things. I'm having problems getting used to it, but I'm sure I'll eventually get it sorted out.

 I had some problems getting it to boot at first, dunno why that was. I had bumped the power cord again and I was afraid I had fried something in this brand new one. I did opt for an extended service plan, though, but I was starting to get annoyed that I was going to have to pkg. everything up and take it back. Setting it up - connecting the cords, etc., didn't take long at all, but I spent a good two hours trying to get this thing to work. Since I had been saving files to an external drive, I didn't lose too much - just the stuff in the April "work" folder. Not a great loss, just a little annoying.

 I've also d/l a free a/v program, immediately deleting the Norton's that came w/ this machine. (just a 30 day trial, anyway) I've also d/l a few programs I always like to have: CrapCleaner, HijackThis, etc. and of course, I d/l Firefox.

It's the behavior of this new OS that I will have to suss out somehow. For example,I opened up Notepad to save some information (and I use Notepad several times a day, really handy program) but I don't know where it goes. The icon shows it's there, but I can't get it to come up. Oh well. I've also got to figure out how to get downloads to save to where I want them.

Another program I really don't like is the Windows Media Player. I liked my old one (some old version - I had upgraded once, then rolled it back) I had bare bones processes on my last PC - something like 20 processes at the max, but this one has 60 going. Since it has a lot more RAM, it doesn't seem to slow it down but I still want to cull down the running processes to just those that are necessary.

The one thing I need to really get used to is the new keyboard. This post has taken me twice as long to compose because the space bar doesn't work as well as the last one and I have to really make sure I'm hitting it for a new space. I tried signing in to my ATT/Yahoo homepage but kept having problems, even though I KNEW I was using the right password - then I saw I had spelled my email/sign-in name wrong "sbcglobtal.net" Oh well, again.