It's Been Forever, I Know

Who knows when this will kick into high gear again. It's been one hell of a month. It'll be at least that long since I last went to a yoga class by the time I do get to one again. Fingers crossed for next Thursday ...

Today was supposed to be the day, but I ended up sleeping until well past class and into the final 30 minutes before I had to be at work. Ooops!

At work it was mayhem, as it's been for far too long. That's partly to blame for missing yoga classes and increased cynicism and dislike of my job.

But it could just be my own brand of holiday cheer.

Today was no exception to the problem, and I have Microsoft to thank for some of that. I received an obituary file in the company's new "open" format. You may have seen the .docx file and wondered what the hell is that and why won't Word open that. Why indeed in the "open" file closed?

Because Microsoft decided to include it in it's newest version of Word and not add support to any previous versions. Apparently, other open source software can't open it either!

There are sites on the Internet that help you, and many do this for a fee!!

What kind of crap is this? I managed to find a few free converter sites, but one said it's conversion software was offline - but not the site? - while another one didn't even have its site working. I couldn't even get the widget to download so that it'd convert these files right from my desktop.

The third, which I went with, but also instituted Plans B & C with the file sender, promised to e-mail me the file, but wouldn't say when. In fact, you had to a pay a fee to guarantee it in a certain amount of time.

Ultimately the sender got the new file sent to me in a much more "open" format and the site I hedged my bets on returned the converted file in about 2 hours.

Can someone please explain why people are not fighting Microsoft? Why the U.S. ultimately backed down from its monopoly charges? Why open source software isn't' better and more widely used? Do people really want to get stuck with this? Another few hundred dollars just to be able to use "open" files from Microsoft is just ludicrous.

Makes me think back to that eye-opening movie I saw ... "The Corporation." But I'll get into movies a little later. I just finished "Sicko" and all of my rants about health care costs have additional backing now ...

St. Peter's Fire?

So St. Peter's Church across from the house in Society Hill was the scene of much attention last night when 6 (six) fire trucks parked along Pine Street ready to beat back any flames.

There was no fire, but the firefighters did have to break through the gate and the side door to determine this. I don't know what triggered the response, be it an alarm or concerned neighbor, but all of those trucks showed up to the try and save history.

The church was just on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer a week ago in a big picture above the fold (it must have been a slow news day). The church was wrapping up it's $225,000 (two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollar) restoration of the steeple.

Here's the view:

Tree Hugging Some More

So plastics 1 & 2 are now being collected for recycling in Center City Philadelphia. The post card in the mail last week announcing this made my day when I read it. Within 10 minutes I had checked the soy milk and laundry detergent containers to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

Does that seem a little crazy and hyped? Only a little, as the house has 5 people living there and containers empty almost as quickly as we bring them in, save for the myriad laundry detergent containers from all the sales earlier in the year.

And the peanut butter & jelly sandwich I had late last night was all the more enjoyable after I tossed it in the blue bin for this Friday's pick up.

Philadelphia is going ever so slowly with its recycling effort, but maybe these baby steps will amount to something at some point. But it's a shame all the waste happening while the city gets its act together.

Oh My!

Alligators, hurricanes and beignets would be the lead off.

Sounds a bit more interesting than lions, tigers and bears.

Those three things are best experienced on "Planet Earth" in HD TV.

But the first three things are great for experiencing when you are in which city?