Why we love Microsoft

Trusty antique laptop had been running Office for years. For some damn Microsoft reason Office suddenly decided to stop working and whine. It wants "activation" and threatened to die for good if not "activated" within the next few usages. So, I clicked on "activate by Internet. The program hummed and whirred and then choked up. "Cannot contact Microsoft Activation Server, check your internet connection." Lovely.
So I tried "activate by telephone". At least the phone answered, a robo answering machine. The robo responder wanted me to key in a 54 digit magic number displayed by the program. After a lengthy button pushing orgy, the robo server decided the number was no good and hung up on me.
So I did some internet searching. Apparently I'm not the only one whose Office got surly for Christmas. But no real fixes were posted anywhere. I was hoping for a registry patch. No such luck.
Finally I tried the "activate by telephone" trick again. This time it worked. I keyed in all 54 digits and the roboserver responded with a second 48 digit magic number, which I copied down and then input to Office. Must be that I messed up keying in the magic number to the telephone last time.
I love Microsoft.

Teebow?

All I know is
1. He plays professional football. (Nothing wrong with that)
2. He is apparently pretty good at it. (Commendable)
3. He has been observed praying on the field. (Commendable)

And for this he is getting more air time than a Presidential candidate.

Coffee makes the age of reason possible.

This one is cool.

Aviation Week doesn't know why the drone crashed

They said it wasn't shot down, 'cause the picture shows it all in one piece, no blast damage, no scorch marks or bullet holes. Makes sense.
The undercarriage is hidden in the photo the Iranians released which suggests "The lack of crash damage would indicate the standard UAV flight-termination procedure after an airborne mishap of going into a flat spin."
That's cool. A flat spin slows the drone down enough to recover it in one piece. Just what you need on a peacetime test range. It's nice to have a chance to fix what broke and fly it again. Not sure if that's what you want in wartime. I think it ought to do a power dive into the ground leaving a big hole. And a lot of scrap metal.
Aviation Week said the nobody was very concerned about compromising secrets. They claim the payload was a "full motion video sensor" aka ordinary TV camera. As far as the air frame and engine go, the experts claim there is nothing new there. Right.

California Cognac

Cognac, the brandy of Napoleon. Comes from just one district in France, and is so smooth you can sip it neat, from a special glass (a brandy snifter). Under French law, only brandy produced in the Cognac district can bear the Cognac label. Everyone else must label the product "brandy". And just plain "brandy" is so rough that us ordinary mortals must add ice and soda to make it drinkable.
Out in California the E&J (Easy Jesus my son calls 'em) has long distilled an ordinary brandy and sold it in cathedral shaped bottles. E&J was OK as a brandy, but you don't want to sip it neat. Now E&J has gotten better at it, and offered a brandy marked "V.S.O.P." the traditional mark of high class Cognac. The NH liquor store carries it, at 1/3rd the price of Hennessy.
It's not bad. It's smooth enough to sip it neat. If they can keep it up, E&J might have a real product here.

HR whines again

This was on Vermont Public Radio this morning. An aircraft maintenance company out in the mid west is complaining about the lack of qualified aircraft mechanics to hire. An lady HR rep from the company said on air "You cannot just hire high school graduates to do this work."
The hell you can't. That's all we did in USAF. We enlisted high school graduates, put 'em thru a few months of tech school, and then put 'em to work on the flight line as apprentices (3 levels in USAF jargon). They worked under the supervision of journeymen and masters. After taking some courses, getting lots of hands on experience, and passing some tests, they got promoted to journeymen (5-levels). Took about three years for the average guy. And with more experience, and training, and testing, the journeymen became masters.
That maintenance company could do the same.
Then they revealed that they only paid people $12 an hour to start. No wonder they have trouble filling vacancies.

Bad day at the Green Hill Mall

It's Christmas shopping season, the sun is out, the snow is melting, great day to be out and about. I needed some electronic parts. The local Radio Shacks are all out of business, so I drove over to a surviving one in St Johnsbury. It was in a nice new mall, with a micro Sears, a J.C. Penny, a dollar store, a bank, couple of shoe stores, you know, the usual. Christmas carols are playing on the PA system.
One thing wrong. The place is deserted. The halls are empty, the stores have more clerks on the floor than customers. The mall has four giant gaping vacancies, the parking lot is nearly empty. Great Depression 2.0 is hard at work around here.