Canon SX170 IS, My new camera

Since elderly Kodak ZX1485 was getting flaky after some 5 years of service, I bought a new, jazzier Canon point-n-shoot.  Fixed zoom lens, LCD view finder, built it flash.  Comes with a non standard lithium battery and a battery charger. Won't run off AA cells like the Kodak would.  Needs you to purchase a memory card.  Comes in black, the proper color for a camera IMHO.  I'm down on pink for cameras, hand tools, electric trains, or handguns.
   Memory card is 16 Gig, and will fit into the memory card slots on my Compaq SR1750 NX desktop.  A "card present" LED even lights up.  But Windows XP does not recognize the card.  Same slot, had recognized the lesser 2 Gig memory card from the Kodak.  Some web surfing discovered the existence of a Microsoft patch to handle memory cards greater than 2 gig.  Said patch came with a lot of  weasel words about not guaranteed, and you ought to wait for the next service pack, and some other stuff that says, "We Microsoft, made this patch 'cause they demanded it of us, but we don't like it, we don't trust it, proceed at your own risk."
   So, I went back to Staples  to buy a USB cable for the Canon.  They had one in stock!  It was a Staples branded Mini USB cable.  Even cooler, the cable came in a clever blister pack that left the "Mini USB" connector open to touch, and even plug into the camera, just to make sure it really fit. Cute packaging design.  To my surprise, Canon had used an industry standard connector on the camera.  Plugged 'er in, and Windows recognized the camera and good old Picassa photography program was able to down load photos from the Canon.  Cool.
   After uploading the photos to my desktop and labeling them I noticed that the camera date was off by seven months. I had set the date during the get-acquainted-and-power-up session.  I had to refer to the camera manual to get back to the date setting menu.  Somewhere in the camera manual it mentioned that there was a separate tiny battery to hold the date while the main battery was out of the camera for recharging.   And it takes four hours for the date holding battery to charge off the main battery.  Result, I had set the date before the date holder battery had charged, so the date didn't stick.

NH Republicans NEED candidates

Here we are, going into what looks like a very good year for Republicans.  Obama and the national Democrats have stuck us with Obamacare, and even the dimmest voter is beginning to sense that Obamacare is bad for him.  We need candidates to run for both US representative seats, the governor's office, and Shaheen's US senate seat. 
  So far, the only really competitive Republican candidate is Scott Brown, from MA, who is running for US senate.  I haven't met Brown, but he managed win Ted Kennedy's senate seat in 2010.  That's impressive in deep blue Massachusetts.  I have met Jim Reubins the other declared candidate, nice guy, but I don't think he is setting the voters on fire.  The talk down at the local breakfast place (The Coffee Pot) was not encouraging for Brown.  Just about everyone called him a carpetbagger, and disparaged his Massachusetts background.  Let's hope he can do some fence mending, quick. 
  We have Frank Guinta running in the other US rep district against Shea Porter.  Frank might be able to do it, he held the seat once, and lost to Shea Porter in 2012.  Maybe he can do a comeback like Charlie Bass did in 2010.  As far as the other US rep district (my district) we don't even have a candidate. 
    We do have a candidate for governor, Andrew Hemingway, nice guy. I've met him.  He is pretty young, and hasn't even gotten elected to the State House of Representatives yet.  He has only held town offices.  I'm thinking a successful governor has to have better name recognition and know more people that Andrew does. 

Wishful Thinking at the Atlantic

Plan could finally free New York-city traffic congestion.   Dream on Atlantic.  The plan amounts to hiking bridge tolls, and putting tolls on the four free bridges.  Jack the toll up to the point where people stop driving into Manhattan.  
   First of all, when you are running a city, you WANT people to come into town.  They shop, attend shows, eat at restaurants, spend money.  They are customers.  You want customers.  Without customers you have Detroit.
   People will drive, 'cause driving is convenient, and much faster than  bus or subway.  No matter how many roads you build, traffic  increases to fill road available.  And, when traffic gets bad enough, people will take the bus or the subway.  For instance, I seldom take my car into Boston.  I take the T.  It's faster, and cheaper than parking in town.  I don't go into Manhattan very often, mostly 'cause the traffic is horrible, and the subway is complex for out-of-towners to master.  

Will the US act when Putin moves on NATO?

Lot of the newer NATO members are ex-Soviet Union or ex Warsaw Pact.  Putin has shown that he wants them back, part of Russia, under his thumb.  Ask anyone in Ukraine.  Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Czech Republic, and some others share borders and history with Russia.  Putin might make a move on any one of 'em.  
  NATO is a military alliance, with a "Three Musketeers" clause, One for all and all for one.  An attack on one is deemed an attack on all.  We set up NATO right after WWII when it looked like the Soviets wanted to take over all of Europe.  Back then, with Hiroshima and Nagasaki still smoking, no one doubted American resolve and willingness to use force.
   How about today?  Take Estonia for example.  It just managed to pull itself out of the Soviet Union in the shakeup after Mikhail Gorbachev hauled down the red flag of the Soviet Union in 1991.   Lot of ethnic Russians in Estonia.  Some of them are unhappy about things like school being taught only in the Estonian language.   Putin has already made noises about this.
   So, what happens when the Russians move into Estonia like they did in the Crimea?  Will the US honor NATO treaty obligations and send troops to defend it?  Obama doesn't want to.  That's pretty clear to everyone in the world.  If we let the Russians eat up Estonia, is NATO membership worth the paper it's printed upon? 
    The question before European countries, both eastern and western:  What do you say to an 800 pound gorilla?  Answer:  Sir! 

Noscript, Cleaning up Firefox

Firefox has been getting flaky.  It will get stuck in loops, sucking up all CPU time, hogging humungous amounts of memory, and slowing to a crawl.  Plus opening unasked for ad windows.  That last is scary, if Firefox will open an ad window just 'cause a website asked it too, it can plant a virus, or do anything else bad that you can imagine. Standard Firefox allows websites to load code into your browser and execute it on your computer.  Which is a gaping security hole.  This code is called "a script" which doesn't sound so bad, but it is bad. 
   There is a fix.  Get NoScript, a Firefox "extension".  Google will find it for you.  NoScript blocks all scripts, along with other flaky things like Java.  Properly coded websites will continue to work properly.  Cheap ass websites, such as blogger,  stop working 'cause they rely on scripts to make 'em work.  Noscript allows you to re enable scripts for the websites that have to have scripts. 
   Since installing NoScript on both Trusty Desktop and Antique Laptop the Firefox lockups have ceased, the unasked for ad windows have gone away.  Re enabling scripts for the low speed websites that rely upon them is easy.
   The Mozilla help pages say good things about Noscript, clearly the Firefox programmers know about NoScript and consider it a good thing.   

NRA cuts another notch on its gun butt

Obama has given up on his surgeon general nominee, a Dr. Vivek  Murthy, who is anti gun, and considers gun ownership a disease.  NRA said a vote in favor of Murthy would be reported to the membership, a serious threat.  NRA has some 5 million dues paying members, it gets the word out to the membership via a monthly magazine, American Rifleman, and the membership takes a word from the NRA very seriously, far more seriously than they take a word from the MSM. 
   Anyhow,  nervous democrats from red districts decided that  voting for Obama's surgeon general might get them voted out of office in November.  There were enough democrats seeing the light that Obama has given up on the nomination. 

Aviation Week on Malaysia Flt 370

My copy arrived in the mail this morning.  Aviation Week reports a few details, like the aircraft tail number, how old it is, and it's last trip thru heavy maintenance (periodic inspection we called it in USAF)  All this was quite unexceptional.  They gave a map of radar coverage in the area.  They did not speculate on the cause of the loss.  They went on at some length about electronic reporting and tracking systems the could be installed, if there was funding, but are not present today.  That's about it.
   No speculation about hijackers, aircrew, Bermuda Triangle, terrorists, bad karma, etc.  Aviation Week just reports the facts, of which there are few.