My Swiss Army knife has a 3 inch blade

The TV newsies now describe the White House fence jumper as being armed with a knife with a 3 inch blade.  That has become a "deadly weapon".  So what was the jumper carrying? Really?  Just a pocket knife?  a switchblade?  A lock blade knife?   I keep a short lock blade knife in my desk drawer to open the mail. 
   Was this jumper really carrying a real weapon?  Or are the TV newsies making a big deal out of a pocket knife like most Americans carry all the time?

Is the media after NFL & Roger Goodell ?

Goodell and the NFL have certainly been chewing up air time.  Could this be to distract the voters from serious problems, like no jobs, ISIS, outrageous energy prices, Lois Lerner and the IRS, and the likely GOP landslide in November?  
   Football is a rough game, played by rough men.  Up til that video tape of Mr. Rice cold cocking his fiance in an elevator, everybody pretty much ignored players behavior off the field.  Most NFL players are decent men, but the few bad apples (there are ALWAYS a few bad apples) can spoil the whole barrel.  The media, all lefty greenie types who think football is too violent and too red-neck, have decided to cover the warts of the NFL in detail, and over and over again.  So the owners have decided that bad player behavior on or off the field, is bad for business, and bad for team revenues.  So the owners, thru Goodell, have put the word out that bad behavior, he listed a dozen sorts, gets you kicked off the team and out of the league.  This will be effective, the players are players 'cause they love the game, and getting blacklisted will really hurt them. 
   Maybe the media will gt tired of Goodell and the NFLs troubles and get back to something important.

Words of a Weasel Part 35

Heard on Meet the Press this morning, a pundit said "The voters want representatives that will compromise and support bi partisan solutions and get something done in Washington."  I wonder what universe she comes from.  The voters I know want representatives who will vote for the right  way and vote against  the wrong way.  And not allow themselves to be bought off by the other side.
   And a lotta things don't compromise well.  Either we build the Keystone XL pipeline or we don't.  Either we go to war against ISIS or we don't.  Either we grant amnesty to illegal aliens or we don't.  Either abortions are illegal or they aren't.  Either we hike taxes or we don't.  Either we legalize marijuana or we don't. 

98.6 Not too hot, Not too cool

Normal body temperature for people.  Back in the day doctors and mothers paid a lot more attention to temperature than they do now.  As a kid I had to run 100 degrees before Mom would feel I was too sick to go to school. That didn't happen often.
  I notice that a fair number of mammals run the same body temp.  Stroke a cat, it feels warm, just about the right amount of warm.  If the cat 's body temperature was much removed from 98.6 it would feel either cold and clammy, or hot and feverish.  Same goes for dogs.  And horses.  I am guessing that 98.6 is pretty much normal body temperature for all mammals. 
   I suppose there is a scientific bio chemical reason  for this magic temperature, but I don't know what it might be.  I don't remember reading anything about it, and I do a fair amount of reading.
High school chemistry taught me that the speed of chemical reactions depends upon temperature.  Mammals run on bio chemical reactions, and to stay active when it's cold, they generate heat and keep their bodies warm.  An evolutionary trick that reptiles never learned. 

Shopping for boots

Boots to put on the ground that is.  Other than Americans, we have the Iraqi Army, the Kurdish Peshmerga, and some shadowy Syrian rebels.   Our Prez doesn't want to use Americans for political reasons.  The Iraqis haven't fought well since Saddam Hussein's early days.  They put up a good fight during the Iran-Iraq war on the 1980's.  That war lasted 8 or 10 years.  The Iranians had a larger population, a lot of good US equipment left over from the Shah's regime, and a scary level of fanaticism on all levels, from Ayatollah Khomeini right down to the teen age Iranian soldiers who conducted human wave attacks on Iraqi positions.  But when faced with the Americans in 1990 and 2003 they crumped.   Iraqi units didn't fight much, or very hard, and a lot of 'em just deserted under fire.   After a good ten years of rebuilding under American guidance, they aren't even as good they were in 1990.  ISIS was able to brush them aside with ease. 
   The Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have a decent rep.  They fight hard and they don't run.  Trouble is, there aren't all that many of them, and they lack heavy weapons, mortars, artillery, tanks, armored personnel carriers, even trucks and jeeps.  We could help out there, but the  Baghdad government thinks that Kurdistan is still a province of a greater Iraq, and refuses to give  the Kurds any weapons, lest they use them to declare independence from Baghdad.  And Baghdad gets huffy with us when we suggest shipping arms direct into Kurdistan. 
   Then we have the Syrian rebels.  They have little to no rep.  They have been fighting for years to drive out Assad with little success.  They have been able to stay alive, and prevent Assad from offing them all, but that ain't much. 
   And then there are the Iranians.  Lots of 'em, close by, and they have a pretty good rep.  Trouble is, they are bad guys, trying to go nuclear and nobody wants that.  Iran is Shia, and Iraq is split Sunni Shia.  All the Sunni Iraqis would rather die than allow Shia Iranian soldiers into Iraq.
  Bottom line.  There ain't no good boots to put on the ground in Iraq.  (except ours of course).

Keyboard Flakie Wakies. Windows and HP Bios

This is a software problem.  Touch typing  causes odd effects like cursor jumping back at random, weird programs starting up, and other badnesses.  Impossible for typing.  There are two bugs causing this behavior that are correctable.  First bug is that the touch pad is active, so that stray finger touches turn into mouse clicks, which make a lot of bad things happen.   

   Touch pad fix.  Do the Touchie-Swipie thing on the right hand screen edge and touch the gearwheel charm for "Settings"   Touch or click on "Personalizations".  Click on "Ease of Access" (text string  in lower left hand corner.  Click on "Make the Mouse Easier to use."  Click on  Mouse Settings (text string toward the bottom.  When the Mouse Properties box opens,  select the "Touchpad" tab.   Uncheck all the boxes.  Then check "Disable internal pointing device when external mouse is present".   Write all this down somewhere, you will probably need to repeat this because Windows sometimes messes this setting up.  This one fix will cut down, but not eliminate the flakie-wakies.

   Sticky Key turn off.   I think this is an HP Bios bug.  HP makes some keys "sticky".  Not sure what sticky is supposed to do, but it is bad for typing.  Press the left hand shift key FIVE times.  This will bring up a little window that allows you to turn off sticky keys.

  Once BOTH patches were applied the keyboard works well enough for touch typing.

  Wasn't that easy?  

Something nice in 8.1

On the touchie-feelie-swipie page they have a "news" program.  Plain maroon square with "news" in the center.  Opens up and it has the sort of stuff you find in USA Today.  Longish (by web standards) articles, nice color photos.  Not bad.  Fairly light weight, but no perceptible political bias.  
  And they have improved the boot time.  8.1 only takes 15 seconds to boot up to the wanna-a-password screen, which is a good deal quicker than XP.