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Big bird sighting
Feb. 26th, 2007 07:26 pmNo, not the big yellow kind. We saw a Northern Flicker this morning at our suet feeder. Gary spotted it first and didn't know what it was so he called me. I haven't seen one in the wild since about 1966 so it took me a minute and a pair of binoculars to recognize it. I expected to see them around here when we first moved in, but I'd long since given up ever spotting one. Sibley reports that their population seems to be declining, and perhaps it is. My father confirmed seeing them all the time when he was a teen (in the 1920s.) Of course, that was true of the Eastern Bluebird 25 years ago, and they've made an impressive comeback for no clear reason. Both are insectivores of great appetite, so perhaps it has taken this long for them to recover from the effects of DDT. Hard to say.
Snow all day today, but it was warm enough that melt kept pace with accumulation and we ended up with about the same amount we had on the ground yesterday. Only it's crunchy now, and so are many of the roads. Nasty driving.
Department of minor but perpetual irritations: We ordered five new computers at work last week, and they arrived on Friday. Today I started to set them up. These were ordered with Windows XP and not Vista, thank you very much, and they did arrive with XP SP2 pre-installed. They were Dells, and I specified just enough customization that they were probably assembled for us rather than stock from the warehouse. XP needed more than 50 security patches. MS Office needed more than 40. Is it any wonder that some of us have the impression that MS software is riddled with bug holes and security leaks? I'm not pleased at having Google's spyware toolbar thrust at me again and again, either. Microsoft wants to install it. Dell wants to install it. I'm not convinced that it could possibly have enough advantages to make it worth letting Google record and report on everything I do. Read the EULA, that's what they do, they say so up front. Of course, you can turn the reporting off, supposedly, but only if you also turn off all the "advanced" features. Without those, it's nothing but a window for typing in a Google search, and it's easy enough to make a shortcut for that.
[EDIT, 27 Feb: OK, while setting up the second machine I realized that the attempts to reinstall Google's spyware "tools" originates not from Microsoft as I had thought, but from Sun when Java updates itself. Which still leaves the question as to why anyone should be so insistent on getting this stuff onto people's machines.]
Snow all day today, but it was warm enough that melt kept pace with accumulation and we ended up with about the same amount we had on the ground yesterday. Only it's crunchy now, and so are many of the roads. Nasty driving.
Department of minor but perpetual irritations: We ordered five new computers at work last week, and they arrived on Friday. Today I started to set them up. These were ordered with Windows XP and not Vista, thank you very much, and they did arrive with XP SP2 pre-installed. They were Dells, and I specified just enough customization that they were probably assembled for us rather than stock from the warehouse. XP needed more than 50 security patches. MS Office needed more than 40. Is it any wonder that some of us have the impression that MS software is riddled with bug holes and security leaks? I'm not pleased at having Google's spyware toolbar thrust at me again and again, either. Microsoft wants to install it. Dell wants to install it. I'm not convinced that it could possibly have enough advantages to make it worth letting Google record and report on everything I do. Read the EULA, that's what they do, they say so up front. Of course, you can turn the reporting off, supposedly, but only if you also turn off all the "advanced" features. Without those, it's nothing but a window for typing in a Google search, and it's easy enough to make a shortcut for that.
[EDIT, 27 Feb: OK, while setting up the second machine I realized that the attempts to reinstall Google's spyware "tools" originates not from Microsoft as I had thought, but from Sun when Java updates itself. Which still leaves the question as to why anyone should be so insistent on getting this stuff onto people's machines.]
