According to Will Rogers this is the before-election promise season. After the election it will be the alibi season, where the winners explain why they can’t keep their promises. (Hint, it’s the other guys’ fault.)

Peggy Noonan, who was a speech writer and Special Assistant to President Reagan, says politicians are bound to disappoint. They can’t help it. It’s just the way they are.

Even with my cynical view of politics, I was still surprised by Stanley Bing’s column in this month’s Fortune Magazine. Stanley Bing is his pen name. He’s also a business executive and mostly his end-page columns are humorous. Not this month. It’s entitled “Recovery Blues” and after Bing bemoans the current state of the economy he writes

And then there’s the entire political situation, whatever that is. The way I look at it, there are two possibilities. The Republicans could take over in November, leading to tax legislation that would favor those who have money over those who don’t and a host of regressive measures that would be good for business. Or the President could triumph, leading to four more years of an obstructionist Congress that would block any attempts at sensible regulation and economic reform, which will be good for business.

So why do I feel as if I may have left the stove on and I’m miles from home?

Whether or not Bing is correct, I was surprised to read that in pro-business Fortune. What do you think? Do you think Bing is unduly pessimistic?

In the process I started thinking about one of the groups. They talk a good talk, but they send me a lot of junk with more appeals for money throughout the year. So I looked them up on Charity Navigator which gave it their top rating of four stars, and it was also a Better Business Bureau accredited charity. That reaffirmed my belief the organization wasn’t a scam, but was it the best use of my money? So I looked at the details on Charity Navigator.

This is how the group uses the money:
 

Charity Navigator told me about other groups doing similar work, and I ended up switching to a smaller group that spends the money this way:
 

I think my money will do more good now. Bless Charity Navigator! (I gave them a small donation too. Click on the following logo to access their site. )

Do you have favorite causes you support? If so how do you decide?

 
We woke up Tuesday morning to eight inches of snow, which was already starting to melt. As you can see from the drought map, we can use the precipitation, especially if it’s not a gully washer that washes out the roads up in the mountains. Our April shower may be different from the usual variety, but we’ll take it gladly.

Do you have April showers where you are?

I keep telling Andy that life is too complicated, it’s impossible to keep track of everything. It’s meant as a joke, but do you ever feel that way?

It’s been a full week. I’ve been playing with my new iPad, of course, and have been doing a little sketching every day. Then because I’m still having trouble with dizziness, I decided to dig out my Wii Fit to work on my balance. I hadn’t used it in over three years, but it thinks my balance is still great. That was a big surprise, but it may be that with my chronic eyestrain I’ve had plenty of dizziness in my life and automatically compensate for it.

At any rate, I’ve set the Wii Fit up in the living room where it’s easy to use, and I’m starting to use it a little every day. It’s been on my mind for a while, so that’s a good feeling.

So things were going swimmingly until yesterday when I decided to phone tech support for the super fancy Roku XS (for watching movies) I bought last October. For some reason it decided not to let me look at Netflix, even though my first very simple one still worked just fine. Hours and hours and seven technicians later–both yesterday and today–it’s working again. It was outside its warranty period, so I had to do most of the support via online chat rather than talking to someone in person, and there were times I wondered if I really cared that much. After all, my simple one still worked and if it decided to go belly up I could always buy the simplest version they had. Just value my time and toss the troublesome one out.

Well, no. That didn’t feel right. I thought it was broken and wanted them to know it. Instead they finally got it working and I learned a lot in the process. Was it worth it? Yes. I value knowledge and am willing to pay for it.

I am impressed that the company provided so much support. Some of the technicians were better than others, of course, but they kept trying and didn’t give up. That means a lot to me, so in spite of the hassle I’m now a loyal customer.

That said, I’m glad the ordeal is over and now I can focus on something a bit easier–our income tax. Life is just one fun thing after another.

Unfortunately, the floor of the porch sags more than the roof did, so we’re expecting they’ll eventually replace the posts below us. We’ll just have to see.

In the meantime I’ve been spending time learning to sketch— I’ll write more about that over at Cheerful Monk this Sunday. And Apple sent me a notice that my iPad should arrive tomorrow. Fun stuff here. What about you?

The quality of our lives depends on how we focus our energy and our attention.
—Traits of Stress-Hearty, Resilient People

The past couple of days have been very low energy for me again, but my attention span has been doing just fine. I’ve been pondering my daughter’s statement that I might like the iPad better than my iPod. In fact I love my iPod, even though I don’t use it all the time. It’s great for checking the weather and its calculator is useful when Andy and I go to the store. I love the feel of it in my hand and the fact it’s small enough to easily fit into my pocket.

I did decide I would use it more for shopping lists if I bought myself a stylus. So I ordered a three-pack, and they do make texting a lot easier for me. And once I had a stylus I decided to see how the drawing app SketchBook works. I had already been looking into the program just in case I ever get an iPad, and have tried it on my Mac. It’s very intuitive and might be fun to use for general sketching/scribbling. So for $1.99 I bought the iPod version and checked it out:
 

 
It’s clearly more than adequate for my level of expertise.

The only problem is I prefer using a stylus instead of my finger (Steve Jobs hated styli and didn’t want people to use them) and as you can see from the pictures of the three styli above, the pink one is already worn down after only one session of scribbling yesterday afternoon. So I spent some time trying to find a stylus that has a longer tip life. There may be one type, the Nomad brush, that works for sketching and has a longer life, but I’ll have to see when it comes. In the meantime I found some videos showing how one can make one’s own stylus. I tried a couple of ideas, but they were slightly less than perfect. So if Nomad doesn’t come through I may have to get used to doing things Steve’s way—using my finger—or else simply go back to pencil and paper. That should work too.

At any rate, the subject has kept me amused the past couple of days, and that’s not to be sneezed at.

What have you been up to?

It turns out we weren’t all that sure what recessed lighting was, so we looked at some pictures on the internet, and I turned to one of our most valuable resources. I phoned my daughter.

She and Torben had installed recessed lighting in their house when they remodeled a year or so ago, so I asked her how she liked it. She immediately used her iPhone to send pictures of her kitchen with just the recessed lighting on (top picture), and all the lights, including the under cabinet lighting and hanging lights (bottom picture), so we could see for ourselves how effective the recessed lighting was. I love it, but Andy will make the final decision, based on how much of our solar-generated power it would take, etc. I’m relaxed. Thanks to Kaitlin, I’ve done my part. And am free again for a while.

It still blows me away how much she and Torben have helped, and how effective their iPhones are at immediately giving us the information we need. What are some of your precious resources?

 
Greg and John came up Tuesday to work a bit more on the solar panels. They continued wiring them up and also adjusted the angle for various times of year. The thing that tickled us the most was the demonstration of sunny winter days in New Mexico—it’s very warm in the sun but cool in the shade. The contrast was so extreme Tuesday that the snow and ice melted off the solar panels in the sun, then dripped down in the shade. The water refroze before it reached the ground. Incidents like this still tickle our funny bones, even after all these years.

It’s been an interesting week. I’ve been fighting off a cold since last Wednesday, and I haven’t had much appetite. That’s unusual for me and by this morning I was having trouble even drinking enough water and was clearly getting dehydrated.

So when Andy came home from the land we went down to our local Urgent Care. I’ve had good luck with them in the past and was lucky again today. They do plenty of business but we didn’t have to wait long and the doctor took all the time he needed. He didn’t try to jump to a conclusion and rush me out the door. We ended up deciding that I should try some anti-nausea pills and try to drink enough water to rehydrate myself. But he would gladly have given me a saline IV if I had preferred. He also said to be sure to get enough salt, something that wouldn’t have occurred to me. So I took a pill and have been munching on pretzels and drinking water. I wouldn’t say I’m back to normal yet, but it looks encouraging. I will definitely keep you posted.

I’m mainly grateful that Urgent Care is there if I need them. What about you? Do you have a resource like this? Whom do you go to when you need help?