Isn't change wonderful?

First, a bit of housekeeping.

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, as Samuel Clemens once proclaimed. I have good days and bad days in dealing with personal health problems. On the bad days, I don’t want to even hear mention of a computer. The evil ritual of chemo-therapy kicks in, and it includes nausea and headaches that are intensified by trying to look into a monitor screen. On the good days, what’s left of my mind is so alive with topics I think need to be addressed that nothing gets written because of simple sensory overload.

The F-22 Raptor is described as the last generation of human-piloted fighter aircraft. This remarkable airplane has onboard governors to restrict its performance in order to protect its valuable human cargo, i.e. the pilot. Similarly, there is a kind of ADD [Attention Deficit Disorder] that applies to those of us who use the Internet as more than a forum for cruising porn sites.

I am most grateful to the founders of Google™ for this blog, and their idealism that allows it. I recently learned more about the origins of Google™ on the Discovery Channel™. (I love typing in that ™ thingy, but I ain’t gonna do it no more hereabouts.)

At the same time, my gratitude is somewhat leery. Google hosts a plethora of enterprises. They started from nowhere, with nothing, as did Bill Gates and the Microsoft monster. Google is to be congratulated in the corporate world as a David who beat down Goliaths.

That having been said, I personally despise Google. One of their enterprises—Picasa—destroyed 27 files on my computer when I attempted to sign onto their photo-share site so I could use certain photo images on this blog. Instead, the Picasa program cherry-picked my files, and destroyed 27 files outright in what was described online as a “picture search”. The graphics went from my computer into Google’s online Hell, and were never seen again.

I attempt to supplement my modest disability income with contract, custom work that involves Adobe PhotoShop™. I work with a huge number of graphics files, and I will never forgive Picasa/Google for destroying my files. It has taken a year to rebuild them, and I am not finished yet.

Now Blogger is gearing up for something they’re calling "Google Beta™". I am praying they leave this blog alone. I had to jump through many hoops to recall this site as the original United Possums. I don’t know that I have the energy to fight them again.

Change in all things is inevitable. They say that this is especially applicable with computers, about every 18 months, so I’m about three years overdue for an upgrade. I can’t afford a new Dell; the old one works well, and I just want to keep typing. I use an older version of Microsoft Word to set these posts up; it’s the “can’t teach an old dog new tricks” mentality.

Google™ may or may not kill this modest blog. Besides cherry-picking my photo files with Picasa™, they are allied with Al “Hot Planet” Gore, so I don’t trust them.

Otherwise, as long as I retain my tiny share of bandwidth and my Constant Readers, we’ll soldier on.