Things I Learned This Week

• I wrote an essay for publication yesterday.  It hit the Intertubes at noon today.  To publish an essay on one's blog, the author must first change the posting status to "Publish Now," not "draft."  Who knew?

• Money may not be the root of all evil, but it is the root of 99.9 percent of arguments between married couples.
  

• While updating software at work, I learned that glitches will convert productivity to nearly nil until one installs patches, converts old data files, and reboots Windows several hundred times.  My hair grayed from this effort.

• Libertarians appear disappointed with Barack Obama's presumed nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder.  Apparently, they believed that President-elect Obama would provide policies de-escalating the drug war and liberalizing marajuana laws.  While I (in the William F. Buckley mold) agree with the idea of decriminalizing marijuana (as prohibition of drugs causes similar violence without reducing demand just like prohibition of alcohol did in the 1920's), I highly doubted an Obama administration would be more permissive on drug laws.  One wonders if the libertarian Obama voters will be surprised if he increases government spending and taxes, too.

• Happy 150th birthday to my adopted hometown of Denver tomorrow.  Both the Post and the Rocky have special sections devoted to it.  Could those pioneers who created the settlement at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River know how prominent a city Denver would become in the years ahead?

• With Thanksgiving coming next week, my father-in-law and stepmother-in-law will visit from Ohio.  They plan to leave Saturday (likely after the Ohio State-Michigan game), and stay for the week.  I may ask my boss for overtime next week (just kidding).

• As I am the cook in the Civil Sense household, I am preparing Thanksgiving dinner using my mom's old recipes.  One of her recipes was for cranberry relish.  Oddly enough, the recipe was quite similar to a recipe from my in-laws.  I successfully combined those two recipes for past Thanksgiving meals, and as a thank-you to my readers, I will provide the recipe to you in case you wish to use it for your menu:

Cranberry Relish

24 oz. whole fresh cranberries (works best if berries are frozen first).
2 medium oranges, seeded and quartered
1 lemon, seeded
1 lime, seeded
2-2.5 cups sugar

Using a food processor, grind cranberries.  Put ground cranberries into a bowl.  Grate 1/2 of the orange, lemon, and lime rinds into bowl.  Peel and grind remainder of fruit into bowl.  Add sugar and mix.  Chill overnight.

by Civil Sense

Comments

[Doesn't Matter]

"While updating software at work, I learned that glitches will convert productivity to nearly nil until one installs patches, converts old data files, and reboots Windows several hundred times. My hair grayed from this effort." - And yet people that have gone through this experience multiple times will eagerly recommend Windows. Baffling.

[Civil Sense]

"And yet people that have gone through this experience multiple times will eagerly recommend Windows. Baffling."

My bosses can use Macs to run business software. Unfortunately, the technical software for the rest of the office does not run on Macintosh computers. I would be interested in a Mac, but I don't like the proprietary nature of Apple products in general.

At least we did not downgrade to Vista. I've had few problems with XP over the years.