Music you need

I haven’t checked out the store yet (I mostly use PC’s, but don’t tell anyone) but I agree that there is a great market for one hit wonders and singles. There was a time when albums didn’t really mean much and it was just singles. And some artists and types of music are just better suited to singles. When I find a good album, I’ll buy it, but it has to mean something as whole or have a lot of good songs on it.

Here are some of my very favorite album fragments (in one folder, so they’re alphabetical):

Continue reading “Music you need”

Palming the Internet

A few years ago our office bought 10 Palm V’s. Over the years any number of horrible things have happened to them. Recently one was sat on breaking the screen. Another, I just found out, hasn’t been used in many months because “it doesn’t work right”. I asked to take a look at it. One problem I noticed pretty quickly was that if you do a soft reset the digitizer loses its calibration and you’ll never be able to recover without a hard reset which will open with the digitizer calibration (and wipe out everything).

So I searched on the internet and found a neat piece of (free!) software called DigiFix from www.copera.com that will reset your digitizer to your settings on a soft reset and can also be assigned to a hard key so that it is always available if something else goes wrong (similar thing could be done by assigning Welcome to a hard button, but this recovers settings automatically).

Another problem seems to be the battery won’t hold a charge. So I need a new battery but it is sealed inside the case. I don’t want to pay to do this, but if I could transfer the good battery in the Palm with the broken screen to the one with the bad battery so I go looking for that and find detailed instructions and pictures!

And just as a bonus, I find a place that will sell an original hard case for a Palm V/Vx for only $5 and a stylus that converts to a pen for $5 (plus $4 shipping.)

A Republic is a Democracy

Democracy is when people have equal votes. But in the US it wouldn’t be practical to have all 280 million people vote on every single law. So we elect representatives to do the voting on our behalf. Those representatives are US, state, county, and city congressmen, mayors, commissioners, etc. They are all elected to pass the laws so that citizens don’t have to worry about learning about every law.

This system is called a representative democracy or “republic”. The system itself is still considered to be a democratic system, but the form of government is called a republic. That’s why the pledge of allegience says “and to the republic for which it stands”. If you look at the definition of democracy (below) it says that a democracy is through the people directly or through elected representatives. So the US is a democracy and a republic. But a lot of know-it-alls will correct people who say that the US is a democracy and say we are not a democracy but a republic. In fact, we are a democracy.

Here’s what my dictionary says:

democracy (d??-m??k??re-s??) noun plural democracies

1.” Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives.

2.” A political or social unit that has such a government.

3.” The common people, considered as the primary source of political power.

4.” Majority rule.

5.” The principles of social equality and respect for the individual within a community.

republic (r??-p??b??l??k) noun Abbr. rep., Rep., Repub.

1.” a. A political order whose head of state is not a monarch and in modern times is usually a president. b. A nation that has such a political order.

2.” a. A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them. b. A nation that has such a political order.

3.” Often Republic. A specific republican government of a nation: the Fourth Republic of France.

4.” An autonomous or partially autonomous political and territorial unit belonging to a sovereign federation.

5.” A group of people working as equals in the same sphere or field: the republic of letters.

The American Heritage?? Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright ?? 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from InfoSoft International, Inc. All rights reserved.