murrays

I was done at 28. Glad I got that over with

James Brown just announced he has prostate cancer and will have an operation in 5 days. I saw him last night (Saskatoon, SK, Canada) for the first time and he and his band put on a great show. Best of luck and good vibes for the Godfather of Soul, Soul Brother #1, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business....Mr. James Brown!! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Congratulations! It ins't always easy but it is worth it in so many ways. (Since November 3, 1980 for me.) Blue skies, -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

What am I up to?...PM sent. It's top secret -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I would like to remove the coloured backgrounds from the Apple/iPod U2 Vertigo video which I have saved as a DV file. I tried making the coloured background transparent in Quick Time Pro but it doesn't clean off all the background...I guess that they aren't all one colour as they appear to the eye. Is there a fast and easy way to do this in Final Cut? I have a copy of Final Cut Express 2. I don't use it but if it can be used to do this I'll fire it up. Thanks

I see that Mozilla has just released the Thunderbird e-mail client. The article points out how it is less likely to allow bad things to happen to your system. For Windows, Linux and Mac. I downloaded the Mac version ...seems very nice. I had one piece of spam in my inbox and it flagged it immediately as junk. While you're at the Mozilla site, get a copy of Firefox, their internet browser. Another way to escape the troubles that come with using IE and Outlook. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Just imagine what Keith Moon (deceased drummer for The Who and notorious hotel room trasher) could have done with a chain saw or two! Banning them would have prevented Keith from performing his "art". -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I'm with you Viking, I Love the fresh ground black pepper!!! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

This Lindbergh quote about his first parachute jump is one I definitely remember from way back when: "A day or two later, when I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of exhilarated calmness. The thought of crawling out onto the struts and wires hundreds of feet above the earth, and then giving up even that tenuous hold of safety and of substance, left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through with fear. How tightly should one hold onto life? How loosely give it rein? What gain was there for such a risk? I would have to pay in money for hurling my body into space. There would be no crowd to watch and applaud my landing. Nor was there any scientific objective to be gained. No, there was deeper reason for wanting to jump, a desire I could not explain. It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man-where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane, where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant." Pretty much sums it up doesn't it... "existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant." Still looking for the other one... -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I think Roche Charmet is the correct spelling of the fellow who went in due to the belly band problem in Washington State. At the time he had more jumps than anybody else in the world...over 10,000. I believe that I recall the article in Skydiving said that he didn't have a twisted belly band but left the plane with the belly band unconnected and spent too much time trying to hook up his belly band rather than just pulling his reserve handle. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I am positive that I first saw this quote attributed to Lindbergh way back when I first started jumping. It was part of a description of Lindberg's parachute jumps. Could it possibly have been in Russ Gunby's "Sport Parachuting" book? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Bill, I would hope that you could find a way to give your logbook with your Canadian Altitude Record Jump to a Canadian that won't let CSPA forget that their record isn't the record. I don't know who that person might be but I have a few suggestions I would share with you in PM. Murray -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

As one Canadian to another, maybe you should understand that the gun registry hasn't saved one life and has wasted a billion dollars that could have been put to much better use. The gun registry has made criminals of many law abiding citizens of this country.... About a year ago I met up with some old retired guys I used to work with in my previous occupation. They all have had several guns all their lives for hunting....22's, shotguns, deer rifles. They asked each other if their guns had been registered...none of them had any intention of registering their guns. They are now criminals...and some of the finest citizens this country has. It's a shame the government has wasted all that money to make some people feel like something is being done to make them safer. Clueless. Absolutely clueless. btw - I'm not a gun owner. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Lost in Translation The Station Agent American Splendour -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

If you just want the web browser, get Firefox at mozilla. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

.Mac learning Centre It's been a long time since I set up my .Mac pages. Try that and I'll think about it a bit more. I have this feeling that the first page you set up becomes your default homepage and doesn't necessarily need to be named index.htm....but that might depend on if you are creating the pages and uploading vs. using Homepage to create the pages inside your web browser. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Lew, Good points on getting people to buy when they are revved up from the experience...sticking a business card with your Shutterfly web address in with the prints in case they want more couldn't hurt either. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Hey Lew, I use a Mac but I can read my Hotmail e-mail in my Mac e-mail client with the help of a little hack that somebody wrote. Try doing a search of the Windows programs on versiontracker.com and see if somebody has done something similar for Outlook....you'd think somebody has because the virus writers seem to be able to make Outlook do whatever the hell they want it to do. Edited to add: Here's a Versiontracker search for you...there are a few that should do the trick for you but all are shareware. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

I have my home iMac set up as an xGrid agent for a dude at Stanford that is doing some scientific work. It was very easy to join his group. I was just reading this article on the new features of Tiger (10.4). Do any of the Mac people out there know if the version of xGrid that will be coming out with the release of Tiger can be used by small workgroups for computationally intensive tasks? In particular, I am wondering if I will be able to attach my work iBook to my home iMac and have the rendering of DVDs done by two computers instead of just one....or even take my iMac to work and have all the Macs in the office work on the rendering. Anybody out there have any idea? -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

And, if you don't believe us, read this synopsis of the December Consumer Reports magazine that recommends the iMac G5. {Some clarification about Mac viruses....the 60 viruses mentioned affect only pre OS X mac operating systems. As FreeFlyDrew points out, there are NO viruses that affect the curent OS. None, zip, zilch.} Apple also tops the PC Magazine rankings for service and reliability. You get a machine that has the hardware, operating system and software all produced by the same manufacturer....and the result is increased reliability and usability. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Pop in more RAM...always the cheapest and best upgrade for any computer. 768 to a gig and you'll be fine. I use an iMac flatpanel G4-800 with 768 mb of Ram. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Our club's policy is that you are welcome to smoke out in the parking lot...preferably in your car with the windows rolled up. Never in the clubhouse near anyone's gear or lungs. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Nicholas, Do you have a high-res version of that shot that you could e-mail me? I remember seeing it years ago...very cool picture. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Yoshi, I have a 14" iBook at work. it's a great little machine. I'm with Lori in thinking that you'll be wanting a DVD burner (Superdrive in Mac parlance) in there. See how much more it would cost you to have a Superdrive instead of the Combo drive...I'm sure you'll be wanting to have one before too long. If it isn't possible to get a Superdrive, it isn't the end of the world. You weren't able to before but you can now create iDVD projects on an iBook or iMac without a Superdrive and then transfer the project to a Superdrive equipped Mac to burn the DVD. That machine has Panther 10.3 and should have the latest iLife versions of iMovie, iDVD, Garageband, etc. 768 mb of ram is good as is a 60 gb hard drive...although you'll be wanting more before you know it. You'll have fun with it!! -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

And you might be able to again. Which lead me to remember Blind faith and Stevie Winwood....and Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" with Stevie on vocals...one of my favourite songs of the 60's. -- Murray "No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey