It's News to Me

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The phrase «television worth watching» is almost an oxymoron nowadays, but this week PBS is airing «The War,» a documentary about World War II co-produced by the team of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.  Last night, I saw the first of the seven installments and that was enough to convince me that it is worth my time to watch this documentary.  If you'll visit this link you can click on «PBS Previews: The War» to see a 26:49 minute overview of the series, giving a glimpse of its goals and some insights about the making of the documentary, and if you bother to watch that 26+ minutes worth of introduction, I'm confident you too will be inspired to watch the series.  The next installment is presented here in the Eastern Daylight Saving Time Zone tonight at 8 PM on the local Public Broadcasting Station.  For more information about the series, you can check this PBS web site.

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I've already given this idea to the on-duty manager of the grocery store where I shop but she probably filed it under looney ideas gleaned from talkative old men in the checkout line and did little or nothing else with it, so I'm offering it to any of my programmer friends who might want to make a name for themselves and in the process create a useful tool for crazies like me who look for innovative ways to use our Internet connection.  I, like most everybody else and maybe even you, dutifully hand the cashier my «value card» as he or she is about to ring up my purchases so that I can get the discounts that accrue from having given them my name and address and having allowed them to tag me with a unique Customer ID.  They use it, among other things, to print out a listing of the items I have purchased that day, neatly categorized into sections like Produce, Package Meat, Grocery, Frozen Food, Dairy, Candy/Gum, etc., and at the conclusion of that listing they announce that Your Savings Today was $7.48 on my most recent (9/16/07) expenditure of $56.66.  I walk away, informed and satisfied that it could have been at least $7.48 worse.

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Back on July the 8th, a Saturday morning, I decided it was time for me to stop committing suicide by sitting (TM) and set aside a regular hour during which I would commit to getting some exercise.  I chose walking.  Believing that scheduling a time for the activity might make it more likely I'd notice that I should be doing some form of exercise at that time, I set the hour between 8 AM and 9 AM as my designated hour for exercise.  Since then, I've been quite pleased that during the ensuing two months I've kept up the walking through my neighborhood with good regularity.  (I've missed walking on only two days in the last 62.) 

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Jerry Pounds has tagged me to participate in the meme that he wrote about yesterday that he called «A Favorites List.»  I received a phone call from him, in which he urged me to answer the same set of questions about myself that he answered, and I agreed.  I don't go looking for these meme-type blog entries as do some of my blogging acquaintances, like Tish who says she enjoys them, but since I don't get many requests for specific posts here at my blog, I thought I'd comply with Jerry's request.  So hang onto your hat or hold your nose, whichever seems appropriate, because here are my answers.

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Just to update those of you who pay occasional attention to this web site, I'm now back after taking a month off from blogging. Also today marks 90 smoke-free days. With each passing day not smoking my pipe becomes easier, but lest I be complacent, I know that the only thing that matters is not smoking today. So I continue in my resolve to remain smoke-free today.

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