Information Junkie

People involve themselves in countless activities which they consider to be important, but they forget about one activity which is more important and necessary than any other, and which includes all other things: the improvement of their soul. (Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, 6 April)

It would be terrrible to be an information junkie yet miss out on the Book that gives you the story behind the story, the book that has the answer to all man's social issues. (Kay Arthur, Search My Heart, O God, 8 April)

Improvement

A person can always improve himself. (Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, 13 March)

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. (Edward John Phelps in One More Day by Sefra Kobrin Pitzele, 6 April)

I shall not pass this way again;
Then let me now relieve some pain,
Remove some barrier from the road,
Or brighten someone's heavy load.
(Eva Rose York in One More Day by Sefra Kobrin Pitzele, 26 February)

Keeping Notes

Each country gets the government it deserves. This isn't a new thought, but ponder its implications. The people in Washington who run the government would as soon lie as breathe. They feel no obligation to tell the truth. That's what we deserve? What an indictment. ... (Andrew Frothingham and Tripp Evans, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, 2 April)

Until today, you may have made excuses for the unkept and incomplete areas in your life. Just for today, be devoted to acknowledging the things you have left undone, unsaid, and incomplete. Acknowledgment is the first step toward healing. (Iyanla Vanzant, Until Today! 1 April)

There's an old saying: only little children and old folks tell the truth. When you get real old, you just lay it on the table. (Bernie Delany in Faith in the Valley by Iyanla Vanzant, p. 119)


A New Way to Keep Notes On My Laptop

I've been thinking about how I could eliminate the clutter of all the PostIts and other scraps of paper I have lying around. The desktop is always a mess and I can never find the note I need when I need it.

In the past I used the SideKick program and the AskSam program for note keeping. I no longer have either program installed on a computer. I thought about downloading a note keeping program or buying one. I decided I didn't want to spend any money and I didn't want to learn how to operate another program. I wanted to devise a low-cost (or no-cost) way to keep notes using the tools already available.

Today I came up with a simple no-cost solution to the problem.

Under the "My Documents" folder I created another folder, "My Notes." In this folder I can store text files where I keep notes. For example, to get started I created files named: Deaths; Genealogy, and Misc.

On my desktop there is an icon for "My Documents." When I double click on the icon a list of folders and files stored under "My Documents" displays. One of the folders is "My Notes." Clicking on "My Notes" displays all of the "text" files saved in the "My Notes" folder.

Clicking on the "Search" button of the toolbar displays the search dialog box. The "Look In" box is already displaying the path to the "My Notes" folder. To search for a word in all of the files all I have to do is type the word I'm looking for into the "Containing text:" box and click the "Search Now" button.

The search results display to the right of the search dialog boxes as a list of the file(s) where the search term appears. When I click on a file name the file is opened in my text editor, EditPad Lite which can then be used to search for words within the file if I can't spot the term I want to find.

Mr. Dickie

Stop and Try to Remember

After a long conversation, stop and try to remember what you have just discussed. Don't be surprised if many things, sometimes even everything you have discussed, were meaningless, empty, and trivial, and sometimes even bad. (Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, 16 February)

Once our appetites are out of control, we cannot stop, not even when the pleasure has turned to pain. (Food For Thought, 4 March)

A fool draws his sword aimlessly and is prone to cut himself to death. (Iyanla Vanzant, Acts of Faith, 27 February)

• One of my SanDisk Cruzer thumb drives came with the HP Photosmart program installed. I was able to get this U3 technology program to execute on my laptop computer. This was the first program of this type that I was able to run. I was familiar with the program because I have another copy of the program installed on the laptop itself.
• I discovered that the Google Documents option can write a PDF file. I did a test. I created a PDF and then sent it to myself via Email. That worked and I saved the file on the laptop. The nice thing about this service is that it's free and there aren't any ads in the document.
• In the Weekend section of The Washington Post I found more interesting sites to visit in Washington, DC. Many of them were listed with URLs. I posted those to my AOL Favorites. I'll add them to my Delicious bookmarks later on.
• I've been asking my cousins to answer some genealogy questions. I'd like to bring my personal genealogy file up-to-date. Sometimes it takes several messages to get all of the information I like to record. Genealogy is a tedious hobby.
• This afternoon Cyndi returns from her vacation in Panama. I'll pick her up at Washington National after 4:00 p.m. It's a long flight with a stop over in Atlanta.

Mr. Dickie

A New Beginning

What reward should a good deed bring you? Only the joy you receive by performing it. And any other reward lessens the feeling of this joy. (Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, 3 March)

The deeds of a person become his life, become his fate. This is the law of our life. (Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, 12 March)

You will find that people unwilling to work will either take advantage of others or be humiliated by them. (Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom, 5 April)

Let today be a new beginning of identifying and releasing all negative beliefs and embracing only those thoughts and beliefs which serve your highest self. (Susan Smith Jones, Choose to Live Each Day Fully, Day 90)

People Will Forget

People will forget what you said.
People will forget what you did...
But people will never forget how you made them feel.
(Anonymous in 365 Ways to Change Your Life by Suzanne Somers, p. 107)

Intuition is the spiritual faculty that does not explain, it simply points the way.
(Florence Scoval Schinn in Acts of Faith by Iyanla Vanzant, 6 April)

A democracy is not a place where every man has a right to do what he likes; it is a place where people enter into a fellowship in which the watchword is not independent isolation but interdependent togetherness.
(William Barclay, The Letter to the Corinthians, p. 295)

• Yesterday I worked outside making up a container of potting mixture. We buy three ingredients in bulk: spangham peat, perlite and vermiculite. I sift the peat to remove debris. Then I mix two parts peat with one part perlite and one part vermiculite. If I have charcoal, egg shell and lime available I throw in a little bit of each. Each time I make the mixture I fill up a large plastic bin.
• I completed my project to post on Delicious the URL's of places to visit in Baltimore, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC. I used the tag "sightseeing" with each posting. I included websites for transportation too: the DC Connector, the Tourmobile and the Metro. There are 68 postings in all. Anyone coming to Washington, DC can access my Delicious account to quickly locate the websites of places I recommend. I must admit that I have yet to visit all of them myself. Three I'd like to visit are: the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, the Postal Museum and the new Marine Corps Museum.

Mr. Dickie

Plants in Bloom

You cannot fix what you will not face. (James Baldwin in Acts of Faith by Iyanla Vanzant, 31 March)

Where the mind goes the behind follows. (Randolph Wilerson in Acts of Faith by Iyanla Vanzant, 29 March)

Speaking affirmations of life and healing aloud and silently reading them are important ways for me to help myself to remain healthy and also to heal. (Colleen Zuck, et al., Daily Word For Healing, p. 68)

• Melva has many plants in bloom right now. In the dining room the poinsettias continue to look like it's Christmas. There's also an orchid and a white Christmas cactus in bloom. In the basement, under the lights a beautiful red-orange amarylis is so heavy with three or four flowers that it's falling over. Outside the jonquils and the hyacinths in the garden plot near the kitchen window are in bloom.
• Yesterday I posted some URLs for Baltimore tourist attractions to Delicious. I plan to continue this project. I have other URLs for MD, VA and DC ready to post.

Mr. Dickie