The air conditioner has been replaced, it works great, and I paid what I expected, a little over $1400, including the initial diagnosis; i.e., the cost of replacing the compressor. So that’s that. Time to move on to whatever coming’s next.
Lurking in the Shadowlands
I have the book by Brian Sibley, the BBC movie based on his original play is waiting to be watched, and on Friday my favorite (excuse me, favourite) radio station, BBC Radio 2, begins airing Ian Richardson’s serialized reading of Shadowlands. We Yanks will have to hope the installments appear on the listen again link.
Saturday note: “Audio stream is unavailable at this time” is what it says here.
It’s working! Go and listen now at that link above.
Jonathan and Darlene Edwards
Considering Jo Stafford’s stellar career and her versatile singing talent, it’s somewhat ironic that she won her only Grammy for a comedy record. Jonathan and Darlene Edwards were the alter egos of Jo and her husband Paul Weston. They were a dreadfully earnest — or earnestly dreadful — lounge act, with Jo’s perfect pitch helping Darlene with her tin ear utterly destroy songs with stunning off-key precision.
You’ll find a wonderfully awful collection of Jonathan and Darlene here on MySpace. The link to Jo’s label, Corinthian Records, is wrong. Use this one instead.
Signing Off On Exactly
I just heard a story on the radio where the news anchor and a reporter said “sign off on” back and forth half a dozen times. Where did this, and saying “EX-actly”, come from? They’re everywhere today.
Instead of saying “he signed off on the agreement” why not just say “he signed the agreement”? And is there no word other than “exactly” that springs to mind when agreeing with someone?
At least these two turns of phrase came into the vernacular spontaneously. Others are manufactured — for example, the Rovian “boots on the ground”. I really dislike the use of that expression. Will Rovian become a descriptive term like Machiavellian?
P.S. One current expression I like, and enjoy using is, “What’s up with that?”
Jo Stafford Videos
Back on Jo Stafford’s 90th birthday I posted a humorous video of her on the Steve Allen Show. YouTube has some more appearances of Jo, including the very funny “Tim-Tayshun,” and I’ve assembled them into a playlist.
Tech Trouble Quiz
I’m still, can you believe it, pulling stuff from my old tower PC onto my new mini-tower PC. We’ve been having lots of thunderstorms lately, so I’ve been good about turning off my computer before leaving the house or going to bed, because the battery in my uninterruptable power supply is just about played out.
Tonight I couldn’t start my PC. Dead battery in UPS, but that’s OK because I paid only $12 for the thing (thanks, tastewar, how long ago was that?), and it’s worked well until recently. The UPS wouldn’t turn back on, so I moved the PC plug over to the surge protector side of the unit.
I powered up the PC and logged onto my account. Within moments the computer shut itself down. Huh. Did it again and it powered itself off again. Ah. Of course. I powered it up again but got into safe mode. I ran a Windows utility program and changed something. Then I restarted Windows, logged onto my account and it was fine.
What did I change to fix the problem? tastewar will know the answer, I’m sure.