How to Cut and Paste Using Keystrokes

I write this simply because a new Facebook friend is one of those individuals that is smart but doesn't grasp the concept easily in a chat window in the online game we play together. I posted a URL address in the chat window and the game chat window has no direct link to the Internet so you must copy it and paste it into a browser to use it. She chose to write it down and enter it manually.

It’s not that she doesn't want to learn but she would rather see it done, have someone phone her and tell her how it is done or watch a video. Well she lives a long way away geographically, did give me her phone number but I am sort of cheap and a little shy about calling her long distance and am not really a good video guy so I will explain it with the help of some of the members of my team that make up my unique personality.

So take it away Terry the Teacher and Chuckie the Computer Geek.

…thank you Raymond
…Raymond the Writer, of course. Who else do you think it would be?
…The task is really quite simple and involves using the mouse, the left mouse button and a few simple key strokes. Chuckie please explain the details.

…thank you Terry
…First you move the mouse cursor to the left side of the text you wish to copy and then depress the left mouse button and drag over all the text
…next you depress the Ctrl key and the c key at the same time which will copy the highlighted text to the Windows clipboard
…having done that you now move the mouse pointer to the place where you wish to paste the text such as the search line in your Internet browser for a url address, as an example
…next you paste the text by depressing both the Ctrl key and the v key which takes the contents of the clipboard and pastes it to its new location
…the text remains in the clipboard until it is replaced by a new copy action or you shut off your computer

…thank you Chuckie
…calm down Lorenzo
…Oh I see you think Queenie is a “hermosa zorro”
…Lorenzo the Lover is Spanish and kind of old
…thank you for your attention and class is now dismissed
…Have a wonderful day!

…WTF I can’t paste this to blogger
…doh the Internet connection went offline for some reason
…I don’t know why.
…all computers are female anyway. They do what they want when they want.

…Infinity the Internet explorer found that spectacular picture of the hermosa zorro and borrowed it on behalf of the team.

Bozo Makes Sense of This Madness

Well maybe not to some of you out there, but I will attempt to make the titles more relevant to this blog and make searching for them much easier than before.

And I Can Fix Your Golf Swing would become Bozo Can Fix Your Golf Swing since he worked for years at a golf course that had lots of folks who did not play so well.

And Mentors - Take 3 would now become Bozo’s Mentors – Take 3 since they are very personal thank you’s  to people who made an impact on his individual development and he just wants to acknowledge that in print.

And some would remain the same like Laughter is an Instant Vacation which is still a personal take on the subject matter but is better left alone as a title.

Now I am not going to back to rewrite all the titles and am not really sure if blogger lets you do that so I will start doing that today.

...thanks Tanya, I got to play extra-long last night because of you
...it was morning you bozo
...play nice kiddies
...nice trick Maverick, you got them looking at other stuff
...I tink I am gonna’ make da Green Eggs and Ham but I call dem green heggs en am

...spellchecker is going crazy right now
...they are soooooo confused lmao
...getting a lot of folks saying WTF
...watch your language, this is a family show
...sing it Sheryl
...all I wanna’ do is have some fun

That will all be explained in the next post yet to be written but see if you can guess which members of the team are talking there.

Time to Stop Singing National Anthems before Sporting Events

I just don't know how many times I can write about this subject, but being a person with some musical talent, I just hate to see/hear songs butchered in public. And so tonight I was watching a NASCAR event and fortunately I missed the latest “The Voice/American Idol” version due to a much needed nature call. After that race, TSN happened to be showing a Canada/USA lacrosse match no doubt since it must have been a slower than normal Saturday night for sports.

So this guy gets up and starts to butcher not one, but two National Anthems putting his own twist into two songs that were written to be sung only one way—the original way. So, in my opinion, if no one is going to stay true to the song, then it is time to stop slaughtering these songs. If you can’t do it in the way it was intended, well I just don't want to hear it. It isn’t much different than listening to someone singing off key in a drunken stupor at the local karaoke bar (which I never go to on purpose) which is a great way to punish someone for a criminal offense, in my opinion.

Enough is enough already. Just get on with the game. Forget about all those meaningless opening ceremonies that take way too long and only feature the sponsor’s family for purposes of getting them on television. What is wrong with the entertainment business today? Don’t you get enough money to not have to punish us for watching the event? Please stop. Pleeeeeeaaaase!!!!!

Life Truths 2

Since there are a lot of these topics, I decided to keep each blog post to just 6 or less stories to make it more Internet friendly since folks don't seem to read on much here and only older folks read books a lot anymore it seems. (Yep another life truth there).

If You Need a Nap, Watch Baseball or NASCAR

Either works really well for me and I think it has to do with how long both events are on TV—very long. It is hard to watch it for that length time and there is a kind of drone that both have that is what lulls me to sleep. They are totally different events when seen live at the venue. Napping at a live baseball game is certainly possible but I doubt it happens much at a NASCAR race without the assistance of a lot of brown pops!

In baseball, it is the announcers filling in the slowness of the game with not so useful information like “Bubba Jones is the only player in baseball to have 100 singles, jock itch and hit left-handed all during his wife’s pregnancy. Maybelle and child are doing well and, I am told, are among the fan-faithful at today's game.” Baseball is the only sport I know that is suitably slow enough for fat guys to play and usually they get to play first base.

In NASCAR, there are two things that drone steadily to lull you to sleep. Seems the cars are really all the same with slightly different front ends and head covers on the engines with different nameplates so they can’t pass each other easily and go round and round in a single line for most of the race (unless the “Big One” happens which is what most people want to see happen). And then there is the drone of the “Good Ole Boys” that get the job of colour commentary in the booth after their days behind the wheel or in the pits are over. “Bubba Jones is the only driver in NASCAR to come from Smalltown, Alabama, won 10 Sprint Cup races and have jock itch all durin' his wife’s pregnancy. Maybelle and the baby are doin' just fine and we saw them in the pits earlier today.” (A guy from the south would say won so don't try to correct my grammar, boy).

I never worry too much about missing what has gone on in either event because Sports Centre does such a great job of covering the important details of each in the nightly wrap up session and each gets about 30 seconds max to do so, unless the NASCAR race had a Big One. (I think the spelling of centre and colour should be enough for you to figure out that I am not an American since I am Canadian and quite proud of it, thank you very much)

You Don't Walk the Dog; the Dog Walks You

Any dog owner already knows this. The dog will let you know when it is time for it to go outside and do its thing and you will be taken on a journey of its choosing. And, of course, you will get the joy of cleaning up after it when it smiles back at you and wants you to comment on how good a boy or girl the pup was. It seems that the grocery store plastic bag has a double function for all dog owners and at least two are mandatory provisions for the dog’s latest trip outdoors.

You will be graciously acquainted with every tree, fire hydrant, lamp post and any other place that one of its many breeds used as a marking spot for “Hey I was here first”. And if they were, in fact, not first here, “Well it’s my spot now!” I often wonder if a lot of humans think that way as well about their space.

Life Truths

(Life Truths is a series of shorts about interesting life experiences)

There are a lot of situations or experiences in life that you will have that are good things, good practices or just plain old common sense like the concept that one of my favourite comedians ever talked about, the late great George Carlin.

The Hot Water Heater

Simply stated, it is incorrectly named. Why in the world would you heat water that is already hot? It should be called a cold water heater since you are heating it from the state of cold to make it hot. And so the wise folks out there just call it a water heater and that takes care of that!

Well I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on Life Truths as I see them in the spirit of George (I think he was wiser than most gave him credit) and these are things that have just crossed my path over the many years.

Owning a House

You do not own a house; the house owns you, even if the bank doesn’t still own most of its monetary value. On weekends, do you get to rest and enjoy the house? Nope, cut the lawn, stain the deck, trim the trees, plant some flowers so you have more stuff to do on the weekends to keep up with the house’s needs. And vacuum the rooms you don’t use very often and move stuff to the garage that you really don’t need (the stuff, not the garage) but the house likes lots of stuff.

Work two jobs, or both parents work and ignore the kids needs to keep up with the mortgage payments and the maintenance of the house because it just likes to sit there and rot, mostly. Ever hear of a house that gets better over time on its own? It needs constant attention or it goes all crazy and gets condemned in the long run. (It’s kind of like some comedians out there. George did do a piece on advice to serial killers which I though was a little over the top. They don’t need any help, they are already really crazy).

And the house can be hard on your health if you don’t keep up with its demands so I got rid of mine. (I am single so I could do that. I know that is not too practical for a family with children). Took the money from the equity generated in the sale (aka the money tied up in the house which the bank wants me to keep paying the mortgage on for longer that the life of the house) and so I rent now and invested the rest into mutual funds and get a good enough return to live off of that and my paltry pension. So now a house will never own me again and I feel way better for that. Why do other people push you so much to buy a house? Maybe they need you to share their misery.

The World is Full of Crazy People

Your job is to avoid interaction with those folks as much as possible and keep them out of your circles and that of your family. They are everywhere on Facebook now and you can quickly figure out how to use the Unfriend option in that program.

There are people that poke holes in their faces, stick objects in those holes and then tattoo their faces and wonder why no one will hire them so they go on welfare.

There are people that beat their babies with pillows and other nut-jobs that film the person doing this shameful act. (How can a mother hurt her own child?)

There are people that will try to get you fined for collecting rain water on your property in a climate that has a lot of rainfall, but they will not fine the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas (in a desert) for wasting thousands of gallons of water daily to allow their tourist attraction to spit it into thin air numerous times a day and every day except when it gets windy I think. They will fine you for flying your countries flag on your house. You will recognize these folks as the government.

There are people that will try to take your money because they are too lazy to do the actual work to earn money and they will do this on the Internet too for the curious but not so bright people that will open an attachment to an unsolicited email and wonder why their bank account is being hacked and why they have all this junk on their computer now.

There are folks that will text message while driving or walking and wonder why they got into an accident since they had their face buried in their cell phone instead of paying attention to what they should be doing.

And you think your wi-fi is slow

There are a "gazillion" would be daredevils that get featured in YouTube posts showing complete and utter failure of their ill-planned adventures and it makes you wonder what under-performing gene pool reared those not-ready-for-Mensa-time players. Several of them may not be able to foster children after the outcome of their various misadventures which, judging by their actions, is not such a bad thing.

And the list can go on for ever really and use up your entire disk space and that of everyone else within Wifi range of a computer to cover all the crazies that are out there. Crazy is consistent with not all of it being there as well so avoid those folks, too.

Might be wise to avoid folks who need this kind of help

So your job is to find those folks out there that are not crazy and keep them close in your circle so the likelihood of you becoming crazy is greatly reduced, not halted altogether, just slowed down for now because it is more difficult to keep one’s sanity now with all the information we get thrown at us each and every day. Good friends are the rarest of prizes in today’s I-me-mine state of mind world.

Poker Teaches You More Than Just How to Play Cards

The best poker players can play the game of Texas Hold ‘em with just about any two cards, since they rely more on how they read the opponents at the table than the actual cards. There is a better time and place to use these skills and the wise player knows when to pull the trigger.

Calling a player’s bluff in poker is very much like calling the bluff of the local schoolyard bully who exists in many places now including the Internet. If you play enough war games online, you will most definitely run into that type of player and they are of all ages.

Another important lesson you learn in poker is patience. It is better to attack the other players at the table with the best hand known as “The Nuts” and setting that up properly is a key element of the game. If you only force the issue when you have strong hands, your opponents will simply fold which results in a very poor pot and you are not gaining any ground with that play.

Poker is really just another form of negotiation and anyone who uses that in their day to day work can learn more from playing poker. And that is just about everyone out there since you negotiate with your spouse, your parents, your children, your friends, your teacher, etc. etc.

The Family Get Together

“…only thing i dont like about family get togethers is the family part”. That is an exact quote I got from one of my playing friends in an online war game that we share and chat on. I call those triggers as they are great thought provokers for a writing topic.

What he is implying is that it seems his family is a lot like mine in that the get togethers are, more often than not, just a large “bitch session” and one gets very tired of those so the sooner the event is over, the better you feel when they depart.

The message he wants to convey is that it would be soooooooo much better if you talked about positive things and made every one laugh and be happy with your conversations and insights that you bring to the group. A family should be a support group and there is not much to be gained with a frequent rush of negative waves. Like my mother said, “If you have nothing good to say, then maybe you should say nothing”. She was a lot wiser than her brothers and sisters gave here credit for and she was a good role model for me.

“Oh you have to leave (thank goodness). Don’t make it so long between visits (every 10 years is Ok by me). See you real soon (I certainly hope not)”. I think a lot of us have heard this upon leaving a family get together and have also felt the feelings represented inside the brackets. Make the most of your family get togethers by trying to practice the positive messages written here. Park the negative crap!!

It’s Hard to Find a Good Boss

In all my years of life spent working for a boss, it became totally clear that not all bosses are well-equipped to be your boss. I would think 50% of them were just plain old a$$holes (yes driven by money and ego only); another 25% or so tried but they just didn’t have what it takes to do the role successfully and maybe the other 25% were just outstanding. I wish I was smart enough then to recognize that the last group would be so rare and that maybe I should have stayed in that job longer. The problem is the really good ones get promoted, move on or just retire and you also get caught in the trap of yourself getting promoted or move to another company.

Too many people get the role of boss solely based on a measurable numeric rate of performance in their previous position, like highest sales dollars. Most sales managers are just really good salesman who get the promotion and have absolutely no ability to manage people. The really should have stayed in sales where they achieved success. Maybe training and an aptitude for management might be in order but that costs more money that most companies just don’t want to spend.

A great boss is a great motivator and knows enough to leave you alone and let you do your thing which results in their department exceeding all expectations. A great boss knows when to discipline in a subtle and controlled manner and never tears a strip off of a subordinate whether that person works for him or her or another manager. A good boss is a mentor for you and will pass on many sound ideas and concepts that you can put into practice and often co-workers who have been through the paces for years are also great mentors.

So if you have a good boss, recognize it for what it is (rather rare) and do your best to keep them in that position for as long as possible because a good boss is not for forever. Trust me a “bozo” is likely to get the position when they are no longer your boss.