One day while riding his Harley a biker ran into God.  After a bit, God asked what was the one thing in the world he would want ?  The biker thought for a moment and said; God, I would like a highway from California to Hawaii so that I can ride my Harley all the way.  God replied that it would be extremely difficult – 4,000 to 5,000 foot pilings and more.  So God asked, what his second wish would be?  The biker thought a little and said God I would like to know how women think and act.  God considered that request for a moment and replied, do you want two lanes or four!

Last Saturday, February 4th, would have been Byron Nelson’s 100th birthday.  In this week’s Golf World there is a great article entitled 1912 The Year Of The Giants but the lead on the cover is probably closer to correct The Greatest Triumvirate – Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of American golf greatest threesome.  Nelson along with Sam Snead and Ben Hogan were all born in 1912, Nelson in February, Snead in May and Hogan in August.  Between them the trio won 198 official PGA tour events.  By way of comparison Arnie Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus won a total of 159. The article is written by Curt Sampson who also wrote a terrific biography of Ben Hogan titled simply Hogan. Those who enjoy golf history will find both the article and Sampson’s book well worth reading.  The last paragraph in the Golf World article is particularly telling. Now a centruy after their births, we remember the Country Boys again.  And we wonder: Would Nelson, Snead and Hogan have succeeded with today’s no-spin balls and 460-cc driver heads? Oh my god, yes.  But it would not be easy. They’d still have to beat each other.

Sometimes you think you have heard it all and then a day like today comes along.  First we have an man in Florida who adopts his 42 year old girlfriend supposedly to protect some family assets. Somehow sleeping with your daughter, adopted or not, is a little weird.  Remember Woody Allen! Next we hear that Ron Paul has picked up a new endorsement in Nevada – the Prostitutes.  They’ve created a “Pimpin’ for Paul” program in which johns can donate money to the candidates campaign. Then comes a story about a special needs teacher in Florida that put hot sauce on the crayons so that her students would not put them in their mouth. And the beat goes on!

A new service for the iPad was just released.  It is OnLive Desktop.  OnLive Desktop brings   true Microsoft Office applications to the iPad.  I heard about it in this article, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577154840906816210.html?mod=djemptech_t, by Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal.  While there are other apps that handle MS Office documents on the iPad, Mossberg points out that OnLive does the job much better. You do not actually install the MS Office applications on your iPad, they run on OnLive’s servers. The really good news is that the service is free.  You have to sign up at http://desktop.onlive.com and once you receive confirmation you can upload documents to their server and create or edit MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint on your iPad. I will not bore you with all of the detail here as Mossberg does a much better job in his article but if you are looking for a better way – check it out.

Did you know that just because you spend the night in the hospital that your surgery or procedure may not be considered inpatient?  Also, did you know that the difference in Medicare reimbursement between inpatient and outpatient surgery is substantial?  Like the difference between $225.00 (inpatient) and a 25% copay (outpatient) which in my case amounted to the difference between the aforementioned $225.00 and over $2,000.00! I did however learn a new term – Outpatient with Observation. I was told that even if I spent two nights in the hospital my procedure would be classed, and billed, as outpatient. It made no difference that the surgeon told me ahead of time that I would be in the hospital for one night and that I did spend one night in the hospital.

A word to the wise if you are on Medicare (I do not know if other types of insurance make the same distinction but you should probably check), before you begin any elective surgery or procedure that occurs in the hospital, and where you will be in the hospital for one or two days, try to make certain that the surgery or procedure will be classed as inpatient if you can.That way you will not get the wake up call I received.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 30 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Here we go again – The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is recommending a total ban on the use of electronic devices by drivers.  There is no doubt that texting while driving is dangerous. But I have a difficult time with the logic that hands-free use of a cellphone is more dangerous than talking to the person in the front seat and I would suggest that hands-free cellphone use is less distracting than talking to the person in the back seat. (Every watch a driver tilt their head toward the back while talking to someone in the back seat?)

But those activities, hands free-cellphone use and talking to passengers, pale when compared to other activities that we routinely see on the road.  Let me begin with my all-time favorite – applying makeup or doing hair while driving. This is over the chart distracting as it requires the use of the hands, sometime both, and worse requires the driver to look in the mirror. How about someone dealing with unruly children in the back seat?  Or driving with Fido or some other pet in their arms?  Or reading while driving – that’s right it is not uncommon to see someone with a book or paper resting on the steering wheel while driving.  There are other activities that are probably more distracting than hands-free cellphone use – unwrapping the burger, eating, trying to clean the ketchup or mustard that you spilled on your shirt and I suspect that you can add a few of your own.

Another side of the hands-free issue is that it is unenforceable.  If the driver has nothing in their hands – using a Bluetooth headset or has their phone synced to their car – how is any law enforcement officer to know they are talking on their cell phone?  Few things erode our confidence in governing bodies than when they pass unenforceable laws and regulations. Texting while driving is already banned in many states, and I suspect that trend will continue.  But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Does it not make more sense for us to focus our efforts on all forms of distracted driving rather than an outright ban on hands-free cellphone use?

Generally speaking I shy away from first-time novelists but after reading the “Click to Look Inside” feature on the Amazon website I decided to give Hunter: A Thriller a try. While the author, Robert Bidinotto, is a first-time novelist he is an accomplished journalist and author and this work clearly demonstrates his skill. More about the author later. The protagonist in Hunter: A Thriller is Dylan Hunter a freelance investigative journalist with a past.  As the story progresses the many sides of Dylan Hunter unfold in some interesting and unexpected ways.  Fans of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher and Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp will find a lot to like here.  The supporting cast of characters, even some of the minor characters, are colorful and well developed by the author.  Wait until you read the description of Wonk, Hunter’s researcher.  Hunter’s developing love interest, and the other principal character in the novel Ann Woods, is a CIA agent making for some interesting tie-ins.  Another key character, Alexandria Virginia police Detective Cronin’s parting comment to Hunter “Stay the hell away from Alexandria” might provide more insight into the interplay here.

As noted earlier the author, Robert Bidinotto while a first-time novelist is an accomplished journalist and author and the following is from About the Author in the book.

Robert Bidinotto earned a national reputation as an authority on criminal justice while writing investigative crime articles as a former Staff Writer for Reader’s Digest. His famous 1988 article “Getting Away with Murder” stirred a national controversy about crime and prison furlough programs during that year’s presidential campaign. It was named a 1989 finalist for a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors.

Bidinotto is author of the acclaimed book Criminal Justice? The Legal System vs. Individual Responsibility, with a foreword by John Walsh of the “America’s Most Wanted” television show, and of Freed to Kill–a compendium of horror stories exposing the failings of the justice system. He drew upon this background and his personal experiences with crime victims to write HUNTER: A Thriller.

He received the Free Press Association’s Mencken Award in 1985 for “Best Feature Story,” and he has been honored by the National Victim Center and other victim-rights organizations for his outspoken public advocacy on behalf of crime victims. As a magazine editor, in 2007 he won the industry’s top honor for editorial excellence — the Folio Gold “Eddie” Award.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and you might want to give it a try. As a bonus you can read the first few chapters on the Amazon website before making a buying decision.  If you like the beginning the novel is available for the Kindle at $3.99 from Amazon and also in paperback. Remember, you can download the Kindle reader for virtually any device.

It’s been a little over 4 weeks since I installed Microsoft Windows on my MacBook Air and things are going well.  I did encounter a couple of issues, more about those a little later, but with the help of Parallels Technical Support they were quickly rectified. Parallels, as you may recall, is the program that allows running Windows along side of the Macintosh operating system without having to reboot to switch between programs in the two operating systems. This, by the way, has run smoothly and I always have programs from both operating systems in the Dock. It is easy to determine which are Windows programs as Parallels places two parallel, imagine that, red bars on the Windows programs.

One of the issues referenced above was with Outlook and the other with an add-in program for Outlook.  In Outlook if one uses the “Delete” key to clear an email the action kicks you to Contacts and does not delete the email.  The fix, one that Parallels Technical Support demonstrated, is to use “Command D” and this works fine. The add-in issue was with Send Individually – a program that I use to send emails to groups without either hitting my ISP’s “Spam” limit for one email or having to split the groups into smaller groups.  One call to Parallels Tech Support resolved the issue and I have experienced no problems since.  One of the key advantages to Send Individually is that each recipient only sees their name and email address.  No need to send it to yourself and use bcc. or other workaround.  If you use Microsoft Outlook and regularly send emails to groups I highly recommend this Outlook add-in.  By the way, Send Individually was one of the primary reasons that I decided to run Windows on my Mac. At this point, Sperry Software – the provider of Send Individually – does not have a version of the add-in for the new Outlook for the Mac and for me being able to send to groups from the MacBook Air was key. As an aside, I have heard that a version of Send Individually for Gmail might be in the works.

Everything else is working as advertised. As noted in an earlier post, the cost for Parallels and Windows was about $300. Had I not installed Windows on the MacBook Air I would have purchased the Mac version of Dragon Naturally Speaking for $100. However, when I purchased Naturally Speaking for the PC, I received a two machine license and was able to install the Windows version on the Mac reducing my overall cost costs for the project.

The MacBook Air made it’s first road trip over Thanksgiving week and take it from someone that has traveled many many miles with a laptop or notebook computer over the years, having this much capability in a three pound package is remarkable.  (I go back to the time when a 13 pound laptop was considered light.)  I was able to not only stay up-to-date and handle correspondence but also sent an email to one of my larger groups, As noted earlier Send Individually is one of the primary reasons that I wanted to run Windows on the Mac.  So no second thoughts either about purchasing the MacBook Air or the decision to install Windows.