Monday jottings

• How is my new computer?  The operating system is in Chinese which is a pain in the ass.  The laptop's touch pad mouse pad will take some getting used to: now, the display will zoom or shrink when I don't want it to because putting  two fingers on the pad will cause it to send magnification instructions.  This is meant to be like what can be done on the Ipad, but if one is used to not having this feature, as I did with my old HP Presario, one needs time to change one's mousing movements.  As well, the magnification operation works better on a touch-screen.  On the bright side, I can now  make blog entries in bed.
• I will spend the October holiday at my wife's hometown Beixin.  We will leave on the second and hopefully be back on the fourth of October.  I return to work on the sixth.
• I will endorse Herman Cain for President of the USA, for now.  Both John Derbyshire and Marc Levin, conservative commentators I like, have said good things about him.  Cain's major drawback is that he speaks sensibly which is a dangerous thing for a politician to do. It is a shame that he and other candidates like Michelle Bachman have been placed in the also-ran category.  A Perry-Romney final would be boring.  It would be like the Super Bowl morphing into the World Cup Final.
• The liberal political commentators I have listened to have finally admitted that Obama is no longer a vessel for hope.  However, they won't admit that Obama is man with stupid ideas.  Their biggest criticism of Obama is that he is merely weak-willed.  I suppose that hearing this criticism is a start.  Hell will freeze over before they also admit that Obama is inexperienced, over his head, ideologically stubborn, and a bore.
• Seven thirty five in the a of the m, I was startled by the sound of apartment decoration beginning.  The grinding of the machine, that put slots in the concrete walls for the piping, could be heard loud and clear from two floors below.
• I took night photos when Tony for an electric bike ride.  We stood on two bridges.  From one, we threw discarded bricks into the water; from another, we watched boat and freeway traffic.  You can see the photos in a previous entry.
• The Wuxi Metro, the official NFL fantasy football team of Wuxi China Expats, have a record of one win and two losses early in the season.  QB Aaron Rodgers has a poor supporting cast and a manager who has made poor roster decisions.
• One way to get a lot views on Youku, I have discovered, is to put on videos of our Takara TOMY train set.  This video, for instance, has garnered 3,000 views.  Here is the latest one that I have just uploaded.
• I talked to a student who had a four year old daughter and an Ipad.  His experience with the two things was eerily similar to mine.  The daughter spends two hours a night playing with the Ipad.  The wife watched movies on the Ipad.  The father never gets to use it.
• Another student, Sara, told me she worked as a financial analyst at Vanco China.  I thought she said the Bank of China, and for ten minutes, we had a conversation that was at cross-purposes.