A number of well known folks have written over the years something like "this is as long as it is because I didn't have time to make it shorter." I am as guilty as anyone in this regard - when I'm writing a post about something I know well I am frequently amazed at how long it ends up being, but almost never even think about rewriting it to make it shorter.

Could be worse. I wanted 1000 Microsoft for my Keogh plan, told my broker to get it in the IPO which I had expected to come out at $17, but he called and said it would be $20 and I passed. I try to remember that every time I start thinking I'm smart.

If he was part of a litter, where are his brothers and sisters? And where's Mom? It's never too early for family pictures, you know.

Is there such a thing as "supersonic" in the void of space? Asking for a friend.

My regular workout got cancelled - my trainer has a family event to attend today. So now that you've got me thinking about it . . .

Seems to me two planets are going to orbit a star the way they orbit the star, whether you can "calculate" their orbits or not. What is a calculation going to give you that observation won't?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a mathematician but have always been intrigued by the field. I can still do basic trig, and remember the underlying principle of integral calculus from high school (can't actually do the calculations, but frequently wonder how long it would take me to refresh my skills.) And while "unsolvable" problems are interesting things to think about, I have to wonder what difference a solution would actually make.

Be sure the replacement products they will offer are of the same quality as what broke. I dropped American Home Shield when it appeared they could just give me whatever met the basic specifications and anything better would be on me at the full MSRP difference.

I suspect it's because "Interstate" highways get Federal money for ongoing maintenance and improvement, where state and local roads don't. The "US Route XX" roads were just naming conventions agreed upon by a committee of state highway department representatives, so people could drive long distances without having to know the local name of each road they needed to take along the way. (It would be interesting to know if anybody ever compiled the local names of, for example, all the roads you had to take if you actually drove the 2000+ miles of "Route 66" from Chicago to LA before the signs went up in the 1920s - the original route, for example, used at least 7 different streets just to get through the City of St. Louis, then another road with 2 names to get through the politically-separate St. Louis County.)

The odd/even pattern for N/S and E/W highways was established when the "US Highway" numbering system was developed in the 1920s by agreement among the states (not by Federal action.) The interstates just picked up the same system for direction, but reversed the numbering order - US Highway numbers increase East to West and North to South, while Interstates are the opposite.

I seem to recall reading that the Constitutional excuse for making highways a Federal matter was National Defense - providing a network of roads adequate to move military men and equipment rapidly as needed. I think there is (or at least was) a requirement that there be 2-mile long straight flat sections of interstate at regular intervals that could be used as aircraft runways if needed.

It's a III. Max shutter speed 1/500, widely spaced rangefinder and viewfinder eyepieces on the rear, and rangefinder diopter adjustment tab concentric with the rangefinder eyepiece. My father had one from at least the early 1950s, maybe the 1940s (he was an audtor for Shell Oil before WWII, and regularly traveled with a steamer trunk for his clothers and a suitcase with an enlarger and developing tanks and trays for the darkroom he would set up in his hotel bathroom at night.) He gave to me the camera in the 1970s.

He bought me a (used) IIIc and Kodachrome film when I went away to summer camp in 1956. It had a max shutter speed of 1/1000, rangefinder and viewfinder eyepieces close together, and the rangefinder diopter adjustment was by a lever concentric with the rewind knob.

Neither of these models included any provision for flash. My father had a 2-piece adapter with a cam that attached to the rotating shutter speed dial, which tripped a trigger that fittted into the cold shoe. The flash connected to the trigger.

I kept both of those cameras until around 2010, when I decided my switch to digital was permanent and disposed of all my film camera and darkroom equipment.

Apart from the poor focusing (compared to equivalent Olympus bodies), the only downside I saw to the original G9 I had was the size. It was enough bigger to not fit comfortably in the small (compared to what I'd been carrying for full size Nikon equipment for 40+ years) bags I had bought for the Olympus EM-1 equipment I already had when I got the G9.

But if I can still do arithmetic correctly, it looks to me like the G9 II is 2.6mm NARROWER and 1.5mm SHALLOWER than the original G9. Only the 5mm of additional height is bigger, and that's less than 1/4 inch. I will be very interested to see how the new one fits in the Olympus-sized bags I still use, once I can get my hands on one. (The additional weight strikes me as little enough to pay for the additional performance that the new innards bring to the package.)

I wish my Lumix G9 had been able to focus reliably enough in relatively low light to capture my speedy grandchildren as well as my Olympus EM1-III. If a new one can do that I'll reconsider my choice of camera bodies, as I really liked the Lumix feel and menus.

I started using Safari when I switched to Mac computers ~12 years ago and appreciated its seamless integration with the Apple phone and tablet I used. But a couple of years ago it began erasing one of the bookmark folders from the Favorites bar. It was a folder that had several bookmarks that I used almost daily.

I could recover and restore the folder from a Time Machine backup, but nobody at Apple could explain why Safari was erasing it or how to stop it from happening. I finally got tired of the hassle, even after I'd done it enough that I didn't have to look up how to do it on the internet each time. I switched to Firefox, which I had used on my Windows boxes before the switch to Macs (I too am an old Netscape user) and have had zero problems since.

I've never used Chrome because I assume it somehow feeds every keystroke to Google servers, for eventual analysis and sale to others.

Make sure you don't spend a night alone in the same room with it . . .

That's a baseline condition to compete for a Darwin Award. If you want to play, you have to meet the standards, you know.