Regarding Technical Difficulties And Good Ideas

I've been hamstrung by technical difficulties lately, and I don't want to spend much time writing about them. But I think I should mention that they have been the only reason for my recent net-silence. I'm not depressed or retiring or anything. I've just been stuck.

I've had one machine that couldn't network, and another that could network but wouldn't let me type. For a while my best option was typing on one machine and moving the files to the other with a flash card, but then my flash card malfunctioned. Or at least that's what one of my computers said. But the other one said the flash card was ok ... and it turned out that there was something else wrong with one of the computers... It's been that kind of week, or two! Arggh.

So my most recent post, "Seven Years Of Bad Luck", was composed rather than written, using the mouse but not the keyboard. I copied and pasted Stevie Wonder's lyric, which I found with no apostrophes in the contractions. So I copied an apostrophe from a different page, and pasted it in between the letters wherever it was needed.

I added the photos with a mouse and I added links that way too. And each line in the lyric was linked to a recent WP story about 9/11 or some aspect of the GWOT, except the final line which was linked to the first piece I ever wrote about 9/11.

Did you click on any of the links? Did you even realize there were links? It seemed like a good idea to mention them, because they didn't stand out the way links usually do when they're embedded in normal text. So I wanted to tell you about them, but I couldn't do it without copying and pasting one letter at a time. And that didn't seem like a very good idea at all.

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Even though I haven't been able to blog lately, I have been able to read, and based on my recent reading, the following idea seems very good indeed:

Go to the bank and tell the manager you've made some bad investments lately, possibly a bad decision or two along the way, and you need some help. It's not for you, understand: it's for the people who depend on your company's continued existence -- if not its actual success in the "free" market. You're willing to lose everything, as you'll explain, but you're deeply concerned about all the people who depend on your company.

Tell the bank manager about some of them. He'll probably sympathize. He's made a few investments too -- and some of them no doubt were wiser than others. So focus his attention on your investors, and get him on their side.

When he asks you how much money you need, smile and say "just $85 billion". He'll tell you the bank doesn't have that kind of money.

And that's when you say, "It's ok. I didn't come to you for money. I came to you for help."

"We can get the money from the government."

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We seem to have the technical difficulties solved, and aside from being two weeks behind in my work, I'm not doing all that badly. So I hope to resume blogging shortly.

That seems like a good idea too.