This week we got new glasses. I think Marsha got new frames or something. I'm not really sure what they look like. We were at the optical shop, she tried on a pair and asked me if they looked good. I said yes and that's all I remember. I think they have turtles on them or something. [EDIT: You are dead meat mister. Marsh.]

I went to a much rounder lens in a wire frame. I think they look pretty good. Here's a picture with my old glasses


Compare that to what I look like with the new ones


It is amazing what a difference a pair of glasses will make.

I found something curious at Zeller's this weekend. I was looking at jeans and as usual it was hard to find my size (38x34 I really wear 36x34 but with shrinkage it's best to start out with 38.). This makes sense because I think of myself as more or less average and what most people buy will sell out first. There were pants on the shelf, just not my size and this got me to thinking. Now, I know Zeller's will only stock what sells. So where are the people that are buying the 48x30s or the 32x42s that were still on the shelf. I sure don''t see them walking around. Even more disturbing, there was a bin for 52x24s that was empty. Not only does Zellers stock this size, but somebody came in and bought all of them.

I'm keeping an eye out for a very large person wearing pedal-pushers.

At work I ran across what I've come to call Stupid Installer Tricks. We got this device and one of the engineers ran into trouble installing the software. For the uninitiated among you when you add a device (camera, ethernet card, video card, mouse, whatever)  to your computer the software will install a driver. A driver just tells the computer "Hey, I am here, this is what I do and this is how to talk to me." We installed the software but the driver did not appear. I wrote to the companies Canadian representative but got an "I'm out of the office" note in reply. So I called the company. The person apologized for my not being able to get ahold of the representative, but at the moment he was in Brazil. Brazil? Lets see, Yukon, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Brazil, Quebec, Nova Scotia....

Yup that's about par for the course for American understanding of Canadian geography.

In any event he said he'd have one of the engineers get back to me. To their credit, within about fifteen minutes I got an e-mail from someone in engineering. He attached a copy of the manual for the device (something conspicuously absent from the box containing the device), and his note pointed me to the "Common Problems" page. I found the instructions were very interesting:

"When you run the software installer package it will install the software and needed driver. Usually though the software cannot find the driver. We don't know why this is so you will need to manually point the software at the driver."

'We don't know why' ? It's your software. You wrote it. You should know exactly why it does everything it does.

What followed was a set of instructions to locate the driver and attach it to the device. However it was the last part that really cracked all of us up:

"Once you have attached the driver to the device reboot your computer. Once you have logged back in you will need to go through all the steps to attach the driver a second time and reboot again. We don't know why you need to go through the process twice but we've found this is usually the case".

Don't know why? It's your bloody software!

We don't have a lot of confidence in these guys any more.

Doug & Marsha

PIX: Sunrise