It's Friday somewhere, isn't it?

I'm going to be offline probably most of the day tomorrow - I can no longer be a cheapskate on dialup; my ISP is discontinuing dialup service so I am going with a cable modem. (And no, I didn't have many other options, so please don't share the horror stories about sucky cable modems.)

I am also, at the same time, upgrading to digital cable.

Last week, I upgraded my tv - I purchased a new flatscreen LCD tv - a smaller one, it still had to fit in between my bookshelves - to replace the aging Samsung I'd been using for a dozen years or so. (The new tv is a 32" screen, "Measured diagonally" or whatever kind of alchemy they use for measuring screens. The old tv was 13". And here's how technology has advanced in even a short time: the new and old tvs weigh almost the same).

I feel compelled to quote Homer Simpson here: "TV...mother, teacher, secret lover."

(I am SO looking forward to getting TCM and the various Discovery-plexes.)

But I have two little flip-offs for the week.

First: my neighbor's new pet pit bull can flip off. Or my neighbors can, for keeping her outdoors at night.

Now, yeah - pit bull. But I'm not too worried. I'm not convinced in the bad-to-the-boneness that some people propose for this breed - it seems most of the attacky kind of pit-bulls are owned by the sort of person who would have a reason (coughindoormethlabcough) to want to train a dog to attack. And every time I've seen her in their yard, she looks at me and wags her tail and her general body language and expression seem to say that she's the kind of dog that believes:

"Stranger" = "friend I haven't met yet" or "Stranger" = "Might have doggy treats"

rather than

"Stranger" = "threat to my territory"

Not that I'm going to go up to her and pet her or anything - I'm leery of strange dogs.

But. The neighbors keep her outside all night long. And she barks. And she barks loudly. I assume it is, in part, loneliness ("Hey....why's my 'pack' in there and I'm out here?") and, in part, the fact that we have a rich and varied nocturnal fauna around here. (I just hope she doesn't tangle with one of the local skunks).

But she barked much of the night, which is just enough to keep me awake.

Secondly: Microsoft Word's "autonumber" feature can eff the eff off, with knobs AND cheese. I had to redo one of my exams because I wanted to "import" a few questions from an old exam, and Microsoft totally and completely balled the whole thing up, to the extent of jumping from question #52 to question #57 in the numbering at one point.

(Normally I'd just skip over it and add the questions on at the end, but this exam is to be machine-graded, so having the numbers correct and in order is of considerable importance).

Actually, a lot of the "features" that programmers add on (or that are added on to cell phones) aren't that useful, and in some cases really mess things up. (And yes, I know Autonumbering can be turned off, but I didn't think to do it that time.)