I had to get a new cell phone. I liked my LG800 touch-screen well enough, but the battery would not hold a decent charge. I got another battery, but it was no good because if the phone wasn’t charged every night it would die, and if you were on it for even close to hour, it would die. Something was wrong with the charging circuit, because a lot of people were complaining about the same thing.

A relative has a Samsung that he swears by, so I bought a 425 which looks like a conventional ‘brick’, but it has a slide out keyboard. I don’t text, but it would be nice to leave a note in comments if the DSL or power has died. I charged it a week ago and it still shows three of five bars on the battery. That is important when you expect to lose power for an extended period.

The other device I’ve been working with is a Kindle Paper White reader that was sent to my Mother. It looks like it will help her to continue reading without have to spend money on larger print books, but I’m a little concerned that the touch-screen may be too sensitive for her. I re-read The Hobbit on it, and it would work for me, but she might get irritated with it. I’ll have to see.

If you are a retailer, you are probably calling suppliers to cut back on your Christmas orders, because this is not going to be a merry Christmas season. People who were affected by the October shutdown are going to be paying off that disaster and preparing for round two in January – Christmas is not going to be a big item on their shopping list.

Based on their comments, the NRPS Congresscritters learned nothing other than to not trust establishment Republicans. People should have learned not to trust the GOP at all.

The ‘deal’ that was worked out might make the “pundits” happy, but it is definitely not what retailers wanted to hear. The problem is going to show up the consumer confidence numbers which were already bad, and are probably going to get worse.

If they screw around and do more cutting, we may well head into recession. Too many people have no jobs and no money because there is no demand. Cutting government demand only makes things worse. Even the IMF has finally figured that out, so why can’t Obama? The Village needs to stop backing the policies that are burying Greece.

Looking for Trouble

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[Editor: Ms Underhouse is back from ‘catspace’ and looking for something to beat up or eat. The perfect feral mother cat.]

Friday Ark

In sports, the military, and politics leaders are expected to inspire their followers for the coming ‘battle’ with a great speech. Probably the greatest example of the genre is the St. Crispen’s Day Speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V.

So I was a bit surprised to find out that in the caucus meeting for their final attempt at relevance, the House Republicans decided to have Steve Southerland, of Florida’s Second District [just East of me] sing Amazing Grace.

Now, I’m sure that he is very accomplished at singing that particular song, as he has call to do it a lot, which is why he knows all the verses. What puzzles me is why they decided to have a funeral director begin that meeting in that way if they were planning to do anything other than surrender? Did they follow up with a recitation of the 23^rd Psalm?