Yesterday I was excited by an email that entered my inbox. The subject line read, "John, Full court records now available."

But when I read the email I found that it was not about basketball.

So, I turn on my laptop this morning at 6:00, have breakfast, shave, read the paper, etc., etc., and when I return to my computer there is a message from Windows Update informing me that I have updates ready to install. I click to see what it is, and am told that it is Windows Vista Service Pack 2. What is strange is that the publication date is 6/30/2009. Today is 9/18/2009. Why does it take almost three months for Update to tell me about SP2? Whatever. If this is like other Windows Service Packs, it will take forever to install and require some rebooting, so I guess I will find something else to do for the next hour while Microsoft is taking over my machine.

Time for the annual week-long family vacation on Block Island. I look forward to this every year.

I never write music reviews. Never. But I made an exception for Gina Riggio's first major studio album, Ultraviolet Catastrophe, which was just released this month. Assuming Amazon accepts it, the review will be posted in the mp3 section within 48 hours. Perhaps I went a little overboard; Amazon suggests reviews between 75 and 300 words; mine weighed in at 877 words. I just had to say something about each song, as well as about the album overall. So sue me.

Gina Riggio's new CD, Ultraviolet Catastrophe, is totally stuck in my head. I am going to write a rave review of it on Amazon when I get a chance.

Leaving this morning to start a road trip to Chicago. I'm looking forward to visiting with my relatives in Detroit on the way there, as our last visit was a good five years ago, for my cousin's wedding. On the agenda is the Detroit Zoo, which I have not seen since I was a little kid. Mostly, though, I just want to catch up with everyone, see their new homes, and so forth.

Chicago is the site of a conference on personality research, where I'll be presenting a poster. It will also be a homecoming for my wife, who spent the first year of her life in Evanston. Of course she doesn't remember living there, but we plan to visit some of the places that appear in photographs from the family album.

I'm wondering if I will have a chance to get in a couple of runs. I feel like I'm back on top of my running, taking second place in my age group in a 5K two weeks ago, and improving my time in the Arts Fest 10K last Sunday by 2:15 over last year.

I started compiling a film bucket list a couple of years ago. The official name of my list is "There's No Way I Could Not Have Seen That Movie" list. What they all have in common is that they are guy movies that my wife would never want to watch with me. Some are classics; some are puerile movies like Dumb and Dumber. I finally watched one of the movies on my list, streamed from Netflix: Unforgiven.

Because it introduced me to Taoism, the TV series Kung Fu 1972-1975 was a life transforming experience for me. Because we had no stations broadcasting ABC in our area, we had to tune into the show via UHF, which was always a little iffy. As fuzzy as the show came in, I could not wait to watch it each week. But, sadly, we totally lost the ability to tune into it half-way through the second season, so I never got to watch the final episodes.

Throughout the 1980s I hoped and prayed that some day Warner Brothers would release the show on VHS tape. And, eventually they did. At some absurd price like $39.95 per tape. As much as I loved the show, I could not afford to spend hundreds of dollars on it.

Then, finally, they released the series on DVD and I bought all three seasons. I began watching, oh, maybe 3 years ago, just one episode every so often. For me it was like drinking precious vintage wine. I wanted to savor the experience and make it last.

About a month ago, I was down to the last of 4 DVDs for the third season. And then I heard that David Carradine had died. That settled it; after 35 years, it was time to finish watching the series.

Two nights ago, I watched the true final episode, where Kwai Chang Caine is reunited with his half-brother, Danny. I was a bit confused about the fact that there were 3 more episodes listed on side B of the DVD. Watching the first one, I found that it was out of sequence, going back to an earlier time in Caine's life. Same for the next, as well as the last one I watched today.

Some research on the Web revealed that this order of episodes corresponded to the dates that they were initially released in 1975. But they actually belonged earlier in the season. When the show is rebroadcast these days, the episodes are in logical order. But not on the DVD.

It was a confusing ending after a 35-year wait and 3 years of savoring the series. Rewarding, nonetheless. And the final bonus feature, Carradine's visit to China, including the Shaolin Monastery, was great.

I was deeply saddened to hear about the death of David Carradine this morning. The show Kung Fu literally changed my life by introducing me to Taoism. The character played by David, Kwai Chang Caine, was inspirational to me. I continue to be affected by his performance in that role even today. I am grateful for the positive effect that David's acting had on me.

In 2005 I bought a case of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA. At 20% ABV, this is a beer that ages well. So I have been saving two bottles out of the case for a special occasion. I told myself earlier this year that when I finished authoring my latest World Campus online psychology course that I would open a bottle. I finished the course last night, so tonight I drank my reward. Amazing how good a four-year-old ale can taste!

This past Tuesday was, hands down, my worst day this year. Almost everything went wrong that day, but describing it all would take more time than I can afford, so I want to just mention the role AT&T played in my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

( How AT&T contributed to my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day )

When I saw the header of the email, I wasn't sure whether it was for real. It is.

We are proud to announce the First International Conference on Yawning. These two days meetings bring together leading international speakers to review both emerging information and its convergence with current understanding. Join leaders in the field on June 24 & 25, 2010 in Paris.

http://baillement.com/congress/ficy_index.html

Firefox keeps finding new ways of failing. At first, it was hanging when I tried to close it. It seemed to close, but the firefox.exe process kept running, making it impossible to re-open the browser. A search indicated that add-ons can cause this behavior, so I uninstalled or disabled almost all of them. No dice. I also found that Firefox was reluctant to open new pages when I clicked links. Seems I had to click twice to get hyperlinks to work. And under no circumstances did it want to open javascript windows, even though I had not disabled this feature.

The last straw was when I tried to post the previous entry about Freedom Watch, and the Post button brought up the preview window instead of posting. I had to switch over to IE to complete the post. What is going on?

Years ago I used to watch two shows on Fox News channel: FOX & Friends In the Morning and Fox News Watch. I remember groaning and wincing a lot while viewing the ideological rants on FOX & Friends. But I forced myself to watch the show anyway. I like to keep an eye on all sorts of people. Fox News Watch I actually enjoyed because the panel contained a variety of viewpoints across the political spectrum. It may have been the only genuinely fair and balanced show on the Fox News channel. Oddly, I found that Cal Thomas talking in this mixed panel was occasionally reasonable instead of the ogre he usually seems to be in his print columns.

At any rate, I stopped watching anything on Fox years ago. I had enough of Neanderthal Brian Kilmeade and the bubblehead female co-hosts on that show. And I started playing basketball early Sunday mornings instead of watching Fox News Watch.

Then yesterday I got an email from the Libertarian Party announcing a show called Freedom Watch that Fox was streaming on the Internet. The show was hosted by Andrew Napolitano, who talked to Peter Schiff, Lew Rockwell, and Ron Paul, among others. Definitely a show worth watching. It is archived on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByZ6g-syjVI&feature=PlayList&p=7EFB0114CACD755E&index=0&playnext=1 .

Of course I made corned beef and cabbage with potatoes, carrots and onions. I washed it all down with a Guinness.

After dinner I planted a potato out in the yard. I've done this every year all of my life, even though I do not believe the superstition that this brings good luck for the upcoming year. I just do it.

So I am reading a U.N. press release dated 02/10/2001, and it is talking about the 9/11 attacks.

"Wait a minute," I am thinking. "How can a February press release be discussing an event that will not happen until September of that year?"

Then I realized that the U.N. must use the European rather than American convention for dates, in which the day is listed before the month.

So, actually, the press release should have been referring to the 11/09 attacks.

I received many electronic Valentines this year.

Most of them begin "Improvee your love life with generic Viagra."

I can't figure out for the life of me why making DVDs has to be so difficult. I've used a number of free and commercial programs over the years. Sometimes the process goes swimmingly, and sometimes it just plain fails for no apparent reason.

Recently I was in a bind because I really needed to create a DVD for a class I was teaching, and my programs just weren't working. So I downloaded a trial of Nero 9. Turned out I had to first install .NET version 3.5 for it to work, which took some time, and then it took Nero forever to install. Tonight I'm running into difficulties again, and figured I would uninstall Nero since it was past the trial period. It took freaking 10 minutes to uninstall. Why is even uninstalling DVD software such a pain in the ass?

. . . Harvard doesn't have enough money to publish a book.

My colleagues and I just heard back from the Harvard University Press editor who had our book manuscript sent out for reviews. The reviewers had some suggestions for revisions, but were positive about the book and recommended publication.

However, the editor said that the Press was running so low on money that, regretfully, they would be unable to publish the book.

When it comes to home finances, I am all for anything that computers can do to assist the process. I was thrilled when Quicken came out and I never again had to balance my checkbook by hand. I was overjoyed when I could start downloading my credit card transactions into Quicken. And paying bills online with Quicken was awesome. No more stamps and envelopes! All good.

Eventually my bank began offering online bill paying as part of their normal services, so I no longer had to use Quicken's online payment service. That was fine with me, because I no longer had to worry about paying additional charges past a certain number of payments. Then another bank bought my bank, so I had to learn a new, slightly more complex system, but things are still fine.

Until today. I had received a bill from my wife's dentist about a month ago, so I ordered an online payment for it. But the dentist's office received a check from our insurance company, so they mailed the bill paying service's check to us, with a big VOID written on it.

So, the money had already been debited from our checking account, and I had a voided check in my hand. The question became, how do I get the money re-credited to our checking account?

I took it to our local branch bank this morning, and they were totally bamboozled. The clerks said that if VOID had not been written on the check, they could have deposited it in my checking account. They claimed there was nothing they could do. They suggested calling the phone number for the online bill processing service on the check.

I called the number and they told me that I could mail the check to them and they would credit the amount to our account. Or, I could call my bank's bill paying service (notice this is different from the bill processing service I was talking to. But they warned me that there might be a fee for doing it that way.

So I called the bill paying service and they said, no problem, we can credit the amount right away with a stop payment. I asked if there would be a fee for this, and I got the strangest reply: They said that they would not charge for this, but they could not tell me whether my bank would charge me for this. They might. So, apparently these people were not an operation of my bank, they were an independent service that did business with my bank. I told them I would check with my bank first before asking for a stop payment and re-crediting from them.

Then I said, screw it, and decided to mail the damn check to the processing center. Hopefully this will work.