Just a little updating. . .

Three times in three days I got bad news.

First, a guy I knew in Beijing back in the 1980's passed away last Saturday morning. Though I hadn't had any contact with him in many years, especially since he was relatively young (about 60).

Next, found out a good friend I've tried to keep up with over the years through a mutual friend died a year or to ago in his adopted home U.S. state, Washington. He and his ex-wife and I and my ex-wife all went to the Foreigners' Marriage Bureau in Beijing in late 1987 to have a "joint" marriage, so to speak. So, there was some special history there. He, too, was about 60.

And just this morning, a long-time friend in Texas posted an online message that her university freshman daughter's best friend died unexpectedly Monday, at only 19, and that is a tragedy, though I didn't know her.

As for the Square, I had a nice visit with Burma Richard a couple days ago, and I always enjoy gabbing with him.

Not so serious, today hasn't been a red-letter one between me and gadgets. First, my computer kept crashing this morning. Then, this afternoon, I had to re-download and re-install Picasa 3.5, as it had gone on the blink. Also this morning, my mobile phone stopped working (though I finally tried cleaning the SIM card with window cleaner, and that worked). The strange part is that my SIM worked in a friend's phone, and hers worked in mine. Finally, about sundown I wanted to turn on the aircon in my lving room -- and two or -- three minutes later it apparently died!

At least my desk phone started working again -- for the first time in MONTHS!

On a much lighter note, if you take photos and/or make home videos using a webcam and/or videocam, you sure can do worse that to use Google's free images-management program, Picasa. The latest release is 3.5. When you record a video, in a menu along the left side one of the options is to upload the picture or video directly to YouTube, a nice feature.

Enough for now --