August 14, 1999 2300PDT

...to this British eye at least, the United States is inhabited by a population consumed by the problems of acid reflux and martyrs to the perils of overactive bladder syndrome.

Regurgitation of stomach contents into the mouth can also occur. This is felt as a warm, salty bitter taste. It frequently occurs with belching, and may be associated with excessive saliva production. This latter phenomenon is called water brash.

Last night I attended another singles' dinner up in the City, but this one was different than previous since it was composed of members of the newer organization I've joined, where we choose from various volunteer activities to participate in. Therefore we had something in common rather than just being a group of supposedly compatible people. The meal was at a place I'd been to with the previous organization, a restaurant called Indigo near the Civic center.² Met someone it seems I'll see again, a British woman named Fi (short for Fiona?) who wants to go dancing. Not an activity one would guess I'd do; but she got to talking about this whole swing thing and I allowed as to how A) I had received formal ballroom dance training way back when and B) I do enjoy Big Band music. So, since I am curious about the new ballroom trends, it'd be a pleasure to mingle among the women dressed so sexy, and her accent makes me melt; looks like I'll be making a fool of myself on the dancefloor in a couple weeks (but first, the upcoming SoCal adventure).

on the laptop, utilizing the Red Hat package my Dad passed along. Had to repeat the process several times, with more success each iteration; finally it's working! Nowhere near complete yet, however; no colors or fonts, just monochrome xterm windows, and certainly no internet connectivity (have to get a modem first) so I can't put my "Powered by vi" graphic on these pages yet; but since I have used the vi editor on my laptop, I can display the penguin:

Turns out the task is actually something I'm familiar with, doing Unix system installs - they were a major part of my job around 1993 and 1995. (Although then as now I didn't actually comprehend all the details of what's happening inside the machine; still, there are familiarities.) Setting the time zone revealed a curiosity: in addition to the usual choices US/Arizona, US/East-Indiana, US/Indiana-Starke and US/Michigan were available. Isn't Daylight Savings Time forbidden in Arizona? Maybe that's what it's all about; but the Indiana settings sound mighty peculiar.

To mark this new phase I'm changing my standard password, moving away from the familiar old standby. Instead of today's entry into the world of Linux, the catalyst was on-the-job: we were instructed to change passwords due to some security breach, so I came up with a new paradigm based on a pattern of adjacent keyboard characters rather than my old mainframe ID at Goddard from the mid-1980s, which is what I've been using for many years.