There are free walking tours (usually at 10am) in many major cities. As you walk around for a couple of hours, you have a chance to meet and talk with others, and possibly continue from there.

It now seems pretty clear that many anti-maskers (to use a polite term) object to wearing masks because they have already been infected and therefore see no reason to continue wearing one. They believe that they are protected against future infection (clearly not true - Delta and Omicron) and that it’s not their…

The biggest problem for me is going into a pharmacy to get them. I hope I don’t have to go near all of the people standing in line to get their prescriptions filled. No way my immunocompromised daughter is going to do *that*!

I have a 2017 15" MacBook Pro. I made sure to update to the latest version of Big Sur 11.6.x before doing the Monterey upgrade on Saturday and, of course, a TimeMachine backup beforehand. Everything went smoothly, and my only issue was having to reenter a couple of serial numbers for third-party software. I’ve run a…

Given the choice between the two cities, I’d stay in Edinburgh any day and take the train to Glasgow, which is quick and efficient. Much easier there than staying in San Francisco for an event in San José (same distance).

You missed some of the most evil companies in the financial sector, most notably Retail Credit Corporation, now known as Equifax. They were known for sending out their agents to go through your garbage and interview your neighbors to decide if you were a good credit risk. Much the same for the company now known as…

There are Windows and Mac versions of LibreOffice, in addition to the versions that ship with various Linux distros. The Windows and Mac versions conform to the standard user interface guidelines for those platforms, and can read and write Microsoft Office formats. As with the Microsoft apps, LibreOffice has many more…

On the rare occasions when I miss a connection, it’s because of weather or because the originating flight has been cancelled or subject to a lengthy delay, perhaps for mechanical or staffing reasons. In those cases, there’s not much that you can do in your advance travel planning.

No reason to give Amazon.com your money for the book. Shop your local new and used bookstores or check addall.com to find other online sellers.

Not all of them were abandoned. Here’s one passing from East to West Berlin on November 15, 1989, 6 days after the Wall came down.

The Unix uucp mail system was also developed in the same era, with many Unix nodes using the telephone network for store-and-forward email. As a user, you had to designate the routing of your message. For example, if you were in Amsterdam on the network of the Mathematisch Centrum (now the Centrum voor Wiskunde en…