Clear cutting

The report from the pathology lab says that the surgery was successful, that they got all of the cancer, in that one area. I still have a follow-up appointment with the dermatologist to
find out if there are other suspicious areas on me.

Thanks for all the prayers and cheers and comforting words. As Luis Tiant said of the Boston fans, "You make do better than I can do."

Now on to the important stuff. I replaced our wireless router at home last night. We've had cable Internet access for several years. The speeds of our connection, however, has been dropping significantly, down to and below dial-up speed. The culprit was the router. When I installed the new router, we got our Internet back again. It's a bit surprising that the router failed first; the cable modem is older by a couple of years.

Anyway, we're back on the air so that we can hear about:

• Well, Angus, what did you learn in school today?
• Give this man a Massachusetts driver's license.
• It's not only a pen, it's a radio. It's not only a pen and a radio, it's a shredder.

One of the problems with the electronic delivery of music (iPods, satellite radio, Internet radio, and such) is the lack of information about the music. Liner notes on albums and even CD jackets provided important stuff like the song's author. If you are fortunate, you'd also find out who played on the sessions. Occasionally, some radio stations will give that kind of background detail, but it's becoming increasingly rare and increasingly hard to locate.

And, then, Apple seems to be poised to address this problem, at least partially. Future versions of the iPod will have text-to-speech capability to let the iPod tell you who is playing what. It won't yet tell me who was playing bass on Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited sessions, but it's a start. (There were two bassists - Russ Savakus and Harvey Brooks.)

The era of crank windows is coming to an end, with just a few vehicles offering them as a cheap option. Two quick stories on that:

• A member of our extended family would have every one in the car open their windows (even in Canadian winters) when they driving over a bridge while in a car with power windows. She was afraid that the windows wouldn't open underwater.
• I knew a guy who was really excited when he bought his first car with power windows. He could then throw his beer bottles out the passenger side and not have to worry about on-coming traffic so much. It worked great, except for the time that he thought the window was down and it wasn't.