Now we know dinosaurs had feathers. I always thought they were the predecessors of birds, but this is amazing. They had similar bone structures, laid eggs and probably chirped.

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In December the Humane Society here informed me that they did not want to renew their domain name or pay for the hosting of their web site. I immediately asked anyone who had a heart if they would contribute a little bit toward saving the site. I got a good response and did so, with my cash and the contributions. We actually went a little over the total, and I gave the excess to the Humane Society, too. I renewed the domain name in a new name instead of the old one because they wanted it that way. Then I got them two more years of GoDaddy hosting. My own contribution includes free maintaining of the site, something I must do on a weekly basis that requires a couple hours.

Yesterday I received an email from them saying they wanted to take the site away from me and give it to a board member's IT class at one of the local universities. I agreed, of course and told them what I needed from them to do that.

Does this sound familiar? It happens all the time when people do something for someone, and the someone then figures "OK, now that I have got that for free, I can just tell the giver to go f**k himself."

It happens a lot with pro bono work. That is one reason I am not going to do any more pro bono web sites.

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It's amazing how some people cleave to electronic devices as if the devices are the best thing since sliced bread. Yesterday Apple announced their newest device, the iPad (NO it isn't a female absorbent pad for use during that once-a-month time!) I have been an Apple Mac guy since before the Mac, when I had the old original Apple Computers. Let me warn you now, every three or four years, Apple changes their chips or their OS and the old computers or devices become redundant. You won't be able to upgrade, either.

Instead of buying a tablet reader for your books, which will require a charger and wires, plugs, batteries, etc., just go down to the library and get a free library card. Then you can, in most cases, check out any book you wish to read without having to pay for it. It is so much more simple and there is no chance of having your credit card numbers stolen.

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We got about an inch and a half of very fine cold snow from 7 p.m. last night until sometime overnight. The mentally challenged young woman just came to my door with the shovel again, and she cleaned my porch, steps and walk out front. I gave her the five bucks she wanted and a tip. Sure beats the old way!

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My cats are very good lately. No big fights or destructive terror attacks. I wonder what is up with them? I wish they would learn to make coffee.

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I have been very busy with a huge design job. The smallest file is slightly under a gigabyte. That is 1000 megabytes. It takes a while just to open the files or save them. When I am finished I will have to send the files over the Internet to the manufacturer. That will be done via FTP protocols, and it will take hours. I have very high speed service but it makes little difference.

Sometimes it makes more sense to burn a DVD with the data and do overnight delivery. But clients don't understand that. The want instant effects and that's it. Even though the chances of losing data when it is sent via the Internet are very high, they want it.

I prefer having it on CD or DVD. (CDs are too small anymore for most of these jobs. They only hold 1.44 gigs of data. DVDs hold more.) If it is on a disk it is already safe as an archived file.

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I have no problem with data storage. I archive on CD and DVD, plus I have a peripheral hard drive with a Terabyte of storage. A Terabyte is 1000 Gigs.

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Part of the President's economic stimuli will be a project here in Ohio to link the major cities, Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati by high speed rail. They intend to use the existing rail right-of-ways and build a seamless rail route like are all over Europe. That's great, but who the hell wants to go to Cincinnati?