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Last year's winner celebrates his good fortune. Moments later, a hearty pat on the back from the second runner-up turned good luck into bad. Fortunately, the sore loser was able to snatch away the winning ticket just before the wind got it.

Thus proving that there's more than one way to skin a kielbasa.

Three here also: #1, #54, and #87. Somehow, this year's movies weren't quite pulling me in as they did last year and the year before. Wouldn't have seen J. Edgar, had it not been for the discussion on this site. I'm very glad I did, as it provided some good context for Hoover's life, and gave me another opportunity to appreciate Armie Hammer's talents.

Do you mind my asking who you told them you were?

Good gosh! Much as I'd love a $500 Gift Certificate, it seems I'd have to significantly change my relationship with the MER site in order to get one. And maybe that's the whole point. I'm starting with 956 posts after five years, although the statistics tell me I've been hitting an average of half a post per day. With 152 days between January 1st and May 31st, normal practices would get me only about 75 posts - not even enough to earn a place in the hat. I'd have to quadruple my output to do that. And, even then, my little slip of parchment could easily end up getting caught somewhere in OZ's hatband. The most reliable way to snare the five hundred bucks would seem to be getting to 2190 posts as quickly as possible to be among the three shoe-ins. Even if I had all 152 days to achieve that feat, I'd have to post nearly fifteen times a day, or thirty times my present rate. And, if I wanted to have the most posts between now and the end of May, Heaven knows how much I'd have to post, day in and day out, not even stopping to enjoy a little siesta on Cinco de Mayo. As it's a very rare day when even two interesting and sharable things happen to me, let alone fifteen each and every day, I guess my choices are limited to (1) start sharing things like how often I get up to pee during the night (twice last night, although New Year's Eve itself provided quite a bounty of opportunities for renal relief as the champagne continued to flow well past midnight, as did I), or (2) continue sharing only those rare events that may enlighten or amuse, and remain on the sidelines to cheer on my more prolific fellow-posters. Right now, I'm leaning toward (2) although, should there be some significant uptick in the quantity and/or quality of events swirling through this rather mundane life of mine, I promise you all will be the first to know.

If it will cheer you up, I promise to keep kiting writing checks.

Not to be too much of a Pollyanna, but there have been a couple of small consumer victories in the past year or so: ● When Bank of America decided to charge five bucks a month for a debit card a few months ago, the consumer outcry was pretty vocal. Partly, I think, because the Occupy Wall Street movement was just hotting up and partly because so many ATM cards had transformed themselves into debit cards without much fanfare. I figured Wells Fargo wouldn't be far behind, so I lined up a local credit union and was prepared to switch my accounts there within hours of getting my notice. Fortunately, it never came, not for Bank of America customers and not for Wells Fargo customers. I figure they'll try some other way of getting an extra five bucks out of me, but I'm ready to walk the minute they do, and I'm sure I won't be alone. ● The second thing I'm happy about is the prominent box that started appearing on the front of my credit card bill starting a year or so ago. In addition to the minimum payment, it now tells me that it will take me fifteen years to pay off my balance if I only pay the minimum. (!) It also tells me that I'll pay about as much in interest as the amount I owe. Anyone can see that's a bad deal. Plus there's an option to pay the balance off in three years, and save lots of interest. It's pretty obvious why the banks did not want to make this information as visible as it is today, and why they complain about the high cost of regulation. Clearly, the programming required to put this information in simple language on page one of my bill did not cost more than a few hundred dollars. What they were complaining about, in my opinion, is the lost opportunity to pull in ludicrous amounts of interest from their customers by keeping the information less available to influence consumer decisions. The demise of the debit card fee came directly from consumers banding together and just saying 'no'. The more transparent reporting of true interest expense came directly from the Credit Card Act of 2009, with most of the provisions taking effect in 2010. It took a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress to get it done. For those who complain about President Obama, the Democrats, and/or over-regulation, I'll point to this one small example of something good happening on behalf of the U. S. consumer.

Ah, well, that's very different.

I think they're double-talking you. When I got home later that day, I had an email from Wells Fargo telling me that I had left my card at the ATM and could drop by the branch to pick it up. No report of "lost", no deactivation, just the machine eating it because I didn't want to sign up for automatic overdraft protection. Of course, I had already got my card back by then, and knew that it was working. Sometimes I think these 'customer service' reps just say the first thing that pops into their heads, so they can get you off the phone. When they don't help me, I ask for a supervisor. I also ask them to stay on the line until the supervisor answers. Two can play at that game. I don't like being a butt, but, having been in a number of jobs where my livelihood depended on making customers happy, I do not take kindly to the word 'can't'. I'm always polite, but I think of 'can't' as just the first step on the way to 'can'.

Very odd, a Wells Fargo ATM also ate my card last week. All I wanted was a couple hundred bucks of the thousand I had in there, and it flashed this big banner wanting me to OK future overdrafts at thirty bucks a pop. As the last thing I need is somebody else lending me money at a big fat fee, I told them 'no'. Next thing I know, the machine is munching on my plastic, and wouldn't give it back. I went inside the branch and got them to retrieve my card from the machine, hand it over, and come outside with me while I started all over again to get my two hundred bucks. It worked this time, but no thanks to the Wells Fargo computer that had orchestrated all this folderol. Anyway, the point of this screed is that your physical card may still be at your local branch, and you might - emphasis on 'might' - be able to get them to hand it over and reactivate it. If it's already on its way to credit card heaven then you will, as you say, just have to wait for the new one. Good thing you have a business partner who is flush. Bonne chance!

Is he slutty or demure? While most have wondered, no one's sure. Perhaps it's not how he may feel, But what it takes to close the deal.

Every time I find a brand of negativity I like, someone goes and fiddles with the formula. This year, I couldn't even chisel Tiny Tim out of his Christmas goose.

Only one bachelor so far, James Buchanan, who preceded Abraham Lincoln. Though it was probably little more than political backbiting, his alleged 'special friend' was Senator Rufus King, aka 'Aunt Fancy', who used to post over at Daddy's. While I don't personally see a compelling need for a 'gay President', if we were to have one, I'd prefer to wait a bit longer and see if we can draw a better hand than Nixon has given us. Though I do appreciate what he did with China.

Sounds like you did a lot of entertaining. Perhaps the hinges on your door were overheating and tripping the hallway smoke alarm.

Sir Hector Kvetchmore pledges that henceforth no lurker shall escape the sting of his whangee.

TY, you certainly have a big one by the tail. I don't think the full story of Washington/Wall Sreet 'collaberation' is out there yet, but the snippets that do make it over the wall give me the heebie-jeebies. I used to think of my government as the thing that kept the corporations somewhat at bay. I still think that's true to some extent, as the Dodd-Frank Act seemed to have a few teeth and the health-care reform act has already done some good and will do more. But the way that business joins hands with government when legislation is getting crafted seems almost impossible for ordinary citizens to replicate. The 60 Minutes interview with Jack Abramoff was no cause for comfort. It seems that these legislative clerks who actually write much of the legislation that gets signed into law are very likely going to go to work for the companies or lobbying firms that help them write it. How is an ordinary citizen going to get represented in that process? Well, the answer would have to be by electing representatives who know how to look through all of that stuff and retain a commitment to represent their constituents. They're definitely out there and they may even be in the majority. But not for long if these systemic abuses keep piling up. It does show the importance of having a President who represents the people directly. I'd be surprised if much banking reform would have got done without Obama and astounded if universal health care would have. Even he couldn't get a clean public option in the legislation, although I wonder if the 'insurance exchanges' might morph into that. Thanks very much for bringing this topic forward.

Ha! Ha!! Had to look up K. C. (learned it meant King's Counsel), although these days, the honorific would switch to Q. C., or Queen's Counsel. In an especially fitting touch, As members wear silk gowns of a particular design . . ., the award of Queen's or King's Counsel is known informally as taking silk. I'll just bet it is.

What a great catch, FourAces! Woe betide the card counter who sits down at your table. I just toggled back and forth between the Review site and the Forum site and the online number stayed the same. Further, the last on-line-at-once record was set at 8pm one evening, which is probably prime time for checking out escort reviews. This may well mean that we really don't have 80 folks lurking in the Forum right now waiting to see what erudite, witty, and occasionally catty post will drop from above for their edification and amusement. In fact, there may be nobody here but us chickens. That would certainly make sense, as some of the world's finest hectoring has taken place within this very forum, and on more than one occasion. For it to prove fruitless nearly beggars belief. Could it simply be that there's no one here to hear it? By the way, it's fine with me if the present Group stays as it is a while longer, some posting daily, some weekly, some as the spirit moves. As long as there's no one gathering up their wraps and storming out in the middle of one of my posts, I'm happy with the present Merry Little Band. I do wish Lucky would surprise us with a brief cameo or two before the New Year, but I think I heard him say he's fiddling with his Roku and I'm sure no one wants to get in the way of that.

Great! Thanks. I love Easter Eggs.

Ha! Ha! Both my legs were wet by the time my sentence finally rounded the bend and came to rest just west of the period I worried might never appear during my lifetime.

For some years, I've had North Korea's official English news website in my bookmarks folder. Just checked and it hasn't been updated since Wednesday, and I don't recall missed days in the past. Could be this happened a few days ago and the backroom boys took a few days to tee up the announcement. I hope his successor will put his people before his ego.

Indeed he did, inspiring this recollection from my own modest travels. "I settled down on a park bench next to the late-night riverwalk cafe near the Chain Bridge on the Pest side of the Danube gazing toward the nearly hidden benches where a dozen Romanian hustlers sat trying to look available but not too available, just a lubricious rather mature American tourist leering at the tight fit of their blue jeans and smelling the cheap Russian cigarette smoke wafting towards me, feeling below my belt the twin bulges of lust in the front and forints in the rear heralding the freedom that is sure to come from striking up a strange conversation in a strange land, looking forward to burying my face between sequential pairs of buttocks where yesterday's shower is but a distant memory and only a pink musky ripeness remains, where it taint nobody's business if I do, and where the lascivious wanderer finds himself temporarily relieved of the astronomical prices he paid for half the indulgence little more than a day ago, eager to fulfill the promise of an exceptionally salacious fortnight awaiting him amidst the outskirts of the former Soviet bloc and hopeful that the tour bus will manage to retain its headgasket climbing over the Carpathian Mountains toward the promised land."

Well, Lucky, my bosom friend, it pains me to see you nipple-deep in such technical quicksand. Each time I see you inching closer to placing the final piece in the puzzle, along comes a Help Desk Wallah who turns over your card table. One trivial idea is to make sure you're not using the quote marks when you enter one of the three URL's for your router. And be sure to type the URL in your browser's address window, and not in a Google search box, for example. I'm no tech guy but frankly I don't see how you're going to find a router without an ethernet connection. I always thought that's how they hooked up to your cable modem. That's what mine does anyway, and then it communicates with everything else wirelessly. Didn't you have an ethernet cable between your modem and your old router? I admit, I'm getting out of my depth here, especially without knowing what various pieces of equipment are included in the Lucky Home Network, so the best I can do is offer you a few suggestions to, Inshallah, pull you out of the muck and send you on your way to some uplifting free home entertainment. 1. Plod along for another few days carting tech gear around the Desert and hope the right pieces end up at your house and talking to each other. A smidge of Hindi will come in handy if you want to get the most out of this experience. 2. As MsGuy has suggested, call in a pro. Just be sure to pick the right guy. 3. Consider accepting hitoallusa's kind offer to fix it up for you very fast. A first class plane ticket and a home-cooked meal might be all it takes. And the fact that he will not have to wonder where you are for a couple of days might be another valued enticement. 4. Forget about watching TV. You have recently learned the pleasure that comes from curling up with a good book and having no reason to put it down other than the fluttering of your eyelashes low down on your manly chest. and, certainly last, and with empathy for those who feel the suggestion to be beyond the pale, 5. Consider a - shudder - Mac router. The one I use is called the Airport Express. It connects to your modem with an ethernet cable, and it talks to everything else wirelessly. And, yes, it works with Windows. I checked out the Windows setup instructions and it looks like they're as simple as those for the Mac. You just plug it into a wall socket, copy the software onto your computer, open it, and answer some questions about how you want to use your network. When I first plugged it in and installed the software on my Mac, the computer found the Airport Express without any help from me. I considered it a thoughtful touch on Apple's part. Apple makes stuff like this so easy, I continue to be surprised by folks who consider their products overpriced. If you put any value at all on the time you spend getting a Windows setup to do things, I think you'd find the Mac to be cheap, cheap, cheap. PS: You can plug your stereo into the Airport Express and play any of your iTunes music through it. I burned all my CD's onto my laptop years ago, and listen to anything I want within a few seconds, even while posting on MER.

Lucky, assuming you can get things back to the way they were yesterday morning when your old router was working just fine, and assuming you have your network password, why not let Roku help you with the setup? Here is a link to their setup guide, and here is a link to the page telling you that you have 90 days of free support. It seems they should be able to help you get your password to 'take'. It will not be the first time they've had to walk somebody through the setup process.

I understand that the best bud is grown without soil. I've long heard of hydroponic systems in which the plant's roots are washed with water and nutrients, which then drain away. Now, I'm told, that has been improved upon by a new system in which the plants are suspended from a wire mesh. The roots hang down in the air and are sprayed with just the right amount of nutrients every few minutes. Lights are timed to give the plants the right amount of light and darkness to maximize resin production. The result is an excellent product with high yield and little impact on the environment. As good weed tends to make me loquacious, I think of them as the Hanging Gardens of Babble-on.