What do you mean I have to change clocks myself?

Imagine my dismay when I learned that I will have to turn my own clocks ahead. I was physically shaken to find out that all the clocks in my house will not spring ahead on their own on Sunday.

And it's not just the clocks, but video cassette recorders, microwaves, digital clocks will all have to be moved up an hour by hand.

Even my computer, which has faithfully altered with the time change every year for much of the last decade, may actually require me to go into the control panel and change the time, by myself.

Some say computers have empowered people, but I'm not one of them. If anything, they've made people more vulnerable because they rely on the computer to do not only their complex calculations, which it's really good at, but also their thinking for them, which it is not.

The computer is a pretty cool tool, but that's all it is. It has no more cognitive power than a hammer and is a lot less useful when the power goes out.

I sit down in front of a computer every day. I'm sitting in front of one right now as I write this column. I enjoy the power they give me to communicate and I recognize that without them, I'd be breathing lead fumes while trying to get the paper out.

But that doesn't mean that I'm willing to turn my life over to them, and it doesn't mean that I'm still not perfectly capable of turning my own clocks ahead, whether Sunday or any other day. Perhaps because I live and work in Carson Valley, I'll simply leave the clock alone and see if an hour one way or the other really makes that big a difference in my life. It would be nice if it didn't.

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One wag called on Tuesday to say the pineapple decorating the Minden-Gardnerville sign is really a badly designed pine cone. There is a story going around town that when they looked at the catalog to pick a top, the pineapples looked like pine cones. I'm putting that one down to an urban legend.

I went back and took a closer look and it is definitely a pineapple.

Business reporter Sharlene Irete told me that pineapples are a sign of hospitality, therefore welcoming people into town.

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Visitors to Genoa got to watch a photo shoot at the Genoa Bar on Feb. 24 as Las Vegas resident Maria Mersino posed for Spike Television's Sexiest Girls From NCAA colleges across the country. We're not sure which NCAA school Maria goes to, but bar owner Willy Webb said Spike will be posting a contest online during mid-March to take advantage of "March Madness." Viewers will be able to go online and vote for their favorite participant.