Your grandfather’s hammer had a power supply?

Of course. You don’t think it powered itself? It was detachable though. One arm power with built-in thumb detection.

Re: ‘behoove’. Chambers dictionary gives both spellings, and ‘behoov’ as the pronunciation, noting ‘behov’ (with a long ‘o’) as unhistorical. Another example where US English retains an earlier pronunciation, perhaps – or where British English has adopted, if you will, a ‘spelling pronunciation’. Rather in the way that people now pronounce ‘brrr’ as ‘berrr’, where my grandparents knew quite well it was a conventional way of spelling the sound people made in cold weather – a sort of labial trill.

I know what you mean about a new monitor. I have an aging 17″ Sony CRT here and it’s starting to get very tired after years of sterling service. It looks like I’ll have to join the flat screen world soon.

As for Mr Jefferson’s quote, I would take the US founding fathers a bit more seriously if they didn’t use words like “behooves”. Whenever I see that word I instantly think of horses’ feet and everything else just takes on a rather comic air.