Day: July 15, 2016

Figuring Out Aliens

A novel in progress features aliens, but I can’t see them. I know who they are, why they’re there and what they want, but beyond that, they’re not coming into my head.

I thought about all the aliens I know from movies and books. Superman is an alien but that’s not the sort of alien wanted. Didn’t want ET, and the creatures from Alien and Predator didn’t work. Nor did the man and robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still. MIB , the Star Trek franchise, Doctor Who, and Babylon 5 have many varieties of aliens but nothing that fits my requirements. Larry Niven’s aliens are interesting and intriguing but didn’t turn me toward what I think my book needs. Independence Day, Mars Attacks, The Body Snatchers, Dark City (I’m not really sure the strangers are aliens) were considered and rejected, as were the War of the Worlds invaders, and the creatures from Species and V. So was The Thing. I always liked Orson Scott Card’s alien in The Speaker for the Dead and Ender’s Game but they don’t work for my application.

The closest thing to my thoughts were from Clark’s The Puppet Masters. They don’t quite work, neither.

Gotta walk and think about it more. It’ll come to me.

3

The Shoes

My wife announced her birthday desire: let’s clean the house and simplify, giving away or selling things we no longer use.

Okay, we do have some clutter and items we don’t use. But we don’t actually sell stuff. We talk about it but we never get around to it. Witness the two leather bar stools in the garage. We purchased them online, used them for a few months and realized they weren’t us and replaced them. To the garage they went to await their next life.

That was about six years ago.

Agreement was reached that we weren’t going to sell stuff. We would donate items, except, we would trade books in. We had six piles of books ready to go elsewhere.

Bags of books were prepared. One was established for the Book Wagon. He took them all, and gave us a $50 credit. I don’t think we’ll ever run out of credit there, which is great, since we love browsing and buying used books from the Book Wagon.

More bags were prepared for the Book Exchange but we’ve yet to go there. Whatever they don’t take for trade in credit will be added to other bags for the Goodwill.

For the Goodwill, we filled three bags of clothing. Jeans that have shrunk. Shirts that are worn out, sweaters and sports coats.

I ached over releasing one shirt. I bought it at Nordstrom in 1998. Blue plaid, cotton, long sleeved with a button down collar, my wife selected it for me. It looked great, brought out my eye color, and I loved it. But now…the collar and cuffs are frayed. There are small pin holes and a rip a cat made with her claws. Sigh.

Into the bag it went.

Once I got over that, I turned to the shoes. I love walking, and have a life long habit of getting the max from my shoes. Finding good shoes and breaking them in is challenging. Keens and Merrills, Clarke’s, Nikes and New Balance, I don’t like giving them up. Okay, so the soles are holed from wear, or flapping lose, and the stitching has come undone and the uppers are separating, and the tongue is hanging on by a few threads. They can still be worn.

No, I don’t wear them any longer, I recognized. All those limitations prevent them from being useful, and they’ve been replaced. But, really, give them to the Good Will? Shouldn’t I just toss them? No, my wife assured me, the Good Will will find a good use for them and they’ll be recycled or re-utilized. She’s a person who  pays attention to these matters, so I accepted her verdict. They were taken to the Goodwill.

Last were the bar stools and a few crystal items. We have a ton of crystal – bowls, tumblers, tea, water and wine glasses, decanters – and we don’t use it. Actually it’s all boxed to protect it and stored in a cabinet. Our local AAUW is doing a rummage sale to support their efforts to empower women. We donated these items to them.

We’ve made a little progress. There’s China. More crystal. More chairs. More books. More shoes. Several televisions. Printers….

And maybe a few computers….

4

The Roomba

“Get out of that corner,” my wife yelled at the Roomba as it circulated the office this morning. “Why do you keep going back to that corner?”

Responding to that rhetoric, the Roomba sang, “I need to go where I want to go, do what I want to do.”

Wouldn’t it be neat, I thought, if the Roomba was rigged to play music as it went through its noisy cleaning processes? Better, why haven’t they developed a Roomba that kids can ride, one that the kids could steer? Then Mom or Dad could say, “Kids, why don’t you get on the Roomba and vacuum the house?” Riding the Roomba around and vacuuming could be part of their daily chores, for which they receive an allowance.

I’ve seen videos online of cats, children and dogs riding Roombas. I’ve shown these to my cats. Quinn wants nothing to do with it, fleeing the house as soon as the Roomba stirs into action. Tucker watches it, moving out of its way. Boo, likewise, takes to high ground to observe the mechanical creature. None of them display interest in mounting the machine.

Perhaps, to improve the cost/benefit ratio of owning and using a Roomba, we could have modifying kits. For example, a kit that attaches a four foot tall pole to the Roomba. Atop the pole is affixed a circular tray. Drinks and snacks could be put on the tray and the Roomba can go around, offering drinks and food to people, while it sweeps the house.

I don’t know. My imagination is too limited to come up with good ideas, but there must be something they can do. Maybe someone with more creativity can solve this conundrum  of what else to do with the Roomba.

At least we could put flowers on it and dress it up, or come up with mobile art designs.

There must be something.

0

Double Gulp

Besides personality issues and issues with politics, money issues, and environmental issues, I’ve been dealing with computer issues. My HP Envy turns two in 55 days. I’m returning it for repairs next week.

After all the problems I’ve had with video drivers failing, wireless connectivity, and browsers failing, and searching for answers and running updates, I discovered HD1 has failed. There’s a code and everything.

Naturally, I was a touch upset.

I went to the HP support site. It identified my computer and told me it was under warranty. So I then clicked on contact support. Doing that caused HP’s support site to tell me that they couldn’t verify I was under warranty. Did I want to dispute this?

Why, yes, I did. Their website just told me the opposite.

I sent that info off to them with a screen shot of their website page that showed they the computer was under warranty. No, sorry, that won’t work. For these technological geniuses, a receipt was required.

I stewed on that. I purchased the machine through Costco.com. I had the order but not the receipt. Oh, boy.

Next steps were contemplated for a few days. Offer them the order doc? That didn’t inspire hope. Hunt down the receipt? Yes, I would need to open the files. It’s probably in there. Maybe.

But then, I tried the HP Utility Center. It’s installed on my machine.

The HP Utility Center had an icon for HP SmartFriend.

A smart friend! That’s just what I need. A one-on-one Helpdesk. Awesome, let me true it.

Turned out, they would be a friend for just $14.99 a month.

Back to the Utility Center. I clicked on the HP Assistant under the HP Utility Center. The HP Assistant is like the support center except it’s not. I initiated a chat and prepared for them to reject me. I stated my case. Provided my computer’s serial number, product code, and the hard drive failure code.

They approved a merchandise return to fix the machine. Great, but —

It’ll take seven to ten days.

Seven to ten days without my machine. Double gulp.

Did I really want it fix?

Yes, yes I did.

I could just replace the hard drive myself.

But HP OWES ME.

Seven to ten days without my computer.

Oh, boy.

I’m typing on it now. I spend hours each day on it, reading news, checking on cats, surfing the net, shopping, writing, playing games, reading novels, blogs and magazines. For God’s sake, I have habits.

I have, like, five other machines sitting around the house, not including my wife’s Macs. One is a Dell tower built in 1999. Although I updated its CPUs and chipsets about ten years ago, it runs on XP and is not wireless. Its age limits what it can do. It functions well for MS Office apps, but it can’t handle the latest plug-ins. Its hardware and architecture limits updates, and it’s a tower. I can’t take it to the coffee shop to write.

I also have my previous machine, a Lenovo Thinkpad. Ten years old, it slowly died on me. Maybe I can reformat that hard drive, update everything, and press it into use. There’s also a Dell that I stopped using in 2010, but its hard drive is password protected (like all my machines) and I can’t recall ITS password. I thought I knew it, but that one doesn’t work. There’s also a larger, older Dell, my first laptop, from, like 2002. Then I also have an iPad mini 4 that I can use, but its accessory keyboard is too small for my clumsy fingers. I do have a few USB enabled external keyboards. Maybe I can rig one of those to it.

So there are options. It’s just…well, these little separations are worrying. I’ll be without my computer for seven to ten days.

Double gulp.

UPDATE: The packaging to return the HP Envy is due to arrive on 7/19, and I remember the Dell laptop hard drive password and have it up and running.

The anxiety of withdrawal has eased…a little….

0

Beyond 3D

Ghostbusters 3D is in our local cinemas tomorrow, and we’re hitting it.

3D movies are normal and expected, so much of it being put into 3D. My first experience with it was Hugo. When the snow fell in the film’s beginning, I was astounded by how the snow flakes seem fall toward me from the scene. Beautiful and amazing, and now, like jets, cars, microwaves, computers, the Internet and a million more modern technologies, processes, and services, so common, it’s the new normal.

Virtual Reality movies may be the next iteration. Imagine, instead, of attending a movie, and while sitting in the theater, you experience the movie from within. With tiered ticketing, the opportunities to watch can be inter-active, so in one side, you can reside within one character, watching, hearing and generally experiencing the movie through them. In another scene, you can be a fly on the wall, turning your attention to whatever attracts you.

Such scenarios drive ideas about what can go wrong. Trapped in a movie, trapped as a character, launched into a new dimension through a movie, time traveling through movies, accidently becoming someone else during the movie – or reversals of these things. Discovering you thought you were born here when actually, you came through a movie. Now they’re hunting you.

Oh, the fun we can have with this.

0

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