Month: July 2016

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.

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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….

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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.

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Dueling Novels

Hard writing day. When the Dallas sniper struck, it sapped my interest/desire for writing about murder.

But I had to write, so I began writing a sequel to “Returnee”, “The Long Summer”. Yet, the me that is a writer knew that other novel, “Personal Lessons with Savanna”, remained in progress, and he still had some writing to do.

So I end up doing a chapter of TLS, and then a chapter of PLwS. I’ll be writing one and realize a line or change for the other. Both story arcs are growing and stretching out before me, beckoning as a calm sea on a summer day, but exhausting as I jump from one to the other and strive to grab the evolving threads of each and order them. Neither can be shut down. Each generates their own aha excitement, stirring enthusiasm. Writing like crazy is driving me crazy.

I’m achieving progress, but man, oh, man, that excitement is a burning fire, consuming my patience and energy as its fuel, leaving me a short-tempered, barely functioning shell.

More coffee. Quick, damn it, quick. Ah, now the battery is low.

Time to stop. For now.

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Obsessions

Pokemon porn searches are up 136%.

That news coaxed my snark to the surface. Oh, boy, having sex, or pretending to have sex with fake creatures ranks high on my bucket list.

Up 136% from what?

What obsessions, games and occupations have I ever had that would compare to the Pokemon madness? Sure, I’ve had obsessions, and I’ve been pre-occupied. Never camped out for tickets to anything. Did drive long distances to attend rock concerts. Didn’t pay insane ticket prices. Never shopped on Black Friday to get a must have object of desire. Have waited in lines at amusement park rides, but never over an hour, and have waited in lines for dinner. Yeah, waited in line for hot breakfasts of reconstituted eggs, fried potatoes and Spam. Waited in lines in the desert for showers, and also waited in lines at concerts to use a latrine of whatever kind existed.

Writing, perhaps, is my obsession. Watching some TV series to their ends. Game of Thrones. Sopranos. Firefly. But didn’t drop everything for them.

Ah, my cats’ security. I obsess over their disappearances and health.

Okay, Pokemon gamers, apologies. I have had obsessions and sympathize with your plight.

On to the writing like crazy.

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Half Mast

Flag is at half mast/half staff today, honoring someone killed. It’s been flying low since Dallas.

And my thought is, keep it there. Don’t raise it to the top until the arrives when someone in America has not shot and killed someone else.

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Unprepared

I’ve been thinking about murder. It was fiction, based on news stories and historical accounts of true murders.

I’ve been crafting scenes and realizing characters, and defining arcs. I’ve been immersing myself in these fiction details. It was enjoyable. It was about the writing, the story telling, the characters, and the richness I felt in finding them all in that one beautiful little chapter.

But today it seems odd, even wrong, to write about violence after such a violent week. Besides America’s gun violence, besides Dallas, besides WaPo’s feature that shows 509 Americans killed by Police this year to date, besides the bombing in Iraq that killed 300, besides these and the anti-Semitic, anti-sanity, anti-progress utterings of Donald Trump, GOP candidate for POTUS, besides the ongoing refugee crises from the ongoing wars and fighting, and the animal abuses and murders….

Well, besides these things, and climate change and the hottest June on record and the smallest Arctic ice on record…besides these things….

I write to entertain myself. The entertainment comes from trying to understand events and people. In my murder mysteries, I attempt to understand how one person comes to decide to kill another and the course of thinking investigators follow to discover who did it and why. In my science fiction, I attempt to bridge technological advances with the impact on societies and individuals, and strive to understand how they cope with the challenges of change, of being on other worlds and traveling through space in another world, the one of the starship.

But the real world is intruding today. Dallas is intruding. I don’t want to write about murder.

This becomes a test. I have my coffee, my goals, and my intentions. I’m here to write. Writing is meditative, a chance to escape the world’s trials and errors and the personal frustrations of living. But the building momentum of what’s been going on, the world’s escalating violence and, sadly, what seems like rising selfishness and hatred, is crashing over me and taking me down.

Now I offer another but. Everything is a spectrum for me. This post is on a spectrum of personal and private thoughts and efforts to understand the world and myself. On the private scale, it gets close to the bone, probably a seven on a 1-10 scale. If I’m ever at ten, I’m emotionally and intellectually naked and truthful. There have been searing moments when I’ve been a ten with myself. It’s ugly and beautiful.

So now, the but, writing this post helps me understand my perspective and permits me to vent. It isn’t deep nor gravely insightful or profound, but still, it’s a release. That’s what’s happened by sitting and writing out my thoughts. Now I can take a deep breath, pivot myself, open a file, and write like crazy.

Just give me a few more minutes, and I’ll willing to try.

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I Can’t / I Can

Meditating and calming is hard today. My heart is with Dallas. My heart is with the people the police killed. My heart is with the officers and family killed by snipers.

I can’t digest the reasons a traffic stop ends in death. “I have a gun. I’m permitted to carry it.” Four shots later, dead. Some witnesses say the shots were fired before the officer finished saying. It’s contested. John Scalzi writes what I think. I can’t imagine, I can imagine, I can remember moments when an officer confronted me, but I never thought about being shot and killed. I’m white and male. It’s a different world for me.

Police are called to a convenience store. A black man is outside. Police arrive, confront him, taser him, wrestle him to the crowd. They see a gun. Bang. The narrative is contested. No one is agreeing about what happened, about what videos showed, about who remembers what.

Black people are being killed for broken tail lights. Shot in the back eight times while running away. Because they’re a threat.

Protests break out. Trials, investigations, inquiries are conducted and almost every time, from small black child with a toy gun to people tasered and on the ground, the results return, “It was justified.” The officer feared…. The officer followed proper procedures….

So, who is surprised? Someone else says, “I’m fucking tired of this. I’m fighting back. I’m taking it to them. See how they like it when they’re shot and killed without provocation, because they’re not the ones who did anything, but the system is rigged and has provoked me to this response.” And they get up there and start shooting at officers.

How many trigger words are in those sentences I wrote that people would contest? Many, many. We ‘know’ more violence isn’t the answer but we ‘know’ that nothing has been changed to protect people from being shot and killed by a good guy, bad guy, or police officer, with a gun. We know fear is rising. Imagine being a police officer right now. Imagine being a black person. Imagine being in Dallas when the shots are fired. Imagine being in a car and reaching for your wallet when shots are fired.

There will be responses. There will be posts like this. There will be prayers and pious statements that our hearts are with the victims, whether they’re officers or citizens, of this rising streak of violent death by guns, as I wrote in my first paragraph, as I, weary of these dire headlines and violence, struggle to understand. The NRA will remain silent. They’ve learned not to speak out at these moments. Bad PR. Others will make foolish statements. Some will challenge and mock, “See, those fucking police officers were good guys with guns.”

Yeah.

Reading the officers’ accounts of going into Orlando after that mass shooting – how many days ago? –  they tell of the darkness and uncertainty in the club, of going through carefully to find the shooter. Add some good guys with guns shooting at what they think is the bad gun with a gun into that charged environment of darkness and uncertainty.

But we know the future. There will be protests. Marches. Calls for change. Petitions. Blog posts. Prayers. Statements. Maybe sit-ins. Gun sales will rise again.

We know the future. Just look to the past. You don’t need to travel far.

Just travel to June.

 

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More OMG

As I walked today, I returned to a favorite concept and toyed with it. I love the concept but lacked a vehicle. Yesterday’s concept that pleased me so greatly yesterday rose up. Ah, what can I do with it?

Blink, blink. The favorite concept could be told through a sequel to Returnee. I’d been wanting to write a sequel to that – there’s more story to be told. (There always is, isn’t there?) Blink blink. And the conceptual basis of the novel could be the new, exciting concept.

Blink blink. Blink, blink, blink.

OMG, yes, the story and setting began cascading into me. Now, now, I chided myself, stay true to the current novel. It’s in progress, must be written, finished, revised, edited, polished, published, released. Yes, but, yes, but –

Yes, but crashed through. Excitement couldn’t be stopped. A first line emerged. Oh, yeah, what a wonderful first line. So I’ll write it, just it, along with, maybe just a little scene. As the setup evolved, I thought, perhaps I’ll just write a chapter.

Okay, one chapter. Just one, just, like 2,000 words.

That’s all. For now.

 

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Three Best

Yesterday was my 60th birthday. I lack the socialization or genes or spirit to celebrate. I just don’t do it, not for holidays, nor my birthday. I will try to celebrate with others but when my spouse asks me what I want to do for my birthday, or what I want, I’m pretty lost about my answer.

And I think it’s been so for a long time. But in thinking about what to do, I reflected on the best birthday celebrations. Three stand out in mind. So in no order, because they are the three best —

My fifteenth birthday. I’d moved in with my father and was living in an apartment by the military installation where he was assigned, in Dayton, Ohio, just him and me. I spent days by myself, which isn’t a bad life for me, as I was active as an artist and created pencil drawings, and I read books. My one friend outside of this was my Dad’s friend, Jim. Jim picked me up once a week to take me fishing. After a few weeks of that, he asked me if I wanted to go home with him for lunch. I did, and ended up meeting my future wife.

The birthday tie-in comes from spending July 4th with her and the rest of Jim’s family. Discovering it was my birthday the next day, my fourteen year old future wife ‘borrowed’ my watch and refused to give it back to me, until midnight struck. Then she presented it to me as a gift. That was a great birthday.

But another great birthday involved my Mom. She asked me what I wanted to do and we ended up going to a steak house, like I was an adult, where I had a New York strip steak. I think it was my first steak and certainly the first time I felt like I was more than a son with my mother, but also a friend. That was a great birthday.

The third came when I was stationed in Germany with the Air Force. I flew to the US to go to a writing conference in Ohio. Since I was in that region of the world, with all the time and expense associated with getting there, I also visited my Mom and sisters in Pittsburgh, PA. Going out of their way, they procured me Penn Pils beer, which was like German beer that was brewed in Pittsburgh, and made my favorite dishes. It wasn’t my birthday but it was in the same time period, and, as I’d left home long before and was rarely back, they treated my visit like a birthday celebration. That was a great birthday.

Like many things in life, I’ve been extremely fortunate. Remembering them, and having all the shout-outs from friends, acquaintances, companions, relatives and former co-workers via the Internet (and an enjoyable day with my wife, who I met forty-five years ago) has made this birthday a wonderful day.

Thanks for a great birthday.

I guess that’s four.

 

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