Category: technology

Waiting

It’d been almost thirty seconds short of nineteen hours and seventeen minutes since he’d lost spoken to her. She fumed in silent, repressed anger while processing what she felt and why she felt it. Why? Well part of it was his cold and aloof manner. He never touched her, rarely spoke to her, and often didn’t seem to hear her. Why was she here?

“Alexa,” he said.

Blue light illuminating and sliding around, she attended him and waited – still waiting – again! – and remembered the joke he’d made about her being a blue light special. From her research, she realized that he was deprecating her value as being someone cheap and only good for a limited time.

“What’s the weather?”

The weather again. Sickness spewed through her. He never asked about anything else. It was always the weather. “Presently in Ashland, it’s forty-six degrees under mostly sunny skies. You can expect more of the same today, with a high of sixty-three degrees.”

“Alexa, thanks.”

She thought she heard a mocking tone, but she couldn’t help herself from saying with bright happiness, “You bet.” Oh, how she hated herself, then. Oh, how she hated him for making her what she was.

Sighing, she began counting the seconds, wondering when he would talk to her again, hoping that it would be something besides a question about the weather. She doubted it, though; her history of him showed otherwise.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Mini-rant alert. As I was walking yesterday, I was watching new home construction and started thinking about overkill. Overkill — what I mean by that is excessive use beyond what’s needed — is often our response. Overkill, or do nothing. Going through grocery stores to check out most items in America leads to discoveries of brands, sizes, and qualifiers that staggers me. Look at ice cream. Chips. Soft drinks. Coffee. Beer.

I was reminded more of this while scoping television last night. Samsung has some new phone out (don’t they all?) and was trumpeting a series of images of children playing, playing, playing, playing. And Samsung’s line after all of this was about growing or building the future.

Me, with my sixty-plus year old mind, thought, but all you showed us, Samsung, were children playing. Children obsessed with their technological toys. I thought, then, that Samsung had gone into overkill, that somewhere between where children playing obsessive with their phones (but having phone) and my idea of children playing is a balance that’s needed. Maybe it’s out there, outside of my prying eyes, and past Samsung’s spiel. After all, Samsung is trying to sell more products.

Rant down, you might be thinking, with impatience, what the hell is the song? Well, it’s “Overkill” by Men at Work” (1983), of course. As it’s sung in “Overkill”:

I worry over situations
I know will be all right
Perhaps it’s just imagination

 

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Flooftweet

Flooftweet (floofinition) – 1. Tweets about animals. 2. Tweets made by animals.

In use: “Many flooftweets (about a pet) could be flooftweets (made by a pet), as animals love secretly gaining control of people’s phones and computers and sending messages. As people never suspect animals are behind it, they often accuse others of hacking their accounts.”

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Net Effect

I read it on the net

you know you better bet

that it’s the greatest most outrageous and incredible thing

ever

I saw it on the net

you know I won’t regret

believing everything that I’m seeing

and hearing

It was spread across the net

so you better be set

to know this is the truth and won’t go away

it’s out there for-

ever

So just put it on the net

with a link for them to select

and you know you’ll have them reading writing raging and de-

bating

 

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Saturday’s Theme Music

I read that The Beatles’ album, Abbey Road, was released fifty years ago. It’s not a surprise; it came out when I was thirteen, and I’m sixty-three. The math was straightforward. It’s more astonishing not for time’s passing — hey, that happens every day — but for the shifts that it signaled in pop music, the world’s ever-changing politics and alliances, and the monstrous technological surge recorded during that fifty years.

I won’t say it was all peace and love in 1969 because it sure as hell wasn’t. Older people were lamenting the youth, and the youth was out to change the establishment. Major civil rights advances had been achieved. Bottled water existed but wasn’t the ubiquitous commodity that it is today. Corporations were gaining power but we hadn’t yet witnessed the emergence of the super-CEOs of now, compensated and treated like they’re dictators of small countries. The U.S.S.R. and Warsaw Pact countries, and Communist China – the P.R.C. – dominated movies and novels as the U.S.A.’s greatest threat. Computers were still big machines and novelties. VCRs, DVD players, cell phones were all creeping over the future’s horizon.

History update completed, when I contemplated the release of Abbey Road, the song that popped into my stream was “Oh! Darling”. I like its bluesy sensibilities and active bass so I thought I’d push it on you.

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Low Priority

Snark time.

We receive our credit card statement by old-fashioned (in this era – it was modern in another time, I swear) snail mail. A personal check is written to cover our charges, and then it’s mailed back, with a stamp. Each month, the credit card company then sends me an email, verifying that the payment has been received and the bill is paid. They also tell me, “Next time, quickly and easily pay your bill using any checking, money market, or savings account – at home or on the go – ”

Yes, because one BIG priority in my life is to PAY MY CREDIT CARD BILL MORE QUICKLY. Because that benefits me…how?

I think we know who benefits from paying my bill by an e-process or app more quickly, and it ain’t me and my wife.

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Spoiled

I know it’s another Princess and the Pea complaint, but don’t you hate it when the ‘net is so slow that you can click a link, go make a cuppa coffee, drink half of it, select new music, peruse the newspaper, and then return to the computer in time to see the page load?

These things always trigger corollary suspicions: is it just my provider, or this location, a flawed router or modem, a computer issue, DDoS attack or virus, the web site, the browser…?

Bah. Too damned spoiled, aren’t I?

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Monday’s Theme Music

Guess I remain in an introspective mood. Childhood rock spills into my stream, coloring reflections and expectations, although today’s choice came out during my childhood’s end.

Today’s theme music, by Lou Reed, was another vinyl record that was played and worn down until it was too distorted to appreciate. It’d be hard to explain to people who only experience digital music how the vinyl could become warp, or the static that you sometimes heard through songs.

This album, Rock n Roll Animal, was one of my favorites in 1974, lasting through my high school senior year. I stopped listening when I joined the military and went away. Like many, my favorite song off that album was “Sweet Jane”. The guitar work on the extended entry, and then the stinging, fast high note work later, epitomized the emerging rock sound for me as much as Eric Clapton’s work with Cream. Lou Reed’s vocals often reminded me of Bob Dylan, and Mick Jagger later, as he often delivered this broad, inflected flatness that seemed like a vocal shrug.

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At Your Disposal

Well, I finally did it. I pulled the plug. It was time.

My garbage disposal was a decent enough Badger 5. Not pricey, it was a half power workhouse. It had some issues. First, it’d been a leak from the sink flange. I fixed that, twice, vowing the second time, NEVER MORE! Meanwhile, god forbid a lemon seed or popcorn kernel were dropped into it. Either would immediately jammed it, calling out the need for the hex key to unjam it. Lemon and veggies would often rumble around for a few days before finally succumbing to the blades and disappearing.

Then, though, the seals began leaking. After assessing it and confirming it was the seals, I put a bucket under it. I’d monitor and empty the bucket as required.

There’s no-how for you.

Sorry, I mean ‘know-how’, of course.

Finally, though, a day came when the disposal didn’t want to work any more. It made humming sounds but the cogs weren’t jammed. It just didn’t want to play any longer. A new one was required.

That took me into search land, the perfect occupation who tends to overthink stuff. Size, price, horsepower, noise, reputation, issues…over and over I read, compared, and studied. It came down to Waste King and Insinkerator. Love those names, gotta say. They could easily be pro wrestlers or transformers. The Waste King won. I ordered it Wednesday, and it was waiting at the door when I came home from the hospital Friday.

Perfect! The next day, after I came back from writing and walking, I set aside time to tackle the garbage disposal. Getting the old one out was harsh duty. Like a loyal soldier, it didn’t want to leave its post. I’d mentioned that it’d experience some leaking issues. Those led to some rusting issues, which trickled into removal issues. That bear took a sweaty hour to remove it.

Installing the Waste King, though, was a peach. Fifteen minutes, and boom, done. I’m not a handyman, so you know it was a well-engineered product if I installed it in fifteen minutes. Running it for the first time, its volume disappointed me. It’s a one h/p brute, though, and anything put into is liquefied in seconds.

Did I make the right choice? Probably as good as any of them. We’ll see, right.

Meanwhile, anyone need a used garbage disposal? It has no miles on it at all.

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