Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Compufloof (floofinition) – housepet who is attracted to computers and other technological devices.
In use: “No laptop, iPhone, or smart phone could be set down and left unattended. As soon as they were, one of the resident compufloofs was on it. Even television, entertainment center, and DVR remotes were bait for their Golden Retriever. That compufloof had once collected them all, hiding them in a closet corner.”
Techno-floof (floofinition) – a housepet who enjoys interacting with electronic technology or who is fascinated or entranced by electronic technologies such as telephones, televisions, and computers.
In use: “After showing his cat videos of birds and squirrels on the large smart-TV, Cameron was surprised one day when he heard the television go on, apparently by itself, in the living room. When he checked, he found his cat sitting on the sofa beside the remote. It seemed like the little techno-floof had watched him and knew how to turn it on.
“No way, Cameron thought. There had to be another reason for how the television came on.”
I was watching “Future Man” on Hulu last night. An eHarmony commercial came on. The featured woman said, “I don’t want to waste time with men who aren’t right for me.”
I thought, soon such apps and approaches will expand. What person should I have as a friend? What books should I read, what television shows should I watch, or what movies should I go to?
Apps will tell you which you’re most likely to enjoy, enabling you to avoid wasting time with other people or activities that aren’t right for you.
Sad. You can learn a lot from wasting time with things that aren’t right for you.
You can even have a good time.
Instead, let’s narrow our minds and reduce our bubbles just a little bit more.
I received an email from my wife that her computer had been hacked. It made her a little nervous.
She’d sent the email two hours before. (As an aside, she sent it on one of our other computers. How many do we have? Yes, too many.) I’d been busy writing and didn’t have my email open, so I didn’t see the email. When I saw it, I wrote, “Okay, I’m coming home.” I was almost done with writing like crazy for the day, although I’d wanted to walk to think more about the concept and plot.
Her computer is an Apple Mac. She hadn’t been hacked but was being scammed by a Mad Defender variant, a little surprising. It’s pretend ransom-ware. The Mac Defender scam is about blocking the user from changing tabs and pages in Safari while a warning that spyware has been detected is shown. It then tells you to call a number for Apple support.
From there, several things can happen. One, they can urge the gullible to share computer access. Two, they can be conned into buying a security program that’s not a security program but gives them access to your computer and its files and information. Or, most enticing for them, they get your credit card info and go to town.
It took me about seventy minutes to research her particulars and find and delete the malware app, along with the offending processes. As Mac Defender and the other names it goes by has been around since 2011, they’d changed details to make it more difficult to find and remove. I was surprised that they were using the MS Azurewebsites for this, as MS has been burned by this in the past. That was a big, immediate clue when I opened her computer and saw the message.
Anyone, it was a disruption to writing and posting blog thingies, along with walking and a few other things, but all’s well, and that’s the bottom line in all of this.
Back to our normal programming.
the computerization
fragmentation
digitnation
wants one thing for itself
and another for the rest
keep everything else
just gif me the best
Macfloofnation (floofinition) – a housepet’s scheming or crafty action or artful design to accomplish something it knows it’s not allowed to do; a group of animal lovers who also identify as Apple Mac users; (slang) housepets who enjoy eating food from McDonald’s restaurants.
In use: “As part of his macfloofations to get food off the plate, he put on his cutest face, holding it in place as he edged his paw forward.”
I received a Costco paper thingy in the mail yesterday, one of those things with thin but glossy pages stapled together that show, “Here’s what you can buy!”
I leafed through the leafs because I’m always looking for things to buy, when what do you think caught my eye?
Yes, that’s right, a smart toilet.
Offered by Ove, the description was pithy. They mentioned that it had memory and a remote control. I thought, WTH? Why would your toilet remember you? Does it say, this guy again, and turn on some air freshener? Or is it a matter of adjusting the toilet height and angle to suit your body for the best experience evacuating bowels? And what the heck was the remote control for?
These questions pushed me to search the net for answers. I found a promotional video so that I can share all of those things with you.
The smart toilet disappointed me in the end. While it was impressive on the surface and intrigued me about what it could do, I thought, what about a phone app for it, and voice control? Does it not interface with Siri or Alexa? I don’t know why you’d want to do any of that, but then, I’m not really sold on a remote control for my toilet.
Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised that the smart toilet has arrived. Smart dildos, smart thermostats, smart phones, and smart toothbrushes have been around for some time. Other smart inventions are arriving every day, like smart sex dolls and smart showers. Naturally, with all this smart stuff, concerns are raised about your smarts being hacked, resulting in unexpected problems. Besides someone else taking control of it, these smart devices are calling back home, reporting on what you’re doing.
It’s another reason to not get a smart appliance. Sooner or later, they’re gonna turn on you.
I presented my Festivus list of grievances to my beer buddies the other night. Although the grievances are supposed to be personal and about the people present, I had a general list, and I took a humorous, provocative approach.
One of my items that generated much discussion was the hacked butt plug. I know that I’m not part of the demographics of people that use butt plugs, so I don’t know much about them. I also didn’t know that they could be hacked, or why others would want to do that. Still, it’s part of a larger world that I don’t get, not because I’m over sixty, but because the shit people do is alien to what I think of as fun. Besides hacking butt plugs and other smart sex toys, a term called screwdriving (hah!), I don’t get people doxxing others, or eating Tide pods, or catfishing. Yes, I understand the intellectual reasons behind people doing things, just like people doing weird shit when I was a kid, but those things didn’t appeal to me then, either. Being a writer, though, is about trying to understand, looking into people, thinking about their motivation and the impact of what they do has on them and their lives. So, I explore…
While mentioning the butt plugs the other night, over half present reacted, “Why would you want to know more about butt plugs?” But others were like me, saying, “How can you not want to know more?”
You see there the sprawl of human differences. Some invent butt plugs. Others use them. Another group hacks them. Someone else shies away from knowing about them. Someone else writes about them, and others read and talk about them.
It’s a wild, wild life that’s teeming with diversity. It makes it a much more interesting world.
At least, to me.
Hey writers, hope you’re all doing well as this calendar year slides to the final days. Hope you remember that no matter what happened this year, you can go on and on and on, even when the days drag you down, people bury you for dead, and the routines become too much to endure. Have a mug of coffee, a cup of tea, a sip of wine, a quaff of beer, a piece of chocolate, meditate, read, exercise, walk, take deep breaths, do whatever you’ve found that helps you pick your ass up and put it down in a chair or bed or wherever you write, so you can stare down the blank space one more time, and let the words out. However you do it, you must do it, you must find the way to keep going, to keep trying, to write like crazy at least one more day. But whatever you do, and however you do it, always remember, if you’re using a computer, ensure you back up your work.
Saw a headline slug, “Driverless Cars Return”.
An imagined television news report about a driverless car getting lost and living on the streets by itself for years climbed into my head, and then came the happy reunion, when the driverless car returned to its family for a happy reunion.
“We thought our car was gone forever,” Patty McLaren said about the brown four-door Ford sedan. “We looked for it for everywhere for weeks. We never gave up, really. Every time a driverless car went by, we looked to see if it was our car. Though I never stopped hoping, I never really believed it would come back, though. It’s like a dream come true.”
The car is a little older and rustier, with bald tires and faded paint. Its radio and speakers are gone, apparently torn out by thieves, and the engine smokes.
“Who knows what it went through?” Mrs. McLaren said, stroking the car’s front fender. “I’m amazed it’s still runnin’. I’m just so happy it’s back.”
Mrs. McLaren said that they were going to get the car a new coat of paint and tires. “Then we’re just going to put it in the garage and keep it there, and pamper it.”
Her daughter expressed disappointment that she wouldn’t be allowed to take the car to college with her.
Michael Seidel, writer 