It’s a grip-worthy day for me. We ordered a packaged. 28 August. It was shipped via UPS Mail Innovactions the next day, or maybe the one after that.
UPS said we’d receive it by September 3. That didn’t happen. Package was in Fife, Washington. Transferred to the USPS. Because this is Mail Innovations.
The package arrived at Fife, WA, on September 3. An update said, your package will be delivered on September 6 by 7 PM.
Didn’t happen. I went to the UPS said, tracked the package — still in Fife, WA, on September 3, the shipment that stood still — and used the assistant link they provided me.
It was not useful. Said the tracking number which UPS provided me is not a UPS tracking number. Well, I saw exactly where the gap began. My number is for UPS Mail Interventions, I mean, Mail Innovations. UPS and its virtual assistance is not set up to assist with that innovation.
I logged into my wife’s email account to help her sort an issue.
Correction: I tried to log into her email.
They — Hotmail, or whatever mastermind now behind it — wanted to send me a code to my wife’s second email address to log into the Hotmail.
So I filled in the second email account and went to log into it to receive a code to log into the first email account
Voila. The second email account wanted a code to log into it. They wanted to send it to the first email account.
To summarize: to log into one email account, they wanted to send a security code to a second email account but to log into the second email account, I had to log into the first email account to get a code to get into the second email account.
I always knew this was where tech was heading. It’s pretty FUBAR.
Just more first world blues, but I’m bummed out by those automatic toilets which flush while I’m still doing my business. Then, when I do finish my biz, it doesn’t flush, forcing me to search for the magic button to make it happen.
I mean, what exactly is that thing sensing when it flushes and doesn’t? Or is it just messing with me?
We started this day in Ashlandia, Wednesday, May 1, 2024, at 36 F. Chilly, baby. No clouds besmirched the blue sky. Sunshine stormed in at dawn. Asserting itself like a new young bull, the sunshine and front pushed the temperature up to 53 F. It’s still climbing with an expected final stop at 67 F.
The cats can’t wait until it gets that warm. Both stayed out for a testing period in the early hours but galloped to the house when I opened the door and offered sanctuary. Tucker and Papi are now napping like the house cats they are.
Yeah, my mood is oneofhosekindofdaysic. All first world blues junk. Fitbit crashing itself, losing two days of data. GASP! Stop the presses. Slow-loading pages. Connectivity matters at the coffee shop. OH NO, it’s the end of the world. Little matters like that which chip away at your spirit like water dripping on stone. It’s such a cruel world. How can I possibly enjoy my scone and coffee under these conditions? Yes, that’s 24 karat snark.
Reading news restores some semblance of balance. People killed in tornados and storms. I can’t deter my brain from imagining what their death must have seemed like. The noise and power of the storm followed by some manner of incident which causes their demise. Seems like a lonely and terrifying way to die. Of course, hearing incoming missiles or artillery shells also seems terrifying. Is it worse when a blow just comes with little sound and warning? What about being a child in a school listening to one your classmates picking off your peers as they walk the halls with a semiautomatic weapon? That also seems like it would generate all-consuming terror.
One of my nephews experienced his 18th birthday recently so I was thinking about him. Naturally, The Neurons conjured Alice Cooper to the morning mental music stream (Trademark simmering) with “I’m Eighteen” from 1971. The song came out three years before my eighteenth natal day, so I had a ready-made theme song for the day.
I pondered the differences between what I was like and my life, and my young nephew. A straightforward comparison is hard to generate. Our social mediate in those days was passing notes and writing letters. Information was just beginning to emerge beyond AM/FM radio and the big three national television networks.
But I think both ages embody a sense of chaos and challenges. I think that’s so for every generation, no matter the era. We face the same issues of finding our nature and going forward as adults.
He, from my vantage, is an intelligent, poised, and talented individual. My sis, his Mum, is proud of him, and so am I. I look forward to seeing him soon. I hope he votes this year and casts a blue ballot.
Okay, I’ve boarded the coffee train. Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the rock video. Stay chill. Cheers
Caught a commercial on TV. About a doctor and her doctor peers, I guess, and their work in a hospital, and their personal lives and romances. As the female doctor kisses a man, a female voiceover says, “The Universe has a way of making sure we’re where we need to be.”
Well, I call bullshit on that. Bullshit because so many people, including children, live in poverty and food insecurity. Some work several jobs. Some deal with personal darkness or physical, emotional, or menal handicaps. Bullshit for the women denied their choice in America and suffer fear and pain because others decide how they should live and strip control away from them. Bullshit for the people around the world with trying to understand themselves and their minds and bodies — I’m speaking about people who don’t neatly align with a binary world — being denied assistance and support.
What about those innocents in war zones? That where the Universe needs to be as the bombs rip up their lives and kill their families. Naw, I’m calling bullshit on that, too. That’s just the tip of a 2024 existence.
I’m happy that some people wherever around the world finds a happy medium where they are and where the Universe has delivered that gives them a safe and happy life. But I think for most, we live lives where we’re scrambling or helping others scrambling to survive.
Man, television and Hollywood can be full of such bullshit. Yeah, that was a young elderly white American middle-class rant. Just needed to expell it from my system.
He thought changing browsers had resolved his WordPress issues. Not so. Longer posts still struggled with the autosaving function. It was like Schrödinger’s WordPress. Never knew what was going to happen.
He was in the coffee shop so it could have to do with their bandwidth or his net connection. Whatever it was, there was no fix. Just coping the post onto a doc, break the connection, start again.
Once it went was into the autosaving hang up, there was no saving it.
It was how long he waited for Microsoft to update.
MS updates always seem invasive. Waiting for it to do its thing is the norm. This is helpful, he reminded himself. New features. Updated security. Bugs fixed.
But he was on a writing schedule. This was twenty-nine minutes of not writing, of sitting and stewing, impatience and irritation growing, while the computer did its thing. Icons didn’t appear on the taskbar. No notice was given about how much longer was required or what was going on. All he could do is sip coffee, tap a finger, and wait.
Eventually, it finished. When the browser finally opened after twenty-nine minutes of waiting, it displayed a message.
He wasn’t impressed. MS had to make up a twenty-nine minute deficit before their updates would start saving time.
Rant over. Back to the normally scheduled program.
Michael Seidel, writer 