Tag: Internet

Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

I was skateboarding the net yesterday, swerving from click to click. An ad bounced up for an Ashlandia coffee shop I used to regularly frequently. It permanenly closed due to the pandemic, Jan 2021.

My backstory is that I enjoy coffee shops as a place to write. I began doing that when I started working from home and began writing short stories in parallel. I use the process of going to the coffee shop as a method to put on my writing hat and throw off the rest of the world. Finding the right place is a challenge. There’s the taste. Location. Prices. Staff. Decent writing surface and a place to plug in. Wifi is a nice convenience to add.

The coffee’s shop closure during the pandemic was the abridged edition. Located in a hotel, a husband and wife team managed it on behalf of her father. He owned the hotel He came in one December day and told them that plans were changing. They protested. The exchange grew angry and loud. The husband and wife were fired.

I’d been loyal to them. The staff walked out with the managers in protest. Long-time customers like me left and didn’t return. They made changes. I visited once a few months later. It wasn’t the same. Management declared after that that only hotel guests were welcome. That was only in the morning.

Replacing it had been difficult. An ad to come patron it surprised me. I checked online: permanently closed, according to its FB page and website.

But businesses are often shoddy about keeping their social presence online up to date. I drove by. Dark. Empty. Closed.

I went on to my new favorite coffee shop. I’ve already lost four Ashlandia coffee shops in the nineteen years I’ve lived here. Hope I don’t lose a fifth. Yes, it’s all about me.

Still, I had to ponder the business intricacies that had an ad for a closed business riding on the net. Sometimes, it’s still garbage in, garbage out.

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Grim Task

It was a grim task set before me. I, not a fan of tasks and less enamored of those tasks of the grim variety, didn’t relish taking it up. But duty, right.

All were assembled around the table. Leaning forward so they could see me, looking around, I loudly said, “I have a question for you.” I waited for silence, which came fast and cast another check on their attention; all were regarding me. “Do you wear socks in the shower?” I asked.

Staring followed, then questions. What, what are you talking about, and say that again was heard among the ten facing me, along with some sputtering, uncertain laughing.

“Do you wear socks in the shower?” I repeated.

“No,” several responded, and then a few inquired, “Why are you asking that?”

“Well, my wife read an article about bizarre things people from different states do, and she read that people in Oregon like to shower with their socks on. Then she asked me, ‘Have you ever heard of this?’ No, I told her. She said, ‘I’ve never showered with my socks on, but I don’t shower.’ I told her, ‘I shower, but I don’t wear my socks.'” Then we talked more and realized, maybe people do this but don’t talk about it because it’s a normal routine for them, so they see no need to speak about it. So, I said that I’d ask you guys, my beer group.”

“No,” all chorused, fully laughing now. “None of us wear our socks in the shower.”

Satisfied that the grim task was done, I sat back and sampled my ale. It was very good.

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Saturday’s Wandering Thought

When people talk about computers and advances in computing, Moore’s Law often comes up. If you don’t recall what I’m talking about, here’s a reminder:

The observation that the number of transistors on computer chips doubles approximately every two years is known as Moore’s Law.

Moore’s Law is not a law of nature, but an observation of a long-term trend in how technology is changing.

The law was first described by Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, in 1965.

h/t to OurWorldInData.org

Well, I have a corollary to Moore’s Law, called Michael’s Law. It goes, “The more in a hurry you are, the slower your computer and the Internet will be.”

Maybe my law only applies to me. Perhaps there’s some computer god assistants somewhere watching me. Seeing me hastily scramble to the computer to search for information and then flee because I’m running late, the assistants notify the God in charge. “Michael is in a hurry. He should have left three minutes ago but he needs to look up the address on his computer.”

“You know what to do.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Just like that, my computer is bogged down, no reason given, leading me to curse the machine and the internet and my service provider, and the app being used or the website I’m trying to reach. It isn’t their fault, of course.

It’s just Michael’s Law.

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Mild Rant

Mindlessly net surfing, I encountered stories that mildly attracted me, just to see what they were about. They were probably among twenty stories of this kind that I encountered. These two, though, pressed my Rant button.

Take One: Atlanta home demolished

That’s what it says on the Bing search page. MSN, AP News, USA Today, and others are covering the tale with headlines like this one from AP.

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

Woman returns from vacation to find Atlanta home demolished

Makes it sound to me as if the destroyed home was the place she was living in. But no.

From the article: ‘“It’s been boarded up about 15 years, and we keep it boarded, covered, grass cut, and the yard is clean,” she said. “The taxes are paid and everything is up on it.”’

It’s been vacant and boarded up for fifteen years. While I admit that someone made a big mistake and demolished a vacant, boarded up home by accident, and that would be upsetting, I think the way the story is projected is wholly misleading.

Take Two: Former Teammates Now Opponents

Yes, this is what’s on ESPN/NFL’s page: a story about two NFL quarterbacks.

TEAMMATES TURNED OPPONENTS

DOLPHINS-EAGLES: 8:20 P.M. ET

Inside the complicated rivalry of Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts2dTim McManus and Marcel Louis-Jacques

The way this story is presented, they make it sound as if the NFL isn’t full of college teammates who get drafted by NFL teams and end up playing against one another.

This article focuses on Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa, quarterbacks who played at Alabama. Hurts was the starter. With a record of 28-2 and a national championship, he was highly regarded and respected, and definitely capable. But Alabama was being shut out. So he was pulled and Tua was put into the game.

Gosh, that never happens in a football! Coaches are always very careful about these things, putting players’ feelings and reputations above winning (yes, that is snark). I can’t think of any other time that a player who wasn’t doing well was benched so another player could be tried, neither in college or the pros. (Yes, that was more snark. It’s a snarky kind of day.)

Fast forward to this year. Hurts now plays for the Eagles and lost in the last Superbowl and Tagovailoa quarterbacks the Miami Dolphins. The two will meet again when their teams play today. Hence, the story.

Yes, I read both stories. Fortunately, they’re not major events. Sure, it’s upsetting to the woman to lose her vacant other home this way; I’d be pissed, too, if someone went to the wrong address and tore the place down. And the way the company has handled it (so far) does nothing to redeem them. But no one was hurt.

Likewise, the football story was a small distraction in an otherwise war-weary and politically numb world, a story significant or meaningful to some serious fans of the teams or players involved, but net fodder for the rest of us.

And yes, in a way, I’m doing the same thing: posting net fodder. But I’m doing it to distract myself from doing other things.

Hope it wasn’t too boring. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

The net can be a dizzying roller coaster. Bad news headlines, followed by humor on a friend’s blog, then disastrous breaking news, chased by sweet floof photos, which give way to dire predictions, trailed by fascinating new scientific or historic findings, war and political updates, and book reviews.

I ride throughout the day, breaking off to soothe myself with my personal writing, and then releasing all the pent tension with a relaxing game or two (or four). You know, Wordle. Spelling Bee. Sudoku.

How different from my youth. We watched television together in the family room — ‘in color’ — so it was a consensus choice. Five channels were available: PBS, the big three, and one UHF channel that washed in and out on a sea of static. Sitcoms (“Green Acres”), dramas (“Gunsmoke) and thrillers (“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”) entertained us, or the Movie of the Week, delivering Psycho, Seven Days in May, and The Sound of Music, among a plethora of others.

Then I consider how different my mother’s childhood was. She was a little girl in Turin, Iowa, during the Depression and World War II, eating popcorn and listening to a radio with her family, or going to the hardware store to watch “I Love Lucy” on the only television in their small town.

Reaching further back, I struggle with visualizing how it was in my grandfather’s youth. He helped establish Turin a few decades before Mom was born. Guess I’ll surf the net about it and see what I find.

Once on the roller coaster, getting off it isn’t easy.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

Maybe it’s just me, but whenever I see a cuddle puddle of sleepy kittens in a photo or video on the net, there’s usually one staring suspiciously at the camera.

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Lost Button

Where is my button?

I can’t find it now.

Don’t know where to eat, what to eat,

And I’m beginning to forget how.

Where is my button?

How do I get through the day?

What will I do when others come around,

Asking me to play?

Without my button, I don’t know where to go,

I have nothing smart to say.

Oh, where is my button?

How did I lose it this way?

People say they never used to have them,

But that cannot be true.

How did they know how to dress,

How to act, what to learn,

Without a button to show the truth?

Oh, where is my button?

It’s driving me insane.

How can I be me, without my button to say?

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Friday’s Wandering Thought

Amazon Marketing was either housed a low level of intelligence or a superior sense of irony and humor. He liked researching things on Amazon. It was the best reason for the site’s existence. Once he finished his research, he usually bought things elsewhere. Say, 9 out of 10 times. But after a few days, Amazon inevitably sent him an email featuring the thing he’d researched, proclaiming, “We found something you might like.” Yeah, you think that, Amazon? Do you think I’ll like it because it was what I was looking at on your site two days ago?

Yes, either impressively stupid or outrageously ironic and funny.

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DIY, Kind Of

Telephone charging. That’s what gave me my answer. Of course, I wouldn’t have been there if I’d not taken shortcuts. But I like shortcuts.

Our net connection went dark last Friday night. After rebooting, I figured, ah, something wrong with the local provider. When it was out the next morning, I reported it to see what they said. The tired sounding female on the other end said, “No one else is reporting any problem in your area.” She followed up with basic questions. What lights do you have? Are all the connections tight? After my answers, she said, “We’ll need to escalate.” Like, that was all she had. “You’re get a call between now and Monday morning.”

The cable modem was showing the ethernet was up and the power was on, but nothing being received or sent to the provider, even after reports. T’ain’t a flicker. I checked my notes. Cable modems normally last five years. This one was five years old. Time for a new one.

Basic research was conducted about what worked with the provider’s network and what didn’t, and if there would be anything to look for to match it with my router. A few reviews were read on the phone, then we went shopping. I bought a simple Arris SB6 series which wasn’t too pricy and was said to fit my network. We plugged it in and got lights for everything, so it was the cable modem, but couldn’t connect to the network. I knew from past experience it was because the provider had to activate it on their end.

Monday morning, I called it in and they brought it up. All was well. Until…

When I returned from my coffee writing session, my wife darkly informed me that our net is not fixed. “It keeps going out.”

I tracked that. Yes, it was going out every six to ten minutes, rebooting, then coming back online. Connections were checked. All was good. WTF?

I noodled it over for several hours. Plugged in new cables. No change. Did research. Nobody had anything else. But the cable connection didn’t make sense to me anyway. Looked like the modem was going off, then we were losing the connection. Then it rebooted. Could be an attack but doubtful.

Then it hit. Power. Microvolts and amps.

Like in the phone chargers and Fitbits.

We’ve learned that not all chargers work with the trackers and phones. Minute differences cause problems. That could be the case now with the cable modem. At least, I needed to check and eliminate it.

The cable modem’s power is embedded in a very sophisticated system that I set up thirteen years ago. Color coded and everything. Hard as hell to reach. So when I bought the new cable modem, I used the old power line and supply. Now, I dug out the proper line, disconnected it and plugged in the new one. Everything booted up properly. The cable modem stayed on and the connection remained solid.

I put everything back together. Lesson learned, again. Beware of shortcuts.

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Saturday’s Wandering Thought

Websites seemed to be growing worse. Almost since the inception of the web, there was clickbait, slugs, ledes, and headlines to invite surfers to click and browse. Too many of these were outright misleading, trying to sensationalize political divisions and celebrity behavior.

Grammar declines. Punctuation mistakes, yes, and typos, which can happen, but some sentences are read several times before the fact is accepted that the sentence is I&I – incomplete and incoherent.

Now, bad links are blooming. Click on a link and it takes you to the wrong place. Is hijacking back? It seems like just weak execution. Whatever it is, it’s another modern, first-world annoyance.

Don’t get him started on the pathetic search results which are often returned.

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