One-Liner Wednesday: Decisions
My decision to decide later crumpled against a more urgent decision to get up and eat, which led me to a pause in front of the bathroom mirror where I decided, not today, and maybe not tomorrow.
The Encounter
Midnight.
I turn on the master bath lights and see a large spider in one of the porcelain sinks.
Finding a tube of cosmetics, I tried to give them a lift up and out.
The spider raced around in a slipping, sliding frenzy to escape the tube. “I’m trying to help you,” I reassured it.
Withdrawing, I found a small cloth and shaped a ramp in the sink. Recognizing the opening, the spider used it to climb up and out. Then it disappeared without even a backward glance or wave.
I wonder what she’ll tell others about her encounter with a human.
The Short Game
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked.
My wife whipped her head around and glared at me. “I am going to kill you. Every day you come in here and ask that. Did you look to see what we have?”
“How ’bout we order Chinese food?”
Her eyes widened. “What about your sodium?”
I shrugged. “I’m not worried. My wife is going to kill me. I’m playing the short game.”
Old Humor – Amazon Echo Silver
My sister and I were talking about how Mom sometimes talks to Alexa as if it’s a person. That reminded me of this old SNL skit. Hope you laugh as much as I did.
Cheers
The Comparison: Computer, Trump
It feels like my computer is starting to treat me like it’s Trump. It doesn’t tell me what’s going on or give me a reliable time window.
I’m accustomed to my computer telling me to do things but explaining why it’s doing things. They gave me options: do you want to update and shutdown, or shutdown without updating? Other options were also available.
Along those lines, the computer would inform me about how long it would take — three minutes, two minutes, six.
Yes, they were using computer time. This is not ordinary time. Comparable times are shopping time and waiting time.
“It’ll be just a minute,” I hear. “Maybe two.” Those minutes compound into ten. Fifteen.
Worse, though, are NFL minutes. Especially the last two minutes of a half or game. I did some research and the average final two minutes of an NFL game lasts ten to twenty minutes. Some estimates show that the final two minutes of a four-quarter NFL football game can consume about five to ten percent of the game’s total time, which is wild if you think about it.
The NFL does give us a ‘two-minute warning’. Unfortunately, they’re very terse about it. “This is the two-minute warning.” They should add, “The next two minutes can take anywhere from two and half minutes to eternity. Go use the restroom now, get something to eat and drink, and let your family know where you are.”
Computer time has now overtaken the NFL’s final time minutes as ‘the time that can’t be measured’. My computer doesn’t tell me many times now how long updates or searches will take. It leaves it vague: “This might take a few minutes.”
You think?
I was running a process to check for memory leaks the other night. Yes, on my computer, not for me.
Anyway, the computer warned me, “This might take a few minutes.”
Thirty minutes later, I was still waiting for an update.
And that’s like Trump. Time doesn’t mean anything when he makes promises or projections. Well, neither do facts, for the most part.
For example: Trump was asked when he would come up with his replacement for ACA. Two weeks, he told us, over five years ago.
When will the Iran war end? “When I feel it in my bones.”
Great.
Sounds just like my computer.
When will the search be finished?
“When I feel it in my hardware.”
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Michael Seidel, writer 