Got my new computer. Ordered it online from Costco. Just a small laptop, nada fancy. Was supposed to be delivered tomorrow but made it in today. Two hours of clicking and it was set up and running, all settings, passwords, docs, etc., transferred between the old machine and the new. Typing this on the new peach.
All of that reminded me of the ancient times when new computers were received. Hard drives had to be partitioned and formatted. OS loaded, followed by programs, security, net connections, and so on. In the distant floppy days, disc after disc would be inserted to do these things. Hours would saunter by.
So, tech, you know? Progress. So much easier. Reminds me of the old stories about washing clothes told by Mom, starting cars related by Dad, using landline telephones, etc. Who knows, though? Maybe under PINO TACO, we’ll revert back to all that tedium.
I should probably buy a new computer. Microsoft has warned me that it won’t be supporting this one much longer. That is a concern. Chrome never makes such dire threats. I don’t know if I can use another OS and other browsers. Probably can but it would be more of an investment in time than I want to do.
The computer is over a decade old. It can’t run Windows 11 without more changes. More importantly, the computer has developed some issues. Its chassis is slightly bent. That causes some control issues. Several keys have been replaced but it hasn’t been a successful fix. The HP Envy’s silver edges are worn black. The tab, q, and x keys often leave their stations. The backspace key broke in half and is held together by cellotape. Several keys, specifically the e, d, c, o, l, and n keys, have lost their identity as my fingernails tapped it away. I often need to consciously press hard on the t, c, and n key to get a response, along with the ctrl key and the delete key. It all slows me down. Every once in a while, the CD drive will pop open on its own, shouting, “Surprise,” like a drunk uncle, just to remind me that it’s there.
So a new computer need can be shown. But, this one still works. I’m just loathe to get rid of things just because they’re not the newest or because it’s less than perfect. Sure, it takes five minutes to fire up. When Chrome is used, five more minutes will pass before that is loaded. It plays pretty well with Windows and Edge, though.
I don’t know. I have the money. It was my birthday and I didn’t get anything else. Maybe it’s time, but I’ll probably let a few more weeks of sleep pass before I look for another. The whole thought train reminds me that I bought my first computer forty years ago.
June is going out on a heat wave in Ashlandia. Topping out at 99 F today, Sunda, June 29, 2025. It’s okay out there for now, 62 F but the sun is already flexing its heat. Went out there for my morning circadiam rhythm adjustment and the sun heat drove me into the shadows fast. It’s not to last; by Wenzda, we’ll see it drop back down into the mid and upper 80s.
Active dream night. From one of them comes today’s theme music. The dream was about delusions, illusions, magic, and tech. Hearing of that, The Neurons came up with a few songs for the morning mental music stream. First up was “Abracadabra”, a 1982 rock song brought into the world by Steve Miller and his band. It’s pretty standard rock radio fare. Diana Ross apparently partly inspired the song. From Wikipedia:
The song is said to have been inspired by the American singer Diana Ross, whom Miller had met when they each performed on the same episode of the pop music television show Hullabaloo in the 1960s.[3] The lyrics “Round and round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows” are a reference to the spinning wheel segment from The Original Amateur Hour.
Speaking on The Howard Stern Show in June 2016, Miller said at first his record company Capitol Records did not see the potential hit it would become. “Capitol didn’t believe in it and didn’t want to release it. I had a different deal with Phonogram in Europe. When it came out in Europe, I cancelled my American tour because it was No. 1 everywhere in the world, except the States.”[citation needed] After seeing its success overseas, Capitol released it in the U.S. and it also climbed to No. 1.
Ah, good ol’ “Hullabaloo”! I remember watching that with Mom and my sisters.
But, as The Neurons will do as I’m busy humming “Abracadabra”, they thrust the Lady Gaga song by the same name from 2025 into the morning mental music stream. Jarring as a train wreck as the two songs are well different. But singing that abracadabra refrain with her is fun.
Got my hot coffee. Keep cool or warm, safe and dry, whatever need be, wherever you’re at. Here we go. Cheers
It seems to me that it’s strange to go to a coffee shop, plug in a game, and sit there, playing a few hours. I mean, I can see sitting there reading a book. That makes complete sense, as does doing homework and studying. I’m puzzled by those who come in, plug in, and watch movies or videos for hours. Of course, I also know what an energy suck that games, movies, and videos can be.
Then again, others probably find it strange for me to go to a coffee shop less than two miles from home, set up a computer and then spend hours there in pursuit of writing. I know from riding others’ blogs that some people find it pretentious.
I defend my writing with extenuating circumstances. Bet the rest can make the same defense. Bottom line, it’s all just as legitimate, normal, and natural in today’s tech world, so just get over it, boomer.
I’m dreaming of a gray Christmas. Where raindrops glisten, and fog and mist close us in, and the temperatures are neither too warm nor too-oo cold.
And I got my wish! Yes, it’s a dreary day outside my windows. 43 F now, up from 36 F before. Cloudy as cloudy can be. Late posting this because I scoffed off to have breakfast brunch with friends. Yes, I was invited and didn’t crash it. Wonderful time with them, culminating in working on a five hundred piece Christmas-ornament themed jigsaw puzzle. Which didn’t get finished but was about 25 % when we walked after about 90 minutes of effort. Besides that, we compared stories of how we met our sig others, what holiday traditions were observed, and related tales of holiday craziness. Fun time all around.
We got home — I’d worn a dark gray sweater and charcoal pants to honor the gray holiday — ditched our clothes and served up leftovers.
You can guess that we’re not over-the-top Christmas celebrants. We’re not even up to our belly buttons in Christmas. Friends gifted us interesting X-mas theme stuff. Like an Amaryllis. And a pine tree centerpiece decorated in red ornaments and ribbons. Shortbread cookies dolled up with minced dill. Other kinds of cookies and baked goods. But that’s it. We put a couple items up and sent off a few cards and put a few gifts online and the end.
Meanwhile, my little sister sent me food photos of her Christmas setup. She had her nephews, children, grandchildren, sister, and Mom, along with her family. About fifteen people Ham. Mashed potatoes and cheesy hash brown potatoes, corn, green bean casserole, meatballs and stuffed shells, tossed salad, Stouffer’s mac & cheese for the kids. Apple pie, banana cream pie, pumpkin pie. Cookies. Cheesy pineapple casserole. Rolls from Oakmont Bakery along with carrot cake.
Today’s song is brought to you be Der Neurons. They’re always up for a song. In this case, someone said something about being human at brunch. The Ns took that as an brainvite to start “Human” by the Human League in the morning mental music stream (Trademark roasting). Not at all a Christmas song, this is a pop offering of a guy trying to explain away his cheating to his sig other by when they’re away by explaining, “Hey, I’m only human. Flesh and blood. A man.”
Hope your holidays met your needs. Time to start counting down to the new year yet? Here’s the music. Cheers
Alexa is Amazon’s ‘virtual assistance’. It’s useful to me for telling me the weather and the news if I ask it. But its recent behavior has undercut my trust in it. Observe.
Night had come on shift. My home weather system said that it was 30 degrees F outside.The sudden downturn surprised me. I wondered if it was right and how cold it would get as it was still early in the evening. So I asked Alexa for the weather.
“It’s 35 degrees in Ashland. Tonight’s low will be 35 degrees.”
Okay, that seemed cool. (No pun intended, because it was cold, no cool. Obs.) I’m on Ashlandia’s southern end, at a slightly higher elevation. Our mountain’s shadows climb over us early and get off us later, as we’re in the valley’s pinched, closing end. I’m not sure where the station is where Alexa gets its weather but it seems to be down where the sun keeps it warm longer. NBD.
A little later, I noticed my system said it was 28 F. I didn’t expect it to keep getting colder after Alexa told me the low would be 35. To Alexa I went. “Alexa, what’s the temperature?”
“It’s 30 degrees in Ashland. Tonight’s low will be 30 degrees.”
Well, wait a minute. That’s not what the system said before.
An hour later, my system said it was 25 degrees. Rinse and repeat with Alexa: “It’s 26 degrees in Ashland. Tonight’s low will be 24.”
What the serious actual fuck? What good is a system that calls out predictions and then indifferenctly changes them? I thought the idea behind her telling me what the high or low will be is to help me plan.
Of course, I asked Alexa about it. It played dumb. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I also asked it where its weather station was. “Hmm,” it said. “I don’t understand your question.”
I repeated it in multiple variations. “Hmm,” Alexa said. “Let me get back to you.”
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.
It was a whole night of dreams again. In one, I was looking for employment after being released in a — well, I’ll do that in another post. Maybe.
Cloudy spring day rolling through Monday, 4/24/23 or 23/24/4. Almost sounds like a Chicago song title. Almost. Song is playing in my head now, though. Temperature is 45. 6:16 and 8:02 are the morning and evening numbers for Ashlandia’s sunrise and sunset. Humidity is declared 86%. Weather underlings slipped the word, high is 61 F.
Huh, breaking news, Tucker Carlson is out of Fox News. Gosh, I wonder what THAT’s all about.
In family news, a younger sister is sick. Deets aren’t coming yet. Little sisters #2 and #3 don’t know what’s up with #1. Mom has deets but didn’t share. #1 little sister, grandmother to two, always shades her life with secrecy.
Uncle B, 79, had a fifth heart attack. Had his first when he was 45, followed by open heart surgery. He’s been dealing since. I hear that steroid therapy is to be attempted. Don’t know more yet. Mom has that info, too. When I thought of Uncle B, I thought of him as the favorite. Not true. He’s youngest of Dad’s siblings — Dad is he oldest, 91 — but they’re all very alike, smart, good sense of humor, friendly, fun to be with. Dad is the different one.
Cats are doing well, thanks. With the clouds taking over, they’ve remained in and are sleeping in the living room.
Today’s song is “I Can Change” by LCD Soundsystems, 2010. I haven’t heard it for a while, but Alex Borstein and her companions played it on her comedy show on Prime. The Neurons heard it and now it’s in the morning mental music stream, although it shared the space with “25 or 6 to 4” for a wee while. I enjoyed her show, which was more than comedy. It’s information rich, too. For examp., I learned about a mush tat. Yeah, look it up.
Stay as pos as you can, which can sometimes be a sigh-pulling, deep breaths experience. Least for me. May your Monday be better than you planned it. Here’s the coffee and music. Cheers
A taut white sheet covers the valley sky. Sunlight finds a small rent and slips through like an exploring cat.
It’s Tuesday, January 31, 2023, and 30 degrees F outside. Inside, the furnace keeps us at 68. Black coffee warms me more, a solid antidote for the morning’s cold impressions. That sun popped in at 7:25, duping the cats and me into thinking we were up for a sunny day. Now the clouds have dropped. But in the way of weather, the clouds signal a warm front and higher temperatures. We’re heading for a high in the mid-fifties as the Arctic blast shifts east. Sunset will be one minute short of ten hours after sunrise.
Local news reports our Mayor has resigned. Then a city council member designed. No clarifying comments were made by either for their reasons. The city will now go through the replacement process for each. It’s already fired up political bases. They’d just calmed down after the November results were swallowed and digested. We never believed the calm would last. The budget debate is ongoing, as are the homeless challenge, drought and its impact, along with our local economy, of course. Our economy depends on snow in the winter for skiing and full rivers, clear skies, and fresh air in the summer for outdoor activities like hiking and boating. Little snow and prolonged drought, tourism has suffered for several years before the COVID load was put on it.
The other big industry here is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Before COVID, wildfire and smoke spiked performances and revenues as the air was deemed unbreathable or dangerous and performances were shut down. Restaurant and hotel businesses fell like dominos. It’s been about five years since we’ve had a healthy economy and the budget has suffered.
Over in my head, The Neurons have planted “It’s My Life” by Talk Talk from 1984 into the morning mental music stream. I know it from hearing it on the car radio as I drove around the island of Okinawa, where my wife and I lived at that time. It has that 80s tech feel to it. Seeds for the song came about as I was trying to make decisions and ended up chatting to myself about my life. This was one of several songs that floated in and out of the conversation but its volume went up later, so here we are.
Stay positive. Get ready for February, because if you didn’t notice, it’s here tomorrow. Here’s Talk Talk. Cheers
Come on, let’s get this Friday started. Today is Jan 14, 2022. Forty-two degrees F in this splinter of the valley after the sun kickstarted the shine at 7:38 AM. Stagnant fog thwarted the sun’s effort to be brilliant. Weatherman says we’re in a High pressure area sandwiched by a Low to the northwest and a Low on our southern side. The two Lows are colliding and keeping the High in place, generating the stagnant fog and warm temps. Expect this for the next week. The high today will climb again into the fifties before we turn away from the sun, starting at 5:03 PM.
Got a song by the Decemberists, “Severed”, stewing in the morning mental music stream. Song just fascinates me from its initial synthpop tech simplicity, like a throwback to songs from the late eighties, to its enigmatic words. Several good videos of the song were available. I like watching groups perform their music, so I went with a version from a late-night show, even though it’s slightly shorter.
Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as need be, and get the vax and boosters when able. A coffee is waiting for me to kick this Friday into another gear. Y’all have a good one. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 