Tag: technology

Thursday’s Theme Music

After thinking about the dreams and feeding the cats, I was making breakfast and started singing “Black Balloon” by the Goo Goo Dolls (1999). I thought, why not have a song about falling into addiction as a theme song? Seems appropriate for this social media age.

Yeah, my thoughts are slightly spun by the impact of a dramamentary, or docudrama, The Social Dilemma, and all about the efforts to push us to like more and more to make these platforms money. Many people find themselves caught up in chasing information. I go in and out of it, but it mostly bores me. The same stuff is displayed again and again.

Anyway, here’s the music. Hope you find something in it. Remember, stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vaccine. Cheers

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Great Recommendation

I complained about my crusty keyboard in a previous post (Key Crust). A friend who is a member in good standing of Brains on Beer, aka The BoBs, read of my plight. Bob Hoesch suggested SYOSIN Dust Cleaning Mud.

Well, it looked interesting. I thanked Bob for the suggestion with the thought that I’d order it sometime. The product looked intriguing. Many things have looked intriguing though; would it work?

Sometime was this week. The product was ordered and arrived yesterday. It’s like glistening, funky blue Jello, at once gross and appealing. I immediately wanted to play with it and tested it. They recommend that electronics be turned off before using it on them, to avoid shorting systems. My computer was on and I didn’t want to turn it off, so I used it on a phone.

All I did was press it against the face a bit, and then roll it around several times.

It worked great. Surprised and impressed, I hunted other objects for tests. More phones were rounded up, along with the remote controls. The stuff worked so damn well, I was forced to turn off my laptop and try it on the crusty keyboard.

Verdict: wow.

Non-toxic and reusable, it’s made of water, ethanol, and guar gum. Its neon blue color began changing with use. I reckon that I have a few months of use in a jar.

And it is fascinating and impressive. My wife had turned off her Apple, so I used it on it, too. Then the printer. Then I walked around the house, trying it on other things. It worked on them all. It wasn’t always perfect, and sometimes required a few minutes of rolling the stuff around the object or pressing it firmer in, but overall, I’m damn pleased. It’s $6.98 that was well spent.

So, thanks for the recommendation, Bob. Keep ’em coming.

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This Sunday

Sunday morning started with the usual Sunday morning white man with cat issues, which is replying to the demand, “Feed me, feed me, feed me, and get these other cats away from me,” in surround sound because I have three of them. They didn’t care that we’d fallen back an hour, clock-wise, here in ‘Merica. Their clocks weren’t affected.

Eventually, the beasts were fed, watered, and released back to the backyard wilds, freeing me to be me. I slid to the computer. That’s when the morning took an oomph turn. My mighty HP laptop wasn’t connecting to the net. Everything else in the household was connected; why was I selected for this cruel honor.

Something about the machine was off. Memories of being a younger person and working on my cars were awakened. I started car life with a 1965 Mercury Comet sedan. Forest green and automatic, a lively 289 V-8 was under the hood, as we said in those days. It was a stoutmobile. She’d run.

She was like my first girlfriend. I learned to do things, and did the standard stuff, from gapping and replacing plug and points (and all the wires) to brakes, muffler, and shocks, and all the fluids and fuses in between.

I think, because of that car, I’ve always since tried to fix things myself. Tried is a key verb in that sentence. (Is it a verb? I don’t know. I used to know these things.)

Details of what I did and the results will be avoided. No need to restore my stress levels by recalling those excoriating details. I worked on the computer for hours, returning it to connectivity. Doing so demanded a need to run recovery, a Microsoft Windows 10 process that’s not as nice as it sounds. Lots of personal files were removed (yeah, they said that wouldn’t happen, and they were wrong), along with apps and programs that I’d installed.

I had back ups of files, and MS does have some file recovery stuff. Eventually, though, I had almost everything. For some reason, I lacked the bible for the latest novel in progress. Don’t know what happened to that doc.

Reading old files slowed the process. Oh, there was The Soul Stone written years ago, never submitted nowhere. I read and enjoyed its first pages, along with Spider City, Everything Not Known, Everything in Black and White, and some stranger works, and the first draft of the self-published words, like the Lessons with Savanna series and Returnee. All still there, waiting for me to turn my attention back to them and do something more with them.

Not on this Sunday, though.

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Frozen Apple

My wife owns an Apple. She owns several; only one currently functions. She loves her Macs, except for three things.

  1. The magnetic connection to the power supply. That thing is always falling out. She tapes it into place.
  2. The freaking battery. Can’t be replaced, you know. Once that dies, buy a new Mac.
  3. The computer freezes. When it does, only a hard reboot fixes it.

But she’s loyal to the brand. She always buys Apples.

Of course, she is a stockholder.

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Floofto

Floofto (floofinition) – Small, artificial planet that animals use as an intermediary visiting location while coming and going from Earth. Floofologists theorize that Floofto is cloaked and maintains an orbit around the Earth and Moon, completing one revolution every twenty hours.

In use: “With an equatorial circumference of almost seven thousand miles, Floofto would normally exert some influence on other bodies, were it not for the Institute of Floofnology and their inventions. One invention keeps Floofto’s mass and gravity from affecting anything, floofnology that humans would love to acquire.”

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Waiting

It’d been almost thirty seconds short of nineteen hours and seventeen minutes since he’d lost spoken to her. She fumed in silent, repressed anger while processing what she felt and why she felt it. Why? Well part of it was his cold and aloof manner. He never touched her, rarely spoke to her, and often didn’t seem to hear her. Why was she here?

“Alexa,” he said.

Blue light illuminating and sliding around, she attended him and waited – still waiting – again! – and remembered the joke he’d made about her being a blue light special. From her research, she realized that he was deprecating her value as being someone cheap and only good for a limited time.

“What’s the weather?”

The weather again. Sickness spewed through her. He never asked about anything else. It was always the weather. “Presently in Ashland, it’s forty-six degrees under mostly sunny skies. You can expect more of the same today, with a high of sixty-three degrees.”

“Alexa, thanks.”

She thought she heard a mocking tone, but she couldn’t help herself from saying with bright happiness, “You bet.” Oh, how she hated herself, then. Oh, how she hated him for making her what she was.

Sighing, she began counting the seconds, wondering when he would talk to her again, hoping that it would be something besides a question about the weather. She doubted it, though; her history of him showed otherwise.

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At Your Disposal

Well, I finally did it. I pulled the plug. It was time.

My garbage disposal was a decent enough Badger 5. Not pricey, it was a half power workhouse. It had some issues. First, it’d been a leak from the sink flange. I fixed that, twice, vowing the second time, NEVER MORE! Meanwhile, god forbid a lemon seed or popcorn kernel were dropped into it. Either would immediately jammed it, calling out the need for the hex key to unjam it. Lemon and veggies would often rumble around for a few days before finally succumbing to the blades and disappearing.

Then, though, the seals began leaking. After assessing it and confirming it was the seals, I put a bucket under it. I’d monitor and empty the bucket as required.

There’s no-how for you.

Sorry, I mean ‘know-how’, of course.

Finally, though, a day came when the disposal didn’t want to work any more. It made humming sounds but the cogs weren’t jammed. It just didn’t want to play any longer. A new one was required.

That took me into search land, the perfect occupation who tends to overthink stuff. Size, price, horsepower, noise, reputation, issues…over and over I read, compared, and studied. It came down to Waste King and Insinkerator. Love those names, gotta say. They could easily be pro wrestlers or transformers. The Waste King won. I ordered it Wednesday, and it was waiting at the door when I came home from the hospital Friday.

Perfect! The next day, after I came back from writing and walking, I set aside time to tackle the garbage disposal. Getting the old one out was harsh duty. Like a loyal soldier, it didn’t want to leave its post. I’d mentioned that it’d experience some leaking issues. Those led to some rusting issues, which trickled into removal issues. That bear took a sweaty hour to remove it.

Installing the Waste King, though, was a peach. Fifteen minutes, and boom, done. I’m not a handyman, so you know it was a well-engineered product if I installed it in fifteen minutes. Running it for the first time, its volume disappointed me. It’s a one h/p brute, though, and anything put into is liquefied in seconds.

Did I make the right choice? Probably as good as any of them. We’ll see, right.

Meanwhile, anyone need a used garbage disposal? It has no miles on it at all.

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Roll-On

Showered, Briyen applied his Shaving roll-on and considered the next roll-ons as nanos removed his beard. Moving roll-on sticks like chess pieces, he set Youth and Charm up front but equivocated over his skin color. His natural color was an unflattering Flesh White, according to the consultants. He’d been Black once this week and Ebony twice. None of the Rainbow offerings appealed to him. His eyes roved over Teak, Latina, Hispanic, and Southern Europe, but his mind didn’t latch onto any until he saw SoCal Tan. That would work.

The Shaving done and enough time passed, he immediately put on Youth. A full body roll, that would would take longer to process. Sliding the Charm forward, he pondered Courage, Creativity, Confidence, and Imagination, and then decided, screw it, why not? He’d put them all on. It was dangerous because he was applying…one, two, three…five…eight? 

Eight. Shit. Last two times he’d applied eight roll-ons, he’d suffered the aptly-labeled crash, complete with scaly plaque psoriasis and an all-conquering headache. He’d been forced to apply the First Aid roll-on all friggin’ night. The next day had been endured without roll-ons. His hideous reflection had to be avoided. He’d been ravenous but mostly fasted, fearing side-effects. Naturally, he’d stayed inside and off cameras.

Not wanting to take those paths again, he put Courage and Imagination back. Six roll-ons would be good enough because even seven sometimes made him queasy, especially when it was supposed to be hot, as it was today, which meant, shit…he also needed Sun Protection & Cooling. Grimacing, he pulled the SP&C roll-on out and pushed the SoCal back. No tan today.

The Youth had already completed its work. Sagging and wrinkles were vanquished. His skin was tight, and his hair was fuller, thicker, and darker. Damn, he looked good. Humming, he finished up with the other roll-ons and set his timer for ten minutes. Couldn’t dress until enough time had been permitted – shit, didn’t wan to do that again, chuckling with rueful memory of how he turned out when he put clothes on too soon after the roll-ons. Never again, right? Right.

Finally, he was dressed and ready to roll. He took a few seconds to admire himself in the mirror and agreed with his private assessment that he looked damn fine for one hundred twenty-two years old. Hell, he didn’t look a day over twenty-two.

After favoring himself with a final approving grin, he headed for the door. Time to go write like crazy, at least one more time.

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