Life and Other Things I Don't Understand
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Living in a Sci-Fi Flick
My son asked me the other morning if, when I was his age, we could only record our favorite TV shows in black and white.
Once I'd recovered from trying not to snark my orange juice all over the kitchen (or out my nose), I explained that in 1977 we couldn't record television shows at all. Either we watched them or we missed them and hoped for the reruns.
I went on to tell him that Sony's Betamax was the first commercial home video format, and even that wasn't really affordable to many families until about 1982 or so.
He made a face, wondering what Betamax was.
He also asked what sort of videogames we could play (Atari, anyone? Oh, how I grew to hate that game in a big fat hurry - or maybe it was just because I played against my brother, who changed the settings mid-game - trying to chase that zippy little dot across the screen and hit it with my equally-tiny playing 'paddle').
How did we do school reports? he pondered. (encyclopedias and a typewriter, or my very best handwriting in *non-erasable* ink)
Man. Do I feel old sometimes.
A little while later, I was grocery shopping at SuperWallyWorld and for once I actually listened to and heard the announcements that are a constant stream of babble overhead.
Ten years ago, even five, what the announcer was saying would have been indecipherable sci-fi gobbledygook. He spoke of new DVDs, X-box and GameCube games, digital cameras, TiVo, XM radio and remote keyless car starters.
It gave me pause, thinking about how much technology has just exploded during my son's lifetime. When he was two, we bought our very first CD player with an income tax refund. It only played one at a time, and we didn't have any CDs, but we did want to be able to play them if we ever got any.
Now they're all over the house. Two in my computer, two in his, he's got a stereo that holds thirty and a CD player he can clip to his belt. There's an old CD boombox in the garage (it skips sometimes, but I won't throw it away), a CD-playing stereo in the car and in the Suburban, a Playstation in his room, the Mountain Dew X-box (thanks, Pepsi!)in the living room, two DVD players in different rooms, a flat CD playing stereo hanging on the bedroom wall, and our stereo now boasts a 25-CD changer that replaced the old first one that developed an odd popping sound several years ago. Oh, and there's a Walkman in my briefcase and a CD drive on that Compaq laptop that I complained (and ultimately boasted) about a few months ago when I had to configure it and load the hard drive.
All this technology, all this convenience... and to what end, really? There's still wars and boys fighting in them and dying way too young, still thousands of people slowly dying of starvation, still too many children in the world dying of diseases that you or I take a pill for and find ourselves better in the flap of a butterfly's wing...
Technology can't make nations get along, can't make plants grow much faster than Mother Nature intended so we can feed the hungry, can't get life-saving medications over rutted dirt tracks of road fast enough to cure, can't help people who've found themselves addicted to some form of slow death detoxified and able to work through the issues in their lives that made the drugs seem like such a wonderful escape...
So much has changed, and yet it really hasn't.
Monday, June 28, 2004
I'm Baa-aack...
See? You're not so lucky as you thought you were. The computer's now functional as ever and I'm back to annoy.
Actually, it was functional Saturday, but I wanted to download all the updates/service packs/etc. for WinME (stop waving that cross around Rhonda Elizabeth, you can't catch ME cooties from a blog ;) ) so I wouldn't get infected with anything nasty. Seems using Win98 kept me out of harm's way somewhat, as nobody has really bothered to write anything truly nefarious for that OS in ages. But, first time I was online with the shaky and oft-crashing Win2K, I caught the Blaster worm. Never did get to receive more than one piece of mail per sign-in with that pesky platform before it'd shut off the power and reboot the whole system (now, isn't that a helpful little feature...?) so I don't know how I got it nor where it came from. And of course, it made Outlook eat all my other incoming mail (*burp*). So if anyone sent me an email, I'm sorry if you've not heard back. If I actually received it (only got one, from Tig), I was reluctant to send a reply, as every time I wiped out the worm, that oh-so-helpful Win2K put it right back. Seems I wasn't allowed to delete anything that's dot-EXE unless I deactivated the auto-restore, and I never could find that particular control panel.
I smashed the Windows 2000 Professional CD. Just to be spiteful and vent a bit of frustration. Now I know why my friend gave me her original copy.
Monday, June 21, 2004
Updates and Upgrades
I have been dragged, like it or not, kicking and screaming (and *sigh* crashing) into this century.
Through circumstances that would be too twisty to explain in any sort of concise way, on Monday last week I found myself with a copy of Windows ME and Windows 2000 Professional.
Mason was thrilled; he upgraded to Win2000 before he went to bed the same night. And has spent the better part of the last week badgering me to upgrade as well. I didn't want to; I know the idiosyncracies of my Win98, the shortcomings, and the different ways in which it wigs out and how to fix them.
I know the enemy and it has been living in my computer for 4 years *heh heh*.
Finally, I decided (mostly because I wanted to change the 'working, please wait' mouse pointer from the boring eggtimer to a strolling dinosaur) to upgrade to ME. Wouldn't have to upgrade the memory or any of the drivers that way, and although I'd heard it has instability problems, the fixes weren't that far off from ones I used with '98.
Leave it to me to not do it myself. I asked Mason to do it Friday while I was at work, and to call me if anything 'sticky' came up, or if there were any options he was unsure of installing.
It seemed to go well; there weren't many phone calls.
*sigh*
He installed the wrong program. Just stuck in the wrong CD (oh, the joys of having a child with ADHD) and didn't realize what he was installing until it was too late and the basics of DOS were buried somewhere deep inside the program and converted to the NT-based filing system. In a nutshell, this means there's no downgrading... only reformatting and reinstalling whatever OS it is that I'd rather have.
It ate my saved emails. It ate my passwords. It crashes (alot). Well, not exactly crashes... it stays functional (mostly) but it refuses to go offline, it reboots on a whim (this is the third time at trying to enter this post... hopefully, the third time's the charm, as they say) and mostly is a big pain in my butt. I spent the better part of Sunday morning finding the most current audio driver for my soundcard and installing it, then had to go out and buy a new, bigger memory card so the system would stop lumbering along like the new dinosaur icon.
I suppose I'll learn to live with it. I don't really want to reformat and reload all those drivers and peripherals.
But if I disappear for days, know that I'm using a clawhammer for the enter key and am pulling out what's left of my hair, all the while hexing Bill Gates...
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
An Old Favorite
Armageddon Sky... and I don't know why I called it that...
Photo posted by Hello
One of the oddest yet most awe-inspiring sunsets I have ever seen. I took this (and the rest of an entire roll as the colors and billowy clouds changed) almost five years ago. Never seen anything like it before or since.
Freaky, huh?
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
June 14, Eight O'clock-ish
Photo posted by Hello
Last night's fiery sunset made me stop in my tracks and just stare, nearly forgetting to breathe. Took a few minutes for me to snap out of it and run inside for the camera...
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Incensed
Two days ago, a detective from our local police force came into the store where I work and handed a letter and some blank forms to the store manager.
The store manager then handed out the forms and requested that they be put into use immediately.
I've been seething ever since.
I refuse to do it.
The detective's request? To have us ask for state-issued identification, and then to copy down all of the information on the ID (including the ID number) for any purchase, no matter how small, of anything containing pseudoephedrine.
Sudafed.
Now, I know that this is what is used for making 'bathtub speed.' There's also a whole bunch of other nasty stuff in there, used to separate the pseudoephedrine from the pills, and then to stabilize it. Ick. Who would want to put something containing traces (or more than traces, depending on the speed-chef and his/her impatience) of paint remover and/or aldehydes into his body? Not this woman...
It's against our company's policy to sell more than three packages of anything ephedrine- or pseudoephedrine-based at one time to any one customer, and we keep all the ephedra-based products behind the counter, right next to the tobacco (an actual controlled substance, unlike its shelf-mate here). It's a sound policy, and had been run by our corporate legal department for assurance that it wasn't against any standing law to limit such purchases. (It's not, by the way.)
But to request tracking information, to then it hand over to the police on a weekly basis, is just a little too Orwellian for me. If the customer refuses, we are to flat-out decline the sale.
There is no court order for this invasion of privacy. There is no DEA involvement here. There is no law requiring the name, the address, and the ID number of anyone buying this over-the-counter allergy and cold medication. I'm not sure there's a law against it, either. However, I don't think it's within the spirit of the law as it's currently written. To me, it just smacks of too much of an invasion of privacy to ask for the verifiable personal information of anyone who buys even one little 12 pill package.
My conscience won't let me do it. I've conveniently 'lost' the forms every day since then.
On a side-note about my workplace, I swear, if I hear Neil Diamond singing about his Longfellow one more time... it's such a nasty song, if you really listen to the lyrics. (And I can't help but listen, it gets played once a day, in-between all the other sleepy, foot-dragging songs we're subjected to.) I don't know who decides the music programming we are forced to hear, but if the slow-tempo easy-listening stuff is supposed to make customers walk slower, stick around longer and buy more stuff, it's not working. Our customer base is rather young, and considers this to be 'old fart' music. So do we, the staff. I think it's more likely to drive them away (and so far, not running away screaming and clutching their bleeding ears, but then the programming is still relatively new...)
Sunday, June 06, 2004
Saturday, June 05, 2004
That'll Teach Me To Double-Check My Source
Maybe they changed their minds?
Photo Posted by Hello
I couldn't remember who named their child Apple (too rushed this morning to check), but apparantly, either they changed their minds after telling this name to the mag or Rolling Stone got it wrong from the start. I guess Apple is slightly better than Eggplant. Either way, though, poor kid.
Animal, Mineral or Offspring?
Photo Posted by Hello
From the most recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine:
Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin and wife Gwyneth Paltrow recently had a baby girl.
They named her Eggplant.
What were they thinking?
What possible nickname could she use here? 'Eggy'? Or maybe 'Parmesan'? No matter how much money she grows up with, she'll never be able to buy her way out of the teasing. Kids'll be bringing little green cans of Kraft grated cheese to school and sprinkling it on her head.
Poor kid...
Thursday, June 03, 2004
In Case You're Not Into Flowers
Here's something else to 'pretty up' the place.
Phoenix; December 10, 2002
Posted by Hello
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Adding Some Local Color
Trying out BloggerBot, 'cause it's time to add some color 'round here (click on the photo for a full-sized version).
The barrel cactus flowers were in full bloom last week. Aren't they gorgeous?
Posted by Hello
This photo's actually about four years old, but the beautiful sight of the cactus in the yard's the same every time they flower. Too bad the blooms only last a week *sigh*
Hey, this photo uploading thing that Blogger recently added is soooo easy! (Thanks Rhonda Elizabeth for the nudge today to finally figure out how to add pics) I think this old blog is gonna see a whole lot more of this!
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
VROOOM!
...But I'm still not going anywhere in the ol' gashog.
I managed to fight with the wind and get the bottom side of the engine compartment degreased and relatively clean. This was important because (a) it's easier to work on a somewhat cleaner engine and (b) the rear oil seal has a small leak and it's ickier than normal under there (gotta get that fixed next, when we've got $350 that's not doing anything special).
After getting my teeth sandblasted clean, and my legs spotted white with overspray and rinse-off mist, I'd had enough and decided to wait 'til morning to take off the starter.
Luckily for me, it was calm, Ed was up early, and he of the masive upper-body-strength took off the dead starter and put in the new one.
He went inside to wash off the grease while I tried out the new starter. It decided to keep on cranking and spinning, even after I turned off the ignition and took out the key (all that effort by the stupid thing and the engine still didn't turn over, either... grr...). I panicked. Nobody was outside but me, and I was a bit reluctant to just let it keep on going and run inside to either get help or to get the right socket to disconnect the battery.
I hit the horn, trying to get attention. This shut off the starter, oddly enough. Ed came back out at this point, wondering why the beast wasn't running. "Damned if I know," I told him, 'cause it wasn't for lack of trying on the part of the starter.
He shimmied his way back underneath, smacked the starter with a hammer, and realized that there was now a small drip of lovely pink fluid coming from the transmission line. From a tiny hole in the transmission line, with char marks outlining it. Apparantly, in its zeal, the starter arced to the transmission line and zapped a hole in it.
*sigh* But the bloomin' thing starts now. A call to the auto parts store yielded the offer to test the starter, in or out of the vehicle, and to replace it if it was, indeed, rebuilt poorly. But they don't believe me about the hole in the transmission line. And even if it did zap that hole, they informed me, the three-year warrantly expressly excludes incidental damages (but it does include free towing, should the starter ever fail in its duties and leave me stranded. I guess leaving me stranded at home doesn't qualify. Boo hiss!).
Ed had to leave for work, so no further repair could be done yesterday (I had no vehicle to fetch a piece of transmission line and the fittings, as the wind started up again and he couldn't ride his Harley to work, and even if I wanted to brave the wind, I don't know how to drive a motorcycle... one of those things I want to learn, but not with his Sportster. Oh, no. I will not be the one responsible for even the tiniest scratch. I'll learn on a dirtbike or something else that's meant to be dumped and look like crap).
Hopefully, by tomorrow, all will be right in my motorized world again.
But be warned, you still need to cover your ears. Ed swears louder than I do when car parts bite his knuckles.
