Haunting…

Before I even post the video, I have to note a couple of disclaimers:

1. I think James Joyce was one of the worst fiction writers ever to gain a readership.
2. IMO, This is the most unsingable thing Samuel Barber ever wrote. As music, I dislike it as intensely as I dislike James Joyce’s pretentious bullshit passing as storytelling in his novels*.

Those disclaimers aside, I sang this piece of… whatever it is at the urging of my voice prof about 40 years ago. Afterwards, I bid it a very unfond farewell and pledged to myself that I would forget it had ever been written. Alas, not to be. Recently, it’s been haunting me, perhaps because of the contemporary scene (all I’ll say to that). So, with no further comment, I inflict this thing upon you, gentle reader, if you dare listen to the thing:


*I’ll admit that Joyce’s poetry, such as it is, is no better or worse than much of 20th Century “poetry”.

*sigh* I Told ‘Em So

Remember this from the other day?

 

 

Well, I told the so-called “telephone support tech” that it wasn’t on my end. Sure enough, here’s what things were like when the field tech called to see if I still needed him to check my end:

 

I relayed that info to the local field service tech while he was on the phone with me, asking if I still needed him to come by and check my equipment (cos that’s the way then “idjits” in phone support wrote it up, of course) and he clued me in. It seems that my area’s infrastructure is being converted from overhead lines for the primary feeds to buried cable (long overdue), and we should have received notice of temporary interruptions or degradation of service. Of course we did not… as have none of the other folks who’ve called in with the same issues.

Communication’s wonderful when it happens, but I have noticed over the years that a growing number of supposedly service-oriented businesses are failing to communicate critical information in a timely fashion, if at all, to those they supposedly serve. And responding to critical information communicated to them by customers? Also flagging. This is especially true of businesses that have nominal government licensed monopolies for a particular service in a designated area. (I had to pester one company for six months to get them to actually test their equipment and find what I already knew from my own diagnostics: that it was faulty and in need of replacement. Six months.)

I do appreciate our cable company’s local field service tech guys, though. Knowledgeable, competent, informative: they’re the best thing th company has going for them, IMO, especially since phone support is so sucky.

Change I Can Believe In

*heh*

Although Spring’s officially a week or so away, I decided it was time to change from this desktop background, which looks very like some of the “piney woods” winter roads in America’s Third World County (but is from a “piney woods” road in Norway):

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

to this one:

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Oh, this field, though also looking much like some areas of America’s Third World County, is also from Norway, outside Bergen, where many of my Wonder Woman’s family are from.

(Yes, I have two clocks on my desktop. One is an alarm clock–digital display–and the other a simple analog display. If I could find an analog display I liked with the alarm clock built in, I’d dispense with the digital display entirely, but so far my searches for such a thing have been in vain.)

Puzzling

Over the past 40+ years or so, ever since my ear began being “tuned” more finely to pronunciation of words, via various vocal pedagogy studies, foreign language studies, etc., I have noticed a certain class of persons that has a strange pronunciation pattern. Now, this pattern isn’t a regional accent, but occurs in the same class of persons, widely separated by economic, social and educational status, as well as geography. Yet, they all belong to one class of persons (which I won’t identify, since some asshat would then call me a racist).

Examples of the consistent, idiosyncratic pronunciation of certain words by this group of persons:

  • children~chirdren (or almost as often, chiwdren)
  • million~miwyon
  • killed~kihwed

Since this problem with the “l” or “ll” sound seems to be pervasive within this group, despite geography, education or social and economic status, I have begun to wonder if there might not be some genetically influenced predisposition to an inability to accurately hear and reproduce the “l” and “ll” sounds, as they occur in English, in this group. Certainly I do know persons within this general class who are able to hear and reproduce these sounds accurately and do so, but in my experience (which may, of course, not be a truly representative sample, though gathered over 40+ years and exposure to folks in 46 of the 48 contiguous states), they are not the norm.

Just an idle pondering that pops into my head now and then…


Note: I did not attempt to reproduce pronunciation markings as would be found in most linguistic studies or most dictionaries, as I’m not quite sure that most folks really understand those markings nowadays, and besides, making sure they reproduced accurately on all platforms on all browsers may be problematic as well. Or not. On both counts. *heh* If you have no problems with common pronunciation guides, please don’t assume I am being condescending.

Isn’t It Amazing…

…that just about the only thing a flock of sheeple can be relied upon to do in unison is to fart nonsense whenever whomever they’ve chosen as their fount of knowledge says to?


Note: this wasn’t in aid of any particular agenda vis a vis leftist/rightist (or any other -ist) cant, as sheeple are sheeple and have no real politics apart from the mindless bleating (or would that be “blatting”?) they do from their nether regions whenever their chosen idol bids them.

The Other Celtic Patron Saint

Well, one of the other Celtic patron saints, but Saint Andrew is patron saint of more than just another Celtic group.

No, this post is just to ask how many other folks (besides me, of course) among my wee readership will wear a leek or daffodil today in honor of David, patron saint of Wales.

Takers?


From a previous year’s St David’s Day post:

“Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd”*

“Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. *Do the little things [in life] that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.”–reputed to be the last words of St David–Dewi Sant– patron saint of Wales (the only Celtic patron saint native to the land of which he is considered patron), is said to have died at age 100 on March 1, anno domini 589.

Ruminations on the Passing Scene

“Too much”=”just enough syrup for a plate of pancakes”. *heh* Juuuust about right, I’d say.

A world turned upside down: was pushing my 4-wheeled walker (with the insanely large basket attached) around WallyWorld the other day, looking at stuff and playing with customers and “associates”, when I happened to spot the price of a gallon of milk. Fifty cents less than a gallon of gas. WTF?!? Does Walmart get its milk from lactating Chinese slaves?

Another thing: MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price). What’s this good for? Does anyone actually pay “MSRP” at the end user level? If so, I wanna meet these suckers, cos I have some great ocean front property in AZ they’d love. Example: a very nice 12″ frying pan we bought not long back for about $50 has a MSRP of $200–and I’ve seen it in stores all over for about $100. Who pays these outrageous prices? Beats me.

Well, my mechanic took my hint and bought the better replacement part for my dead fuel pump. Sure, it was a little more than twice as much, but it also included an end-to-end replacement of my fuel lines, a Very Good Thing on a car with almost 200,000 miles and a failed fuel pump, IMO. See? Save enough NOT paying MSRP when you don’t have to and have the $$ to maintain things right. *heh*

I can’t believe that someone–in a forum far, far removed from twc–had the timerity to ask the question, “Is Obama a Patriot”? I could only wonder what rock the loon had been living under after his lobotomy.

Hey, next time you’re at the grocery store or someplace like Target or WallyWorld and you see a parent(s) with a child in their cart, stop them with, “Well, that’s encouraging! It’s so nice to see folks with such confidence that they’d buy a child in today’s economy!” *heh* I get such looks… 😉

Understanding “Capitalism”

“Capitalism” as used by the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, nearly ALL politicians *spit*, Academia Nut Fruitcakes, Wall Street moneychangers and the common (“mass man”) man in the street today really refers to a system of spoils, wherein government licenses fiefdoms to businesses and then taxes and regulates them into inefficient, wasteful systems of producing wealth for those who are “connected” to political and bureaucratic power bases by family (or other associations) or money.

Classic capitalism is something the U.S. hasn’t seen for a long, long time.

An Easy Mark

That’s me. It never ceases to amaze me, though by now I ought to be used to it, how manufacturers can send shoddy workmanship out the door.

Examples: a nice [name brand redacted *heh*] office chair whose arms would not stay firm, but wobbled, loosened and seemingly ready to fall off, within a short time after purchase. Simply tightening the bolts holding the arms on wasn’t the solution: they needed some thread locking compound. Simple. A couple of pennies-worth of thread lock, if that, and the arm bolts stay tight. (The cheap, thin leather on the arms and body was expected, and some has since been replaced after wearing out. More to come)

Bought a kitchen island, packed for assembly at home. It was pretty much what I expected, except… it had a drop leaf (one of the nice lil features) with one piece of 1″ hardwood (looks like oak) as a pull-out support. That’s fine, except that when I opened the box, the first thing I saw was that the support was split for about 3″ from the tip. *sigh* Carpenter’s glue and C-clamp. Next? When it was assembled, it became obvious that there were three problems with the faux “butcher block” top (it was a soft wood and NOT constructed as butcher block–but I already knew that from the store display so that wasn’t the problem). Pretty much in the middle of the top was a rather prominent marring. When the drop leaf was raised, its level did not match the rest of the top because of a crowning of the drop leaf surface.

Now, some progressively-finer sanding with my old (50 years? More?) Clarke sander did several good things: it got rid of the marring and the crown problems and removed what little finish was on the top and drop leaf, so it could be replaced with a better, Danish oil finish. I do not intend to use the top as a cutting surface, so something to provide a durable, low gloss finish was a good way to go.

Of course, I know why manufacturers send products like these out the door, ill-thought-out or with poor quality control. Many people won’t give poor quality control or bad construction (or even design) a second thought–perhaps because they simply don’t know better or because returns are a PITA. A few will complain and go to excessive lengths to compel a manufacturer or seller to make things right–and I’ve been known to do that very thing, even to the point of being almost thuggish to compel a seller/provider to “make me whole” when something is bad enough or involves anything beyond my dollar threshold for such things. Most of the time, I will just go ahead and make things right myself, often having expected in advance to have to do so (on the kitchen island, having seen a store display, I had already planned to refinish the top, for example).

Still, I’ve enjoyed the few times in recent years when I’ve been able to purchase something and have it be “just right” right out of the box. Appliance purchases this summer and my lil toy Asus are the recent examples of manufacturers and sellers getting it just right, but such examples still remain in the minority in my recent years’ experiences, and I keep on buying things I just know I’ll have to fix, right out of the box.

Rude Software

Bought an HP F4580 wireless printer to replace a 13-year-old HP “workhorse” inkjet. Like the printer. WiFi Protected setup didn’t work, though, so I went to the utility on the setup disk.

*arrrgghhh!*

If there is a circle of hell for the purveyors of rude software, HP will reside there for eternity. ALL I wanted to do was run the wireless connection wizard, but no! Attempting to cancel the installation of all the other HP crap canceled the wizard. *gag-puke-spew*

Now, I have to decrapify the computer I used to install the printer.

I like the product, but HP is working very, very hard to make me hate the company.


Yeh, yeh: this was one of those “I do these stupid things so others don’t have to” kind of things. Naturally, when I went to other computers to select this printer for others on the network to use, not one could “automagically” find and install the driver, so that had to be done manually, and no I did NOT allow the HP crap to install itself elsewhere (I didn’t need the wireless setup wizard at this point). But *sheesh*, could HP have made it more clunky to manually install the drivers? I don’t think so. What a PITA.

And now I have to dig out which of the drivers included on the CD is the TWAIN driver, so that folks can initiate a scan from their computers over the network, as well as simply print from their lappy or whatnot. All the drivers installed (along with all the crapware) on the computer I initially connected with a USB cable, but installing the printer driver apparently doesn’t include the full functions of the printer.

HP is really beginning to chap my gizzard.