Category: The Voices in My Head

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Micro-Mini-Life Hack

A case of “Two Very Minor Irritants Solve Each Other”.

Or,

“The Voices In My Head Make Me Do the Strangest Things, Sometimes”.

Irritant #1

I use a nice lil lapdesk with my lil Asus notebook. Moreover, I normally use a nice Logitech M305 wireless mouse with the notebook, and the laptop desk surface makes a nice, smooth, slick surface for mousing. Great little mouse. It’s not as comfy in my hand as the mouse that comes in the Logitech MK320 bundle, but it does have a “nano-receiver” that makes it a good fit for notebook use (dongles hanging off notebook ports=BAD :-)).

But, moving the laptop desk from laptop to coffee table or to the couch beside me, with the notebook and mouse still on it, frequently led to the mouse sliding off that slick surface. Sure, take the mouse off and put it elsewhere. BTDT, don’t like having the notebook/mouse in separate places. Be really careful when taking the laptop desk off my lap and placing it elsewhere (or picking it up, etc.). Right. Not me.

So, pick mouse up off floor every now and then, whatever. *grumble-grumble-gripe-complain*

Irritant #2

Picked up a cheap notebook bag–$7 cheap–for carrying other things (techie tools, etc.). I already have a nice bag for the Asus and another–a Targus hand-me-down from someone who “diminuted” her computer use to a netbook/smart phone combo–for my primary techie tools (now two bags to carry what used to fit in a padded aluminum case. Oh, well), but this seemed a nice enough way to carry most of the rest.

Except for the really tacky “designer’s” logo patch sewn onto the large outer flap. Made of some of that silicone-rubber-plastic stuff that is kind of “grippy”.

!

Removed patch from cheapo bag.

Applied contact cement to ugly, tacky “designer” logo and

Glued face down on upper right-hand corner of laptop desk.

Now, I can place the mouse on this small, 2″ patch of silicone-plastic-rubber whatchamacallit and the weight of the mouse and the “takiness” *heh* of the patch material holds the mouse in place at up to 30-degree tilts.

Using one irritation to solve another: life-hacking.

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Contemporary “Music”

Since The Guinness Book of World Records just made up a couple of new “world records” for Taylor Swift, I thought I’d once again comment on the state of popular so-called music:

By and large, it’s crap.

Swift has set records in, urm, record sales, etc. with sort of rhythmic, off key renditions of crap like this:

Well, it was kind of cold that night
She stood alone on her balcony
She could see the cars roll by
Out on 441
Like waves crashing on the beach

And for one desperate moment there
He crept back in her memory
God, it’s so painful
It’s something that’s so close but still so far out of reach

Oh yeah, all right
Take it easy baby
Make it last all night
She was an American girl

Oh, please. High school glurge in grade school vocabulary. Simply crappy in every way. And I refuse to post a clip of the nearly atonal crap its rendered in. And that’s the GOOD stuff from Swift, a cover of a Tom Petty piece of crap! *sheesh!* I absolutely refuse to post “lyrics” supposedly “written” (in crayon, perhaps?) by Swift herself. Lobotomizing my reader(s) isn’t a Good Thing, IMO.

Why am I picking on Taylor Swift? As I said, because of her new records demonstrating that it is she who is now the standard bearer of manufactured pop “music”–the best reflection of where the money from brain dead listeners is going. But she’s only a typical example. Most of the crap being excreted from the mouths of performers nowadays is eagerly lapped up by coprophagic morons.

OTOH–and this just occurred to me–perhaps Swift is a brilliant satirist of “kiddie music” and is making atonal existential metacommentary. Is this possible? In a word, no.

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Oh, Please…

*sigh* So people had sooooo much difficulty using the “old” ketchup packets that Heinz spent tons of money and three years developing a new disposable single-serving ketchup packet.

My take? People had sooooo much difficulty using the “old” ketchup packets because people are sooooo stupid. I never experienced the difficulties with the “old” ketchup packets that are referred to in the video, but then I’m not as stupid (though still stupid in my own idiosyncratic ways *heh*) as many (most?) people.

Oh, dear, does that sound arrogant? Who cares? I don’t.

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I Usually Get Away With This, But…

…not today. My Wonder Woman’s ethnic heritage is pure Norwegian (20th Century grandparent immigrants on both sides). While I usually get away with it because it sounds–the way I deliberately pronounce it–like “Sweetie”, today when I called her my “Swedey” she didn’t let it slide… *heh*

Oh, well, another lil grinner down. *sigh*

😉

In related fun, while reading an article on PixelQi’s transflective display retrofit kit for netbooks, I ran across this in comments:

…which earned this response:

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Two More Unrelated Things

*heh* Well, unrelated except in the most passing, glancing relationship…

First, yes I did have 38 tabs open in Opera in the session shown in the screenshot below. So? Wanna make something of it? *heh*

Second, what went wrong? I mean, after the start I had under the first (and arguably, at least one of the very best, as another former student of his while he was at Florida State attested to me 30 years later) director of the band noted in the screenshot below, how in the world have I ended up with a “houseful” (well less-than-full in recent years) of musical instruments… that I no longer play?

Oh, well.

*hmph* We only toured a few hundred miles into the interior of Mexico “back in [my] day”. Still “won” everything in sight in competitions, though, during the first four years the high school was. A high school, that is.

(OK, one of the 38 tabs noted in the screenshot above contains the question someone asked me that spurred me to look up the info noted. That’s the second-order relationship between the 38 tabs and the content of the screenshot. A more distant, ethereal connection exists, though. :-))

And more… (Sounds/looks like a Capshaw designed and rehearsed this program; don’t ask how. Not so sure about the treatment of Holst).

Sadly (or perhaps not? ;-)), none of the old black and white film from the performances 45(?!?) years ago has made it onto YouTube. *heh*

More unrelated (except in the twisted back alleys of my mind)? OK. Linux Turns 20.

Even if you don’t run Linux on your desktop or notebook, you probably use devices that depend on it, and you absolutely certainly *heh* use it daily as you access material on the web that depends on Linux servers and devices with embedded Linux systems.

Like third world county.

Continue reading “Two More Unrelated Things”

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An exercise in giving thanks

[heh]

[Speaking to self: Self, read yesterday’s post. OK, now you can write this one. 🙂 ]

Wednesday, I recieved the motherboard I was waiting on. Put it away, cos, well, family was here, it was The Anniversary and the next day was Thanksgiving. Very “righteously” avoided even looking at it on Thanksgiving Day.

This morning, opened it up, put all tools, etc., out, arranged everything and began the process of installing the new board.

It was not the board I ordered and paid for. It was not at all the board advertised, promised for delivery or confirmed as being shipped. The company I ordered from stiffed me by shipping me an inferior product.

Not an explosion, but a very, very fast burn…

Later, more calmly, after being stiffed multiple times by a disfunctional voicemail/phone system at the other end of the pipe, I sent an email detailing the need the company had to make me whole, in order to demonstrate good faith.

Hours went by… more attempts to penetrate the impregnable defenses of a disfunctional voicemail/phone system.

Nearly twelve hours later, an email. Their remedy? They’re sending me an RMA#. I am to ship the inferior product that I did not order back to them. The company makes NO representation in the email concerning either replacing the inferior product with the product they advertised, which I ordered and paid for and they said they had shipped OR any reference to a refund!

Now, am I thankful for this lil difficulty (and admittedly, it is a small difficulty)?

Well, yes. And here’s why. I responded to the “RMA” email by detailing a few of the ethical and legal lapses in the company’s behavior. I very truthfully pointed out that should the company NOT make every effort to make me whole that I would bring their illegal bait and switch behavior to the attention of the federal fraud folks (http://www.ftc.gov/sentinel/ 😉 and two States’ Attorneys General, as well as complaints to Yahoo (since it was a “Yahoo Store”).

Why take such a hard line?

Well, while it’s no big deal for such companies to cheat me on such a small scale, unless a few folks (metaphorically) rap them upside the head with a brick bat for such behavior, they can mulitiply it hundreds or thousands of times, defrauding–harming–hundreds or thousands of other people.

So, I am grateful for the opportunity to climb on my swaybacked white horse, don my flowerpot helmet and take up my mop-handle in poor imitation of Don Quixote in hopes that this lil inconvenience for me may not be so readily perpetrated upon others, who may very well not find it a small inconcenience, but a heavier burden.

BTW, if you want to drop by the business that stiffed me and just let them know you’ll be spreading the word that you give credence to my opinion (based on my experience with them) that they are unethical, unreliable and altogether despicable, here’s their site and email:

http://www.justdeals.com

customerservice@justdeals.net

One more dishonest place to avoid doing business with, IMO.

Update [11/30/04] Spent an hour on the phone with a “manager” at Justdeals.com having the distinct pleasure of lecturing him on the moral. ethical and legal failings of his firm. Finally wringed from him the “concession” that he would refund the transaction on our credit card (as though he could avoid doing so: by this time, our next step was calling the credit card company to report their fraud and have the CC company get the charge reversed, which they would certainly do [heh]–and he very well knew it by the time he made the “concession”.) By this time, he was also offering to avert complaints to the California Attorney General’s office and the FCC as well, so he told me to simply keep the product we had not ordered (as though he had the ability to demand a return of something we had not ordered! [heh]).

[sigh] Some people are really dense. (Of course, there was also the language barrier… 🙂 I had both those “offers” in my pocket to begin with!

Well, eventually (when it’s convenient for me to be near a UPS dropoff) they’ll get their inferior product back. IF the refund is posted to our account by Thursday.

Warn folks you know: in my opinion doing business with this company means you don’t necessarily have any kind of chance of getting what you pay for and getting any kind of good faith behavior out of them after the sale is a chancy thing at best.

But when you get right down to it, having the distinct pleasure of exercising my “prophetic gift” (speaking forth hard truths, clearly, unequivocally, unreservedly) was nearly worth the inconvenience of doing so while burdened with a (temporarily) deaf “phone ear”… (Laid up today with a frequently painful stopped up left ear… sometimes clears temporarily only to plug up again… drainage? wax? If it goes on, I’ll have it seen to [sigh]).

But man! The guy had to deal with me while I was nursing a case of deaf phone ear… Personally, I bet he’d rather have had to deal with a bear with a toothache. [heh… heh]