Category Archives: GeekWorld

Aging, Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, GeekWorld, Humanities, Politics, Retirement

Gadget Obsessed? Moi?

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Samhain                                                          New (Thanksgiving) Moon

To call me gadget obsessed might take reality a tad too far, but not much.  I saved up some money and bought a TIVO.  It took me this afternoon to get it set up and working, putting the cables in the right places, getting the codes right, creating a few channels on Pandora, wondering at the limited Netflix options when the full menu is available on my new Play Station 3, (OK, maybe it’s not quite far enough.) and deciding whether or not to ditch the cable tv subscription from Comcast, my least favorite company of the week.

In spite of myself it looks like keeping the cable subscription is still the best way to get the most out of the TV.  I’m gonna keep checking though since new ways to watch movies and broadcast shows keep popping up.  Most of what’s on tv is low culture, but often compelling anyhow and even the stuff I like that’s not compelling entertains me. With streaming movies the content available at home on demand has increased a hundred fold.

As a general rule, I don’t watch tv to get educated and I’m rarely disappointed.

Even with the increased quality and options though, nothing on the tube–that phrase dates me like saying icebox–compares to the live music, open studios and visiting with friends at Art Attack last night.  Remember Alvin Toffler?  The futurist from a long time ago.  He talked about high tech, high touch and I’ve found him right on that score.  I use the internet, the facility of cable tv combined with the internet and software like WordPress and Microsoft Word to make me much more productive in the work I choose to do, but going in to the MIA and seeing my docent friends or over to Paul’s house for a Woolly meeting, a Sierra Club meeting on Franklin Avenue are equally important to me.  Without them I would be a hermit.

A lot in the hermit’s solitude appeals to me, so I’m happy Kate and I have created a place here where we can be alone and creative, just the two of us, but I need face to face time with others, too.

GeekWorld

When Bad Service Is All You Expect

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Samhain                                               New (Thanksgiving) Moon

Over to Comcast offices, a 20 minute drive, to pick up the multi-channel cable card a Comcast chatline worker told me I could pick up there.  After taking a number, 14, while the number being served was 90, I sat down, thinking the wait was worth it because I’d driven the whole way.  So I sat.  As the numbers ticked off, I watched a guy who had an angry countenance grimace, a man a good 6 feet five inches walk in with a cable box under his arm.  His pants had a belt and suspenders.  Safer that way.  A small boy with a mischievous smile ran up to the number dispenser and started to take one, then looked back at his mom so the proper expression of dissatisfaction could register, smiled and ran over to her.  Most folks sat resignedly cable boxes, dvr boxes or modems clutched in their hands, having done Comcast the service of getting in their cars, using their gas and coming all this way just to do business with the folks to whom each of us shell out so much money each month.

(I’m not the only with complaints against Comcast.)

13.  “13.”  “13.”  Ah.  “14.”  “I need a multi-channel cable card, please.”  “We don’t carry those, you have to schedule a service call.”  The drive, the wait, for something I could have handled over an interminably long phone call, but at least I would have already been at home.  Unhappy camper here.

I’m gonna start looking at alternatives.  Right away.  Like right now.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld

Various Ways to Watch A Movie

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Fall                                              Waxing Harvest Moon

When I workout, on my treadmill 5-6 days a week, I watch movies.  That means I need a source of movies since I can go through 2-3 in an average week.  I used Comcast for a while, with their movies on demand, but the cable box won’t let me.  I’ve swapped it out twice with no joy and had a comcast person come by the house and offer to set up a service call.  I took him up on the offer, but no one showed up.  I still have the service, in part because they also provide a reasonably good internet connection, though it’s slow and expensive relative to the rest of the world.  I bought movies for a while, but that was expensive and I had to buy a lot.  Blockbuster and I shared many transactions, but that required physically going to the store and remembering to return stuff on time.  My current solution is netflix.  They mail me movies, I watch them and mail them back.  Pretty easy.

Netflix also has a service which allows you to watch movies over the internet if you have a properly configured device.  Upstairs, where Kate’s Wii sits, I long ago connected with our wireless router and happily watch movies up there without mailing, buying or stopping somewhere.  A while back I began looking at the Playstation 3 because it has a blu ray DVD player and the capacity for wireless link up.  The Wii is not blu-ray.  So, I ponied up the cash and bought one for downstairs.

It took the better part of 3 hours to get it connected to the internet, get permission to stream the Netflix movies and configure the blu ray remote I purchased.  It took so long because computers are, in essence, stupid things that only do exactly what they’re told and if you miss a beat on a password, a step in a process, or don’t wait long enough for a particular action, nothing happens and you have to start over.  I know this from years of handling electronics in various forms, still I dithered, shuffling my desktop with a password over to the Playstation, then back to the desktop to finally write down the password I’d not remembered quite correctly.  And so on.

Still.  I got it done.  Now I can watch movies from a broad selection with minimal hassle.  It’s important to keep in mind when mumbling through the set up of some electronic device that the time it will save way more than compensates for the groaning and moaning, so it’s worth it.  I keep telling myself that.

GeekWorld, Politics, Travel

On the Banks of the Wabash

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Fall                              Waning Back to School Moon

Lafayette, Indiana on the banks of the Wabash River.  Home of Purdue, the Boilermakers.

Got in here at 8:58 last night Minnesota time.  But, this being Indiana, it was 9:58 here.  Indiana suffers from chronic ambichronicity with the rest of the country and from county to county within the state.  A pleasant night for a stroll took me past the county courthouse and several college bars to the Holiday Inn.

Tuckered out, as we say in Indiana, I went to bed not long after.

Up this morning with a significant amount of work to do for the Sierra Club; we’re in the legislative priority setting process, so I ordered room service breakfast and tap, tap, tapped my way through saving files, sending attachments and setting up a meeting wizard for a late October meeting.

After that the friendly folks at Enterprise entertained me by sending a man who stood right next to me talking to Kate and asking her where I was.  When he realized it was me, he hung up, saying, That was your wife.  Well.

Now back at the  Hotel, finishing up this and that before heading out to Chesterfield Spiritualist Camp.  If you feel any spiritual vibrations, it means I’ve arrived.  At the camp.  Not the great beyond.

BTW:  I carry this netbook with me as well as my Blackberry and my  Kindle.  An electronic menage a trois.  Keeps me connected, informed and well read.  Not bad for under 2 pounds.

Dogs, GeekWorld

Rigel and the Fallen Tree

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Lughnasa                                                        New (Back to School) Moon

The DEW line here has no flaws.  The Distant Early Warning system, also called Rigel, found the tree that fell over the fence during the winds of today.  She walked on and crossed the road.  The Perlich’s brought her home not once, but twice.

No electric fence is good enough to counter a fallen tree.  I don’t have time (light) enough now to get out and take care of it.  That’ll have to come tomorrow, even ahead of the final bee run before leaving for Georgia.

Not to mention that all the electrical off and on bungled up the internet again and I spent another couple of hours reestablishing connection. It’s not a trivial matter since Kate’s work life requires internet access while she’s home.  My day finds me in the front of the computer, on the internet several times, and it has become a fixture in my regular routine.  Still, it’s fixed.

Problem solving on the estate.

Bees, GeekWorld

Bee Diary: Supplemental

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Lughnasa                            Waning Artemis Moon

The varroa mite count is in and my bees had–1.  That’s one mite for the sample of some 225 bees.  I didn’t get the optimal 300, see the business about the bees not volunteering for freezing to death, but finding only 1 mite makes me feel pretty comfortable.  Wednesday I’ll check the divide and see  how it’s doing mite wise.

I’ll have to become more facile with this procedure since I need it to do at least twice a year, more if the counts begin to go high.

We had a thunderstorm that knocked out the power and turned on our generator earlier tonight.  My computers were not unplugged, but they seem to have survived.

GeekWorld

OCD

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Lughnasa                                       Waning Artemis Moon

I have OCD.  Obsessive Computer Disorder.  If something’s wrong with my computer, it’s like a raspberry seed stuck between my teeth.  I worry it and worry it and worry it until it’s not there anymore.  Latest example:  I lost my google search bar.  Not a big deal, you might say.  Except to me.  The google search bar is my window to the world wide web.  It also has my bookmarks that I use most frequently.  With the toolbar gone, navigating the web and doing things I do often became very complicated.  So, I futzed with it, jammed it, reloaded an reinstalled Firefox.  Upgraded to FireFox Beta 4.4.  Unloaded that.  Round and round.  Clicked off my add-on’s one by one.  Nothing.

Finally, I uninstalled all my add-ons.  Ah, relief.  But.  It took the better part of a day.  No, really.  A day.  Geez.

Still, when the google tool bar reappeared, I threw up my hands.  Yes!  Victory.

Now I can get back to my life.

GeekWorld

Geeking Around

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Lughnasa                                    Waxing Artemis Moon

Yet one more day of running in place, a bit unfocused though things are moving.  The thing I got myself into seems about to work itself out.  How about that.  The honey extractor is stuck in bureaucracy land at Dadant.  They have no record of my order. Maybe not but they have our $915.  We’ll get it resolved.

Since I got my newest computer, I’ve gone through several semi-geek experiences, so far all of them successful.  I don’t consider myself a full geek since I never learned programming, but I do love fooling around with computers.  It’s a similar fixation to working on cars only one I understand.

GeekWorld, Humanities

Forgiving. Not Being Able to Forget.

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Summer                                        Full Grandchildren Moon

Over the last year, with seeming increased speed in the last three months, the nattering nabobs of negativism (thank you, Spiro), have problems with the internet.  The Web Means the End of Forgetting in this week’s NYT magazine recounts the many issues that self-revelation and innuendo can raise in an environment of perfect memory.  The issue of privacy in an age of electronic elephants has many folks concerned.  A second area of concern involves reading, attention spans and even our ability to think deep thoughts.  The rapid pace of information dissemination and consumption on the Web, the theory goes, makes us unable to read long books, think in arguments that have more than two moves.

Paul Revere has lots of company.  Endless memory is coming.  Endless memory is coming.  Loss of focus is coming.  Loss of focus is coming.  Balderdash.

I use the web with frequency.  I just finished, for example, a 2,340 page book, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  I regularly write essay length pieces for Unitarian-Universalist congregations.  The quality of my arguments you may question, but their length and number of  moves you may not.  Also, Steve Pinker, whom I respect as a neurologist and psychologist said all this is silly.

In my brief life as a blogger, a bit over 6 years if you count my regular posts during the year the Woolly’s had a pilgrimage theme, I’ve had three difficult incidents as a result of the Web’s reach.  The first was with material I wrote about my sister.  Material I regretted, but there it was.  Out there.  And she found it while I was in Southeast Asia. I found out in Bangkok in a China town internet cafe.  An unpleasant incident which still has reverberations.

Not long after that I went after a job in a small UU congregation.  I posted only that I had had an interview, but the search committee viewed that as a serious breach of trust, definitely not the kind of impact you hope to have when hoping to become someone’s minister.   Result:  no job.  Finally, and the least serious of the three, but still significant; I wrote my reactions to a political event I attended.  It was an insider’s deal, at least as the convener’s saw it, and I got a mild reprimand through the channels of an organization for which I volunteer.

Even with these situations in my recent past I still say, “Geez, folks.  Get over yourselves.  We are who we are regardless of our capacity to hide it.”  If more of our selves becomes subject to scrutiny, why shouldn’t we be held accountable?  Yes, I know the argument about slander and unintentional posting of that silly photo from Spring Break.  Even so, I think the larger question is, can we as a human community accept people as they are, not only as the carefully edited version of them we may get at work or in the bowling league or at church or at the bar?

We are an inconsistent, irrational, exuberant species with so much behavior to think about, wouldn’t it be easier if we all got our undies unbunched and realized the flawed creatures we all are?  It’s a thought.

GeekWorld

A New Electronic Companion

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Summer                                   Waxing Grandchildren Moon

Adding a new computer to what step-son Jon calls my command center.  This is a Gateway, my second, that I bought a couple of months ago, but waited to install until I could afford a new monitor for it.  That came during the grandkids stay so I decided to set the whole thing up yesterday.  It’s up and running though I’ve not downloaded my security software yet and I haven’t got some additional software on it yet either:  Microsoft Office, Photoshop Essentials, and some software and passwords from this (Dell) computer that need to go over to it.

(reality:  3 desktops.  fantasy:  see picture)

Soon this computer (the Dell) will function as my weather station and back-up system while the new Gateway will become my primary computer for e-mail, blogging and using the Internet.  This one has begun to have periodic work stoppages, ones I have not been able to resolve in spite of much troubleshooting.  They annoy me, but are not serious enough to abandon the computer  altogether.  Over the course of the last couple of years the price of desktops with fast enough cpus and mega storage have fallen dramatically, far enough that I could afford a new computer dedicated to writing, art history research and Latin (in my study) and now to upgrade my main internet gateway.

This Dell has been with me ever since Ancientrails began during my achilles tendon repair in February of 2005, so it has given good service and I imagine, with light use, will give many more.  (the first couple of years of Ancientrails were in Frontpage and can now be reached under archives on the links to the right.)

OK. Enough rationalization.  I really like computers.  Like the bees, they’re part serious, part hobby and I can no longer tell where the line belongs.

May your clock always run fast, your storage always be enough and may your computer be ever young.