So there’s two days left in my ‘Stache On-‘Stache Off campaign to raise money for the Ali Forney Center, an organization helping homeless LGBT youth in New York. Right now, the bucket for ‘Stache ON has more money in it. On Friday night, whatever bucket has the most money will determine the fate of my mustache. If ‘Stache On has more money, I’ll keep it through the end of the year. If ‘Stache Off has more money, the mustache goes for a few weeks and will be replaced by a smaller ‘stache (or beard) of more reasonable proportions. And of course, all proceeds go to the Ali Forney Center, which is actually the reason for doing all of this, because I believe that we all agree that no one deserves to be homeless.
Tonight is my third attempt at trying out Windows 8 on my laptop. Since the developer preview version is out and I have a spare laptop for this sort of thing, I decided to give Windows 8 a whirl again. After all, the third time is a charm, right?
I think I’m too smart for my own good.
One of the things that I need to remember is that even though this is Windows, it doesn’t behave like Windows, it behaves like a mobile phone I’ve never used before. From my earlier attempts at using Windows 8, I am lucky to remember that you fling your mouse off the right hand side of the screen (either corner, actually) to get something called ‘Charms’ to appear. The charm in the middle is the start menu. When you click that, or press the Windows flag button on your keyboard, you’ll get big lego blocks that have information rotating about in them. These big things replace icons. You click them and magic happens. The magic involves your screen waving around as anything you were working on disappears and then the new application presents itself full screen. It’s a lot like the iPad when it comes to multitasking; you’re not going to do it.
If you want to search for something, there’s no search button or key, you just start typing while the lego blocks are displayed. If you want to go to the desktop, you click “Desktop” and that brings up something that looks like a cheaper version of the Windows 7 Desktop, but it’s so cheap that you don’t get a Start Menu ball down in the corner. You’ll need to keep flinging that mouse to the right to bring up the charms, which will then bring up the lego blocks. So if you want to open, say Skype for example, you fling the mouse to the right and click start, which will cause the desktop to go away, and then just randomly start typing “Skype”, which will then bring a lego block with the Skype logo on it and then you click on the block. The blocks then go away and you’re back to the Desktop and Skype will open and complain about “fonts” being called “font”.
I’m not making this up.
Soon you’ll discover that flinging your mouse to the upper left hand corner will give you a picture of the last application you had opened but flinging your mouse off the left side of the screen will bring up pictures of all the applications you have open so you can move to another one, HOWEVER, if the application is open on the desktop you just go to the “desktop” window which makes the blocks disappear and the start menu taskbar without the start menu appear. Then you can pick the small icon of the program you want to go to.
NOW. If you want to shut down your computer, you go to settings by just randomly typing “Settings” at a lego block. OH! I did figure out that when you have pictures of all the applications you have running along the left side of your screen you can right click on them and it will ask you if you want to snap left, snap right or close. I did three snaps in Z-formation GURL! That wasn’t an option but I threw it in there for kicks.
I think it’ll be easier once everyone has their grubby little hands all over their screen and you can actually touch the blocks and move them around.
Honestly, I can see the direction that Microsoft is going with this “shift in paradigm” (I love big words) with Windows 8. They’re heading towards my always coveted dream of being able to take a presentation on your laptop and swiping it up to the presentational board in a conference room. It’s not quite like a Bewitched-like magic move but it would still be uber awesome. (I don’t know how to put the umlaut over the ‘u’ in uber). I LOVE the vision of the future that Microsoft is working towards, I just hope it’s not as rocky of a road as it seems it’s going to be getting there.
Because this Windows 8 experience, though it has not ended with the completion of this blog entry, is making me reach for my iPad. Very quickly.
For a palette cleanser, here’s what Microsoft sees us doing with technology in 2019.
Today the world lost one of the first ladies of comedy. At 95, Phyllis Diller passed on from this life. Reports say she died peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face. I hope she’s entertaining on the other side and punctuating it all with her inimitable laugh.
Rest In Peace, Phyllis. You’re definitely one of a kind and you will be missed.
When I was younger I would get excited about this time of the year because of the impending arrival of a double edition of TV Guide. This particular edition of TV Guide was not just a listing of what was scheduled to be on the tube for that week with a few random articles interspersed here and there, no, this double edition featured a full listing and description of all the new television shows planned for the new fall season that would begin in mid September. These exciting listings would include full color photos of the cast of the new show. I would feel much excitement about these new shows and pick out the ones that I would want to watch, assuring that they wouldn’t have a conflict with the other shows I enjoyed.
I guess I was easy to please.
There are several shows that I remember being excited about as a kid. Here are a couple that I remember being excited about but they didn’t last for very long:
1. “Mr. Merlin”. I remember this show with Clark Brandon as the apprentice of Merlin the Wizard. I think Elaine Joyce might have been in it too. I remembered Clark from one of the last episodes of “Wonder Woman”. I found him obnoxious only because he got to do the cool television stuff with cool people. It was pure jealousy.
2. “The Powers of Matthew Star”. Another supernatural show with a lead character that I found obnoxious only as fueled by my jealousy.
3. “We Got It Made”. This one wasn’t supernatural, but it was worth remembering because the apartment on the show had the same painting of a boat that my grandparents had hanging over their television. Teri Copley as the gorgeous maid did nothing for me, but the smart guy, Matt McCoy certain did. He fit into my mid teen fantasies quiet nicely.
Looking back on these shows they seem quite ridiculous, but then when I compare those shows to what I’ve recently seen on today’s television, they seem like works of art. Earl and I ended up watching some piece of drek on TruTV the other night that had something to do with repossessed cars. I think the only plot of the show was to piss off the female guard, who was a big woman that seemed to growl and beat on people. I’m a little embarrassed by the fact that I watched it long enough to figure out what was going on but I’m really embarrassed by the fact that this is what passes for entertainment on American television now. I found reality shows mildly entertaining in the early 00s, now I can’t stand to watch them. I can feel my IQ drifting downwards every time I see someone do something stupid in glorious 46″ HDTV.
There’s a part of me that would really like to cut the cord to DirecTV and just rely on downloaded shows. We have all the pieces and parts necessary to do it. I have the entire second season of “Happy Endings” ready to go at a moment’s notice, but there’s two issues with this approach: 1. We can’t watch live football off the internet and 2. Earl likes to click the clicker and find something to watch.
I have been passing time watching old episodes of “Maude”, “Eight Is Enough” and “The Little House on the Prairie”. I’m finding much more entertainment by downloading these shows instead of watching what’s being thrown all over the airwaves and cable today.
I can’t think of one show that I’m excited about with the arrival of the new season in September. I don’t know what’s new or what’s coming back. I’ve heard about “American Idol” but I gave up on that seasons ago. I lost interest in “Private Practice” when Shonda Rhimes decided to exploit gay men in the military through a ridiculously timed episode about a man being raped by his commanding officer (stereotypes get ratings!) “Modern Family” has become hugely predictable and quite frankly I don’t know what else is on. I had heard something about a revival of “Bewitched” but I don’t think it’s going to happen. GOOD! Oh, I heard about a revival of “The Munsters” but I don’t know what’s going on with that.
So there’s one week left in my ‘Stache On-‘Stache Off campaign to raise money for the Ali Forney Center, an organization helping homeless LGBT youth in New York. Right now, the bucket for ‘Stache ON has more money in it. One week from tonight, whatever bucket has the most money will determine the fate of my mustache. If ‘Stache On has more money, I’ll keep it through the end of the year. If ‘Stache Off has more money, the mustache goes for a few weeks and will be replaced by a smaller ‘stache of more reasonable proportions. And of course, all proceeds go to the Ali Forney Center, which is actually the reason for doing all of this, because I believe that we all agree that no one deserves to be homeless.
I hate to admit this but I start feeling a little achy in my shoulders when there’s rain on the way. I know that makes me sound incredibly old, and at 44 I don’t think my warranty has expired yet, but nevertheless, when it’s looking like it’s going to rain I can feel it in my bones. Earl says it’s because I try to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. He could be right. He almost always is.
For those reading this from the Central New York region, there’s rain on the way. At least I’m not like Mrs. Ziffel, claiming that lumbago means we need to plant corn this year.
Looking back on it, I can safely say that yesterday was a shitty day for me. I should probably use a classier word choice, truth be known, but that would just cover up the fact that it was just a shitty day. That whole lipstick-pig thing. I call it like I see it.
I was so unfocused yesterday. I don’t feel like I accomplished much. I was cranky. Irritable. It’s that whole expectations thing I was talking about in one of my blog entries yesterday; I have expectations, they’re not met, and then I’m cranky when in all truth of the matter I really don’t have a reason to be cranky because they’re my expectations. Someday I’ll learn.
What’s more important is that today is a much better day.
I did discover that one thing that was making me cranky was working on my work MacBook Pro from home yesterday. It’s a 15-inch display but it feels so cramped when I’m working. Like most folks I multi-task a lot, and when I have five windows open on one window and I have four different desktops that I am flinging back and forth on my screen, the 15-inch screen feels a bit cramped for serious work. That size of a display works great when you’re focused on one task, much like when you’re working on an iPad (or other tablet), but when there’s a lot going on in your work life you need to have a lot of space to manage it all. The other frustrating part of it all is that I have a 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt Display for my personal Mac Mini that won’t work with my mid-2010 MacBook Pro from work. The port looks the same. The plug from the monitor plugs into the port, but nothing happens, because apparently there’s one wire difference in the way the connector works.
That’s just silly. It’s even more irritating. You’d think that Apple would make an adapter but they didn’t.
So I’m trying to figure out how I can get my work computer on a bigger monitor without breaking any budgets. I think I’m going to end up selling three computers to buy one robust computer and then I’ll buy one monitor and call it a day.
One of my friends from high school wrote on her wall that she was disappointed with President Obama because he was wining and dining with Hollywood celebrities while poor people starved. This was the first thing that I read this morning and it ticked me off. I promptly deleted her from my friends and it made me wonder why I even bother with Facebook in the first place. People say really stupid things on there. I also wondered if her breath was still as hideous as it was in high school.
I’ve been ranting about Facebook on and off for the past couple of weeks but I think I have come to the point where I have seriously OD’d on it. Aside from a photo of a 1970 Amana Radarange that another friend shared today, I stared at the stream and wondered why the hell I was wasting the time. It’s kind of like watching TRU-TV’s crap reality shows with people that you allegedly know. It got me to wondering, do I really still ‘know’ people that I went to school with 30 years ago? There’s a few on there that I still enjoy very much, but there’s also a couple that were downright cruel to me during high school and now they want to be “friends”. You scarred me for life, why would I want to continue that sort of frivolity? And yes, being told that “you’ll never fit into society because of your mannerisms” will scar a person for life. You’re lucky I don’t hunt your computer down and put a virus on it.
Now while I’m ranting about Facebook friends, I have to share flipside and say that there are a couple from high school that I have been happy to reconnect with. It was amazing to see a bouquet of flowers from “The Lunch Table Crew” at my father’s services last December. That was a bright spot in a bleak time. I have enjoyed thanking old teachers for helping me even though they didn’t really know they were doing it at the time. I like seeing what former bloggers are up to, those I have met in person and those that we haven’t crossed paths with yet and only met electronically. With the decline of personal blogs and the tendencies for folks to microblog in its place, you have to kind of be on Facebook if you want to stay connected with those folks you knew from the ’00s. But for the most part, the platform seriously pisses me off.
I think I need to cut my Facebook consumption by 9/10ths and seriously prune my friends list down in the process. This might make things more manageable and less irritating.
But I’m seriously keeping the friend with the cool Radarange.
My sister and I always knew when dad wasn’t happy with us. He never showed his anger by yelling or raving or anything like that. His approach would be more subtle. He would get very quiet. It wasn’t his usual quiet nature, you could tell these instances were different. Conversation would be reduced to the essentials and he would spend time alone in the basement building a bookshelf or an airplane or something. He’d come up for meals and sleeping and other required family interaction, but otherwise he’d retreat to his own space, be quiet for a while and get his head where he needed it to be, coming to his own terms via his own space. We would rarely talk about whatever he was upset afterwards. This has probably made me ask folks on their current well being a lot over the years.
I inherited this quiet approach from him, but to keep it all interesting, I also inherited my mother’s more demonstrative ways. I kind of have this hybrid approach. If something upsets me and it’s something fairly trivial or minor on the hysteria scale, I’ll rant and rave about it, slam a few doors, throw a boot and consider the matter resolved. It’s out of my system and let’s move on to the next thing. But if something really disappoints me or bothers me, I’ll take like dad and go quiet and build a computer or edit music or something. And because I analyze the crap out of stuff, I compare, contrast, weigh symbols and scrutinize between every line to the point of what may seem trivial to someone else ends up being a big deal to me. I believe that most everything means something even if it falls into the nature of a Freudian Slip.
Did I ever mention that I was complicated?
These traits of mine are not something that I am proud of. Earl keeps telling me that I shouldn’t have expectations when it comes to people because folks rarely live up to our own expectations. My rosy view of the world is often clouded by reality and that’s because it’s MY rosy view. I know I have control issues and I know I have expectations but even after 44 years I’m still learning to let these things go and once in a while something disappoints me and I can’t help but go silent and figure my own way through my feelings. This is how I get through it.
I guess one of the days I might get it all figured out.
I make typos all the time. I substitute words that make no sense from time to time. I mess up a lot when I type. But I’m not a journalist. I’m not a professional blogger. I’m just your average geek with a flair for language.
When I read something from a “professional” source, I have a certain expectation of quality. A lack of attention to detail in presentation is going to significantly impact the level of credibility of the information being presented. How can a reader buy the facts when they’re sloppily presented?
This is why stuff like this bothers me. No one has any pride in their work these days. Hurry up, get ‘er done, get the revenue flowing.
I know, it’s just a typo. To me, it speaks volume of this person’s quality of work.
Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m cranky. But I’ll champion the causes of quality and pride in one’s work until I leave this life.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
