Technology.

My husband took me out to dinner. We haven’t had a “date night” out since the beginning of the pandemic and with the abnormally beautiful weather in Chicago, it was a gorgeous night to sit at a sidewalk table in front of a restaurant and have a nice dinner together.

The approach to social distancing at restaurants here in Chicago involves quite a bit of technology and a couple of assumptions. Some restaurants are checking temperatures at the door. At the moment, no restaurants are allowed to have indoor dining; only open air dining is allowed as of last weekend. To avoid spreading COVID-19, restaurants have opted to skip hard copy menus and instead have posted QR codes at tables. Patrons scan the QR code with their smartphone and are then presented with the menu. Wait staff are now carrying handheld electronic devices to manage the order tableside. Everyone is wearing a mask. Sanitation is happening everywhere.

The handheld devices I’ve seen are branded “Toast”. An Android device, the mini tablets allows servers to have their own device and not rely on a shared touchscreen at a central station. No paperwork is shared between the servers and the kitchen. We did get a printed receipt, which had another QR code, which we could then use to pay directly on our smartphone.

Our current state of technology has allowed us to manage the pandemic fairly well from an economic point of view. Can you imagine if this pandemic had come along in the late 1990s and we were trying to do this with Windows 98 and dial modems? The country would have come to a grinding halt.

Like the Y2K scare and the advancement of technology at that time, I think one good thing the pandemic has brought has been a shove in a positive direction in regards to technology. The work place will never be the same. School kids will never have a snow day again, they can just switch to remote learning.

And we’ll be able to read our menus right on our smart devices.

6 November 2020 by Geek 0

Suey.

My parents weren’t big on using the legal system to sue people or corporations, which were two different things back when I was growing up. I’m sure we had a couple of occasions to sue someone for negligence or something that harmed our family in some way. The car accident in 1978 comes to mind; either a driver drove a truck that was too tall to get under a bridge or the state had built the bridge too low. Despite the fact the car was totaled, there were hospital bills, and the like, we didn’t sue anyone. It’s just not the way my family did things.

I’m sure the family contracting business was sued by an angry customer on occasion. Now that I think about it, we probably took a few people to court for not paying their bills, but again, we weren’t really that big on engaging the legal system in this manner.

Now, I’m not saying there’s never a reason to sue someone. Willful negligence. Sure, it makes sense. But some folks like to stuff up the legal system with lawsuits over and over again in the hope of winning one of them once in a while. This makes them feel important.

Donald Trump immediately comes to mind in this last scenario.

When things aren’t going his way, he’ll threaten to take things to the Supreme Court. Over and over and over and over again. Maybe he thinks if he wears folks down with constant legal proceedings he’ll have a large penis or something. Honestly, I don’t know. I do know that the legal system should be reserved for the big stuff. Our legal system has enough in the way of issues, we don’t need to try perverting the system for our own pleasure or gain. That’s just so, well, dirty and unpatriotic. We shouldn’t clog up the legal system just to say we sued someone to get our way, when we wouldn’t have normally gotten our way. It just seems so un-American.

When I think of people that are un-American, I do think of Donald Trump. Now more than ever.

5 November 2020 by This Ain't No CNN. 0

Still Waiting.

And we’re still waiting for the 2020 Election Results. I’m feeling like there’s media contributed hype that’s unnecessary this evening. Let’s hope the trend continues in the current direction.

But, I’m ready for this to be settled.

4 November 2020 by This Ain't No CNN. 0

Waiting.

I took today off from work. It would have been unfair for me to claim I was working from home when in fact I’d most likely be wrapped up in election results, so I decided to just use some of the vacation time I have left in the hopper. It’s openness and honesty that’s contributed to successfully working from home for a decade.

The news pundits are claiming we won’t know who the next President of the United States is today, even though it’s starting to lead toward Biden at this moment. This could change at any time. Whatever is going on, the truth of the matter is, it shouldn’t be this close. It shouldn’t have come down to this. Why nearly 50% of the American electorate would continue to support Trump is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps they’re tired of wearing a mask or something.

I’m trying to avoid doomscrolling Twitter and getting wrapped up in the theatrics. It’s easier to be calm and cool about these things in the morning. The night of Election Night can be too frenetic.

I must be getting old; I’m finding the mornings to be easier to manage.

4 November 2020 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Vote!

To my U.S. readers, please take a moment and vote in this historic election. It is your right and our democracy depends on this simple action from its citizens.

Vote with compassion. Vote with empathy. Vote with humanity.

Vote with your heart.

3 November 2020 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Sunday.

We’ve come to the end of what will probably be the last “normal” weekend (whatever a normal weekend has come to mean) we’ll have in the United States for a while. After this election, no matter the outcome, no matter when the votes are tallied, all hell will break loose.

I have taken Wednesday off as a Mental Health Day. As I made my request I jokingly said to the Director of the organization, “I’ll either be hungover, drunk, or stoned. Of course, I’m kidding about that”.

It might be the best avenue out of this mess.

I am so weary and tired and fed-up. I’m sick of hearing about every outrage that Trump has done or every set of clutched pearls because a Democrat did this. I’m also extremely tired of memes stating the likes of “If people can’t be friends with you because of who you voted for they’re not very good friends to begin with”. That’s just a sign of crass cluelessness, because why would I want to be friends with anyone that will gleefully vote for Trump? The man has lied through his teeth for years, has no plan at all for anything, worked with the Senate to shove through a Supreme Court justice that will probably vote to not only end my marriage but take away a woman’s right to choose, never mind the fact that his policies permanently separated children from their families at the southern border.

I don’t terminate relationships with people because they voted for Trump. I terminate those relationships because they have a very weak moral foundation and lack any sense of human decency or compassion. They are selfish. I have no desire to debate or discuss their reasons for voting for a man that has done all of these things.

And now my blood pressure is going up. I’m going to go off and enjoy what’s left of this Sunday. Daylight Saving Time is over and my circadian rhythm is happy once again.

At least that part of my life is normal.

1 November 2020 by Fun and Games Dept 0

In The Clear.

From a 1982 commercial for Zayre Department Stores. I never did figure out where to buy a clear bathtub.

31 October 2020 by Geek 0

Neighborhood.

I was encouraged by the number of Trick or Treaters in the neighborhood late this afternoon. Parents and kids were going from house to house. Familiar calls of “trick or treat” were yelled from the sidewalk.

The majority of houses had a table set up on the front lawn with an assortment of candy and a bottle of hand sanitizer. I saw a half dozen houses with some sort of candy delivery system, usually a bunch of discarded paper towel rolls affixed end to end. A grown up would send candy down the chute to the waiting child with a trick or treat bag. One house had a witch’s hat in the end of the delivery system, and the candy shot out the witch’s hat.

This little slice of normal in the neighborhood raised my spirits a lot. Of course, we don’t get trick or treaters, being five stories up in a condo building, but Earl and I are eating the candy in the spirit of the holiday. It’s the American thing to do.

I was happy to see neighbors still decorating their houses. This has been an ongoing thing since the beginning of the month.

It certainly helps the mental state of the neighborhood. Happy Halloween!

31 October 2020 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Apple One.

Apple officially released their new subscription service today. It’s called Apple One. It’s basically a package deal for their individual services like Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Arcade, and iCloud. Their new service, Fitness+, will come before the end of the year, and it’s included in their “Premier” level of Apple One.

I subscribed us to Apple One Premier. It will save us a little over $5 a month vs the current subscriptions we have. Plus, we’ll be able to drop a couple of other subscription services, including Dropbox. Since we use Apple products, iCloud works just fine for us.

I’m excited about Fitness+. It’s a fitness program that works in concert with videos on various Apple devices and the fitness capabilities of the Apple Watch. I’m hoping it will inspire me to be a little more fitness minded during the dark, cold months of winter.

One can always hope.

30 October 2020 by Geek 0

About J.P.

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.

Weird? Eccentric!

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