We did a little Christmas shopping on Saturday. Even though this is our third holiday season in the desert, I’m still not used to shopping in the warmer fresh air while listening to Christmas carols and seeing the various decorations.
Fresh Air.
I decided I needed some fresh air today so I went for a 5 1/2 mile hike. It was a beautiful day.
Print Slower.
I really miss dot matrix printers, especially in the retail world. When we purchased our new vehicle last weekend, the finance manager processed all the paper work using pre-printed forms fed through a dot matrix printer designed for that sort of thing. It was earlier technology magic that has no need for replacement; it does what it needs to do it and it does it well.
Restaurants still use dot matrix printers as well because the thermal printed tickets would be rendered useless by the heat of your typical kitchen. When you place your order at the counter of a fast food restaurant, to hear it print out on a printer in the kitchen is music to my ears.
Can you imagine if retail establishments still had to use dot matrix printers today? No longer would CVS receipts be measured in feet with useless marketing messages. Kohl’s cashiers couldn’t write on the receipts with their fingernails. We wouldn’t be bombarded with surveys and coupons and the like.
It’s worth the screech of the dot matrix printhead and the challenge of threading a roll of receipt paper between the ribbon cartridge and the platen.
Hah!
I ran across this photo on Mastodon and it just tickled me to no end. I love it!
And in case the post disappears, here’s the original photo.
Caturday.
Truman was head of the supervisory committee overseeing holiday decorating this week. He positioned himself in strategic locations throughout the house as various trees were assembled, lights were lit, and decorations were installed.
After the many trees were installed and the like, he went back to monitoring the back stairs for activity. He keeps an eye on traffic going up and down the stairs from this vantage point, as well as birds coming and going from the roof area directly outside the door at the top of the stairs.
As long as kibble is supplied as requested, he is content.
Hockey.
Earl and I went to watch the Tucson Roadrunners play hockey in the desert tonight. Tonight we won against the San Jose Barracuda, 5 to 1. It was a good game.
We have a half season of tickets; basically a bundle of tickets we can use when we wish throughout the season. Sometimes the two of us ago, other times we bring others along. We are always in Section 105. The section can be a little rowdy.
Attendance seems a little down this year compared to last year but we’re still having fun.
Ex.
I haven’t paid much attention to Twitter (now called X) in a while. After Elon Musk purchased the platform and started doing crazy things and other shenanigans I decided it was time to leave. I deleted all but one account on the service; I kept my aviation related account in case I wanted to touch base with other aviators.
Other than a post a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t done much of anything in the way of scrolling or sharing posts. After the recent weird comments from the owner I logged out and haven’t looked back.
But notice that I haven’t deleted that last account yet. I really don’t have an answer as to why I haven’t gone ahead and just deleted everything. Nostalgia? Hope? I really don’t know.
Apparently Space Karen tweeted some antisemitic remarks over the past couple of days and is now on some PR tour to do some damage control. The Verge reports that Space Karen claims advertisers are boycotting the platform by not spending ad dollars with X (formerly known as Twitter), because of his antisemitic tweets. Space Karen then specifically told the advertisers what they can do, naming Bob Iger of Disney specifically.
I’m really tired of Space Karen. I’m really tired of hearing about Twitter (apparently now called X) and I’m really shaking my head at CEO Linda Yaccarino trying to gaslight the entire planet that Space Karen’s remarks are something normal.
Yet, here I am writing a blog entry about this.
The truth is, I really hope the entire platform collapses and is gone by mid-2024. Like, completely gone like “MySpace”. I also hope the U.S. Government comes to its senses and stops putting all its space eggs into Space Karen’s basket. The thing is, one Twitter (now beckoning the name X) is gone, will journalists know how to be journalists? I mean, if it’s not on Twitter (X, if you will) they don’t know how to report on it.
May you live in interesting times.
Vibe.
I have been very much under the weather all day. I didn’t get much sleep due to coughing. So I slept between meetings at work.
I needed a bit of fresh air and the mountains and clouds reminded me of why life is good.
Tradition.
When I was a kid I loved decorating the outside of the two story colonial my father built. When the landscaping was put in I was very excited to put up Christmas lights. During the holidays my dad would often share that I said to my mom, “the next time you go to town please pick up a couple more strands of lights”.
The Christmas lights in question were sold in sets of 35 and cost $1.99 per set at The Rite Aid. These lights used the standard sockets of the time and the light bulb sat inside the reflector, and the reflector plugged into the socket. I was delighted when I discovered a reflector from a set purchased at Ames, which was shaped like a crown, would fit into the same set as the set purchased at Rite Aid, which had reflectors shaped like a flower.
With LED lighting all the rage we have LED Christmas lights all over the house. They look nice but in my opinion they lack a certain warmth when it comes to the festive colors. There’s just something so enchanting to the traditional colors and the incandescent glow of these old sets of Christmas lights.
The 35 count light sets often had “two way flashing”, which was basically two circuits of lights. Each could be controlled by a red tipped, white “flasher” bulb. With one flasher, every other light in the strand would blink while the opposing light would remain steady. With two flashers in the set, the two circuits flashed to their own rhythm. If you put three flashers in the set, which the circuits were obviously not designed for, the circuit with two flasher bulbs would flash rapidly until one of the flasher bulbs burned out. I did that only once or twice.
During the Christmas season I was often found lying under the tree, usually snuggled up with one of the several cats we had at any given time, staring up into the Christmas tree watching the lights blink or twinkle.
Marketing.
Nothing screams “the season of good will” like receiving 25-30 marketing emails an hour proclaiming the importance of Cyber Monday. You do not love your loved ones until you’ve purchased them some sort of plastic trinket (valued at $75 today only!), wrapped it in paper, and watched them open it on Christmas Day to say, “what the hell is it?”.
