Tag Electronics

A Shocking Tale

Michael 10 Comments

Did you ever have an extended period of time where all things of the same ilk were happening. Little fiddlies that by themselves would be handled, maybe with aplomb or maybe with a little impatience, but they were handled. Put together, a handful of fiddlies go from, “oh, look at that,” to hmm, again?” then to, “oh come on now already!” For me, this has not been a good electronics week for me.

It started with the little car. How can a car, that was olde, much older than a really good Scotch, start a week of electronic discombobulation? How could a sweet little roadster kick off a week of a shockwave slinger’s version of hell. Three little words. Electronic fuel pump. These little babies can do their impression of the Energizer bunny for 100,000. The little car (Rosemary by name because she’s red but has more zip than any ordinary rose) has not covered even a third of that distance, but it is about to turn 26 years old and that’s old enough to have gone through two pumps by now and we’re still working with the original. Or we were. Replacement is pretty simple if you have the tools and the knowhow. I have tools and I have knowhow. Unfortunately, neither of them is the right type, and that’s why we have mechanics. Cost measured in hours and dollars. Just a couple hours. Lots of dollars.

A few days later, a classic summer thunderstorm rolled through. Very loud, very windy, very wet! One of those storms when a really lot of rain doesn’t fall but it all comes at once. According to the National Weather service, a little over a half inch fell in 12-15 minutes. Then it settled into a nice steady rain. All those rain drops made for an interesting weather report, but the wind was the real story. Wind not quite enough to cause widespread downed trees and power fallers, but enough to cross wires and cause intermittent outages. Living a lifetime with severe storms had trained me to regularly turn off power strips and unplug sensitive computer equipment. But, like the house servants in the Jazz Age (and every other age before and since), we all have workers we count on every day we never pay notice, like garage door openers.

I have a garage door opener that operates one huge double wide and double heavy door.  It is operated with the usual wired wall controller and 2 wireless controllers, one for each car, and an outside wireless keypad. They all work superbly, unless the electricity goes out. Then for no good reason I ever came up with, every time there’s a blackout, the head unit forgets it has wireless connections. Remember that storm from a paragraph earlier? Yep, it went out and the controllers turned into knickknacks. Not a problem. It’s happened before. I just teach it a new thing or two, hop in the car, and drive on out. Except this time, I was out when it happened and got home during those 12-15 minutes when the rain clouds were doing their imitation of Niagara Falls. Cost, no dollars, just a few minutes, a lot of fresh towels.

I took advantage of Prime Days and bought a sound bar for the bedroom TV. It isn’t used much but on those few occasions I watch television in that room I find myself struggling to hear with my aging ears. A sound bar on the living room television made all the difference and when I found a smaller model of the same brand for a significant savings, I thought it would make a nice upgrade. I anxiously awaited the delivery man. Okay okay, that was a little dramatic. I put the order in and a couple days later it showed up in the doorstep. As I emptied the contents of the packaging, I set aside the HDMI ARC cable knowing I couldn’t use that as my set has the old-fashion HDMI just like the living room television where I used the alternate optical connector. I knew I’d be able to do that because the two televisions are the same brand only one a little smaller and a year or two older. After wrestling the piece around so I could access all the little connection sockets, I discovered that a year or two made a difference. No optical connection back there! Ugh. Just a couple old fashioned HDMI doodads. Reading the instructions, the online forums, Reddit (which is vastly underrated for its comic relief) I confirmed, “gotta have” the HDMI ARC. And then I thought, but wait, how about Bluetooth? Confirmed…television. Bluetooth enabled. Yay! Sound bar? No Bluetooth. Sigh. Cost in time- longer than it took to change an electronic fuel pump. In dollars- net $0.

I was so disappointed I thought I’d spend a little time at the electric keyboard I have in the Swiss Army Room. (Yes, I finally gave it a name.) Actually, I wasn’t that disappointed, but just had some time and nothing pressing, and it’s always been a pleasant pastime. The Casio has been with me for years. More than a basic hobby electric, it’s a 61 key (fully weighted) MIDI keyboard with a piano tone so clear it sounds as close to a piano as you can imagine. I couldn’t believe my eyes way back when I spotted it on a shelf in a thrift store, this amazing instrument that when new cost as much as an electronic fuel pump. I’ve enjoyed playing the Casio for almost as long as I’ve been playing with Rosemary (you remember her, the little car). I toggled the switch and waited for the display window to come to life. And waited. And waited. Hmmm. I tentatively fingered a key hoping only the display went the way of many 20 year old electronic gadgets and life stilled hummed through its keys. Nothing. And I thought. No, I didn’t unplug it the last time I played it, two days ago, the day before the power failure, and maybe power surge. Costs in dollars- untold. In time- immeasurable.

This has not been a good week with electronics for me.

Blog Art 2

Children aren’t just adults in training. We look at how they can be models for adults who would do well to look at the world through a child’s eye rather than looking at the world as their playground in Growing Up, Older, in the latest Uplift.

Spring cleaning

Michael 2 Comments

I did some electronic spring cleaning tis morning. I fear this is a battle I’m doomed to lose. Of course by electronic spring cleaning I don’t mean deep cleaning my living space with robotic assistance. A robot vacuum might be fun to have around, but until they come up with one who can wash down the cabinets, keep the appliances sparkly, daily clean the bathroom, and tidy the bedroom – like Rosey on the Jetsons! – I’ll do the physical cleaning on my own for as long as I can. No, the spring cleaning was going through apps on the phone and tablets, reviewing bookmarks on the browsers, moving image and document files to cards or cloud storage or deleting them outright, and getting rid of those nasty cookies (which unfortunately eliminates the helpful ones also which is why I so rarely take that on).

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It went relatively smoothly except for one tablet which makes me wonder if I take things too literally.  The tablet in question is an older Samsung that I’ve threatened to put out to pasture at least once a month for the last several years. But I’m used to its quirks, it fits me and my expectations, and I guess I like it enough to poo-poo my attempts to use the newer but still not completely set up tab sitting on my desk (which is now certainly itself hopelessly outdated).

The odd thing about this particular, older unit is the help that it wants to provide, particularly at clean-up time. It knows its storage limits and can clue me in on where I can reclaim valuable storage space. What it has a hard time with is knowing what’s stored where. Let me explain. As an older tablet it has limited storage, only 16 GB, so each little chunk of that is valuable. It wants to be a helpful little thing so this morning it told me that 970 MB was holding onto pictures and videos. No need to have them there but also no need to use up space on the cloud account with them when I have plenty of room and can move them to the SD card. Except when I tap the icon to show me the detail of what makes up those 970 MB of treasured photos, it gets confused and shows me all the files the tablet can access – internal, card, and cloud storage. It very graciously tells me how much each destination holds but not which files are at which destinations. So I go through file by file to find what goes where Sigh.

Another thing the poor old piece wants to help with is shedding itself of unused or rarely used apps. Every handheld device has a means of displaying all its resident applications by frequency of access. Except this one hasn’t learned the English definitions for always, sometimes, rarely, and never. I’m just certain that it would get so confused trying to complete a survey it would give up after the first few questions. Anyway, it listed all my apps by often used, sometimes used, and rarely used. Except that they aren’t. My crossword app that I use daily was in the sometimes used pile while Facebook that I haven’t accessed in the last several months was among those often used.

After hours more than I wanted to devote to the project I feel good that all my electronic, connected devices are as trim as can be and for a short while I should be able to enjoy efficient downloads, speedy uploads, and generally smooth, glitch free surfing on the Internet on my own little intranet.

I just really hope I didn’t delete my WordPress account.  Well, here goes nothing! (Hmm, let me know if you didn’t get this.) (Thanks!)

Black and White

Michael Leave a comment

Do you remember “White Sales?” I might need to address that to the over 50 crowd only. Over 60? For the under 30 crowd, no, that’s not a racial thing. Go find an old person for clarification. Well, White Sales popped into my brain just yesterday when my tablet went black. How do I know why? It just did. I gave up long ago trying to figure out my brain. It was giving me headaches. But there I was with a black screen on my tablet and White Sales on my brain. And they say it’s not a black and white world!

Fast forward to this morning when I stepped out of the shower and pulled a black bath towel off the bar and again thought, “White Sale!” But my thought didn’t stop there, oh no. It continued, “I need to start looking for a new tablet.” By now everybody either knows from experience or determined through careful inquiring and/or slapdash Googling that White Sales and tablets do not go together. Again, I’ve given up on brain figuring.

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The interesting thing about White Sales, at least the last ones I remembering patronizing, is (was?) the lack of white linens. Just now I had to get up and check my closet to see if I even have any myself. I indeed have a set of white towels and white sheets although I don’t remember the last time either was out of the linen closet. It was probably when I moved and they made the trip from one closet to another. Neither set has been in the regular rotation for, well for years. Considering I actually had to go looking for them should tell you it’s been lots of years. It probably also tells you I don’t clean out my closets as often as I should but that’s a post for a different day.

The interesting thing about my tablet is it might be as old as those white sheets. For a piece of portable electronics it’s held up remarkably well. It gets a lot of use. I’d say constant use but there are a few hours each day that I can say I don’t have it in my hand. I know I had it for several years before I moved and I moved 4 years ago. It’s so old that when I read an e-book on it I have to wet my finger to turn the page. Well maybe not, but it is quite old. It has an old operating system, limited RAM, and if it wasn’t for the Micro SD Card it would have almost no memory. But I like it. I like the size, the screen quality (when it’s not all black), the battery use, even it’s case. I know I’ll never find another one that will last however long this one has been with me. Seven years? Ten years? And I am certain one today will probably cost twice as such and last half as long.

I need a sale!

With luck I can hold out until Black Friday. Electronics are always on sale during the Black Friday Weekend. And if I can’t find one then maybe I can make it until January. After all, that’s the traditional month for White Sales.

And they say it’s not a black and white world!

 

 

Just Because You Can

Michael 5 Comments

This morning Best Buy announced they will no longer sell CDs in their stores. Vinyl yes, polycarbonate no. Apparently those who had normally opted for the shiny discs are now more likely to download or stream music to their hand held devices.

Last week the local paper announced that in August they will be dropping the print version of the paper from seven days a week to five. Apparently everybody wants their news electronically. This particular paper has not only its news website but two different apps for reading on mobile devices.

When Apple told us they had just the thing for that (with their trademarked and copywrited slogan (copywrit? copywrote?)), did they know they would release an app to reduce mobile dependency 9 years later? In fact, their app for that is only the latest in a string of such aids to reduce our electronic jonesing.

No, I’m not going to embark on a rampage decrying the ever presence of mobile devices in people’s hands. For the most part, I personally would rather hold a paper in my hands for perusal, especially now that they’ve resolved the inky finger problem, and though I never really got the hang of transferring a song from “somewhere out there” to what I still call “the phone,” I think we’ve done well in miniaturizing and availing technology to the masses. Even I am more likely to read the morning paper on my tablet out on the patio and I actually have a collection of favorites in my music folder in “the phone” (thanks to the daughter’s doing). Still, there are some things that shouldn’t completely replace the older hard copy iterations.

TriptikFor example, if you have a cell phone any less than say six years old you likely have a GPS mapping program at your fingertips. When I was traveling for work I appreciated my locating and traffic apps. I’d step out of an airport that looked quite like the airport I departed from, got into a rental car that look quite like the one I returned in a city earlier, and navigate to a hospital that looked suspiciously like one I visited the previous day on roads that held no resemblance to anywhere I’d even been. Yet I never got lost. My “phone” always knew where I was and which way to go.

But even knowing exactly where I was I never had a sense of roughly where I was. Years ago I’d use AAA “Triptiks” to navigate to a specific place. They were flip chart looking collections of mini-maps that specified your travel along highlighted roads. But I also always had my guidebooks and atlas so that at stops I could get a feel for what lay beyond the margins of the designated route. How else could you know that the world’s largest ball of twine was just 50 miles around the next bend, a drop in the mileage bucket when you’re already 1800 miles from home? You don’t get that from GPS.

So although I hope atlases never go away and that I’ll always have a CD player in my car so I have something to listen to while I search for the second largest cactus shaped like a tea pot, I can still appreciate the electronic versions. Now if only the proponents of those would please leave my paper and plastic alone we can live together in peace.

 

Game On!

Michael Leave a comment

Many people who are just acquainted with us are often shocked to ultimately find out that He and She of We are not married, or at the very least for the 21st century, not even living together.  We spend a lot of time together but we each have our own houses and spend more time in our own houses than we do at either’s others’ houses.  Of course there are evenings we’ll be found on one or another’s sofas usually in the glow of a televised sporting event or a demanded, if not on-demanded movie. 

Last weekend we were on He of We’s furniture, about 4 feet apart, rapturously engaged in a game of words.  No, not the grand-daddy of all games of words Scrabble, not the second cousin of word games without words, Charades.  No, we were sitting next to each other, letting our fingers do the walking through Words with Friends on our cell phones.  In the same house.  In the same room.  On the same couch.

Although both of our children are either young enough, or old enough depending on your point of view, to have discovered and to have played with PlayStation, Nintendo, and Wii, none of them became one of the electronic game junkies who walk around with fingers flailing over tiny controllers of hand-held versions of the gaming consoles that hold so many in mental hostage situations.   And all of them are familiar with games that involve fold-out boards, dice, tiles, poppers, timers, and a pad and pencil to keep score.  We’re pretty proud parents that our children made it into adulthood with having hand-held electronic games listed as dependents on their income tax forms.

So where did we go wrong for ourselves?  How did we manage to find ourselves phoning in our own recreation?  Don’t tell the children this but it is darned convenient having a game at your fingertips.  No boards to pull off shelves, no tables to clear.  No looking for the pieces that fall under the chairs, no pencil sharpeners to wonder if we even still have to look for.  No shaking up bags of tiles to pick from randomly, no wondering if that really is a word and will I look foolish if I challenge it.

So yes, we’ve succumbed to the dark side.  This time.  We’re willing to let a microprocessor randomly select letters and accurately add up scores.  We still get to use the best game piece – our minds.  Yep, of all the things we’ve lost – tile holders, letters, box tops, score cards – we’ve not yet lost our minds.  We’re pretty sure of that.  Yeah, pretty sure.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?