Tag Questions

Questionable Behavior

Michael 20 Comments

I know we are entering only the second full week of the new year, but I already have questions.

I undecorated from the Christmas season, redecorating into the winter décor (yes, there is a difference) Saturday and Sunday of the weekend. This was one of the few years I did not add to either of my ever-growing collections of nativity sets and nutcrackers (and if you are wondering (and I know you are) yes, I have a nativity set made up of nutcrackers, or nutcrackers in the shapes of a nativity set). Still, somehow, when all was said and done, I had no room in the inn for one iteration of the Holy Family. How does that happen? (By the way, the difference is snowmen.)

In the continuing story of the faithful companion Jingle the Dog, he is doing well enough, continuing with his chemotherapy. He was still getting his normal amount of exercise, walking a couple miles a day and leaping onto any piece of furniture that afforded him a good look of the outside world. Somehow (there’s that word again), he managed to pinch a nerve in his remaining shoulder. So, the daughter is now dealing with a dog with one missing front leg and one inoperative front leg, and was told to not let him walk or jump for 5 days. Has anybody ever kept a dog from not jumping?

Last Thursday I posted about the BBC Music video of “God Only Knows,” the mind-blowing compilation of “32 artists and groups mingling their distinctive styles into a single beautiful performance.” I’ve played that video several times, clocked the link to identify the participants, and wondered how they pulled this off. How did they?  Never got a good answer to that, but I did find an interesting behind the scenes video. (No, I don’t get referral fees from them.)

Oaky, my brain is happier now. I haven’t gotten any answers. But at least the questions are out there now. That’s something, isn’t it?

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Some things I don’t know that I don’t know why I don’t know them

Michael 4 Comments

You would think if I got to be as old as I got to be, I’d have figured out most of what it is that got me here. Nope. There are still way too many things I don’t know. Some of the are just beyond my grasp and I now take it for granted that I’ll never know how radios work without wires and why yellow and blue make green. But some things shouldn’t be that hard and I still can’t figure them out. For instance:

Why does only one shoelace come undone in the middle of a long walk. Both feet are going the same places and the same paces. Both shoes and both laces are made of the same materials. The temperature and humid at my left foot are pert near identical to those at my right. All things being equal, why are the laces? What makes one slip its knot and not the other?

Why does a cracker spread with peanut butter always fall face down when it slides off the plate to get away from its cracker cousins? In a similar vein, have you ever noticed when you pour a bagful of wrapped candy pieces into a candy jar, they always land with the pretty shining label face down leaving the tacky loose edged wrapper “tails” facing up and daring you to turn each one over?

Why do microwave ovens at work, hospital and garage waiting rooms, and other public venues always smell of popcorn and pizza? I once was involved in the opening of a hospital. Brand new facility.  New paint on new walls, new tile on new floors, new tables and chairs in new break rooms, and a brand new microwave right out of the box. And even that one smelled of popcorn and pizza when it was opened the first time!

Why does my email spam filter redirect newsletters to which I’ve subscribed to the junk email folder but allows ##HEARING_AID_ADVICE ‼️ and **Prostrate Help is Here**  through to the inbox unmolested?

Who is Pete and why do we keep doing things for his sake?

And the biggest puzzle of all: Why do people go to the grocery store wearing camouflage? I’m not talking about military persons completing a household chore in their way home at the end of their duty day. I mean the guy who closet brush with the army is watching The Dirty Dozen on his favorite football team’s bye week Sunday? Hey fella! Those animals in the meat case are already dead. You don’t have to sneak up on them. Hmm. You know what? On second thought, I don’t want to know the answer to this one.

 

What do you do with a day that’s cloudy and gray? Don’t wait for tomorrow; tomorrow is a long way away. Start a new day today! The sun that will come out tomorrow is already up there. All you have to do is let the light in.

This is really a good one. If you haven’t been there, go to ROAMcare.org and check out our last week’s blog “Today is Only a Day Away.”

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Things I was thinking about when I was thinking about the things I think, I think

Michael Leave a comment

It’s that time again when I have to get some things off my mind or I’ll go out of my mind, and that’s the first one. Going out of one’s mind (which admittedly falls trippingly off the tongue) is taken to mean losing it, going nuts, flipping your lip, and a half-bazillion other ways to say gone bonkers. “Don’t pay attention to him, he’s out of his mind.” “I need a day off or I’m going to go out of my mind.” But it’s actually possible to just go half out of one’s mind, “I was half out of my mind with worry” which usually conveys just a temporary inability to deal with a specific occurrence. That’s not to be confused with “having half a mind” which no less an authority than Merriam-Webster defines as “the feeling especially when angry and annoyed that one would like to do something while at the same time not really planning to do it.” It’s just all much too mindless for me.

This one gets a little politically incorrect (and if you ask me, all of politics is a little incorrect lately). Recently, I had the opportunity to read a magazine article that addressed a dispute between a person who wished to be addressed by the pronoun “they” and another person who was addressed as “she.” The columnist, clearly being a woke (and presumably politically correct) person that he/she/it is, honored the request. It was by far the most difficult piece of reporting I have ever read and I used to read military efficiency reports. I could never tell if the author was talking about one or both of the individuals at any given time. In one sentence the word “they” referred to both the individual and both individuals. Please can we stop with using “they” as a singular pronoun. As noted last week, the English language has over 600,000 words. If you don’t like the one people have been using, at least pick one of the more obscure ones. Or make up a new one. Clearly with over 600,000 words, English language users are not shy about doing that!

I don’t know if this is universal among anti-virus programs so maybe you can clear things up for me if you know. I run Norton-360 antivirus program and I swear, sometimes I wish I’d have opted for the virus. I can’t turn on any of my computers without having it pop up and remind me of some extra cost option I haven’t purchased, or pop up usually while I’m in the middle of entering a nice long string of something (data, words, pictures) to let me know it recently did its thing, all is well, and do I know there are extra cost options I haven’t purchased, or pop up while downloading a file, program, video, whatever and assure me that suchandsuch.somethingorother is safe and by the way, do I know there are still some extra cost options I haven’t yet purchased. If one of those options was a pop-up free version I’d write out the check today!

Another thing I don’t know if it is universal is that since I’ve had COVID, I cannot get warm. I can have the furnace on 68, 72, or 76 and I still want a hoodie (or two) on over my sweatshirt (or two). Oddly, or oddlier, it’s only my upper body. Throw an extra blanket on the bed and my legs get hot. I have got to get this in check before next winter because I refuse to be one of those over-testosteroned Neanderthals that walk around in blizzards with their flannel shirts, camo hats, Carhart jackets, and shorts! And I don’t even want a pick-up truck.

I seldom go on Facebook anymore and maybe this is why. On a recent rare excursion to the Land of Odds (odd balls!) I found a post that had great intentions, but, well, really now. You likely saw it or one of its cousins if you still visit there. It was titled(?) “Why Ukraine matters” and then went on for 1,000 words or so listing all of Ukraine’s attributes. How about. “Ukraine matters because Ukrainians live there. Ukrainians matter because they are people.”

Thank you for sticking around to the end. I know it’s a messy process when things just fall out of my head. I should be good for another couple months now.

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Truthfully?

Michael 2 Comments
A tossed in, not given a second thought aside in my post from a couple posts ago provided the inspiration for this post with a little encouragement from Christi at Feeding On Folly, confirmed by a comment from WD Fyfe – do, or how regularly do, or why don’t people do lie on the security questions that accompanied passwords in “password controlled” sites? You know the ones, first pet’s name, first car, paternal great grandmother’s shoe size. All the things anybody with a little observation prowess can deduce from your Facebook profile.
 
My actual thought was “By the way, those security questions – does anybody lie about them? Wouldn’t that make more sense? I mean if they are the last line of defense and somebody has already cracked your 23 character upper and lower case, number and special character containing password that you change every 4 days, surely they know what street you grew up on. But I digress.” Well, the time has come to, um, er, do the opposite of digress.
 
It does seem silly when you think about it. These are the questions they ask if you have to confirm who you are if you’ve mis-entered or forgotten your password or the super secure second level site protection. Password requirements get more complex – 8 to 20 characters long, cannot be your user name, cannot be your email, cannot have been used for the last six passwords, include upper and lower case alpha characters, 2 numbers, and a special character or two, and must be changed every 60 days. But if you forget that password they will let you in if you can correctly answer the name of the city your high school is located. 
 
Christi (you remember her from the opening paragraph) suggested it would be fun making up answers and WD (he’s in that same paragraph if you’re wondering) intimated he had lied on them, so I (you remember me from, well, from here) thought, “Let’s do this!” Let’s consider the most common of these questions, Grandma’s shoe size not among them.
 
City where you were born: Obviously I can’t use the city where I was actually born. To begin with it’s too pedestrian. There are some good ritzy cities out in the world, Tokyo, Abu Dhabi, Manhattan (never New York), but the fictional ones are better. Would I want to have grown up in Emerald City? What kind of childhood would Port Charles provide? Oh, I know the perfect city to be born and raised in. Bedrock!
 
First pet: Considering I spent my childhood in Bedrock my first pet could have been Dino but he seemed loyal to Fred and Wilma and I couldn’t deprive them of that. Unless Fred and Wilma were my parents. That would be a whole different story. Pebbles could have been an older sister and I came along much later. Or perhaps she was the much younger one and I was already out of the house and/or cave by the time was playing Frisbee Rock with Bam Bam Rubble. Either would clear the way for Dino to be my first pet except that seems just too obvious. If I am to stick with Bedrock as home and the long lost child of Fred and Wilma a more secure pet answer would be the other animal living at Cobblestone Way, Baby Puss. 
 
Maternal grandmother’s name: This is taking over the spot formerly held by mother’s maiden name I guess because that was too easy to figure out. But because everybody knows Wilma’s mother is Pearl Slaghoople (you did know that, didn’t you?) I think it’s time to fast forward from prehistory. Think of all the famous women that have graced the world. So many choices. But there is only one that is the most secure. Anna. More specifically Anna McNeill. Most specifically Anna McNeill Whistler famously appearing in Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1.
 
First car: if we’re going to be making things up we might as well make one up with flair. Perhaps my first car would be a Bugatti or Alfa Romeo, a Corvette split window coupe, or maybe a Mustang like the 1968 390 GT Steve McQueen drove to fame in Bullitt. This might be my weak link, the one somebody might be able to puzzle out, the 1964 Aston Martin DB5. If they ask about a chauffeur it would have to be Bo…. But I digress. Again.
 
There are so many other questions and they keep changing them just ever so slightly but well take a stab at one more. High School Mascot: This could be the easiest answer for a hacker to hack. It wouldn’t take much personal history delving to uncover a connection to the Merry Mountainmen or the Fighting Firefighters.  So we have to be particularly suspect in our choice, one no hacker could imagine. Clearly it must be the Hapless Hackers.
 
So these are my “truthful” answers to some of the more common security questions. What would yours be?  And please, please, don’t go blabbing my answers around!
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When A Door Closes

Michael 3 Comments

This past weekend I was getting out of the car when I realized car doors don’t close right, the kind of light bulbs that last ten years don’t last ten years, and computers ask questions they have no intention of doing anything with about. I also realized these are all first world problems but, well frankly, those are the kinds of problem I most encounter.

Let’s look at those cars doors. Every other door in the (first) world either opens or closes. Most exterior and interior house doors have latches or knobs and you push them open and they stay open or fasten them closed and then stay closed. Some even have pneumatic or motorized closers that close them for you, and thus a name that has nothing to do with baseball. Refrigerator doors have those magnetic strips that run the complete inner rim of the door with the expressed purpose of making certain the door, when not opened, is indeed closed. An entire industry has been created around the process of opening and closing garage doors. The point is that most all doors in most all buildings are mostly always open or always closed unless you take steps to leave them partially opened (or, for the half empty types, partially closed).

Car doors are a different breed. Yes car doors have a latching mechanism that ensures the door remains in the closed position until you take steps to open it (a perfectly reasonable expectation of a car door when travelling down the highway at 15 miles over the posted speed limit), but only the car door has taken pains to provide the user with a position not open yet not quite closed (and a quite unreasonable position on that same highway). So often are these doors in this position that car manufacturers have taken steps to alert the driver that a door is not completely closed by means of a warning light on the dash panel. Would it not be a more reasonable resolution to take steps to make a door that closes completely? Perhaps the car makers should get together with the refrigerator makers.

Now, speaking of lights, I have this pole lamp in the corner of my living that has graced the corner of this living room, the previous living room, a family room, and a room that once had aspirations of being a den but became a nursery instead. As you can see, it’s a versatile and, at least in my opinion, an attractive light. I bought it about 15 years ago. I almost didn’t buy it. It was pricey for the time and for its type and that, I was told, was due to the light’s lamp. Lamp’s light? It has (had) a most usual bulb that looks like a miniature fluorescent tube that had the added bonus of a built in dimming mechanism. I questioned this arrangement, not to mention the price, before making the purchase. I was assured that the dimmer worked as well in the home as in the showroom, that indeed it was expensive and when it comes time to replace the bulb it too will be expensive, but that its bulb would last at least 10 years if not longer.

Well indeed it was expensive but it worked as advertised and its bulb lasted more than the claimed 10 years. I use the past tense here because after those ten and half again more years the bulb has given its all. I never found out if the replacement bulb is expensive because when I went to buy said replacement bulb I was told that “they haven’t made those for at least ten years now, but, who knows, maybe you can find something on the Internet.”

So to home I went, in my car with the now fully closed doors, fired up the old desktop computer and thought I’d check my email before beginning my what would probably be fruitless search for a miniature, dimmable, fluorescent light bulb. A message from my doctor’s hospital organization was there telling me I had a message on their server. (If they can send me a message that says I have a message why can’t they just send me the message? That may be Thursday’s post.) So I signed on to their server with my user name and super secret password and was immediately presented with a pop up window asking me if I want my browser to remember my super secret password. I suppose so I was not confused by this question I was presented with multiple choice answers. — Yes — Not Now — Never —  And as I do every time I am asked that same question entering that same site I select “Never.”

And then I wonder…we can’t even make doors that close all the way and I expect a computer to understand the concept of never.

 

Dogs can’t read MRI’s…

Michael 7 Comments

..but catscan!

Ok, that has nothing to do with today’s post but I couldn’t come up with a post where it would have relevance and I really wanted to use it.

But then again maybe it does go with today’s post because today’s post really doesn’t go with anything else. It’s a sort of “things I think I think” bunch of things that I think I thought this week.

  • I was at a book store, a real book store with real books and all, and there was a display of cookbooks. I always like cookbooks so I went over and the first one I picked up was a paleo cookbook and the first thing I thought was the same thing I thought every time I see a paleo cookbook. How do they know?
  • I saw a post come across my Facebook time line (and I wondered who came up with that name, but I always think that) that said dogs and cats can see apparitions. And I thought things not unlike when I think of paleo cookbooks. How do they know?
  • Why do cable companies advertise specials for “new subscribers only” on exclusive subscriber only channels?
  • Why are chilies hot but hotties are far from cold? (Originally I was going to use “Why are chilies hot?” as today’s title.) (In case you were wondering.)
  • How can 17 bad guys empty all of their machine guns and the hero doesn’t even get wounded while he hides behind a telephone pole yet he manages to never miss a shot with his little pistol? And how do they even write that up in the screenplay direction notes? “Bad guys shoot poorly?”
  • Can it still be called “breaking news” if it happened yesterday?
  • What’s the other half of a semiprecious stone?
  • Why is the opposite of “pro” con, anti, and amateur?

Will this never end?

 

 

 

Fire Sale

Michael 24 Comments

If your house was on fire and you could carry one thing out of it with you, what would it be? A question like that has been asked for ages. In philosophy classes, on psych papers, over drinks at happy hour, in bible groups, at marriage counseling. It should be getting easier to answer. Or maybe not.

When asked the question, in public the answers all sound very altruistic. My baby. My pet. The picture of my long dead parents, long suffering spouse, long loved child. In private we’d probably say, grab the tablet, CD, or memory stick with all our family financial info and maybe the one with pictures too if possible, or the purse or wallet with driver’s license and the credit cards because who wants that replacement hassle right after the house burns down. No! Get the phone!

I really was thinking about this recently. If I could save just one thing, what one thing would I want above all that I may risk my life to get?

My grandparents might have had a really hard time answering. Both trunks of my family tree started their branches in this country during World War I. Although not yet the depression Era as far as the United States was concerned, the European bank scare of 1914 had a dramatic effect on the Italian economy and its people. When they emigrated they took their distrust for banks with them. If it was of value, it was in the house. A fire would be devastating to the future of the family unless all of the children, 12 on my mother’s side, were old enough, big enough, and strong enough to each bring at least one item with no room for sentiment.

By the time my parents were contributing boomed babies to the landscape, the American economy was on an upswing and even middle class families had nest eggs that could be proudly secured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Up to $10,000 per depositor at the time. Like now though, nobody but the very rich had $10,000 nest eggs. But they still didn’t trust everything to the banks. Safety deposit boxes were for rich people. Personal treasures and savings bonds purchased almost painlessly through the Payroll Savings Plan were secreted in a strong box, itself cached away at the back of a linen drawer, the bottom of a cedar chest or top shelf of a closet, or among the pantry items in the newfangled built-in kitchen cabinets. In case of evacuation, a responsible adult, probably the dad, was in charge of collecting the canned collectibles, while another adult of authority went after more sentimental treasures.

My generation was the tween of generations. Everything from the first half of my life is on paper, the last 2 or 3 decades could and does fit easily on a flash drive. I have a strong box but other than my passport almost nothing in there is irreplaceable. Almost nothing else in there is probably worth trying to replace. If I was running from a fire I have to pleasure of knowing that I could grab all the sentimental items like the picture album filled with a record of the daughter’s formative years and perhaps a cherished bobble head.

But wait! I should go get that passport. I doubt I’ll be doing much travelling in the future but just in case I win one of those crazy on line raffles for an all-expense paid trip to Iceland, I’d hate to have to decline because I’m waiting on replacement documents proving who I am and what I look like. So that settles it, pictures, passport, and a cherished bobble head.

My essentials

My essentials

Oh no. But wait again (he says somberly). Forget the albums. Forget the bobble head. Forget the passport. (I’m going to have to find a more readily reachable place for that.) I forgot even more essential, if not sentimental items that I have to have. I have them with me all the time so I sometimes don’t consider that I actually have to carry them for them to be with me all the time. One is my cane. I can walk without it. For about 20 or 30 yards. About 50 to 100 feet depending on the day. That might get me as far as across the street from the theoretical blaze, but unless I’m planning on camping there forever, or unless I want to live the rest of my life 100 feet at a time, I better grab the cane.

That still leaves one hand free. Why not snag that cherished bobble head? Well…this a little personal. So much so that I don’t even tell people what’s in the bag I always have if someone who even suspects that it’s anything other than just a small day bag should ask. It’s a small bag but it’s huge in what it means to me.

You might recall from two posts ago that I am pretty much running on spare parts and that some of those parts actually are performing functions they were not originally designed to. And they require some help. That ever present bag carries the external pieces my spare-parted body needs to perform some otherwise routine internal functions. Yeah, that’s more than a little cryptic, but let’s say I can’t go but about 6 hours without it.

So. Two hands. Two things I sort of need more than pictures, bobble heads, or even passport. It looks like for me, like it was a couple of generations ago, there’s no room for sentiment.

Now I’m curious. What would you carry out?

 

Walls O’ Wisdom

Michael 4 Comments

Friends of ours have a plaque hanging above the entrance to their house’s center hallway.  One has to pass it on the way to almost any room in the house.  Every seat in their favorite gathering spot has a clear view of it.  It holds the wisdom of centuries, the hope of generations, and the fear of all who read it.  “What if the hokey pokey is what it’s all about?”

Years ago we took philosophy classes in college to ask the unanswerable, to earn motives, to seek fulfillment, to learn the wisdom of the ages.  Today we just need a good craft show and a vendor with access to the Internet.  All the hard work has been done.  The answers are there.  Along with some questions that we never even thought to ask.

And so we thought of it one day last week.  It came while He of We was standing at the kitchen sink at She of We’s.  There sits a piece of ceramic tile.  Painted on it the thought we all have many times a day but won’t, or can’t verbalize.  “I can only compensate so much for your stupidity.”  Admit it.  You too have wanted to tell your boss just that very thing.  You can’t, or won’t.  You head home knowing something isn’t right.  You can feel it but you aren’t sure what it is that is making you “not right.”  If you were She of We when you get home, you’d know as soon as you stood before your sink what it is that you are feeling.  That one little phrase puts you back on top and sets all right for the rest of the evening.

What are some of the other great wisdoms our walls share with us?  A quick scan at our offices, dens, kitchens, hallways, foyers, even bathrooms provides us with so much enlightenment that we will forever be at inner peace. 

                Half of the people in the world have below average intelligence.

                Behind every great man is an enormous amount of caffeine.

                Don’t believe everything I think.

                If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.

                Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.

And so it goes.  Maybe they aren’t the world’s greatest pearls of wisdom but they make us smile.  Sometimes they even make us think.  Now wasn’t that the goal of freshman philosophy.  Not to answer questions, or define our motives, or to become fulfilled.  It was to make us think.  Maybe after all the years that have gone by we still need that reminder that not only don’t we have all the answers, we still aren’t sure what the questions are.  Maybe it’s time to slow down and think.  To recognize that success doesn’t equal fulfillment.

We like our walls of wisdom.  So yes, we still need to be reminded that we shouldn’t work so hard at making a living that we forget to make a life.  But we also need to be reminded that nobody gets in to see the wizard, and that somewhere, the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about.

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