Smoke Signals
Hello World,
Happy March! It's hard to believe that two months of 2007 are already in the books, and here we are, embarking on a new month and no end in sight. The weather around here has moderated to the point that it is no longer the extreme record-breaking frigid temperatures of sensational news stories everywhere, and with some drenching rains yesterday, a lot of the left-over snow has melted, even out of where it had been piled up in the shady areas. After the recent deep freeze, this was a welcome change. In fact, I think it was Wednesday when the AOL Welcome screen said it was 47 degrees, and because I had the window open in my office, I was the first to notice the unmistakable sounds of the ice cream truck making its rounds in the neighborhood around the hospital. Mind you, this was still February, and not even 50 degrees yet, so many of us might have considered this not only wishful thinking, but woefully premature to boot. I will admit that when it came to the Emergency Room entrance, there was a line of hospital employees buying ice cream, but I wasn't one of them. Some of us still have our standards.
Speaking of standards, I don't mind saying that I've just about had it with computers that can't keep the right time, and I'm just disgusted with them. It's not like keeping accurate time or making high-powered computers can be considered innovative or novel anymore, and you would think that getting a computer to keep the right time would be no more challenging than, say, re-arranging all of the icons on my desktop, which it seems to do with annoying regularity. But no, this very routine and seemingly mundane task is beyond the capabilities of the greatest computing wizards of our age, and at work, I'm left with a Dell that consistently gains time every day in a relentless race against the clock. So then I would have to wonder, if the stupid computer itself can't figure out how to keep the right time, why can't it check in regularly with some reputable source that has the right time, and reset itself to mend its errant ways? Apparently in Windows XP, you can do just that, using the Internet Time tab in the Date and Time folder of Control Panel. Unfortunately, my computer at work is running Windows 2000NT, and it requires a whole different set of instructions to keep it in step with the rest of the world. Bill was kind enough to send me the directions, but try as I might, the time continued to be wrong. He said the time was probably wrong on the hospital server, and displayed that same incorrect time on all of the facility's computers linked to the network. That sounded logical, in fact, a little TOO logical for the way things go at work, so I decided to check it out. I have a Nextel phone that verifies the time with its satellite, so it always has the right time. Yesterday, when it said the time in the real world was 4:14, my computer said 4:25, the clerk's insisted it was 4:04, the buyers showed up as 4:38 and 4:47, while the PC in the spare office was at 4:27, and the display on the desk phones all said 4:20, courtesy of the switchboard, which is supposed to be manually set to the same time as the Nextel satellite information. Honestly, people in the Middle Ages had more accurate time-keeping, thanks to the church bells of the local cathedral, than we have now with rooms full of electronic gadgets at our disposal.
In other electronic news, I honestly don't know what has happened to technology these days, and if anyone thinks this is progress, I'll eat my proverbial primordial hat. Apparently, we've finally gotten out of the Age of Steam at church, where it was decided that a new copier would be just the thing to move us away from the tired and old-fashioned days of yesteryear, and thrust us into the forward-thinking vanguard of modern times. Of course, we couldn't have just any copier, oh no, no, no, not by any means. We're the proud new owners of a fancy new Xerox PE220, which is a multi-function device that handily serves as a copier, printer and scanner all in one. What could be better than that, you may be wondering, and when it comes to the miracles of modern technology, you may indeed wonder. Now, I admit that along with the dinosaurs, I have a well-deserved reputation as a Luddite, but although I may not whole-heartedly embrace the new technology, I still make use of it at home and at work, if grudgingly. So I didn't quail before this small plastic alien when I found it in the church office, and was in fact, perfectly willing to make peace with it, or at the very least, make copies. I happened to be at church by myself during the week, and needing to make a copy of a bill that I was paying, and I approached the new copier with no trepidation. I placed the bill on the document glass, and then felt along the sides of the equipment for the power switch, which is where it is usually found on these types of machines. When I didn't find it there, I was surprised but not alarmed, and poked around further, on the front and back, and various other places. When all was said and done, it literally took me ten minutes of crawling all over this thing to finally find the power switch, just so I could turn it on and make a copy, and after that, I further discovered that you first have to select the right mode before it even understands that you want to make a copy. Honestly, it would have taken me less time to walk the invoice all the way back to my office up the block and copy it there and walk all the way back to church, than to waste my time dancing around with this darned Xerox and its inscrutable methodology. Seriously, if it wasn't Lent, that thing would have been hearing some language that would have made its paper curl.
At the end of last year, we had taken in a neighborhood stray that had been hanging around in our yard for the better part of two years. This was no brutish and moth-eaten tomcat from the School of Hard Knocks, but rather, a small and silky solid black kitty with neat habits and even temper, and we called it Smokey Joe for no particular reason. MoJo has had the run of the attic for a while now, and pretty friendly for a stray, so we figured that the time had come to go to the animal hospital for a check-up and all, so the new addition could be introduced to the rest of the family downstairs. One thing I wanted to get done, as long as we were there, was to get a collar put on MoJo (who turned out to be a little girl) because it would be the only way we'd ever be able to differentiate her from her identical cousin, His High Holy Invisibleness, Captain Midnight. However, MoJo managed to frighten the vet in her inaugural visit, and he refused to get near her with a collar, so she came home as pitch dark and naked as she went. The plan was to let her out into the library and keep her closed in there, until we could very carefully open the doors little by little and let everyone become more familiarized. In fact, in preparation for this eventuality, we had whisked everyone out of the room the day before, and closed the doors to keep it pristine and empty for our new little princess to have the place to herself. I said to Bill that someday I'm going to look back on this and laugh, although at the time it was anything but funny, when I tramped back from the animal hospital and opened the door to the library to put MoJo in there, only to find the elusively invisible Captain Midnight, of all things, already in there on the plate rail! He took one look at me and dived under the furniture, so I had to chase around after him for 15 minutes, just to get him out of the room and close the door behind him. After that, I opened the cat carrier and went back to work, and we didn't set eyes on MoJo for two days. And all I could do was shake my head over the weird coincidence that practically had us closing up the library with both of our solid black cats inside, and neither of them with a collar on to tell them apart. Not to mention, the implications of Captain Midnight letting himself into a closed room, and closing himself in there, would be frankly too frightful to contemplate.
Two years ago, my cousin's daughter had her bat mitzvah, and the entire family braved the uncharted wilderness of upstate New York, including Mom, for the occasion. This time around, it was her younger brother having his bar mitzvah, and once again the family responded by packing up its belongings and heading north for the festivities. Because there had recently been snow, it rendered the venue not as accessible as it needed to be for the mobility-challenged among our party, and even the young and able-bodied found the footing uncertain, particularly in fancy dress shoes. But for those of us determined to be there, or know the reason why, it was considered to be worth the trip and the treacherous conditions underfoot. My favorite part was at the conclusion of the service, when the teacher praised his student for learning the lessons so well and quickly, and added that he wouldn't be surprised if the young man decided to became a rabbi. Here is where I'm thinking that the idea of a Rabbi Tango would certainly open up some eyes, even in the most lackadaisical Jewish communities, where religious traditions have spanned the centuries, probably without a single Tango in sight. Of course, everyone knows it takes two to Tango.
There was a reception later at a nearby hotel, and because members of our clan were staying overnight there, the mobility issues were handily dispatched, and everyone was able to attend and party till the cows came home. As usual, Mom was the belle of the ball in her sparkling finery, and graciously accepting the adulation of her adoring public, who flocked to her side and basked in her reflected glory. While I can understand that everyone wanted to have their picture taken with the center of attention, I thought the autograph-seekers were just too much. In any case, the party was a huge success, and every bit as raucous and irrepressible as young people like them nowadays, and while I think that the snow might have kept the cows from coming home, I did notice the hotel staff vacuuming the carpet and piling chairs on top of the tables while the youngsters were still dancing. It was one heck of a shindig, and I'll bet the cows were sorry they missed it. Most likely, their computers are running Windows 2000NT, and they simply have no idea what time it is.
Happy March! It's hard to believe that two months of 2007 are already in the books, and here we are, embarking on a new month and no end in sight. The weather around here has moderated to the point that it is no longer the extreme record-breaking frigid temperatures of sensational news stories everywhere, and with some drenching rains yesterday, a lot of the left-over snow has melted, even out of where it had been piled up in the shady areas. After the recent deep freeze, this was a welcome change. In fact, I think it was Wednesday when the AOL Welcome screen said it was 47 degrees, and because I had the window open in my office, I was the first to notice the unmistakable sounds of the ice cream truck making its rounds in the neighborhood around the hospital. Mind you, this was still February, and not even 50 degrees yet, so many of us might have considered this not only wishful thinking, but woefully premature to boot. I will admit that when it came to the Emergency Room entrance, there was a line of hospital employees buying ice cream, but I wasn't one of them. Some of us still have our standards.
Speaking of standards, I don't mind saying that I've just about had it with computers that can't keep the right time, and I'm just disgusted with them. It's not like keeping accurate time or making high-powered computers can be considered innovative or novel anymore, and you would think that getting a computer to keep the right time would be no more challenging than, say, re-arranging all of the icons on my desktop, which it seems to do with annoying regularity. But no, this very routine and seemingly mundane task is beyond the capabilities of the greatest computing wizards of our age, and at work, I'm left with a Dell that consistently gains time every day in a relentless race against the clock. So then I would have to wonder, if the stupid computer itself can't figure out how to keep the right time, why can't it check in regularly with some reputable source that has the right time, and reset itself to mend its errant ways? Apparently in Windows XP, you can do just that, using the Internet Time tab in the Date and Time folder of Control Panel. Unfortunately, my computer at work is running Windows 2000NT, and it requires a whole different set of instructions to keep it in step with the rest of the world. Bill was kind enough to send me the directions, but try as I might, the time continued to be wrong. He said the time was probably wrong on the hospital server, and displayed that same incorrect time on all of the facility's computers linked to the network. That sounded logical, in fact, a little TOO logical for the way things go at work, so I decided to check it out. I have a Nextel phone that verifies the time with its satellite, so it always has the right time. Yesterday, when it said the time in the real world was 4:14, my computer said 4:25, the clerk's insisted it was 4:04, the buyers showed up as 4:38 and 4:47, while the PC in the spare office was at 4:27, and the display on the desk phones all said 4:20, courtesy of the switchboard, which is supposed to be manually set to the same time as the Nextel satellite information. Honestly, people in the Middle Ages had more accurate time-keeping, thanks to the church bells of the local cathedral, than we have now with rooms full of electronic gadgets at our disposal.
In other electronic news, I honestly don't know what has happened to technology these days, and if anyone thinks this is progress, I'll eat my proverbial primordial hat. Apparently, we've finally gotten out of the Age of Steam at church, where it was decided that a new copier would be just the thing to move us away from the tired and old-fashioned days of yesteryear, and thrust us into the forward-thinking vanguard of modern times. Of course, we couldn't have just any copier, oh no, no, no, not by any means. We're the proud new owners of a fancy new Xerox PE220, which is a multi-function device that handily serves as a copier, printer and scanner all in one. What could be better than that, you may be wondering, and when it comes to the miracles of modern technology, you may indeed wonder. Now, I admit that along with the dinosaurs, I have a well-deserved reputation as a Luddite, but although I may not whole-heartedly embrace the new technology, I still make use of it at home and at work, if grudgingly. So I didn't quail before this small plastic alien when I found it in the church office, and was in fact, perfectly willing to make peace with it, or at the very least, make copies. I happened to be at church by myself during the week, and needing to make a copy of a bill that I was paying, and I approached the new copier with no trepidation. I placed the bill on the document glass, and then felt along the sides of the equipment for the power switch, which is where it is usually found on these types of machines. When I didn't find it there, I was surprised but not alarmed, and poked around further, on the front and back, and various other places. When all was said and done, it literally took me ten minutes of crawling all over this thing to finally find the power switch, just so I could turn it on and make a copy, and after that, I further discovered that you first have to select the right mode before it even understands that you want to make a copy. Honestly, it would have taken me less time to walk the invoice all the way back to my office up the block and copy it there and walk all the way back to church, than to waste my time dancing around with this darned Xerox and its inscrutable methodology. Seriously, if it wasn't Lent, that thing would have been hearing some language that would have made its paper curl.
At the end of last year, we had taken in a neighborhood stray that had been hanging around in our yard for the better part of two years. This was no brutish and moth-eaten tomcat from the School of Hard Knocks, but rather, a small and silky solid black kitty with neat habits and even temper, and we called it Smokey Joe for no particular reason. MoJo has had the run of the attic for a while now, and pretty friendly for a stray, so we figured that the time had come to go to the animal hospital for a check-up and all, so the new addition could be introduced to the rest of the family downstairs. One thing I wanted to get done, as long as we were there, was to get a collar put on MoJo (who turned out to be a little girl) because it would be the only way we'd ever be able to differentiate her from her identical cousin, His High Holy Invisibleness, Captain Midnight. However, MoJo managed to frighten the vet in her inaugural visit, and he refused to get near her with a collar, so she came home as pitch dark and naked as she went. The plan was to let her out into the library and keep her closed in there, until we could very carefully open the doors little by little and let everyone become more familiarized. In fact, in preparation for this eventuality, we had whisked everyone out of the room the day before, and closed the doors to keep it pristine and empty for our new little princess to have the place to herself. I said to Bill that someday I'm going to look back on this and laugh, although at the time it was anything but funny, when I tramped back from the animal hospital and opened the door to the library to put MoJo in there, only to find the elusively invisible Captain Midnight, of all things, already in there on the plate rail! He took one look at me and dived under the furniture, so I had to chase around after him for 15 minutes, just to get him out of the room and close the door behind him. After that, I opened the cat carrier and went back to work, and we didn't set eyes on MoJo for two days. And all I could do was shake my head over the weird coincidence that practically had us closing up the library with both of our solid black cats inside, and neither of them with a collar on to tell them apart. Not to mention, the implications of Captain Midnight letting himself into a closed room, and closing himself in there, would be frankly too frightful to contemplate.
Two years ago, my cousin's daughter had her bat mitzvah, and the entire family braved the uncharted wilderness of upstate New York, including Mom, for the occasion. This time around, it was her younger brother having his bar mitzvah, and once again the family responded by packing up its belongings and heading north for the festivities. Because there had recently been snow, it rendered the venue not as accessible as it needed to be for the mobility-challenged among our party, and even the young and able-bodied found the footing uncertain, particularly in fancy dress shoes. But for those of us determined to be there, or know the reason why, it was considered to be worth the trip and the treacherous conditions underfoot. My favorite part was at the conclusion of the service, when the teacher praised his student for learning the lessons so well and quickly, and added that he wouldn't be surprised if the young man decided to became a rabbi. Here is where I'm thinking that the idea of a Rabbi Tango would certainly open up some eyes, even in the most lackadaisical Jewish communities, where religious traditions have spanned the centuries, probably without a single Tango in sight. Of course, everyone knows it takes two to Tango.
There was a reception later at a nearby hotel, and because members of our clan were staying overnight there, the mobility issues were handily dispatched, and everyone was able to attend and party till the cows came home. As usual, Mom was the belle of the ball in her sparkling finery, and graciously accepting the adulation of her adoring public, who flocked to her side and basked in her reflected glory. While I can understand that everyone wanted to have their picture taken with the center of attention, I thought the autograph-seekers were just too much. In any case, the party was a huge success, and every bit as raucous and irrepressible as young people like them nowadays, and while I think that the snow might have kept the cows from coming home, I did notice the hotel staff vacuuming the carpet and piling chairs on top of the tables while the youngsters were still dancing. It was one heck of a shindig, and I'll bet the cows were sorry they missed it. Most likely, their computers are running Windows 2000NT, and they simply have no idea what time it is.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 1:47 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home