Phone Tag

Hello World, Happy October! Although it's only fair to point out, as we have all long since realized, that in any month that starts on a Sunday, it won't be long before we're staring down both barrels of Friday the 13th, which we certainly will be doing at the end of the week, alas. But it is the last one for the year, and in fact, there isn't one in January of next year either, so that at least gives us a bit of breathing room from all of that superstitious gloom and doom, as it were. Speaking of gloom and doom, it only took two weeks for the Jets to turn things around in the AFC East, and with two straight wins, they managed to bring themselves up to a respectable .500 record, when more than a few sports pundits (not to mention, their long-suffering fans) morosely predicted them going 0-17 for the season. On the other hand, things could not have gone worse for the poor ill-fated Giants, who inexplicably managed to start 0-4 right out of the gate, and not much chance of salvaging any kind of impressive numbers after that, I dare say. It's true that football seems like a long season, when they don't play the Super Bowl now until February, but there's a very small number of games overall (compared to baseball, basketball or hockey) so each individual game is that much more crucial to the standings. On the other hand, if they played more than one game a week, most of the players wouldn't even last a whole season, so everything is a trade-off, I guess. But with 4/17ths of the season gone already, it must be said that Big Blue has its work cut out for it, and the numbers don't lie. Speaking of numbers, on the baseball side of things, the scrappy Yankees managed to squeak into the playoffs by winning the Wild Card game, with sheer dogged persistence, and on the shoulders of their slugging sensation Aaron Judge, who broke the rookie record for home runs in a season. There's a lot more baseball yet between now and the World Series, but at least they're not already sitting out the off-season (like the hapless Mets) and giving the hometown faithful reason to hope. And speaking of things to look forward to, Halloween will be coming up at the end of the month, and apparently it's not too late to teach an old dog (metaphorically speaking) new tricks (or treats) when it comes to everything spooky. According to a newspaper circular that we received from Michaels (the arts-&-crafts retailer) there is such a thing as The Pumpkin Project (and I have no doubt that you can go visit their web site and see for yourself) where they encourage people to set out a turquoise-colored pumpkin by their door, "to let trick-or-treaters know you have allergy-friendly, non-food treats." Who knew! I was previously unaware of color-coded messages masquerading as decorative pumpkins, so this decidedly came as news to me, I can tell you that. Also on the local scene, I was coming home from work last week and found myself behind a tow truck with a license plate that said: GOTCHA. I don't know why that seemed so funny to me. For some reason, that reminds me of a documentary that I was watching recently on one of the science channels, about archeologists trying to re-construct one of the colossal temples at Karnak in Egypt, which had been an area for pet projects by a long line of pharaohs for thousands of years, and basically, one right on top of another. Some parts of the various temples had collapsed over the course of time due to the inexorable effects of gravity, while others had been plundered by later rulers and used to build their own elaborate edifices instead. Trying to re-assemble everything correctly was proving to be a dauntless task for the intrepid team of experts, and not undertaken lightly, with plenty of the latest technology to help things along. I said to Bill later, I don't know how they used to describe the intricacies of this endeavor before someone invented jigsaw puzzles, because that's always what they say about these types of restoration projects: "It's like a giant jigsaw puzzle." Like trying to describe hail before there were golf balls, I just can't imagine what words they could have used to get their point across. Or as comedian Steven Wright once famously observed, "What was the best thing BEFORE sliced bread?" And while we're on the topic of things that are new and (supposedly) improved, it was several months ago when I finally had to accept the reality that my old iPhone 4 was becoming less of a help than a hindrance in many ways. The operating system couldn't be updated any more, and the way it was, there were too many apps that wouldn't run on it - and here, I'm talking about things I really needed to work, and not just a bunch of silly games. Bill was feeling the pinch from his old phone as well, so off we toddled to the Apple store in White Plains to see what was new and exciting in the wide world of smart phones that we could upgrade to, and join modern society once again. Bill is easy to please with the latest gadgets and all their various bells and whistles, but I preferred to stick with the iPhone 6S, because I find the newer phones are just too big to fit comfortably in my hand, thanks not. This phone is slightly larger than my old phone, but still small enough for me to handle easily. Of course, like anything else, new phones can be a mixed blessing, and these no different, especially the transition period from one to the other, heaven knows. It helped that we both kept our old phones as well, so there was no question of losing any data along the way, and that was a very reassuring thought. The new phone prominently features the HEY SIRI function, unlike my previous phone, although I have never felt any particular need for it before, so that was no detriment. But a few weeks ago, I had one very long and rambling handwritten document that needed to be digitized, and I decided to try reading it aloud as an email that I could send to my computer at home, and save the step of retyping it all from scratch, so to speak. From a technology standpoint, this did not turn out as successful as might have been hoped, despite much lengthy and earnest effort on my part, I can tell you that. As I read it out loud to SIRI (who, for her part, did seem to be trying her best) the whole thing ended up as something like a dozen separate messages, some of which only contained 6 words before the disembodied apparatus called it quits, and sent it out like that, just as it was, and once again, thanks ever so much not. When all was said and done (literally) it would have been 10 times faster for me to just have retyped the darned thing in the first place, but on the other hand, this is what they call progress, after all, and I ought to know. Of course, if this was our somewhat impatient friend HEY SIRI, she would have long since cut this off right in mid-sentence and