First take a look at this parking lot. Actually, it is half a parking lot, because this photo is from the center. Notice the lot is empty and so huge the far edge is barely visible. You’ll notice the drive lanes. The speed limit is 10 mph, imagine me riding my bicycle faster than that diagonally across this lot to the gate at the far end, and it is a pedestrian gate, not a car gate. Now imagine what it would take to drive an SUV up and down these lanes fast enough to get ahead of me at the far end and stop exactly where I would have to slam on my brakes. Some lady managed it this morning. An incredible feat of speed and timing. She took off before I could get her picture.
Of all the adapters I’ve accumulated over the years, I could not find a stereo phono to 1/8” mono. It’s a good thing I started looking because I’ve got trunks of this kind of thing. It was just odd that of the dozens, not one was what I needed. You never saw three men going bonkers trying to install Win 98 like today. Each of us had our own methods and they were not compatible. I’ve got a different Thinkpad as the other would not boot. This is the computer to be used for a disk player on stage. If I can get it working in time. We have a situation at the shop these days. That French lady with the raspy voice, not the one who wrecks my computers, but the one that always has to add something to what you say, was in today. She reminded me of my days with the corporation.
All women of a certain age do it and she is smack in the middle of the process. I used to see it all the time in the divorced women at the phone company. They try all the dating services and lord knows what, then one day they take the plunge. She showed up with crimped hair, miniskirt, pumps, contact lenses and a different voice. As the guys said, “Looking for a discount”. The problem is, I’m the only single man in town and it looks like the same lady to me.
This laptop turned out as obsolete as possible. I’m old enough to recall that computers were supposed to be flexible, so they would never go out of date. Yes, that was the promise. This laptop would not recognize the CD player. When it did, the media player would not play the disk. When a real media player was installed, the computer would not recognize MP3s. The laptop is still on the bench, but there is a lesson on how far America has strayed from the day where standardization bought us the world.
Of course, the users are no better. Computers were supposed to free us from drudgery and standardize the system as well. The same information would be at everyone’s fingertips. Did we, as Americans begin to use the computers for all these advantages? Or did we start using it for cyber-dating, used cars and stealing information. I know for a fact that some of the people I showed how to use computers instantly sat down and started posting evil messages to strangers. We wonder why the world hates us.
The neighbor has his daughter back in tow. Last year she was twenty; now she is twenty-one. Does it ever show. She is become that liability they have to do something about, soon. She’s getting heavier and harsher looking by the moment. She reminds me of Debbie, this brainless teenage brunette who shacked up with Dave Foster, the 48 year old manager of a dance studio I once worked at. Same hair, same body, same face. Don’t get me wrong, she can run into me in a parking lot any time. I’m just saying she is visibly older than she was last year.
Oh, and if skydiving and bungee jumping isn’t enough to prove you are desperate for the attention you aren’t getting at home, you can now take trapeze lessons downtown.
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