One year ago today: December 24, 2019, everybody hates DMCA.
Five years ago today: December 24, 2015, like a railway tie.
Nine years ago today: December 24, 2011, mystery home town.
Random years ago today: December 24, 2002, Xmas in the Gables.
The van is the top end model, with all the DVD screens and the 110V outlets in the back. I test drove it late and could not figure out what half the buttons were for. I glanced at the on-line manual, it was some 541 pages of rather unclear photos, cluttered diagrams, and barely marginal grammar. What we’ve become to call the MicroSoft standard. Here’s a picture of a similar situation. Remember the “World War Eleven” syndrome These are the, shall we say, “recently educated” mob. Where it is sufficient to communicate without any depth.
The van is in our driveway, I won’t be able to get the paperwork started until Monday. I watched a few on-line reviews, but they focus one the obvious. None showed where the rear view camera lens was, which needs cleaning. That funny contraption on the rear doors turns out to be a bottle-opener. No explanation of the buttons on the sun visor. And terrible instructions for the A/C. I see the same thing with smart phones. The user finds the two or three features they use and the other 200, well, those are a challenge—but they consider themselves qualitied as experts.
The small dog has developed a rough cough. No, no COVID, the wee lad was born with a trachea condition. It’s just not been this bad before. If it persists tomorrow, it’s vet time. That’s part of the fun with pets, wait until Xmas day to get sick. Can anyone married with children confirm any similarities here? That means we spent the day indoors except for a couple of walkies.
You gotta love the laughs when a formerly reputable company goes full millennial. BMW will not use license-plate readers to broadcast embarassing messages to drivers with expired warrantees. This includes roadside billboards which they claim has no personal information. For now. Remember when the Internet was anonymous? It is amazing to hear of these so-called changes that are really juvenile ideas from the 1980s that got rejected because they were just too sick to stomach. Is it even BMW’s business whether you have warranty coverage or not? As usual, this is just another step in the softening up process, but you can’t expect anyone who graduated this century to grasp it.
My word, is that sunken-eyed skank really Miley Cyrus? Now she looks like the circus lady with the pancake makeup. A millennial star in the mould of you classic Madonna/Cher sleazehood. Oblivious to the examples they set, but there will always be some top-knot pointing out they made money, which is pure Americana. The bun hides their pinheads.
Costa Rica bar girls.
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This is where I discovered why I cannot but a bottle of port wine in Tennessee. Port is fortified, which means the producer distilled alcohol from another source, then adds it to the port mixture. At around 20%, this halts the fermentation, and leaves any residual sugar in the mix. The alchohol content is above the level allowed to be sold except in government approved liquor stores. I’ve only been in liquor stores a few times in my life, which could now change. I don’t get my usual wine hangover from port, possibly because one glass is plenty.
It’s no big deal, but on my own, I liked to go out alone on Xmas Eve, given the opportunity. I worked every Xmas Eve from 1982 to 1994. In its own way, it’s a wonder how quickly the Reb & adapted in the sense neither of us lead routine lives. By some measures, that’s formula for conflict. I answer back that it depends on the routine. It’s not like I have to put up with anything. Right now the Reb is painting, she has an easel and an awful lot of colors of paint. Last evening she was singing and playing the keys. Ha, I can just hear some guys saying if that was the type of routine they had, they’d feel the same. Yep, but I spent 30 years trying to find it in somebody else, so don’t presume it’s there for the asking.
ADDENDUM
This last item could be insightful. I have my winter boots, kept in the closet. I dug them out to walk the dog. I put one on, and there was a grain in the toe and heel, I got the other on and same thing, What? There are no pebbles in the closet. I emptied my boots to discover five of those push-pin tacks. Turns out the skinny cat, Lillie, had knocked over a tin of these a few months back. The Reb figured this was hilarious. You see, I’d walked a bit thinking it was not that bad. Why are you laughing?
This one has already become a stock wit around here. As in, like when accidentally turned out the porch light, making it impossible to find the keyhole in the dark. Hey, at least I don’t put tacks in your boots and tell you to walk the dog. Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha.
And I’ll tell you who else needs a kick in the head. The bastard that designed Blluetooth to cut off your computer sound card. Where do these shitheads come from? You enable Bluetooth and your standard audio jack becomes “no device found”. I think it is a combination, they are born AOLs and use pubic schooling to bring it to a fever pitch. They’d just defend themselves saying you don’t know the technology. Like you don’t know what a mechanical switch is when you plug in your headphones.
I contend there is a secret tech college hidden in New York state. It’s behind a row of portable stadium toilets. This school takes the worst of the brightest and gives them special courses. Have you ever noticed, most products these days fail in the most disaventagious possible way. With not another thing apparently wrong, the fridge stops freezing, the mower stops mowing, and the camera stops taking pictures. Of the myriad things that could go wrong, the only one that one that does always involves the device’s primary function. This is not happenstance. The school is tax-dollar supported, what else?
It will only get worse with the IoT. They’ll claim it is the interdependence of efficiently designed parts that causes the fail. I call the BS on that one. In the old days, when a knob broke on your radio, you had no treble. With IoT, when the knob breaks, the Pope’s bike tire goes flat and your grandmother’s cat goes blind. Due to built-in deniablilty, you only think there’s no connection.
