nonetheless I will waste your Saturday morning trying to explain just how darn clever I am, for a geezer in training. That geezer-hood is imminent is obvious in many ways, but to drive another nail into the virtual coffin, the other day as I was flailing and failing to accomplish some simple task, offspring #3 was heard to mutter with the sort of patient tolerance for a puppy that just ate the dining room table, “ah, old people and computers,” as he came to my rescue.
To be vaguely serious for just a moment, I remember how odd it was when my mum simply became incapable of using her computer. She was a very smart lady
[That’s mum and dad and me, when Dad was becoming Principal of Victoria College]
and we had computers early on, and it wasn’t long before both mum and dad had each their own, with printers, modems and all that jazz, way back in the days of autoexec.bat, when getting ‘set clock’ right was kind of a triumph, let alone having the computer find your external floppy drive. As a family we emailed like mad – it was like having a phone that didn’t ring, a miracle for a swamped hermit like me. And even when mum first moved into a senior’s residence, her laptop was open on her desk all the time. But then she sort of got spotty on responding, but very defensive if we mentioned she had missed an email. It was years, literally, before I was able to get the computer off the desk, even though she hadn’t touched it.
Her cupboards also disappeared, and hence all her clothes. So why am I reliving this disastrous story? Not to ruin your morning, but to explain why I am just going to show off the marvel of my interconnectness, just before all of the things I am about to mention become obsolete. You can in fact know they are about to become obsolete because I am mentioning them in my own attempt to stave off obsolescence.
So to get to the meat of the story, yesterday when I was in the bank with Mouse, who is a great fan of the bank, Mouse and the teller were too fast for me. As Mouse stood up, I suddenly remembered my plan to get rich and famous through #MouseCam on Instagram and reached for my iPhone. But in my panic I somehow had the phone on video, and luckily [for me, not you] captured this cute bit of the main action. So I thought to myself, I must put this on my web page, because who wouldn’t want to see Mouse getting a treat, globally significant as it is. But who would have thought one would have to wrestle with Google+ [always makes me think it should be Google±, like in hockey, and frankly right now Google+’s ± is looking pretty terrible] and Youtube, just to get a .mov off your stinking phone and viewable on the web. And then suddenly there are profile pictures to choose, and now I seem to have a Youtube channel, and it could have personalized art, and a link to my website, and …
I have come up for air, but it is all very cool, really for a geezer, to have somehow got all these disparate things cohesive, with links that work! I was also able to finally kill off a cyber me that Googledamnminus kept on insisting I be. A sort of cyber-murder-suicide, but I was mercifully quick. Too bad they are not like Sims, and could just die on their own if you failed to feed them.
But without further ado, I bring you Mouse Goes to the Bank, as she goes live on Youtube, having made her debut on Instagram:
I’ll bet you can’t wait for the next instalment … same obsolete batty channel, same obsolete batty time, same obsolete batty ma’am!
Oh the panic – I hit publish instead of preview – but I am done with messing with it now. I know all my anxious readers have been deeply concerned.
My Mom had her last couple of PC’s that seemed to give her no end of fits. Having to do all these virus scans, etc., plus her vision is getting really crappy, plus the very short list of people that she might occasionally swap email with seemed to be dropping off on their own. Those of us kids who were in a position to come and help (“Mom’s got computer trouble again”) got pretty sick of it after a while, and besides, we had long since switched to Mac and while loving it, were simultaneously getting rusty at our Windows tech support skills and also getting resentful that we were still being dragged down into PC Hell even though we ourselves had been bright enough to switch to Mac.
So when the last PC died we knew it was time for Mom to make the switch to Mac. Or not. She would need a giant screen to see anything by this time. That was fine. It wasn’t about the money. But it would entail teaching Mom a whole new schtick about how to use her Mac. No one was looking forward to that (hit that little red dot to close a window, mom. What dot, I can’t see any dot…). Plus, why does she really need a computer anymore anyway? She doesn’t email anymore. She had sold her rental property so she didn’t have complicated accounting to do anymore, or any business related letters to type. Reading online was getting tough due to the vision problems. She had a mountain of genealogical data in the computer that seemed like it might not be switchable to Mac, so that was a problem (my sister has long since moved it and made it better than ever on the web, so problem solved on that front).
So we sort of talked about it for a while, like we really need to get down the apple store one of these days, but just never got around to it. The PC was already dead, so as time dragged on with no computer at all, everybody realized that it was fine. No more computer for Mom. The end of an era, I suppose.
As for posting video to youtube, of course the kids can do it in a blink. My wife, to her credit, took the plunge and figured it out (with some help from the kids). She does it both for personal (anybody want to watch hours of poor quality video of our kids band performances? Hey there’s John, that blurry face in the back row…), and also for work purposes (here’s our new onion ring line, yippeee). But every time she posts one, it seems a bit of the learning curve needs to be repeated, so it’s a labor.
As for me, well I’ve decided that this is one thing that it is just not necessary for me to learn. And so it begins….
Cleaning out her computer desk was fun.
Mom: Here, maybe you can use all this printer paper I have.
Me: Mom, that’s got the perforations along the side. Nobody has had a printer like that in 20 years.
Mom: OK, how about these floppy disks? Brand new, still in the box.
Me: No Mom… 🙄
Even her laptop, when I finally extracted it, was more useful as a doorstop than computer. Things move fast, and I noticed Mikey reading messages on instagram, not Facebook the other day.
I remember a 94 year-old fellow from mum’s residence that I knew from the cottage, and he was getting out his cell phone to text his grand-daughter and I felt a real pang for what could have been.
I deactivated my facebook account a few days ago. I only set it up (last fall) to keep up with what the kids were doing, and now they hardly use it. So I’m out of there.
Lesson for Libertarians- be careful what you wish for. Ya want less gov and less regs? Read on.
copied from last Tues:
“Listening to this while I research propane cos. There has to be some profit there when I paid $1.39/gal in Aug and it’s $2.52 now and rising. My geothermal heating and cooling system needs assistance when temps drop into the teens and below. Been needin’ lotta damn assistance lately.”
This was after Monday calling around to find supply at the best price. I didn’t need it right away but thought I should get some before the situation got worse as I had heard prices were rising and supply was a problem.
Delivered today. I happened to be outside (not by choice, don’t ask) when the truck came so I took the opportunity to talk to the driver (Ferrell Gas- FGP, NYSE). I asked him how much the price had gone up since Monday when I placed my order and he said “you won’t believe me so I’ll show you the ticket from my last stop before here.”
…………………..Are you ready? SEVEN DOLLARS A GALLON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s right, what I had just paid $504 for, someone else had paid $1400. The stop before that, the people got off easy for only $6.50 since they were already customers and it was a non-emergency fill up.
I asked him about how supply procurement worked to confirm what I thought I already knew. Lp is a refined product and comes via pipeline to large substations where it is transported by tanker truck to local outlets. According to him, the pipeline was empty for a while until price shot up and now the pipeline is gushing supply albeit at these inflated levels. In another “corporate life in America” wrinkle, he further informed me that while his company was a major player other smaller companies had contracted with them for supply. Guess what- they are ignoring those wholesale contracts and postponing delivery to them so they can sell all they can at these staggering retail prices. The little guys’ contract was probably for a dollar or just above so you can see the outrageous profits FGP is reaping. I know that to be a close approximation of wholesale price as I could have contracted for $1.39 pre-season but I don’t use enough to satisfy the minimum contract requirement. Propane is an unregulated industry and the reason why I spent major bucks to convert to geothermal.
We’ll have to see how this plays out as I did buy some FGP Tues and while the overall market has gone down since, I am still at even, but watching closely. I just don’ think it will trip my stop loss at -8%, but so be it if it does.
(why is so be it three words while albeit is only one?)
If I am successful, this will be another case of investing from the news. China having the Olympics? Buy FXI. Gas $4.00 gal? Buy refineries. Carpets ruined in Katrina? Buy Mohawk. Fed printing nonstop? Buy pm’s. OOPS
i once had this perspective on communications technology.
let’s try this. the above picture was actual size.
man am i ever blowing it today. like we used to say, “communications is our business, not our policy.” 😀
sorry Dude for running over your comment. what you are talking about is summed up by the old adage, “charge what the market will bear”. i lean towards your point of view on the matter. in weather like this, some people are having to make some really tough choices.
be careful investing based on fundamentals. that is how i blew up my retirement. 🙁
the dudes who did these songs first…
glad you got your propane. this winter is from hell. yeah, i actually believe hell is a cold place.
Albeit, sobeit! Inflammatory – you can set it on fire. Inedible – you can’t eat it.
What a tale of control of price through control of supply re propane – reminds one of reading of the early days of Standard Oil, that principled company from days of yore. Regulation fails because of regulatory capture, as the body set up to regulate ends up hiring industry experts. Nowadays designed to fail from the start, pretty much, just a chum/chum situation of industry insiders and government middlemen as soon as the political campaign is over or crises that called for the regulation in the first place. An industry regulating itself is just one step simpler than another body pretending to regulate it while scarfing down baby owl appetizers in D.C. Neither seems to work. I think that limited liability is perhaps a huge problem and lies at the moral hazard disaster we see around us today where people in large corporations do not bear the brunt of their decisions.
industries like this were regulated in the first place because of barriers to entry. in this case, it is too expensive, and does not make economic, or environmental sense to build competing pipelines. there is a market clearing price that is fair for most products, but not for monopolies, or even what are called oligopolies (few competitors). they will charge as much “as the market will bear”, whether by monopoly or collusion, unless regulated. if you want to know what happened, and how and why we basically have 6 media companies, two software companies, 4 oil companies, etc. dig into the Reaganomic, supply-side, neo-con, Ayn Rand, trickle down, whatever bullshit name the so called theory has now, talking points a little deeper! i think you will find that we have all been sold down the river, and for chump change at that.
wow! trying out a new coffee this morning and it is kicking my butt!
sorry about that. it’s not just the coffee. we are going to have another 40 degree swing in temperatures in less than a day. even for Wisconsin, this winter blows.
my point to the above is that most of the crushing problems facing the Western economies, the immediate problems that need to be addressed right now, were caused by deregulation, lax anti-trust enforcement, regressive tax policies, etc. once corporate power is untethered, it is very difficult to restrain.
when i say i am non-partisan, i mean it. the right has led ever since Reagan. the left has only weakly protested. the truth is that our entire government is bought, and corporate power has reached down to the local level now. i agree with anyone that says we need to get control of the government, and we need to start at the bottom. i agree that the Federal level of government is totally out of control, and outside of revolution, the people cannot not fight that head on.
thank you for letting me speak my mind here Xty. i think you understand why that is so appreciated.
have a nice day all. 🙂
apropos
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21570684-global-leadership-industry-needs-re-engineering-davos-man-and-his-defects
Feel free to vent – my point was simply that regulation needs to be regulated, so to speak, as the process gets corrupted, naturally, by seeking ‘expert advice’. Those experts always come from industry, one way or another, even if it is a university with arms’ length funding. He who pays the piper …
excess leads to excess- Madame Defarge may be the next regulator, although I doubt in my lifetime.
Some people do get it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-branson/plan-b-prioritize-people-_b_4603247.html
Some never will: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/25/taxes-rich-holocaust_n_4665676.html
From your Economist link – I actually guffawed
So there is clearly a need for global leadership. But when the public look at what is on offer, they are not impressed. Many of the bankers and politicians caught dozing by the financial crisis were regulars at Davos. Ordinary folk trust Davos Man no more than they would a lobbyist for the Worldwide Federation of Weasels.
There is something pernicious in the concept of global leaders – there were ‘global leadership camps’ that only the children of the pretty darned wealthy here could or would, more to the point, send their children to. Just the kind of people to think they are saving the world if they offset their Tundra truck purchase with a cute little Prius for the wife. Masters of the universe. I took his conclusion very well – that the answer, to the tricky question of leadership, certainly lies in humility, which is unlikely to be learnt or reinforced by a junket to Davos, vin de glacier washing down the quails’ eggs.
http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/archive/segment/noam-chomsky-current-economic-system-is-pure-savagery/52cda95cfe344430a8000163
apology for the annoying ad
and here’s some more about regulation
i meant to comment on this before. Xty said, “I think that limited liability is perhaps a huge problem and lies at the moral hazard disaster we see around us today where people in large corporations do not bear the brunt of their decisions.” i’d take this one step further and say not only does the legal definition and structure permit corporations to behave like a single sociopathic entity, it is actually encouraged. all the more when the highest court in the land starts giving corporations “rights”!
Dude – the article likening public antipathy towards the filthy rich to antisemitism in Nazi Germany is disgusting, but also surprising in that it took so long for the analogy to be constructed by the wing-nuts. 🙂
by the way Xty – nowadays most of the so called “think tanks” are set up with corporate money from the get-go.
this dude is as big of a fox as you’ll see. he’s as big a fox as you’ll see, and he likes my cooking.
Great big tail, and pretty red coat. With about 70 full grown oak trees around the house, i had gave up fighting squirrels long ago. But now they are all magically ‘gone’!
Good boy Mr. Fox.
(edit- posting the pic somehow cut off must of it, at least as it looks in my browser… hmmm, ??
he was eating that food about 7 minutes after I put it out back. He was probably watching me the whole time before i walked back to the house.
testing pic posting… the last one got deleted when i edited comment… ?
one more try…. sorry for cluttering things up here.
When i post the pictures, most of the right half is cut off. But i suppose Mr. Fox would prefer it that way… adds to his sly mysterious image.
Hope everybody is having fun.
What a cute picture of little Xty! And kudos to Mouse on his fame.
I have tried to install plugins that are meant to resize pictures for us, but they just don’t seem to work. Pictures show best with a width of about 600 pixels, and on a mac you can just open a picture with preview and under tools their is a simple resize option. With a pc, you probably have to unscrew the top, reinstall a new graphics card, download a driver, fix some incompatibility between programmes, reboot a couple of times, and then install a programme that resizes photos, available for $799 at the nearest BestBuy.
But that is a cool picture. Is that one of those Nature Cams?
Extra weird – I can go behind the seasons and edit media, and I reduced your photos, but they still display wrong – but if you right click on them they open correctly.
Yes, a GameCam/Nature Cam that i got for Christmas. Took me this long to read the manual and get the thing set up. I’ve got a long ways to go, but it is kind of cool.
I have about 5 deer that i would like to get pictures of. They come by late at night for acorns
I will have to figure out the sizing thing… shouldn’t be too hard.
And, actually both Mac and PCs are outdated. Droid/smartphone OS are getting all the R/D money. But will shoot for 600 pixels here on my HewlettPackard 386sx running windows 3.1 !!