Caution: Blog Under Construction

After seven years of using same-old boring Blogger template, I needed a change.  Tabs, color, a little variety.

So, with a lot of help from Allison Cooper, the techie, Millennial-generation daughter of a friend, this space is getting an overhaul.   

Here's patient, creative, diligent Allison yesterday in my studio operating on this site:

 

In the meantime, there'll be new features on the old site (this one) and one day the Great Reveal.  Stay tuned.



Computer Regains Sanity, Jerry Loses His



Keyboard removed from computer

Yesterday--finally--I took my computer to a fix-it guy and got the space bar function restored.

It's been maddening.   Except for internet addresses, which have to run together, I couldn't type anything thatdidn'tlooklikethis.  I was ready to throw it out the window.

I spent an hour-and-a-half in an unheated shop while a genial guy named Won painstakingly disassembled the computer and then jimmied the keyboard, flexing it, cajoling it.   He was fearless.

Putting it back together

We covered a lot of chatty territory during this operation.  I found out that he's Thai-American, trained as a graphic designer, and switched to computer repair.  He referred to the binary logic of the Start button (!), and he's a Democrat with definite ideas on immigration ("We all came from somewhere").

Scary!

He charged me only $50, despite the $80 minimum charge posted on the wall.   I would have paid a lot more than that.  Lucked out.  Took it home the same day.

* * * * *

Department of Jerry-Stuns-Me-Once-Again:  Last night, after we cleaned up the dinner dishes, I watched him fish a cookie out of a plastic bag, leave a few crumbs on the kitchen counter, and slyly brush the crumbs on to the floor.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

"What are you doing?"  I screeched.  (Yes, I did.)

"They were tiny," he protested, with a sheepish look.

"But why?

"You don't like crumbs on the counter." 

It made perfect sense to him.  I don't like crumbs on the counter, so why not sweep them onto the floor?

* * * * *

My friend Lin and I went shopping in the Elmwood neighborhood of Berkeley on Saturday, and we dropped in at The Focal Point, where I buy my glasses.  We poked around.

Fashion flash:  wire-rims are out.  There are hardly any for sale.  Lots of plastic frames.

I found a pair I really liked,  that were about as flattering as it gets on someone my age:

Pricetag:

That is not a misplaced decimal.  Can you imagine?

And the pair in the foreground:

Pricetag:

Unbelievable!  Fortunately, there were lots of frames

that cost less.

* * * * *

Boxes of stuff have been arriving via UPS, Christmas presents I ordered  for my sister and Jerry.  I've been doing a mental count and decided that each could use another present or two.  (What's this weird equation we do in our heads re "enough" gifts?  I know my mother did it, too, and my pal Lin cops to doing  it, too.)

I asked Jerry for a suggestion or two, and he came up with this item after a long search in his car:

It's golf glove for a right-handed person, meaning it fits on the left hand, but there's no size printed inside.    In the old days, pre-internet, I would have gone to a golf shop, presented this item to a clerk who would have recoiled, but helped me figure it out.  Now I'm off to Amazon.

In the course of searching the car for the golf glove, Jerry found a pair of glasses that are so old he can't remember wearing them:

I told him he could save a lot of money and be fashionable if he just had new lenses put in.

The Computer Has a Sick-Out

Yes, the ThinkPad has lost its  mind. (See  weird spacing?)

First, the "v"wouldn't work, then it came back. Then the"c"packed it in and came back to life a couple of days later.  Then  the Backspace, and now  the  space  bar, which demands to be hit twice.  I'm  waiting to see  if this passes in the  next day or two;  if not I'll call the computer guy,who calls me an "end user."

I think I may need  an exorcist.  Or a lighter touch.

Techno-Peasantry in Action

A piece of paper got jammed deep inside my printer.   Distress call to Jerry.  Mutual agreement that printers are not worth a damn, bred to breakdown,  maddening, etc.  Was it possible to just pull the paper out?  (No.)   Printer instructions useless.   

We needed a long, grabby thing.

Assembled implements:  forceps from Jerry-the-entomologist, kitchen tongs from me

                                 

Born of desperation:  lint remover tape wrapped around a pencil

                                  

Jerry painstakingly removing bits of paper with the forceps

Success!  The rest of the page removed in pieces.  Surely there's a better way (besides throwing the printer out the window?) ? 

Another Voice Heard From

My sister dropped by yesterday, and we agreed that these are scary, scary times.  The Republicans have lost their minds.  I, for one, am convinced they'd take away women's right to vote if they could.  It's just shocking that women want to decide how many children they have. The gall of it!

And then there was Maureen Dowd, with her column in yesterday's New York Times.  She says many delicious and accurate things ("Santorum, whose name aptly comes from the same Latin root as sanctimonious..."), beginning with this:

"Republicans being against sex is not good," the GOP strategist Alex Castellanos told me mournfully this morning.  "Sex is popular."

Later that evening, I got to the chapter in my iPhone manual about Siri, the voice-activated feature.  I experimented.  I talked to her, and the text of what I said appeared on the screen.  I showed it to Jerry.

Then we lost our minds.  We spoke to Siri, said anything we liked, which turned out to be a lot of pent-up hostility against Republicans.  We got, as my English friend Val would say, "vulga."  And Siri, bless her heart, must be a Democrat.  She got every cuss word, every obscenity, absolutely right, perfectly spelled.  Except ca-ca.  She spelled that with a "k."

The Not-So-Smart Owner

Claudia and I set off at 1 pm today to buy smart phones.  I was going to  buy my first smart phone; she was upgrading from a Blackberry.  We drove directly to Best Buy, where they sell every smart phone you could possibly want.

Very soon I was in the hands of a Verizon rep who looked amazingly like Luci Johnson.  Didn't catch her name; I just thought of her as "Luci." (Claudia agreed, she looked very Luci-like).   In no time, I'd decided on an iPhone 4S which, for those of you who don't know, means that I have a tiny person named Siri inside my phone who is now my slave. I'm very excited about that aspect. I can boss her around, tell her to e-mail people, have her take down a shopping list as I wander around my kitchen. All by speaking into this magical instrument.

Luci-Lookalike turned us over to a Best Buy employee named Virgil, who was a doll. Efficient, smiley, utterly lacking in condescension.   Still, it  took at least 45 minutes to sell us two phones (Claudia got a Windows phone). The line of people waiting for help was long, but Virgil was methodical and fully attentive.  He transferred our phone numbers.  He offered service contracts.  Finally, as the last step, he took our credit cards.  I felt as though we were carrying the crown jewels out of the store.

We and our phones repaired to Saul's in North Berkeley for a late lunch.   Since the place was nearly deserted and we had a very accommodating waiter, we sat and fiddled with our phones after we'd finished eating, passing them back and forth to each other when we got stuck.  Which was often. I  did manage to take an iPhone photo of Claudia:

Claudia mulling her new smart phone

Finally, we managed to call each other FROM ACROSS THE TABLE.  Yes, we did!  We had failed at downloading apps, getting our e-mail accounts on the phones, and other challenges, but, by God, we called each other at Saul's.  Then I called my house and got the answering machine.  Then I called my sister's cell and got a strange woman on voicemail.  Three calls!

I came home and put out an SOS to Annika.  She came over, reassuring and patient, and showed me some basics. Without her, there would be no picture in this post.  In the meantime, I got to look at her iPhone and see guys who are approaching her on Ok Cupid.  I learned that some are douche-y.  All in all, I feel a little more hip than I did this morning.

And Leah, if you're reading this, I no longer have that embarrassing flip phone.