Friday, March 4, 2016

The earth did not move

I spent the day yesterday moving into a Confederate state. Without ever leaving my building I clocked 16K steps.

By 1730, I had connectivity and DVR, found enough sheets and blankets to make my bed and ordered delivery pizza, which you can eat without knives and forks. (I have yet to unpack the cutlery, although I did find the compostable paper plates I nicked from my employer for exactly this purpose six years ago.)

I also have been mainlining Naproxen.

Well—it’s a start.





Thursday, March 3, 2016

Social platform


You know, it’s bad enough that the presidential election idiocy has pushed its way into time more than 15 months before the actual, you know, election. It frankly feels to me as though we’ve had a parade of political buffoons passing before my consciousness since about 2013, and I’m heartily sick of every single one of them.

(And this is just the presidential wannabes. I’ve come to hold everyone in both houses of Congress and most of the judiciary branch in permanent contempt. Only their position on the list changes from time to time.)

I used to get some measure of relief by not watching any live TV and fast-forwarding through the increasingly frequent and abusive political ads. Because: Internet.

But Facebook is definitely pushing its way up my nose with its attempts to force politicrap on me, regardless of how many times I try to click it away.


However am I going to make it to November?

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Early childhood development


Well, of course, I don’t know, but my best guess is that this will not end well:

 

 

 

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Google hangout

I don’t recall off-hand what occasioned this appearing in my Twitter feed, but since yesterday was one of those days where you just can’t seem to win for losing, this is all I got to give you:






Monday, February 29, 2016

Gratitude Monday: Assistive technology

I very often crab about technology—“hot” apps that are more style than substance solving extremely limited first-world problems (e.g., a valet parking app for those times when you can’t be arsed to find a parking space in San Francisco, or maybe Manhattan, but not many other places, and you’re perfectly willing to give complete strangers access to your credit card details and your car); arrogant subscription policies; crappy user experience.

So allow me a little space for a petty bit of personal gratitude: for the past couple of months I’ve had my first access to Netflix, along with a large (by my standards) TV. Even though I don’t think it does a great job of letting you find out what they actually have in their library, I’ve been ridiculously happy to be able to watch full seasons of Foyle’s War, cherry pick some favorite episodes of Quantum Leap and ferret out the occasional actual, you know, film.

The other night, in fact, I wallowed in one of my all-time best-loved rom-coms, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. What delight!

And I could pause it to run to the kitchen and top up my wine, fast-forward over parts I’m not wild about and rewind and re-view those I especially like.

Now, this is technology without a downside: on-demand video. And I say hurrah for it.