Blowin' in...

So, we had some wind yesterday in the People’s Republic. It wasn’t quite the gale as we’ve had before, but still:

I was glad to find nothing like this at home. Only my Norfolk Island pine in its pot blew over.

Tech transfer

And speaking of technology, at the moment I’m quite chuffed that I managed to set up my new Pixel 3 mobile phone, including transferring my data and apps from my old Nexus 5x. And removing the SIM card from the old phone and installing it in the new.

I had to acknowledge that the Nexus battery was just draining to quickly, even after I had a new one put in. It’s more than three years old, and (as someone pointed out to me WRT my laptop touch screen freezing, which also happened yesterday) device manufacturers would not survive if they couldn’t gouge the user with nearly annual regularity. So last week I ordered the Pixel from Amazon.

(Google Fi is my carrier, so I’m limited as to compatible devices. On the other hand, I used that phone for weeks in Europe over the past year, and my monthly bill has never been more than $35.)

Bit of a kerfuffle, because the Amazon driver delivered it to my neighbor. And by the time she brought it over to me, she was slightly chagrinned because she’d opened the outer package before realizing it was for me. (Look—have you never found a smiley package at your doorstep and wondered, “Huh, what did I order from Amazon?”) But it was fair dues: a month or two ago I got her mortgage statement with a bunch of my own bills, and it was only after I’d opened it that I realized it was hers.

But I was concerned about doing the transfer and setup, because one of my colleagues at my old job used to be my wingman on that sort of thing. However—as you might have surmised—I went to YouTube and figured it out. I did it at work so the help desk could set me up on the mobile security app we use for two-factor authentication. And I charged it via the most excellent LED lamp facilities got for me, which has a mobile phone stand and a USB charging port integrated into it.

Now I believe it’s wine o’clock.

Back to the stone age

I got home from work yesterday around 1630 and—as per usual—turned on the laptop. And discovered that my Internet connection had gone wonky. The network radiation icon would come on, I’d refresh a page or hit send/receive in Outlook, and the icon would turn to some kind of globe with a little x in it.

I called Comcast and got the usual computer-voice telling me I had to reset my router. Which I did. And after the requisite 10 minutes, I had Internet. For three minutes. Then it and my phone went out. More globe with the x.

Eventually the phone came back on, so I redialed Comcast. This time Computer Voice told me “we are experiencing an outage in your neighborhood that may affect your service. We expect to have it restored today, by 2056. An agent will not be able to fix your problem sooner. Would you like us to call you when service is restored?”

Like four more hours of no connectivity is a mere bagatelle when the Kleptocrat Administration is in free-fall. Also—Comcast has never once in all the years I’ve had it actually called me back for any reason.

So I wrote this and posted it during one of the microseconds when I had network radiation instead of globe with little x.

Technology, man. Good thing I brought a white paper home to read.

Protein deficiency

The last time I went grocery shopping, I was trawling the frozen dinners aisle because there are some days when you get home from work, you don’t want to do anything more than rip open a carton and toss something in the nuke.

(I have to say that I was not whelmed. Everything is bowls these days, with quinoa and other miscellaneous nonsense. Ugh. And Marie Callender’s has lost a whole lotta shelf space. I couldn’t even find any pot pies from her. Only from that veggie freak Amy. I guess I’m going to have to take up making and freezing them.)

Anyway, I happened to see these from Lean Cuisine:

Exact same product, with exact same ingredients (I checked). I’m wondering how you can get a delta of 3 grams in the protein while still racking up the same number of calories?

Gratitude Monday: commuting

The weather forecast for today in the People’s Republic is a high of 75°F. So I’m walking to and from work.

This is the most amazing thing: walking to work. And I’m tremendously grateful for it.