Day: 05/17/2017

PRECIPICE – OR – DON’T FALL!

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 21 Comments

Garry is not afraid of heights.  He might have liked mountain climbing, but work kept him otherwise occupied. He did try — and enjoy — jumping out of planes. With a parachute.

The years have marched on and although he no longer ventures up on the roof, it’s not his fear of heights. More like a fear of getting giddy at an inappropriate moment.

I haven’t met many people who can climb high places and not get freaked out.

I’ve gotten a little bit better over time, but I still don’t like being near the edge of anything higher than a small stepladder.

Thus, during the times when Garry decides he want to shoot the falls from right along the edge, I try to control my urge to whimper and cry out “DON’T DO IT BABY! I LOVE YOU! COME HOME!”

HP – UNSELLING THEIR PRODUCTS AGAIN

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 24 Comments

Every time Windows 10 does an update, it knocks my printer out. Not just offline, but off. It stops working. Add to that the small matter that Charter/Spectrum has been down for hours a day for nearly a week which I’m sure doesn’t help.

We don’t use our printer much, but it’s not even two years old. Very little mileage.

Usually when it decides to stop working, I reboot it and it figures out what its supposed to do. This time, it wanted a password (which it has never had). The printer apparently got the message and spit one out, but when I entered it, I was the password was too old. They are only usable for 90 seconds and it takes me more time than that to run up and down the hallway. Since I kept getting messages from HP saying if I need help, I should call them, I called them.

Printer with paper

I should have known, when they first locked up my telephone line and I had to reboot it before we could have a conversation, that this wasn’t going well. When we finally connected, I shlepped my laptop to the room where the modem, router, and printer live. And awaited instructions.

She started explaining how to find the menu.

I told her I know how to find the menu. She explained she was merely trying to “educate me.” I said I was well-educated and could she please tell me what to do to get the printer working. She asked me to “please wait a minute” and came back to tell me that it would cost me $99.99 for their kind assistance. Including downloading a whole new set of drivers which I knew I could get for free from their website or Microsoft. If I needed them. Which I didn’t.

I pointed out the printer had cost twenty dollars less their “repair” price and that was when I bought it — brand new — slightly more than a year ago. She said I could go to some local guy for repairs. Except we both knew the printer wasn’t broken and this was a software glitch. I told her to advise the company for which she works to go screw itself and hung up.

I went back. Deleted the printer. Rebooted the computer. Added the printer as new. It found the printer and asked for a password. I gave it whatever the printer had spit out. It told me that hadn’t worked, to try something else. I had no idea what else to try, so I deleted the password file, clicked “Add A New Printer” again — and instead of asking for the password, it simply installed the printer. Then sent me a test page and began to work as it had before.

Either the password worked, or it had never needed one. It hadn’t needed one in the past … and their solicitations to call for help was a cheesy way to get a few extra bucks for a company whose computers are selling poorly.

With good reason. The only computer I ever threw away in disgust was an HP. This is the company which believes in bloatware to the max. It had so embedded this crap in their system, I couldn’t make the computer usable. I gave up. Bought a Dell. I’m still buying Dells.

The only thing I’ve bought from HP since then — during a full twenty years period — is this printer which I picked up at Wal-Mart. When I get the next printer? Back to Canon or maybe Epson. HP has permanently unsold me on HP for anything. Ever.

A hundred dollars? To tell me how to use their printer? I bet all they would have done is tell me to do exactly what I did, except they would have downloaded a bunch of new drivers I don’t need.

And, in the end, I ordered a printer that would work in Windows 10. It was not an HP. Twice ripped off? I’m done.

RIPOFF!

A top-notch job of convincing me to never use any of their products. Way to go HP!

“CHEMISTRY” IN RELATIONSHIPS – BY ELLIN CURLEY

/ Ellin Curley / 15 Comments

My mother was a psychologist with a private practice. She saw lots of relationships up close and personal. She always wondered how people seemed to be able to find others who satisfied their unconscious needs. The Ying to their Yang.

“How,” she would ask, “Does the sadist find the masochist?”

You need one of each for a relationship to work. No one wears signs advertising their dominatrix tendencies. How does the person who likes to wear diapers or fluffy animal suits, find like-minded people? Today the answer is online, but before the internet, people still managed to find one another. We are all like puzzle pieces. There are a few other pieces that fit neatly into our piece. But only a few. How do we find those needles in the haystack of humanity?

For example, everyone knows someone who always seems to end up with a similar ‘type’, usually one that is not good for them. There’s the woman who finds men who treat her badly, cheat on her, or abandon her. How does she know who is going to fit that pattern from an initial, often neutral social contact? When we first meet someone, we can’t really know them. So — what propels our choices?

My mother believed we all put out ‘vibes’ or signals on a subtle, primitive, even physiological level. Dogs can hear and smell things humans can’t. Mom believed that the unconscious ‘senses’ things of which the conscious brain is unaware. Maybe it’s pheromones. Maybe it’s micro facial movements.

I’m a perfect example of this unconscious level of communication. When I was young, I was attractive but very guarded about relationships with men. I was superficially outgoing, intelligent, and funny, but I was very closed off emotionally. Men sensed that and stayed away. I could go to dances, looking great, and never get asked to dance. It was as if I’d created an invisible protective shield around myself. I ended up marrying an abusive, controlling, manic-depressive. I stayed with him for 25 years.

Decades, and years of therapy later, I started dating again, after my divorce. I had conquered my inner demons and was open to a healthy relationship. I had no trouble finding men who were interested in me this time around, even in my late 40’s. I ended up in a wonderful marriage to a kind, caring, delightful man.

Something had happened to me on a deep, emotional, and unconscious level. Yet it made a palpable difference in my real world relationship experiences. How was that change so effectively communicated to the outside world? My outward personality hadn’t changed much. To meet me, you weren’t hit in the head with my inner transformation. My friends still recognized me as the same person I had always been – at least on the surface.

I’m not a psychologist and I don’t have any answers. I find it fascinating that who we are on a psychological level manages to get projected to other people. Haven’t you met someone and immediately had a strong reaction to them, either positive or negative? I met a woman at a book club meeting. I knew we were going to be friends. Years later we are still best friends, yet we hardly talked at that first meeting.

We call this ‘chemistry’. We say we are ‘drawn’ to someone. I don’t know how to explain it, but three cheers for whatever it is!

QUALMS, CONSPIRACY, AND STUPIDITY

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 13 Comments

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I’m not much of a conspiracy person. I have doubts about them. Qualms. Because conspiracy involves intentions, which in turn, requires thoughts. Sometimes, even an idea. Like, you know, a bunch of people work together towards a nefarious goal … as opposed to a lot of dummies voting for a moron as president. The first might be a conspiracy. The next is stupidity. Of which there is not now, nor ever has been, a shortage.

We are living in a stupid world and a stupid era. Where people think that education is worthless, which actually doesn’t explain how stupid they are. If the power of stupidity was fuel, we’d never need another power source. The world could run entirely on stupid. If it doesn’t already.

I have seen a great deal of mass stupidity. Political stupidity, fiscal stupidity, and just regular old daily standard dumbness. Not to mention stupidity based on sheer meanness. Conspiracy? To repeat my oft-repeated signature quote:

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It’s worth remembering that most of the horrible things we see are predominantly stupid. Because malice requires planning, thought, and concepts. Maybe even brains. Whereas stupidity seems to be the clay of life.

So, as for qualms? I don’t believe in anything except for the small, mean-spirited, nasty little people who have infected my world. They are stupid. Ugly and possibly even cruel. And some other morons — whoever you are, hang your heads in shame — elected them.

If you don’t have qualms about this, I’d like to know why NOT?