3/12/07

Mobile-Web:
Yesterday-morning (Sunday, March 11, 2007), after bringing our dogs back from so-called elitist country-club because it was too icy........
......I decided to try the web-function on my cellphone. After waiting about 10 seconds (this some Gates gizmo?), I was entreated to sign up for “Mobile-Web” for only five additional buckaroos per month.
What in the wide, wide world do I need that for? About the onliest things I do with the Web are 1) e-mail; 2) this here site; 3) the blog; and 4) occasional Googling and Jeevesing.
I’m not about to become a slave to my e-mail.
If I remember it, I try to process it every night.
That might be 1-3 new messages (from ex-Messenger photographer Anmari Linardi and the all-powerful Tim Belknap — both are ne’er-do-wells), and maybe 5-8 spam messages from the great email-server-in-the-sky to delete.
MyWay never gets spam. It has filters, plus the spammers haven’t discovered it yet.
And parrying Jack would be no fun at all from a cellphone. A cellphone would be worse than the De Land Public Library. Not only no macros or HTML-tags, but a tiny keypad that requires multiple hits per keys to get different letters.
So get a Blackberry with a full qwerty keyboard. Great, but still no AW macros and no HTML-tags.
So maybe the macros could be programmed into the Blackberry, or you can get software that has HTML-tags.
La-dee-DAH! All that just to parry Jack?
I ain’t that desperate.
He gets maybe 3-4 hours per day while I drink coffee or eat an orange at this here rig.
That’s plenty.
I don’t need no Mobile-Web.

MAC-ad:
Yesterday-afternoon a snippet of an Apple-ad was on the TV in the background while I was watching my Tehachapi DVD.
Two guys were standing outside the operating-room at a hospital: one being a rather droll-looking “PC” in a frumpy hospital-gown. “PC” was flabby minion — appeared to be a fat-cat, except he also had geeky glasses and a buzzcut.
The other guy was “MAC,” a hip youngish dude looking very modish — no tie.
“PC” was about to walk into the operating-room: “New operating-system,” he said. “New video-card; all kinds of things. Every time they change anything I hafta be rebuilt.”
“MAC,” utterly dumbfounded, threw up his hands trying to make sense of what “PC” had just told him.
“Lissen here MAC,” PC said; “If anything goes wrong, I wantcha to have my peripherals.”
“Hell-ooooooo,” I said.
Not too long ago our LL Bean catalog arrived, and it has all MAC-equipment in its ‘pyooter-desks.
For at least the last 12-or-more years I have been hearing about the impending death of Apple.

And so begins Daylight-Savings Time, no longer important to us, since we’re retired, and don’t have to show up at work.
When I first started at the mighty Mezz, I had to be there by 6 a.m. or so, so we could start pasting-up that day’s sports-section.
It meant getting there in the pitch-dark until the sun started coming up earlier.
Driving in the dark and riding the mighty Cow in the dark, and parking in the so-called elitist parking-lot in the dark.
I parked under an orange sodium-vapor streetlight, both car and motorbike. I was usually the first one in the lot.
Once it deluged after I got there — a fast-moving thunderhead — and we were afraid the mighty Cow might blow over.
But it didn’t — my boss was going to help me pick it up.
During my final years at the mighty Mezz, my arrival was by 8 a.m., and then 7 a.m. when we moved up the deadlines and publication an hour.
So it was usually light when I got there — and I was only doing the web-site: iteration #3.
But none of that matters any more. We get up when it gets light; which used to be about 6:50, but now it’s 7:50.
That means getting out later, but soon we’ll be able to walk the dogs before supper (super?), and then after.

The “so-called elitist country-club” is nearby Boughton Park.

“This here site” is our family’s web-site.

“The all-powerful Tim Belknap” is one of many editors at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, where I once worked. My brother-in-Boston noisily decided he was the onliest one.

“MyWay” is my e-mail service. (My old RoadRunner e-mail still exists, and accessed “the great email-server-in-the-sky.” MyWay accesses it.)

I can access our family’s web-site from the ‘pyooters at De Land Public Library, while in Floridy in the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower (where my wife’s mother lives) — but it ain’t as easy as here at home. I can also process my MyWay e-mail (it’s like Yahoo e-mail).

“Jack” is my macho blowhard brother-in-Boston.

“Tehachapi” in Californy is the location of the famous Tehachapi-Loop; a railfan-site.

“The mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper.

“The mighty Cow” is the Kawasaki ZX6R motorcycle I had for many years.

The “so-called elitist parking-lot” is the parking lot I parked in at the mighty Mezz; so-called because management used that lot. The hourlies used the other lot: the so-called “riffraff” parking-lot.

My brother-in-Boston noisily insists “super” is spelled “supper” (e.g. Supper-Bowl).

My brother-in-Boston also noisily insists the Macintosh-platform is doomed.