Four incidents

— 1) Last night (Saturday. January 1, 2011; New Years Day) I happened to notice the button for voice-activated calling from my Verizon Droid-X smartphone.
Okay, experiment-time; I’ll try it.
I turned on my wife’s cellphone, so I could call it.
“Say a command,” a disembodied female voice said.
“Call Linda,” I said.
“Did you say ‘call Adam?’” my phone asked.
“What? This happened the other night. Since when does ‘Linda’ sound like ‘Adam?’”
Adam is my baby-sister’s oldest son in Virginia.
He’s in college.
My phone called him the other night, which I managed to cut off before he answered.
Choices were displayed on the screen; Linda or Adam.
I quickly fingered the Linda dialog, since it appears my phone would call Adam by default, if I didn’t act fast enough.
It called my wife’s cellphone.
Progress, I guess.
We’ll try it again doing it the same way my friend Gary Colvin (“Coal-vin”) does with the Bluetooth cellphone in his car.
“Call Linda,” I said.
“Did you say ‘call Adam?’”
“No!” I shouted.
“Did you say call Colvin?”
Again, “No!”
“Unable to understand your command; please try again. Be-boop!”
“Call Linda,” I shouted again.
“Did you say ‘call Linda?’”
“Yes!” I shouted.
My cellphone called my wife’s cellphone.
Okay, I guess I can turn off my wife’s cellphone, but it called my sister-in-law in Florida instead.
“Hello,” she answered. “Is this Bob?”
A call from Linda’s cellphone shows up on the receiving phone via caller-ID. and since it was a male voice, she figured it was me.
“I apparently called your cellphone by mistake. I was trying to shut off my wife’s phone.”
“There are no such things as mistakes,” she said. “That’s the first rule of psychiatry.”
“That may be,” I said; “but I’d label an unintended phonecall a mistake.
Apparently Linda has your number in here as a speed-dial, and I must have hit that.”
(We ascertained later this made no sense, since her speed-dial was 21.)
I hung up.
Back to trying to shut my wife’s phone off, but this time it called AirTran Airways.
I could hear snippets of a machine response.
“Yada-yada-yada-yada. Please hold during the silence. Boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom-chicka.”
“Is it even possible for a stroke-survivor like me to shut this thing off?” I cried.
I get these hairballs all the time — I’m frequently reminded I don’t have all my marbles.
I walked away, and let my wife shut off her phone.
“Time for a real person,” I said.
—2) The other day (Thursday, December 30, 2010) we had a medical appointment at Strong Hospital in Rochester.
It entailed parking in their parking-garage.
Doing so, you’re issued a ticket as you pull in.
It has the time you pulled in recorded onto a magnetic stripe.
Parking there costs a fortune, but with an appointment you’re issued another ticket that vastly discounts your parking-cost, like down from $5 to $1.
The hospital has computerized gizmos inside that can process your parking-fee in advance.
There’s a drill to it, I guess, lest the machine get confused.
You’re supposed to insert your original parking-ticket first, then your discount ticket.
I would leave by myself, and return later, no parking, to pick up my wife.
So I had both tickets, and had been told the discount ticket was a $1 parking-ticket.
I inserted that ticket first, thereby committing a cardinal sin.
It spit it back out, so I inserted my original parking-ticket.
“$5.”
Insert discount ticket.
“$1.”
I inserted a dollar-bill.
Nothing happened thereafter, although I may have not waited long enough (a minute) for return of the original parking stub. It’s rather slow, and I had the discount ticket, which is what I thought the exit-machines wanted.
I inserted the discount ticket in the exit-machine.
Nothing happened, except I noticed my discount ticket had been spit back out.
“Please turn ticket,” the display said.
Okay, I thought. Happened before.
I flipped the ticket.
BOINK; “Please turn ticket.”
I ended up trying four different ways.
Every time, BOINK!
Finally, “I give up.” I drove over to an adjacent exit-booth manned by a human.
“I guess it doesn’t like my ticket,” I said. (He had been watching.)
“That’s because it’s the wrong ticket,” the attendant said. “Do you have your original parking-ticket?”
“The machine inside took it,” I said. “It didn’t return it.”
“Well, sometimes that happens,” the guy said; “but I can deal with that.
Now I need your discount ticket.
$1,” he said.
“I just gave the machine inside a dollar,” I said.
The exit-gate lifted, and “Thank you sir.” He shooed me through.
—3) The other night (probably Friday, December 31, 2010) the ABC national TV news reported Facebook had passed Google for Internet hits.
Like social-networking has become more important than facts.
“Not me,” my wife said. “I’m searching Google all-the-time, and hardly look at Facebook at all.”
“Me neither,” I said. “I can’t risk it. Facebook’s locked my machine.
Of course, we’re both old geezers,” I said.
“We’re word-people, anathema to the younger set.
Enslaved to complete sentences with modifiers.
Not inclined to share every burp and fart with others in one-word responses.”
And on the rare occasions I fire up my Facebook, it’s always slightly different.
I always have to figure it out.
The fact I even have a Facebook is due to a Facebook fast-one.
I got an e-mail from Facebook saying an old friend wished I’d “friend” her.
So I did, thereby setting up a Facebook of my own.
I wasn’t sure I wanted it, but I could see no exit.
I also am tired of Facebook’s many “improvements;” which strike me as degrades.
Facebook is a trap; I only have 40 friends — not the 400+ Facebook-friends my younger brother has.
My aunt in south Jersey has only one friend, that same younger brother, who set her’s up.
Only one friend is probably a record.
“I guess we’re not much into socializing,” my wife observed.
“Or what passes as socializing in the future,” I added. “Like ‘You go girl,’ and ‘way 2 go :-)’”
Actress Betty White had it best.
She’s in her 80s.
“I’ve finally managed to figure out Facebook,” she says; “and I think it’s a waste of time.”
—4) The other morning (probably yesterday, Saturday, January 1, 2011) I fired up this here computer, and “Where’s my desktop? I’m getting the purple Aurora Borealis display Apple resorts to.”

Photo by BobbaLew.

My desktop-picture (“Wallpaper;” for youz Windoze users) is good old GG1 (“Jee-Jee-ONE;” I only say that because a friend was mispronouncing it “Jee-Jee-Eye”) #4896, as illustrated at left.
The Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG1 electric locomotive is the greatest railroad locomotive of all time.
And 4896 is the only one I’ve ever been through.
I saw it many times, but only got this one photograph.
We poked around.
A desktop-picture was no longer selected — no idea why.
We reinstalled GG1 #4896 as my desktop picture.
Restart. VIOLA; there’s GG1 #4896.
“Sometimes my PC does that; defaults the desktop-picture,” my wife said.
“I never know why. —Sometimes it loses everything.”
(My wife drives a Windows PC; I drive a MAC.)

• My wife of 43 years is “Linda.”
• “Bob” is me, Bob Hughes; “Bobbalew.”
• I had a stroke October 26, 1993, which killed part of my brain; although I recovered quite well from it. Most wouldn’t know I had a stroke — I can pass as normal.
• RE: “We’re both old geezers.....” —As of today, January 2, 2011, my wife is 67. —I myself will turn 67 in about a month.
• “Windoze” is Microsoft “Windows,” which many Apple-users think is inferior to the Apple computer operating-systems.