Tag: life

New System Engaged, But There’s a Miffed Wet Hornet

Posted on by D. L. Keur

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So, after a lot of hard work and even more patience, the new phone system is working, now, throughout the house as well as in the office, with wireless, LAN, and DSL all working seamlessly together along with FAX and landline phone WITH the plus that, if and when the DSL goes down (something that happens about once a week here in North Idaho), I can still get on the Net via another wireless option.

This has taken almost an act of Congress to get functioning, but, finally, as of yesterday, all systems are stable and working within optimum parameters.  The entire project took remodeling the whole system from a patched together one. It also required a great deal of coordination between disparate companies, plus some remodeling in the office and other parts of the house structurally connected to that office.

Whew.

Of course, just when you think that you’ve got everything back under control, all hell breaks loose somewhere else, in this case, at the two shops where my husband’s trucks are sitting. The first truck is his relatively new KW heavy haul…which needs a new wiring harness…which isn’t in stock (of course) and the second one is a loaner that, upon start-up, is throwing engine errors and is rife with air leaks.  Lucky for me, I’m sitting safely home, nowhere near a husband who is about as happy as a wet hornet.

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Brain Silence

Posted on by D. L. Keur

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“The brain never sleeps.” That’s what one neurologist said to me during a break at an event I attended several years ago. I listened, nodding and smiling when appropriate, but, all the while, I was thinking, “This is news?”

It’s too obvious to me that my brain never sleeps. But it does go silent on occasion. I’m having one of those ‘occasions’, right now–brain silence.

It may be because I finally am going to get a verdict on something that’s been hanging over my head since December, something that could completely change my life. It could be that it’s just a ‘time-out’ after months upon months of often frenetically-paced ‘doing’.

It could be that I’m fed up, too–fed up with fellow-citizens, national and global, who seem bent on self-destruction, a self-destruction that was completely foreseeable as a consequence since I was in high school.

I’m not sure why my brain has gone silent, but it’s an interesting experience. I’ve had this happen a few times, mostly just before I’ve had huge perception shifts, not when some life-changing event occurred. During those times in the past, I was more robot than human, I think…just doing by rote the day-to-day ‘have-to’s, not-thinking. And I’m good–very good–at not-thinking. But this feels different. Not ominous. Rather, it feels like what is to follow is inevitable…immutable.

It’s strange.

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A Quarter Inch of Joy

Posted on by D. L. Keur

I was out watering my ever-bearing strawberries, and, in the process, knocked a tiny black creature — a quarter inch long little black wasp — into the rain cistern. Reaching down with a gentle finger, I scooped her out and put her on my t-shirt sleeve before finishing my task while keeping an occasional eye on her revival progress.

It took her about two minutes of rubbing herself on the soft cotton material of my shirt sleeve, then another three or so of “tidying” before she considered herself “presentable” to the world again.  Watching, I was captivated by the meticulous attention she paid to every part of herself — her antenna, her thorax, her legs, her head, her wings.  She was not hasty; she attended every detail in a thorough, methodical, and almost leisurely, never panicked fashion.  Her lack of fear, her sense of “safe”, brought me a great measure of joy — that the small creatures around me know that I will never intentionally swat, hit, squash, or harm them.  It brings me a greater measure of joy to watch these wonderful living things go about their daily business in peace and harmony with every other creature who shares their life journey.

Be kind. The life you save could very well brighten your own well-being.

A Sony Friday; a Sony Saturday, too.  *Sigh*

Posted on by D. L. Keur

Husband gets wild hair.  Let’s put all the CDs inside a stereo unit.  In fact, let’s get two or three of these things and put the stuff we mostly listen to on them.

Ah, honey?  Let’s try one.  First.  If it works, we’ll think about running them in series.  Okay?

Awwwww.   Yeah.  Okay.  You’re probably right.

I roll eyes.  He gets so enthusiastic, then, when you suggest just a tad bit of self-restraint, it’s like you dashed cold water on him.  But he dries off fast.  Good thing.

But.  This is going to be a P-R-O-J-E-C-T.  With a super capital P.

Hubs BUYS Sony CDP-CX445.  It arrives, 2nd day air UPS.  I groan when I see, then HEFT, the box.

Okaaaaaay, I think, brace yourself, knowing that means that I’m going to spend all night, all day, all night, all day again, and probably another all day, helping.  There goes the weekend!

He’s so excited when he hears it actually got here.  On time.  In Podunk, Idaho, no less.  He races home.  He unpacks it.  He pulls 400 CD’s, stashing the jewel cases in a box. He dumps the Styrofoam packing into the garbage.  He hasn’t yet broken the box down, though, and I have to keep walking around it to help him when he smartly commands, “Hand me that wire.  Hand me that flashlight.  Hold this.”

P-R-O-J-E-C-T.

He’s in bliss.

So I finally crash.  He stays up till 4AM loading the CD’s into it.  Morning comes.  He’s out of bed in a flash, four hours earlier than usual. 

P-R-O-J-E-C-T.

“Will you type the artists, album names, and slot numbers for me into an Excel spreadsheet?”

Right.  “Okay,” I say, hoping it will only take maybe an hour to do.  I mean 400 slots is a piece of cake to type.  Should only take a little bit of time, right?  Because how bad can a piece of electronics slow something down. 

HINT: It takes almost a full minute for the machine to read the Artist and Album label because it first has to laboriously load the CD, taste it, think about it, then decide if it wants to show you the answer.  (I start twitching after the first five.  I’ll be a basket case after fifty, never mind you might as well call the men in white coats after the full four-hundred.)

We start doing a comedy show to ease the pain as he presses next and I wait patiently like dutiful wife, fingers hovering over keys.

…We get through 200 of them…in two hours.  I’m about buggy.  And…and…and…we’re halfway through.  He does a rah-rah arm pump.  I just want to GET DONE.  “And 201?” I ask.

“It’s not reading it,” says he, which means he has to hit play so we can listen to it to identify artist/album.  And….

THE MACHINE IS SKIPPING.

We check again.  Nope, disc is fine.  Change the CD to somewhere else.  Nope, disc is fine.  Load something else into slot 201.  Skips.  Ummmm.  Go backwards and forwards from 200.  Skip.  Stops skipping when it is at 189.  Everything back of 189 is fine.  Everything forward of 189 skips.

Now what?

Call electronic stores.

Call everybody.

And….

I-Pod. 

No. Not. Never.

And….

…And he’s still researching “another solution.”

So, what are we going to be doing?  Tearing this entire house apart again, laboriously loading CD’s back into their jewel cases, and….

And…I don’t know.

I think I’ll put on some Dokken on the five CD changer and try to ease my migraine.

…I HATE Sony.  Have since they started that proprietary nonsense.  Then they started that invasive crap.  Sony = contemptible.  And their electronics SUX a bad egg.