The Fun Never Stops

 

Let's take another look at that old adage about bad things happening in 3s. This time, it seems to be true. First, I had to take my car in to get its power steering looked at. I grew up with hydraulic power steering, but I couldn't find the power steering fluid reservoir, so I had to take it to the shop. I also asked about new tires, because I knew those were coming up on being bald.

In order to fix the power steering, they needed to get me a replacement steering column. Or for about half the price, a 'gently used' one. I opted for the used one. Plus, when they were looking underneath at my tires, they noticed all sorts of problems with the tire rods, and whatever else they found. My eyes kind of glazed over when they started listed all the things that needed attention. So, 10 days later, I finally got my car back, along with a whopping bill to go with it.

That was item #1.

Next, my 15-year-old computer turned itself off in the middle of a rainstorm. Now, when a computer is that old and is put through its paces nearly every day, you start expecting problems. For the life of me, I could not get the computer to turn back on and stay on. It wouldn't even get to the point where it wanted to know my password. That was on a Sunday, so the next day, I got up and disconnected the CPU from everything and ran it to Geek Squad, since it was under contract. Their 'make an appt now!' app gave me half an hour to get there, but their store is a pretty solid hour's drive away, so I was late.

Wouldn't you know it, they plugged it in, attached a monitor, keyboard and mouse, and the CPU behaved beautifully! Slow as molasses getting started, but that was normal. Just to be sure, I left it with them to do a diagnostic, and when I got home, I dug out a MacBook we only use when we're traveling. It works okay for checking email and composing rough draft, but is lousy at formatting or looking at Word docs you've already created.

But it would surf the net, so I kind of got through the 4 days my old computer was in the shop. When I finally got to pick it up, they had diagnosed it, updated it, and couldn't find any malware on it, so the bill was $0. I was so happy!

Still, I'm counting 'computer in the shop' as bad thing #2, because I got very little work done that week.

And it turns out that I went to the grocery store the day I was going to pick up my computer, and when I got home, I accidentally left my cell phone in the car. It was hot that day, and the windows were up, so when I climbed in in late afternoon to get my computer, I found my fone had been fried. Well, half fried. It still counts the steps I take (yea!), and it will still send and receive texts. But it won't send or receive phone calls. Won't even try.

I've done some preliminary research to find a replacement, and finding something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and have all sorts of bells and whistles that I will never figure out how to use is not easy. I'm used to an android, and even those are getting pricey. I even looked at jitterbug and alcatel flip fones. I like the idea of a flip fone that won't spend its time taking pictures of the inside of my pocket. But the downsides of the alcatel add up to quite a bit; the screen size is 2.8 inches, so I'd have to carry a magnifying glass to try to read it. It's not water resistant. And the battery life is 6.5 hours. Okay, I guess I'm back to look at androids.

Actually, I'm not looking at the time. I've decided not to get a new one until after our vacation, about mid-August. I asked one of my sons to look at my carrier's website and see if he could find something I could live with. But this item is probably going to cost me. Not to mention all the left-over minutes I have that won't transfer to a new fone.

So, a semi-fried fone is Item #3.

That's it. That's 3 bad things. I'm done now. Everything is going to be smooth sailing and peachy fine for a while.

Won't it?

Science Quiz

For 7 years, I’ve tried to ‘update my science [knowledge].’ I’ve always wanted to write science fiction, but my last science class was a quarter century ago, the one before that in 1970. I’d been busy working full time, raising kids, and so on. So when I retired and started writing science fiction, I found the vast research I did – and the results produced – shot huge holes in my time, the story background, and the plot I had picked.

Therefore, I subscribed to magazines, watched science and history documentaries, did other ‘educational’ things. I love to learn but… have I caught up? Am I ready to write science fiction?

Last week, I received the Jan/Feb 2017 issue of Discover. It includes a list of the ‘Top 100 Stories of 2016’. As I read through some of this list and the entry for each article, I realized I was not familiar with everything listed. Have I failed?

I decided to keep track of which stories I had and had not already heard about. Now, I don’t get to read a magazine in one sitting, so as of today, I’ve only gotten to #40. Don’t worry, I will finish this issue, but in the meantime, how many of these 40 items had I already learned about before this issue?

First, the ones I had no knowledge of:

#4. Oldest Human DNA Revises Our Family Tree (I’d heard of Neanderthals & Denisovans, but not this particular story)

#5. Biologists Create Organism with Smallest Genome

#9. New Particle Fizzles, Leaving Physicists to Soul Search

#10. Did Lucy Fall and Not Get Up? (I knew about Lucy, but this was a new hypothesis that she died by falling out of a tree.)

#11. Bangladesh Sits Atop Potential Major Quake Zone

#12. Big Data May Lead to Earlier Alzheimer’s Diagnosis

#18. Electrons ‘Split’ in New Form of Matter

#19. Science in a Post-Brexit World

#22. NIH Proposes Lifting ‘Chimera’ Research Ban

#23. Picky Primes (Prime numbers are not as random as believed.)

#24. Finding China’s Great Flood

#27. Battle for Access (Should scientific papers be available to all, or only those who can afford to subscribe to scientific journals?)

#28. A Bone to Pick about Philistines

#29. Go, Go AlphaGo (Computer learns game, beats human champion.)

#31. Pushing the Limits of Life in the Lab

#32. Disrupting Dopamine Dogma

#35. Mathematicians Find the Answers (I was unaware of this question.)

#36. T. Rex Evolution: Smarts First, Size Second

#37. The Rise and Fall of Theranos (Fake medicine exposed)

#39. Plenty of Room at the Bottom (Saving data with chlorine and copper)

#40. Pluto’s Hidden Ocean (I knew it had one, but this article is about how it’s freezing, breaking Pluto apart.)

And the ones I was familiar with:

#1. Einstein’s Ripples in Space-Time

#2. Earth’s Surprise Neighbor Hints at Exoplanet Abundance (planets of Proxima Centauri)

#3. A New Enemy Emerges (zika and mosquitoes)

#6. The Pace – and Problems – of Climate Change Accelerate

#7. Can America Avoid Another Flint?

#8. Looking for Planet Nine

#13. Persistent Heat Decimates Coral Reefs

#14. The Ozone Hole is Finally Healing (Still has a long way to go.)

#15. More Hobbitses, Prescious! (More remains of hobbit-sized hominids found.)

#16. We Are All Africans

#17. The Falcon Has Landed, Now SpaceX is Eyeing Mars

#20. Ceres Hosts an Ice Volcano

#21. Regulating the Brave New World of Human Gene Editing

#25. The End of the Periodic Table? (How many more elements can scientists make?)

#26. Drug Couriers for Brain Injuries

#30. Crowdsourced Study Pinpoints Depression Genes

#33. Planets of the Milky Way

#34. Superbug Arrives in the US (Bacteria not deterred by any known medicine.)

#38. A Sharp Find (Ancient sword found in Denmark)

How did I shape up? Hmm, 21 stories I did not know; 19 I was semi-familiar with. If I were in school, that would be less than 50%, a solid F. But, I can’t know everything, so I don’t feel bad. Besides, some of these articles have hinted at background knowledge or even a story plot. I am stoked!

What have you learned in the past 7 years? I bet it’s a lot, whether science or not.

No Deadlines

I honestly don’t know which is worse:

• A.   Having gobs and gobs of chores to do, all of them inter-related and requiring research and learning, with deadlines for some stuff, and the entire day, nearly every day, to work on these chores.
• B.   Having limited chores to work on, because everything is packed away except for four flashdrives and a laptop with limited capacity; no deadlines; and the ability to go to a place and use their computer with a nice big screen (or two!) for a whopping 3 to 4 hours a day.

A is what I had before my husband decided to retire. It was mind-numbing. Every morning I would stare at that long list of chores and wonder, ‘Which one should I work on? Is there one that seems shorter, so I can feel like I’m making progress?’ (Inevitably, that short chore would turn out to be HUGE!) ‘Can I break this big chore into smaller pieces? So far, I’ve done research on X, L, and S, and now look, they all come together in this big knot, along with 6 other things I haven’t even begun to research!’ Over-whelming. Enough of that, and your mind truly goes numb. It ceases to function.

B is what I have now, as we wait for repairs and renovations to get done on our house. If you follow me on facebook, you know that we’ve been ‘living’ in one room for a month. To attempt to stay sane, we go out each morning to use those wonderful computers until lunchtime, then go home to check in with the workers. (At least they’ve mostly stopped finding more water-damage problems that need to be fixed. Now, if the carpet would just arrive…!) After lunch, we go to the gym for a couple hours, ending with 20 minutes in a massage chair before we go home to spend the evening watching tv, probably reruns from Netflix.

With everything we need to survive until the house is sold scrunched into that one room with us, there is only a path through the room, really. Only one of us can get up and move about at any one time, and unless they wander outside that room, they are probably blocking the other person’s view of the tv.

B is also mind-numbing. I start the day eager and happy to be working on a REAL computer, grit my teeth and put my body through its paces in the name of health, and then settle down to do… absolutely nothing.

Hey, something for me to research tomorrow! CPR for numbed brains! You know, for when we finally do get to settle into a new house and I start having deadlines again.

Rumors of My Death…

 …if you’ve heard any, have been premature and greatly exaggerated. I am alive, and (relatively) well, but life has been… complicated.

It all started getting messed up when my husband came home one day and said, “I’m going to retire.” Well, yes, eventually I expected he would, possibly even this year, so I didn’t think it was anything to worry about, because his 62^nd birthday was still 5 months away. And then, a few days later, he added, “I can apply for social security 3 months before I turn 62. Let’s get the house ready to go on the market.”

In a nutshell, that pretty much turned our world upside down.

We knew we had to remove a lot of the personal stuff from our home, so we packed our book collection, our art collection, our video collection… We hired some young helpers to put these heavy boxes in our storage unit. He packed up everything in his office except his computer. I packed or threw out a lot of stuff from my office until I ran out of time.

We had a vacation scheduled for most of May. The paperwork for retiring was signed, and the day husband flew down to Orlando for that vacation was his last day of work. We spent a couple days in the parks and visiting friends while he tried to get his head around his new status. We checked out a few houses that were for sale while we were down there, and started the process of getting pre-approved for a mortgage.

And then… that infamous ‘hurry up and wait’ segment settled in. For the past 3 weeks (and probably for at least another week), the 2 of us have been living in 1 room while all the rest of the house gets fixed up and painted. While we are in that room, the only computer we have access to is the laptop we had in Florida, which I perch on a folding chair while I sit in an easy chair. Is it any wonder my neck, shoulders and back almost constantly ache?

It doesn’t help that I was surprised by a rush editing job just before leaving Florida; the 4^th manuscript in a 5-book series. I got that one done and back to the publisher, but I’m wondering when #5 will appear in my mailbox.

At first, we spent a lot of time in that room, watching various tv shows. By now, we have opted to spend our mornings at dospace (If you live in Omaha and haven’t checked out dospace at 72^nd & Dodge, you should – dospace.com); several afternoons of the week we go to the gym and work out; and at least once a week, we go see a movie – or 3.

Being confined to 1 room is mind-numbing. Most of the time, I just can’t concentrate. Oh, and if you are waiting impatiently for me to add another episode to MacOnFireball.blogspot.com, don’t hold your breath. I will get back to it, but guess what? The notebook holding the original story got packed when I wasn’t looking. Actually, I found the notebook, but the 10-20 pages I had out, next to my desk-top computer, to be typed in and tweaked… also got packed, and has proven to be elusive.

Eventually, the work on the house will be done. Eventually, our Omaha house will sell. Eventually, we will buy a new house in central Florida (we’ve been told it takes a minimum of 6 weeks from bid acceptance to document signing/closing) and can get the household belongings shipped down there. But right now, as the days grind by at a snail’s pace, ‘eventually’ seems a terribly long time from now.

Learning New Tricks 1

Remember that old saying, “Old dogs can’t learn new tricks?” Now that science says older people should be learning new things in order to keep their mind sharp, this ‘old dog’ is determined to learn new tricks. Even if I’m not a ‘spring chicken’ anymore.

Happily, there are plenty of opportunities to learn new things, ranging from free to costing quite a lot.

FREE - Tandy Leather offers free lessons in working with leather, from beginning to advanced. Generally, these lessons are offered on Saturdays for 5-6 weeks. I am in the middle of my 3rd class with them, learning to lace and sew leather projects. Usually, I come out of these sessions with 1 (maybe 2) projects done, but there are a lot of different lacing techniques to learn, so I am keeping my projects small and otherwise unadorned (no carving or stamping), and I am finishing one project a week.

A couple months ago, I discovered dospace, located in Omaha at 72 & Dodge. They offer crash courses in various computer programs. Afterwards, you can go in at any time (that they’re open) and use one of their (many) computers to practice and do projects in that program, so you don’t actually have to run out and buy it. I’ve taken 3 classes from them, and try to get there for a couple hours each week to practice on the programs we don’t have.

YouTube offers lots of instructive videos. We’ve watched many on using particular types of materials for specific pieces of costumes or props, and more on makeup techniques.

Company websites sometimes have instructional videos to show you how to use their products. Smoothon, for instance, will show you how to make molds, and how to use those molds to cast items in resin. Hubby really enjoys doing that, and that’s how he learned the method.

Television is a relatively ancient method of learning, but still an active teacher. I think the best (easiest) to learn from tv are cooking and sewing. There are other opportunities, such as doing a mosaic tabletop with pieces of broken china or tiny glass tiles, but too often, you get 1 or 2 10-15 second shots of some of the steps in doing that, with verbal instructions for the entire process delivered at 90 miles per hour. That has never been enough ‘learning’ for me to actually try it, although it is for other people.

Of course, you might get a book from the local library to teach you how to do whatever you have a hankering to learn.

Hmmm. I’m running out of room, and I haven’t even gotten to some of the learning opportunities that cost money. And actually, I intended to write about the different ways people learn, but I’ve wandered quite a ways from that topic. Okay, then, this is Part 1 of “Learning New Tricks”. Stay tuned for future parts, one of which may or may not show up next week. It all depends on if I find some other fascinating subject to talk about before then.