Friday, April 27, 2012

27 April 2012 Smarter than the average pick-a-nick basket




          This afternoon finds our erstwhile hero (and our quietly supportive heroine) happily at home in their little bit of the Appalachian range. 
          The morning began, wetly around 0200 -0300 as a series of sudden small, and rapidly dying thunderstorms butted against the higher ridges and then dumped their water content as the cells encountered cooler air.  The times are approximate, because the hero was too happily dozing next to the heroine to fully wake up and look at the clock.  She, mean while, slept happily ( we assume) through the series of dying storms.
          While Gloria is eagerly crafting a new bit of jewelry, hoping the bauble will attract a buyer, our hero is busily catching up on correspondence with old friends and trying to convince his self that it really is Friday, not Saturday.  This time-space dislocation is due, in part to the multiple wake ups initiated by rain hammering down on a metal roof in the wee, dark hours.  It may also be due to the nasal congestion caused by the local pollens and molds that call the forest home. However, the major source of temporal confusion is most likely the brief, encounter with a phone that may well be smarter than our hero. 
          The practice of not providing operators guides for electronic devices is a foul and loathsome habit.  The answers to users’ questions may most likely be found by searching for web pages that purport to answer questions about hardware and software but which generally make no effort to help beyond directing the poor, befuddled owner of new hardware to a users’ forum where high school graduates and foreign nationals compete to proffer solutions that do nothing except generate more calls to a customer service desk that is staffed around the clock by three men named Christopher, from Mumbai.  Christopher, in all their technical trinity’s competence are compensated by the manufacturer and service provider according to the number of service calls they generate for callers demanding to speak to someone who is able to speak English.  At this point in the game, the maddened user is referred to a small, set of pictographs and icons that may be of some use if the new owner can decipher them.  They are printed in a miniscule font that cannot be viewed by anyone over 45. 
          It is a devilish little financial and emotional game, which allows those citizens of India to take massive and devastating revenge upon the species, which once claimed India as a colony, and all other native English speakers. 
          We’ll leave our hero and heroine here for the nonce.  We suspect that they will enjoy the evening over a quiet dinner and cherished companionship.  Tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of “Mr. Ranger won’t like that!”

Shabbat Shalom!

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