Mass Effect(s)

 I own Mass effect Legendary and Mass Effect Andromeda, and just today I bought Mass Effect 2.
It's because some review site insists that this has to be the best game ever made.

I forget playing them, I forget the whole story.
There WAS one version where Player (me, the protagonist) follows her boss on the roof down to some soldiers fighting enemies....and I can't remember much more.
What was Legendary? One and two stuck together, maybe three. 

Why didn't you mention this, can I play it?
That's why I bought "2" specially, the unvarnished, unremastered version.

It's too dark, everything is tinged red (in my head, I'm not playing right now)

I wonder if I install "Legendary"would I kill this thing or would it look nicer?

I'm sick of playing without a controller and trying to read tiny icons, but everything runs smoothly.

Will I get controller abilities?
Will the cheats work?

This display seems normal enough on a light background.

But sometimes it seems to overemphasize "red".

-------

Back to reality, and thanks for making fun of my playing old ^%$# games.
Yeah they're old, but they seem to work, and they're unfamiliar to me so it all works out.

It all runs together anyway, a girl walks into a bar and meets a slimy guy who gives her valuable tips.

I distinctly remember a completely different game doing exactly that.
Then I kill all the bad people, and ... I ...??

Nested missions. To get the apple you must go to the supermarket,
By taking the bus, 

By having exact change.

So...

Talk to the guy 

to learn about the enemy (tiny specs I can't see)

Constantly fire (and run out of ammo)

Cheat tons

To recruit the guy

so's you can eventually fight more tiny specs and a hulking thing.

Then, a speech.

I don't really like this game.

A photographer seemed hellbent on creating a christmas card photo of people in a forest 

(The location is not clear)

I suppose they could be in a tiny park next to the subway.

Cats have it so good, people buy $700 toilets for them.

(Tiny dogs have to go in the freezing cold, rain, and snow, it's tradition.)

Was there ever a *dog* toilet? A plastic indoor lawn, a cardboard box?

Or is the dog an excuse to avoid in-laws at thanksgiving...

Was the photo retouched to look all soft and dreamy (and cold?)

How can the whole ground be blurry white?

Why do they keep getting people in here who yell at the air?
Why is that girl talking just a little too loudly about something she disagrees with in this blog?

My place should look like the Taj Mahal after this long, but no. It will be pale white over dark insignificant gray or blue. All my stuff will be in a huge pile or gone forever, and I'll spend a year trying to sort it out.

My mind wants to dwell more on what will happen, but it doesn't fit in this blog.

Tell me those people didn't get all dressed up to watch their pet take a shit.

Amazon sells everything from everywhere, and if there are ads, they push electronics.

Well I came up with a commercial in my head for "Amazon Fresh" or whoever.

The crowded house is full of argumentative relatives who hate snow and cats and slippery sidewalks, and sit there overacting (for the commercial, keep up.)

The sneezing kid, the allergic brother-in-law, the Grandpa with symptoms too long to list but he'd need some sort of OTC pain killer, bottom line.

Yeas, they all need to be medicated.

Get made fun of for having a huge tray of meds, or order them online (This wouldn't work though...16 relatives, 32 ailments, umpteen orders?)
I vote for the huge tray you ordered the other day.

Let them make fun, until they're sneezing and in pain, and you can shoot darts from your eyes with a grin as you pass around the pills and Band-Aids.

Make fun, will you? No Band-Aid for you!!

I wonder if it would make good advertising....

It's tradition

Not to rub it in, but WAR is tradition, 

Pestilence, Death.

Lotsa stuff is traditional, but helluva reason to justify it.

Nature (Why?)

From the train of thought on Google's front page:

After laying off many national park workers, Trump will make it more expensive to go to a national park. 

I'm of a mind to believe in my darkest heart of hearts, unbeknownst to anyone else....

That white republicans are nature lovers, sort of.
I mean, with the campers and the endless driving, who does that?
My rocky intro is for this picture. I cannot tell where it's from, only who.

Patriotic Graffiti?

---

---

The cough medicine they sent me was opened and used, so I said that in a review that no one will ever see, they said so.

They DID send along a link to Black-friday deals.
The deals they sent seem to be wallflower, stay-at-home products no one would ever buy.

And me, with my shrinking prune of an account, could not buy anyway...

A picture of one, if this still works (a "pimple" patch)

Pimples are a fact of life, why not draw attention to them?
Pimple-lives Matter!!!

"Vegan" (I missed that) gotta have vegan pimples.
Are they free-range?

A very depressed woman seems to be wearing a sackcloth outfit for her boyfriend (That's the name of the product)

Someone bought it and complained [that it looked *exactly* like the one in the picture]

I only just remembered a really old TV show where a normally sexy woman wore an oversized football jersey to bed.
Yeahbutt...

These look too expensive to be pajamas

Lonely abandoned products needing a home won't you spend 19.95 a month (0.65 a day) to make these products happy on cubbyholes and dusty shelves?

Buzz lightyear, the hank-hill of cartoons (in my head, anyway.) 

I vaguely remember a toy room on free TV where the toys tried to escape. 

Or was that those zoo animals?
The zoo animals were livelier zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There is a whole sermon I just wrote on one finger, and it's gone!

Fine!

TLDR

Charlie Brown is full of it 

(L I N K) Link You have X days until Xmas, so say your overlords in Washington.

True false: There were / are TWO Thanksgivings, one for wingnut batshit crazy people, one for everyone else?

It's complicated, involves math.

Fourth-Thursday vs Last-Thursday of-the-month.

Bombastic people explain it better, and the two-thanksgiving-thing was a dated rumor from a relative.

Edit: This just in!!

In other words, this does not rate a blog entry, but it saved my android Phone browser's life:

OK...in any advice about android-"edge", the browser, they keep mentioning three dots, like everyone everywhere has them.

I do not.

I DO have lines, on the top and the bottom-right.

Bottom, three lines (not useful) ... Top right, three "sliders" for lack of a better word.

Inside the sliders, a few options:

"Show Feed" is now turned off, to quell that incessant propaganda from MSN (I *think* it's from MSN)

And WHY would I want "Show sponsored shortcuts" on?? It's off as well.

"Shortcuts" (not sponsored ones) are great unless you really like typing with one fat finger.

The "Dots" everyone refers to DO show up on different context menus, just to confuse me, but they do NOT show up here.

The shit is about to hit the fan with political news, and I turned it off just in time, otg

too deep, nevermind

 

how do you write an introductory paragraph for the Universe?
How do you fill an hour for unruly kids?
You try, but you can't, says conventional wisdom.
For example, Mitosis vs Meiosis.
How you talk about reproduction in such a way that book burners
fall asleep and are generally pleased?

It's like, TMI to the max, 99.99% of the population would never see relevance.
It's an interlude in a cool sci-fi movie.

Someone mentions "Double Helix" and it's like some hypnotic keyword that sends your mind into the fantasy world of highschooler girlfriend Nancy, who you sat behind in Biology. 

There is no relevance in school, and if there accidentally is any left, conservatives will excise it.

Fire teachers, ban books, until all that's left is the above, for future real estate salespeople, data-entry personnel and politicians. 

When Mommy and daddy love each other, uh,

Mrs. Mei separates the diploid from the haploid,
Makes Gametes.
I took a sick day.... What's with "Gametes"?

Oooo We're all Zygotes from the Planet Gamete and zzzzzzz 

Buried within the minutiae is the fact that this process involves some randomness.

Religions do not account for random events, (it's against their religion) so nevermind.

But if you're in the mood, go read about it.

If there were no "God", the benevolent construct micromanaging everything everywhere,

I think chaos would exist until the biggest baddest warlord conquered this-and-that and ran what he could until he died.

*With* god and the rules surrounding God (he/she/it,) biggie baddie warlords can proclaim legitimacy because of (their) God, as written in The (their) book.

Maintain a facade of obeying their God, and their rule is assured, backed by their priests and judges.

But this was a train of thought that is speeding away very fast (What did it say about intolerance? I can't remember anymore) "Free will" is a fallacy in most religions....something like that.

Piss off enough gods in other religions and you'll get a war, unless you WANT a war, because it makes you more glorious in the sight of your priests, judges and people who count....Peace is "woke", bottom line.

Or so the thinking goes, I'm only a parrot.

--------------------

The irrelevant TMI I shall speak about today right now is,

"Do I have a home to go back to"? 

I don't miss the neighbors, or the tall dangerous cliff-like road, or the bugs...and yet, when seen from very far away, they all make sense.

This place does not.

Fictional, yes but Zillions know what it is.
Now if only they did one on Zygotes and gametes
and God

I'm tucking this one-finger edit

For another time.

Android OS usage: 7.8GB,

Massive bloat for 16GB users.

8GB users don't get that so why should I?

Rosh Hashanah

 It's a day to visit KFC, as is this thursday, and Christmas.
But I doubt KFC is open on biggie holidays;

Someone needs to write a blog about carefully preserving the KFC until the day you eat it.

Something in my router was updated and now it has a hidden channel stalking it, like some cursed spirit, and I do not even use MLO.

What is MLO, You ask? I don't know, ask Reddit.

The hidden channels are like peaceful aliens in movies, watching everything we do.

Just when we start getting used to them (in the movie,) BAM! They destroy us like germs.

My body is sneezy, toilet-y and very sleepy.
And I don't have a lot else to say. No one anywhere really knows how to shut off those hidden (MLO?) channels.

Well, there IS one thing:
The doors around here are designed to sound like that, all loud and alarmy. It comes with living in the building!!!

You can walk ten feet away from a door and it will "Slam" or briefly sound an alarm, if you were too slow to let the door go.

So.......

there.

I wanted to point out some photos yesterday, but got too tired.

The guy building a 300-million ballroom can't afford a steak?

My cold (a draft)

 Not sure why it's common knowledge that "Nyquil," The once all powerful cold-killer, is old and weak (cough-cough) because they took out the best ingredients.

This could be a pity-party or it could research what works these days. For COLDS, not the other thing.

I told a lady I wanted cherry Nyquil, not knowing about all the other ingredients.

She never called back.

Now, I can order damn near anything from the internet, anything legal, but I wonder what RFK would take? In other words, what works in 2025?

I'll continue this later.

https://www.forbes.com/ (not helpful)

https://www.forbes.com/health/wellness/best-cough-medicine/

Still not helpful, but it looks authoritative.

Robitussin, Mucinex, Honey.

Just saying that in a sentence sounds so authoritarian and bigoted, but that was the f'ng gist of their very bombastic article!!

Diverging slightly from the text:

You get the feeling that everyone is a latent addict, and just need a little push for them to fall over the edge into the fires of perdition (hell)

So forget that shit, also forget "Honey".

I hate "Mucinex", it tries to be all green and yucky to stay in soccer moms' good graces,

And if they turned it red and cherried it,

The inquisition would burn them for heresy.

  I feel better, I do, I just have a lingering cough and excess snot.

More yucky Mucinex???

There's gotta be something better, PLEEZ

I realize that this is not earth-shaking, but I appreciate my phone withholding its own keyboard while I use the regular keyboard, because it reminds me not to microscopically hunt-peck.

I still don't know how anyone texts effectively on a phone.

Now if only I knew how to resize pictures on phones.

Double-tap and drag does nothing. Resting my finger on the little square on the border lightly, occasionally it lets me drag it.

I'll summarize, then.

Full of snot?? Mucinex.

In Church / the Library / the bus?

Robitussin.

But Wait! Can I interest you in some "delsym"? only 3-dollars an ounce.

There's also a walmart brand, 45 cents an ounce.

Makes you wonder.

This bottle should have been free.
Some sick person took a swig.
(That red print you can't really read says,
"Don't use without a seal."
WHAT seal????

If I narc the guy out I could make him lose his job, and him with that nasty cough from all the rain and the snow.

This is so bad that society thinks I should ignore it, or really bitch about it.

Ain't society great? Always there with the (Snarky) answers

My cough....hmm... It's dry unless I cough in exactly the right way to hock up a giant loogie.

So I'll say it's dry, with occasional wetness.

I don't care if I cough till the cows come home, so F U, Robitussin.
Mucinex, you taste so damn bad.... I get it, you don't wanna get pilloried by the overactive mom society who have a responsibility to lock up meds only they don't, they'd rather sue.

I can imagine it... The little brat missed lunch because he was sent home early for being a miscreant.

So he hunts cabinets for stuff to eat and finds this in the refrigerator (Is that why they're selling such tiny bottles lately?? 3oz, $3 an oz, nine dollars.)

Someone out there has a cold.

They ripped off the seal from my bottle, took a swig, and put it back.

I really hope the guy isn't dying of covid or aids.

Keyboard tome mysteries

 This is mostly a rant, so far,

 that you can ignore. 

I disagree with some of my new keyboard's terminology.

"Fn" or, "Function Key" is imprinted "Fn" and that seems simple enough and is copied by several keyboard companies.

To access special keys that have nothing to do with typing, press Fn and the key which usually has the special function imprinted on the key!

But these guys wanted to reinvent technology.

The Function key now has four modes (it would be technically impossible to have more than 2, except for *another* switch I haven't mentioned yet)

Also the four modes start with "0" just to look extra-technical.

Also, to use two of the modes, you need a different type of a computer (I didn't mention that either, for fear of confusion)

The damn Fn button is "on" or "off", pressed or unpressed, 0 or 1 (if you like techie terminology.)

But now thanks to the alternate universe-switch, it can be 2 or 3 (Are you following this?)

Being the richer-than-god guy that you are, you prolly have TWO computers, but are too cheap-ass to buy two keyboards.

• Change channels to one or the other computer.
• Change the Type of computer (Apple or windows) (This action will rename your function key)
• Press the function key (to, uh, turn on a light or whatever)

It all becomes clearer if you are into writing computer programs ("Macros") for your keyboard

(Which is possible I suppose, but I have not read that page yet)

In a way different section, you can stumble blindly around to find the keyboard light combo that is pleasing to you.

Don't like rainbows? (too suspect subversive "woke"?) They have a keyboard key that changes the default(?) rainbow color to, for example, red (as in "kiss your ass goodbye soon" red)

But can you duplicate it for friends next Tuesday?
I really wouldn't know.
Punch the key and watch different patterns, until one looks acceptable (not puke blinking-green)

None of this needed a program, although I think maybe I could use one.

I was reading a reddit thread which asked about disabling the sleep-tendencies of the keyboard.

A snarky guy DYOR bla-bla and gave an answer.
We (general "we") don't want to read tomes, it's Nice to be able to ask a question to masses of people at once,

but the people always run across the snarky, the mean and the confidently stupid, first, and those people win awards for non-helpful bullshit answers (10k of them)

"Google is your friend"

"I have no problems (shs)"

"DYOR"

"I don't know"

----------

Here is something I'd like to try, blogging on my phone using the keyboard.

Yes, when the apocalypse happens and the laptop is dead, I can use the phone to talk to the keyboard! 

I'm doing it now.

But, could I suddenly decide to switch back to the Laptop?

Uh, not instantly, it's a blog after all that gets updated online, but, ignoring those little details, hang on....

Yes!

---

Anyway...

I worry that the lens (The glass covering the lenses) is either scratched or could be scratched.

Guess what? It does not matter a hell of a lot.linky

I'm so relieved!! You have no idea. The microscopic scratch I cannot really see (My eyes are kind of bad) vs the sandblasted scratch they put for test purposes.

My thumb and flies would have a much bigger effect.

I wonder sometimes about reviewers dissing phones.

Yes it seems better than God, but it's just not apple.

Bah.

They should buy an actual camera to compare the phone to.

$4k but then would you shut the hell up and stop bitching?
(Did I mention it was $4k, Twerp?)

Speaking of which, if people care so much about picture quality, why not just buy a camera?

But you've seen the photos, the ones where a politician is speaking and all the reporters eagerly hold up their phone.

The dancers in Iraq (wherever) or the miserable people after a disaster, are prolly hosted on much more expensive dedicated fancy cameras.

Which brings me to my next question, how the hell to keep lenses clean in dusty environments?

Also, dedicated cameras don't have a piece of glass to shoot through, it's the unprotected lens against the world.

This phone sits its butt down on the glass covering the lenses, that seems wrong, somehow.

rogue robot

 There's so much about this subject I don't know, I would need an AI machine of my own to figure it out.
So I'll guess, and ask hypothetical questions.
Isn't it true that most biggie tech firms load up on a project hoping to dominate the field.

When they fail to dominate, they buy.

If they cannot buy, they abandon.

I predict Gemini will be abandoned, certainly by 2028 but prolly sooner.

?

The combined talents of both competing systems (I'm not proposing mergers and acquisitions, hmm)

might be beneficial to consumers, but I'm assuming that they want to make money at some point.

Anyway, enough mind wandering.

I'm at stage two of my cold / flu, which is constant calls to the bathroom. Is that significant?
I'm armed with cough medicine, snot-minimizer and of course, Imodium. 

So a few hours a day I can stay awake wondering stuff, and then it's back to the bathroom or bed.

And right now I wonder what the hell a phone wants with AI.

I mean, what??! It should make really nice sounding calls. 

It should *Maybe* stream videos and have a way to pipe them over to friendly TV's at waiting rooms.

It might even want to play a game!

So what the hell is AI for? 

"Tensor G5" is a processor without a mission, unless that mission is to watch what I do and where I go, and make predictions to the overseeing authority.

It plays games! Sort of.

It's a biggie Nielsen box that monitors what I watch, what chat programs I use,
And (I didn't know this one) what I photograph!!

Someone somewhere way high up, is teaching their AI program what porn looks like, to better report on it in the future.
Someone somewhere (yada,) Keywords.

THEN some data harvester can hand in a detailed summary to some politician, "what did people talk about most, yesterday?? What did they watch??"

I already get ads tailored to my tastes, "I see you looked at power supplies, huh? Here. I've got one on sale," and that's NOW, no fantasy.

We need (I need) random keywords to test out the theory, but I'd rather not have people busting down the door looking for my seditious behavior, TYVM

I just had a train of thought about phones with location services.
The good guys in movies always seem to be running away from the evil people who just happen to have the finest state-of-the-art surveillance equipment,
One of the good guys always grabs the other's phone and smashes it. Phones are precious to us, we love them and keep them close to our hearts, and that is precisely why movies do that (I think) although the movie-phones are around ten years too old. Them smashing up Modern iPhones is prolly sacrilegious.
On the new phone is a missing, obvious setting, "roaming (yes/no.)" It (instead) says "Roaming: allow data" which means to me that turning off roaming is unthinkable, not an option.

AI, we've got a job for you

"Compared to previous models"? Tell that to my pixel 7, one-bar if I'm lucky, usually. Anything less would be death.

I'm supposed to add a screenshot here of the sim-status page, but it won't let me.

'Signal Strength"

"-83dBm 57 asu" (-105 dBm, then -92 dBm 42 asu)

and it was worse when I first asked it (-92, I think)

Regardless, all signal-bars are happy.

My Mobile voice-network-type is, NR SA. I don't think you'd care but I want to go look it up.

My mobile data network type is "I W L A N" (also, look it up)

AHh!! someone closed a door several hundred feet from here,

 and the signal lowered to -110! 

Point being, the bars dropped a little. They don't shrink, they just go missing.

So the bars are not decorative, they work.

All bars present at -99 dBm, and after that they start to disappear.

I had a devil of a time working out Bluetooth though.

You must be able to quickly press menu buttons on both phones.

My brain was telling me that once it's hooked up, only one phone needs to be fooled with, but that was way wrong.

No one ever tells me anything. Is this cool or what??!!

I don't know if I mentioned it, but my pixel 7 (ordinary edition) and the Pixel XL10 are so close in size, Flies would have trouble landing on the difference.
But the corners on the new phone are much more lazily curved, like some patio, not a building.

And the new phone supports magnetic charging.

I'm really trying to wrap my head around why.

Wouldn't the phone get too hot?
Could you (for example) watch some movie while it magnetically charged?

How busy are you that plugging / unplugging cords would eat into your time?

In the way-future, magnetic chargers on buses and trains and coffee shops would be nice, but doubtless they'd be for iPhones, not for Androids.

I don't see much of a reason at present; the charger would keep disappearing from your office.

And isn't it true that the charging gizmo needs a regular charger to work?

I'll need to absorb more propaganda videos before I'm sold.

Why?

This video is bombastic and doesn't use the official Google charger-gizmo, but it claims that problems exist with magnetic charging anyway.

"Qarging"??

I'd think (I wouldn't know) without their official $39 dongle which does absolutely nothing without a charger, you can't diss the wattage yet.

(Does nothing without a Qarger? WTF?? Are we being all vegan or is google just cheap??)

At the risk of getting punched, uh,
What lame-wad assmunch marketing rep decided to release one/half of a product
and then have the nerve-gall-audacity to charge $39.??
There's more to this.
I have vague visions in my head of protesters and e-waste, but when you specifically sell charging equipment that DOES NOT CHARGE.... wut?

I like the reddit headline, lol.
But it's my point, you're selling an f'ing ADAPTER for a charger
and then you want $40??

It includes a fan! Cuz phones get hot,
It does NOT include a charger!! 
See, cuz, uh ......

The eco-terrorist who decried little wall warts in every package could not have known the obligatory purchase of even bigger wall warts, unless he was a traitorous shill from the electronics industry (The ones who change USB every three months)

I don't work in an office, no one would ever see it, so the only thing really going for it is that the USB-C port on the phone could remain more, "virginal" or something, not bent up, etc.

Since a phone needs to be plugged-unplugged daily to charge, and cables go bad, yes, I see a reason, but maybe they'll come down to 9.95 or cheaper. I see them with those nice useless toys google keeps pointing me to: spinners, tiny planes.

----------------

I don't know why everyone says it's big, why they call it XL.

 Maybe the ordinary-edition is smaller by a lot. I'm not richer than god but I'll guess, the Apples run small and so Google must follow. Anyway I'm totally glad I got the larger size.

Picture,->bluetoothed over.

The transitive verb "Bluetooth" (I'll Bluetooth it to ya) hasn't been invented or this grandma spellchecker is still way 90's, IDK) I'm behind too...It's prolly BT2U

I'm going to upload a pretty picture taken in very poor light.

The point is, it's lots better than everyone says, all the shills who'll say Apple is the best, etc.

This picture has been shrunk and converted, and it *still* looks nice.

All settings for the camera were "auto."

Yes keep doing that. I'll take your picture.
O! Someone's coming!!

forced air: a sentence or two

 You can't blame motels for not wanting to smell, so there's this constant breeze blowing.
I don't care what that maintenance guy said, my heat is on the fritz. It blows room temperature air....
(*Achoo*!!)

(*Achoo*!)

So you see, it doesn't matter if you never talk to anyone, the air will find you.

Beware the air.

On the bright side maybe, I ordered this teeny tiny (we're talking small) bottle of Nyquil.

Forced Air:

People only incant the first few lines

We might never know if that poem had a desired effect.

People repeat it like some incantation, hoping it'll influence the woman in earshot.

"You look nice tonight" won't cut it, but this is long-winded and barely understandable,

What if she yawns? I can re-read this forever and won't really understand it.

The guy thinks the night sky is nice, like her pimply freckled face and moon-eyes.

(What's with her ass? O, she walks nice, I get it (Tick-tock-butt swaaaying)

I just spent the better part of 20 minutes looking for a damn border for my HTML, and nothing that they say, works.
Luckily I have my own damn dissertation on borders that ALWAYS works...waitasec

Bad salespeople (I'm thinking,) repeat the speech they were given, word for word, coldly, and expect the magical power to do the rest. 
Jesus,
"The Bard,"
Patent medicine.

If you can sell stuff, my son,
The world is your oyster.

Did the cold medicine work??

It was Mucinex, not Nyquil, and it might have helped, but I'm cursing the day I bought it now, all drippy and cold.

But if I'd bought Nyquil, would I be better?

Will I be in some hospital soon?

o, man.....

"You cannot self diagnose Pneumonia" says the money-machine, the sponsor-supported google.

"But you can tell if you have it because" and then it lists symptoms.

Don't get me started on the alternatives.... Legionnaires, Covid ...   

Real bad colds can land someone in the hospital twiddling ...

I'm gonna self-diagnose the crap outta myself, not much else to do.

Tightness in my throat... very dry cough (But that could just be the Mucinex (omg)

So as I'm outside early freezing-morning watching all the rolling stops at the 4-way stop sign,

My throat aches a little less, and my head is not as dizzy,

"Fresh air and a cigarette" is my prescription.

drafty: Microsleeps (did I mention the drafty part?)

 You'd think more people would have this. 

And anyway, being clumsy doesn't help at all.
But lately it happens lots more.
My brain writes a blog about "Remember when"
or "what if" and I'm asleep, or at least I think I am. 
It would be a nice thing to google. 
I watched a "Funniest videos" about tiny kids falling asleep into their cheerios...
it's like that.
But grownups might have to sort tiny items at their job, or read long reports, or play chess...
Doubtless very busy people never get this, I'm thinking, because they follow strict schedules.
Being wide awake sort of sucks right now, in the wee hours.
My body follows its own schedule, and issues a command to sleep NOW.
Waking up, same thing.
ten-to midnight? get up already.
5:30AM? 
Sleep NOW or I'll do stuff you won't like.

Tell Google a symptom and it'll convince you you're dying or have cancer.
it is NOT being helpful.

Life sucks and then you sleep.

OTOH it might explain one single thing, in a preachy hyper-moralistic way.

In other words, smoking is worse than original sin but it is useful sometimes.

Smokers don't go around shooting up the saloon for no reason, or yell at their spouse (unless they're out)

And your antidepressants are killing the country (actually that's just one guy, but)

"Cataplexy" sounds cute, reminds me of Catwoman...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So, let's try our new keyboard, OK? I can't type blindly and have to look at every key before I press it with one finger, but....

So far, it's a darling keyboard that reminds me of a black and white dog.

It has splashes of red too.

Actually, , uhm, I *tried* to run it from inside the translucent bag (the permanently foggy bag) but the keyboard would not operate at all. I must have been squishing some keys.

A red warning light went on in the left-hand top corner.

When the keyboard is happy, All the keyboard lights are on in soft pastel colors constantly changing.

I haven't read the book yet but I suppose they can be turned off.

Wow, the "screen Brightness" keys got transferred over.

But ya know what,

Dell decided to update my BIOS with very little warning, at the exact time I plugged in the keyboard! 
Very scary.

I have said/erased this before, that Dell (anyone) should warn people it's a BIOS update, which is like brain surgery with a 50/50 chance of survival.

Anyway.

You don't describe keyboard keys as "Cute" but they are!

They do not "Clack" loudly, it's a soft definite clacking, like a person talking in a low voice.

Or a woman typing over the phone.

The "knob", that notorious thing, is fat and round and has ridges. It *automatically* chooses to adjust the volume!!

Wait....F1 and F2 are...screen brightness, though not automatically (You need to hold down the FN key) How thoughtful. Not even Dell does that, and they should've.

Did I repeat a key yet?
I probably will, and I need to practice my Zen strength of character, and (if that doesn't work) buy more switches.

I will edit this later. I bought that airflow tray and some sort of keyboard cover for the laptop (I seriously guessed)

And I reeeeally need a keyboard cover for the keyboard.

I will keep working with that foggy bag.

The airflow tray has low-profile, and "tall."

With "Tall" you could maybe buy a fan somewhere, but I have no plans for a fan so I place it "Low profile" which is maybe an inch high. There are no names or labels, but, how else could I type this?

The legs, all folded up and ready to be put into a closet for next season, are already an inch high thanks to clever design.

Yes it's steady. Yes it reaches almost to the edges (not quite) and no, it isn't slanted, it's level.

Testing my laptop's keyboard... the new cover is a solid color, but in-between the keys it is translucent.

The Letters are printed on the rubbery cover. Nice Cover!

O. It fits exactly. I chose well.

The thing is, The design of the USB connector is, as usual, shortsighted.

Many a month could go by before I smash it up on the laptop.

Think of it like this:

_____L____________

 "It's a nice keyboard, handle with care"

Lots of wasted space (see below)

The unfortunate reality is that this breakfast counter is really too high to be typing on, and I might move this keyboard again and again, quadrupling the chances that the USB connector will get bumped into and fail eventually. I shall try Bluetooth (and leave the 2.4ghz dongle in the box for now)

beeeecause, they give you three switchable choices: Dongle, Cord or Bluetooth (nice)

Bluetooth (the technology) must be nice but there seem to be so many reasons it would not work well on a computer system.

I already have a keyboard and a mouse. They have 2.4Ghz modules so they could fight among themselves and leave Bluetooth alone. But I'm running out of USB slots.

Well anyway if you sneak up to the PC and play a song from my phone, stuff sounds great.

But actually doing anything, destroys the song.

So the PC becomes an expensive radio. 

A phone I don't use much and some bluetooth speakers seem to be a better solution.

This laptop can play Bluetooth songs live, it's just not worth the hassle.

What if...

I stacked the keyboard on top of the trackpad??

So now the trackpad is unreachable.

The fingerprint-reader is barely reachable, I just checked.

I don't know of any long term side effects, except more room for my coffee cup or bowl of food.

Also, they've included little gold screws and little rubber pads, without saying what they're for.

I shall specially preserve them as artifacts like on "Stargate SG1" until someone explains them.

My sleepiness force is strong with me tonight.

It started out not as strong, but the tension coming from installing the software to update the firmware must have been more sleepy building than I can handle.

Speaking of the firmware, I'll add that it was impossible at first, then extremely easy.
Not sure how or what I changed.

But I don't intend to fool with the actuation at all, although this is this keyboard's claim to fame, its sales highlight.

I'm falling asleep so fast that it is hard to type this.

"mode" beats Keychron, this guy says.

It's like, a guy who can barely play chopsticks buys a Steinway, because he heard they're good,

a hunt-pecker buying an Alps keyboard.
I should talk....I bought this because I couldn't get a realforce Topre which has never chattered (repeated) in years, although it's filthy and the USB cable barely works anymore.

Stuff I didn't know yesterday: "The regency era" in the UK.

They're a little vague on the years.

The era most people are thinking about is Belle epoque, or (in my head) the 1890's.

I didn't know about "Regency."

This all factors into Donald Trump and his ballroom. (O!) and "MAGA" as in, when was America great, mostly?

Reddit says, the fifties.

Then they get all generalized and start quoting their own wealth as proof that they should be listened to.

 

---

---

---

I wanted to rant (very quietly) about my "vegan" coffeecake.
It tastes good, my stomach will probably like it (I can hope, anyway), but I don't really want to be associated with the whole chicken-hugging, brown egg eating, free-range, organic movement,

just because I don't want soy in my food.
Why is that so foreign, so alien, to american cooking?
I'd much rather have lard.

We must be the worst cooks in the civilized world, and we're still fat, and cancerous, so what's the point? Let the great experiment die. Let corn and canola (and Lard) live.

politically incorrect

despondence vs depressed

 "when I fall in love"

it will be, forever.

Or I'll never fall

in love....

... And the moment I can feel that you feel that way too

Is when I fall in love with you"

As if a person could be so choosy about who they fall in love with.

I know about the falling in love part.

It's the part about "feeling that way too"

Trains of thought don't wait, they leave the station when they feel like it, and I don't know where this was going.

Except, that song is running through my head, and in my racy game, Player and his friend will have sex very soon.

Is she in love with him?

Is He with her?

The bottom line of most of these games is the same, and I'm learning that the window dressing is copied over too. 

I've got a damn keyboard coming from (originally) Hong Kong with a layover in Florida.

Florida?!
It was supposed to be here hours ago but air-traffic-controllers, the weather, customs/tariffs, contraband checking, (*sigh*) it might not get here till Saturday.

Today??!! Nononononono.
A nice person, in Florida, rates.
You don't count.

I was *this* close to cancelling it. Even the amazon website says it will arrive Sunday 16.

Very odd.

And how rude for pulling the rug out of my date...but.... is this week some holiday that ends around the 20th??

I'm pleased to report that amazon typed in an update that looks more recent than Friday morning.
It rose from the swamps and is heading northwesterly, albeit slowly.

(Well even a damn car only takes three or four days to traverse the US)

Unless they maybe stick it in some warehouse for the holidays, it SHOULD be here tomorrow or the day after.

"Three days," says most of the amazon warehouses on this map.

I have a superstition that you condemn a package to slow-boat narrow-street delivery status, if you keep checking the status.

A computer dutifully records and reports on every time you check and when, and occasionally they notice and do some snarky thing (route it to Florida, etc,) if you check too many times for their tastes.

Kind of like some back-seat driver saying "Are we there yet? Did you take the Triborough bridge?"

"gggrrr, put it in the garage (warehouse) and let it sit"

And another thing...

A piece of hardware coming from the FAR East didn't have to originate in Florida, unless the package is from a small business with dust-bunnies on the stock which Amazon promised to sell.

It's a little vague, but couldn't my Floridian keyboard be from Best Buy?

I totally lost the trains of thought. 

People can be nice, smile, be all friendly, occasionally have sex,

They're just not in love.

Too bad for you, have a nice day.

Not sure why the internet thinks that every disease or malady you can google should be represented by women and/or children, men seem immune.

I don't have the skills to re-retouch this retouched representation of depression (despondence?)

---

"influencer" is a vaunted word, and if you parrot the exactly correct talking points, and join the right forums, and say just the right things, 

You too could be put on watchlists.

In fact, I just read about an influencer-wannabe.
She might be one someday, but apparently is not one yet.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/fake-nyc-food-influencer-goes-missing-45-minutes-around-bill-time-arrested-persistent-evasion-1755439

Later on (very soon) it won't be "What do women want" but "What does AI want?" Probably true but out of context without a lengthy explanation:

AI news will judge who is hot and who is not, who is an Iconic rebel and who is a criminal waiting to be locked up. 

AI in action (I think)

But this is a train of thought, not some sales seminar. Here:

"Come up and Analyze me sometime"

a vague (possibly misleading) headline started all this.

Who died and made THIS guy the expert on employment trends??

Let's judge the book by its cover, and assume the guy means, you'll be rich or unemployed.

https://fortune.com/2025/11/13/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-prestigious-college-graduates-doomed-people-expert-knowledge-make-more-money/

Unfortunately they're trying to paywall/assimilate me, so I have not really read it yet.

Capitalism is dead, Oligarchy FTW, something, I'll guess.

Not quite... it's more of a recruitment blurb about how great his company is, and why you should work there, as a high-school grad (because once you hit college, you cost too much)

And if he's real lucky you're an ace programmer (hacker) or you're super good with chemicals....

I added that last part, don't sue.

But it's true (isn't it?)

*I* think.....Sons and daughters of politicians and moguls will always be welcome at Ivy-League schools, regardless of what this guy thinks.

They don't need the money, but the company needs them.

I had half a mind to write another blog entry about "The new normal" but 

it's way too vague in my head, and the New York Times did it better.

If you're reading this, right this second, this last part will look very disjointed as I gather information on the premise that fringes of society are now the center, and what was centrist before is disparaged as radical.

"The Party" was my initial train, shepherds trying to corral the internet memes into some uniting force against whatever they happen to believe has messed up their world.

(Paywalled)

An opinion article makes the front page, and me trying to quote it gets a large banner saying

I don't like memes, and organizers in forums trying to get you to buy or to vote a certain way, as if they just got out of bed and thought up something.

It's a campaign, that serves their political machine.

What?

O, that was it, nothing too specific.

Join a forum, read the comments of any newspaper, and you get hints about what I mean.

That, and maybe a vague question about people travelling the world to make speeches and shake hands,

when all they really need to do is Skype, conference-call each other.

(how can we propagandize)
How can we spread the word of MAGA
WORLDWIDE

Write something on "X" and it becomes a world-shaking event.

It's no wonder they diss a college education, they'd much rather hire young influencers and people drawing ugly frogs and clever memes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c629pny4gl7o If a high school kid was there, (apparently) he'd know what to do.

AI will further marketing, propaganda, empower politicians, it's no wonder that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread lately.

(If I get enough of these random thoughts together, I could have a decent blog entry, lol)

what's his face, the computer generated meme guy.

Inanimate meme heads have names, I suppose, but I don't know them.

Super-meme, Righteous-bro meme,

                   vs

your dad meme

They're grooming you for the next election (j/k)

alt-right guy vs dissolute sinning leftist revolutionary antifa communist alien...

Oh. "Compare and Contrast" AKA does this look biased to you?

Is my bias showing?

Does this make my bias look fat?

People on the intolerant side call up their meme-friend to prove a point.

Does he have a name?

"Yes." (maybe)

I would think that a good elementary school openly discusses "Mind manipulation" although they probably use more uplifting patriotic terms designed to inspire and not be clinical.

If all teachers had to do was repeat information, we have computers and recordings to do that.

I started to bombast about real life situations and stopped myself, not being a patented expert.

Parrots could teach better.

Huey Newton, Malcom X, Guy Fawkes, Sirhan Sirhan, these are historical names but I wonder how many students, through personal preference of the school or the teacher, know who they are.

Sethi: Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time.
That (ahem) That was from an ancient movie, but the same idea exists now.

Drifting back into orbit, um, cigarette smoking is vilified by consulting firms and marketing firms, it's what they get paid to do.

Miserable people in the freezing cold, slowly dying.

But if you switch to cigars, suddenly it's manly and pleasurable.

Why?

I have a theory that those expensive marketing firms concentrate on cigarettes and leave cigars alone, that would be another contract and more money.

I also had a few rants about vaping, how suddenly, without many studies, vaping is bad (m'kay?) and the people vaping are evil and killing your dog who lives across the street (*Koff!! Koff!*)

 Anyway.....Google's front page news right this exact second (because the political headlines change often) has a picture of protesters with signs.
I wonder how much of the headlines are designed to distract from real news, but that is a way different blog.

Dangling yarn before hungry cats...

Still, I liked the picture.

"Yes"-Chad dons his hat to watch a "rally" two or three people they scraped together for a photo.

Apparently we're at war with Venezuela, but that was not one of the headlines.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oyucH0TIfJs (TLDR: really huge oil reserves are there)

https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+wants+oil+from+venezuela&oq=trump+wants+oil+from+venezuela

weighty shit comes from tiny posts with off-the-cuff remarks.

Suddenly we're all Harry Reasoner pontificating...

but if I were a meme-generator, I might flippantly say

Greenland

Canada

Venezuela!

and add Castro's speech in "scarface"

but I'm not, so I won't.

Nevermind.

Good night and good news.