'Tis The Season to Be Bitchin....
Nov. 14th, 2021 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogYesterday brought the first snow of the season. It was pretty and heavy and fluffy and stuck to the ground. I went out with the dog and passed a teenage neighbor lying face-up in the middle of their lawn.
I asked, “Are you okay, or are you making snow angels?”
“I’m making snow angels!”
“Well, then, you’re okay:)”
By nightfall, the sun had come out and melted it all, but this morning, on our regular group dogwalk meetup, Day Two of Winter brought a snow that was slushy and yucky and mushy on the ground- nothing to write home about. Pepper yanked on her leash as I left the car and dropped half my coffee to the trail. I continued grumpily for much of the morning, but being with friends always improves things:)
Maybe one of them got a better picture of the dog in the foreground, who was probably lapping up the last of my Timmy's:P
----
I then headed home for more online fun. First came an effort to figure out how to get Apple products to display on our supposedly smart telly. Last weekend, I mentioned taking a crack at installing an app for it and finding the device was too full of bloated preinstalled crap to allow it. One "fix" I read about was using a USB flash drive to increase the television's available storage; I popped a blank one in last night and it promptly screwed up everything else we were trying to watch. So this morning, I went in search of online help.
Good luck with that, old man.
I found many things that looked like this, but this site was the one I found the most troubling:
Never mind the hideous bad English in that text. No, this has become the flavor of the month among malware pushers, and I see it on all kinds of supposedly reputable websites: right above, or in this case in the middle of, an article is a "download now" ad that likely leads to who knows what being installed on your computer. Not a word to tell you it's an ad, and while I recognize that triangle/X combo in the upper right as a Google Adchoices cue, I doubt that Grandpa Simpson would before loading up Bart's laptop with toolbars and widgets. I was grumpy enough to report it to Google, despite knowing full well that tugging on Superman's cape would have more effect.
Worse, the instructions below that, for actually using a USB stick to increase the TV memory? Utterly useless. They pointed me to options on the set's "settings" menu that simply did not exist.
So I remain Doctor-less, short of connecting a laptop, for the time being. I did finally watch the second episode, which I thought was pretty well done. I didn't finish it until yesterday, Odd Couple Day, which was completely appropriate because "War of the Sontarans" included, as a significant plot point,.... a FRYPAN?!?
(You did know that yesterday was OCD, right? I did, and knew the main reason why, but this piece pointed out a second-level significance of it: November 13th was the birthday of Garry Marshall- longtime producer of the series and brother of future director Penny who played Oscar's secretary on the show.)
----
The grumps continued when checking email:
A book I ordered a week ago? No sign of it being shipped; it is in something called "ready to pull" status, whatever that means. (Never mind whether Eleanor's new laptop will EVER be shipped. That's in her email and I do not ask these things.)
Google acknowledged my snitch, but basically said I'll never know if they do anything about it.
Then came a last straw on another front:
The Buffalo News finally got me to cancel home delivery when they sent an email proposing to jack up the price of a Sunday-only subscription from 29 bucks a month to over 45. For a paper you can buy at the store for quite a bit less than ten bucks.
When they first put up their paywall several years back, the Sunday-only subscription was actually a couple shekels less than their online-only price, because advertisers still valued hands-on customers. We soldiered through increases- from $11 to $22 to most recently $29. Some of it was inertia, some to support journalism- at least this paper's print content is not the Pennysaver-size drek Gannett papers have become- and some because we loved our Sunday delivery driver. But he retired this year, and this upcoming increase was the bridge too far.
We'll still pay to read online daily, but it's going to be the going rate of a buck a week. Their useful coupons are down to nothing, the funnies aren't funny, and there'll be a lot less in the recycling bin.
----
Fortunately, the Bills redeemed the afternoon from the depths of my grump by resoundingly grounding the Jets down in Joisey. It was the debut of a new radio announcer, since our longtime play-by-play guy tested COVID-positive and was out for the week. In his place was a radio guy from the Giants broadcast team; he's based out of that area, works for a sister station to our Bills flagship, and Big Blue was off this week. He did a nice job, but Murph is expected back next Sunday.
And we just discovered that the one true Ghosts series is back on HBO Max for us tor resume watching tonight! CBS premiered a knockoff version set in the US, but the cast of dead characters from the BBC is what we've been looking forward to:)
Even if most of the ghosts are pretty grumpy....
I asked, “Are you okay, or are you making snow angels?”
“I’m making snow angels!”
“Well, then, you’re okay:)”
By nightfall, the sun had come out and melted it all, but this morning, on our regular group dogwalk meetup, Day Two of Winter brought a snow that was slushy and yucky and mushy on the ground- nothing to write home about. Pepper yanked on her leash as I left the car and dropped half my coffee to the trail. I continued grumpily for much of the morning, but being with friends always improves things:)
Maybe one of them got a better picture of the dog in the foreground, who was probably lapping up the last of my Timmy's:P
----
I then headed home for more online fun. First came an effort to figure out how to get Apple products to display on our supposedly smart telly. Last weekend, I mentioned taking a crack at installing an app for it and finding the device was too full of bloated preinstalled crap to allow it. One "fix" I read about was using a USB flash drive to increase the television's available storage; I popped a blank one in last night and it promptly screwed up everything else we were trying to watch. So this morning, I went in search of online help.
Good luck with that, old man.
I found many things that looked like this, but this site was the one I found the most troubling:
Never mind the hideous bad English in that text. No, this has become the flavor of the month among malware pushers, and I see it on all kinds of supposedly reputable websites: right above, or in this case in the middle of, an article is a "download now" ad that likely leads to who knows what being installed on your computer. Not a word to tell you it's an ad, and while I recognize that triangle/X combo in the upper right as a Google Adchoices cue, I doubt that Grandpa Simpson would before loading up Bart's laptop with toolbars and widgets. I was grumpy enough to report it to Google, despite knowing full well that tugging on Superman's cape would have more effect.
Worse, the instructions below that, for actually using a USB stick to increase the TV memory? Utterly useless. They pointed me to options on the set's "settings" menu that simply did not exist.
So I remain Doctor-less, short of connecting a laptop, for the time being. I did finally watch the second episode, which I thought was pretty well done. I didn't finish it until yesterday, Odd Couple Day, which was completely appropriate because "War of the Sontarans" included, as a significant plot point,.... a FRYPAN?!?
(You did know that yesterday was OCD, right? I did, and knew the main reason why, but this piece pointed out a second-level significance of it: November 13th was the birthday of Garry Marshall- longtime producer of the series and brother of future director Penny who played Oscar's secretary on the show.)
----
The grumps continued when checking email:
A book I ordered a week ago? No sign of it being shipped; it is in something called "ready to pull" status, whatever that means. (Never mind whether Eleanor's new laptop will EVER be shipped. That's in her email and I do not ask these things.)
Google acknowledged my snitch, but basically said I'll never know if they do anything about it.
Then came a last straw on another front:
The Buffalo News finally got me to cancel home delivery when they sent an email proposing to jack up the price of a Sunday-only subscription from 29 bucks a month to over 45. For a paper you can buy at the store for quite a bit less than ten bucks.
When they first put up their paywall several years back, the Sunday-only subscription was actually a couple shekels less than their online-only price, because advertisers still valued hands-on customers. We soldiered through increases- from $11 to $22 to most recently $29. Some of it was inertia, some to support journalism- at least this paper's print content is not the Pennysaver-size drek Gannett papers have become- and some because we loved our Sunday delivery driver. But he retired this year, and this upcoming increase was the bridge too far.
We'll still pay to read online daily, but it's going to be the going rate of a buck a week. Their useful coupons are down to nothing, the funnies aren't funny, and there'll be a lot less in the recycling bin.
----
Fortunately, the Bills redeemed the afternoon from the depths of my grump by resoundingly grounding the Jets down in Joisey. It was the debut of a new radio announcer, since our longtime play-by-play guy tested COVID-positive and was out for the week. In his place was a radio guy from the Giants broadcast team; he's based out of that area, works for a sister station to our Bills flagship, and Big Blue was off this week. He did a nice job, but Murph is expected back next Sunday.
And we just discovered that the one true Ghosts series is back on HBO Max for us tor resume watching tonight! CBS premiered a knockoff version set in the US, but the cast of dead characters from the BBC is what we've been looking forward to:)
Even if most of the ghosts are pretty grumpy....
News
Date: 2021-11-15 12:22 pm (UTC)Lately, I've been catching up on spooky stuff, since October things are far too numerous to get them all done for Halloween. The Harry Potter series is where I'm watching now--currently on 3: Prisoner of Azkaban. :)