A Jaunty Little Blog – Page 9 – No-wax, easy maintenance, bacteriostatic, and anti-slip.

September 28, 2015

Nothing But Trouble

Friends,

I wrote this for inclusion in an application package to write for an Apple-centric blog. I haven’t heard back from them, but I thought you might enjoy it. Please also note that it clocks in at 299 words, which seemed important.

Chris, the Time Warner Cable installer arrived early for the appointment yesterday. His detailed tattoos declared his love of mountain biking. His worn and too-large boots showed that he’d been around a while. It was time for me to make the switch from the rural-class DSL recommended by the realtor when I bought the cabin to faster and cheaper cable.

Connections complete, he poked around on his iPad to turn up the service while I poked around on the Mac Mini to see why the network wasn’t coming up. I should at least get a connection to the router, I thought, but Safari protested, “You are not connected to the Internet.” I’ve never used a Netgear modem with this Airport Extreme, but the modem’s lights were all reassuringly green next to the Airport’s ominous orange.

“Oh, you’ve got one of these,” Chris sighed, flipping the Airport around. “I have nothing but trouble with these things.” That can’t be, I thought. Apple stuff just works. After decades of troubleshooting and cussing and fixing PCs and third-party gear, I made an effort to keep my own home network as homogeneous as possible. I need to get actual work done, so only Macs, iOS and Airport will do. I’m all in.

I managed to change the network address settings in Airport Utility and hit Update only moments before Chris took matters into his own hands and pulled the router’s power. “There, that should do it,” he beamed. Green light, connection established, and I was ready to stream the Galaxie 500 deep cuts playlist. If I were a good Apple evangelist, I would’ve told him that the static IP settings weren’t working. Instead, I simply thanked him for his hard work and gave him a positive rating on the survey.

If you have comments, please leave them on your Pinterest or Instagram feeds and I’ll go look for them.

Your pal,

– bob

August 31, 2015

Our New Offering

Friends,

I applied (again) for a copywriting gig at a reasonably famous craft brewery in a county just South of here and their HR department politely declined the offer of my services. Before I submitted my application, I did my research and spent time on their website. This particular brewery seems to have written themselves into a very deep hole if you think about it. Their site is full of words, their packaging is full of words, and each of their many products have a pile of words apportioned to each product page. You’d think that they would have glommed onto my application like a lamprey, since as you’ve seen here, I am rarely at a loss for words. Many words. Many lots of enormous words.

This got me to thinking though—how would I write for beers? Also, how might I write for beers and incorporate (and milk endlessly) a single joke. Here’s my product announcement…

Ampersand Brewing Company Announces Latest Creation

Ampersand Brewing Company, the premier craft brewer in Northern Southern California’s famous craft brewing region, is excited to announce its latest premier craft beer—Additive Ale. Brewmaster Ann Annotherthynge has hand-selected the finest Ersatz hops from the Etcetera region of Austria, bringing the fruity nose and resplendent hearty head fans have grown accustomed to. Using the finest Furthermore yeasts and slow-hopped over months and months and months, the finish is smooth with notes of caramel, grapefruit and leather. Additive Ale will be initially available on tap at finer gastropubs, and in restaurants, and at liquor stores, and supermarkets, and in growlers on our web store, and in convenient six packs, and from taco trucks, and from other places.

Yup, just the one joke.

Your best pal in the entire world,

– bob

August 15, 2015

Not The Future

Change the oil and she’ll fire right up!

Friends,

I applied for a copywriting job at a cute little agency housed in a cute little Victorian about 50 miles away from my piney paradise. 50 miles you say? Isn’t that the distance I crabbed about not that long ago? Yes, but the old gig was in a sea level men’s room hand dryer, not in an old neighborhood with quaint tree-covered lanes.

The setting was great, the people were welcoming and the job was something I could do standing on my head. How do I know? During the selection process, I was sent writing tests, including a timed test, that I took to like a kitten is drawn to a webcam. A long week waiting for an answer ended with polite rejection. As is my custom, I asked what I could have done differently as a way to figure out why my application was turned down. I received this:

“Your qualifications and interview was excellent. You were one of our top three candidates. Ultimately, it came down to the best fit for our company and our future.”

I’m not entirely sure how I might not have fit into the company, since we seemed to get along very well in the interview and subsequent email correspondence. What I’m worried about as I, ahem, gain more life experience, is the perception that I won’t be around for a company’s future. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve got another good 100 to 150 years left in the tank. Putting in another twenty until some people might think I should retire is a wildly optimistic number for any business concerns’ hopes of longevity if you look at the numbers.

So what does this mean? It’s back to the drawing board, or writing board, or keying board. I’m sure somebody needs the savvy and experience I’ve earned. Sadly, the folks I had hoped would see that, didn’t.

Your best pal in the whole wide world,

– bob

June 18, 2015

In Defense Of Yesterday’s Technology

Friends,

I’ve been a subscriber to a single wireless phone carrier for twelve years, which is absurd when you think about it. Who hasn’t switched and flopped between carriers to get the best price or the best signal or to take advantage of a last gasp deal (Hello, T-Mobile!). I was finally able to take advantage of my, erm, loyalty yesterday and also a giant multinational corporation hoping to clear last year’s phone model out of the channel to get an iPhone 6 for nothing down. Also, the payments on the new phone with the deal are lower than the old phone, so the monthly is lower. That’s the financials, but what about the hardware?

Brilliant. The camera is lovely, the processor is very fast and migration of data from the old to the new model was reasonably quick when directly connected to the desktop through iTunes. It’s bigger than the older phone, but it still fits in a front jeans pocket.

All that said, there are some problems. My laptop is from (late) 2007 and has been rejuvinated with a RAM and hybrid hard drive (part SSD, part spinning disks) upgrade, but still can’t run the latest version of Mac OS X. That means that it has been excluded from the great cloudiverse. It can’t share data with the new phone, iPad, or the desktop machine if I turn iCloud on. Apple makes an app (or application, if you will) that allows Windows machines to access iCloud storage, but you can’t do that on old Macs. Perfectly functional Macs.

Perfectly functional Intel-based machines are out. The Power PC machines, like the G4 Cube, Power Mac, Powerbook G3s and iBooks (before iBooks was an e-book purchasing app, or application, if you will) are still running, but out of luck in this ecosystem. Surely you don’t want to toss these machines in the bin since they have a lot of useful life left doing the things that most people want to do, like browsing the web or checking email, so making these machines obsolete seems like a waste.

There are lots of ways around this file sharing problem, like Dropbox, and local file sharing, but the many old machines on my network deserve something better. They’ve built the company, or at least the ethos of the company, so why not cut them a little slack?

I know why, but that’s the subject of the next piece.

Your pal,

– bob

May 21, 2015

Tramway!

Friends,

How do you build a tram system up a steep slope before we invented anti-gravity boots and rock-climbing robots? Helicopters! These “mechanical dragonflies” hauled stuff up the hill to build towers and string cables so that a bunch of guys in the 1960s didn’t have to. This video is 25 minutes of your life that you may, as I do, find fascinating.

Also, the opening set-up shots are worth the time just to see the hotels and businesses that no longer exist—like Bob Hope.

Come for the nostalgia, stay for the crass jokes!

Your pal,

– bob

May 20, 2015

Oh, The Technical Issues You’ll Have!

Friends,

I’ve been working on cleaning up some of the issues around here, but it’s a bit of a slog to go back through ten years of posts to find what’s broken. Here are only a few of the fun things that have gone wrong at your favorite Jaunty Little Blog:

When I moved to the new hosting platform, some of the images didn’t make it over. There are broken links everywhere and I’m going through the archives to return the missing files. It’s a bit of a mess.
Changing to the new template has damaged some of the closing tags for links in the posts. This means that links are just spilling across entire articles instead of ending where the link is supposed to end. I’m not entirely sure why this happened, but I’m going through each post and editing tags. So far, I’ve made it back to 2012.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to do, but I appreciate your patience while I continue to work on restoring some order.

Your pal,

– bob

UPDATE: I’m having a harder time finding old pictures than I thought. It turns out that my naming convention wasn’t as air-tight as I thought. I hope the Wayback Machine can help.

April 10, 2015

Welcome To The Future

Friends,

This BBC documentary from 1966 details the technological advances pioneered in California with not a small amount of wistfulness. California’s rapid pace is awe inspiring, but there are casualties…

It’s worth your 45 minutes.

Your pal,

– bob

January 9, 2015

Things I Learned While Staring At Trees

Friends,

I was really looking forward to having a respite in 2015 from the nightmare that was 2014. Make no mistake, 2014 was no picnic. I had to quit the job I relied on to get away from an evil boss. Racial turmoil and mass shootings roiled these United States. War, disease and privation made above the fold headlines every single day. Soft media concerned themselves with glossy asses and selfie sticks. Surely, the jackals could take a moment to reflect and step away for a while. This was not to be.

The Paris offices of French magazine Charlie Hedbo were shot up yesterday by Muslim extremists, killing 12 and shocking a nation. This was one of the few publications that republished the cartoons depicting Mohammed published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005, earning the magazine a fatwa.

The day before, a chapter of the NAACP in Colorado Springs was bombed, leading to hardly a peep of news coverage. Apparently, this wasn’t fireworks or a gas leak as some have suggested. Rather, this domestic terror attack was intentional, but the outrage machine has been mostly dormant.

The 2016 Chevy Volt was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show the day before that. One of its key features is the ability of the car to extend to you GM’s “commerce and engagement offering” by showing you ads and offering you coupons when you drive by participating businesses. You can also receive a discount on your insurance via the car’s built-in connection to Progressive Insurance by opting into allowing the car to tell them if you’ve been speeding or doing other naughty things. Hashtag: snitch.

We have also been bombarded in this nascent year with the news that our New Year’s snow storm did not put a dent in California’s drought. which is the worst that has ever happened in the history of forever. We will need, it is supposed, 11 trillion gallons of water to cure this deficit, which is an unimaginable and unattainable number. Therefore, we are doomed.

Or are we?

Okay, yes, maybe we are doomed. What has changed is that we’re being constantly beat over the head with our own failures and our own suffering. The bludgeoning by the media with the cudgel of despair must drive ratings or SEO or clicks or something, but I can see a way to manage the gloom…

Require the media to offer solutions.

None of this “spark a dialog” or “encourage a conversation” nonsense. I’m talking about real solutions. If the drought is caused by too many of those little silica desiccant packs in our packages drying out the air, let’s get rid of them. If the bombers in Colorado mistook the NAACP building for an Arby’s, let’s find a way to get them better maps. If French Islamist extremists don’t understand that cartoons aren’t actually photographs of the prophet, let’s give provide them with a better arts education.

Okay, I couldn’t think of real solutions for any of those problems except for this: Never buy a GM product with OnStar. Ever.

Your pal,

– bob

December 10, 2014

Kate.

Friends,

I listen to a lot of podcasts, which is like radio without the antennas or the static. This week’s Roderick On The Line episode discusses minimalism, go-bags, jeans, trendy boots and ends with a reflection on Kates versus Kats versus Kathryns that I’ve snipped for your listening pleasure.

Of course, you should probably listen to the whole thing if you’re not afraid of a couple four-letter words.

Your pal,

– bob

December 6, 2014

A Small Business, Man

Friends,

No, I’m not giving up on finding a commuting for an hour, sitting in a cubicle 9-to-5 job, but the benefits of a freelance career have their appeal. For instance, I can step outside and take pictures. Also, Mme. Puppy Dog isn’t getting any younger, so it’s nice to spend time with her.

The only hiccup is getting new clients, and recurring clients would be nice. Maybe you know someone who needs a press release or a new website or who’d like to start a direct mail campaign. I know someone who can make that happen.

You know who.

– bob

November 26, 2014

Drought.

Friends,

August? Really? It’s been that long?

I can explain…

My trip to Hemet, discussed in some detail here, was to deposit the final paycheck from the Far Eastern Outpost of a charity. In the intervening months, I’ve been looking for jobs, trying to keep my house, and other fun activities.
“You can’t fire me, I quit,” seems like a lot of fun to say, but actually doing it is fraught with problems. First, I should say that I was, by my reckoning, the fourteenth employee to be investigated at that charity in the last year. By investigated I mean selected for summary judgement and immediate dismissal. It turns out that when the boss tries to impugn your expertise in public, that boss will make sure you’re fired if you stand up for yourself. For instance, I was unable to see into the future to know that the boss’ internet connection in a hotel conference facility on the East Coast might be spotty. Nor was I able to fix that connectivity problem. Therefore, I must be the worst and she let everyone know that. I was having none of it.
Luckily, I have friends who warned me of my impending separation, so I was advised to quit before the papers could be drawn up. The bad news is that it’s pretty difficult to receive unemployment insurance benefits if you quit, regardless of the reason. I’ll just go ahead and put my ultimately successful appeal of the denial of benefits in the “other fun activities” column.
After a year slogging through a fairly hostile work environment, leaving has been a relief but getting healthy has been a slow process. Slower still has been working out what to do for a living now that I’m all grown up. Freelance copywriting seems the most risky tack to take, but I’m gravitating in that direction. Head over to bobtherieau.com and let me know why that’s a terrible idea!

That’s the short version of events. There are some great stories to share from my final days over there, but the holiday season has begun and I hate to do anything that’ll adversely effect their fundraising efforts. After all, I wouldn’t have stayed there for a decade if I didn’t believe in the mission to help people in need of a fresh start. I guess you’re witnessing my own fresh start, so cross some appendages that I can make it a good one.

Your best pal in the whole wide world,

– bob

August 16, 2014

Hemet.

Friends,

I’ve taken a break, in case you haven’t noticed, to take care of life. It’s been a tumultuous month or so but you’ll be pleased to know that the tumult is largely over. I’ll get back to that in a little while, but you should know that I took a little trip to Hemet today.

I had a check to deposit and the closest branch of my bank is in Riverside County’s home of potato farming, Hemet, California. Once I managed to wade through the traffic, the incessant lights and the low-motor skill holders of driving licenses, I rolled up to the parking lot and caught the attention of enough skinhead loiterers that I thought I should head inside.

Once I was buzzed through the outside doors and the vestibule doors (not entirely unlike this, and you know how that turned out), I was greeted by a pudgy security guard who insisted on shaking my hand and disco playing from the overhead sound system. Friday. Disco. The teller at the end motioned me over, “I can help you.”

Then I noticed the name badge on her teller window. “Excuse me, can I ask you a personal question? Is your name really Shimmy?” “Well, my name is much longer, so most people call me Shimmy.”

“With the disco playing and your name, this may be the most fun bank branch I’ve ever visited.” “Why thank you,” she said. “We try.”

So if you’re having a bad week, head to the Hemet branch of my bank. They seem to be having a pretty good time.

Your pal,

– bob

June 6, 2014