Memories of my last Old Settlers.

The city should be setting up Old Settlers this week. I have some interesting memories of Old Settlers time. Here is a memoir of my last Old Settlers memory.

Old Settlers Time

The smell of anything you want fried on a stick and cotton candy hangs heavily in the air, causing mouths to water regardless of the hiked up prices. It is that time of year again. It is that week were the carnival companies come and turn our downtown, as small as it is, into a barricaded off playground of children's imagination. Citizens and corporations alike come from every side of town and set up their tents in a shameless attempt at pushing their wares on the unsuspecting public at marked up prices. Everyone comes with paintings, crafts, candles, toys, sand, food, and even somewhat drug like substances. You can stop in to the O2 tent and for a few minutes you can get a free oxygen high.

There is one tent that stands out from the others. It is placed somewhat on the outskirts of the carnival, it stands twice as large as the other tents and distractingly shines in it's bright yellow color. Underneath the shadow of this tent stands tables piled full of various books all by one author L Ron Hubbard. It is the Scientologists tent. I read some of the posters briefly as I wait. One poster outlines the several points of the organization's mission, End war, End sickness, End drugs, End poverty, etc... Other posters outline different techniques that they teach to combat addictions, depression, and even muscle pain they cure by using touch therapy. There are two men sitting in chairs giving demonstrations to passers by. There is a woman who I recognize from my church sitting in a chair in front of another man. I cannot recall her name, I am bad with names. She is holding onto two slender silver cylanders, they look like those can and string telephones that we would use as a kid. But instead of the wire just going from one can directly to another, the wires go into the back of an odd looking blue device that has several knobs and switches and a little meter. I listen in.

"How are things at work" says the man.

"Things are going well." the woman says.

The meter confirms this as the needle remains still.

"How about your family?"

The needle wiggles a bit and drifts upward. The woman's eyes stay fixed to the meter, she refuses to say.

"Hmm, is it your husband." the needle stops.

"Perhaps a child." the needle begins to move upward again.

"Do you have a son or daughter that you are worried about?" The needle shoots up.

"It looks like you have some stress."

The woman throws the cans down out of her hands and looks hurt. "That's not fair." she says. "Everyone who has kids worries for their kids. Do you have any kids?"

The man doesn't answer the question. "Scientology could really help you." he says. With a huff the lady gets up and begins to move away.

"How about you sir, would you like an audit?" the second man says as he turns to me.

I look at him squarely in the eye, he looks unkempt. his beard has grown long and his hair is uncombed. I shrug, "Why not."

I take a seat and the man hands me the cans. I grip them loosely.

"What is your name?"

"Stephen?" I respond.

"Well Stephen, it is nice to meet you, this device, to put it simply, is a stress meter. I will ask you some questions about your life and try to find areas of your life which cause you stress so that you can focus your efforts on those areas of your life. let me calibrate the machine to you." The man turns a knob slightly and the needle on the meter swings up to a halfway point. I relax.

"How is life going for you Stephen?"

I think for a moment and calmly reply, "Things are going well enough." I watch as the needle begins to drop slowly.

"How are things going in your family."

I concentrate on the family and try to find any thing that would be a cause for stress, I find none.

"My family is doing well." The needle drops nearly to the bottom of the scale.

The man adjusts the knob to bring the needle back to the middle.

"How about work? Are your coworkers nice?"

"Work is going well, I am saving up enough money, that is a good thing." the needle continues to fall.

A discouraging look begins to creep across the man's face.

"What kind of things do you do for a hobby?"

I shrug as several things cross my mind, "I like to build things with legos. I like to write. I play video games." the needle drops down further almost touching the bottom of the meter a second time.

The man adjusts the knob again bringing the needle to the beginning. "Hmm" he says as he looks at the machine. "Do you hang out with anyone? Are your friends doing well?"

I began to rack my brain now, searching for anything, even something unrelated to the question that might trigger stress. The best I can come up with was a recent argument which I had with an online hotshot. Even as I thought about that argument though, the needle was unwavering in its determination to reach the bottom of the meter. I looked at the man again. "My friends are all doing well."

The man adjusted the knob a fourth time to bring the needle up to the middle, "What are your plans for the future?"

"I am saving up money right now so that I can go on a mission in a couple more months."

"A Mission? What for?"

"To preach the Gospel."

"What church do you belong to?"

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints."

The man looks back at the machine, the needle rested firmly on the bottom of the meter. Confusion crossed his face. "Umm. well... It was nice meeting you Mr. Stephen. I don't know what to say, I have never seen anyone with as little stress as you. I really wish I could live as free of stress. Scientology realy does help out a lot of people though. I can give you a free book that you can read to learn more about it." He holds out a thin looking book.

"Thank you" I say kindly. I stand up and begin to walk away.

My friend Peter leans over and chuckles, "Dude, as soon as you mentioned your mission the needle just dropped, it didn't drift down slowly. it was like it was pulled to the bottom."

I shake my head, I flip through the pages of the book. There is nothing of interest to me. I dump the book in a near by trashcan. The thought runs through my head. If I have just accomplished what they are working towards, then why not ask me how I do live a life so free of stress. It boggles my mind that someone could just pass up an opportunity like that. We pass by the tent later to find the man huttled down behind the books, hiding the cigarette that he was lighting up. We both shake our heads and begin to roam elsewhere among the countless paintings and toys and trinkets. It is Old Settlers Time again.

Patience is a curious virtue.

Patience is a curious virtue. I've often considered that I have a lot of patience. However there is still things that get under my skin. I am trying out speech recognition software. I've found that I have very little patience for computers. I'm currently trying to use windows speech recognition software to write this blog. But it is not going so well.

For example I just had the say new paragraph about five times for it to finally recognize that I wanted a new line. And every time I try to type new paragraph or new line, I have to say "literal new paragraph" (That is it. I give up, this software is practically useless) The people who develop speech recognition software use the argument that people can speak 120 words a minute yet they can only type at less than 40 words a minute as a way to draw them in. My problem is figuring out what I want to say. This lack of inspiration is what makes me type at 40 words a minute (ish). Consequently, this lack of inspiration causes me to speak at 40 words a minute as well. In fact I could argue that because I have spent more time using a keyboard than I have using speech recognition, I end up thinking in type faster than I think in voice.

On top of this argument is the fact that I have go go back and correct a minimum of three things per line when using speech recognition. This constant stop and start in composition interrupts my thought process and I can't think of what to say next. I didn't mean to take up a whole blog post with a rant about speech recognition. However it does seem fitting. I have patience with people, they are people, they are imperfect by nature. Computers on the other hand hold very little of my patience. Computers are tools, they are supposed to make life easier. Yet at times my computer becomes so unwieldy. It is like trying to weed my garden with a back hoe. I want to do some small task but it ends up being such a hassle.

Like trying to write this blog. It would be some small thing. If I could do it with speech recognition software, it would be nice, yet the software just is too unwieldy and turns the tiny job into a huge mess. I will have to say though, I wanted to use speech recognition because November is approaching fast. November means National Novel Writing Month. This means that I have to figure out how to write 50,000 words in a month. When I attempted this two years ago I had my trusty palm that I could rely on, during breaks at work I could just pop open my portable keyboard and away I would go. Now I have to find some other way of efficiently adding to the word count between work and home. I thought I would record me dictating my book, but seeing as how poorly my software is working, I don't think that is an option anymore.

It is crazy how someone can be tolerant and forgiving and patient with one thing so well, yet be viciously unforgiving and borderline abusive with another thing.

HP is influenced by the Frustration Corporation.

HP is slowly drifting into my black list. I am concerned when it comes to buying any more of their products. (Unless it was a calculator, because their calculators are still better than TI) The first really bad experience I had with a 4 gig thumb drive. It may have been a defective unit. I may have simply had bad luck in my selection, yet the fact still remains that every time I try to do anything with it, it will shut down and restart causing Windows Vista to ask me what I want it to do with the thumb drive. I finally gave up on it and got a micro SD to usb dongle. I find it works both faster and with fewer problems during use. (Hooray for Kingston) On top of this I also find it nice that if I ever need more room I can just go buy the relatively cheep Micro SD cards. They are small and so they can go easily with you.

My most recent evidence that HP is secretly influenced by the Fustration Corporation happened just a few days ago. I sent my laptop in for repairs two weeks ago because the internal fan stopped working (That is what I get for buying refurbished, I am still happy, it could have been worse.) I finally get my beloved laptop back expecting everything to work fine and dandy. I turn it on to find out that my wireless network card is not functioning the way it should. I press the button to turn the wireless on and then I get a notification on my screen that the wireless network is now off. I press the button again and receive a note that the wireless network is disabled. (GAAAHHHHHHHHHH, that is the sound of my head exploding.) I click on properties to see if anything might help. There is nothing indicating how to turn on the wireless. I check in with the help document which upon reading I find out that 90% of the document is devoted to telling people how to open the screen which I already had open. The other 9% of the document said that, to activate the wireless Internet, I should press the button which I had already tried. In frustration and with an exploded head I went to bed frustrated at the thought that I would have to call up the repair shop again and that they would possibly take my laptop for another week to run diagnostics. (which undoubtedly would reveal that my computer is in perfect working order)

I slept on it, not particularly well though. When I woke in the morning I popped open my computer again and gave it another shot with my re-assembled head. I started clicking random things to see if I could make any progress. Finally this is what got it working again. There is an option that says Show: independent controls for installed wireless devices. I selected this box and I was awarded a button that says "Turn On" next to my Wireless LAN. After a brief Alleluia I was back on the road updating Windows and McAfee.

Can you guess who made this program?.... HP. Who would turn off the option of seeing the controls? Who would put in the option to turn off viewing of the controls? This is clearly the Fustration Corporation in action.

Sigh.
~SB

Road Trips aka Pain Trips

The only good thing about a road trip is reaching the destination. Last week we went on a road trip which proved to be rather eventful. My laptop (aka my main source of entertainment on this journey) began to overheat again and shut off periodically. Then we broke a GPS antenna cable, (wich was realy bad because we were relying on that GPS to tell us how to get there). Next we proceeded to break the antenna on the FM transmiter wich we were using to listen to audio books from my MP3 player. Then we blew a tire (one which was giving us trouble any way) and we had to stop for the night in some town (whose name I still don't know). We ended up ordering dinner at the Applebee's which involved Dad and me sitting at the Bar watching everyone else get drunk or scratching our heads at the revolting looking concoctions that the girl at the bar was making. In the morning we arrived late at the continental breakfast to find only a few muffins and bananas left. Mom tried to get hot chocolate from the coffee machine. In order to ensure that she wouldn't get any of the coffee flavoring in her chocolate she decided she would let the machine just run off for one cup which caused the catch tray to overflow. After we got that cleaned up she ended up with a cup of slightly murky brown water and decided it wasn't fit to be called hot chocolate.
When we got on the road the next morning, Mom and Dad went to walmart to replace the FM transmitter. We found out that it only transmits on a small range the high end or the low end of the FM spectrum. It was hard to find a station to transmit on. We finally arrived safely and we all got stiffly out of the car. We had fun for the next two days and then headed back home. The return trip was also not without event. My little brother and I both plugged a laptop into the transformer and blew the fuse, Dad ended up pulling off to find a place to get a replacement. Then two hours away from home my little brother began to throw up.
But out of all the troubles and problems I would still have to say that the most difficult thing for me was just having to sit there in the same position for so many hours. There is a reason I don't want a sit down job.

From Stone Soup to Apocalypse

“Doctor, is there something wrong with him?” they stared at the drooling patient who’s blank eyes stared back at them. A bell rang somewhere and the patient immediately shot out of his chair and began making his way to the door mumbling the words “Orders. Where are my orders?”

“I think Maam, that he has a case of under used brain. It is seen in some cases where a person has been locked up in isolation for too long. But I’ve never seen it in anyone outside of prison.”

“What can I do doctor?”

“What does he do for a living?”

“He works at a warehouse.”

“Does he work with anyone?”

“He does most of his work by himself.”

“Do you have a music player?”

“What do you mean?”

“He should play music or audio books at work.”

I am glad I thought listening to audio books while working before I ended up a drooling, brainless, empty sack of a man. I have been enjoying quite a selection these past few weeks, everything from Wizard of Oz to an audio play called The Dead Girl. The Audio plays are most interesting because they feature sound effects along with the spoken words of the well-trained voice actors. There have been several moments when I have stopped in the middle of what I am doing in order to hear better during an intense moment in the story of the audio play. I wish I could find more of the radio theater productions but a Google search on the subject has yielded mostly stuff that is not free. I have to save up as much as I can so that I can go to college.

Luckily, there are several wonderful sources where I can find audio books. Most of the stuff isn’t current; you won’t find Harry Potter on audio free. However, you can find a lot of stuff that is in the public domain. Look at Librivox.org or search for the Gutenberg project.

One more pro to this whole thing is that it is a good way to get into self-education. During the Fourth of July, we went to visit Jason and Denise, two of the most incredible people I know. Jason and I had a friendly chat and he let me in on the secret that if you can really get into self-education than there are several ways it goes above and beyond college or university education. I still need to expand my genera beyond fiction, but I am getting there.

Audio Blues

Have you ever been walking down the side of the street and then someone nearby says "Hello, how can I help you." and you turn to them thinking that they are talking to you. You try to respond but then they give you a dirty look and point at their bluetooth ear peice. Don't you hate that? I hate it.

This makes me kind of embarrassed to admit that I actually bought one of these blasted little devices, and suffered the repeated remark "we are the Borg" from my dad. What would drive me to such insanity... Well, I'll put it this way...

I work in a warehouse job. I do a lot of lifting and moving and boxing and so forth. I don't work with anyone in particular because they had to fire the other guy in the economic downturn. This leaves me with a lot of quiet time. I go insane with too much quiet time (as you can see from some of my other posts). So I decided that it would be a good idea to bring along some music to listen to. It was an improvement to listen to music or to audio books but a problem came with the fact that my earbud cords kept getting caught on boxes or on tables or on air or on anything. This is frustrating to put it mildly. So to remedy this problem I decided to buy one of those little bluetooth contraptions and see if I could get my music to play through it. That was the biggest mistake ever. I can't get the thing to play music, my phone can route calls through the pinky sized black device but it can't do music. Now I have the device and I have taken it out of the box and all and so it will be more problematic to get a refund for it. Meanwhile I still had the problem of the cord getting stuck on things, and I risked getting chewed out by my boss who doesn't like me listening to music on the job.

I had to come up with a solution to these problems and my little brother helped me out in this respect, he suggested just threading the cord through my shirt. I did so, it is a little bit uncomfortable but I found out that I can easily take the earbuds out, throw them behind my back, underneath my shirt and my boss will never find out. Now if only I can get the phone to turn off the pressure sensitive skip and pause buttons to deactivate.

Why do MP3 players do that? don't the companies realize that many of these people want to just slip the thing in their pocket and go. The people don't want their favorite song interupted by accidentally bumping into something and triggering their player to skip to the next song. I say there should be a hold switch installed mandatory on every portable music playing device so that it can be placed in the pocket without fear of it fast forewarding to the next chapter of the audio book. *shakes head in disaproval* silly electronics companies. Why couldn't you get it right the first time.

~SB

The Great and Terrible Debate...

Have you ever done something and for a moment were glad you did it, but then afterward were harrassed by other people because of it?

On facebook you have the capacity to join various causes or other pages that show support on various issues. I joined one that regarding Marriage between a man and a woman. For quite some time I just ignored the updates and posts that it posted to my home page, just like I ignore the updates from most of the cause or fan pages. I don't realy want to give face book that much of my time or effort. Yet, last night I decided to take a look at the posts and the discussions. I kind of wish I hadn't. Most of the people on there are either A) Gay bashers with only as much creativity as it takes to repeat the last 18 people in saying "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve." or B) Anti-Gay Bashers who call everyone else idiots and ceaselessly throw out the used up old arguments that have been circulating ever since the debate started, including attacking some religions and then saying that they aren't attacking any religions.

I posted some very moderate remarks trying my best to avoid falling into either of the two groups. Afterward I felt good about it, regardless of the fact that the concepts that I wish I could convey would require a lot of prefacing explaination in order to be understood. But then something deperessing happened. I get complete strangers from both Group A and group B who all of the sudden want to lable me under one or the other. There is one guy who is harrassing me and attacking me personally rather than attacking the issue. and I have annother random group A lady who sent me a friend request???

Fact is, Both groups are wrong in my point of view. Neither shows much love, respect, tolorance, understanding, forgiveness, or any other decent quality that should be redily found in a citizen of this great country. In my oppinion, this country can't handle this topic; this country doesn't possess enough people who can look at this subject in a mature manner. So for the record, I say, LAY OFF IT, calm down, go to your corners and count to ten and take deep breaths and then come back and sit and listen completly and intently to the entire argument of the opposing side, then when you are both on the same page and can cast asside your prejudices and false views of one annother, then and only then can you hope to do anything with this war... But even then, I don't think it would work.

sigh...

~SB