Tony's Stuff

#Health   #Aging My poor wife has fallen so many times in the past six years that we have lost count. I think it’s somewhere between 14 and 18 times, some accompanied by broken bones, but every one adding to her pain and disability. It started at a garden place. I had stayed in the car on a phone call, and she had walked to the main building. A curbed sidewalk was the same color as the parking lot; she didn’t notice the curb. It was a bad fall, bad enough for an ambulance ride. Nothing broken that time, but enough muscle strain to make her unstable. So, a few months later, down she went in a supermarket while I was at work. Was that when she broke her thumb? I can’t remember now, but the falls continued at home every few months, slowly increasing in frequency. There was a bad one in our bedroom with a lot of bleeding. I was driving home, but was a half hour out. I told her to call an ambulance; by the time I got home they were loading her in. And then more. I quit work so I could b...

  #Working   #SelfEmployment There may be traffic, I protest. Then everyone will be late, she retorts. One of the few things my wife and I disagree about is when to leave the house when we are supposed to arrive somewhere else at a given time. I want to leave early; she prefers to leave “on time“. I will be at least mildly upset if we are running late, but she will shrug it off. I have reasons and excuses. I say that it is rude not to be punctual. She says people expect you to be late and factor that in to their plans. I say that we might have trouble finding a parking space. She disagrees. There may be traffic, I protest. Then everyone will be late, she retorts. Read for free at Medium:  https://medium.com/it-doesnt-fit/i-am-obsessive-about-not-being-late-f00a347eb317?sk=340da7d07c5f6b7011a7dca0c3391037

  My wife can be very unreasonable about my public appearance #Humor   #Funny   #Marriage Earlier I expressed my frustration about my wife not allowing me a tiny bit of clothing decoration to brighten my day. Writing that reminded me of another clothing incident from back when I was working as a computer consultant and troubleshooter. One of my long term customers was opening a new store location. Because this would involve new internet access and router to router VPN’s to tie this new location to four others, I was scheduled to go there one Friday morning. I had already programmed the new router at home, but there had always been issues with something when I had set up the other stores. Bad cabling, incorrect configurations by the internet provider, computers and printers needing to learn about each other, whatever. It might take an hour, it might take more. But this was well-worn ground for me, so I didn’t expect anything I couldn’t handle. I showered, shaved, dressed a...

  My wife had noticed the toothpaste spot on my sweatshirt. She pointed at it. “You can’t go out like that!” But I can. There are plenty of places you can go with a dirty sweatshirt. Any hardware store. Any Walmart. Any gas station. Lots of places. While my wife disagrees, I feel quite comfortable about running to the supermarket for bananas with this badge of white on my chest. People could mistake it for paint, and getting paint on your sweatshirt is a confirmation of masculinity. She spotted the protest in my eyes. “No, seriously, you cannot.” I sighed. Defeated once again, I dejectedly walked to the bathroom to remove the detriment to my social standing in the community at large. The male of the species likes to decorate himself. Why can’t the women let us be pretty too? #Humor #Funny #Marriage This story was originally published at Medium . I’m Pcunix there and most everywhere else. https://medium.com/family-and-love/cant-a-fella-have-a-little-pretty-decoration-now-and-th...

  #ApplePay #GooglePay #SamsungPay #TapToPay As I write this, we are still in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. If you aren’t thinking about ways not to touch things that other people have touched, you certainly should be. Most of the food stores I have visited have put up signs to remind you “We accept Apple Pay and Samsung Pay”. They are trying to help you avoid touching that grimy payment terminal. So why aren’t you using contactless payments? I actually had a conversation about this with my sister just this morning. I learned that neither she nor her son use contactless payments. I gave her a little talking-to on why she should and I’m going to give you the same lecture. … Read the rest at Medium for free! https://medium.com/tonys-tech-corner/why-arent-you-using-contactless-payments-yet-f74c08a9c45e?sk=f0ba9daa373118b07e893749c8c64cb9 …

  A small sports victory for a nerd #Nostalgia   #Sports   #1950s We didn’t have a proper baseball field. Nor were we playing baseball; it was softball, with its larger and softer ball, heavier as well, hard for anyone to hit very far, never mind scrawny sixth graders in 1958. No, our field was just a grass field, sunk lower behind the paved playground at the Cottage Street Elementary School in Sharon, Massachusetts. No stands, no proper markings, just a place where the boys could play during recess. At an ordinary recess, I would not have been playing or watching as I, a four-eyed bookish boy, would not have been invited.  Dennis Mahoney would have played, because he was an athlete. … Read the rest at Medium  for free!  https://pcunix.medium.com/imaginary-man-on-first-7b4f811ac5b1?sk=202a6c99f73f217582c3e92e3028eab9

  And the rest of those ridiculous day names #Humor #Funny Photo by author — No wonder I hate Mondays Listen up, because I’m only going to say this as many times as it takes to get it through your thoroughly muddled, overly distracted head. We need to get rid of these ridiculous stone-age inspired day names. I mean, seriously, Wed-nes-day? No, that didn’t come from that movie with Christina Ricci and if you are too just-born to remember that, it obviously didn’t come from the new eponymous Netflix series because WAKE UP: that’s not going to be her role. And Tue-es-day isn’t any better. All of them suck, in fact, all but Sunday, but that’s only useful if it falls when it isn’t raining, snowing, or visiting some other horrendous global warming insult. So screw all of them. It’s 2022, damn it! Checks calendar. Confirms date. Nods wisely and smiles. You still got it, Tony-boy! … Read the rest at Medium for free! https://medium.com/well-i-thought-it-was-funny/lets-get-rid-of-mondays-...

DALL-E 2 Image of couple watching sunset at beach by author I could have worked to pile  up money for early retirement as the FIRE movement folks do, but millions in the bank have far less value if you cannot walk, or have to spend your days consumed by pain. Read the rest at Medium for free! https://medium.com/side-gigs-money-and-the-rest/always-remember-why-you-work-60bdabc5f8c6?sk=83cc1aa8e6175e362da1322792182bda

  Or any of the others #Bitcoin #Cryptocurrency #Money #Politics #Crime DALL-E 2 Image by author of melted Bitcoin I truly cannot understand the reason people think Bitcoin or any other virtual coinage will become our currency. This is very much like thinking that the supposed truth of your religion will be taken up by everyone else. That’s not likely to happen. Though some CryptoHeads do have a religious fervor about this, don’t they? … Read the rest at Medium for free!  https://medium.com/tonys-tech-corner/virtual-currency-is-inevitable-but-it-wont-be-bitcoin-6904092a5e0c?sk=7e8f4f1a6c7da6ea8107e22e195cb321 …

  Because why wouldn’t I want a mouse jiggler? #Humor   #Shopping   #Working I guess randomly searching through Amazon isn’t doom scrolling, but I don’t have a word for it. Maybe Zon Scrolling? Whatever you want to call it, I seem to do it fairly often. Sorry, I lied. I do it almost every day. … Read the rest at Medium  for free! …

  So what should I do now? #History   #Graves   #Childhood There is a body buried at my childhood home. I know that because I saw the gravestone, but there is more to the story than that. Summer, Early 1950’s I can’t put an exact date on this. I might have been as young as four, perhaps as old as six. It’s hard to pin that down: I know that I was quite young and that we moved to this house in 1952, so it couldn’t have been before that. If I could remember whether the old barn was still standing, I might narrow the date. My father tore that barn down sometime after we moved, but I don’t know when and I don’t remember if the barn was still standing on the day in question. … Read the rest at Medium  for free! …

  Dangerous for them, for starters #Tech   #Technology   #Google   #Chatbots Google has decided to go ahead with releasing its ChatGPT project. This is the one that caused a kerfuffle a little while back when one of its trainers insisted it had become sentient. According to a lot of breathless press I have seen and heard, Google’s baby will “blow the socks off ChatGPT.” If so, Microsoft and a few other big money investors will be sad, but nobody knows what nobody knows until they know, you know? But let’s say the scuttlebutt is accurate (is it ever?) … Read the rest at Medium  for free! …

  Frustration and irritation abound, but I like what I’ve done #Apple   #AppleWatch   #Programming   #ShortCuts Shortcuts on my Watch Shortcuts can be highly annoying and frustrating. I feel that I have to start every article I write about them with that disclaimer because, well, because, dammit, they are! Don’t let that intimidate you. Many Shortcuts are very easy to create and understand. They are usually more Point and Shoot than programming! … Read the rest at Medium  for free! …

  You obviously aren’t busy, so why can’t you do it better? #Restaurants   #Dining   #Tipping DALL-E 2 image by author of burned pizza Yesterday we had a morning medical appointment in Boston. On our way back, we stopped at Bertucci’s for lunch because we were tired, still had shopping to do, and didn’t want to make food for ourselves. There were two other tables in use when we walked in at 1:00 PM. One table had two couples, the other just one, so there were now eight of us eating or waiting to eat. … Read the rest at Medium  for free! …

  Paper or electronic, the bitter conflict #Humor #Funny #Marriage All photos by author I am not an unreasonable man. I am calm and agreeable. I possess unusual patience and am always ready to listen to another person’s point of view. There are limits, of course. Some actions that people might take are too far beyond the pale, too “out there”, so abominable as to be beyond my tolerance. As I am a reasonable man, all right-thinking persons would agree with me if they encountered such incredible things in their own lives. Or in their marriage, as it happens. … Read the rest at Medium for free! …

  Setting alerts for heart rate is a big one for me #AppleWatch #Apple #Exercise #Workouts Aaargh! I don’t know when these features were added — it may have been in WatchOS 9.0, and I had my mind on other things at the time. Adding to that is that I already have my workouts set to what I want — or at least to what I wanted and that Apple gave me a way to set! It doesn’t matter because I did notice them today, and although I have a minor complaint about the interface, these features are a welcome addition. … Read the rest at Medium for free! …