Rants at a picnic…

CCTV raw news page. I think this is the page other news papers and TV stations are supposed to buy the story from. I wish I know how to go about getting it the right way for my site. The video streams all the way from China, so bare with the speed..

Same Story, in Chinese, but with pictures!

In Retro Episode #3 Extended – YouTube.

I spend 25 years loving this game and never finishing it. The music was spectacular! The things they were able to do with just black, white, red, and green pixels were fantastic. And the game had so many things to try. SPOILER ALERT! After wandering through that world for 25 years, I finally found out all the evidence was useless except for the Mayor’s envelope and the police chief’s. I’d had both of them so many times. What I did not know was that once I had them, all I had to do was go back to the room I started in and leave through the teleporter. All previous attempts to use that teleporter failed, so I assumed it wasn’t part of the game. None of the other stuff mattered. The game can be complete in about 9 minutes. And what do you get for your troubles? A black screen with the words, THE END. Voila, c’est tout. It was the biggest let down of an ending since Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES.

Mom always had this sewing machine as far back as I can remember. I was scared of its needle when I was small, and the case was too heavy for me to lift. It uses a Cessna airplane engine and is capable of sewing layers of sheet copper. Ok, that might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but this thing was ridiculously strong, and could go through more denim than anything else ever could! Sewing was never something I could do. It wasn’t a skill boys were encouraged to take up. Later on, I realized it wasn’t a skill ANYONE was still taking up, which only strengthened my want to learn! My older sister took home economics, and it was understood that it was a class that would teach sewing, but I remember mom complaining bitterly about the education my sister received. “They only taught her one lousy whip stitch,” I remember hearing her say. I’m not sure what that means, but I don’t think is was adequate.

The machine had been in the back of mom’s closet for years. But I never stopped thinking about it. It wasn’t getting any older. It was made in the era of technology that was built to last! Heirloom quality. Hopefully, it would last generations and still maintain its usefulness.

A few years before mom died, I had asked her about it. She made it a gift to me and said she would start teaching me to use it when she came back from Houston. But she never got the chance to do that. So now it’s sitting on the back of my closet. I pulled it out and set it up and plugged it in. It still works perfectly! Even this ancient light bulb. I’m going to have a hard time getting that thing replaced if it ever does go out. For all I know, it’s an Edison Mk II or something like that. I found the instruction booklet. Its pages are stuck together and brittle from having been wet, but I got most of them apart. At some point, someone seems to have tested out a hole puncher all around the edges of the booklet. I am able to read nearly everything. And yet, without someone to guide me, the booklet isn’t much use. I need a real person to teach me, even it’s only video. That’s the way I learn hand skills.

Something awful happened tonight. At least I feel awful about it. While I was putting the machine back in its case, a task which I have accomplished many times before without incident, I left the power cord sticking out and the metal case cut through it like a pair of scissors. Every part of this survived in tact for all those decades, and I did this to it in one clumsy minute. I shouldn’t have even had it out. Now I have a repair to make before I can try it again.

It seems like every day now, something about Facebook upsets me. I don’t understand it. I don’t know how it became so popular. It’s only merit is that EVERYONE is on it. I only maintain an account there for people to be able to find me if they need me. But I can’t follow it at all. There are people I would love to be able to keep up with, but I just can’t figure out how to do it. Twitter is easy. Every time anybody I follow on Twitter says anything on Twitter, my phone makes a noise. I look at it, I see what they said, and I can reply to it or not. This worked easily over text messaging, even before I had a smartphone. I’m in the loop on Twitter!

With Facebook, I’ve tried Motoblur, Facebook for Android, Tweetcaster, Seesmic, and also various apps for my old Blackberry. They all behave exactly the same way. Nothing sends me an alert except a direct private message. By the time I remember to check in on my Facebook timeline, I find 300 requests for diamond pickaxes and manure, interspersed with 18 hour old messages about someone’s new baby with a mile long comment thread because everyone else found out about it within minutes and that I didn’t get to participate in at all. Sometimes I post a status that I really want friends to see. No one ever replies. Sometimes I find lots of replies and shares of posts that I made on this website and which I never meant to go to Facebook. I post here because I want to read the comments here where I can see them.

Another fun time is when I do try to crosspost something to Facebook on purpose, and it never shows up there. I log in to Facebook, and look all up and down my timeline for it, and find nothing. So I ask someone for help. They click on weird stuff I never would have tried. They appear to be clicking at random, like they don’t know where they are going, but eventually find a page full of copies of the post I have been looking for. If it got buried that deep, how do I know if anyone else ever saw it? Why do I have more than one timeline on here anyway?

That leads me to the final problem I wanted to bring up. Under no circumstances have I ever been able to get the same list of notifications to show up on the website and on mobile. Some on one, some on the other, and some on both. There is no rhyme or reason to it. As long as this kind of stuff continues, I’m going to continue to be frustrated and upset with it.

I frequently think about closing my account and being done with all the grief. Then I think about Mrs. Lollar finding me there and inviting me to sing at West Texas Music Academy’s fund raiser. Not everyone knows this about me, but I constantly think back to my junior high and high school days in choir the same way Al Bundy did with his high school football career. It may not be healthy, but it’s true. Kantorei was one of the great high points in my life, and getting invited to sing in WTMA’s ensemble made my whole decade!

Just a few months later, I accidentally ran across Cody Tumlin’s work call on Facebook for The 39 Steps, which he was directing at the Permian Playhouse. Of course I went! I was so excited, I nearly injured myself getting to the car! And just when I’m so happy getting to work with Cody and Ken, in walks Lori Gregory, and later in the project, Carl Evans. These are some of my favorite people in the whole world, they live one town over, and I NEVER get to see any of them! I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s just how I am. From just getting to hang out with them, my happy levels were at such dangerously high levels, I couldn’t really process them anymore. I have no idea what that looks like from the outside, but I probably acted like an idiot. I floated around on cloud 9 for weeks. And this was all thanks to Facebook.

So I stay torn. One one hand, I can’t stand all the crap it puts me through on a daily basis, but on the other hand, I can’t stand the thought of missing more opportunities like the two I mentioned. I might be happier if someone could really teach me how it’s all supposed to work. How does everyone else sort through the junk and find the good posts in real time? How do I get people to see the posts I want them to see from me? It’s a social network! I’m supposed to be connecting with people. But I’m only seeming to do that on an accidental basis at this point. Help me?

That’s British Sign Language. Some people don’t realize that there are sign languages all over the world just like spoken languages. Signing is something I’ve always wanted to learn, but never had the opportunity. Now two of my siblings are fluent in ASL. I can’t say I’m not jealous, but I am certainly proud of them.

Watch Japan’s Killer Quake on PBS. See more from NOVA.

Her eye got scratched or chewed by a dog and it looks pretty bad to me. She won’t tell me exactly who did it or how it happened because she doesn’t want me to be upset with the dog. She says he didn’t mean to hurt her. But I’d like to find her some way to get treatment for that eye. There are no stuffed animal hospitals near me. If you have any ideas, please let me know.