We didn’t play as much this weekend as we had hoped. Things took longer than expected, and the gremlins, pixies and leprechauns were acting up again, apparently partying far heartier than we were. They might have had a ways to go to keep up with us back in the day, but this weekend they were way ahead.
My friend J visited from out of town, and it was very good seeing him again. We were going to go buy toys, which we did a bit of but not as much as we intended, and we were going to resolve some computer issues I had, which we did too much of and is where the gremlins came in.
Did you know that gremlins are generally mischief makers having to do with machinery? They have a distinguished Royal Air Force background.
We were trying to network things and fix some troubles and do some fresh installs and most steps forward involved some new complications that had us sidestepping to resolve, which meant resolving that first, and then another sidestep — you know how it goes.
And then there is my filing, or lack thereof and my general inability to find anything lately.
Like the version of Windows that came with my old Compaq PC — it’s gone. Plus other disks and programs we needed — I had thought I’d saved all this stuff in a box, but the gremlins got there first and are kicking my butt.
And it’s not just them. Other stuff is gone, too. For instance, there’s an extended Hispanic family who live next door to us. I asked the Dad (and designated English-speaker) what all their names were, and he gave me a list for all three households which list I have lost, utterly lost. So now I have even less of an excuse to confuse their names and an even greater likelihood. Thank you, leprechauns of household mischief-making.
I lose all kinds of stuff lately, and it came to a head when the print server kit we bought didn’t work and I wanted to return that on Sunday and I couldn’t find the receipt. And I mean I could find every other receipt, too — for the meals we went out and enjoyed, the Dragon NaturallySpeaking (voice-to-text) software, the Sony recorder I bought to dictate to my pc, the crumpled up receipt J tossed in the garbage — I found all of it, every scrap, except for the one I needed.
The leprechauns had a field day. But it was okay. J knows me well enough to suspect a few of my neurons can find each other and fire on occasion, even when appearances run contrary. To be honest, I was just glad my head comes fully installed to my neckbones. And even if we didn’t do everything we might have liked, it was still very good hanging out together.
For instance, he commented that he wants people to stay the same as they were back when he first knew them, which I find both amusing and an idyllic sentiment. (I’m not particularly prone to wishing for a fountain of youth. On the other hand, if I could go back and visit for a while, I wouldn’t complain, either.)
Yet regarding those changes there is something wonderful too, in how people and their relationships can progress and mature. Some of the raw energy may be lost. But so too, sometimes, are the raw wounds.
So the conversations were sprinkled with stuff like that, amidst the cursing at gremlins and machinery. And I do like my new Dragon, NaturallySpeaking speech-to-text toy. I’ve had some wrist issues in the past, so the chance to just talk and have text appear is a big help. (You see, I can find my head with both hands and I’m saving wrist strain — counting the blessings!)
Plus, the Dragon works better than I had hoped, too. Honestly, as much as stuff was going wrong for us, I expected trouble with the Sony recorder speaking to the Dragon. Technically, for recorders to work with the Dragon, you are supposed to buy NaturallySpeaking Preferred, and we had inadvertently picked up the Standard version.
I thought I’d have to return it or upgrade on online, but J looked at the jacks with me and asked, “what’s the difference?” The Dragon’s headset and microphone jack went into the PC the same as the recorder jack. It turns out the recorder adds a kind of metallic buzz when playing that throws the software off a little, but it mostly worked — and it even seemed to learn how to deal with the buzz, as it did better on late recorder attempts. (Plus, some of the typos it makes are more fun than what I actually said.)
I was amazed! As much as everything else stumped, stymied, and hornswoggled us, I figured there was no way we’d overcome the warnings on the product box telling us the Standard version didn’t work with recorders. Take that, pixies!
No, we didn’t make it in to our old haunts in San Francisco. And we didn’t go buying a camera or a new digital recorder for the TV or any of that stuff, either. But by the time he left on Sunday to drive back down to the southern beach community where he lives we’d had a good time, in spite of the mischief-makers.
Plus, Monday morning when I got in to my car to drive to the ferry terminal, I found the print server receipt I needed in my car to get my hundred bucks back. Bonus!
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