Not Apple

I tried to play a movie at NCSC this morning. Last Monday I made the mistake of trying a YouTube movie (extremely slow download), so I thought I'd be smart and take the movie in on a flash drive.

Oops. Downloaded and saved it as an MP4 movie. That doesn't work on Windows because MP4 is too new for them. (It's been out since 2003.) Nothing in Windows can play that format. Should have used the older format from 1997 (MP3).

People keep wondering why I'm such an Apple fan. At least I have the machine that can play things from this century.

I feel loved and wanted

I wish I could read Chinese. Nearly every day now, someone comments (in Chinese) on one of these posts. Thank you China. What are you saying?

More glasses news

Tried to go back for my "computer glasses" today. The computer system at LensCrafters was having a bad day. Apparently my name screws up the system, and it crashed three or four times before someone who could tame it came to work. Windows 2000. Need I say more?

Trifocals

For years, I've resisted my eye doctor's advice to go for bifocals. Then about three years ago, I caved in and got separate reading glasses. They always seemed a pain, though, and I could always function quite well without them, so they sat in my desk drawer for quite some time. Then, just before my eye exam last week, I got them out for a trial run. They were terrible! Couldn't see a thing through them.

The eye doctor thought something was suspicious, so he did a bit of snooping and discovered that I'd stumbled on a very old pair of distance glasses. Oops. Back to the desk drawer to find the proper reading glasses. They aren't too bad after all.

But my main problem is computer screens, so now he's making me a third set (well, fourth, if you count the sun glasses) for middle distance. So I guess, if I can find my glasses, I've now got trifocals.

My morning ritual

Every day I begin with comic strips at the computer. One of my favorite sources is comics.com, and I guess I should expect that my daily fix is paid for by advertisements. Because I'm eating cereal, I haven't had the nerve yet to click the ad for "Overactive Bladder Videos." (What would they put in such a video? People running to the loo? Graphic depictions of what's happening?)

Anyhow, MSN has a banner ad for their service, complete with their slogan, "Know now." That one would be lost on my students. They can't tell the difference between know, now, and no. I guess I can see some of that. The "k" hasn't been pronounced for hundreds of years. In Old English, the word for "know" was cnawan, so our spelling does make sense. Sort of. And "no" comes from the Old English nay. (Just to be complete, "now" comes from the Old English new.) My students see the three words as completely interchangeable. That stuns me. Yes, I understand that know and no sound the same today, so the sentence "I know no Englishmen" would sound like it has a repeated word in the beginning. But who pronounces now that way, especially in Ohio? Who would pronounce words two, three, and four alike: "I now know no Englishmen." It's bizarre.

Of course it's going to rain

Today is Wednesday. We did have an incredibly hard rainstorm last Saturday, and every day since then the online weather report has been predicting doom. Heavy, severe thunderstorms dumping more than two inches of rain in an hour have been predicted every day. And every day has come and gone, beautifully clear. Well, a couple of days have been cloudy. And every day I've stayed in, knowing that I don't want to get trapped on the bike trail or elsewhere in a severe thunderstorm. Today there's a bit of a drizzle, so I guess they're vindicated. Now the weather map shows five days of clear weather, so I guess I should find my umbrella.

Me and Nintendo

It's kind of funny trying to play a game with a teenager. Maybe it's just a boy thing, but they always seem to assume that everyone on earth—certainly including me—was born knowing all of the details and strategy of their favorite game. It's just part of being a human, right?

Years ago, Chris tried to teach me how to play a Lord of the Rings card game. He took at least an hour to explain in minute detail the contents of all the dozens of different cards, but refused to answer my one burning question: What am I trying to do here? As I remember it, there were glass rocks that we were trying to accumulate or something, but I never did figure out how a person actually wins.

Then there was Jon. We'd play Nintendo 64 games, usually shoot-em-up things. He always denied that he'd tweaked the controls, but I could shoot him a dozen times in the middle of the chest and his health would only go down a little, but if he fired one shot anywhere in a room I occupied, I would die instantly. I always considered it a victory if I could get his health to go down below 90% before I'd die.

Now Jared and the GameCube. We pretty much stopped playing Lego Star Wars because I can't keep track of which character I'm supposed to control when they all look alike and they have to change 50 or 60 times a minute to optimize their weapons and strategies. And that game ties the characters together so that the leader (Jared) loses a battle if I can't keep up with him. So we had a long hiatus in game playing. This summer, though, we've been playing Tales of Symphonia. It's a pretty bizarre game with a mythology that's distilled from just about every culture I've ever heard of. There's Christian, Norse, and Buddhist, plus a lot of others. It's a frustrating game, though, because my character can only do about one thing, and usually isn't onscreen at all to do it. So I'm usually just kind of punching the big green button, hoping that helps.

This evening, I'm cheating, though. Jared isn't here, and I dug up an online description of what those buttons actually DO. Apparently I really can control my character and get him to do stuff. I can even defend myself so I don't instantly die every time a bad guy shows up. Of course, you knew that the X button defends your character against attacks. Jared knew it. I'm sure Jon and Chris know it. Maybe my mother knows it. I'm the last guy on the planet who didn't know it, but fortunately someone wrote it down and posted it online. Now I know it too.

Curt's Culinary Disasters

The small group idea is evolving. My apartment is so small that five or six is about the limit. My downstairs neighbor (in a slightly smaller apartment!) has half a dozen or more people over more than once a week. Why not me?

Anyhow, I needed a theme and the title of this post came to mind. Most of Mansfield is incredibly conservative about food. Burgers, fries, pizza, and steak—and we've exhausted the entertaining menu possibilities. But some of the best food is incredibly unlikely sounding. How about pan-fried steak with an espresso coffee rub? Speaking of fried, Welsh pan-fried cakes with currants. Cornish meat pies with rutabaga. The key drawing card could be "what on earth can he come up with NEXT?"

Did it again

I can't claim total responsibility for this one. Yet again the church has sent out a really complete questionnaire and I responded with a LONG answer. Then I added a page. Then I write a two-page letter to the elders. Well it's their fault. They asked for my opinion.

I guess I'm ultimately very passive about church stuff. I assume that everyone else is going to start something and I'll join in. That really goes against my personal philosophy—at least what I say about it.

OK. So what would I like to see and by when? (Music from The Man of LaMancha: "To Dream the Impossible Dream" fades in). How about, for starters, a small group?

• Not necessarily a therapy group and certainly not meeting to flog the latest pop psychology or political fad.
• Fun, food.
• Interesting and thoughtful
• Accepting, even if you're liberal, intellectual, gay, or unmarried (demogrpahics that haven't done too well in this church)
• Maybe even interested in doing stuff outside the meeting times and (gasp!) becoming friends

The main obstacle I can think of is strategic. The only leader I can think of at the moment is me. I think I've finally overcome the stigma of being The Divorced Guy. (Most of the church can't even remember me being married. After all, that was 15 years ago.) But I've been truly marginalized here, so I don't know anyone to invite. And I live in an apartment. House-livers are (I've been told repeatedly) frightened of going to an apartment. They think they are walking into a tenement and will get knifed in the hallway. I should keep my eyes and ears open, though, and perhaps try to invite someone over. Wonder who.