Monthly Archives: December 2018

Holiday Helpline Hell

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Eagle-headed Protective Spirit, Assyrian

Today, I helped Harry straighten out computer problems. He was locked out of his email, Netflix and finance accounts. First up was email. After progressing as far as we could online, we called AT&T. Its automated call handling process was quickly circumvented and a real person came on the phone to help us. She was both courteous and competent. With her help, Harry and I were soon able to get his email account open. After ensuring that this account hadn’t been hacked, we progressed to Netflix. Since, we had regained access to this account’s controlling email, this chore was a piece of cake. This lulled me into a false sense of security. Yahoo’s finance page left much to be desired.

Yahoo complained that we were using an out-of-date and unsupported browser and there was an operating system update waiting in the App Store, but since I am not a Mac person, I viewed that upgrade as a bridge too far, especially over DSL. After finding my footing on this web page, I cleared out all of the old portfolios and then reentered his latest numbers. For expedience sake, I only entered whole numbers of shares, even though Harry’s cheat-sheet numbers had four digits to the right of the decimal point. I detected some disquiet on Harry’s part for this practice that was not at all allayed with my joke of planning to pocket the fractional remainders, as round-off error. I was more concerned that the Yahoo page was randomly throwing out NaN (Not-a-Number) figures. This only reinforced my opinion of its trustworthiness versus mine.

After, I had entered Harry’s life savings to the nearest share, as an exercise, call it homework if you like, I had Harry reenter his numbers the way that he likes. Tomorrow, time permitting, I’m planning on giving him a pop quiz. My efforts were justly rewarded, when afterwards, Bubs asked Harry if he had gotten his computer problems fixed. Harry answered, “Why yes, Carl was very helpful.”

All that Glitters

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Tablecloth, Milky Way, Marguerita Mergentime, 1939

Anne’s yarn-a-month club gift box states that she “crafts so hard that she sweats glitter,” which really makes a mess, especially in-between the sheets. Glitter in bed is worse than beach sand, if you ask me. Still, I was intrigued by Caity Weaver’s New York Times article about glitter. In it she waxes poetic, while describing a glitter factory’s appearance that she visited for her story:

…which looked like an industrial manufacturing plant colonized by pixies. The concrete floor was finely coated with what appeared to be crushed moonbeams. The forklift winked with shiny crimson flecks.

I was actually more intrigued with the underlying science. There wasn’t all that much in her article, trade secrets precluded many disclosures, but one could read between the lines. I’ve had some similar experience that guides my guesses on how glitter is made. Those processes were even more closely guarded than gold.

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Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, the day that the boys practice pugilism. We got out and about today. First, lunch and Literati, which I kept wanting to call Illuminati. Anne and I walked home from there, the boys taking the car, having more boxing yet to do.

Lunch was at the Blue Tractor, which was not as good as Grizzly’s, even though Grizzly’s serves the beer brewed at the Tractor, but more about that later. The luncheon clientele consisted primarily of families with small children. The table next to us had two couples, with between them four children in high chairs, plus one still strapped to mom. Anne observed that everyone was taking their kids out to lunch, which we were too, but I also observed that our boys were bigger and could probably take anyone else’s there. Boxing Day, don’t you know.

Ordering there was somewhat difficult. The first beer selection that Dave chose, they were out of. So too for the first beer that Dan ordered and again for Dave’s second attempt. They were also out of the food that I first ordered and the same for Dave. We did all eventually get food and drink, but when it came time to pay the bill, both the first and second pens handed to me were out of ink. 

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Back to the glitterati. On the way home, Anne told me a glitter related joke. It is a little bit racy, but here it goes:

A woman getting ready for her GYN appointment, first took a washcloth to her lady parts. Her doctor upon examination commented, “Wow, you really did something special.” “Thank you for noticing,” she replied. Returning home, she was immediately queried by her teenage daughter, “Mom have you seen the washcloth that I used to clean off my glitter makeup?”