Technology does not like me – really, it doesn’t

The techie guy pointed out that my computer repeatedly needed replacement far earlier than anyone else’s

i-love-technology-but-technology-hates-meI believe i may have misrepresented myself in this blog. It is not that I dislike technology. Rather, it’s that technology does not like me.

Two or three work techies ago, the guy pointed out that my computer repeatedly needed replacement far earlier than anyone else’s. He told me that some folks just have “ions” or whatever that irritate machines. I’m not sure I believe that, but it WOULD explain things.

I have a printer on my desk, which worked for a short time, then inexplicably stopped. That was no big deal. i could print to one of the printers on the Local Area Network. Eventually, though, they too ceased working for me, but not for anyone else.

It’s now the folks who are at SUNY Central who tend to our machines. I called the help desk, who generally are very good at what they do. The techie took over my machine remotely.

In the beginning, no luck. Then a sample page was published, followed by 691 sheets of paper with merely one or two lines of gibberish. Finally, after 111 minutes, my local printer, and at least one of the LAN ones were working for me.

Other people don’t understand. When I’m walking back and forth to the various LAN printers, someone said, “Well, I’M not having any problems.” Diagnostically, that was actually useful information, but emotionally, not so much. Nearly two hours wasted – grrrr.

The good news is that because I know that technology does not like me, I’ve developed coping skills. For instance, there are two elevators in our building. We were told NOT to use the left elevator, with paper messages on each of the four floors. But it took them two days to TURN THE ELEVATOR OFF.

When one summons a lift, the left one would inevitably arrive first. This was actually frustrating to some people, but not to me. I’d get on the left elevator just enough to send it from the 1st to the 4th floor, then get out. THEN I’d summon the elevator again, and get on the right one.

Technology and I are still dating. I’m definitely not married to it.

For ABC Wednesday

Recent anti-abortion laws: ignorance is no obstacle

“The sin to me is bringing a child into this world and not taking care of them.”

women.abortionI checked. The last time I mentioned abortion in this blog was in 2009. And THAT was about its representation on television.

I wouldn’t have taken it on now except for the fact that the perpetrators of recent laws weren’t just confused about what exactly their bills do — “they were proud of their cluelessness.” As a New York Times opinion piece noted, America’s Leaders Need Sex Ed. “For those who want to regulate women’s bodies, ignorance has been no obstacle.”

Oh, and there’s right to privacy angle too.

In Georgia, the six-week law is scheduled to go into effect in January 2020. women who terminate their pregnancies would receive life in prison. This law would also criminalize healthcare providers, like doctors and nurses, providing the procedure.

Moreover, Georgians who seek abortions outside of the state may be charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Anyone who helps the pregnant person complete the journey, such as by driving them to a clinic, may also be charged with conspiracy.

“And a woman who miscarries because of her own conduct—say, using drugs while pregnant—would be liable for second-degree murder” Exactly how is this latter provision supposed to work?

Roughly 15 to 20 percent of all pregnancies in the United States end in miscarriage, “defined as the loss of a fetus before the 20th week. The majority of miscarriages occur within the first seven weeks of pregnancy.” A woman having a miscarriage is supposed to suffer the additional stress of proving – to whom, and how? – that she didn’t have a drink after dinner?

The US Supreme Court held in Roe v. Wade, and elsewhere, that the Due Process clause of the US Constitution includes a certain amount to privacy. And this right should mean that the government should not intrude in such delicate affairs.

The Georgia law also bestows personhood to a fetus, “entitled to all the protection of all the laws of Georgia.” That means they’re counted in the Census? If they’re American citizens, they can’t be deported if mom is there illegally, I presume. All sorts of legal landmines there.

Alabama did Georgia one better. Their law, going into effect in six months, would effectively ban abortion in the state. It criminalizes the procedure for doctors who provide them, and they could face up to 99 years in prison. The legislation doesn’t include an exception for cases of rape or incest.

The hypocrisy is strong. As reported in Newsweek, AL “State Senator Linda Coleman-Madison proposed an amendment to the bill that would require the state to provide free prenatal and medical care for mothers who had been denied an abortion by the new law. Her amendment was struck down by a vote of 23-6.

“‘The sin to me is bringing a child into this world and not taking care of them,” Coleman-Madison said. “The sin for me is that this state does not provide adequate care. We don’t provide education. And then when the child is born and we know that mother is indigent and she cannot take care of that child, we don’t provide any support systems for that mother.”

Here’s NOT a surprise: States with the worst anti-abortion laws also have the worst infant mortality rates.

A friend asked an interesting question: Women have used the seeds from Daucus carota, commonly known as wild carrot or Queen Anne’s lace, for centuries as a contraceptive. “The earliest written reference dates back to the late 5th or 4th century B.C. appearing in a work written by Hippocrates.”

If Queen Anne’s lace is used after intercourse – as a morning-after pill, essentially – how would the laws deal with that, since pregnancy would not yet be confirmable? This is also relevant to other birth control methods, notably the IUD.

It’s not just the South doing stupid stuff. In April, Ohio also passed a bill that would ban abortion at as early as six weeks. Now, the Ohio state House is considering a bill that would limit health insurance coverage for abortion services and also bar coverage for many forms of birth control.

It has a doozy of a provision that allows an ectopic pregnancy fetus to be removed from the Fallopian tubes and inserted into the uterus, a procedure that DOES NOT EXIST.

GOPUSA notes that such “bills have almost no chance of surviving the inevitable lower-court challenges, but that’s the point. Republican lawmakers are spoiling for a legal fight, hoping that their state’s pro-life bill will become the vehicle for the high court’s 5-4 conservative majority to put the brakes on Roe.

With restrictions on abortion, and, foolishly, contraception, being passed or considered across US, the goal isn’t to end up with the heartbeat bills, but to continue to chip away at women’s rights.

Yet, only 18 percent of Americans believe abortion should be illegal in all instances, according to a Gallup poll. Nearly six in 10 Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to Pew.

In response: #YouKnowMe: an online movement in which thousands of woman have come forward to put a human face to the figure that one in four women get an abortion in their lifetimes.

1st movie that I… (SamuraiFrog flashback)

Depends what you consider screwball, I suppose.

This is weird. I was trying to figure out what I had in draft for my blog, nearly 300 posts. I discovered this one from 2011 (!), and I can’t see that I ever published it. From SamuraiFrog, and only one answer has changed:

1st Dracula Movie: Not sure – it would have been on TV one Saturday afternoon, but I believe it was the Bela Lugosi version.

1st Disney Movie: 101 Dalmatians, which features a character named Roger.

1st movie I saw without my parents: The first movie I ever saw alone, without my parents or friends or anyone, was a double feature of a Francis the Talking Mule picture and something called The Leech Woman, a movie that absolutely terrified me, as I’ve noted.


1st movie I had to stand in a long line for: Quite possibly the original Star Wars movie. But even a longer line for Pretty Woman.

1st movie I saw with a girl: I really can’t remember. I know I saw The Great White Hope with my high school girlfriend, but her father came along. It might have been Catch-22.

1st James Bond movie: Certainly on TV, probably Goldfinger.

1st adult date movie: I’ll say Rosemary’s Baby, my freshman year in college.

1st X-Rated film: It was either Midnight Cowboy or A Clockwork Orange, depending on whether the former had been edited down to R.

1st Marx Brothers film: Duck Soup.

1st movie on videotape: Annie Hall or Being There.

1st animated feature film: Again, 101 spotty dogs.

1st favorite film star: Sophia Loren, before I ever saw her in anything.

1st film star I got an autograph from: If I ever have, I don’t recall.

1st film star I saw in person: Jack Nicholson, hanging out backstage with Mike Tyson after an Anita Baker concert at the Palace Theatre in Albany c 1989.

1st WC Fields film: I saw several in my youth, but they tended to run into each other in my memory.

1st M-rated film: The Night They Raided Minsky’s. M, BTW, became PG.

1st R-rated film: Catch-22. It traumatized me for a while.

1st movie on DVD: I had so few movies on DVD in 2011. TV shows, yes. My wife bought me West Side Story. I bought her Whale Rider and Dreamgirls. The only one I bought for me was a 2-pack of the first two Spider-Man movies, which I got from a library sale in 2010.

1st blaxpoitation film: Have I ever seen one?

1st martial arts film: I’ve seen a couple on local TV but I never knew the name of any of them.

1st screwball comedy: Depends what you consider screwball, I suppose. Is Adam’s Rib a screwball comedy? I guess I’ll say The Philadelphia Story.

1st Cary Grant film: The Philadelphia Story.

1st Clint Eastwood film: probably Every Which Way But Loose.

1st favorite actress: Barbara (Seagull) Hershey.

1st favorite movie song: “Cruella de Ville” from 101 canines.

1st favorite movie cowboy: Roy Rogers, though I knew him more from TV.

Sister Marcia: Alzheimer’s fundraising

A potential cure for Alzheimer’s has been found by a new study.

Marcia.Roger.ChristmasAs I surely have mentioned, my sister Marcia was in a too-familiar position in America.

She was raising her daughter and making sure our mother was all right.

For much of the time, Mom was pretty OK. Then in the months before she died in February 2011, not so much. The reason they had a post office box was that mom would take the mail and hide it. She could be belligerent, though seldom to people outside the family.

On her Facebook page for her birthday, which is today, Marcia is raising money for the Alzheimer’s Association. Her timing is quite fortuitous. There is a “special opportunity to double your impact in the fight to end Alzheimer’s disease — our $500,000 Matching Gift Challenge, thanks to longtime supporters, Mary Joy, Jerre and the Stead family.

“The Mary Joy and Jerre Stead became involved with the Alzheimer’s Association when Jerre’s mother developed Alzheimer’s. Since then, Mary Joy, Jerre and their family have been dedicated supporters of the Association, and they’ve pledged to match every gift received by June 15, up to an incredibly generous total of $500,000.”

Incidentally, I read that a potential cure for Alzheimer’s has been found by a new study that appears to have uncovered what causes the disease. “The new treatment would use drugs that are currently prescribe to fight HIV.”

“‘For the first time, we can see what may cause the disease,’ lead researcher Jerold Chun told The New York Post. ‘We also uncovered a potential near-term treatment.”

“The Post added: ‘Chun and his colleagues at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in San Diego, Calif., compared brain samples of seven people who had Alzheimer’s with six who didn’t.”

Donating through the Alzheimer’s Association NOW, whether through the efforts of sister Marcia or not, would be a great birthday present for her, and would honor our mother to boot.

A song you’d love played at your wedding

I will catch your fall

At_Last_-_Etta_JamesThe next music prompt is “A song you’d love be played at your wedding.” I assume they’re really talking about the reception – among other things, we had Bach during the ceremony – so I’m operating on that premise.

We had a keyboard player that played a number of songs. I believe my father, sister and niece Rebecca likely sang; I might have as well, but it’s a bit a blur. I specifically recall, because there’s a photo, my niece Alex singing Yellow Submarine with one of her young cousins.

My wife and I first-danced to At Last by Etta James. I’m sure the first time I owned it was from the Rain Man soundtrack. I know the choice is now cliched. But we went out for 18 months (1994-1996), broke up, then got together at the end of 1998 and married in May 1999.

When I was wooing her again, I made her a mixed tape. Such a quaint device. I no longer have any idea what put on that collection. Knowing me, it probably had God Only Knows by the Beach Boys.

She only remembers one song, I believe, and that is Have A Little Faith in Me by John Hiatt, my favorite song by him.
And when your back’s against the wall
Just turn around and you will see
I will catch, I will catch your fall baby
Just have a little faith in me

What else might I have put on? I Only Have Eyes for You by the Flamingoes is highly probable.

The rest is speculation. How about Betcha By Golly Wow, maybe by Aaron Neville rather than the Stylistics, because I didn’t have the latter on CD.

Finally, a song I doubt I put on, but would now: Let’s Make More Love by Nat King Cole, from the Billy May Sessions, released in 1993. Oddly, the composer is listed as Unknown.

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