Making an effort

90 minutes with a little cat on my lap this evening.  I watched an old movie on TiVo while she napped.  From 6:30 to 7:00 I listened to Kaleidoscope, which tonight featured Pearl Harbor and Wake Island and the events of December 1941.  

Then I came upstairs and watched a few informative things on YouTube, including another lesson in how to use OpenShot.  Not a whole lot of initiative, but with the exception of preparing photos for TP on Sunday night, more get-up-and-go than I've shown for a couple of weeks.  

For the record:  I TiVo'd Withnail and I some weeks ago, and at last got around to watching it in half-hour bites over a few days recently. It was great to see it available on TCM, as I'd heard so much about it since its release in 1987.  Maybe back then I would have seen it the way they did, and I'd have enjoyed it more too.  As it was, I made it through the entire film, which is more than I can say about some of the movies I've recorded, but it was easy to delete when it finished.  Ah, I'm sure I'm the outlier here.  I'm supposed to laugh at the talented actor who's wasting it with self-destructive behaviour.  Okey-doke.

A little extra cash in pocket -- wonder what to do with it?  I know:  I'll pay off the bills PG and I ran up yesterday!  First Costco, then Wegmans, then Wild Birds Unlimited, and finally to Weis for stuff we didn't find at Wegmans.  [insert "chi-ching" GIF here]

Windows 10 Bluetooth pairing dialog box too small

After visiting TP, I came home and tried to download photos from my phone.  I got a message saying that Bluetooth between the phone and the downstairs laptop was not connected.  I tried following the instructions in Settings, and this came up:

No yes-or-no buttons, not scrollable, not enlargeable.  The pairing failed time after time until I found that not only had many others encountered this problem, but also that it was a bug in Windows which was first detected in 2021.  Here's more info:

I ended up getting a USB adapter and plugging it in, and downloaded the photos that way.  But here's an answer I can vouch for:

So there's a bug that prevents people from pairing their phones and their contents to Windows 10 via Bluetooth.  We're coming up on the 3-year anniversary of its first appearance.  And it hasn't yet been fixed.  

When I get around to the new laptop, I'll see whether it still exists in Windows 11.

Insomnia

Awake since 2:15.  After a largely sleepless night last night that I blamed on the caffeine in the Pepsi I had with pizza, I don't have a similar easy explanation for this.  

Anyway, I lay in bed for an hour before giving up, getting up, and going downstairs.  Xitter doesn't work with Google Chrome, either upstairs on my PC or down here on my laptop, but it does work on Edge, which is based on Chrome.  I'll use that workaround rather than clear all cookies, which would force me to sign in everywhere else all over again.  

I had to wrestle the snow thrower once again yesterday in the wake of an unexpected storm that left six more inches on the ground.  A body would think that would tire out a body.  

Completed the Connections without a mistake, and even began with the tricky purple one.  Some are harder, some are easier.  Some days I don't even get one correct answer.  Followed Connections with Spelling Bee, which is generous with pangrams today.  I found two in the first three words, then checked the Buddy and learned that there are six in the puzzle.  So I found a third pangram and sent an IM to PG, telling her only that I had found half the day's pangrams and was leaving the rest for her.    

Yesterday, no drums, not even a half-time shuffle.  The day did have its share of things that kept me busy in an interesting way.  Now that the new laptop is here, I went through the app executables on file and deleted some outdated ones.  Unlike Samsung phones, Microsoft will only re-install apps that were on your old Windows machine if they are also in the Microsoft store.  That leaves out a few, like ACDSee.  

Not sleepy yet.  Watched another OpenShot tutorial video, and will bring up France Info after I finish writing.  Tried to find a free open source Windows video clip manager, without success.  I want to organize the video clips, recognizing that I'm probably the only person who cares about them and that after I'm gone no one is going to save them.  

C'est midi passé de six minutes quelque part, je viens d'entendre.  Moi, j'ai besoin de sommeil.  Bonne nuit à tous.

Focus

I was just reading an article from today's Le Monde, and I was doing fine with the language.  Not quite as smooth as English, but I knew what was going on.

But while I'm reading something in another language (one of the stated activities set for retirement) I'm not practicing any of the variations on the half-time shuffle; I'm not watching a tutorial on OpenShot; I'm not creating a video in OpenShot.

I already know what I want to do first.  Months ago, I saw a WWII cartoon with a character like Private Snafu.  In it, there was a section of gibberish consisting of a speeded-up human voice.  I recorded the audio and slowed it down in GoldWave, and found it was the same voice as the lead character in the cartoon.  It shouldn't be difficult to put together a video that reveals this fact to anyone with ears to hear.  Call it my latest contribution to the sum total of human knowledge.  

OK, kid, focus.  Back to Le Monde.  The rest can wait until tomorrow.  After you clear the latest snowfall on Saturday, and before you visit the cats on Sunday, there'll be time for creative activities.  (After you visit the cats, there'll be photos to go through, tag, file, and touch up for publication.)  Remember that Monday's an off day, too.  You can't do it all at once, but you can do it all at one time or another this weekend.  

Conversation

Me:  I've heard the stories, and it sounds like to become a major star, a woman had to be hard, tough as nails.  Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck.  

But then I read about Jack Benny and Bob Newhart, and the impression I get is that they understood that letting the rest of the cast get the laughs was the way to success.  Not tough as nails at all.  Are there any women like them who made it big ?

PG:  (after a moment's thought) Carol Burnett.

Content

Accent on the second syllable, to be clear.  

Around noon today, I drove somewhere, parked, got out, walked in, a minute later walked back out.  No pain in my back, in my knees, in my feet.  Blood flowing without any problem.  Breathing normally.  Recognizing how fortunate that makes me as a 67-year-old.

After six inches of snow Sunday night, I wrestled around a heavy snow thrower to clear the driveway, the brick walk behind the house, the sidewalk along the house, and the sidewalk along the street.  Later in the afternoon, came back out after the township plowed in the end of the driveway and shoveled the wet, packed snow onto piles on either side.  No trouble.

Floaters in both eyes, tinnitus in both ears, some plumbing problems, but the kind to have (the kind that doesn't require Depends).  

I love my wife, I like my job, and whenever I want, I can go spend time with cats.  They've asked me to take pictures and write about cats, I didn't have to apply for anything.  I am reasonably competent reading and hearing a second language (speaking it is something else, since I don't get any practice).  I am learning a musical instrument, taking lessons on drums for the first time after my most recent birthday.  

While putting together a piece for Special Needs cats, I found that it would help if I knew a little something about video editing and creation.  I had made a hundred or more short YouTube videos over the course of a 10-year period, then ran out of inspiration or something and stopped completely.  

Sony Vegas isn't available to me now, so I went looking for a replacement, free and open source if at all possible.  OpenShot seems to be the answer; it's installed now and I've been checking out tutorial videos on (what else) YouTube.  This of course leads to the realization that although I've done a better-than-average job of tagging the digital still photos taken over the past 25 years, the video clips aren't nearly as well-documented.  There's a project, and a big one.  It'll keep me busy when I'm not taking pictures and processing them, or loving on cats, or writing about them, or reading/listening to French, or practicing variations on a half-time shuffle.  

Back in time

This is genuinely for me only.  Most if not all of the other posts in Before I Forget can be read by anyone, on the off chance anyone else finds them.  But considering the miniscule chance that anyone will find this, and the even smaller chance they'll be as interested in early videotape as I am, I recognize this one's for me and me alone.

Back when I watched broadcast television, there was some special probably related to the history of a network.  I saw a clip of Sinatra and Bing and my mind snapped to attention.  From the live look of it, I could tell it was a videotape, and I knew that black-and-white clips from early TV were always in the form of lower-quality kinescopes.

On YouTube, I learned that it was a clip from The Edsel Show, which aired on CBS on October 13, 1957.  More about the difference between videotape and kinescope at Kris Trexler's website, King of the Road, as well as the story of how he helped make The Edsel Show available.

Also at KOTR is the story of An Evening With Fred Astaire, broadcast just over a year later on NBC, "in living color" as they used to say.  That used to be on YouTube, too.  

It also used to be the oldest existing show nationally broadcast on color videotape, until the announcement of the Kraft Music Hall that was on October 8, 1958, nine days before the Fred Astaire show.  

I have a little list of YouTube-available shows from way back when.  Some are videotapes, some are kinescopes dating back to 1948.  Near the top of the list:  the oldest color videotape of any kind:  dedication of WRC-TV studios, May 22, 1958, featuring President Eisenhower.  Here too, Kris Trexler had a hand in putting that up for everyone to see.

As of tonight, 13 of the shows I put on the list aren't available anymore, including the Playhouse 90 telecast of Judgment at Nuremberg.  When Rod Serling complained about serious shows that were interrupted by six bunny rabbits selling toilet paper, that was one of the commercials on this show.  

Also, this show was sponsored by the gas company, and for that reason, all references to gas chambers were muted.  Someone with a black sense of humor could come up with something far worse to take their place.  My sense of humor only goes so far:  I liked it when margarine ads, which were forbidden to use the word "butter", made the most of it by referring instead to "the high-priced spread."

My Day

Yesterday, we went out at noontime to pick up the usual weekly groceries, down in Macungie at the Nice Weis.  By the end of the day, my stomach was upset and I didn't know what I'd done to deserve it.  I got through the night without regurgitating anything, and in the morning PG and I made out another shopping list.  Time for a bland diet, at least for a few days.

This time, we went to the nearby Giant, because I knew it carries Vernor's, and ginger ale was one of the items on the list.  By the middle of the day, PG had made a pot of chicken soup and a bowl of applesauce with cinnamon.  We also had fresh bananas, a box of Rice Krispies, and a loaf of Sara Lee Butter Bread for toast, which is the "T" in a BRAT bland diet.  

Back home, I napped deeply enough that vivid dreams occurred, none of which I can remember now.  Other passive activities:  watched the first half hour of Harold and Maude; read chapter 2 of Surrounded on Three Sides, a book first published in 1958 with pop culture references like Norman Vincent Peale and radio-TV columnist John Crosby, both of whom are forgotten today.  I got them, though, and even look forward to digging for more information if the author drops a name unfamiliar to me.

Tragedy, Farce, Etc.

2016:  #ButHerEmails
2024:  #ButHurSays

One More Thought

Watched Nuremberg on Tivo and was astounded as ever to see the hundreds and thousands of German citizens who enthusiastically sieg-heiled throughout the reign of the Third Reich.  Smiles on their faces, right arms raised high.  Were they all really true believers at that point?  Wonder whether any of that film had been shot in Dresden.  If so, wonder how many of that group of people survived.

Thoughts While Scrolling

I'm not paying close attention... well, in a way I am, following political Xitter and Bluesky regularly, but more on the Headline News level than in depth.  OK, that said...

Things I've read online, things I've seen or at least heard about on TV, and I haven't heard or read this next put this way:  anti-Trump people are working together with the same goal.  Extreme example: Liz Chaney (who, it must be admitted, was plugging her book) and Rachel Maddow.  True, neither of them are in office, so it's not the best example of politics-makes-strange-bedfellows, I get that...

Being anti-Trump has brought them together, and they're working together without getting deeper into political beliefs.  They treat each other with respect.  If MAGA is defeated, then won't that respect carry over into day-to-day governing?  

These days, the overview seems to be that Democrats think Republicans are evil and out to destroy America, and Republicans are just as sure the opposite is true.  In the good old days, it is said, they'd disagree without being disagreeable, and after the day's battle would go out together for drinks.  So I'm thinking, isn't all this working together now going to help down the road, too?

Fooled twice, almost

There was something in the New Yorker that referenced someone whose TikTok videos were popular.  I followed the link... and you know what?  I'm not going through the details of what happened after that.  It's enough to say that they now have a junk mail email address of mine and a made-up date of birth, and whatever got left behind after I deleted the app from an old phone, less than 10 minutes after installing it.  It wasn't worth it.  

I'll have to remember this for future apps.  It's going to have to be awfully good, because now signing up is more than an email and a password entered twice.  There are other hoops to jump through, and it's either their way all the way or no way.  

You'd think I would have learned from making a half-hearted attempt to sign up for Threads, which also failed, for the same reasons that I stopped trying to sign up for TikTok.  Oh well, they've got plenty of members already, they don't need me.

It was a good day

Didn't sleep well Thursday night, but made up for it Friday night.  Stayed up going down rabbit holes until after midnight, and when I finally went to bed, I slept the sleep of the gods for 7 1/2 solid hours.  No bathroom visits overnight, just blissful slumber.   This happens very rarely.

So I woke up at 8:00, and the sun was shining, and I showered and put on clean clothes, and I felt like doing stuff.  Not Immaculate Grid or Spelling Bee, but breaking down boxes to recycle at the township and loading the car with them.  

That was the first task on the list, since all the boxes piled one on top of the other blocked my view of the rear view, so getting rid of them had to be first.  After that, to Wegmans for the standard list of groceries; milk, sugar, salsa, and bananas (yes, we had no bananas).  

Stopped at the Wild Birds Unlimited a couple of blocks from the Wegmans, and was impressed that the manager behind the counter remembered us, even though it had been weeks since our previous visit.  I mean, not only did he recognize us, he pulled up our frequent shopper account and helped remind us what we usually bought.  He had a shaved head and a bushy beard, but he's as good a businessman as any clean-shaven man in a gray flannel suit.

Returned home, dropped off the groceries, had half an apple with peanut butter, and back out again to shop.  First, though, to the new car wash a couple of miles from home.  We had been mass-mailed a card containing a code for a free wash, which I had forgotten but which PG remembered, saving me thirteen bucks.  You bet I thanked her.

At Costco, it seemed like every space in the parking lot had been filled, so we gave up and instead got a few things at the nearby PetSmart.  Then home again for the rest of the day.  We made a pot of chili and ate some of it, and I took a nap in the rocker/recliner with Good Queen Swirly on my lap.  She got down eventually, I woke up soon after, and fiddled around with the drumsticks on shuffle beats for some time.  Play for awhile, watch a video lesson for awhile, play some more, watch some more.  Nothing intense, just a low simmer.  

PG wanted a kitchen gadget from Amazon, so I ordered a couple and added some small stuff for myself.  We'd just bought a set of kitchen chairs to replace the worn-out set we'd gotten in 2006 or so.  That purchase was good for 5% cash (or store credit) back, so today's much smaller purchase cost us nothing.  

Today's mail brought the yearly letter from our accountant, providing a checklist of required tax documents.  We'd been dumping the W-2, the 1099's, and cumulative statements in a tray, and today I went through them, organizing and listing them on a cover letter that will go out soon.  Not expecting a big refund; in fact we try to break even or owe a little bit, hanging on to our money the way tax advisors recommend rather than make interest-free loans to Uncle Sam.  

One last thing:  in the Philip Wylie rabbit hole last night, I learned about a 1915 book which described a superweapon that strongly resembled an atomic bomb.  Immediately I went to Gutenberg and downloaded a copy of The Man Who Rocked The Earth.  The book looked a year ahead and described the destruction caused by the world war, and while I don't know my history that well, I bet the story wasn't way off in its predictions.  I don't take for granted having near-instant access to documents and information that were out of reach the first forty years of my life.  What a time to be alive, y'know?  

Friday night

A thought while scrolling:  "That's all well and good.  But I know good and well that..."

---------------------

Seen any good stuff lately?  Yes, the Mike Wallace Interview, a half-hour of picture radio from the late 1950's, conversation with the up-and-coming (Henry Kissinger), those past their prime (Mary Margaret McBride, Dagmar, Gloria Swanson, Philip Wylie) and those still riding their 15 minutes of fame (Ralph Lapp) or infamy (Eldon Edwards, Grand Wizard of the KKK).  A few people at the top of their business (Steve Allen, Eddie Arcaro), and some near the end (Commando Kelly, Diana Barrymore).

---------------------

As a child growing up a couple of decades after World War II, I learned about the war years through history, not as an eyewitness.  The Manhattan Project had been top secret, I read, except for a few pesky leaks to the Soviet Union, I read later.  When Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked, it was a huge surprise to everyone outside that small cadre of nuclear physicists.  No one had ever heard of such a thing.

And so it wasn't until tonight, following up on the Mike Wallace Interview with Philip Wylie, that I learned that the atomic bomb had been the subject of numerous articles in the 1930's in newspapers, in magazines like Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated, and short stories in pulp science fiction magazines.  People knew about the sudden cities in Oak Ridge and in Los Alamos.

Actually, the pulp stories continued into the early years of the war (so I found out) until a government agency said in effect, "Ix-nay on the Omb-Bay.  The enemy can read, too."  Philip Wylie had written a story that brought together a great deal of knowledge about the progress being made on nuclear weaponry, and he was taken to a quiet room by several serious men who wanted to know how he knew so much and why he was telling so much about it.

---------------------

I was in the basement last night, and I looked across the floor and saw my little cat, Good Queen Swirly.  She saw me and ran to me for some affection, and I was happy that seeing me made her so happy.

---------------------