We thought Roe v Wade was fixed in stone, but we were wrong. Clearly, it was only pencilled in. Today, though, I discovered something that does seem to be eternally fixed, and I doubt that even the US Supreme Court can change it. The Google logo and search bar are deliberately placed just slightly above […]
Category: Technology
Amazon Made Me Their Enemy
Any time that anyone mistreats, cheats, or defrauds one of my children, my momma bear claws come out. This week, Amazon turned me into a bear. My eldest son recently finished writing a novel. The work took over two years to complete and was created in the middle of the night on weekdays and during […]
Learning to Speak Robot
This week I have been trying, multiple times, to change the address and phone number on my Bank of America account. You’d think that would be fairly straightforward, wouldn’t you? First I tried to make the changes online, but could not enter any edited data. So, I tried the chat line. The chat person was […]
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow was published in 2008 and, although it discusses computer technology that is now dated, it still has relevance today. It is a book intended for young adults and has teenaged characters who find ways to challenge and disrupt their dystopian world. Marcus is a tech-savvy seventeen-year-old who has figured out […]
Thank You, Yaktrax
I don’t usually promote products or services on this website, but today I am making an exception. After a recommendation from Judy at New England Garden and Thread a few weeks ago, I ordered a set of Yaktrax, and this week they have been the only reason I have been able to get out of […]
Who Wants to Know?
If you use Facebook at all, you will have seen some random questions occasionally. You have also, probably, answered a few of them. I once answered the question about how far I live from my birthplace, and the one about how many grandparents I can name. Mostly, though, I have resisted the temptation. These questions […]
Mailroom Thievery
Yesterday someone with my garage remote was accused of stealing packages from the mailroom in my condo building in San Jose. To say I was shocked and horrified is to understate my feelings when I got the email from the property management company. The email was quite terse and, I thought, unnecessarily accusatory. Here is […]
Sometimes A Technical Problem Isn’t
Recently I have been getting very frustrated with my phone and computer technology. They keep upgrading and making matters worse. I know you know what I mean. After every upgrade some key programs or settings get changed and it takes forever to figure out what happened. To add to my frustrations, I switched out my […]
Old Movies, New Roles
Last week, I was idly looking for useful things to do when I opened the cupboard doors in my TV stand to see what I could clear out. (I’m experiencing a combination of Covid isolation and a late-life decluttering urge.) Inside the TV stand were some DVD’s that had been out of sight and out […]
Three U-Turns In The Night
Imagine for a moment that you are a seasoned solo traveller. You have been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, and you have pretty much figured out travel by road, air, and sometimes train. You also have a good handle on computer and cell phone technology so you can do […]
Tired, Hangry, and Lost
Yesterday I started out on a little adventure. I took a trip to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. “How lovely!” I hear you thinking. Well, it may be lovely eventually, but yesterday was a bit of an ordeal. My first flight took me from Edmonton to Vancouver, and then an hour after I landed there I […]
Strathcona Science Provincial Park
K and I enjoyed a nice walk in this new-to-me park today. As we approached the park we passed a golf driving range, a nordic skiing area, and a snowboarding park. Because of the season, the winter sport areas were not in use, but when we arrived at the parking lot for the Strathcona Science […]
LaMarchand Mansion
A couple of years ago I took some photos of the lovely LaMarchand Mansion on 100th Avenue in Edmonton. At the time I promised myself that I would take a look inside one day, and today was that day. I had a few minutes to spare before an appointment nearby and so I went in […]
The Interesting High Level Bridge
Edmonton’s High Level Bridge takes traffic southbound on 109 Street. It is an unusual bridge because cars and small trucks use the lower level, not the top. The upper level is reserved for the Edmonton Radial Railway Society‘s historic streetcars. One of these days, I want to take a ride in that streetcar.
Views from the Dudley B. Menzies Bridge
Edmonton has some magnificent bridges and one recently caught my attention because it has a shared used pedestrian/cyclist path underneath the track for the light rail train. I had seen pictures of it and I wanted to walk across it to see what the North Saskatchewan River looks like when you are right in the […]
The Value of An Opinion
What is your opinion worth? If it is in the comments section of an online news article, it is not worth much at all. No one cares what you think unless you insult someone’s entrenched point of view. In your Direct Messages or email or apps, though, you might think your opinion can actually help […]
Covid-19 in Alberta
A few days ago, I expressed some frustration because I don’t know who is vaccinated. That makes me feel unsafe when I’m among strangers. I was worried about this because Alberta seems to have a high number of people who are vaccine-hesitant or resistant. In response to that blog post, Tildeb provided extensive comments for […]
Does Everyone Except Me Know This?
There are some things that are not immediately obvious and that we cannot know unless someone tells us. Things like having to change the oil in the car occasionally, or to change the furnace filter now and then, or that the earth revolves around the sun. They are things that are either not in plain […]