Wednesday, December 5, 2012

SCIENCE!

Ok, so I didn't get the best picture to really drive home the point here.  That picture is of the two dorks in "Weird Science" wearing bras on their heads.  I know the point of a picture is to not have to explain the picture.  And as you read on you'll find the humiliating irony that in the very post I'm using to describe a major breakthrough in computer stuff, I can't get a decent image to show up to be scintillating.  Or something.

And I wasn't really wearing a bra on my head, but I was probably close to this state of arousal.  Kelly Lebrock didn't show up or anything.  But I did get internet.  Somehow.  And this with neither spending extra money nor camping out close to a wi-fi deal.  Nope.  Just some good ol' fashioned yankee know how and a few other things.  Like a friend telling me that this was a thing.  And me doing a little searching.

The scene was set with all the usual decor.  A Piano, a TV, video games, etc.  But I was done with my book.  The book selection is looking bleak.  So, long intro to story short, my buddy said he had an app blah blah blah internet blah blah blah but he was online.  I'm not a droid guy.  The only smart phones I've owned and took seriously were iPhones.  And they work like they're supposed to.  All the time.  The droid that I have now is a bit more temperamental.  It seemed too daunting to even bother with, until...

Last night a friend of mine emailed me a video and assured me it was worth watching.  So I downloaded it on my phone but couldn't find it, then found it and it was the wrong format.  Then there was an error etc.  So I went to the old app store and dug up some new fangled doohickery, slapped it on the old HTC and voila.  Video time.  It was kind of a revelation to me.  This was probably the first time I solved what was to me an in depth problem on a computer or computer like device.  Got my shoulders kinda loose and thought "hey, it's not a conspiracy against me.  It can work."

So I came up to the wheel house today with a laptop computer under one arm, a phone in my pocket, and a tangle of wires and chargers and basically had a seventh grade science project.  When the chief engineer walked in, I'm sure I looked something like...


That.  Just doodads and wires and consternation on my face.  He kinda laughed and called me out on it too.  I just shrugged and said 'science'.  So he came and went while I worked through the night, or next twenty minutes just dealing with all of these incompatibility issues.  I got the program on the phone but needed it on the computer, the computer is a mac, you need this program, but with that program you need such and such thingy.

Welp, in what was certainly a task that I made harder than any sixth grader would have made it, I found sweet victory.  I was like Thomas Edison, marveling at his first, useless, dim light.  The internet is way faster on my phone than it is on the computer, or at least with the signal I had then.  And it probably wasn't even worth saving fifty or whatever dollars some internet would have been.  But it was alive.  ALIVE!

And here I am.  This is probably the least compelling story I could have told right now.  I could have made something up about a kid named Jamal and a cat that would have been better.  And what's worse is the fact that I tried to spare the details in my mercy, but really omitted anything that might have resembled a thought provoking sentiment.  But I have a keyboard in front of me in the comfort of the wheelhouse.  I will therefore run my yap about it.

Pretty much it there.  Just uhh, haaaangin out.  I'll do better next time.  But I think it's pretty effin cool that I teamed up with science to solve a problem.  Now we just wait for computers to take over the world.  Probably seriously not far off.  Think about it.  Society could deal with almost any calamity better than every computer just not working anymore.  Kinda weird.  I'd be the only one left, driving a '66 Chevy with all this gas that no one needs anymore and a charming growth stunted Italian man playing an accordion in the seat next to me, you know, for my tunes.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.  Later.

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