Seducing The Muse. …more like a desperate plea.

Did you miss me? Well I missed you too!

Sorry for my absence. I promise I have a good excuse though. Well, it’s mostly a good excuse. I’ve been fighting the forces of evil with a couple of groovy friends, a stoner, and a talking dog. What? What do you mean you don’t believe me? Yeah, well it sounded good in my head.

The truth is rather boring. I’ve been having technical difficulties.

The good news is that, after scrimping and saving, and doing more research than an undergrad studying for his finals, I bought a new laptop. Yay!

The bad news is that, a few hours after finishing the final draft of “What’s Going On“, my wandering rant about race in America, my two month old laptop got the dreaded ‘blue screen’.– NOOO! Not my baby! — Needless to say I was heartbroken. Fortunately, the remedy was relatively painless. Customer service could not have handled the situation better. The woman on the phone was able to remotely diagnose the trouble. I sent the laptop to the Texas care center on the Friday before Labor Day and received it back ten days later.

Yeah. I was surprised too.

The whole reason for the laptop was to encourage me to write more. I’m one of those people that have ideas flying through my head all day long but the moment I sit down in front of the computer… nothing. Then there’s the issue of my grammar, which needs improvement. I live in constant fear of the run-on sentence so I tend to drop commas every few words in the hope that a few land in their proper place.– Even a broken clock is correct twice a day. — The point is that I wanted to start putting thoughts to paper (screen?) and thought a laptop might make it a little easier.

In high school I loved creative writing. Of course, in high school, I had English teachers who gave us direction and deadlines and… Dickens! — Sorry. Then in tech school I got to let my imagination run free. Tech school was essentially an introduction to communications. We covered the basics of radio and television. The idea was to give you enough knowledge that upon graduation you could easily find an interning position or continue your education. My dream was editing for television so that’s where I focused my energy. My specialty was short subjects. I wrote a lot of commercials. My magnum opus was a hidden camera short where I pranked our instructor. The poor guy was the target of much of our humor. He was a good sport though. He never asked us to compromise our creativity, no matter how ill conceived our ideas. Our world would be a much better place if we had more teachers like Ed Gannon.

There’s truth to the old adage, “If you don’t use it you’ll lose it”.

It’s been a long while since I’ve had to engage my imagination on a regular basis. I’ve been so preoccupied with writing big and brilliant that I forgot a few basic rules. Write, write what you know, write some more and, for God’s sake, Keep It Simple Stupid! — KISS for short.

So, for me, the trick is to try to get in the habit of writing again. That’s what this meandering mess is: an exercise to get the juices flowing, an attempt to seduce my elusive muse, to just write whatever pops into my head at this particular moment. — Even if it means boring you all to death. 😉

To Facebook or Not To Facebook

…or, Does this selfie make my ego look fat? 😛

By next month I will have been on Twitter for four years. Four years of absurd puns and double entendres, interrupted by the occasional political rant. It’s so easy to get caught up in righteous indignation that sometimes I forget why I joined twitter in the first place. — For the record, I joined twitter so I could send suggestive tweets to Craig Ferguson‘s Late Late Show. To my knowledge, he’s never read any of my tweets on air. 😦

Since 2010, I’ve joined Tumblr, I tried Blogspot (which I’ve neglected for almost two years), and somehow managed to acquire two G+ accounts. Though I only use one of them.

I chose twitter because it fit well with my personality. Facebook presents itself as this ever-growing community of “friends”. Twitter makes no such claims. On Twitter, people follow one another. No commitment is required. — unless you find yourself immersed in a hilarious hashtag game. (#MoviesMadeBetterWithSharks anyone?) I’ve established some interesting connections on twitter. I’ve even gone so far as to exchange my real contact information with a few of them. But those connections are very casual and fluid. Something about Facebook scares me. For one thing, I’m a bit shy around people that I don’t know. Then there’s the difficulty I have reaching out to people. I find it nearly impossible to make the first move. It’s a wonder I’m in a relationship. — Now there’s a good story I’ll save for another time.– Just because the interactions happen online, rather than in person, doesn’t make them any easier.

So, Facebook.

I DO have a Facebook account. I created it last year after my Acer tablet crashed. My tablet was a year past warranty so contacting Acer through their website was impossible. After trolling through some of the android forums, I learned that this was a common issue with Acer’s Iconia A500. Several forum posters claimed to have had good results after contacting Acer through Facebook. So I created a Facebook account, Acer fixed my tablet, and I’ve been ignoring Facebook ever since.

But why?

Well, the short answer is privacy. I’ve tried very hard to maintain a certain degree of online anonymity. The last thing I want is to have all that disappear because of some piece of wayward information that gets leaked. Sure, if you dig far enough you will discover that my true identity is Bruce Wayne and then I will have to kill you. But, for the most part, I’m very happy being an anonymous entity.

Then there’s Facebook’s intrusiveness. We’ve all read the stories. People’s accounts have been hacked. Private information was collected and sold. Everything you post, tag, or like, every single mouse click, is tracked and sold to marketing companies. This happens on every site you visit but, for some reason, Facebook gets all the press.

Maybe it’s because of ALL THOSE DAMNED PERSONAL QUESTIONS!

God help you if you intentionally leave some information blank! Facebook does not like blank fields. They take it as a personal failure if you don;t answer some of their questions. I’m still being pestered with “You haven’t finished filling out your profile information!”, “Where did you go to high school?”, and “HEY! You forgot to tell us your blood type!”, notifications every time I log on. Okay. That last one was fake but Jeeze! Give it a rest! Maybe I don’t want to give you my mother’s maiden name.

There’s also the issue of time. I barely have enough time to keep up with WordPress. When I created ADignorantium.Wordpress, I promised myself that I would try to publish at least one post a week. If I can’t even do that, what makes me think I’m going to keep up with Facebook?

So here I am.

I changed my Facebook header to match my WordPress and Twitter headers. One must be consistent. Maybe that will encourage me to play around with Facebook. Who knows? Maybe I’ll like it.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, and G+, subscribe to my YouTube channel, pin me on Pintre...wait! I don’t have a Pintrest account! And oh, yeah… if you friend me on Facebook it might take me a little while to get back to you. 😛

Got A New Laptop?

So, I got a new Windows 8 laptop and was trolling through YouTube for tips and tricks when I found this video.

The guy from Tek Syndicate  is friggin hysterical!! — and I mean that in a friendly way.– He holds your attention as he demonstrates how to clean all the bloatware from your computer.. Even if you’re not a techie you’ll find this humorous as well as educational.

 New Laptop: What to Do When You Get a New Notebook/Laptop/PC

BTW- He’s right about Norton anti-virus. Garbage.

• Here’s something that EVERY computer user should be doing, create and use a separate local user account! Create a local user account that has limited permissions. Use that user account for your everyday activity. You can always log onto your administrator account to install software, tweak you’re settings, etc., otherwise leave it alone.  That way, nothing will be installed on your computer  should you ‘accidentally’ click a link with malicious software, spyware, etc. If you’re using a secondary user account with limited permissions, your computer will ask for an administrator password before installing anything.
• To find out how to set up separate local user accounts, click here.

FYI- This post is for education and entertainment purposes only. If you are unfamiliar with the inner workings of your computer, you should leave it to a knowledgeable professional. Neither I nor Tek Syndicate can be held accountable for your computer.  In other words, you’re on your own.

 

The New Technology Blues

NOTE: I’ve been with Virgin Mobile for about a decade. I resisted cell phones for a long time. The truth is, I don’t like talking on the phone. I never did. So, for me, a cell phone was a waste of money. It was my boss who suggested I get one. My responsibilities had just increased and well, with increased responsibilities come even more responsibilities. I chose Virgin because they were the cheapest. At the time it was $20 a month Vs $80 for the other major carriers. – You do the math.

The old boy on the left is dwarfed by the new improved, I can’t live without it, model.

So I just upgraded my phone…

There was nothing wrong with my old one, really. It was only two years old. It’s got a few dings and scratches, but it works just fine.

Perhaps that was the problem. It only worked “just fine”. It was a fine mid-range smartphone for someone like me, who had not yet immersed himself fully into the Android OS.

I blame my e-reader.

A year before buying my smartphone, I bought a nifty little e-reader tablet for a hundred bucks. It was my very first Android device. This puppy had a resistive touch screen, which meant I had to press it to get it to respond. It was the early days of Android tablets. I didn’t know any better.

Within a year I had had enough of the resistive screen. I was tweeting heavily by then, and a resistive screen is just… no. So I saved my pennies and as luck would have it, Tiger Direct and Amazon were competing to see who could offer me the best deal on a new tablet.

Now I had this sweet tablet, with an operating system that I was slowly getting accustomed to, that was supplementing my PC nicely.

If only my cell phone was just as useful.

I had this little “feature phone” which was fine for texting, email, and even twitter, but I couldn’t follow many of the news feeds I was reading on a regular basis. And forget blogging.

Luck smiled upon me again. Radio Shack offered up a “fine mid-range smartphone for someone like me” at reasonable price.

I really did like this small, unassuming phone. I could read my books, magazines, and most of the news feeds I like. It was a little workhorse. 

Then, about a year ago, I started running out of space. I moved as many of the apps onto the SD card as I could, but I was still finding I had to chose between Angry Birds and Twitter. “Oh, the humanity!”

The writing was on the wall.

So I had this two year old phone that still worked, but I’d outgrown it. I made the decision last April to shop for something a little better. I even considered leaving Virgin. – That lasted all of two days; the length of time it took me to realize that I really didn’t want to spend more than $50 a month.

I started saving my pennies again. Virgin had just lowered the price of one of their smartphones, but a little voice in my head asked if I really wanted to “settle” for something I’d probably outgrow in a year. So I waited. …and kept saving those pennies.

A month later, Virgin added the Galaxy S3 to their line-up. It was twice what I wanted to spend. Should I wait? If I wait, maybe the price will come down. But by then, something better might come along.

What to do.

The deciding factor was Amazon. They dropped the price by $50 AND… if you apply for an Amazon credit card, you get another fifty bucks off. Woohoo! The Gods had smiled down upon me once again. Where do I sign?

So now I have this great new phone. It’s fast. It’s powerful. It’s pretty. I love it!

Do you think I should upgrade my tablet?

When you reward bad behavior, expect nothing but bad things. Ball players are not gods. Stop treating them as such.

A girl’s life was ruined by young men who thought they were above reproach. They got that way because we make excuses for athletes. We give them a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card.

More importantly, why do we have to “Teach Boys Not To Rape?” Shouldn’t that come under common sense? Why is it necessary? Does anyone really think there’s even the smallest possibility that these thugs didn’t understand what they were doing was wrong? Seriously?? They knew it was wrong. They did it anyway. Their crocodile tears are a result of being caught, nothing more.

And hey, that phone you’re carrying around, the one used to take pictures of that nearly unconscious girl being assaulted, can also be used to call for help when shit like this goes down. Instead it was used to document horrific behavior for the sole purpose of showing the world what an animal you are. In my opinion, you should go to jail for distribution of child porn.

An unintended side effect to all this is people begin to believe all athletes act like this. That can’t be true. Right?

#SMH

If You Ever See Somebody Using This Punch Him Please
http://nonstahpfun.tumblr.com/