Better than a Business Card. (And yes, I know of Moo Cards, thanks.)

Business cards seem to be a Good Idea, Almost. If you are really interested in the business, you keep that card that was given or included. But more likely it gets piled, stashed, stowed, forgotten, and finally tossed. If not tossed right off. There are other means of keeping your name in front of people: paper notepads (used, if less so, even in this Smartphone Age), pens, pencils… but those are both universal and interchangeable. Today I got something new, and at least for a while (until “everybody” is doing it) it will be better than the rest.

I have my in-use smart phone, the older ones – so far generally employed as over-capable clocks, but they can do more and one day might, the Kindle, the various computer screens, and… glasses (that haven’t been glass since sometime in the 1970’s). And this company (Cerrxian – I have some of their USB cables now) has their name and email address on a lens/screen cleaning cloth – something I find atypically useful and will thus keep around. And, so far, I’ve not seen anyone else include such with their products. For the moment, they win.

“Postmaster please deliver between…”

If you ever figured that the local Postmaster never actually sees that, or only sees them in a glance and they get maybe a smirk, you’re right. I used to work at a Post Office (I’m feeling much better now, thanks) and I’d see this all the time. And the Postmaster was generally in his office or such, not being bothered with what is really advertising aimed at the end recipient – or instructions to the folks actually moving the mail.

Perhaps you’ve heard (or even repeated) the alleged joke that a postage rate increase is to cover storage. At the place I was at, we HATED getting stuff we HAD to sit on (tax forms, mainly) as… there was no extra room. Storage? Nonsense, we genuinely wanted to move the mail as fast as we could – get it out of the way! And if you think the USPS is slow, have you dealt with postal services of other countries? As lousy as USPS can be, it’s the envy of most of world for good reason: The damn thing works. Yes, it’s rusty, crusty, inefficient, government AND union regulation bound… and it’s STILL better than most. Damn, those other guys must REALLY suck at their jobs.

I really like Honor 8 phone… but it ain’t perfect.

Yeah, others have a few more megapixels on a camera. Big whoop. This thing will do. No, the real annoyance is that plugging it in to charge – on a fast charge capable charger anyway, it shows a fancy animated bit to show it’s fast-charging. Fine. But it will not let you do anything else until that show is over, which is annoying when one plugs in to be sure there’s power to Do Something. Yeah, it’s only a few seconds – but in a microsecond world, that’s S..L..O..W.  Let me override that, Huawei – if I’ve just plugged it in, I fscking KNOW it’s plugged in! If the light doesn’t come on, I know the other end of the cable isn’t getting power. Stop getting in the way!

The IR port is great, but the app is necessarily limited. I get that there’s no pre-defined entry for a 20+ year old all-in-one stereo system. What’s annoying is that there seems to be no recognition such things exist and so one needs to find some other class of things to wedge into that to even do manual programming. Universal remote that isn’t, really. It seems if there’s some one-off weirdball thing that doesn’t work with a “Universal” setup… I have it. At least the app knows of TVs and so I could tell it about the now-ancient Contec set (which “universal” remotes, even back when, seem to deny exists). The other downside is that there is serious temptation to find the right codes to use on TV’s in bars and restaurants and such and turn them off.

The Neighbor’s House…

Is finally cleaned up or cleaned up enough. There are FOR SALE signs in the yard and have been for a couple weeks now. I’ve not seen anyone looking at it, but my hours mean that I’m usually sleep or otherwise engaged when so-called normal people would be looking at such. I suspect I’ll still blow out the driveway of that place when it snows, just to make it easier should someone wish to move in during the snow season – and it means the snowblower will run more than just a couple minutes and the engine can more likely get up to a good operating temperature.

LibertyCon 31

Huzzah! It is happening! $HOUSEMATE has already reserved us a room. Now when convention registration finally opens… I hope I’m aware of it in time!

ACME Delivery

If you have an idea for a delivery of $SOMETHING to $SOMEONE at LibertyCon that would be best done (committed?) by me under ACME Delivery color, please let me know. I can be reached, curiously, via e-mail of Vakkotaur, with domain that of google’s mail service. I know it’s awkward that way, but if I wanted spam, I know where to find Hormel. And don’t put it in the comments – surprise is a Good Thing – and maybe you want some anonymity.

Or, for that matter, if you’ve an idea that I ought to be at some other event… please enlighten me about such. Do to work constraints, “last minute” means “ain’t gonna happen.” Right now I have only two must-be-there events. One is LibertyCon and other is the Siouxland Renaissance Festival. I am hoping to make Riverssance (Sioux City) this coming year, after a couple years of unfortunate interruptions. Everything else is pretty much open, so long as I have the time and funds.

People watch this crap?

The local VFW closed (poor/limited menu choices meant it was not a popular dining venue) and a new owner has the place as his restaurant. Tried it once, so far, and have been quite impressed despite some obvious start-up issues. While there, I saw (the volume was low, thank goodness) some ABC show (‘Speechless’ I think) and what I saw looked like everyone was overacting or every character, save perhaps the fellow in the wheelchair, constantly over-excited. I have NO desire to see more, let alone experience it with the dialogue. TV like this is great… for convincing me to keep to old time radio shows.