YAHOO! FREECYCLE => TRASH NOTHING

I share administration responsibilities for a Buy Nothing group on Facebook but occasionally I still check in with the two Yahoo! Freecycle groups I belong to.  Big news!  Yahoo! is essentially ending support for Yahoo!Groups!!!

Below is the info from the Freecycle New York City, which covers all five boroughs of NYC.  I haven't checked out Trash Nothing but Yahoo!Groups I know is so clunky by 2019 standard.  It is about time.  So long Yahoo!Groups...

We're happy to announce that New York City Freecycle is moving to the trashnothing.com site.

Sign up now at:
https://trashnothing.com/freecyclenewyorkcity

The new site makes freecycling quicker and easier with:

- group posts categorized & color coded by type (Offer, Want, ..)
- automatic removal of offers that are taken & wants that are received
- instant email alerts for items you're interested in
- all your group posts in one place
- it works great on phones & tablets
- simple photo galleries, spam protection & more!

See all the features at: https://trashnothing.com/freecyclenewyorkcity

谢谢你的爱

A pun may not be funny if it has to be explained but I'll take the chance so you may appreciate the punchline in the previous post. 谢谢你的爱 is the title of a popular song by Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau.  It means Thank You for Your Love.  In pinyin (the romanization of Chinese characters to make it easier for non-native people to read Chinese) the phrase is xie xie ni de ai.  I readily associated the last three words as near the eye.  Then at some point I thought of the catchphrase See Spot run from a series of children's book.  So I got See + something that sounds like xie + near the eye, but what can that something be?  President Xi of China was a good match, although I mean no offense to not refer to him as President.  I could have drawn a cartoonish version of him, as opposed to the stick figure, but I want to avoid any misunderstood bad portrait of him.  At one time, I thought of using the nickname of an old nurse in the news, See See, but given all the news about U.S.-China relations these days, President Xi makes more sense.  Originally I was going to draw the Statue of Liberty, with different views of it as the helicopter buzzes about.  It would be a lot of work.  Luckily, a recent visit to the Statue got me a few photos that I was able to use as the backdrop edited in Gimp (the free alternative to Photoshop and its annoying subscription model).

So there you have, a pun in two languages, a bit convoluted, but it's definitely original.  That's my style, I try to come up with original content.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOVE

A pun for music fans of Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau.

This is the Statue of Liberty

That is President Xi Jinping of China on a helicopter tour to view the Statue of Liberty

See President Xi near the torch.

See Xi near the crown.

See Xi near the mouth.

See Xi near the ear.

See Xi near the nose.

See Xi near the eye.

PINNED TEMPLATES

A few days ago, I wrote about using Office templates to make repetitive tasks easier to handle.  The way Microsoft wants us to launch the template files, I don't like it at all.  There are just too many clicks to go through.  My approach is to save the template files somewhere easily reached, like Documents folder or top level of network home drive.  Be sure to pin Outlook application to the Taskbar.  Have Windows Explorer opened to where the template file lives.  Right-click the template file and drag it onto the Outlook icon in the Taskbar, at which point the mouse pointer should mention Pin to Outlook.  Let go.  Next time you need to launch the template, right-click on the pinned Outlook icon and the template is right there at the top of the list, similar to what I have below.  Click the item and you are ready to breeze through it.

GOOGLE MAPS WITH STRESS LEVEL?

Nowadays many of us depend so much on GPS devices or smartphone apps to guide us as we hurry from home to work or elsewhere.  It's pretty good, how did we ever live without them?  But they can be better.  How often do you hear Google Maps say "There is an accident on So-and-so Turnpike and traffic is heavy but you are still on the fastest route"?  Or when you look at the options for the few routes you can go from Point A to Point B, the highway option is dark red but is still somehow faster than the local route?  I usually choose the local, slower option.  Or whatever the other option that may not be the fastest.  When there's an accident, if it's not too bad one lane of the say, three-lane highway is unusable.  If you are unlucky to be stuck in that lane, you move slowly toward the wreck and then some a**hole in the next lane will try not to let you in, oh because they are so important.  The stress in such situation must be high.  Maybe some day we all will have biotech equipment on us that feeds the phone vital data like blood pressure etc and based on that the GPS app will also list stress level as a factor for taking so-and-so route.  I know I hate to be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway so even if I have to stop at every red light on the local street, at least with that I can divert my eyes briefly from the sorry sight of traffic jam when I stop at red lights.

TEMPLATE IN A TEACUP?

Every now and then I would meet a computer user who says he has some template file to help speed up some repetitive task.  Microsoft Word may not be the best program to create forms but it does the job.  In the case of said user, he would have some MS Word document, say Request-Form.docx.  A bonafide MS Word file, that he opens, then erases a word here and there and enter the new information.  Then he Save As some other names, say Request-12345.docx.  I am such a stickler when it comes to language and terms, the idea of calling such a document a template annoys me to no end.  That's not how a template is supposed to be.  If one day he forgets to edit certain words, then the document is wrong.  Hopefully it won't be some sensitive information that is sent to the wrong people, but it's a possibility.  If the world is still all pen-and-paper like not so long ago, my user would be taking a completed form and use correction fluid to cover up the old info, wait for it to dry, then write in the new info.  The electronic method is not as tedious, but you get the idea.

A real template file, or for simplicity's sake, template, is a file that when you open creates a new document, based on the template's name, with some number attached at the end.  For example, if you have a template to contain Help Desk requests and name it HDRequest.dotx, when you double-click it you get a new file named HDRequest1.docx.  While the first document is still open, if you double-click the template, it creates HDRequest2.docx, so on and so on.  Let's say the request has some boxes to hold the requester's first name, last name, and contact number.  You create the template with those fields empty.  When you launch the template, the new document is also empty in those fields.  Whatever you do or not do to the new document, nothing will reflect in the template because the new document and the template are two different files.  Not so with the crummier method that I described in the beginning.  Let's say you open some faux template and filled in some fields, then instead of saving under a different name, you use the same name and unwittingly select Yes when asked to confirm the overwrite.  Your faux template has been changed, unintentionally.  You will have to re-create it by removing certain words etc until it's back to its original format.

Many programs support the use of template.  We already saw the example with Microsoft Word.  Excel has it, so does PowerPoint, and Outlook too.  Let's create a template in Outlook and see how it's used.

Let's say everyday you need to send an email to the four messieurs as shown above, about some repetitive topic, of course.  You create a new message as usual, enter Mr. Fahrenheit and Mr. Fancy Pants in To field, then Mr. Magoo and Mr. Ed in the Cc field, some meaningful Subject, and finally something useful in the body of the message.  If you already have signature auto-appended to all your new message, do not include the signature in the template.  For example, if my signature already includes Qaptain Qwerty and the easy-to-remember phone number, an Outlook template like that above will generate a repeat of the name and phone.

Save the "message" and choose the format to be Outlook Message Format - Unicode (*.msg).  When you select Outlook Message Format, the location the file is saved is automatically set to the user's Appdata\Roaming\Microsoft\Template .  

To use the template, the way Microsoft wants you to, as seen in  Outlook Help, is tedious.  You have to click New Mail / More Items / Choose Forms / Users Templates in File System .  I think I have a better system, but I'll save the tip for the next blog entry.

IF FOUND PLEASE CALL OWNER

This past Saturday, I found an LG smartphone in the municipal parking lot by the New Utrecht Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.  I have a knack for finding lost items, probably because I keep my eyes on the ground to avoid tripping or stepping on undesirable stuff.  One time, the iPhone I found had no lock whatsoever so I was able to someone who recently had a conversation with the owner.  Another, I cannot recall how I did, maybe I said "Call home", and was able to connect to someone the owner knew.  This time, the phone was locked by fingerprint so I was stumped.  I think I pressed the unlock button one too many times eventually I was offered the chance to unlock by passcode, which of course I failed.  The phone started to go dim and it took me a few minutes to realize that its power was low.  4%!!!  Luckily, I had a micro-USB cable in my car so I was able to power it.  I don't know if it's because the phone now had a steady supply of power, but it showed the message "If found please call owner" with a button, I think, below to press.  I tried that and was connected to "Mom", who couldn't meet me soon but told me to drop it off with an Alex in the nearby eyeglass store.  By now the phone and its owner should be re-united.

It's such a good idea to have the ability to call someone related to the owner of a smartphone, all from the lock screen.  Granted the average person would try to wipe a found phone or make some bucks out of the incident.  Yes, I am pessimistic.  But on the off-chance that some decent human being find a phone, why not make it easier to have it returned.  Of course, you would not set the function to call the phone itself, what's the point, right?  You would set it to call your next-of-kind, or your room-mate, someone nearby.

I tried to find out how such function can be had but have no success.  The low-tech method is to design the lock screen background to have the message "Call owner if found at so-and-so number".  I think I used to have my wife's phone number affixed somewhere on my phone, another low-tech solution.  At the other end, I found some enterprise app that can remote-wipe a phone, plus showing the If-found message, among other functions.  I think what I encountered was done via some Android apps but for the life of me, I couldn't find it.  You would think Google knows everything, but not always.  Maybe someone in the blogosphere can educate me?

BRING NYC BACK

Bring it back, bring it back
Don't take it away from me because you don't know
What it means to me...

CityStrides recently had a major overhaul.  Lots of cities are now recognized so there is no need to individually request for them to be added.  Streets are now all real streets and not highways, buildings, bodies of water, etc.  Some streets that were mistakenly removed for being confused with Creeks or highway-style Turnpike were added back.  Examples are Cromwell Crescent in Rego Park and Union Turnpike, which is mostly an avenues with lots of traffic lights and red-light camera, but definitely not a real turnpike like Massachessetts Turnpike or Pennsylvannia Turnpike.

It was a bit scary for a few days to see all my ranking went low, like 4% complete instead of, say, 25%, for some given city.  I waited for it to be fixed but in the end had to write to Mr. CityStrides and now all is good.  Except that now there is no New York City (NYC) as an entity in itself.  In its place, not exactly the same, we have the five boroughs - The Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island.  Plus, in Manhattan there are further breakdown of the the island-city into Manhattan Community Boards xyz.  I was really happy with my #1 position in NYC but now I have to settle with being #1 in The Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.  All meaningless really, just bragging right, and nothing of real value.  Hopefully some day when things settled with this major overhaul, NYC will be brought back and the many Manhattan Community Boards will be abolished.  OK, it's not really Love of My Life we are talking about here but it's still nice to have it back.