BACK TO SCHOOL, SORTA

No respect, I get no respect.  Yup, when it comes to some jobs, having no certificate whatsoever in the computer field gets me no respect.  Recruiters nowadays probably run resumes through some filter and if there's no A+ or MCSA, or whatever the job demand, then you get filtered out.

I finally took the plunge and registered for a paid A+ online course.  It's not the first time I try to go for a cert, but this time it's online so hopefully the progress-tracking provided, the example tests etc will help.  In the past, I spent x dollars on some set of books then lost interest shortly afterward.  Maybe because work required more time, family matters, whatever.  This time, with the exam voucher already paid for, that should be incentive enough to get the darn thing done.  Plus while unemployed I do have some time.

People ofter mention so-and-so school course is so useless, such as, "When was the last time I need to use trigonometry in real life?"  Trigonometry, I have to agree on that, at least for my line of work (computer support, mostly at financial institutions) but not algebra.  Still, likewise these cert courses are so boring, going into every little details and most likely won't be used ever in real life.  It's like reading a book on how to avoid being sued if you run a business.  It makes me chuckle to think back on all the risky behaviors ex-colleagues of mine did.  Like stacking boxes so high or haphazardly so that they eventually crashed down overnight.  Or management at older jobs where the floor had gaping holes because some tiles were partially removed.  I guess if those people have certs they wouldn't do that.  Or that they don't care about safety, just rushed around getting the job done with the minimal effort and move on to the next one.  Sigh.

At least now I am at some chapter in the online course where it's a little more exciting, different types of USB connections, hard drive connectors etc.  Maybe if I think of a pun to go with a topic occasionally it won't be so boring.  Like SATAday Night Fever or ATA boy!

Have you found something really useful from an A+ cert prep course in real life?

THE RETURN OF THE AMAZON REMOTES

 Like many people, I buy from Amazon, every now and then, not weekly like some addicts.  I try to support my local businesses but sometimes the local places just don't have what I want. The pandemic doesn't help either.  Getting the stuff delivered to me is convenient, especially since there's an Amazon Locker at my nearby 7 Eleven.  Porch pirates ruin the experience and I once lost a package so now even if I have to pay extra for the Locker I still go with it.

One thing I dread about though is returning stuff to Amazon.  I haven't had the need to do so, until this week.  In my mind, that involves finding some box that would fit the items, pack the items, contacting the seller for some authorization paperwork, print or write the return address, then finally take the package to the post office, which the past few times when I went there on the weekend the queue was long.  Not at all an attractive prospect.  Recently I bought some third-party remote controls for my Wii console and they wouldn't stay synced.  I had to sync them each time the Wii is powered on.  I was glad to find out that it was a rather smooth process to return them.

I had a month to use the product before it's ineligible for return.  I heard about Kohl's store being physical pickup points for Amazon but didn't know that they process returns there as well.  7 Eleven places also handle returns, except the available choices are few, nowhere near where I live.  Kohl's is not as close but I could use a nice walk, some excuse to get out of the house once in a while.  Although the return process for Kohl's clearly mentions no need to pack up the items, I thought since I had a printer and a padded envelope from a different, recent Amazon purchase I would pack the items up.  It turned out to be unnecessary, or probably detrimental to the process in use by the person doing the returns.  She asked me to cut open the packaging and then she did her usual things.  So much for trying to re-use stuff.  I guess Amazon has their fixed process, or the person doing the work just didn't know what to do when the items are already packed.  Whatever, a day or two later I got credited for the purchase on my credit card.

I did notice a small pile of used Amazon boxes by the entrance to Kohl's.  The boxes are probably from people who picked up their stuff and then didn't want to deal with proper disposal of them at home.  If you need a box, Kohl's by Caesar's Bay should be a place to check out.

ORIGAMI ORIGIN

I love origami and had a phase during which I was very much into modular origami.  There are so many types of modular origami, as I discovered in the books I borrowed from the public library or bought from elsewhere.  I tried maybe two or three types and found sonobe modular to be the easiest to do.  Sonobe, that's all I know by name.  It's important to know the lingo so we origamists can communicate.

One day at a friend's house, as we prepared to start dinner, my friend's mother started folding these little trays.  The trays were then used to hold bones and such, stuff discarded from the food dishes.  I love origami but so far the stuff I made were just decorative and serve no useful purpose.  I sometimes joke a sonobe ball can be kept in the car dashboard for throwing at bad drivers, but such action would probably escalate quickly.  Anyway, I asked the woman to show me how to make it and was able to master it quickly.  Later on, I showed my own mother and she's been making them regularly.  I just made the ones shown below, as offer to my local Buy Nothing group.

What are they called?  There must be a name for them.  Some Japanese words, I prefer.  I don't make them regularly and usually I would have to reverse-engineer one when I forget.  If I know the name, I can look it up in YouTube.  Better yet, I plan to use Jitsi Meet's record feature to make a YouTube video, just for my own feeble memory to rely on when needed.

 

COSTCO QUEUE OR NO QUEUE

 Sometimes Life is just not logical.  I need to make a grocery run to Costco in Sunset Park, plus a visit to Bed Bath and Beyond just a few blocks away.  I got to Costco around 4 P.M. and there was a queue going around the block.  I suppose it's some kind of social distancing measure.  Wife didn't want to be spend time on the queue so we went to BB and B.  I gave up on the idea of visiting Costco that evening, since most likely when we were done with BB and B, more people would get out of work and make a stop at Costco, further lengthening the queue.  Strangely, on the way back from BB and B, we drove by Costco and lo and behold there was no more queue.  I thought maybe because the store was going to close soon, but an employee said they were still open for another three hours or so.  What gives!?  So much for logical thinking.  Or maybe the queue wasn't for social distancing, or maybe the queue was too long and Costco was afraid of losing customers and just let everyone in.  Who knows.

Inside it was somewhat comforting to see that everyone wore masks.  The store was big but there were many people too.  There's no way you can avoid being close to people.  Hopefully the masks did their job.

MEET PHILO-REN, SUPPOSEDLY

 Back in 1989 when I first started working my first job out of college, a colleague just bought a house and there was this plant in a pot in her backyard.  I think it wasn't in great shape, I vaguely recall her telling me.  She noticed I was diligent in watering the various plants in the office and offered to give the plant from her backyard to me.  Probably more likely just a snip of it, I cannot imagine her carrying the plant with its pot on public transportation.  We were working at One Penn Plaza and I think she traveled via MetroNorth commuter rail, from Little Neck area.  Took care of the plant I did, I even took some cutting home and gave out to other people who were interested.  I took a piece with me as I changed jobs over the year and still have a few at home right now, some 30+ years later.  I never knew what type of plant it was so one day Google told me it's a philodendron.  Recently, my track club sprouted a plant propagation club and I wanted to find out what type of philodendron my plant is.  I already came up with the punny name Philo-Ren.  Alas, none of the places Bing took me to told me what type of philo the plant is.  Some site mentioned pothos and a club member did too.  So, after all this time, it's not a philo, but some type of pothos.

Can actual people of the Internet help?  I really want it to be a type of philo but the color and shape just don't match anything I read.  The leaves are elongated, not heart-shaped.  Color is solid green.  This particular plant (in the photo) grows in water and is near a window, so while it has some sun, no soil nutrient so the leaves are not that large.  I moved a cutting to a pot outside and the new leaves are significantly larger.  Please let it be a philo, else I need to come up with another name to be punny with reference to pothos.

TROUBLES IN WII PARADISE

In general, I am very happy with my Wii setup, in particular Wii Fit exercise program and Wii Board.  But as my son pointed out recently, it's over 10 years old, the world has moved on to bigger and better things.  Well, maybe not better, as the Wii physical input is probably still the best.  Yes, things are breaking down, perhaps aided by fumbling fingers.  Recall that when I recently re-discovered the Wii controllers and boards, the busted batteries appeared to do some damages to the battery compartment.  That wasn't the case.  But then the family started to use the setup regularly, everyday, sometimes by three different people.  Mistakes were made and new batteries got depleted.  One controller started acting weird, going off on its own or losing connection to the main system.  Luckily, there is a market for replacement controllers and I got a pair this week.  A visit to some setup screen and the new controllers detected the mothership, we already started using them yesterday.  (They actually arrived that day Tropic Storm Isaias cut off our power, didn't do us much good to have them.)

Something else that's different with the Wii setup is how the top ten list for Wii Fit Plus behaves.  While I am still glad that the ranking carried over from Wii Fit to Wii Fit Plus, I also noticed that some list got many entries cleared out.  Can it be because the main system is running out of storage space?  So that given the additional poses and exercises that came with Plus some older ranking must be removed?  I think as long as the top few positions are still intact, I am OK with it.  Yeah, first world problems.

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW

Yesterday, Tropic Storm Isaias hit New York and it sure was nothing to sneer at.  Not that much rain, at least for where I was, but really high wind.  The wind just blew right along the street outside my house, along with traffic too.  I am sure a block over it was going against traffic.  Electrical power went off many times, each time just a second long, but by 3:30 P.M. it finally did enough damage wherever power was flowing from and there was no power for a while.  The occasion finally made me install the iOS app from Con Edison to report the outage.  Supposedly power wouldn't return until 3 A.M. next day.  Luckily, power did come back around 10 P.M. same evening, a few hours ahead the scary estimate.

In recent months I started using these so-called cabinet LED light-sticks and love them during the blackout.  They are very bright, have a USB port for charging so you don't need to worry about regularly buying alkaline batteries (be it AA or D etc).  They are motion-sensitive so they are great for hallways and other places that don't need constant illumination.  The first one I got only had two mode - ON with timed shut-off and OFF.  The next three I got, from a different company just to see how different they are, also has a ON-until-manually-powered-off mode.  As if to further convince me to get away from D-battery lanterns, and their ilk, one of the old lanterns the batteries busted so badly that the spring parts that help keep the batteries in place corroded right off.  I am tempted to cannibalize another flashlight, or anything else that's broken but has a similar springy thingy, to repair this one, with some Crazy Glue, but I definitely will not buy any more of them old flashlights.  LED rules!

SAY NO TO MO'

And they lived happily ever after.  Or so they thought.  Some time ago I read somewhere that gift cards make great presents.  They give the recipient the choice to get what they want and the cards themselves have no expiration.  Then Toys R' Us went out of business and I joked about getting gift cards for my nephew who was going to become a father.

Not too long ago I won a raffle for a Modell's gift card.  Just before the pandemic hit NYC, Modell's went bankrupt.  I think I already used the gift card but wasn't that sure.  This week I noticed that on the back of the card it says the card expires five (5) years from the date of issue.  So much for that idea about gift card having no expiration date.  Or maybe it's just Mo'.  Not that Mo' will be around much longer, but for now I must Say No To Mo'.  One other thing:  when I visited my local Modell's this week, they have a sign that says they only accept gift cards up to July 26 or .  It was already early August so whether or not my card had any values on it, it was no good.  I did call 800-ASK-MODELLS and only to be directed to some mailbox that's already full.  No human to help me with my card.  When I insisted, the chap at the store in Caesar's Bay supposedly looked up for me to confirm that the card had zero dollar.  I hope he's right.  Or if he didn't really look things up and just wanted me to get out of his hair, oh well, easy comes easy goes, that's how raffle prizes are sometimes.

A WEIGHTY SOLUTION TO A FIRST-WORLD PROBLEM

I still use a regular, non-digital bathroom scale to keep track of my weight.  Yes, people elsewhere may have hunger problem but some of us worry about being too heavy.  I do need to lose many pounds and a combination of rope skipping, elliptical running, and Wii Fit exercises seem to help.  The Wii Board can sense my weight but from time to time I still use the bathroom scale.  Problem is my eye-sight ain't that great and I cannot see the dial that well standing atop the scale.  I can bend down but even though my whole body is still on the scale, the action seems to affect the weight reading.  Enters the omni-present smartphone!  I now use the zoom function of the camera to get closer to the scale's face to better see my weight.  Yes, the cell phone weighs something but it's a good trade-off.  I am fine with that.

iOS TEXT REPLACEMENT

I regularly offer to my Buy Nothing group free items or stuff to borrow. I would end the post with the phrase “Pickup near the 25th Avenue station of the D train.” By now, the iPhone is smart enough to start offering the word “near” as soon as I typed “Pickup” and so on. But I can take that further with the Text Replacement function. As illustrated below, through the Settings app, I define the “word” BNpu as “Pickup near the 25th Avenue station of the D train”.

As long as your brain can remember a few “words” that you define, there are great possibilities with Text Replacement in helping you save time and be more accurate with your typing.

I already created the shorthand BNpu so it appears in the list, you would touch the plus sign in the upper right of the screen to create a new shorthand.

Note that the shorthand is not case-sensitive, I had the n in lowercase but iOS still offers me the replacement text.