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.

WE LOVE WII FIT PLUS

In these uncertain times of sheltering in place, it is important to stay active with indoor exercises.  Years ago when I got an elliptical machine, it was used mostly as a coat rack.  I was able to run outside at least every weekend and would occasionally used the "coat rack" during the week, but it was mostly not used.  Likewise, for a while my son was using the Wii program Wii Fit Plus, with the required Wii Board, to do yoga and strength exercises.  A few months ago when I pulled the Wii Board out of cobweb, the batteries already busted but luckily a little cleaning with rubbing alcohol and cotton swaps, plus fresh batteries, all was good again.  I've been using the elliptical and Wii Fit everyday.

As great as Wii Fit is, there are only so many yoga poses, strength exercises, and balance games to interact with.  A few weeks into the new routine, I started searching for a sequel of Wii Fit.  There is one and it's called Wii Fit Plus.  Not wanting to be a compulsive buyer, I promised myself not to buy it until I finished all the moves.  Or at least between my son and me.  It's necessary to add that additional clause because I am horrible at the balance games and only play a few of them, whereas my son aced all of them.

It's been a long time since Wii Fit etc came out so there are no "new" program to buy.  Amazon offers Renewed version at some discount with a guarantee so I went with that.  For some reason, among the various offerings on Amazon there was a PAL version.  From my days of dealing with software for the Amiga platform, which was popular in Europe, I learned about NTSC and PAL, the two primary video signals used in the U.S. and Europe, plus other places.  I don't know the nitty-gritty details of the difference, just that you cannot view a video made for PAL on a TV set in the U.S., which can only handle NTSC.  I made sure the Wii Fit Plus I bought does not say PAL or spells out NTSC.  I used the Amazon Locker at my local 7 Eleven, no package for you you porch pirates!

It's been a while since I last inserted a disc into the Wii, the first time I did so with the Wii Fit Plus disc I did it wrong and the disc couldn't be read.  Flipped it over and all was well again.  I plan to go through every yoga pose, every strength exercise, with different levels of time duration, every balance games, just to make sure the disc has no bad sector or scratch.  So far the three new yoga poses and the new strength exercises work so I don't expect to return the disc.  My son is still going through the many balance games, hopefully nothing wrong there.

I suspected that the Wii has some internal memory that remembers all the players and their stats.  I am glad that that is the case.  It makes sense, but sometimes things don't necessarily make sense in real life.

WENT TO B.A.T. FOR COVID-19 TESTING

As part of return-to-campus, my son's school requires him to test for COVID-19.  I recalled seeing video footage of testing places having long queue of cars and thought that would be a safe way to get it done.  Everyone in their own cars, whoever getting tested just need to stick their head out the window to get the brush stuck up their nostril.  I also recalled seeing someone Facebook friends' post that the testing site at the Brooklyn Army Terminal (B.A.T. or just BAT) had no queue at all, you get in and out very quickly.  It's a huge place that I drive by whenever the BQE South has too much traffic and I take Second Avenue to the Belt Parkway.  Surely there's enough room for a long queue of cars.

I drove my son to BAT around 12 noon.  It was not an ideal time to be in the area.  Years ago there may be plenty of room for a long queue of cars but much has changed in the area.  There's a relatively new building erected to house a Ford service center, taking a chunk out of the parking lot.  Then there was some road construction along Second Avenue, running from 58th Street toward the entrance to the Belt Parkway, two-way traffic was controlled by a few road workers with STOP and SLOW signs.  The nearby hospital, now under NYU Langone, expanded and took a few new buildings, resulting in more traffic in the area.  The COVID-19 test site is a walk-in.  What's worst was that just north of Third Avenue it was alternate-side street cleaning between 11:30 A.M. and 1 P.M. that day. I could have just dropped off my son, he's old enough to do the test himself, but I was already in the area, I wanted to accompany him in.  Alas, with the construction and alternate-side sweeping, there was just no place to park, not even the parking meters were available.  We went to have lunch elsewhere and came back to squat in a place and waited in the car for 1 P.M. to arrive.  Supposedly, they cannot ticket a car that has a driver sitting in it, but I have no faith in the ticket agents, but I also have no choice.

At 1 P.M. or so we walked the few blocks to the test site.  There was no queue at all.  Literally in and out less than 15 minutes.  Fill out some quick form, verbally, sign some electronic pad, look up to the sky and let the lab technician stick the brush up your nostril, all done at walk-by windows.  There was even a mobile restroom that we used before heading back to the car.  Restrooms in NYC are even more difficult to come by these days.

The B.A.T. COVID-19 test site was really quick.  There were many booths to take care of clients if the queue was long.  Some bus stops right by the entrance so it's not totally unreachable by public transportation.  Depends on where you live, you may need to spend time with subway-to-bus transfer etc.  If you drive, find out the street-sweeping regulation, which days of the week, between what hours of the day, and time your arrival so you can easily get a spot.  There's no drive-in testing so be prepared to park or just to drop out your "patient".

RECURRING SLEEP-VISIONS

I heard that the German language has a word for every situation.  Supposedly, the Japanese language does too, although I heard about German more regularly.  There are some words, English or otherwise, I wish I know that would better define the following two scenarios:

DREAM.  As simple as it sounds, DREAM is a misleading word.  It may have started out as just something you "see" while sleeping, but then it became something that you wish to come true, as in Martin Luther King's I have a dream.  When I want to discuss something that I just saw while sleeping, it may be just something interesting to me, nothing dramatic that I would wish to be true.  It may not be so bad as to be labeled a nightmare.  For now, I use SLEEP-VISION, I love coining words, assuming that SLEEP-VISION is not already a word.  I think hyphens are underused also so I try to throw them out there whenever I have the chance.  Onto a SLEEP-VISION I had recently.

I was supposed to setup a bunch of computers for a training session.  Nothing unusual, just the CPUs connected to monitor, mouse, and keyboard.  Oh year, Ethernet network connection, too.  Funny thing is I had that vision before, that someone told me about the training schedule so that I would be there x days before the event to set things up.  I think I arrived late.  Maybe a few hours before the training event, or maybe a few hours late on my scheduled time.  If anything, it just means I sometimes think about work.

So what's the German word that aptly describes the situation?  Something that was seen while sleeping, that seems to continue after a period of time.  Inquiring minds want to know.

POSTERINO 3 - EASILY FORGOTTEN IMPORT FOLDER

I run an active alumni group for my high school.  Every now and then I would make a photo-grid of one particular teacher.  The grid shows photos of the teacher, in chronological order.  It's nice to see someone changed over the years but certain features would stay the same.  I use Posterino 3 on the Mac to make the grid.  The software is great for that kind of thing.  Ideally, this is how it works:

1. Set up a grid.  In the example below, it's a 4x4 grid.
2. Select the folder to import images from.
3. The photos from that folder show in the little gallery to the left of the grid.
4. Either drag individual photos into the grid, or fill the grid up alphabetically, or even randomly.

I love the idea of a template and Posterino has the feature, but documents created from my custom template wouldn't show the images available.  The only way to get the images to show, at least to me, is to carry out these steps:

1. Create new document based on the template.  The grid is there, with the editable years that need to be adjusted depending on what years' photos I have for the teacher.  The years also depend on how long the teacher stayed at my school.  Unfortunately, there are no photos to the left of the grid.  The screenshot shows some images I placed in the source folder.  They should be part of the template file, at least I think they should be, but they are not.
2. Select the source folder by selecting File/Import Images as in the picture.  I would love to avoid this step but it's the crux of the problem.  Even after I selected the source folder, nothing would show up.  Very weird, but that's why we are having this conversation.
3. Create a new document, again!  Use any existing template.  I stick to the standard ones instead of the custom one I made, just to be clear which one is which.
4. Immediately close the new, second document, without saving.
5. Boom!  Somehow the action of creating a new document forced Posterino to load the images in the source folder.  Maybe it's because I'm still using an old Mac, maybe it's a bug that is to be resolved later on.  I am fine with my workaround for now.

Before I came up with this "solution", I worked off folders named for the teacher.  Now, everything has to be in a folder called photo-grid.  As I am done with the project I would copy the folder's content to another folder named for the teacher.  It may work if I change the source folder every time but I think it's easier to see where things are with the five steps above.

DON'T STOP, SKIPPING, HOLD ONTO THE FEELING...

In this day and age, you would think the Internet has all the answers.  Or at least it should.  I had a question last night and Google didn't quite give me a straight answer.

My exercise regiment, while I am unemployed and sheltering in place (at home) includes rope-skipping, elliptical, and Wii Fit.  I never skipped when I was a kid.  It's not something boys would do, at least in Viet Nam.  But I keep seeing it used as part of a training program, especially in the Rocky movies.  I happen to have a skipping rope in the house, it takes very little space to skip, and you can do it almost anywhere.  Some time ago, I started skipping in the alley at my house, my son and I took turn using the one rope we had.  Those early days, I could barely do five or six consecutively.  I jumped too high and wore myself out quickly.  Or I would get entangled with the rope because my timing was just off.

With this current pandemic, I renewed my interest with skipping and made much improvement.  I now can do forty reps of the rope moving overhead to in front of me then gliding below me.  I think that's the standard.  I can even do backward, where the rope goes overhead behind me then comes back to the front from underneath.  At much slower speed, but still in reps of ten or so.  My current routine is 3 sets of 40 reps each, forward, then 3 more set of backward skipping, whatever rep I can manage.  I may have read a little bit about rope-skipping, but maybe only about variations, to make it less boring.  Last night, I decided to research some more, especially with regards to losing weight.  Articles after articles would discuss the work involved in terms of time duration, not reps or sets as I've been doing.  That led me to dig some more around the question of "What time duration should I do with my daily rope-skipping exercise?"  And wow it sure took a lot of digging.  At first, it seems 30 minutes is the answer, but then the instructor mentioned that in that 30 minutes one would also do push-ups and other exercises, so that's not it.  In the end, I found from some blog that for a beginner a series of 10-minute sets will do.  With short breaks, like one or two minutes.

That's what she said, supposedly.  Today, I put myself to the test.  I thought I am pretty good at it now, that I should be considered intermediate.  Was I wrong!  While I was able to do 80 reps in one minute, I was flat out tired afterward.  I tried to have one-minute break, as opposed to the usual breaks that I had before, which involved doing other things around the yard, or checking for updates on social media.  The verdict is that I can do 5 sets of 80 reps in about 10 minutes, rest included.  I sure was all sweaty and panting.  The last set I think I only got to 70 something because I was out of gas and couldn't jump high enough so the rope got me.

The moral of the story: sometimes there's no one size to fit all.  Research and get an idea what should be done, but then try it out yourself.

FIRST-TIME ACTIONS DURING THE PANDEMIC

There's a first time for everything, they say, and I certainly did a few of those first-time things during the pandemic.

• I need to have an eye test to renew my driver license.  Silly me, I looked up the local DMV (Department of Motor Vehicle) address on Google Map and just drove there.  The DMV office is on the same street block with a police precinct.  The entrance to the block had a police sawhorse with a policeman stationed.  I thought maybe it was to keep protesters away from the precinct.  Maybe it was, but the policeman told me DMV wasn't opened yet.  The next Phase, whenever that is.  Doh, I should have called first.  I ended up having my eye test done at a local pharmacy.  Quick and painless, I was asked to put on my near-sighted glasses then read one line off the chart.  That's it, $20 please.  Not free like the DMV, but I sure saved a ton of time.  If I have my choice, I would rather save the money.
• Drive-thru anything is such a necessary evil.  When I was working as a field technician, there were days when I had to rush from one visit to another.  Only in those circumstances would I consider a fast-food drive-thru.  Such a waste of gasoline, burning away and polluting the environment while the vehicles wait for their turn at the order microphone then again at the pickup/pay-up window.  Sadly, we are living in a certainly interesting time and I found myself a few times recently using the drive-thru of some Chick-fil-A's.  The entire service area was closed, no restroom, no Starbuck's, just the Chick.  Not too long ago I even used a bank drive-thru, to deposit a check.  I did use the bank's app once or twice, but in this particular case I wanted to make sure the check got deposited without any issues.
• I have my share of buying stuff online but it's almost always because the item in question isn't available in the physical store.  Or the store has so few options.  My work shoes are a few years old so I need to replace them.  Ah, but the shoe-stores are not considered Essential so they were not open the last time I tried to visit one.  They would open the following week, I believe, at which time I was no longer working.  I try not to go outside unless it's for grocery or for work.  So mail-order it was.  Luckily, I know my shoe size and there was one retail store I recall joining their mailing list to receive whatever discount I got at the time.  Free shipping for members, too.  The only thing that wasn't good is that I forgot to use the $10 discount code.  Argh, I know someone who would return some item that cost just 25 cents to buy it again at half that price, but I won't be that person.  Maybe I'll buy another pair and remember to use the code this time.

THE INTER-CONNECTED LIFE

It is a good thing I don't have any abnormal fear of COVID-19.  I am lucky so far, only lost my job and nothing else.  The week before the public library shut down until further notice, I borrowed an audiobook by the name of Lone Wolf, by Jodi Picoult.  Audibooks are normally loaned out for 21 days but because of the pandemic the library gave long extension.  For some reason, I never got around to listening to the 11-disc "book".  Probably partly because computers nowadays don't come with optical drive.  I do have a USB DVD drive but the extra step of connecting it to my laptop somehow discouraged me from start listening to the book.

With the public libraries scheduled, perhaps already, to open this week, I finally decided to start listening to it.  I thought maybe I only have another week or more of the extension.  The audiobook has at least two narrators, a male and a female.  From Disc 1, I learned that the male narrator is someone named Nick Cordero.  Or maybe I should use the word "was", because in the news recently there was a Broadway actor, young person too, just 41 years old, who just died because of complications from COVID-19.  A few searches in Google and Bing do not confirm my suspicion that it's the same person, but I do know actors, singers etc sometimes narrate audiobooks.  Maybe if I stumble upon some Nick Cordero Fan Club, if those things still exist, I can confirm it's the same person.

A major part of Lone Wolf involves a person who suffered severe injuries to the brain and had to be kept alive with breathing apparatus.  Yup, a VENTILATOR.  Years ago, I may not pay much attention when the word VENTILATOR is used, but nowadays it makes me shudder, based on what I read it's a painful process to be put on a ventilator.

Sometimes you just cannot avoid the news.  I don't try that hard to avoid it, so while I find it interesting that COVID-19 still makes its way into my life, just as I try to forget it via an audiobook, it's no big deal.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KAREN!

Poor Karen, she has no love on social media these days.  I think I'll give her a boost by using her name as the first in, hopefully, a series of video clips, that show nothing but the phrase Happy Birthday followed by a name.  People are born every hour everyday anyway, right?  Maybe even more frequent than that.  Surely someone somewhere is celebrating birthday and in need of a video.

I made the video from a GIF, or actually, from a few GIF because I did the work in PersonalPaint on an Amiga computer emulated on my MacBook Pro.  The phrase Happy Birthday, Karen! is too wide for the screen and had to be created as three separate GIF files.  Thank goodness for EZgif.com, which let me combine multiple files to create GIF.  I discovered that the trick is to name the file sequentially and the new GIF will created in that order.  In my case, the files were called 1-Happy.gif, 2-Birthday.gif, and 3-Karen.gif.  I also typed up the final frame and held it for a minute or two.

Maybe because it's the first such video, it's quite a process.  Hopefully if I do it more regularly I can get better.  I used the Bullion animated font and there are a few more to work with.  I suppose the next video will still use Karen's name, but with all the available animated fonts.  After that, what name should I use?  Maybe I'll consult the list of most popular baby names of 2019...

Check out the video at:

https://youtu.be/YnkIB7csPys

FACEBOOK ROOMS (VIDEOCONFERENCE SERVICE)

I recall not too long ago videoconferencing was still a novelty.  The technology just wasn't there.  You can do text chat fine but as soon as you turn on the video option, you can see the jerky motion, maybe eventually the chat software would crash too.  Nowadays, I regularly FaceTime with colleagues or headhunter.  Talk about a computer in your pocket.

Of course Zoom is all the rage these days, warts and all.  Being a frugal guy, I also made the jump to Jitsi Meet to see how useful it is.  Free is good, right?  No time limit, no registration whatsoever.  I even found out recently someone made a tele-health package based on Jitsi.  The sky is the limit!

Today I checked out Facebook Rooms, Facebook's answer to all this video-conferencing craze.  It's built into Facebook and Facebook is the king of social media, you cannot go wrong!  Well, in my particular case, I could use some more participation, but that's another story.  There is a limit of 8 people max per room and it wasn't an issue for me.  I had only one other participant and his window took up the center of the screen while mine sits in the lower right.  Very simple interface - the row of buttons in the screenshot is all you get.  Share Screen, See Participants, Mute Video, Mute Audio, and Hang Up.  I sure miss having a text chat window, but maybe Facebook figured many people cannot type or spell anyway, there's no need for a texting feature.  No background picture or video, either.  No background blurring as well.  Note the Gear icon in the upper right?  That's just Settings, and a bunch of keyboard commands.

I find Facebook Rooms feature-lacking.  Too simple.  What's with the eight-people limit?  I cannot see myself using it again in the future.

A WII BIT BETTER EXPERIENCE

One day a few months ago, during the height of the pandemic perhaps, I decided to better explore the Wii program Wii Fit and its companion Wii Board.  The product was bought years ago to help my young son lose weight.  The Nintendo Wii is great in that it requires physical interaction with its programs, but the Wii Fit program takes it a step further.  Instead of games disguised as exercise, Wii Fit offers training sessions in yoga, strength training, aerobic exercises, and yes, plain simple games that also requires some simple forms of physical movement.  You start out interacting via the standard Wii Remote, but then you would need to power on the Wii Board and get your weight measured, your center of balance, etc.  Excellent tool to have during a pandemic lockdown!

PSA!  If you are still sheltering in place and have a lot of free time, then search for electronic devices that use AA, AAA batteries etc.  Open up the battery compartment and see what state of decomposition the batteries are.  In my case, the Wii Board and both Wii Remotes had busted batteries.  I had to clean the contacts with rubbing alcohol, via a cotton swab, and all is well now.  I even re-visited an Apple Bluetooth keyboard (model A1314) and managed to remove a busted battery to regain use of the device.  The only battery-operated item that I couldn't save was a freebie flashlight.  No need to waste energy trying to save that.

I never like the point and click interface of the Wii.  It takes a little getting used and I guess old me never got around it.  Luckily, for Wii Fit, I discovered that after the first few initial screens, once the yoga lessons get rolling, I can do most of the interactions via the directional buttons and the A button.  Just move up, down, left, or right as needed, note which item gets highlighted, then press A.  To go from Yoga to Strength Training, use the minus or plus ( - or + ) button. The B button on the underside of the Wii Remote is for going back to the previous layer.  See what I mean, with the knowledge which button does what you shouldn't need to point at the Wii Receiver any more to interact with Wii Fit.

I NEED SPACE

Until recently, I was having problem with storage space on my MacBook Pro.  It's my newest Mac but it's many years old and the hard drive seemed not to be big enough.  I would delete photos, music files, etc to reclaim a few measly gigabyte then all of a sudden, right in front of my eyes, I would see in a Finder window that available space dropped steadily until there's nothing available.  Sure, those podcasts took up some space and I deleted them, stopped the subscription.  I also moved scanned photos to a 256-GB flash drive.  Yeah, I also deleted cached data in the Safari and Chrome browsers, that sure helped a lot.  I read somewhere that having a few gigabytes available is a dangerous thing to do.  Supposedly, just the sleep file, which is some file that holds all the info for the Mac to seemingly instantly wakes up from sleep mode, is a few gigabytes.  There was so much I can do with my own account's data.  Luckily, I decided to look at the other accounts on the same computer.  Motherlode!  I discovered that in the Downloads folder of the guest account there are some 10-gb files.  Some ISO file and some update to Xcode, the code-writing environment for Mac.  Moved those files to an external hard drive, wham, 20 GB reclaimed!  I also read up on Xcode and as nice as it is, I have no plan to become a Mac programmer, or any kind of programmer.  Yes, I'll whip up some PowerShell script to make my job easier, but nothing that would need Xcode or any integrated development environment.  The app takes up 10 GB of my little laptop, so off it went!  Now my Mac has a whopping, no sarcasm there, 30 GB of free space!  It's just an app, it's perfectly safe to delete.  I did gingerly test all my apps the days after I deleted Xcode.  From what I read, the only time you would need Xcode, outside of being a programmer, is when you download some uncompiled, i.e. not readily usable, open-source piece of software.  To run said software, there may be some script you would need to launch, whereby the script would use Xcode to make the final compiling.  Or something like that.  If you only use commercial software, or ready-to-run open-source software, there's nothing to worry about when you delete Xcode from the Applications folder. 

Not that it's insignificant, but earlier I also found 1 GB of some movie extras.  I rented the movie off iTunes and only saw the movie so that went away but the extras stayed.  I usually don't care about extras materials, especially from a movie I saw so long ago.

In order to see content of other users on the same computer, you would need to give yourself access.  It helps to be an administrator of your own computer.  And know how to grab power!