NUM LOCK TO THE RESCUE

As a Desktop Support Technician, I am no fan of the Num Lock key.  Many users rely on the numeric keypad to quickly enter numbers but then they act as if the numeric keypad is the ONLY way to enter numbers.  It does not help that with certain keyboard nowadays, there is no steady light to indicate if a certain LOCK status is on.  Call me old-school if you wish, but I want a light for CAPS LOCK, one for NUM LOCK, and one for SCROLL LOCK, even though I rarely use SCROLL LOCK.  Much as I like making the most of battery life in wireless devices, not having a dedicated light for NUM LOCK and such is a major inconvenience.  Said users would enter password and unaware if NUM LOCK is on or not.  I always tell them to use the numbers of the row below the Function Keys when entering numbers in a password.

I recently got bitten by the genealogy bug.  Or re-bitten, to be exact.  Genealogy is a lot of work.  Old people die, young people get married and produce offsprings, the work doesn't stop.  My family tree involves names in English, Vietnamese, and Chinese.  There was a time when one would have to shell out $100s to get Windows to be able to write Vietnamese or Chinese, now it's all built-in.  For Vietnamese, Windows remaps the number keys to become certain letters in the Vietnamese alphabet, or become the diacritical marks that modify the vowel that comes just before said mark.  For example, to get á , one would first type the letter a then press the number 8, while in Vietnamese mode.  The 1 key is re-mapped as ă, so if after entering a Vietnamese name, I would need to switch back to English mode to use the 1 key as the number to enter, say, a birthday.  Or better yet, as I discover, use the numeric keypad!  Just be sure to press NUM LOCK so the keys in the numeric keypad behave as numbers and not as directional movement.

2026-05-31: A FREE AND BOOKISH DAY IN QUEENS

Over the weekend, I spent Sunday mostly in Queens.  With my old friend Dorothy from A.R.R.O.W., I joined NYC H2O in removing invasive grasses at the Ridgewood Reservoir, in Ridgewood, Queens NY.  It was a beautiful day to be outdoor.  Breezy, sunny, clear sky, a great day to be outdoor, before New York muggy summer arrives.

I was going to make a stop in Glendale, Queens to drop off some books for a Little Free Library that was recently cleaned out.  Some people are just horrible.  Take a book, leave a book, or if you cannot leave a book, take a few books, but NEVER EVER take everything.  It's either a little kid who doesn't know any better and needs better parenting, or some evil person who planned to somehow sell the books.  It turned out I couldn't find the post.  I had an idea of where the LFL is, I thought on Cooper Avenue, but without knowing for sure, I scrapped the idea of a side trip.  I was running late anyway, so that sealed the deal.

I still ended up visiting a few bookish places by the end of the day.  The first place was the LFL at American Legion 2414 on Metropolitan, near Ascan Avenue.  I dropped off some books, took two, one was a cookbook, a salad cookbook, that Dorothy liked, so that became a present for her.  Next, after dropping off Dorothy at her home, with a parking spot across the street, such an unusual thing to see in Sunnyside Garden, I walked over to the Sunnyside Books and Media Swap.  The Swap is a book exchange magnified many times!  There were a few tables or books, then more in bins on the ground, then even more on a table labeled Last Chance.  The typical book actually has a suggested donation fee of $2.  Children's books are free, but donations welcomed.  The Last Chance table has totally free books.  There's also a sign that says if you are broke then take the books for free.  It's New York City, at any point in time, there must be someone who is broke.  Free books, what more do you want!  I was hoping to pick up a copy of a DVD by Stephen Chow, ideally Kung-Fu Hustle, but I would settle for Shalin Soccer, too, but that day they only had books and LPs.  The donation bin had some puzzles, but I have no room for that.  On the way to the Swap site, I happened across the Amplify Library.  It's actually part of a small network of LFL-inspired boxes, but focused on black, indigenous, and people-of-color authors.  I actually have been stocking books by Asian authors for my home-grown book exchange, but I didn't have any with me for the Amplify Library.  Lastly, just by chance when I went to visit a friend in Jackson Height, on the notorious 34th Avenue Linear Park, there were some books spread out on two tables, free to take but donation also sought.  It may be there all day already, I was at the friend's apartment for only half an hour or so, when I went back to my car the tables and books were gone.

Four different locations for "free" books!  A bona fide totally free Little Free Library, a little library with the same principle but with a focus on black authors etc, a donation-suggested mega-library, and lastly just some person's attempt to recycle some books with a simple ask for donation.