PLAYED TOURIST - AMSTER YARD ETC

I recently took a day off to play tourist in my own home town.  First, I took the subway from near Coney Island all the way to Elmhurst, Queens, to visit my high school, Newtown High School, to pick up gym shirts I ordered for my alumni group on Facebook.  I miss the buskers on the subway and there was one in the tunnel connecting the Sixth Avenue train line (B/D/F) to the 7, but he wasn't that good.  I think he was singing some Whitney Houston song but I didn't catch it right away.  I actually got off the R train a station early to do some CityStriding.  I don't go to Queens often so every little bit helps.  By the time I was done it was lunch time.  Stopped by Phở Bằng, near Broadway and Elmhurst Avenue, for lunch.  I didn't enjoy sharing a big round table with two other lone diners.  Next time, maybe I will try Phở Bắc, further in in that same strip mall.

First stop in Manhattan was a re-visit to Amster Yard on East 49th Street.  It's a courtyard garden for a private Spanish library, Instituto Cervantes.  Without reading about it I wouldn't venture past the gate on 49th Street.  But it's open to the public, I used to go there regularly when I worked in the area, indirectly for TIAA-CREF, or whatever their name is now.  It's nice to be there and not hear the noise of the city outside.

Next stop was the "rooftop garden" of the re-built NYPL Midtown Manhattan Library.  I know, it's now known as the Niarchos Foundation Library, but old habits die hard.  I read about the "rooftop garden" but haven't had a chance to visit.  It's actually referred to as a "rooftop terrace".  My fault really, I like "rooftop gardens" so that was my expectation.  Lots of sitting area but very little greenery.  There was some area under construction, hopefully that will add some plants etc to the terrace.

Lastly, I visited the "new" Moynahan Train Terminal, which is where the Main Post Office used to be.  The post office windows were still there, perhaps preserved for historical purpose, but behind them toward Ninth Avenue there is a large area with skylight, shops etc.  I heard much about the Moynahan Extension of the High Line.  I expected it to be a part of the Moynahan building but it turned out it's an avenue over, on the block across Ninth Avenue, an area called Manhattan West.  The nice thing is where the Moynahan Extension ended is a plaza a few floors above the street.  Such plazas were popular in Hong Kong, the last time I visited the "island nation".  "Sky bridges" would connect a few such plazas so people can travel from one part of town to another without ever being on street level.  I love walking and enjoyed such walk very much, no need to deal with vehicular traffic.  I traveled the entire Moynahan Extension, past the giant pigeon sculpture, back to the High Line near Hudson Yard, back toward 23rd Street.  Took the C downtown to transfer to the D and got off at Grant Street station - Chinatown.  I love Vietnamese heros - bánh mì - so it was necessary to stop by Saigon Bakery to get some.  I also got some nem for my mother, from Tân Tín Hưng grocery store.  Another long subway ride home and that was my day being a tourist in Manhattan.

'85 REUNION ANNOUNCED ON SCHOOL WEBSITE

It is official - Newtown High School (Elmhurst) Class of 1985's 40th Reunion is announced via the school website.

https://www.newtownhighschool.org/apps/pages/reunion

The promo flyer went through a few changes, things were too quiet after I submitted it to the school, but eventually it was up.  Hopefully this will fetch the reunion a few more paid attendees.

The promo flyer is repeated below for even more exposure.  The QR code is a nice touch.  It brings up the texting app on a smartphone, my phone number already entered.  Got to make it easy for people who are interested.  I already receive regular junk text and phone calls, I suppose it won't get any worse.

While it is marketed as a 1985 reunion, alumni from other '80 years are welcomed.  We already have people from '84, '86, and '87, maybe ten total.  Reach out if you are interested!

FREE COMPOST ETC

 The best thing in life is free.  Really.  Especially when the free stuff aligns with your belief.  In particular, I am talking about recycling.  New York City recently made a big push to get more organic recycling to happen.  For a brief time, it became mandatory, fine would be issued if houses have no compost bin out for collection.  Sadly, people complained loudly and now there is no fine, I am sure some people just take that as a sign not to bother participating.  I really like that after separating out paper, metal, plastic, and now organic stuff, there is little left of garbage.  The City pays a lot of money for garbage to leave town, on trains destined for some neighboring or faraway states.

Anyway, what's the use of collecting all that organic waste and not making use of the end product?  Free compost!  It's a bit of a challenge to sign up for these events.  You need to check in regularly, the dates are open for registration for like two weeks ahead.  I managed to snatch a ticket for this past Saturday May 31, from the NYC Department of Sanitation depot up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn North.  It's a long drive but for ten 40-pound compost, it's worthwhile.  I like that it was in the morning, traffic was low and I was home by ten or so, still time to do other things.  I plan to share my loot with members of my local Buy Nothing Group, in Bath Beach/Gravesend.

While waiting for the depot to open, I happened to discover the Kingsland Avenue entrance of the Newtown Creek Nature Walk.  I first discovered the Walk's Paidge Avenue entrance but I was in the area for something else and didn't have time to actually visit it.  It was a few years ago, I vaguely recall it was Phase I of the Walk.  It is a great idea.  All these waste treatment plants are already all over the area.  Instead of fighting them, the Walk just meanders alongside them.  Granted there are walls to keep the Walk away from the facilities, some tanks are so huge you cannot avoid seeing them.  Along the Walk, there are trees, bushes, benches, waterside seats, and more.  Look out the water and far away you would see the skyscrapers of Manhattan, plus a few in bustling Long Island City.  I only walked a few steps in from the Kingsland entrance because I didn't want to miss the queue of cars quickly forming outside the DOS Depot.  After I got my freebies, I made a leisurely visit to traverse the entire Walk and back.  The sky looked like it would bust open any minute so I didn't take the chance of making a big loop south to Greenpoint Avenue and back.

Free walk, free compost, wait, it got better!  By chance, in the afternoon, I happened to notice a freebie event at the Latino church near my house.  From far away, I thought it was a fund-raising event for the church, perhaps the items were offered at low price.  No, they were totally free!  Clothes, shoes, some packaged food, some toys, and dear and near to my heart, music CDs!  Call me old school if you must, but I still like to play music from CDs.  I do have a collection on my phone, but it's a nice feeling to just pop a CD into a player, and play the music loudly in the living room.  Or in the car.  I have a portable DVD player that can handle music CDs just fine.  I got a stack of music CDs, mostly from the 80s.  It was a great weekend.

THE JOY OF GARDENING

This is the blog post that was supposed to be written the weekend of Saturday May 24 and Sunday May 25.  Life got in the way.  The days leading up to the weekend were plagued with rain and generally lousy weather.  It felt like winter had returned.  Then came Memorial Day weekend, weather was nice.  Sunny, not too hot, great time to work in the backyard garden, what little there is.  I live in Brooklyn, New York after all.

I am no gardening expert but I do enjoy weeding, sweeping things up and adding the stuff to one of my compost containers.  Two of the containers were pickle barrels, something left behind at a house that a friend of mine was selling, as a real estate agent.  The third one is a spare garbage bin.  Nothing fancy, no tumbling mechanism, other than the occasional rolling around I give to the barrels.  I enjoy smashing the stuff inside, either with an ice-breaker, or with a shovel.  I also use a trident to turn things over, occasionally.  In general, I just let things rot.  If heavy rain is expected, I would open the containers' lids and let them help catch some rain water.  It happened once that the rain came down so fast and so heavy that water got into basement.  The French drains could only absorb so much.

Besides fiddling the compost bins, I also cleared out the so-called lattice I created for the chayote vines to climb last spring and summer.  To make room for a loquat tree that my wife has kept in a pot in the backyard.  The plan is to cover it up during the winter.  We will see how that goes.

The final thing I did in the garden for the long weekend was to empty out one of the compost bin.  I like to think of it as compost cash-in.  I don't think the stuff was as good as it could have.  Probably too much of the same stuff, namely dead leaves, vines, etc.  I saw maybe only one or two worms.  Oh well, hopefully with the weather gets better in June I will spend more time tending to the compost bins.

NEWTOWN HS CLASS OF '85 - 40TH REUNION - INCENTIVE

 Newtown High School of Elmhurst, Queens NY Class of 1985 40th Reunion just got a boost it badly needs!  While the reunion is still a few months away, on October 4, 2025, we will soon have to pay deposits for the DJ, photographer, etc.  As an incentive for buying admission tickets, each 1985 alumni will get a chance to win a vacation package from Holiday Inn Express in Cambridge, MA.

TAKE CLASS, SAVE MONEY

 You have to spend money to make money, it is true.  I like to save money, or make some extra money at least, and occasionally peruse those articles on the topic.  Like many things on the Internet nowadays, some are scams, others may be real.  Scammy things to me are those that tell the reader to switch car insurance or some other service and here's a convenient link.  Then there are real things but can be a pain, like installing some survey apps and spend hours to make pennies.  Something I haven't seen that regularly, but I must have come across at some point, is taking Defensive Driving Class to get reduction on car insurance.  Yes, it is uninteresting to say the least, the verification process is a total pain, but cough up $20 to $40 to get a 10% reduction on car insurance, that is a good deal.  In case you don't know, because many people are inherently cheaters, these courses require voice verification.  You cannot just give your username and password to someone then have them take the class for you.  You have to record your voice once, then each time you resume taking the course you have to say something the computer verify you based on the voice.  You still need to sign-in.  What I absolutely hate is that they offer the ability to reset should you fail the voice test.  So they know it's a difficult test, yet they try to make money off of it.  If you are one of those people who racked up many points, the course can also help reduce them.  I was off on Friday and decided to sign up for an online class on the topic.  Eight modules and I am done with three.  I have more than 28 days left to finish but I plan to do a little everyday just to get it done with.  They already took my money, I would hate to get distracted and completely miss the chance to finish it.  You can take the class every few years, so as soon as I am done with this one, I will make a reminder in my online calendar to take the next one.  I don't remember when I last took a similar course, more likely already missed an opportunity or two.

EMMANUEL KANT, BUT DESICCANT CAN

" Your phone fell in the water, quick, put it in rice!"  So goes the popular belief.  The rice would absorb all the moisture overnight and the next day the phone would work again.  Recently, my son's Android phone showed the water droplet icon and would no longer charge.  He tried vacuuming and blowing air into the power port but nothing worked.  Before going the rice route, I read a bit about it and there were actual articles saying that it does not work.  Little bits of stuff in the rice may get into phone's port(s) and make things worse.  But packets of desiccant would make a good alternative.  I've been working in the computer industry for a while now.  New computers and computer equipments normally come with little bags of desiccant, to absorb moisture and what not during transit.  At one job, someone told me he wanted them, since we were throwing the packets away after unpacking the computers.  Ever since then, I started to save them, too.  Yeah, I save too much crap to use some rainy day.  But recently that day came!  I put a few of those desiccant bags in a rectangular food takeout container - two instances of re-use! - and then the "wet" phone.  Placed a heavy book atop the container, waited overnight.  I am not 100% sure if that did the trick, but next day my son's phone worked again.  It's been more than a week now, so far so good.  My mother had a similar problem a few weeks earlier.  I did the same for her recently but when I asked her if it helped, she just rambled on about something else and I couldn't get a word in edgewise.  I will have to see it for myself this weekend, sigh.

STAPLES REWARDS - CASHED IN

 I am proud of my knowledge about recycling but there is so much info out there it's good to have connections.  Electronics-recycling is not as easy as it should be.  I used to take stuff to the Best Buy store near me, in Caesar's Bay.  What I don't really like is they lump Recycling Desk with their Customer Service Desk and there's almost always a long line at the Customer Service Desk.  It's kinda silly, because they only do that to make sure the stuff people try to drop off are acceptable to them.  They charge for recycling TVs and computer monitors of certain sizes.  It's a good thing that a friend from my local Buy Nothing group told me about Staples' recycling program.  It takes more than just electronics stuff!  Pens and writing instruments, alkaline and recyclable batteries, inks and toners, and even TVs and computer monitors, free of charge.  Once a month, I visit the Staples store in Linden Commons to recycle whatever I gathered that time of the month.  You do have to register with Staples, so your recycled items can be tallied and points earned.  I used the points to buy a ream of paper here and there, a few times to buy pens, not stuff that I really want but hey the points may expire so why not just use them.  This past week I splurged for a webcam.  Recall that a few weeks back I thought Camo Studio was such a cool thing?  Free software to connect an old iPhone to use as a webcam, that is cool, right?  It still is, it is just that my old iPhone is, well, just too old.  The battery doesn't last and the connection to the computer, via Camo Studio, doesn't seem to last that long as well.  I still need a webcam after all, something to mount above one of the two monitors connected to the Lenovo laptop.  The laptop has a built-in webcam, but in its closed state sitting on the side, the webcam is unusable.  I got the cheapest webcam available, some LogiTech 720p/30fps model.  All the other models are priced from $100 and up.  Yike, is that the effect of tariffs or what?  Already?  Anyway, if you have a Staples store near you and you are as passionate as I am about recycling, register with them.  I am old-fashioned and still enjoy walking into a store and look around.  Maybe you are too.  If you don't want to bother with the points, i.e. you buy all your stuff on-line, then just let the points expire.  It's good to recycle.  Staples is trying to be a good corporate citizen, or maybe there is money to be made, we should support them either way.

GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT FOR MY SON

 After over two plus years from graduation with a degree in Game Design, my son finally landed a job.  I blame it partly on COVID-19.  He missed his summer intern jobs.  Even though he attended graduation ceremony in May 2022, he had to do some project that finished in August 2022.  Maybe he didn't send out enough resume, or maybe the game companies weren't hiring, he got nowhere.  He took an online web-design course with other programming classes but that didn't help either.  I got him to help me with my local Buy Nothing Swap Meet, just volunteer work but it helps to get him out of the house and meet people.  I also got him to work as a poll worker, again just for the experience.  I always think of working for the Board of Election the equivalent of serving jury duty or being in the military.  It's mostly civic duty, the pay is not much, if you don't count the tuition military people get afterward.  But now, a few weeks back, he finally landed a job, something more steady, even though it's not related to his study.  At this point, something is better than nothing.  The interesting thing is he was hired as a part-time worker, just a few hours on a few days during the week, then a block of eight hours on Saturdays.  Some other kid was hired full-time but his performance was not good enough.  He was terminated and my son became a full-time employee.  Talk about being in the right place at the right time.  It's also about who you know, since we learned about the job from a friend's daughter.  It's my hope that my son continues to work on his game and some day publish it and it becomes a killer app.  Hope for the best but dream a little, too.  Congratulations, son!

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY, GOVERNMENT!

 Ugh, another week that I need to work hard to find something positive to write about.  On the CityStrides.com web site, I have stiff competition in Staten Island, NY to regain my number one spot, but a morning walk that would get me at least five streets completed had to deleted.  I forgot to stop the Strava app when I started driving to work.  I was able to crop the route in Strava, but I already deleted the activity in CityStrides, somehow it wouldn't sync again.  Oh well, what else...?  Oh, right, the stock market crashed, rich people were cued to buy low, then President Inside Trading halted the tariffs so the market would go back up and rich people got richer, what's not to like?  Speaking of poor people get poorer, it is almost Tax Time.  This year I was diligent and dropped off my paperwork with the tax accountant almost a month before the April 15 deadline.  The person there that evening scanned the documents and gave the stack back to me.  Supposedly I only needed to answer a few simple questions in their web portal, then three weeks later the tax forms would be done.  When the time came, I called hoping to pick up the completed paperwork but some grouchy woman said they were running behind so it wasn't ready.  Another week went by and I called again, this time I asked if I would need an extension.  The woman on the phone, someone different from the one last time, said somehow there was only a Schedule C in my file.  No W-2, bank statements, the usual lot!  Luckily, she offered to take care of it first thing in the morning, a Saturday, if I can bring the documents in.  I followed through and next day by the time I had a late breakfast, all was done.  I owed some money but at least it's over, for this year.  That's the silver lining I had to dig deep to find, so sad.

CAMO STUDIO = COOL STUFF!!!

It has been a rough week.  I did not think I can find something to write a Happy Note about.  Dump and his co-President continue to wreak havoc to the U.S. government, economy, whatever they can touch.  The weather is cold again, some spring we have.  I was coughing and sneezing after dinner a few nights in a row, had to turn in early for the night.  Today, I was tasked with making use of two monitors and a set of mouse and keyboard.  Sounds like an easy task, since I do have an old Lenovo dock.  Only issue was I connected the USB-C cable to the wrong port on the dock, for a few minutes I was sad that I wouldn't be able to use the monitors etc after all.  The better news, worthy of a Happy Note, is that I was able to use an old iPhone as a webcam for the laptop that's connected to the two monitors and set of keyboard and mouse.  Laptops do come with built-in webcam but in its closed position the webcam cannot be used.  Entered Camo Studio, a little program that makes everything works together.  You need to install it on the computer first then the companion app is needed on the phone itself.  Click 'Pair A Device' and you are presented with a QR code, use the Camo app on the phone to scan that.  In the beginning, I didn't have the phone app ready and the Windows program switched to pairing by file.  Just cancel that and you will have the QR code again to scan.  It really works!  Well, I didn't actually make any video calls yet but the preview looks good.

THE KARATE KID AND THE WATER HEATER

 Some years ago I saw a rebooted version of "The Karate Kid", starring Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan and Will Smith's son Jaden.  The movie took place in China, which is kinda odd considering karate is a Japanese thing and Chinese in general hates Japanese, but I digress.

Call me odd but the one thing I remember the most about the movie is the scene where Chan's character informed Smith's character that in China turning on the faucet for hot water requires waiting a little bit for the water to get boiled.  There is an additional switch to tell the water tank to heat the water.  It's a good way to save water, at the cost of some amount of time.  When I recently replaced my water tank, I was excited to finally get one like that.  Alas, it turned out to be too expensive for the budget, so I ended up with the same old system.  I would waste some water by spraying the initial cold water down the drain while waiting for the water to get hot.  At some other time, my bathroom sink got worked on and the strainer was replaced by a screwable piece.  Instead of having to dismantle the pipes below the sink, each weekend I would unscrew the piece and clean it with paper tissues.  Recently, it dawned on me that I can put to work the water that would otherwise be completely wasted.  I would unscrew the piece from the sink, hold it under the shower head, then spray it with the cold water while waiting for the water to warm.  I have a bow to collect water for use as brown water, to flush the toilet.  The nasty stuff would come off the sink piece after being hit by the shower head.  I feel a little better with the lesser waste of water.

SHARE FAIR AT KING'S BAY LIBRARY

Back in January 2020, my local Buy Nothing's co-administrator came up with the idea of asking the local library to host a swap meet, except everything is free because, Buy Nothing...  The librarian approved the request and the rest was history.  Well, sort of.  Recall that by March 2020, the whole world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  No library, no swap meet.  Eventually things got back to normal, hard to believe but it happened.  We continued to have monthly event, lots of stuff changed hands, all free, the leftover went to a nearby soup kitchen the next morning.  The event got so popular that these days we need two cars to take the stuff to the soup kitchen.  With the more recent events, I had to drop some stuff by the side of my house and advertise them as Curb Alert.  I live near a train station so there is much traffic, sometimes everything would be gone by the next morning.

Today, I attended a similar event, organized by the Buy Nothing group in the King's Bay area.  The local library is on Nostrand Avenue, between Avenue X and Avenue W.  It was nice to look at the stuff without worrying about people grabbing too many or helping others separate the donations.  I was just an attendee, not running the show.  I did chat a bit with the organizer.  I only visited King's Bay Library once before and didn't know that it has a sort of an art gallery just to the left of the lobby as you enter the building.  It is a spacious room.  The stuff was spread out on tables and clothes racks along the walls of the room and there was a little island in the middle with shelves and more tables.  They plan to drop off the leftover at the Salvation Army on the same block, near the corner of Avenue W and Nostrand Avenue.  I told myself not to take anything but in the end I took a music CD and two books, the books are for my own faux Little Free Library.  It's good to see the Buy Nothing movement going strong and build the community through events like this Share Fair.  Photos in the following Google Album:

Share Fair 2025 March 22 at King's Bay Library

LOW SEE INTO TOE

"Lo siento", sorry not sorry LOL... For someone like me with a little extra girth, it's a pain to cut my own toenails.  I couldn't bend over far enough to use the nail-clipper to do its work.  I had to wear my near-sight eyeglasses so I can see what I am doing, lest I snip some meat off the little pigs.  How nice it would be to have a servant to do the work for me, but I digress.  Recently, I was able to do it all by myself.  No glasses, bending was sufficient to get the work done.  I wonder if the weekly yoga I do with Wii Fit Plus finally paid off.  Or the more frequent walks I did in past weeks.  Not long ago, I discovered that at CityStrides.com I am no longer at the #1 spot in Staten Island.  Some guy at some point put in lots of work and now I am over 100 streets behind him.  Right away I started to re-focus my walks in Staten Island.  No more Elizabeth, NJ or Bayonne, NJ, all Staten Island.  I usually walk as a form of exercise after work, but some mornings I even got up early to head out early enough to put in a walk.  I am narrowing the gap.  Still, at yesterday's doctor visit, the doctor told me I need to lose some weight, so weight-wise I still have work to do, but maybe I improved a bit.  Small victory.

2:30

 2:30, or two-thirty... tooth hurty.  Tooth extraction sounds painful and it is.  That's what I had a few weeks ago.  I don't remember the last time I had one pulled but this one was complicated.  First, a parabolic X-ray was done to show that the target tooth was in the way of another that needed work.  Next, a 3D X-ray was needed to make sure some nerve is not in the way, otherwise the pain after the tooth is pulled will be permanent.  Ouch!  During the experience, something flew out of my mouth and landed on the floor.  I suspect it was the tooth.  Even with Novocaine, it was still quite an experience.  It helped that the dentist gave me verbal update of what was going on.  I breathed a sign of relief when he said the tooth came out, he just needed to sew the wound close.  Whew!

I was in pain for a few days.  I decided to adopt the new habit of flossing more often and brushing after as many meals as possible.  Hopefully if I can keep up with the new habit, no more bad teeth in the future.  I wish I can be like my father with regards to dentists.  He didn't need to visit any dentists for most of his life.  He did mention about having a string tied to a loose tooth and slamming the door that the other end of the string was attached to.  That was the old days in Vietnam, I am sure it really happened.  But that was a for loose tooth, what if the tooth wasn't loose?  Months before his death, my father had a dentist appointment for something.  His condition got worse and oral hygiene was put in the back burner.  He joked about not having to pay any dentists his entire life.  I suppose my having a sweet tooth is part of the blame for my teeth troubles.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

Planning for my high school reunion is proceeding well.  Initially, the Reunion Committee worried that not enough people will pay up front, that we may not have enough money to pay a deposit to the hotel where we rent the banquet hall and have dinner provided etc.  We did get enough people coughing up the dough, but there was another challenge.  In this day and age (the year 2025), you would think any bill-paying platform would automatically have online payment already included.  And you would be wrong.  The bill-paying platform that we use, which I choose not to remember, at the moment, has no such feature.  Or at least, it's not there until I asked for it.  We used the same platform in 2010, I probably was not a Treasurer for the Reunion Committee, or maybe my memory is really that bad, maybe we paid everything by paper checks?  Based on some old email communications, it seemed money was regularly transferred to a bank account, then somebody wrote checks to cover all the expenses - DJ deposit, photographer deposit, catering hall deposit, etc.  Back to the year 2025, or at least late 2024, when the Reunion Committee decided not to have a bank account.  How would payment be made then?  I can add a Vendor, but there seems to be no way to do online payment.  I had to open a ticket with tech support and somebody turned on some switches and voila I was able to send an email to request the hotel's bank info.  Earlier I went through my Committee contact with the hotel and got some info but none of that matched the form in the payment platform.  By going through the payment platform process, I can see that they had the same bank as me, but their account number is masked, I only see the last few digits, which is how it should be.  The due date arrived, I arranged for electronic payment, and money is scheduled to change hand, sort of.  Whew, a hurdle cleared, but it would be so much easier if it's a standard thing to start with.

 

ADAPT OR DIE

 I like technology but I hate to see perfectly-useable wares get discarded.  Like when Apple dropped most ports on its laptops, users are left with only a few USB ports and some USB-C ports.  Or when laptops in general no longer have VGA or other legacy ports, it's HDMI or use some dock.  As a result, in my computer hardware collection I have various adapters.  USB-to-Ethernet, SCSI1-to-SCSI2, USBC-to-USB3, DVI-to-miniDP, so on and so on.  Yes, I still use a Mac computer and once used an Amiga computer, maybe weekly, which explains the SCSI connection.

My current computer is a Lenovo Flex 5 laptop.  When I got it some years ago, it was running Windows 10.  Recently, I finally gave in to Microsoft's push and upgraded to Windows 11.  The laptop has a touch screen and something with a recent Windows update seems to cause the screen flicker every now and then.  If I use an external monitor, there is no flickering.  I have a few external monitors that worked with the laptop before, nothing fancy, as a matter of fact they are somewhat defective, in a minor way, free stuff from my local Buy Nothing group.  Strangely, now none of the monitors work with the laptop.  I used the built-in HDMI port, tried a dock with DP port and HDMI port, nothing worked.  Last-ditch effort, I used an adapter to convert the outgoing HDMI signal to VGA and it worked!  It would be nice if I can go directly from HDMI to HDMI, so I can listen to music on the monitor's built-in speaker, but at least with the adapter I can use an external monitor again.  Adapt or die!  Ok, it's not that serious, I just like to say that.

I YEARN FOR YEARBOOKS

 I run an active Facebook group for my high school alumni.  One feature of the group that makes it lively is the yearbook collection in the group.  After so many years out of school, people lost their yearbooks.  Maybe it was lost during a move, maybe it got flood damaged, whatever the reason, people love to see the pages of the yearbooks.  By some luck, when I got involved with the alumni, my yearbook was sitting right there on the shelf behind my office desk.  I was able to scan the pages and share the content with my class.  But it was just one book, 1985, and the alumni group that I run have people from all over, as far back as 1956 and as recent as 2007.  A few people lent me book from their own year, like 1971 and 1956.  A few other people helped by doing the work themselves, by scanning and uploading the pages.  But for a school that existed over 125 years, there are many yearbooks totally missing.  Enters eBay, mostly.  I set an alert in eBay to notify when the school name, "Newtown High School", is part of an offer.  Newtown yearbooks are hot items on eBay, a few times I had to enter a bidding war, sometimes I lost, other times I won.  But at $70 or so a pop, buying yearbooks from eBay is expensive.  From my point of view, the best case scenario is when someone offer the book(s) to me for free.  It actually happened twice, in bulk.  The first time was when dear Mr. Weinstein passed away and Mrs. W didn't want to keep his yearbook collection.  The school was offered first but they didn't want it.  Other people in the alumni group want pieces of the collection, some may have mentioned willing to re-distribute.  Luckily, many recommended that I be given the collection, because I had the track record of scanning the pages and sharing the work for the group to enjoy.  Another occasion, a teacher decided to give me a collection that cover a few 1990s books.  Over the years, I got a few more, usually it started with someone offering a parent's book and the group would in unison recommended that I be the benefactor.  Thank you, alumni!  With great power comes great responsibility, I won't let you down.

The latest, possible donation I just learned a few days ago is from a 1969 alumnus whose mother attended the same school in 1946.  The donor knows someone in the alumni group, I provided my contact info to the group member and now I just have to wait.  One of these days, I will make the drive to Bayside, Queens NY to pick up the items.  Yearbooks are valuable to me, I prefer to personally pick them up instead of having the items sent through the mail.

DEPOSIT GOAL MET

 Some months ago, against better judgement, I joined the Reunion Committee for Newtown High School (Elmhurst, Queens NY) Class of 1985's 40th Reunion.  I was on the committee back when we had the Silver Reunion (25 years).  I cannot remember why it was painful, but it was.  Lots of work, monthly (?) meetings, hunting people down in many social media platforms, including Plaxo and Friendster - who remember those!?  Facebook was somewhat new for me at the time.  This time around, we already have a good base of interested people, but what I found out recently is fifteen years after the other reunion, many people are no longer active on Facebook, or left the platform altogether.  I cannot blame them.

Proceeded we did, admission price was set and a deadline for collecting x dollars to hand over to the hotel to secure the event space.  I was somewhat worried.  We live in interesting times, a bizarro world with events making writers at the satirical website The Onion scratch their heads.  Inflation, bird flu, uncertain economic future, will people plunk down x dollars to see a bunch of people from high school?  But plunk they did and we now have enough money to cover the deposit.  Whew!  I was worried for a while we won't make it and have to refund the money and lose some more money because the billing service we use charge x percent for every transaction.  Maybe we'll hemorrhage our fund because of the service charges and have to use our own money to cover the refund.  I know of at least one horror story of someone trying to do a reunion and lost $1000s.  OK, not this time for Newtown Class of 1985, whew!

REMOTELY POSSIBLE

 Remotely controlling another computer in the same office, or across the continent, or in some other part of the world, that's one of the wonders of computing.  It is nothing new of course.  My first experience doing remote control was with some MS-DOS version of pcAnywhere, when I was at a small software development firm in the Wall Street area.  The company supported some law offices, one as far as California.  Whatever wide area network they had back then, it was somewhat painful.  It probably helped that it was all character-based, it was MS-DOS after all, years before bloated Windows OS came along.  In more recent years, one remote control software I use is some flavor of VNC.  It is pretty basic, just remote control, being able to see another computer's screen, move mouse cursor, enter keystrokes.  Some major change came along not long ago, now most of the time when I type on the remote computer, the characters would get repeated many times.  Even with today's graphical user interface, it's still quick to type a few characters of a program to bring it up.  For example, click Windows then type Fil to bring up File Explorer, as opposed to scrolling down the alphabetical list to find F and so on.  But with the quirk I described, one F would become many FFFFF and so on.  Trying to connect to \\server1\share2 is impossible, as it can become \\\\\\\ssssseeeerrrrvvvveeeerrrrr11111\\\\\\ssshhhh , you get the gist.  Arrrggghhhh!  I thought using the on-screen keyboard would help but that's not the case.  This week it dawned on me that perhaps there is some settings I can adjust.  The remote systems emulate Windows, the operating system of the terminal itself is some Linux flavor.  Some Dell ThinOS.  It has its own settings.  Let's see... System / Peripherals / Keyboard... Repeat Rate... It was on some setting, I chose the last option, "No Repeat".  Who thought it would be a good idea to have anything else other than "No Repeat"?  That was it!  I was able to type normally again, while on these remote computers.  Poke around and ye shall find!