Power Failure

A few months ago, in the cold of winter, I replaced a battery on my wife’s vehicle. Now, as repairs go, a battery is probably one of the easiest to perform and quickest so I really wasn’t too disgruntled over the project. It took about a half an hour at the most—and that included the trip to the store. Still, it was winter. And did I mention it was cold?

Despite the ease of the job, I used the occasion to give my wife a bad time, reminding her it was cold outside, batteries cost money, and she probably should take better care of her vehicle because modern vehicles won’t run without a battery! I also may have mentioned something about my pickup NOT needing a new battery. Oh yeah, and that I had better things to do than work on a vehicle even if it was a simple fix.

She knew I wasn’t really serious about all my complaints (at least I think she knew). I was just having fun and trying to amuse the grandchildren. Still, it may have been the wrong thing to do. This past week, I was once again working on a battery. This time in my pickup. Oddly, my wife didn’t seem too concerned with my woes! But, thankfully, neither did she go through all the list that I’d relayed to her regarding batteries and cars—or pickups in this case.

I guess I should have known this was coming, after all, batteries don’t last forever. But hey, at least my battery the common decency to do its meltdown during the summer, when it’s warm outside! ~

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, The Lana Denae Mysteries, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook at www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

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Flying High

These days, it seems like flying has become a risky venture. There is no shortage of headlines chronicling some atrocious behavior of the airlines. Every few days there is something new. Flights cancelled, passengers charged ridiculous sums for regular services, others being forcibly removed, and/or arrested, etc.

So, it is with much delight that I can report an uneventful two flights on my most recent vacation. Not one problem; there were no unexpected charges, no rude flight attendants, no disputes of any kind. They didn’t even try to kick us off the aircraft. Nothing bad at all. Of course, we weren’t flying United so...

All this is rather surprising considering my track record with most businesses. If there is only one customer they can mess things up for, it will be me. It is a rare occasion to go to a restaurant, any restaurant, and have them get my order right. Seriously, I could order just a drink and they will bring me the wrong one. Most any business is the same; they take one look at me and a backroom conspiracy begins to see how they can mess with me. At least that’s what I envision.

With all the news reports of people being dragged off planes and the like, and my usual reception by stores and restaurants, you can understand why I would be a little leery about flying anywhere—and my relief when I actually made it back home without being stranded somewhere. Not that being temporarily stranded in a warm climate paradise would be all that bad. I might even make the headlines!

For now, the only headline is that I’ll be heading back to work today—the much anticipated vacation has come to an end. ~

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, The Lana Denae Mysteries, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook at www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

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Celebrate Good Times

At the risk of sounding ungrateful for my job, I really like vacations. Really. I don’t even have to go anywhere. Staying home is fine. I just like vacations from my job. And they are few and far between. Too few. And too far between. So, I eagerly count down the weeks and days until my next one.

And the next one is here. Yay! To make it even better, my wife is also on vacation this week. We thought we’d time off at the same time since it’s our anniversary. As of Tuesday, we will have been married thirty years.

Thirty years. Three decades. 1560 weeks. Or, 10,958 days. Any way you look at it, it is a long time. Not that I’m complaining. I like being married to her.

Thirty years. If we’d purchased a house on our wedding day, it would be paid off now. But we were a little busy—with the wedding and all—so we waited a while before buying a house. Then, we sold that one and bought another. All that means is we still have a ways to go before it is paid off. But that’s good, I suppose. More payments requires more going to work. And that means more vacations. See? Good, in a weird sort of way.

But back to my point, thirty years. A lot has changed in that amount of time. For instance, the language. Words, and a lot of them, have morphed into new meanings, thanks mostly to computers. And yes, I do have a few examples.

Thirty years ago, if we were searching for something, it meant we were physically digging through drawers, cabinets, or boxes and actually looking for said item. And speaking of searching, google was still just a part of a larger word; googolplex—the number represented by a 1 followed by 10¹⁰⁰ zeroes—the largest (named) number.

And there’s more. A browser was someone who wandered aimlessly through a store, looking but probably not buying. Memory still referred to a function of the human brain that allowed us to recall facts or events (and sometimes to the strange properties of some metals to return to their previous shape). An icon was an object or picture that represented something esteemed as virtuous. These days an icon is a tiny picture on a screen that you click on to open a program or app, many of which, though I would not describe as bad necessarily, are not all that virtuous.

A desktop was, well, the top of a desk. A flat screen was a cloth screen used for projecting slides or home videos, which were 8mm film. And clouds were still those large puffy things in the sky that blocked the sunshine and sometimes produced rain—not a term that referred to storage. And there’s another word, storage. Thirty years ago, if someone asked you how much storage you had, they probably wanted to leave something in your garage. They were certainly not talking about devices like CD’s, SD cards, or thumbdrives, and definitely not talking about a cloud.

I could go on. I made a list of over one hundred terms that have changed meanings in the last three decades; mouse, tablet, cell, surf, text, web, you get the picture I think.

Thirty years ago, we didn’t have cell phones or iPads and the like. And although computers did exist in 1987, almost no one had one. Which wasn’t really a problem. There wasn’t much to do with a computer in those days since Al Gore hadn’t invented the Internet yet. Besides, most people, like my wife and I, would have never been able to afford a computer. Not with a minimum wage of 3.35/hour, which in case anyone is wondering, produced a net income of about $120 per week. Not much, but then we didn’t need a lot of money back then. A gallon of gas was about .60, a candy bar was .25, and you could get a large pizza from Dominos for 4 bucks. I can’t imagine trying to pay for a $600 iPhone! Wouldn’t have been much time, or money, left for vacation.

Oh, there’s also a new word that’s been coined in recent years—blog. And now that I’ve posted to this one it’s time to head for the airport to fly away. Hey, I never said I ALWAYS stay home for vacation! ~

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, The Lana Denae Mysteries, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook at www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

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Power Struggle

Several years ago, my son and I visited a Radio Shack in search of an adapter that would turn a regular outlet into a USB port. This was back before iPhones and tablets had come along. At the time, apparently, no one had envisioned a need for such a thing. Except me, I guess.

I had some equipment that was USB powered but didn’t necessarily need to be connected to the computer. I was trying to move some of these things away from my computer corner to make more room. I thought if I could plug them into a wall outlet, it would get them out of the way.

When we couldn’t find what I was looking for, I asked the “expert” sales clerk if they carried anything like that, explaining what I wanted to do. You’d have thought I’d asked if we could get tickets for the next rocket to Mars. And as if the look the guy gave us didn’t convey how stupid he thought we were, his condescending tone made it clear. “That’s not even possible. Those are two completely different systems.”

“Different maybe but not impossible to connect,” I argued.

“No. USB can’t operate on house power.”

Now I was the one giving out disparaging looks. “The people who invented the USB plug didn’t invent an entirely new form of energy. They’re both still electricity.”

My son even chimed in, pointing out that transformers or transducers allow electricity to be converted to whatever form is needed. But it was no use.

“You just don’t understand electricity,” the guy said. “You can’t plug one into the other.”

Right I thought. I said, “I plug my computer into the wall and then plug the USB cord into my computer. Am I missing something?”

The guy didn’t have an answer so instead; he gave me another look that said my stupidity was an annoyance and wasting his time. I informed him we would look elsewhere and we prepared to leave.

“You’re never find what you want because it doesn’t exist,” the guy said.

Well, he was right, sort of. We visited every store in town that carried electronics and no one had what we were looking for, such a thing did not exist—yet. So, I gave up on the idea.

A few years later, my son and I were quite amused by the little cubed adapter that came with an iPhone. It plugged into the wall and had a USB port. Amazing! What will they think of next?

Then, about a month ago, I replaced an outlet in our kitchen. In addition to the regular plug-ins, the new outlet features two USB ports. This eliminates the need for anything other than a USB cord to charge phones, tablets, or any number of other gadgets that are piling up around the house these days and utilize what has become the current standard method of charging.

After installing the outlet, I wondered what the so-called expert from Radio Shack would think of these new developments. Would he still insist it wouldn’t work? Does he still think that USB is some new energy form? Or, I wondered, has he figured out by now that electricity is quite easily connected to electricity? Guess I’ll never know. I’ll probably never see the man again because they have now closed our Radio Shack—along with a few thousand others. Hmm, I think I might see why! ~

Bruce A. Borders is the author of more than a dozen books, including: Inside Room 913, Over My Dead Body, The Journey, Miscarriage Of Justice, The Lana Denae Mysteries, and The Wynn Garrett Series. Available in ebook at www.amazon.com/Bruce-A.-Borders/e/B006SOLWQS and paperback on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. Bruce A. Borders is a proud member of Rave Reviews Book Club.

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