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Last weekend, we had a day of heat and sunshine.  It was early afternoon and I had finished my lunch – and with no projects or yardwork looming over me, I decided to sit outside and read. 

There’s a spot on the back patio that is secluded and gets plenty of sun.  I put on a hat to protect my scalp and then took off everything else.  With a book and a cushion to sit on, I got comfortably seated on the step and read my book.

It was quiet and I sat there peacefully sweating.  After a while, I finished my book and thought about going inside.  Instead, I got a broom we had near the door and swept off the patio – then moved the cushion to support my head and laid down on the concrete.

Now that I was stretched out the sun really started to heat me up.  I had a lot of surface area exposed, after all.

I didn’t sleep, but I drifted – the hat pulled down over my eyes.  I didn’t move or even fidget.  Even on the hard concrete, I was completely comfortable and at peace.  The only movement was my breathing.

I lay there for a while, feeling as though I was floating in the heat.  A vague thought about falling asleep and getting sunburned drifted through my head, but I let it go.  

And then, a bit later, I let the spell break and sat up.  I brushed off my back – and my backside – then gathered my book and cushion to cool off and get out of the sun. 

I got a little pinkish, but not burned.  And a little aloe after my shower took care of that. 

There are not many days of summer left and I don’t know if I can recapture the magic of that peaceful afternoon.  

Just me, my hat, and the sun.

Jim had ordered some furniture for the living room but after it was delivered he noticed that there was a defect in the fabric.  So, it needed to be remade and we used the defective furniture in the meantime. 

I was working from home on the day of re-delivery and saw the guys pull up their truck and begin to unload the boxes.  I met one of them at the door and he showed me the paperwork on a clipboard.    He said what I thought was “Pico” and pointed to his eye.  I told him I didn’t understand and he repeated it a few more times before I realized he needed to inspect or look at the existing furniture.

He didn’t speak any English. And I don’t speak any Spanish. 

The guy that was with him also spoke no English.

They conversed rapidly in Spanish between each other and I stayed out of the way.  They noted the defective patch on the chair, but the sofa looked the same.  I pantomimed that it was supposed to be taller and they checked the new legs – same size.   I texted Jim and he said the legs would be the same height, but the seat cushions would be taller.    Again with pantomime, I explained as best I could the difference and the three of us could see that the seats were higher. 

I got them some water since it was a hot day.  They appreciated it and I guess said thank you – though I couldn’t follow. 

They worked quickly to get the old furniture out and the new furniture in and assembled. 

When it was done, I looked things over and signed the paperwork for receipt. I got a “Have a nice day” from one of them – which may have been his limit of English – and they were out the door.  They cleaned up the packing material and were on their way.

I updated Jim and went back upstairs to my office to continue working. 

It was a frustrating encounter for me and I’m sure for the delivery guys as well.   If I had known some Spanish or they had known some English, I might have been able to help more. 

We might as well have been on different continents instead of the same room for all we communicate with each other.   How strange it is that language can split us up so easily.

When Jim got home his more detail-oriented eye noted a problem with the fabric on the back of the couch and he reached out to the company. So, if we can’t find a solution ourselves, I might see them again.  

I should see if I can get google translate going on my phone – just in case.

Today was the 2024 Maker Faire at the Wayne County Fairgrounds in Wooster, OH.  I had my car packed the night before so I was able to roll out early and arrived at the start of the setup window.  I parked right up front, grabbed a cart, and asked a volunteer where my booth was.  He was friendly, but not very engaged, and had a little trouble looking up the list.  He eventually found the booth and sent me on my way. 

I was glad I got there early since it took me a while to figure out how I wanted to set up my booth to be bright, colorful, and inviting.  Took me about an hour and when I was done I went back to the volunteer and asked where I should move my car to since I was right up front.  He thought about it for a moment, then decided it was fine just where it was. 

Which was not the case and I managed to mostly not hear the announcement as I headed into the bathroom about moving out cars.  Whatever, my foot was kinda bothering me so I didn’t really want to walk that far.

I was ready an hour before the event started and had time for the obligatory social media post.

And then, I waited for the people and turned myself – for 6 hours – into an extrovert.

I said hello to everyone.  Invited everyone to fold something with me or take a free item from the premade bin.    I was polite, engaging – even (gasp) chatty. 

The kids, as usual, were the best.    I made sure to encourage them and cheer them on when they got a tricky step right.  If things went completely sideways, I always made sure to give them the one that I made too. 

And I got to share some fun surprises.  If we made a box, I always added a small crane or frog before putting on the lid.    The wings on the bird always got a test “flap” and each frog was given a test “hop”. 

I had some good conversations with people and gave out my email address to a couple of people that either wanted an interview or for me to attend another Maker Faire.

To my delight, I had at least one person request everything on my board.    Including one firefly that one little boy did perfectly.  It was pretty great. 

Here’s the final count of the projects I did with people.  I was also folding things for the giveaway box the whole time so I don’t know how much I folded, but it was a lot. 

• Bird 5
• Box 19
• Frog 8
• Butterfly 10
• Flower 3
• Firefly 1
• Duck 1

The day ended up being 2 hours for set up, 6 hours of folding, and an hour to pack back up.  I got chided for not calling the coordinator over to sit at my table so I could walk around – but it seemed like I would be doing a disservice to those that came to the event.  I did take a short break at the table to have most of a sandwich, but that was it. 

So, it was a long day.  But a productive one.  I think people had fun and enjoyed learning something new.  

Might get some “future folders” out of it.

The closest Taco Bell is in perhaps not the nicest part of town, but they are fast and surprisingly accurate with the orders.  When a quick dinner is called for, I heed the toll of the bell.

Last evening, I was at The Bell and had placed my order at the kiosk.  This is one part of the pandemic that I didn’t care for at first, but a kiosk that is set up well is pretty nice if you are a little picky about your order.  

I stepped to the side to let someone else order while I waited  – and of course I had paper with me to fold.  I had started a crane when a guy came in to pick up a door dash order.   He was black, mid-twenties I’d guess, and dressed like he was working on a burgeoning rap career.  Hat off to the side, large gold chains, gold teeth, etc. 

I describe him only to paint the very different pictures between us  – me being the standard-issue Old White Guy.  Of course there is more to meet than meets the eye and the same can be said for this guy as well – but we both did what everyone does in these circumstances in that we just left each other alone and waited for our food. 

Except that the motion of a “test-flap” of the paper crane caught his eye and he looked up from his phone. 

“Did you just make that?” he asked, surprised, and I nodded and handed it to him to see it.  He put his phone in his pocket to try to get the wings to flap.  I gestured that he should hand it back so I could demonstrate – then handed it back so he could try. 

When he got the wings to gently flap, his eyes lit up.  

“That is raw!” he said and while I don’t really know what it means in this context, I’m assuming that it was positive because he was really excited.   He repeated it a few times too, for good measure. 

He flapped the wings a few times and then tried to hand it back to me.  I shook my head and told him to keep it. 

You would have thought I’d handed him a million bucks.  He was absolutely delighted and held it up – saying he was going to hang it from a string over the dashboard of his car. 

He sincerely thanked me and I said he was welcome. 

My food arrived and as I left I wished him a good evening.  He returned the well wishes – still marveling over the paper crane. 

I’ve said before how lucky I am to have stuck with this hobby – and that trip to Taco Bell just confirmed it.

He and I might never have spoken except for the gentle flap of a paper bird’s wings.  

Instead, I made his day.

While I like solving problems, I don’t like solving them more than once.  When I solve a problem, it should stay solved.

Which is why I don’t like plumbing.   Or software where I don’t have access to really fix the problem.

And today it was software. 

We have a program that is normally pretty awesome, but there’s an email problem where it sometimes puts people on a blocked list and then not tell anyone about it.   The emails fail, panic ensures – the usual.

The “fix” – if that’s what you can call it – is to contact the company’s support and request that the addresses be taken off the double-top-secret blocked list.

I’ve got a process to identify the problem when it occurs and I know how to report it to get it quickly resolved.

Except not anymore.

The company has added an AI layer to the support process and it is…not great.    When prompted, I put in my request knowing full well this was going to fail but not having any other option. And believe me, I looked for any other option. 

The bot replies that it isn’t allowed to access user information – big surprise – then asks if that answered my question.   (Really?)

I click the No button and it tells me that it is very sorry – and asks me if I would like to contact support. 

I tell it yes, and it offers chat, telephone, or email.  Since I have 25 addresses that need to be removed from the blocked list, Chat and Phone aren’t going to cut it. 

I select Email and it tries to redirect me – and then just sits there spinning.   I eventually realize that it’s trying to open a new browser window and I click to allow that.  But, by that point, it has forgotten what it was doing and reloads the page I’m on – right up to the point where it tries to hand off to the email support option.  I try reloading the chat to get it to trigger again and it keeps getting hung up.

So, I close the entire browser, reopen, log back in, and make my way back to the bot and this time I’m more vague on my request to just get past it.  I was tired of playing the game by that point and so was the AI.  It replied with “I”m sorry I can’t do that, Dave”.  We jump through the hoops again before it finally hands me to the email window.  

I put in the request quickly since I’m on familiar ground now and the system opens a ticket.  

So, I head over to the ticket system to see if I could have bypassed this by creating a new ticket directly – but, no, I can view and edit (and close! it helpfully notes) tickets, but can’t create them. 

I knew the AI couldn’t help and the AI knew it couldn’t help.  And I have to imagine the company techs that put this in also knew it couldn’t help.  

But here we are.  Trying desperately to make AI a useful thing instead of a hindrance or a scam. 

I, for one, welcome the inevitable rise of our robot overlords.  

But they aren’t here yet.

I went to pick up my prescription and as I dropped it off at the pharmacy counter I was told it would be 10 minutes or so.    And I was skeptical, but started the usual wander around the store.  

Once I had seen everything – not a big store – I went over to the waiting area for my second and third set of “10 minutes”.  

I played a couple games on my phone, then took out some paper to fold.  There were a couple of kids sitting there with their mom and I could tell they were getting bored and stir crazy.  I had just finished up the second crane when I got the text that my prescription was ready. 

I stopped in front of the kids and their mom and explained that I had made these cranes while I was waiting and that my prescription was ready.  I asked if they would like them and demonstrated how to make the wings flap.

These two little boys, who had been getting restless, instantly locked in.  They were fascinated and took the cranes from me with lit up eyes.   

The mom thanked me and prompted the boys to thank me as well.  I told them they were welcome and went on my way to stand in line at the counter.  I heard them talking about the birds and trying to get the wings to flap.

I smiled to myself.

I’m not a big fan of waiting, but I guess I can make it better for other people.

I had errands to run this afternoon and mostly avoided interacting with other humans.  Some days I like people, but this was not one of them. 

I had been doing pretty well as I made my way from kiosk to self-checkout – but the final test was the self-checkout at Giant Eagle. 

I approached the station and scanned my card poorly name “loyalty card”, then started taking the items out of my cart and scanning them one by one – then adding them to plastic bags in the tiny bagging area.  Not exactly rocket science. I was about halfway through when the system froze and complained that I hadn’t scanned an item.  

Inconceivable.

I tried to check to see where I had messed up, mentally recalling the swipe movement and the accompanying beep.  And then it cleared on its own.

Skeptical, I proceeded with scanning the items and when it was done I had two bags in the bagging area and my credit card in hand.

“PLEASE WAIT, HELP IS ON THE WAY”

I visibly deflated.  I didn’t need help and I didn’t want help.  But help was on the way.

The clerk came over and said, “Don’t look so dejected,”

“I thought I did everything right,” I replied and his response suggested that he would fix things, but that I clearly done Something Stupid ™. 

He scanned his badge and the system cleared to let me pay for my groceries. When I got my receipt I pulled my cart around and picked up the bags from the bagging area – intending to carry the two bags and return the cart on my way. Because I’m not a monster.

The clerk came back over and suggested that I should move my cart to the other side earlier in the process and put my filled bags in the cart instead of leaving them in the bagging area.  This was, presumably, the Something Stupid ™ that required HELP ON THE WAY.

I thanked him for the suggestion – just to get on with my life – and put the bags in the cart to leave the store.

As I was walking, though, I wondered how that would work?  I still had items in my cart to scan when I had filled the first bag so moving the cart would put the unscanned items at the wrong end of the process.  And, I always get scolded by the machine when I don’t leave my items in the bagging area.

So, I still don’t really know what I did Wrong ™, but it was Something Stupid ™. 

It’s been about a year since I got “maybe” diagnosed with gout and it came roaring back at the end of June.  It started on a Friday and I popped a pill from my prescription and hoped it wouldn’t last.  By Saturday, I was hobbling around and by Sunday I was using a cane.

I thought it was getting better, but then it started to hurt badly enough that I was losing sleep.  I had a couple of rough nights of only a couple hours sleep and nothing seemed to help.

I elevated it. I put pressure on it. I used an ice pack.  I took my prescription. Added an anti-inflammatory.  Even tried a Tylenol PM which lasted all of an hour before the pain came roaring back and woke me up.  

I was miserable. 

The oddest bit was when I tried to get comfortable. I would hurt, move a little, and it would stop hurting for a tiny moment. And then it would hurt again. I would spend hours making small movements until I was exhausted and I’d eventually fall asleep.

I hobbled around the office for a couple of days and tried to get an appointment lined up with a podiatrist that a friend had recommended. 

It slowly got better – though my foot remained red and swollen – and I took pictures of it when it was at its worst so I could show the doctor.   My appointment is in a few days and in the meantime I’ve got a stinging pain in my ankle and on my other foot it feels like I’m walking on a marble when I’m barefoot. 

I’m a mess, but I’m getting better at getting around with a cane. I guess that’s something.   I’ll update once I have my appointment and we get a better handle on what’s going on – and if I really have gout. 

Getting old is not much fun. 

Edit: Doctor’s appointment

I had my doctor’s appointment and it was kind of a waste of time. I got there early, filled out the requisite paperwork, and waited for the doctor to come into the exam room.  

I explained I was there for two things – to confirm a diagnosis of gout and to investigate an intermittent but somewhat frequent needle sharp pain in my ankle.    I showed him pictures of what my foot looked like in the middle of the maybe-gout flareup and he said that’s what it looked like.  I had also marked the exact spot on my ankle where I was getting the sharp pain and he confirmed that exact spot has a nerve that was likely getting pinched.  

He commended me on the accuracy of the mark, but things went downhill for the treatments.

The doctor wrote a prescription to get some blood work done and another one for a steroid to take just as the next flare-up happens.  If I take it soon enough, then it won’t be quite as bad.

I asked him what to do to prevent a flare-up and he suggested home remedies like cherry juice.  When I asked what to do to hurry it along when it happens he said,

“If you figure that out, let me know,”

For the sharp pain, if it was worse, then a cortisone shot would help.  But, since it’s not debilitating, he wouldn’t recommend it. 

And that was it. 

I went on my way to get my blood drawn and then went on into work. I got the results later that day that showed uric acid in my blood on the high end and the doctor’s admin called me to confirm the gout diagnosis.

So, I should check the internet for treatment options and drink some cherry juice.

Millions of people all over the planet have gout and we’ve been getting it for hundreds of years.  And still, this is the best we can do.  

Science, you have let me down.

When I was a kid, I could spend literally hours in a book – reading through page after page at a breakneck speed. Less reading, really, and more like absorbing the stories.

But then a smart phone came along and my attention span fell apart.  Now, I would have trouble concentrating for a long period of time with the siren song of the interwebs calling from my pocket. 

I didn’t like that I had become so easily distracted and resolved to recapture the immersion and speed from my younger days.

And it’s worked, mostly.  A cup of tea, a comfortable chair, and a good book with a silenced phone meant I could escape again into some fantastical world again.

Provided it was a good book.  With all the books I’ve read over the years, I have a pretty high standard for my reading materials and if I’m going to invest my time – it had better be good and it had better be weird.

(I have also gotten a bit snobbish about the size of books.  $23 for a novella?  Absurd!)

I was pretty excited when I picked up a new book that had an interesting cover, an interesting title, and a summary that suggested it would be quite weird.

And then… it wasn’t very weird.  Things happened to people and people did things, but it was at this strange remove.  I was 3/4 of the way through before the first ghost ship showed up, but there was no connection or reason.  It simply was.  Where was the mythology?  Why were these things happening?  It just plodded along until at the end when the ghosts animated wax figures from a museum and…saved the day?  I guess?  I lost the thread somewhere in there.

I read it all the way through – seems courteous – but added it to the Half-Priced books pile when I closed the cover.  I didn’t like it, but perhaps someone else will.

I’ve moved on now to a suitably weird and consistently weird (and reasonably priced) new book and I’ve spent much of the weekend sitting outside in the sunshine – with my nose buried in a fantastical tale.  

As I should be. 

When I bought my first chromebook, it felt…special.  Since a chromebook mostly requires a wi-fi connection to function, it felt less like a traditional computer and more like an extension of the internet itself. Or perhaps just my portal to that space. 

I was enamored with the interface and the touchscreen – though I’m not much of an artist.   I was already all-in with google so I navigated the docs, sheets, and drive like an old pro.  And I was free to move around the house and write where-ever I wanted. 

I even put a cool-looking clock decal on the cover.

And then, that time ran out.  A chromebook is only as good as the last security update and the latest updates soon would no longer run.  I tried to use it even after the last update, but it was sluggish at best. 

I waited a while, torn with spending more money for an essentially disposable computer, and felt a little cut off.  Not that I didn’t have my main computer and a phone smarter than most some people, but that magical portal had faded. 

So, I waited for a sale and when the 4th of July rolled around, I bought a new chromebook.  Found one for less than $200, bought it at Best Buy, and brought it home.

And had it set up in about 20 minutes – with most of that being waiting for a download.  There’s not much to setting up a chromebook – it’s mostly just logging in.

The new chromebook feels a little more serious.  It’s about the size of my main laptop and has a full keyboard, but no touch screen. Pretty amazing for the price – and astonishing based on what that would have gotten me only a few years ago.   The portal has reopened – though it doesn’t quite have that magic.  And the clock has already started to tick. 

But it’s nice to have my own little corner of the internet where I can drink tea and tell stories – to those around me and to future versions of myself. 

Now, I just need to find a good decal to add to this one – and decide how and when I’m going to e-recycle my old portal.