Coffee heat rising

Computers

Keyboard: The outcome

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So how’s that external keyboard workin’ for ya? So far, the outcome is OK. Of course, juggling external peripherals is not ideal. But Apple has made that true in spades by killing off the USB port, requiring you to buy an adapter that you have to plug into Apple’s version of a port connection. The one I got — far better reviewed on Amazon than the one the guy at the Apple store tried to sell me — works loose at the slightest jiggle. Move the computer aside so you can get up from your easy chair and the damned dongle disconnects. And of course, that disconnects the wireless doodad, which disconnects the keyboard.

But that is not insurmountable.

As I sit here, I remember more and more wonders of the PC keyboard, wonders that do not exist on the Mac keyboard. For example, the “Home” and “End” keys. How have I managed to do without those all these years? I used to use them all the time. When you take on the Mac, it’s scroll-up-scroll-up-scroll-up-scroll-up… or scroll-down-scroll-down-scroll-down-scroll-down-scroll-down… ad nauseum. The Home, End, PageUp, and PageDown keys on this thing operate with no extra holding down of function keys, no farting around with a touchpad, no learning of arcana, no guesswork.

Created a table. Found the keyboard navigates cells and rows in the normal way, with the directional arrows. The “formula” arrow works nicely to add up a column of figures in a table. However, the presence of the keyboard seems to disable the “formula” function in Word. Oh well.

The function keys that run along the top of the row of number keys work in interesting ways. They seem not to correspond with their icons. One that runs the spellcheck is marked unenlighteningly with the back of an envelope. F5, which shows an open file folder with a curvey arrow, operates the Find, Replace, and Go To functions. Hot damn! These are not available on the Mac keyboard — to operate those in Wyrd, you have to enter a keyboard command.

Forgot how much I’d missed the “go to” button.

F4 pastes memorized copy — in Word, anyway. Not in WordPress. Hm. But Windows-V (which is Ctrl-V, which is Command-V) works in all programs, so why you would need a dedicated command key that works only in Microsoft programs: ????

F1 deletes a piece of copy permanently, such that Windows-Z will not bring it back. That’s odd.

F12 is Save As. F11 is a shortcut to the desktop, great for hiding whatever you’re playing with from the boss. F10 reduces the size of a window. F9 brings up a tableau of all open windows, which is extremely kewl.

If there’s a way to activate the function key that apparently is supposed to make the numbers pad work as a calculator, I haven’t figured it out yet. The would also be, well…beyond kewl.

But at least, thank GOD, it has a number pad. The Mac keyboard does not, and that is a considerable aggravation. I just hate having to stretch fingers to reach the keys in the topmost row, or else have to take my hands off the letters keys and hunt & peck for numbers.

The volume and audio on/off keys work swimmingly. Other keys apparently meant for Web cruising or controlling audio or video functions remain incomprehensible.

Not crazy about the “feel” of the keyboard keys, which aren’t as comfortable as the wired Microsoft board. But they still aren’t as cockamamie as the Mac’s keyboard. Occasionally I have  a little trouble hitting the keys straight on, but still is much better than the MacKeys that don’t fit your fingers.

That struck me as weird, because they don’t look all that much different. Maybe, I thought, it’s the “ergonomic” shape?

Well, no. It absolutely is the keys’ size and the distance between them.

MacBook: Letter key width: 4 pica; Distance between keys: .5 pica
Microsoft: Letter key width: varies, 3-5 pica; Distance between keys: 1.5 pica

Apparently because of the MS keyboard’s “ergonomic” curviness, the letters G, H, B, and N are wider. Seems to have no effect on typing efficiency, though.

The rodent is surprisingly easy to use. And it loses the aggravations inherent to the Mac’s touchpad. Maybe because I used a rodent for so many years B.MB. (Before MacBook), it seems less annoying to use than the damn touchpad.

The touchpad does unpredictable things because of the cutesy “gestures” Apple builds in. For example, all of a sudden it will decide the program you’re in is no longer active, so you have to go down to the bar hidden at the bottom of the screen and click on Firefox or Word or whatever program the damn thing has decided you don’t really want to be in. Or surprise! What’s on the screen is enlarged by a factor of ten or shrunk to Lilliputian size. Or the “gesture” that’s supposed to do X, Y, or Z does nothing. Or worse, does A, B, or C.

And I’d forgotten how handy the little roller thing is on the mouse. You don’t have to disengage your brain from whatever you were doing to scroll up and down the page. SO much less annoying!

Will this be a BIG improvement? Probably not titanic. But an improvement it surely will be.

Keyboards: Back to the Future!

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Here I am typing this post on an antique Microsoft Curve ergonomic keyboard, plugged into the stupid dongle on the idiotically designed (and idiotically expensive) MacBook Pro that I shouldn’t have bought a year or so ago.

The Macbook has a number of issues, most of which you eventually get used to. But the biggest issue — in my opinion — is the dreadful design of the keyboard. While you’re shopping down at the Apple store, the design fails to register with you as dreadful. That is because the changes they’ve made in the damn thing are so subtle they’re barely visible to the naked eye. You need a transparent ruler, an old MacBook, and a new MacBook to tell the difference. Or else you need to sit down and start typing on the thing.

If you’re a touch typist and you type fairly fast, you cannot enter copy without also entering a slew of typos. No matter how carefully (read s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y) you try to hit the keys, you invariably end up with a slew of crazy typos.

For a long while, I assumed this was my own incompetence. I do type very fast — I can type as fast as most people speak, a convenient skill in a journalist who does a lot of phone interviews. Something must be wrong with me, I thought. Have I had a stroke? Apparently not. Am I drunk? No…happens whether or not I’ve had a glass of wine with dinner. Am I senile? Possibly, but you’d think that would affect other motor skills, like driving and painting one’s face…

Eventually I realized that the new MacBook’s keys are wider than the old ones were, by a fraction of an inch. And they’re a fraction-of-a-fraction of an inch more widely spaced. The result of this is that when your fingers aim for a key, you tend to miss by a narrow margin. But miss you do: and that causes you to hit two keys. Hence, if you typed “hence” on the Macbook, you’d get something like “h3ence.”

Over and over and over again…

Yesterday I ran out of patience and resurrected this ancient Microsoft thing. And what a difference! Suddenly I’m typing normally again, not having to backspace every three or four characters to fix typos, not having to proofread copy two or three times to sift out all the errors one misses on a fast read. Hot DAMN!

Of course, you have the problem that Apple and Microsoft operate in parallel universes. What works on a Mac keyboard does not work on a Microsoft-compatible keyboard.

At first I thought I would have to remap the keyboard, which is a project and which, I feared, might gum up the computer’s works intolerably. So I called Apple Support and forthwith reached — can you imagine? — a human being. Explained the problem…he seemed familiar with users’ bitching about the keyboard, interestingly enough. But it is the presence of human beings who actually answer the phone and speak with you in human tongues that keeps me with the Mac.

This guy said there’s no need to remap the keyboard, because the main functions for the Apple already reside in any Microsoft-friendly keyboard. They’re just marked with different names. Thus…the “Command” key is not what you would think — “Control.” Rather, it’s the “Windows” key — of which, like “Command,” there are two, one to the left and one to the right of the space bar. It is also called the “Start” key.

Ohhhh yeah? Tell me more, dude…

The Mac’s “Option” key is Windows’ “Alt” key. Mac’s “Delete” is Windows’ “Backspace.” And obviously, Mac’s weirdly named “Return” key is Windows’ “Enter.”

These function in the standard keyboard combinations, along these lines:

Copy = Start-C
Paste = Start-V
Undo = Start-Z
Redo = Start-Y
Highlight all = Start-A
Delete = Backspace

I’ll be damned.

Not only that, but this keyboard operates Mac functions that didn’t exist, even on a Mac, when the keyboard was built. For example, Alt-Escape will cause the Mac’s Dictation function to read a highlighted passage aloud. Holding down a key will bring up a diacritical, so that — voilà — you don’t have to search for every diacritical in the accursedly busy “Symbols” table.

A-n-n-n-d this keyboard has features that do not exist on a MacBook keyboard…like a number pad, for example. On the new MacBook Pro, the only way to turn sound up, down, on, or off is with the amazingly annoying touchbar, a thing that requires you to take your hands off the keyboard and dork around and dork around to get it to come on and then to operate it. Lo, the dinosaur keyboard still has KEYS that control the sound AND start or stop video and audio play.

Of course, a number of its keys don’t work, or if they do, I haven’t figured out how to activate them. Yet. This keyboard has a set of keys designed to help navigate the Web. Except for the audio keys, those don’t seem to do anything on the Mac. It also apparently has a function that will make the number pad work as a calculator, but that one also doesn’t seem to speak Applese. Too bad. However, just the few things I’ve listed that do work increase functionality and productivity about 98%.

Because of Apple’s inane decision to remove RSB ports from its new computers, using a plug-in keyboard is a nuisance. The damned “dongle” attachment thing doesn’t stay connected — hiccup and it you’ll knock it loose enough to disconnect. Plus of course the reason I have a laptop is to do away with the miles of cables and cords.

However, both Microsoft and Logitech make this very style of keyboard in a wireless version. I’m thinking I’ll get one of those. That will allow me to set the computer on a table next to my easy chair, put the keyboard on my lap and my feet up on the wonted ottoman, and proceed far more comfortably and less crankily with life.

But really, dear Apple…why should your customers have to jump through such stupid hoops to get a fully functional professional-level keyboard?

Another Fine Day in the ‘Hood…Another “Fine” Apple Product

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Y’know, just once it would be nice to sit outside on a beautiful afternoon and not have one’s loafing interrupted by a police chase.

Talk about your forlorn hopes… 😉

This afternoon I ensconce myself on the back porch, put my feet up on a chair and the computer on my lap, and start pasting and formatting chapters 2 and 3 of Ella’s Story into the Plain & Simple Press website.

And, by dayum! before I can even format the first heading, along come not one, not two, but THREE cop and TV helicopters. As it develops, a band of armed robbers committed some crime on the far west side. One of them made his way into east Phoenix (so we’re told) and hijacked a woman’s car. When the cops threw down a bunch of tire-busters, he jumped out and hijacked another woman’s pickup.

From there he led the cops on a merry chase, ultimately running up Conduit of Blight Blvd, across Gangbanger’s Way and into SunnySlop, where he abandoned the truck and ran into his mom and dad’s miserable slum apartment. They caught the poor schmuck, but not before considerable property damage was done, large numbers of taxpayer dollars were expended, and an abrupt end was brought to anything resembling peace and quiet.

It gets tiresome. Once again I had to pack up everything, call the dogs inside, lock up all the doors, and forget any silly ideas about enjoying my backyard.

Speaking of silly ideas, remember that great Apple slogan, “It just works”?

Have you noticed how they’ve stopped using that?

Presumably because the operative phrase is now “It just doesn’t work.” And lest you think that is not a widespread phenomenon: it is Tuesday afternoon just now. The SOONEST I can get this practically brand-new MacBook in to the purported “Geniuses” to see if they can and will fix it is 4:15 — the height of rush hour — next Friday afternoon!

The key for the B character has stopped working. The only way I can type a letter “B” is by copying and pasting it.

Look this up on the Web and discover it’s a known issue that’s been happening since 2016!

How long do you suppose it takes Apple to fix a thing like this?

My other two Macs are upwards of nine years old, and they’ve never had a key just stop working.

uying Purchasing this pricey little bastard was a big mistake. Clearly, it was time to go back to the PC, with all its equally annoying headaches. At least a PC is relatively cheap — when it craps out you can go buy a new one.

The magically self-disabling “b” is not the only irritant with this keyboard. The keys are slightly larger and slightly further apart than they were on earlier models. Result: every third time a finger reaches for a key, it either hits the wrong key or it hits two keys. This means what once used to be a fast, accurate typing style now produces a mish-mash of typos: to wit, gobbledy-gook.

Looks like it’s time to go out and get an inexpensive PC from Costco and re-learn Windows. Then figure out how to get all the MacData into Windows format — shouldn’t be hard, because every file that matters was produced in Office programs, and they’re all stashed on DropBox. But it will add to the endless hassle factor.

Endlessly.

Copy, Paste….B b

How to Make Your Tax Accountant Crazy…

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First, you hire her.

Well, I take that back. First you major in English, instead of a useful subject like, say, accountancy. Then you will be perfectly situated for making any accountant of any variety crazy as a loon.

Then, get yourself a Mac, a nifty machine powered by software that is devilishly incompatible with Intuit’s software. This will cause one snafu after another, which the accountant will be able to handle pretty well during most of the year. As tax time approaches, though, it will drive her right off the rails.

Back in the day when I worked exclusively on PCs and knew Microsoft Windows and its compatible programs backward and forward, I did all my bookkeeping in Quicken. During the Dark Ages, it was a wonderful program. But as time marched on, its designer (Intuit) decided that it must be made ever more incomprehensibly complex and quirky. Managed to keep up with it, more or less, until the fateful day that I purchased a Mac.

That was the end of Quicken for me: Intuit made a sort-of, patched-together, shitty little low-end version that would kind of run on a Mac. But it just wasn’t worth the effort.

So started doing my books in Excel, which is pretty easy, pretty straightforward, and very hard to screw up. I can screw it up, of course, because I’m an English major and quite a creative one. But most humans: not so much.

My tax lawyer, the ex-husband’s ex-partner, retired from preparing tax returns for friends and former business acquaintances. Luckily for me, WonderAccountant came along about then.

WonderAccountant is an Intuit aficionado. She takes annual courses to keep up with that fine software, and she’s very, very good at using it for her clients’ manifold purposes. But of course it won’t work on my software. My attempt to learn the Cloud version of Quickbooks made my head hurt back in the day when it bore a faint resemblance to a shadow of Quicken. Today, when it has become clear that Quickbooks actually is code from aliens dwelling in Andromeda: out of the question.

So what we’ve done is set up a QB account to which she has accountantly access, and into which she can engross the emanations of my bank accounts and credit card accounts.

Sounds good (if you’re not an accountant), doesn’t it?

Well. No. The problem is of course she has no idea what any given deposit represents or to whom any exotic  check was written, or for what…

Meanwhile, my records are in Excel. They don’t speak Andromedan. Don’t speak any Earth language, either. So this means we have to compare notes so I can clarify the many transactions that Quickbooks uses to make corned-beef hash.

So now she has come up with A Solution: A spreadsheet that can be made to upload into Quickbooks (it’s really just a matter of correct formatting). This is a whizbang little fellow that hears what you’re sayin’ and fills in the blanks. Asked nicely enough, it can categorize all of your transactions by the appropriate “account” category, of which we have about 20. This is pretty cool.

This requires the English-major client to perform a seemingly simple task: Download transaction data from the credit union and the credit card companies and fit it into this spreadsheet by copying and pasting columns. Clarify transactions where necessary.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

Yes. We have an incorporated entity here. It has its own bank accounts and credit cards. And we have a living breathing human being: it has bank accounts and credit cards, too, which have little or nothing to do with the S-corp’s books.

And…heh…the human being is an English major.

Well, eventually I figured out (I think) (sort of) how to get these documents right (sort of), and after three hours of dorking around sent them off to her. She has lapsed into stunned silence.

Probably catatonic.

So that’s it. All you need is an English major, a Mac, Quicken, and Excel. Piece o’ cake!

 

 

 

I need another hole in my head….

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So along about 11:00 a.m., having organized this year’s mountain of tax papers, I stroll across the street to WonderAccountant’s place, there to deliver the trash. As I stroll down the driveway, I hear a woman shrieking, truly screaming in terror. Drop the papers on WA’s doorstep, holler at her to call the cops, and start to run in the direction of the yelling. By the time I get down to the house where I think it’s coming from, it’s stopped. I can’t find anyone around, so stand down.

While WonderAccountant and I are waiting for the cops to show up (they never do…) we see the Perp stalk out of Other Daughter’s house, jump in his car, and drive away. We realize the screaming was very likely coming from OD’s: WonderAccountant has noticed before that conversation taking place in OD’s yard bounces off house walls on the other side of the street and sounds like they’re right in her or Joel’s  front yard.

We debate whether to add this to our report to 911 but figure since he saw us standing out there, he’ll know where that came from. If (we’re still thinking, mistakenly, when) we see a cop, we’ll casually mention that they might want to check on her welfare, without commenting on the abusive father.

OD told another neighbor that when her sister, Pretty Daughter, was advanced in pregnancy, he socked her smack in the gut with his fist. Said he used to beat both girls and their mother when they were kids. It’s believable: he really is a beaut. But then: she’s certified nuts, too…evidently for a reason.

So there I am in the driveway waving good-bye to the plumber, who shows up half-an hour before the 1-to-3 slot he reserved, and thinking…God Dayum, I do need that German shepherd back.

Anna. She did quite the little number on the Perp’s schizophrenic accomplice, Son-in-Law (he who no longer lives with Other Daughter). SiL tried, apparently during a phase when his meds weren’t working, tried to get into my backyard through the side gate, while a friend and I were sitting on the side deck. He managed to escape (luckily he’d parked his car in front) before she could catch him, but I’ll tellya…he never came back here again. Scared the bedoodles out of him.

As for the Perp himself: she could’ve taken that aging sleaze out in about three seconds flat.

Sometimes I think I need to get another German shepherd.

Right. Just what I need: another hole in the head.

If I’d had Anna at hand this noon, I would’ve gone down to O.D.’s place to see if she was OK.

Right.

Today’s Day from Hell started yesterday morning, when I managed to clog up the main bathroom’s toilet. It being Sunday, that meant I had to make do until today, when the plumber could send his son to clear out the pipes.

This morning, during a visit from yet another Cox technician, we learned that Cox’s shitty equipment just doesn’t work at all with the VSR Call Blocker 5000, which is damned annoying.

After 309 intercepts, most of the robocallers have given up. It’s been relatively quiet around here the past few days, with the device disconnected.

They’ll be back in due time, of course. At that point, I’ll either switch the phones to Ooma and NoMoRobo (as I should have done at the outset) or deep-six the landlines and replace them with a few cell phones. I figure I can get a real cell phone — an actual smartphone, now that one of my friends has volunteered to teach me to use it — and then acquire a few ultra-cheap clamshells with prepaid minutes to set around the house for emergency use. These can just be left turned off, and the proposed smartphone can take my present phone number.

Last night at about 12:15 a.m. (that actually would be this morning, wouldn’t it?), Firefox (!!! Firefox!) crashed with a resounding roar. In doing so, it took down a website I’d been working on half the day, losing about two hours’ worth of coding. I hate coding. I hate coding even more than I hate grading freshman comp papers. And that is a lot. And yes. Yes, the page was saved. Do you really think I don’t hit “Save” about every thirty seconds, after all my fun escapades in Computer Science?

So spent two hours this morning reconstructing the disappeared content and design. Good morning, fuckin’ America!

In the Hole in the Head Department, y’know what I really think I should do?

I think I should give over all pretense of doing anything that in any way looks like work. Toss a couple pair of jeans, a few shirts, a jacket, the camp stove, the dwarf dogs, and a sleeping bag in the car and just…start…driving.

And never. come. back.

Wining Time

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Time to sit down and swill a nice glass of Kirkland’s best.

The days swirl past like water flowing down the drain. And at this age…well, that’s a pretty apt metaphor. It’s been a very busy few hundred hours of late, some of them fun and some of them not so much.

Today started out pretty fun: A special choir session in the morning, in which we got some extra-special coaching from our professional musicians, met some new choir members, and had ourselves sorted out by timbre and reseated here, there and yon.

Even though one must yodel all by oneself, in public before an audience that does include the aforementioned professional musicians, I always get a kick out this process. It usually results in a set of new seating companions, which is cool because it allows me to get to know more choir members…otherwise, being the recluse that I am, I would cling to the few friends I’ve made and never get to know anyone else. So this is good. One of my favorite Chamber Choir singers is now seated to my right, a lovely singer with a wonderful, effervescent personality who seems, unlike moi, to be afraid of nothing and no one. To the left, a quiet woman who has been around for awhile but whom I’ve never had (or made…) an opportunity to come to know. AND we’re right down in front, meaning no climbing up and down and balancing on bleacher-like things. It’ll be a little harder to see the director from the new vantage point — and that is something I rely on simply because I’m just not that experienced, as singers go. But I think as long as we’re standing, it’ll be OK.

Yesterday was a bitch, as it developed.

Last night we finally moved the current wave of copy back to our journal editor. But not without a fiasco of the first water.

Working on revamping the Plain & Simple Press website and not making much headway, I’m figuring it’s about time to knock off and go do the day’s required fucking blood pressure test. This is the best time of day, when the numbers are at their lowest ebb…and that is a desideratum, because we wish to keep Cardiodoc at bay. I’ve not yet taken a pill, but it’s about time because part of the gaming of the system entails dropping one of these minuscule doses, waiting about an hour, and then running the hated gadget. This results — well, unless the ambient temperature is in the low 60s, as it can be — in a fine set of numbers in the mid- to low 110s.

Impressive. Very impressive. If that doesn’t get the guy off my neck, nothing will. 😀

Just as I’m thinking Get up, lady, and drop a pill, in comes a message from The Kid: where is Essay 4?

Essay 4? It’s on DropBox, in the Essay 4 folder. Of course (just unwittingly typed that “of curse”). Where we put it several days ago, and happy we were, indeed, to see the end of that fine document.

You understand: some of these authors are using their gilded efforts for P&T (promotion and tenure reviews). In its current incarnation, the journal seems to be absent anyone who even vaguely resembles a peer reviewer, nor does the copy seem to have benefited from the advice of an editor who is, shall we say, gifted with a jaundiced eye. The new editor appears to be inexperienced with wrangling creatives or unwilling to ride herd on the livestock. Articles are difficult to read primarily because they’re far from ready to go to press.

That is about the mildest I can get on this subject. And yes. I do remember my mother inveighing about “if you can’t say anything nice…” You can’t.

No, says The Kid. It is not on DropBox. Where is it?

Where, indeed? WhereTF? I search DropBox: and I know that is where I stored it because I no longer stash this stuff on my local disk. DropBox has a back-up/restore function, and supposedly Time Machine is also backing up DropBox.

She’s right. It’s gone. I search “All Documents” on my MacBook.

Not there.

WTF?

I fly to the big computer, fire up Time Machine, and search directories going back a week.

Not there.

By now, I am seriously freaking out.

I break into DropBox’s website, parse my way through the nightmarish techno-instructions, and search DB’s back-ups.

Not there.

Holy CRAP! This file, which was utter diabolical torture to read, is flat-out fucking GONE.

I email The Kid and tell her I’ll have to plow through the whole.god.AWFUL.thirty.god.DAMNED.pages again, which will take another full (agonizing) day.

So I go to open the hideous unedited original in Wyrd. Of course, when you open Word it proposes to “Open Recent.”

Hmmm….  No sign of the missing files in “Open Recent.” But what do we have at the bottom of the “Recent” list but a MORE tag….ah, yes.

Click on that. Select “this week.” Wait for some unholy number of files to register in Wyrd’s memory.

And lo!

There the little bastards are!

W-H-A-A-A-T??

W-H-E-R-E??????

The things are stored in a folder — that would be a “directory” for grown-ups who use Microsoft Windows — with a title that is a long, arcane number: D123455432211 or some damfool thing. Both of them: the clean edited copy and the marked-up copy.

WTF is D123455432211????

Not caring much until I can contrive to open the things and then save up to DropBox, I stash the files, open them, and confirm that yes, they are the edited and clean versions. These, I mail to The Kid and to myself, by way of ensuring that they will not get “disappeared” again.

Whatever a D123455432211 is, I’ve never seen anything like it. Search the Internet. Whatever terms I dreamed up, at this moment I do not recall…but something that I typed into Google called up the answer. As it develops, when someone sends you a MacMail attachment and you open the damn thing, MacMail will save it into a “Downloads” folder. It does not prompt you to save the file where you want it to go. It just quietly saves in some un-findable location where Apple wants it to go. To make it even more un-findable, MacMail will designate this folder with a zillion-character numeric title.

By the time our author’s fine piece of literature has resurfaced, I am simply beside myself with rage, frustration, and horror.

Not only have I neglected to run the damn blood pressure machine, by now I’m about 5 hours late in taking the hated anti-hypertension pill. Along about 11 p.m. I gulp down the drug and test the BP. Really, it’s not that high: in the 130s. One figure is in the dramatically high 130s; the rest are in the middle range. The last time I flew into a state of Extreme High Dudgeon, the gauge reached 165/105, presumably in the bust a blood-vein category.

Unfortunately, in the brave new world of the American Heart Association, anything above 129 is now regarded as “high blood pressure.”

Questionable though I suspect that to be, nevertheless Cardiodoc takes it as received wisdom from Rome. So sticking those numbers in the record is contraindicated.

This evening they’re back down into the 110s. Those, we keep.

I hate computers.

That notwithstanding, I’ve spent a fair amount of today rebuilding the Plain & Simple Press site so that I can offer content from two completed books and one work in progress for free to readers.

This required a refresher course in rudimentary coding. Needed to figure out how to build an internal link in a web page. You understand: once, back in the dark ages, I knew how to do this. That was when my mind was young and elastic. Today: phbphphbhphphbbbt! I do not want to know it and so I have forgotten all that arcana.

Okay. I now know how to do it. Again. Probably will not remember until tomorrow. But for the nonce, code that can be self-plagiarized is installed in one of the new pages under construction.

I should take the dogs for a walk, it being not even 8 p.m. Exercise is needed for dogs and for human. But…

One is given pause.

An admired friend of mine, one of the most elegant European women I have ever met, lives within walking distance, in a tiny development of patio homes that fronts right on Central Avenue. This is within easy walking distance of the Funny Farm.

She reports that a couple nights ago someone came to her door about 9:00 p.m., rousting her from whatever she was doing and alerting her German shepherd. Fortunately she has a steel security door.

When she opened her front door, she found a guy on the other side of that security door foaming obscenities at the mouth and waving a gun around. He was in some kind of rage, he was trying to get in, and he threatened to shoot her.

She being a woman of some self-possession kept her cool, closed the door on him, and called the cops. He was gone by the time the gendarmes showed up. But as you can imagine, she was somewhat alarmed.

She speculated that he was a transient, as he was dirty and probably high on the usual drug of choice in our parts — meth.

Mmm hmm.

Well, I walk these dogs at night all the time, partly because in the summer it’s the only time they can walk on the hot pavement and partly because I’m busy from dawn to well after dusk. I never see anyone — sketchy or otherwise — wandering around after dark here. The bums are sleeping in the alleys, and the residents are nailed to their TV sets.

But just now I think…maybe not.

If there’s some drug-addled animal out there waving his gun around and threatening elderly women, I really do not want to meet him at night. Not in the daytime, either, but especially not at night. My gun is heavy and I do not even know where my father’s holster is stashed. Nor do I especially fancy the prospect of keeping two wackshit dogs under control while I try to defend myself against a wackshit human.

And so, to pour another glass of wine.

Prosit!