On the Road #3: Another Market Stop

Posted by Grumpy on September 28, 2016
Posted in: Culture and Humanity. Tagged: .

Background for the On The Road series.
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This stop gave me another up close and personal cultural experience, but one quite opposite from what I described in On the Road #2: Schooled at the Corner Market.

My target stop was a small market in a run down section of the city.  I found it operating out of the first floor apartment in an old, dilapidated building.  While getting my paper work together, I noticed a group of children playing in front of a building about two doors down from where I parked.  Before I left my car, a boy in his mid teens walked out of an alleyway next to the market and set his gaze on me.  He wasn’t wearing a shirt, undoubtedly to advertise the results of some intense body building.

Inside the store it was very dark, with just a few bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling.  Some customers were talking with an old man who was working the register and they all gave me a quick once-over in a manner which increased my feeling of not being welcome.  To avoid catching grief back at the office for not completing this stop, I decided to wait for the customers to finish their business and leave.  It was a very long wait.

Just as the last customer in the store was getting ready to leave, the teen I saw outside entered with what seemed to be the entire group of kids I had seen playing in the street.  There were a dozen or more and he had them line up single file at the counter, which pushed me further back into the store.  He told the old man to give them each the candy or soda of their choice, leaned up against the counter facing me directly, and  glared at me nonstop.

I decided this visit was not worth possibly getting my ass kicked, my car damaged, or being relieved of my earlier collections, so I left.  Being a short, lean, 65 year old man, I would not be able to defend myself against this kid.  After I started my car I looked back and saw him leaning out the door, arms crossed, with a smug look on his face.

This story may seem overly dramatic, but it is how it occurred.  Blatant intimidation worked well for the teen, and the use of his young gang to block me from getting to the old man at the register was a pretty slick move, one I imagine he had used before.  I have no guilt or shame over my reaction to it all – I felt threatened, eager to leave, and never wanting go back.

I did not take anything positive away from this experience.  It was my first exposure to a bully since my college years.  It felt just as uncomfortable as it did back then.  I did encounter this type of behavior on later runs, but none quite so “in your face”.  It was often just ignoring me until I went away.

 

Lenovo Ideapad 100S

Posted by Grumpy on September 25, 2016
Posted in: Technology.

Lenovo Ideapad 100S

I had a Fusion (VMWare) virtual machine running Windows 7 Pro living in my iMac, that I upgraded to the free Windows 10 Pro.  As this was my last Windows instance in the house I decided that if I was going to have only one Windows machine, it might as well be the latest version.

Windows 10 did run in the virtual environment but not as well as Windows 7.  It took longer to start up, ran somewhat slower, and glitches with the display and sound drivers which did not occur with Windows 7 were annoying.  I don’t rule out that living in the iMac had a lot to do with the poor driver behavior.  Around this same time, I happened to cruise the laptop aisles at Best Buy and saw laptops under $300 that seemed to have enough oomph to support the kind of things I would use a Windows lap top for.

I ended up purchasing a Lenovo Ideapad with Windows 10 Home edition installed, for about $245.  It has a 14″ screen, 2 GB memory, a 64 GB SSD (solid state drive), a microSD slot, 3 USB ports (2 USB 2.0 and 1 USB 3.00), and an HDMI port.  Also included are a Celeron Dual Core CPU, Bluetooth 4.0, and 802.11 a/c WiFi connectivity.  The purchase also qualifies for a free 1 year subscription to Microsoft Office 365 Personal if you sign up for it within the first 6 months of ownership.

I’ve had this machine for about 2 months and I like it.  Its main uses up to now include getting to know Windows 10, cruising the web and updating web sites, and getting back into coding with Windows Powershell and VBScript.  It performs all these functions in a snappy fashion and starts up from the power off status or a sleep fairly quickly.  

Admittedly, this is not a gamer platform, or suitable for applications needing high CPU usage or more than 2 GB memory, but for web surfing, email, and other activities where almost all the heavy lifting is happening on a web server somewhere else, the sturdy and light Lenova Ideapad 100S is a great machine for the price.

 

Trump Jr.’s Gas Chamber Remark, Unfairly Infamous? Unlikely.

Posted by Grumpy on September 17, 2016
Posted in: American Aristocracy, The Press.

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This week’s top news stories included Donald Trump Jr.’s mention of the gas chamber in a speech he made supporting his father. After searching the web and reviewing the context in which it was used, I wasn’t sure it should have been immediately targeted as “Nazi” anti-Semitism referring to the Holocaust, causing the Anti-Defamation League to demand a retraction.

When I was under 10 years old in the 1950s, I can remember playing cops and robbers with my neighborhood pals and the gas chamber was a common threat or promise to the “bad guys” in this activity. We were old enough to have heard the phrase used on television, in comic books, and in our elders’ discussions in reference to criminal activity. We were thankfully too young to have any knowledge of the atrocity of the Holocaust, or grasp the concept of Anti-Semitism. The gas chamber was just an American thing.

I was almost able to accept the younger Trump’s explanation that he used it in the “American” sense – as an acceptable means of capital punishment in our country (as early as 1921). Why didn’t he reference the hangman’s noose, firing squads, the electric chair, or the gurney?

I now think my early assessment was pretty naive.  Given the rabid history of the Trump campaign, the odds strongly favor the use of “gas chamber” being intentional, to bring about the press response it received.  It was another instance of the Trump campaign’s strategy of making outrageous and inflammatory statements daily, to bolster the likelihood that the Trump name would be at or near the top of the day’s “big stories”.

Another striking example of big media’s true charter, that ratings and the profits they bring are all that matter.

 

Occasional Blips – Current

Posted by Grumpy on September 10, 2016
Posted in: Rants Raves, Blips.

oblips32bCache dump of thoughts, ideas, and recommendations…

⇒ RuCyrious Post Update:  Posted a gallery of art by Alphonse Mucha to RuCyrious.com.  Mucha was a groundbreaker with his style in the 1890’s, but you stoners out there should recognize that style right away.

⇒ The site format and layout changes are completed.  Basically, the theme was changed from zBench to Paramount.  I’m happy with the way it looks, but could jump back to the previous look if need be without much effort.  

ARCHIVE 2016,  2015,  2014,  2013

A Hobby: Fountain Pens

Posted by Grumpy on August 20, 2016
Posted in: Rants Raves, Pens.

Since my high school years (a very long time ago), I’ve always liked writing with fountain pens.  In the last 10 to 15 years that interest grew more serious and I started purchasing pens off the web, upgrading a step up from the fountain pens I had been buying off the rack at the local drugstore for $5 to $15.  The latter were usually not sturdy enough to carry around like a ball point, and often not reliable enough to be sure they would write every time without some prodding.  They also made a much larger mess on your person when they leaked or dumped their ink without warning due to a bump or jostle.

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The pen pictured above is my latest purchase, a Lamy CP1, with a steel fine nib.  The term “fine” defines the relative width of the line it draws on the paper and is not a hard and fast measurement, as it can vary from brand to brand.  This purchase was influenced by my experience with the 4 Lamy pens I already own.  The Lamy brand was among my first purchases on the web and stood out from other brands in its price range as being the most reliable (write first time, every time), most durable (take a licking and keep on ticking), and easiest to write with.  These 4 Lamy’s are all Safari models of various colors, with sturdy ABS plastic bodies except for one, a Safari Al-Star which has a light aluminum body.  All are fixed with medium nibs, writing a thicker line than the fine.

The CP1 has a very slim metal barrel and a slightly textured finish.  For me, it is a very comfortable pen to write with most likely due to the small circumference of the body and the smoothness of the nib.  It shipped dry and as soon as I plugged in the cartridge it came with, it wrote immediately – no prodding or waiting for it to be ready.  And it has been writing immediately every day since.  I usually keep about 4 pens inked, and at least one of them has always been a Lamy.  This pen will always be inked, so other Lamy’s will get a rest.  From the feel of it I’m confident the CP1 will be as reliable and durable as the Lamy Safari models.

My most prized purchase is a Sheaffer Prelude (above), Black Matte with 22k gold plated trim and a steel two tone fine nib.  This buy was influenced by a gifted Prelude I received years earlier.  It was the best writer I had, meaning most reliable and sturdiest for daily carry and use, and was just easy to write with.  The Black Matte lives up to that assessment, being a daily writer for me, staying inked all the time.   Unfortunately, the first prelude was damaged by some idiot (me) dropping it onto a hard surface with the cap off – and of course it hit nib first.  I want to get it fixed but it would probably cost more than just replacing it.

This is a hobby of mine.  It’s fun and I usually make about 1 purchase a year.  I have a small collection, around 15 pens, and I try to get almost all of them in use at least once a year, rotating them in and out of service.

Whatever I’ve learned about fountain pens comes from a very long time, great friend of mine.  If you have interest in fountain pens I strongly suggest you visit his web presence at The Fountain Pen Quest.  You’ll find very detailed reviews of many different pens, ink, and writing papers, as well as a long list of links to more information on topic.