Monitor Meaning

I was at my computer when my mind wandered and I began thinking about my monitor – a 23” flat screen with LED backlight. I thought about my previous monitor – a 19” flat screen with florescent tubes for backlight. I thought about the fact those tubes were called CCFLs (for cold-cathode florescent lamps). I thought about the fact that my 19” monitor had developed a problem and I had to set it aside. That’s when I bought my 23” monitor. (Later, I repaired the 19” unit, but that’s another story.) I thought about how my LED monitor was much thinner and ran cooler than my CCFL monitor. I reflected upon its reliability – my newer monitor has worked flawlessly every day while being powered up pretty much continuously for seven years. The images it displays are as precise and colorful now as they were the day I first turned it on.

Those were my thoughts when I heard a sound come from the monitor. It was a short and faint fffftt. At the same moment as the sound, the monitor’s screen brightened considerably. I thought perhaps my web browser had glitched, causing the screen to brighten. I closed and re-opened the browser, but the screen was still too bright. Black text was slightly washed out, appearing grayish.

Next, I thought perhaps the problem was with the operating system. So I restarted my computer. After restart, I opened my browser and checked: it was still too bright. Hmm: my computer is not the problem. I opened my monitor’s menu and checked the settings. The brightness was set to 100%. I cranked the brightness down to 70%. Still too bright. I set it to 60%. Still too bright. Finally, with the brightness at 50% the monitor looked “normal” again.

I knew with certainty I had never set the brightness to 100%. My monitor set itself to 100%. And it did so after seven years of working perfectly, at the very moment I was reflecting upon how reliable it had been. Random coincidence? Synchronicity? Is the Universe making a point? If so, is it that our thoughts influence reality? Maybe. Maybe not. All I know for sure is that it gave me enough material for a blog post.

Internet Logic

If you ask Google “How many calories are in a pastrami sandwich?”, this is Google’s answer:

“Calories In Pastrami Sandwich.
476 calories, 21g fat, 49g carbs, 24g protein, 6g fiber.

Calories In Pastrami Sandwich with Swiss Cheese on Rye.
243 calories, 3g fat, 13g carbs, 19g protein, 1g fiber.”

It appears that adding Swiss cheese to the sandwich will cut its calories in half and reduce fat from 21 to 3 grams and reduce carbs from 49 to 13 grams. Does this mean adding twice as much cheese to the sandwich will send its calorie count to zero? It sounds impossible, but as we all know, if it’s on the internet it has to be true.

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I use a popular email client that is not made by Microsoft. It’s open-source and totally free. The people who maintain the browser’s code constantly say they want its users to send money to them to help them keep it free. They say this with no suggestion of irony.

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In astronomy news:

“PGC 83677 is a lenticular, or lens-shaped, galaxy … located 300 light-years from Earth.”

It’s 300 light-years from Earth? That’s a neat trick, considering our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 100,000 light-years across. If another galaxy was 300 light-years away, it would be inside our own galaxy. In fact, it would be in our own stellar neighborhood. In reality, PGC 83677 is 300 million light-years away. It’s the difference between saying the Sun is 93 million miles from Earth and saying the Sun is 93 miles from Earth.

I know: “Details, details.”

Trump’s Deplorables

Hillary Clinton said half of Donald Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables.” She said they were "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic."

And just like that, she lost the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic voting bloc. Can she really afford to write off these deplorables? In a close presidential race, it can’t hurt to have a few deplorables on your side.

Someone said Clinton’s description of Trump supporters as "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic" was actually a description of Donald Trump. But is that accurate?

Is Trump racist? At one of his rallies, Trump pointed to a black man and said, "Oh, look at my African-American over here. Look at him." Does that sound racist? He said “my African-American.” How can he be racist if he has his own African-American?

Is Trump sexist? Admittedly he has said some ugly things about women, such as Carly Fiorina couldn’t get votes because of her face, or when he called women “bimbos” and said breastfeeding was “disgusting”. There are too many insults for me to list here. However, if you’re interested, you can find a list of Trump’s insults to women on this page. It’s a long page.

Kirstie Engaged

Pentatonix member Kirstin Maldonado has gotten engaged to her boyfriend Jeremy Michael. This will surely destroy their relationship. They may as well break up now.

Look at what happened to Kaley Cuoco. She was dating Ryan Sweeting, and they seemed so much in love, when they married on Dec. 31, 2013. That marriage lasted 21 months.

I knew a couple who lived together for seven years. Finally, they decided to tie the knot, and they got married. Two weeks later they broke up and went their separate ways. The incident reminded me of an episode of Star Trek called Amok Time. In it, Mr. Spock said, “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.”

Good luck, Kirstie.

Starsailor

The song of the day is Tell Me It's Not Over from the 2009 album All the Plans by English band Starsailor.

Ice Cream

A couple of days ago, I was at the grocery store and I bought a tub of ice cream. I love ice cream, but I rarely buy it. By rarely, I mean maybe once a year. This is because I don’t want to weigh 400 pounds, which I seriously might hit if I allowed myself to eat as much ice cream as I’d like to eat.

When I was a kid, one could buy a pasteboard box of ice cream that held a full gallon of the icy goodness. Four quarts. Eight pints. Sixteen cups. I don’t know when that changed, but it did change. In my neck of the woods, one can no longer buy a gallon of ice cream. Today, it is sold in pasteboard tubs containing three quarts. Six pints. Twelve cups.

I admit that ice cream is a hopeless weakness of mine and I usually avoid it the way an ex-addict avoids heroin, and perhaps that biases my observations. But I contend that the new tubs contain four – not twelve – servings of ice cream. In fact, I further contend that those four servings are “girly” servings which equate to only two “manly” servings of ice cream. Oh sure, the container may say “12 servings” on its side, but that’s just marketing hype. If you’re an ice cream addict, you know full well that you’re lucky if a tub of ice cream lasts two days. In fact, it requires a great deal of willpower to make a tub stretch that long.

I bought the 3 quart tub of Cookies ‘n Cream on Sunday and threw the empty tub into the kitchen trash receptacle on Monday. Sayonara, two-serving tub. I foresee the day (which doubtless is fast approaching) when the largest container of ice cream you can buy is a single-serving tub. Sure, it may say “Family Size” on the tub, but we’ll all know that’s a lie.

The Hyland Anomaly

Sarah Hyland, an actress who plays Haley Dunphy on a sitcom titled Modern Family (a good show, IMHO, with good-to-excellent writing and acting) recently recounted on her Twitter account an experience she had. She awoke around 6:30 and saw daylight outside and assumed she had had a wonderful night’s sleep and now it was 6:30 in the morning. But as time passed it dawned (pun intended) on her that it might not be 6:30AM – might, in fact, be 6:30PM on the previous day. And, as it turned out, that is exactly what it was.

It’s disconcerting. I know because the very same thing happened to me, and it happened on the very same day that it happened to Hyland. I awoke, saw the sunshine, and thought, “It’s a beautiful, sunny morning!” I was also feeling just a bit proud of the fact that I had slept all night without having to resort to popping a sleeping pill or drinking alcohol to help me sleep.

Those thoughts didn’t last long. As soon as I walked into the living room, the wrongness of it hit me. The window blinds were open, and they’re never open when I get up in the morning. The “morning light” seemed odd, and though my still-sleepy brain didn’t know exactly why, the oddness assuredly was caused by the sunlight coming from the west instead of the east.

I walked to my computer (why that and not my phone?) and checked the time. PM! Damn it! All the things I thought I had sailed through overnight, like falling asleep so easily, sleeping through the night uninterrupted, waking up on a sunny morning ready for the new day, were all a fiction. None of them happened. Bummer!

When it comes to sleep, there is another kind of bummer that happens to me far more often. I go to bed at a reasonable time – say, 11PM – and fall asleep quickly. I awaken feeling like I’ve been asleep for hours. It’s dark inside and outside, but I’m wide awake feeling like I’ve slept for hours, so I’m sure it is close to the time I should get up. But then I look at the clock beside my bed and my hopes are dashed: it’s 1 AM. Morning is hours away. There’s nothing to do now but get out of bed, pour a drink, and type a blog post.

Sophie B Hawkins

The song of the day is As I Lay Me Down from the 1994 album Whaler by singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins (Sophie Ballantine Hawkins).

Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash

The song of the day is Girl from the North Country from the 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan by singer, songwriter, artist, and writer Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman). Dylan re-recorded the song as a duet with Johnny Cash (J. R. Cash) in February 1969. That recording became the first track on Nashville Skyline, Dylan's ninth studio album. The song was used in the 2012 film Silver Linings Playbook starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

Pixie Lott

The song of the day is Lay Me Down from the 2014 album Pixie Lott by English singer, songwriter, and actress Pixie Lott (Victoria Louise Lott).