Difficult Day Trip

While not an overly challenging time, in many ways good recent weeks, enough activities caught up with me to warrant a day to myself. My computer failed.  I took it to a local shop with long reputation.  They concluded that it had run out of memory, recommending a new computer with data from the dying one loaded onto it.  Like many, I've become dependent on my laptop.  The local public library has desktops for public use, so I can access the internet and use a flash drive for personal writing.  I did, but it was not really My Space where I do my best work.  The expected return date did not happen.  Lacking a convenient computer, I thought I might do some house upgrades and garden enjoyment.  My best herb pot underperformed, vegetables not thriving and flowers barely emerging.  Rain did not help.

Each summer I make two trips to the state's beaches.  If the rain lets up, I  committed to doing that.  A go from weather.com, a day off from my treadmill schedule, to which I have remained faithful.  I offered my wife a chance to share the luxury of warm sand.  She interpreted the weather report as hot sand but blazing sun, and too soon in the season for the water to lose its chill.  I went myself.

Two sand chairs in the trunk. Sunscreen SPF 30 applied to face by finger, sprayed elsewhere.  Canvas tote bag with my initial embroidered on the front and leather handles filled with all that I would need.  Room left over for my street clothes.

My home state of Delaware has beachfront assigned to three state parks, which I visit preferentially.  A shore runs for some twenty miles southward to the state line with Maryland.  All has public access to the sand, but not public access to facilities.  When my children were school age, like many families we would take a few days off from work, stay at a small hotel a few days, walk the five blocks to the beach each day, and enjoy the interesting town of Rehoboth Beach, dining at places different from what we would find at home.  Now state parks work better, as I have an unlimited Senior Pass that affords me entry and changing facilities.  I've been to all three.  The middle park seems the most developed, with two bathhouses in different stretches.  The southern park is most isolated but has the fewest parking spaces.  I've never been closed out, but had to drive around for a bit at mid-day, seeking somebody vacating their space to go to lunch.  

Sussex County, Delaware's southern county, has changed considerably over forty years.  It used to be a pleasant drive, nearly toll-free, over an iconic road that stretched almost the north-south dimension of the state.  The kids could look at farms and small business areas as we drive to our destination.  Very pleasant to get to and to be at.  Sea shell and t-shirt shops along the main street, little places to get breakfast in the morning and pizza for supper.  People would vacation from Baltimore and DC as well as Wilmington. A wooden boardwalk with a small amusement section just right for grade schoolers preparing for their pilgrimage to the grander Hersheypark or Disney.  Candy shop, ice cream places.  One single realtor dominated.  And a short drive, gave an afternoon at the Outlets, something less ubiquitous at the time, more bargains than now, and an escape from the rain when needed.  The world changed.  Those Federal Workers and lawyers from DC retired with pensions.  Vacation with families became relocation for healthy seniors.  Gays with substantial incomes and no college to save for found second homes and eventually retirement relocation.  And with new money came businesses providing places to spend it and maintain elegant residences.  The state built an expressway to connect its northern population center to the beach.  Now a drive clogs about two miles north of Lewes, the northernmost beach.  Every square cm of flat surface along the main thoroughfare now hosts places that year round residents need.  Lowes, WaWa for gas and snacks, supermarkets with the same names that we find at home. Restaurants are now big, whether parts of chains or independent places funded with private equity.  It's much like home, only farther away and with more traffic that does not let up until state land takes over south of the town of Dewey Beach, where families on vacation can still save up for a few days away.

To get to my chosen state park, I had to creep through the full milage of this economic growth.  I had plenty of gas.  I could use some lunch, not having eaten more than two cups of coffee at home and a small thermos more as I drove.  WaWa has become my roadside destination.  Hoagiefest week, $6 for a 10-inch customized roll.  And a reliable, if not always immaculate, men's room.  I pulled into the lot.  Checked email, called wife.  A few snags on my computer repair.  They needed passwords that I didn't know existed so they could load my Microsoft products from the dying computer to the new one.  I got my cheese hoagie, Swiss at the base, cheddar as the second cheese, some toppings, and some honey mustard.  As I ate half and a few bites of the second half, I dealt with computer care.  Once parked at the beach lot, they would send me a text allowing me to set a new password.  I drove the last few miles, over a bridge, then followed some not entirely single interpretation signs to the beach entrance.  I flashed my Senior Pass, waited for the attendant to nod, then drove to a distant but ample part of the lot.  I called the computer repair tech back, waited for the text message, read him the access number, then gave him the new password.  I wrote it down on a paper next to me, though I am likely to remember it as the one I use for sites that require a complex set of small letters, capital letters, numbers, and symbols.

Ready for the beach.  The walk to the changing lockers are upslope.  I had my tote and beach chair.  My wife interpreted the heat index correctly.  Still, I got changed into swim trunks and t-shirt, then took my time schlepping it all over the state's wooden boardwalk to the sand.  I found a vacant spot at just the right distance from the last tide mark.  After setting up the chair, I took out my cell phone.  The midday sun and intense brightness made reading it unrealistic.  I could not even see the numbers on the screen to enter the password.  I rested a few minutes, then tested the water.  It contained people, mostly kids.  Having lost one pair of glasses in the surf two years previously, I wore a backup pair, and left those at the chair.  It took about a minute to get to the water's edge and another minute to figure out that the ocean warms slowly as the summer progresses from June to August.  Still too cold on July 1.  

Back to my chair, basically unable to communicate, forgetting that for most of my life I could not communicate on a beach, I covered my head with a gray floppy hat, and sipped water from a very effective insulated bottle.  I knew I would not stay very long, maybe another half hour.  I set the time on my smart watch, which offered enough brightness to discern its numbers and settings.  At the appointed time, I put everything back ot the tote bag, folded the chair, and schlepped back to the locker room.  Once back in street clothes, I walked to the parking lot, put the chair in trunk and canvas bag in back seat.  I noticed a few things from the parking space not appreciated before.  At the end of the parking lot they have a pier.  I did not see a lot of fishermen.  They usually position themselves across the street on the other side of the suspension bridge near a series of rocks. I have fished there unsuccessfully once previously but remember the other anglers wishing me and others luck with hungry fish.

Destination two, the only winery in my state that I've not visited previously.  I had been to their tasting room much closer to my home.  Great experience.  Waze told me I had sixty miles to get there, 1.5 h driving, considerably longer than anticipated.  Delaware has two borders with Maryland, one that runs east-west and a longer one that runs north-south.  This town, which borders the two states, sharing the name Marydel, sits about halfway on the north-south line.  When I requested my GPS provide the route home from the winery, it was another 1.5 hours.  Visiting would take me about 30 miles out of my way from the route home.  I had enough time.

About half the distance covered the same route, including high traffic miles, that I would have taken anyway to get directly home.  Then it veered west.  I knew Delaware had its own agricultural presence, though a much smaller one than most other US states.  I've driven past much of it.  Poultry coops line the southern county which I drive past to get to Fenwick Island at our southeastern border or when my destination is the length of the Delmarva Peninsula to reach Virginia Beach.  I have much less familiarity with our northern agricultural areas.  However, two years of every three, I attend the State Fair which showcases my state's farmers.  The route took me through some decidedly rural scenery.  Some farmers apparently do very well, with impressive houses.  More have prefab housing, either converted mobile homes or prefab one story foundation homes.  There are schools, and an occasional child occupied a driveway or yard.  Numbered roads have businesses, typically places to eat something, though not very many familiar chains other than gas stations with convenience stores.  Roads with names rather than numbers only have isolated houses, fields, and some storage silos.  I found that part of the drive relaxing, though I had to keep glancing at the Waze map as turns to local roads came frequently.  While the vineyard may attract the most visitors that the town receives, no signs indicated directions, or even its presence.

I arrived.  They had a semipaved parking area.  I could see grape vines off to the side, though not many of them.  When I visited their tasting room in Pennsylvania, another location not obvious from the road, the superb attendant had given me some background of the vineyard, its town, its history, its transition from purchasing grapes from other vineyards to bottling more recent wines exclusively with grapes grown on its own property.  The winery shares its building with another enterprise of only minimal signage.  I don't know what they do there, and maybe they don't want me to know.  The right half of the building looked better maintained, with a banner at the door indicating open.  I entered.  To my left they had their bar.  Nobody was at the bar, but two groups of about three each sat at round tables in an adjacent room. 

The attendant came over, explaining their tasting policy.  For $15 I could choose four selections, two ounces each.  She confirmed that all grapes had been grown on their property.  Some of the wines had won awards.  I picked two of those.  In all, three reds and a white dessert wine.  She instructed me to take a seat at a table in the large adjacent room.  I chose one near the middle.  As she indicated at the bar, she brought my selections to me, then disappeared to her post.  Ordinarily, at wineries I prefer to remain at the tasting bar with the attendant.  While the wine is their product, information on how they make it, history of the vineyard, sweeteners, conversations about the area I am visiting are all part of the visit's experience.  I had been abandoned to taste what I wanted by myself.

A typical glass of wine ordered in a restaurant would be 5-6 oz. Most wineries that I visited in the past offer five one ounce samples, about the equivalent of a restaurant meal order.  Each portion sipped and swirled.  For a combination safety and experience, I did not want the full two ounces repeated four times, or 8 oz.  The attendant did not bring me rinsing water or little cracker palate cleansers.  Just four stemmed glasses with wine, each sitting on a disposable white paper strip with the name of the wine written in pen beneath each glass.  I drank about half of each red, the full glass of dessert wine.  That seemed enough.  I felt more processed than welcome.  I left with nothing else, not a bottle to take home, a logo glass, or a t-shirt from their small gift shop.

Waze set for home.  The winery sits on Delaware's westernmost road.  It was unclear which direction to turn on exiting the parking lot.  The GPS had me make another right at the next intersection, which brought me to a road marked Maryland and at the next intersection a gas station named State Line.  I turned right again, re-entering Delaware.  While I had only been in a trivial part of rural Maryland, that section appeared more unkempt than the properties on the Delaware side.  More rural roads, mostly named rather than numbered.  Towns that I had heard of but never visited.  Kenton, Hartly.  Recognized from the exhibit signs at the State Fair. Attractive towns from the roadway, though I don't quite understand how people make a secure living there if not themselves farmers.  A few more turns brought me to a much bigger place called Smyrna, which hosted the state's largest correctional center.  Within commuting distance of Kenton, Hartley, and even Marydel.  I assume some correctional workers, not lavishly salaried, would be willing to drive a bit to obtain lower-priced housing on a larger lot.  Numbered highway the rest of the way home, most full speed.  I had only been to Smyrna one time before, to the high school where my son participated in a math competition.  This part of the town looked quite different, less isolated than their HS property, with a number of small businesses.  Some served the surrounding agricultural areas.  Signs and GPS direct me to the highway.  I had entered north of the toll plaza, leaving only one bridge over the state's Canal to deduct a dollar from my EZ Pass transponder.  I arrived home with drizzle the final few minutes, finishing what was left of my Hoagiefest cheese hoagie while still approaching Smyrna.

It did not take long to put my tote bag on the kitchen floor, then stretch out horizontal on the living room sofa.  The day had been long.  Elements of the day's travel took their toll.  Beach time minimal.  Driving time a lot.  Phone with computer technician intrusive to what I thought would be a mini-vacation.  Traffic near the beach within my capacity coped without resentment.  Winery a great disappointment.

But like many of my travels, getting to the destinations offers more satisfaction than staying at the destinations.  Beach not a great outing, marred by traffic and oppressive peak midday sunshine.  I can avoid the traffic on future trips by going to the northern or southern state beach park. The hoagie was quite good, and a bargain at $6.  My thermos kept the water refrigerator cold for the entire day, finishing the water shortly before arriving at the winery.

As much as I admired the winery's peripheral tasting room nearer my home, the on-site experience left much to be desired.  I learned what I already knew.  The experience of visiting a winery for me involves much more than taste.  I insist on an interactive session, which is my usual encounter.  The attendant pours, tells me about my selection, tells me about the winery, the grapes that enabled what I sip.  Even the tastings at the big wine stores offer personal contact.  The wine should be served in a stem glass with enough room for a nose and enought clarity for a swirl.  The stores offer liquid, about 20 ml in a stemless plastic cup.  That's distinguishes a liquor store wanting to sell you a bottle from a winery taking pride in what they produce.  This time it fell short.

In exchange, though, I got to drive through parts of my home state that I've not visited before.  Pretty parts of the state, no crowds, no traffic, few traffic signals.  I learned that some farmers do quite well.  The schools I drove past were regional ones more than local ones, about the same building sizes as where my children attended, but probably much smaller classes and teachers willing to sacrifice salary for a better lifestyle away from the state's population centers.  The produce and the livestock displayed at the State Fair come from these farms.  I got to see them and understand why the State Fair has an entire pavilion devoted to its farms.  Yes, getting there sometimes overrides being there.

Expertise Matters

After months of inconsistent performance, my computer now works fairly normally.  It had accumulated three glitches.  The most serious involved access to my email.  Xfinity does not connect me to the internet pretty much every day.  It will loop me to an unfamiliar starting screen, denying me access to their site.  When I simply type www.xfinity.com which should take me generically to their site, it automatically adds a slash / which diverts it.  A few times a week I telephone Xfinity which I find agonizing as they will do anything to avoid transferring me to a person.  When I get a representative, they read me their script without ever listening to me explain what I encounter.  Eventually, I get the problem patched up, only to reappear the next day.

My computer does not always shut down.  Sometimes a popup called RealTek impedes this.  I will indicate that it should shut down anyway, which it does.  I do not know what RealTek is, never asked for it to appear on my screen, and when I asked the ISP to fix it, they tell me the problem lies in my computer.

Finally, I have a change in how my computer recognizes USB ports.  When I put my flash drive in a new port, it gets a message that says it is in Port D://.  The same used to happen when I plugged my phone into the port, but now it bundles it with the rest of my computer.  I could not navigate the phone from my computer. Calls to Samsung turf the problem back to my computer.  These corporate giants can do no wrong. Their agents are scripted to placate the caller without fixing a problem that they likely do not understand themselves.  

General Message:  they are not there to serve ME.  The megacorporations put barriers to even accessing expertise.  And these guys are proficient relative to the agents at my local Xfinity Store who are in the business of selling me stuff, not making stuff that I already have work at top form.

Out of exasperation, I considered shipping my laptop for service.  When I purchased it four years ago, I took Amazon up on their offer for a four-year warranty.  It expires in six weeks.  I've almost mailed it twice, and once spoke to a representative who expertly guided me through a programming glitch within weeks of purchase.  My problems, typing all caps and some similar annoyance, ran their course.  The insurer had emailed me mailing labels.  Having to back up all my data before shipping served as a deterrent to unnecessary utilization.  But with the warranty in its final weeks, I needed this resolved.  A not-so-easy email search through a temperamental email service identified the contract and a phone  I dialed it.  An agent answered promptly.   After she confirmed my policy was still active, she took my information, including a description of the problems.  Rather than ship my computer, she recommended that one of their 24/7 technical support people could probably guide me through this.  

Within a minute or two, I got connected to a representative, a man with a hint of an accent to suggest he had to learn English as a second language, but mastered it well.  He tried to share my screen but that got blocked by my protection software, so we did this verbally.

He explained that all major programs now automatically add a slash / with destination to their generic web address.  Mine takes me to a loop.  What I need is a slash / destination that takes me where I want to go directly.  He suggested www.xfinity.com/login.  It took me to log in.  I created a shortcut on my Google Search intro.  Subsequently, Xfinity changed /login to /email, but so far I've not had diversions to non-functional Xfinity opening pages unfamiliar to me trying to sell me something.

He addressed RealTek in a straightforward way.  It is apparently a factory-installed feature that allows the laptop's speakers to function. Why it pops up doesn't matter, as long as I can override it, which I always can.

For the Samsung issue, he accessed my telephone screen.  From its camera, I could now show him my laptop screen.  He brought me to the Samsung entry on File Explorer, opened it, and should me how to navigate my phone from that screen.

Total time, 38 minutes, not much different than the time it takes me to bypass the endless Xfinity automated messages and resets.  All solved.  This fellow did not read from the script.  He let me explain what I had experienced.  Were he able, he would have looked at my laptop screen and navigated it himself.  As he went along, he explained to me why I encountered what I did, along with its significance.  I do not remember what Amazon charged for the supplemental protection.  Worth everything I paid for it.

Having devoted my career to serving not only as an expert but with a responsibility to explain what patients sought in a way that they would find understandable, I connected well with the warranty representative.  Expertise matters.  He had it, and he conveyed it.  I valued it.  Our corporate giants accept a lesser interaction with their consumers.

Electronically Challenged

It's been a tough time for me with Hi Tech.  My computer got hacked.  My new car has too sophisticated a front screen for me to use properly.  My GPS of 2011 vintage leads me to places that no longer exist without the ability to track the locations that replaced them.  And my cell phone, trouble free for the three years that I've had it, made paying the monthly bill a hassle, then used up my monthly allotment of 10G a week before the next payment.  I don't even know what counts as 10G, or really even what 10G is.  And my bottom rung tablet does not charge as it should.

There are resources, some Geeks, some company representatives, that come to the rescue, some expertly, some the NP extenders for the Geeks who really aren't up to the tasks that get hard.  After a few calls, my computer email has returned to baseline less the years of Sent Folder, which I rarely look at but still miss having.  Toyota cell phone app got downloaded and appears on the screen, only to discover that the GPS program which I need the most, requires a $25 annual subscription.  And I still don't know how to get my cell phone screen, which has a GPS, to appear on my car screen, or even how to mount my cell phone onto the dashboard so I can see its Waze GPS App safely while driving.  After trying to update my Magellan Roadmate GPS map online, I deferred to Customer Support which I expect to be forthcoming.  T-Mobile has one more month of service before I consider other plans that for comparable price annoy me less.  And the tablet can stay in its charger longer.  There's a reason why it cost under $100, and I rarely use it.

Electronic Misadventures

Not being a Geek, I depend frequently depend on their expertise.  It's been an electronically difficult few weeks.  My laptop crumped, victim to a cup of spilled herb tea.  There remains a place for gratitude.  The experts at Best Buy were able to capture my data, including my Microsoft programs.  Moreover, while replacement poses an unexpected expense, I have the resources to meet it with no impact on my lifestyle.

The Amazon replacement came promptly.  Making it function went easily.  Being a modern version, it lacked a built in DVD drive that I use for my library CD's and for Great Courses.  No problem.  They only cost about $25 from a variety of online sources.  I picked one from Walmart, which turned out to be partially good fortune.  It came ahead of schedule.  Despite my best efforts, I could not get the computer to recognize it in the USB port, let alone get it to work. The device came with a small folded card of instructions, written by somebody who learned English as a second language or somebody who could send something to a printer for mass distribution without being hassled by an editor first.  My wife made some headway but in the process corrupted the Google Chrome access which started presenting Hide History as its search results.  I couldn't get rid of it.  A computer that fully functioned in cyberspace stopped functioning.  I installed, then uninstalled two Media Player programs. Fortunately, when I purchased the laptop I included a comprehensive warranty.  A phone call to the Amazon warranty carrier eventually got me to somebody who could get me back to Chrome as I was used to using it.  He could not get the DVD going. One final try.  Walmart contracts with an organization called WOW electronics to provide this product.  They had a customer service number which I called.  Nobody answered the phone.  Their automated menu offered to take me to customer service but the best I could do there was leave my phone number for a callback.  None over the next hour or so. Before going to Walmart, I needed to generate the receipt from the electronic purchase.  No problem, just print the email of the transaction.  Unfortunately, my printer didn't print, as the printer had not been installed on the new laptop.  I thought I could do this, following instructions for downloading.  I got our all-in-one ready for scanning but not for printing.  My wife, who has done this before and knows the side traps, got it done with some effort.  But a printed receipt got stuffed into the packing that came with the DVD drive.

Since I only had the device a couple of days, I checked out return policies, after slamming the product on Walmart's online review, though I was more than generous with Walmart itself which made the purchase easy and delivered ahead of schedule.  Apparently a product purchased at walmart.com could be returned to a local store, which I did.  I would have expected the young lady at Customer Service to have more familiarity with online returns but she got by.  My DVD which had no use to me went into a box, shipping label generated, and my credit card will get it's refund when the product arrives at the warehouse.

It's been at least months, probably early fishing season, or maybe during my visit to metro St. Louis for my son's wedding that I last entered a Walmart.  In person shopping has taken a big hit.  Aisles were cluttered, shelves had major merchandise gaps, staff was hanging on in the hope that they could move onto another place that pays more without acquiring skills that would make most of them worth more.  Might Walmart in person have another DVD?  Not only didn't I see one, every person I saw in their computer section worked in a different department.  They had a great price on a flash drive, which I needed, so I got that.  A trip to Walmart is never complete without a stop at the fishing aisle.  Saw some braid at a good price, but another time.  I stood on a not too fast moving line with a ten dollar bill extracted from my wallet to pay for the flash drive.  My turn came up, with the attendant motioning me to a scanner.  I scanned the flash drive, then inserted the $10.  Instead of giving me my change and a receipt it dispensed two five dollar bills.  Next I inserted my usual credit card in the usual way but the screen informed me it could not be read.  No better on the repeat.  It asked for another card or for cash.  I put in one of the $5 bills, took a single out of my wallet, inserted them, and watched the machine process my receipt and a few coins change.  Not a great shopping experience though I wonder if the shoppers, including me, really deserve any better.  Maybe not.  Or maybe that's why online shopping has begun to nudge out on-site retailers.  Touching a product pre-purchase has an advantage but My Space where I navigate through my laptop appears far more orderly and the people I encounter online when I need assistance seem to have gotten more out of their schooling than the people whose aid I seek in the local stores.

I still need a usable DVD player.  Amazon had one that I liked so I put it into the cart.  To get free shipping I need to spend another few dollars, so this may be an opportunity to buy a tripod or a kittel with the remaining $55 in five dollar bills that I harvested from cash change the second half of 2020.  Much to my surprise, amazon.com includes kittels in their inventory, exactly the $55 I have to spend, but I think the tripod would be a better way to get me past the free shipping shortfall this time.

Without Laptop

My HP device was tried and true for its five or so years, meaning about $120 per year or $10 per month.  It failed twice, requiring some costly though cost-effective repair.  Once some settings went awry, the other time the hard drive reached the end of its life span.  It's terminal event was more ignominious, drowning in herb tea from a cup that got knocked over from an overfilled and off balanced desktop stand. Those Geeks at Best Buy were able to save its data but not its innards.

It had what I needed.  Ample ports, comfortable keyboard with visible letters whose keys responded to my multi-fingered touch.  I had personalized it with a sticker of an SLU Billiken.  If lost, as I would transport it to OLLI and often far destinations, it had a sticker with my name and address, though neither my phone number nor email contact which would have been more useful to an honest finder of lost objects.  It served me well until its abrupt end, surfing me through the world, enabling a few Power Point presentations, providing me a forum to articulate what I thought through social media responses, my blogs, or submissions for publications.

Among my many good fortunes has been a reasonable accumulation of wealth which enabled me to seek a replacement as soon as the Geek informed me of my pseudo-animate friend's demise.  While still at Best Buy I looked at replacements. I don't particularly like shopping there, though they have the best computer service.  Their selection of laptops, and even the option of an All-in-One, was placed by professional marketers who know how to make the expensive alluring but keeping the lower priced options either more obscure in the display or more typically placed adjacent to a gleaming model so the comparison becomes more obvious, even it the disparity in value isn't.  Staples did better.  It's where I had purchased my now departed device.  They had a very small display, which is good.  There are studies showing that people who choose from among a handful of options tend to prove more content with their selection than those who choose among dozens.  Too many thoughts of what could have been.  But I knew all that I saw fell short of what I had just lost, and the Staples Geeks did not distinguish themselves when I needed them.  Since Target had to be passed to get home, I stopped there too.  Mostly lower end Chomebooks, though I had to look up what a Chromebook was when I got home.  It's low price and portability would probably make it a useful second device for travel if I opted for an All-in-One desktop replacement.  Once home, my smart phone connected me to online Amazon and Staples, each reliable, though with an overwhelming array of choices.  By days end, I used the filtering devices to get something very similar to what I had both in features and in price.  Staples had a lower price but less desirable supplemental warranty, so I went with Amazon, paying the extra $50 for the item and securing a four year warranty that covers all unintentional mishaps. In my two decades of dependence on these electronics, this is my second unsalvageable liquid spill, the first being my first decent smart phone.  Worth the peace of mind.

These days without a real keyboard exposed me to a previously unrealized reality of our Covid isolation.  In the past, when I needed a keyboard with screen, our local library served as a good safety net.  I almost never had to wait for an available computer, though they limited each session to one hour and a total of three hours in any single day. While it was too public a place to log my finances on Excel, with a flash drive I could type away whatever I wanted to write on Word, keep my work in my possession, and transfer it to my home computer or pre-retirement to my at work desktop for further revision.  Alas, our library is closed.  My wife has a laptop which she offered to me but only used one time. It lacked a numeric keypad and the keys when pressed offered an insecure, maybe overused feel.  I could not type on it effortlessly as I could with mine, the library's, or my work desktop.  As a result, I only did a few time dependent essentials like renewing a medical license, but avoided creative expressions.  In the meantime I also obtained via online shopping a low end 10 inch tablet which replaced another tablet of similar generic vintage.  This one feels more substantial than its predecessor though less responsive.  I understand why it is of essentially disposable price.  Adequate for reading from the internet, maybe even pretty good for reading an e-book.  Not at all suitable for typing in anything more profound than a password.

So I found myself with the more verbal segments of my mind stymied a few days.  Fast and short tweets or FB responses dominated. My more weighty thoughts require longer words, more complex sentence structure, the ability to navigate between sources, a thesaurus to help me select a more precise word than my mind generated, and to copy and paste what I find via exploration.  All this had to be set aside, not really a form of vacation to be pursued with renewed vigor, but more like an illness that would require convalescence once Amazon delivered the replacement laptop and the salvaged contents of its predecessor restored.  In the midst of feeling deprived, though, an opportunity arose.  Without the keyboard, I resorted to taking notes on paper, jotting down fragments of my thoughts that could create more coherent compositions and sequence of thought than I have been able to do with keyboard alone.  It's how I was taught to think and transfer thoughts to paper.  Correction of composition was much harder with typewriter so having that outline has lost its importance, but these days with a note pad may have restored an important but overlooked skill.

I'm back.  New laptop up and going, though without a DVD drive which I use, but HP deemed obsolete.  My notes on what I want to write about some uneasy Jewish organizational relations appeared in my line of vision as I resumed my first Word initiative on my new device.  The days away were not a vacation from expressing what I think but forced some useful return to previous processes that I realize now had become underutilized.

Disposable Tablet

 

My Beneve 8 inch tablet served me well.  I don't quite recall when I bought it, maybe five years ago.  It cost just under $100, likely my first electronics purchase from amazon.com. I don't know when I bought it but I know why.  I had an iPod, of blessed memory, $275 that did everything.  It was about the size of a smart phone but lacked telephone capacity.  The screen cracked but did not shatter.  At about the same time Google decided to get into the device business with a brand they called Nexus.  It cost about $150, had a 7 inch glass screen, and did more than I could hope it would do.  Top notch quality, what I would expect from Google.  Not only did the glass break but fragments separated from the screen.  It would cost more to fix than to replace so I went to amazon intending a direct replacement.  This may have not been Google's best growth strategy. New Nexus was no more.  Shopping part by feature, part by price, I selected another tablet, this my Beneve.  By now I had an android smart phone with internet access, more than enough camera, and telephone capacity.  But I also travelled more and wanted a bigger screen without needing the telephone service.  What I really wanted was portability.  For $100 I couldn't go wrong, though from time to time went a little wrong.

At the  airport waiting for travel to Boston for an Endocrine Society meeting, lacking my laptop, this device malfunctioned.  I tried to get it going, or at least secure a telephone number for assistance.  Eventually I found and called the number, got through with difficulty, and before boarding was taught how to reset this tablet, which I had to do a few times during its lifetime.  The next misadventure came some time later, a permanent discoloration of the screen leaving a pattern suggesting part of an electrical circuit.  It still performed adequately but then stopped accepting a charge.  I could only use it with the cord and transformer at my side, which made it no longer portable.  Finally the cord no longer turned it on, attempts to access reset never succeeded.  Technology had advanced to where my smart phone could do everything this could do and more, though it cost several times what I spent for my Beneve tablet.  I liked the bigger screen, just right for eBooks where portability matters,  I have read Old Testament and Willa Cather's O Pioneers on my smart phone, but reading on the larger tablet was better.  My Beneve had cost about $20 for each year I had it.  Can't go wrong with a replacement.  Yet the Beneve was of far lesser quality than the iPod and the Nexus so I would select a different brand.

That decision would be forced on me, as others must have found the experience less favorable.  The brand is now gone, replaced by several other generics and by reliable low priced options from Lenovo and Samsung.  In past five years options have proliferated, though prices largely static.  Amazon had more than a thousand options with their filtering system still cumbersome.  Walmart online, which gave me an outstanding experience with big screen TV and less good experience with $20 desk lamp, had hundreds.  When sorted by price it got hard to navigate and diverted me.  Figured B&H Photo where my good friend used to work would have a more civilized online purchasing system.  It did, but priced much higher.  Only 6 in the range of $75-100 that I was willing to spend, and none approaching what might be available on Amazon or Walmart.  I picked one from Amazon, $100 which said free shipping until  I went to check out.  Free shipping if I agreed to join their Prime class, which I don't.  But since I already picked one, I then did a web search for that model.  Sure enough, for that $100 I could get one from a company called Newegg.  Checked the company, seems reputable.  I'm just buying a product, not service once I receive it.  Visa data submitted, purchase confirmed.  A little larger 10 inch screen.  Doesn't really answer the question of whether I really need a new tablet, but it's not the first or most expensive thing that I have purchased that I don't really need.  It should arrive soon.

 

Computer Revival

My hard drive failed.  I could tell something was not right as things failed to load promptly, particularly Chrome.  My email booted me out as I was working.  Finally I got some kind of delayed start having to do with (C:) Stage 1 and Stage 2 which went through a repair.  You can find anything on the www so I checked on this and it pointed to a dying hard drive.  Having had an unfavorable experience with Staples Tech services last time, I selected the Geeks at Best Buy who for a fee took it through its paces.  They called me with the diagnosis of a failed hard drive for which I authorized a replacement.  They reloaded most of what would have been lost.  So for $265, about half of what a new computer would cost, I am back into cyberspace with a keyboard.

There were some rough spots when I got home, most notably Xfinity which always refers me to somebody from the Philippines who reads their script without listening to me at all. But in ten minutes I got the information that should have taken ten seconds, pushed the right button on my modem, and I'm back on the internet.

I've set new screen wallpaper, selecting easy rather than optimal. And the computer responds much faster. Sent off a Letter to the Editor on my congressman's wrong vote.  Checked that I could get on FB and Twitter.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.  This falls short of perfect, but so far pretty good.