Monday, 28 March 2016

Dropbox Misbehaves On Your Computer Like a Bad House Guest

           


            On Sunday morning I had bacon and eggs for breakfast. It was the first time I’d eaten animal products in a month and a half, and it was very satisfying.
            I uploaded a video to YouTube, which took over an hour, but then when I posted it on Facebook it seemed kind of blurry in full screen, so I tried for the first time uploading directly from my computer to Facebook. I seem to recall that that didn’t used to be an option. I don’t know if it was any less blurry in full screen though.
            I read Emmanuel Levinas’s “Meaning and Sense”, though I couldn’t very well discern its meaning or its sense. He thinks that there are ethics beyond culture.
            I did a virus scan of my external hard drive that took two hours. I wonder if I really need all the Windows files from my previous system.
            The program called Dropbox that I’d downloaded in order to get the essay that my Short Story instructor had posted there had rearranged some of my files to an annoying degree, so I uninstalled it. It seems to me that when people design programs they should engineer them to behave on someone’s computer like guests in someone’s home. They should take the little space they are given and only go elsewhere when specifically invited to do so. When I open my documents folder and look up in the left hand corner where my Favourites are listed, I want to see my Downloads there. Dropbox moved my downloads so I had to search the menu to find out where they were and then I had to move them back to my Favourites. Grrrrr!
            I rubbed a rack of ribs with brown sugar, mustard, cayenne, paprika, cumin and salt; grilled it in the oven and at half while watching two episodes of Father Knows Best.
            In the first episode, the teenage son, Bud, was having trouble talking to girls. When a girl his age came to the door selling Camp Girl cookies, he hid in the closet and came out wearing a Halloween mask that had been stored there. With the mask on he took on a different, more confident persona and the girl thought he was funny and charming and told him he was “a top”. His sister, wanting to break him out of his shyness, arranged for a girl to call him on the phone, but found he even needed to wear the mask to talk to her. When he did, he was again very confident and asked her out on a date. Afterwards though, he realized that he couldn’t go out with her because he couldn’t wear the mask in public. The solution was to throw a masquerade party, but that night his mask went missing. His father told him he could recreate the mask with theatrical make-up. When he was done, Bud wanted to look in the mirror but Jim said there was no time because the guests had already arrived. So he went downstairs, not realizing that his father had tricked him and had only drawn on his face with a clear pencil. Halfway through the party he realized he didn’t have make-up on, but realized that he didn’t need it. He still had the fake persona though.
            The second episode began with Jim complaining about how no one keeps their promises anymore. Princess wanted to cancel a date with a boy that she said was a dope but her father made her keep the date. Meanwhile, the youngest daughter, Kathy, was building something out of old crates in the back yard. At dinnertime, Jim, with his mouth watering, was about to dig in to some of his wife’s roast sirloin, when Kathy reminded him of several promises he had made to her when she had the measles. He’d promised her she could have a playhouse in the back yard, that he would eat with her there and that he would also spend the night with her there. So he had to eat graham crackers with butter and sleep with Kathy out in the rickety little shack she’d put together, because he’d promised.

No comments:

Post a Comment