Technology Which Festers

I get it. You get it. We all get it. The Internet follows us around. 

You order one thing - one thing - and the Internet thinks you need hundreds of it. Thousands. 

Yesterday I ordered a 23557 Clutch Casting for a Ridgid K-1500 mainline drain cleaning machine. I haven't needed one in years. The one I'm getting may be the only one I need for the next four or five. Yet the first thing which came up this morning on not one but two websites I frequent were ads for that part.

What particularly annoys me is not only the general uselessness of the ads, but that they didn't encourage me to buy another for purely economic reasons. Each happily informed me that I could get AN AUTHENTIC RIDGID 23557 CLUTCH CASTING FOR ONLY $173.99! But hell, the one I actually ordered was forty bucks less. If I need another anytime soon I'm going back to those guys.

But to give you, yes, YOU, the chance to satisfy your curiosity as to what I'm talking about and be smothered in ads for such a part, click here. Yes, it's for the more expensive one. I'm not telling you all my secrets. You'll buy the cheaper one and then overcharge me.

Numbers Up

After all these years of having Internet at home (around 30 I would guess) I still haven't gotten into the habit of the Internet as a go to. This after many successful forays onto it for truly useful things and ideas (and a lot of time wasting). It may be information overload in a lot of ways, but there's good things out there.

I've struggled for months - months - trying to figure out the simple task of adding page numbers to my books, so that I might set them up on Amazon by my lonesome (those writings of mine available were not configured by me). I think it's a talent I need to acquire if I'm to write and look professional. But for a half year or better I simply could not get page numbers added to my new books.

This past Monday a thought hit me: are there numbered book templates I might find online? A quick web search for free book templates brought me such a thing in seconds - seconds - and a simple copy and paste along with a few formatting corrections gave me a fully set up book in about an hour. I was happy, yet I felt stupid that I hadn't thought of that before.

The Internet is your friend. If you focus on how it actually helps you.

A man's man

Three hours this morning, three hours I tell you, I've spent trying to get online through my desktop computer. Thank goodness for cell phones or I couldn't have posted anything to facebook.
After trying restarts, after unplugging and replugging various HTML cables and connectors over and over, after allowing updates to install, after running the troubleshooting program ad infintum, I am online. I can play my daily games. I can like posts and post some more. I can create today's blog (which you've noticed I assume). I am Marty; I am a man who can solve first world problem deftly. Well, I suppose not deftly as three hours is a chunk of time. But I did it. By gum, I did it. I am online. I have solved the problem.
The trouble is that I don't really know how. Expect tomorrow's blog to be late.

Need for Public Libraries is Waning

Library Larry loved his local library. So much so that when he learned that it had to cut its budget significantly for the next year he remarked, "I would gladly pay a few dollars more on my property taxes to keep that from happening."

"I wouldn't," replied Conservative Carl.

"But the community needs the library!" Larry protested.

"Why?" Carl asked. "You have books and the Internet at home. You can read and research from there. Why should I have to pay for a library you don't actually need simply because you have made the value judgment that it's necessary? I am not expected to pay for your other forms of entertainment. Why should I pay for your use of the library?"

Library Larry muttered that Carl was a fascist and stormed off.

This may or may not be an oversimplification. Yet libraries, like the print media, are fast becoming obsolete. But perhaps more importantly, why should Library Larry be seen as such a hero (he will be for some who read this) for being willing to force his neighbors to spend their money on what he likes? It's arrogance, pure and simple. Yet that attitude is the basis for an awful lot of public spending.

All democracy ultimately means is that fifty percent of the population plus one person can force everyone else to do what they want. That is not a rationale for good public policy or public spending. But it can and will create jealousies which, in the long run, will rent asunder the body politic.