Allan's journal to the world. (Sounds important, doesn't it?)
Mom’s biopsy is today. I was thinking of going, but Mom says there wouldn’t really be anything to do – just go and wait for her to finish.
I’ll stay here and do some maintenance on the house instead. I am digging around the rear of the house to stop the house itself from sitting on the ground and to replace the rotten wood that had most likely been there since the house was placed here. Lots of work.
The idea of the tiny house is catching on. The homes as well as the trend itself are getting to be not-so-tiny. There are a few shows on TV about people building their ideal tiny home. Floyd saw something in the paper today about a website devoted to organizing and marketing tiny house plans called Tiny House Plans. I found another called Tiny House Basics. Pretty interesting if you ask me.
Have you ever sat through a movie that was just awful? I watched something on Netflix called The Disaster Artist, a movie about the making of another movie called The Room. So when The Disaster Artist was done, I tried watching this B-movie about directed, produced, and acted by Tommy Wiseau. Oh my frakking god! It’s now 56:00 into the movie, and I just can’t watch it! Give it a try, see what you think.
I found a new printer – at a yard sale – for twenty bucks. Yes, I know, it’s not new. It has the same printing mechanism as my old HP Photosmart C5150 except that it has no scanner and it has different letters – D7260. Not sure if it’s the D or the higher value numbers that make it print in all colours, but this one does. As Aaron would say, “How dope is that!?” It print didn’t when I tried it at the yard sale [error – error – does not compute], but I was confident I could repair it, and I did.
What about the old one? (A freebie from work a hundred years ago!) Try as I might, I could not get the C5150 to print blue. The weird thing is that there are two blues in it (actually, cyan) – a regular blue and a light blue – but neither of them printed. If it were just one type of blue, I’d say the ink suction tube was faulty or the print head was damaged, but the two blues use different ink streams – cartridges, tubes, portions of the print head. So what gives? Short of replacing the print head (which I did for the HP Offiejet 7610, a wide-format printer), I can find no way of getting the blue to print.
Doesn’t matter now. The D7260 prints nicely. Happy happy joy joy.
Holy heck. In writing this Ongoing Letter entry, I nodded off like three times. If I find it lacking adequate excitement so as to fall asleep this many times, I can imagine how you might feel reading it. I think it also has something to do with the heat. It’s hotter than Arizona asphalt out there, and it’s making me dopey.
It came.
In reading about ocean life, as mentioned in my previous Ongoing Letter entry, I saw this article, “How to talk to little kids“. (No, you didn’t read it wrong. I know the two concepts aren’t related. But there was an ad, if you can call it that, to read the article. And of course, being a kids’ tutor, I had to click on it.)
I don’t agree with all of it, but one thing the article mentioned that also drove me a little batty when teaching kids is adults’ habit of talking in high-pitched squeaky-talk sing-song voices. Aunts or uncles or grandparents would come by sometimes and say, in a sing-song tone, “Ohhhhh, you‘re speaking English!!!” Not sure who it drove nuts more – me or the child. The child, of course, would roll their eyes, get terribly embarrassed, and never open their mouth (in English) again while they were there. Parents, on the other hand, would not. Why? I asked them to please not do that. It hinders the overall process of learning to speak another language. “Talk to them normally, (in English)” I asked. They would, except for one really old grandmother who came by who spoke to everyone younger than her that way all the time.
Wow. Surprises around every corner. This morning I read an article from NPR.
We (humans) only understand about 5% of the oceans, according to the article. Yes, we have giant flotillas of plastic out there, but no it’s not too late to figure out what to do about it. The oceans are still very much alive with a surprising level of diversity in so many places.
I had an interview today with MPE Engineering. Well. I hope I left a positive impression. We talked about courses and experience in college classes, software used, the ESL world, and others. I bombed on two questions – expected salary and knowledge of MPE.
Helpful? You be the judge. Be honest, now.