Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
It appears I am the last person on the face of the earth to know what the ‘Comic Sans’ font is. And it’s already twenty-five years old, as of this week. In my own defense, I am not unfamiliar with type fonts and can spot a serif or lack of serif at twenty paces, but …
Dear Mr. Rogers; No, not you with the cardigan and the movie with Tom Hanks. I’m talking to the telco Mr. Rogers, who I believe has unfortunately left his mortal coil, but whose name is on the eponymous telco. I vaguely remember that we may have had a relationship in the past, although if we …
The first thing my new eReader wants me to do is sign on to Wi-Fi so it can configure itself. Lest you think I am being dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, this is actually my third eReader. The first one lost its mind after being locked in a briefcase in a closet …
I rode on a berserk subway train the other day. At every stop the woman inside the PA machine issued a different Cassandra-like announcement: “this train is delayed due to weather” “this train is delayed due to mechanical difficulties” “this train is delayed due to signal problems” “this train is delayed due to passenger illness” …
Last week many news outlets carried a story about the 40th anniversary of the creation of the bar code. I found this puzzling because I recalled that a couple of years ago there was a story about the 60th anniversary of the bar code. And unless the bar code had defied the laws of aging, …
I now have my fingerprints on file. This might be a good thing in case something bad happens to me (and a note to all: if the basement floor looks recently enrobed in concrete, please ask some questions). On the other hand I now have my fingerprints on file, which places certain constraints on future …
I spend most of my day on the phone. I am not having conversations that are, like, awesome discussions about whether Justin Bieber is still hot or not. I am not texting my current whereabouts or dinner plans. I am not taking selfies and uploading them to Instagram. No, I am doing work or trying …
Apparently January 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the Apple Macintosh computer. One thing that completely annoys me is the way the current day media talks at length about ‘digital natives’ and how much the millennials and their subsequent generations know about technology. I beg to differ because I doubt they would …
I am not sure if this is truly a coincidence or not, but this week was both the 50th anniversary of the touch tone phone and the 50th anniversary of Dr. Who, the latter of which as you should know is closely linked to the phone. But in fact today’s topic is not Daleks nor …
For some reason I missed the memo on the anniversary of the wrist watch last year. These days, we simply call it a watch and don’t add any information about its location on a particular body part. But back in the day (1912 and earlier), watches lived in pockets or on broaches. Apparently, the watch …