McHuston Booksellers

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Tag: new books (Page 72 of 91)

An iCure for iSick iPads.

August 6, 2013 /

Somebody in my impressionable youth told me, “If you can’t fix it with a hammer, get a bigger hammer.” Amazingly enough, I’ve had that work for me on occasion.

Usually doesn’t have anything to do with delicate computer technology though. I’m not sure a bigger hammer would have brought my waterlogged cellphone back to life.

Imagine my surprise then, when I did a search on iPad troubleshooting. The symptoms? Where the screen should be displaying white, was a dull red. Not just backgrounds. The shades of white in photographs and other images were the wrong color too.

She admitted that she had dropped the iPad. It was kind of slippery, she said. It may have come out of her hands. Once.

This revelation is being shared – not as a public shaming for letting an iPad hit the ground – but as a tutorial on how the thing can be repaired.

With a hammer.

Actually, I didn’t take a hammer to it, but I probably would have if I’d had one handy. In this day and age, when we have trouble with something, the first thing we do is Google it. Which is exactly what I did.

Unbelievably, the search results brought up a string of conversations written by folks with the same glowing red iPad screens, all of whom admitted the tablet had been dropped. Not so unbelievably, many of them blamed the baby, a neighbor, or their mother-in-law.

Almost every posting was bragging about having repaired their iPad by:

SMACKING IT ON THE BACK.

I immediately had a mental image of a newborn iPad being readied for its journey into the great computer world and receiving that life-bringing Smack! Picked up the tablet and gave it a whack. Nothing. Whack. Nothing. Third whack. Nothing.

Back to YouTube. The image is of an actual video in which a successful computer repair person brought their sickly iPad back to health with a hammer. (If you can’t fix it with a hammer…) Picked up the iPad. No hammer at the ready, so I grabbed the salt shaker from the table. Tap. Tap. Double Tap. Nothing.

Back to YouTube. After rereading those really happy people who revived their beloved tablets with the Smack-Method, I thought I’d give it another try.

Baby slaps. SMACK.

Red gone. Color correct.

iPad: Back in business.

The moral here?

It would follow the lines of that bigger hammer thing, but would include some newborn slaps and a salt shaker – which sound kinda like a bad science fiction movie plot.

Always happy when things work out, however crazily!

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, Broken Arrow OK!

Music. Soothing the savage beast and all that.

August 3, 2013 /

Music.

It’s always amazing to me how our brains link things together. Since I have only the one brain, I can’t say whether my experiences are unique or universal. Things like tasting a particular food and immediately conjuring a memory.

Things like – hearing crooner Dean Martin’s voice soaring from the shop’s speakers and immediately thinking of my Dad, the biggest Dean Martin fan I have ever known. I’m guessing that – because he had it on the television and I was intrigued enough to watch with him, I remember segments like Crazy Gugenheim and Foster Brooks, the (now politically-and-socially-incorrect) lovable drunk who could not get out a complete sentence without a hiccup.

Now, I just have to hear Dean Martin singing and I can remember my Dad in his big green easy chair, watching the TV program.

Foster Brooks, the lovable drunk, lived to the age of 89. Singer and actor Dean Martin was 78 when the curtain dropped down. My father had just pushed 50.

So, I hear his music and think of him. Because we never had that time together as adults. Never spoke together as men. Always – dad and kid son.

I grew up, but he never grew old.

And that darned brain. Connects us like a time machine to other places and times with – whatever – as that fragile thread hanging tough against the winds of time.

Just now, I passed through the shop office, where the television was in action for no one (got to justify my cable bill, you know…) and KOTV was running their (probably obligatory) program about Oklahoma. Lawton, was said and I turned around and saw my childhood neighbor Tony, an award-winning photographer, now working in front of the camera as well. They were visiting Wayne’s Drive Inn, in Lawton.

Bam!

Immediately after seeing an image of the place, I was mentally hearing Roxanne, by The Police. You know it, probably. Roxanne. Roxanne. You don’t have to turn on your red light.

You don’t have to wear that dress tonight.

It was the first hit for Gordon Sumner, the Englishman in New York who called himself Sting.

When I heard the song on the car radio, I was waiting for a to-go order for Alicia, me, and soon-to-be born Dustin at that Lawton OK drive in. We lived off Cache Road. Just visited Wayne’s the one time, but it had nothing to do with the food. I recall a great burger, but our family’s time in Lawton – at that point – had just about played itself out.

Crazy brain stuff. See a Lawton, Oklahoma burger joint and immediately flash to a memory of Sting and Roxanne and my wife and baby boy. And just moments after enjoying a dose of Dean and the vivid recollection of my long-dead father. In truth, these three generations have music as a common thread.

Maybe there is some DNA thing about things like that. Father, son, grandson – have all performed before audiences. My great-grandfather Caleb had a musical program in San Francisco in the early days of radio. Hit a couple of notes of just about any song and I can quickly dish up a memory of a place, time, or experience.

Too bad the genetics didn’t come down from a silversmith, athlete, politician, or conman: some DNA that would have made for an easier living. Family. Gotta love ‘em anyway.

We’re like family here! Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, Broken Arrow, OK!

Ah. The commercials explain it all.

July 27, 2013 /

‘Splain it, I should say. But they also make me realize things I didn’t know I needed to know.

I don’t have one. Do you? I mean – truly – I didn’t know I was supposed to have one. But here I stand (actually, I’m sitting…) having just been ordered by the person reading the television commercial: Ask your rheumatologist.

My rheumatologist?

Not even sure who those people are, or what a rheumatologist does. But, Phil Mickelson has one. He’s the star of the commercial, if commercials have stars. He spends his on-camera time talking about how dealing with pain is part of his golf-game. Apparently, Mr Mickelson suffers from what we used to call arthritis. My grandparents probably just called it aches or pains. At some point in my lifetime, it went from simple arthritis to Rheumatoid Arthritis.

Oh, the folks suffering from it never said that. There was no “Gracious, my rheumatoid arthritis is kicking up a touch. Perhaps I’ll have an aspirin.” Nah. It was more like, “Agh. Darned arthritis,” if anything would be said at all. I believe folks of my parent’s generation would have just endured it with minimal complaint.

Times were different then.

Now, in our age of gotta-have-air-conditioning-or-I-might-die, and our increasingly abbreviated speech, that old ailment is just too long to be spoken. Rheumatoid arthritis is now: RA. Our mouths just don’t work like those of previous generations. We can’t say things like “medication.” Our dogs take pet “meds.” I suppose we humans do too. If I’d had my “meds” I probably would not be writing this blog. Blog. Used to be a “web log,” but that took too long to say, so it was shortened to “blog.” That’s okay, I guess.

‘Kay with you? (Saved a full syllable there. Okay?)

You know when to be taking your meds, by taking your temp. That’s the thing that used to be “temperature” but it was just too difficult to voice. Temp. Meds. RA.

As a kid, I suffered the effects of asthma. Of course, if it recurs at this point of my life, I’ll need meds for A. Two syllables are just one too many.

Another question-posing commercial asks about your financial “number.” People are seen walking around with a large red number in their hands. There are no three or four digit numbers in any of the commercials. I’m not sure there are even any six digit figures. What is the number? It’s the amount of money we should have salted away for retirement. Not a hundred-thousand dollars. Not eight-hundred-thousand dollars.

The commercials all show actors carrying around one-million-dollar-plus retirement numbers. That’s the amount we’re supposed to have stuffed inside the mattress over time to take care of bills in our golden years.

Regrettably, my golden years will be closer to fool’s-golden. Somewhere along the line I failed to stash away a big enough percentage to have that Sweet-Million set back for the post-work good life.

Of course, based on the today’s pared-down style, I’m just keeping with the times. When the RA creeps up on me, I’ll just take a hard-earned D and buy an A. (D: dollar. A: Aspirin, for those of you my age. The rest of you already knew that, I know.) I don’t have a million set back, but I have the abbreviated version. The Really-Abbreviated-Version.

And, of course, when I feel the pain of RA, I’ll consult him or her. You know…

My rheumatologist.

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, Broken Arrow OK!

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