Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: technology

Ishmael? No. Call me Manuel. Manuel Labor.

It is a bit dreary outside with the first real springtime storm dropping rain as though it will all come at once instead of spacing itself out over the season. Inside, it is snug and comfortable.

No need to set buckets in the back to catch water. The old location – with its leaks and exposed fluorescent bulbs and stained ceiling tiles – is history.

Earlier, I closed my eyes after setting the drill in place and ran the bit through the new wallboard. Hated to do it, but it won’t show and the wall shelves must be anchored for safety. Half are completed and I’m taking a break to post this update.

I’m exploring old and new technology this afternoon and both went off without a hitch. It’s nice when that happens. Being both supervisor and laborer today, I had to find a way to lift a broken shelf into place to be repaired. You can see from the pictures that I managed it, and the unit is much more solid with the new woodscrews than it was with the thirty-plus year old commercial staples.

Even though the staples gave way from the sliding, wrenching, lifting, and tilting, the wood is solid. Heavy stuff. The section is six feet long, and you can check the construction in the picture (it’s the nearest light wood fixture). I was able to lift it onto the base by stacking a series of steps using extra shelves. I could raise one end, slide the lift underneath, and then move to the other side to repeat the process.

Eventually, I had raised the top to a level where I could slide it over onto the base. Drilling pilot holes and running in the screws was the easy part.

I’m wishing I could clone myself to give myself a hand (not applause, silly – just a little extra lifting power).

Raising something heavy is ancient technology – pyramid stuff.

I’m able to post pictures using something I’ve just discovered. My cell phone is equipped with Bluetooth technology, something I’ve heard bandied about, but never had occasion to investigate. It turns out my laptop has the same capability.

It took a few minutes to figure it out, but I got the telephone to talk to the laptop and transferred the pictures from my phone to the computer. Bam! There they are, without so much as a wire to carry them from one place to another. And I love that fact that it worked on the first go ‘round without a frustrating learning curve.

Now that the images are here and this note is ended, I’m back to the drill and electric driver to run a few more screws into the remaining shelf units. The last wall anchors will complete the installation of the newly acquired shelves.

A break in the rainy weather will allow me to start bringing the books out of storage.

Here we go!

Half the Story

A kid’ll eat the middle of an Oreo first… Growing up in that ad’s generation (along with “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer weiner” – try to explain THAT one!) may explain why I am watching half a television.

The middle.

Somewhere in the midst of the whole switch to digital and high-def movement I kept watching my trusty Sony. In its day (the day of 90 pound televisions) it was an example of top-of-the-line visual stimulation: big picture, stereo sound, bright colors, freeze frame, picture in picture, popcorn popper.

Now it shows the middle of shows. I was watching a game and a graphic popped up at the left edge, presumably to tell me what I was watching: OX RTS. Being a part-time detective, I deduced that it meant to say Fox Sports. I also tapped into the clues to figure out that the graphic was a comparison of the two teams in different areas, but I could only see the team listed on the right edge of the graphic.

Probably had some great content on the right edge of the hi-def production too. Except I couldn’t see any of it. Honestly, I’m happy for everyone who has hi-def TV’s and get to see the extra twelve inches of wide-angle action. I just don’t understand why the content can’t be located where the rest of us can view it, too.

Or maybe I’m the last human to be watching in reg-def, or low-def, or deaf-def – whatever it is called.

And the commercials! Advertisers paying money to put their message on TV with half the address or phone number lopped off at the edge. Tech-changes. It reminds me of a deejay morning when someone called and asked if I knew the music was only coming out of one speaker. My voice was coming out of both, he said. The music? Just the right speaker.

Turns out, the engineer had tinkered with the technology overnight, and what I was hearing in the control room wasn’t what was going out to the radios. Oopsy. Which reminds me of the power outage (another engineer tinkering), and the fellow who called to ask why I didn’t announce we were off the air, so folks wouldn’t think their radios were broken.

Or my coworker (during another power outage that interrupted a staff viewing of a movie) who quipped, “this will be cool! I’ve never watched TV by candlelight before!”

Maybe I’ll hold a candle up to the edge of the screen, and I can read the rest of the hi-def!

My dilemma, sort of:

Is Your Name Famous?

Getting in Touch

In this ever changing, technological, knock-your-head-back-from-the-speed-of-advancement, electronic-oriented world, McHuston Booksellers ranks slightly above Neanderthal. Certainly beyond dinosaur. Nowhere near cutting edge. Tweet? Ahhhhh. No thank you. More power to Ashton Kutcher and his many followers.

Hugo Chavez is now on Twitter. The apocalypse may be upon us.

Facebook is a lot like Southern California. Fun to visit, but I don’t want to live there. Too much time spent in traffic.

Emails still work just fine! (Or what about the telephone, even if it IS cellular and offers texting?)