My life, so far, this week.

We are eligible to upgrade our phones this month.  We are probably going to stay with our carrier, Verizon, and probably going to stay with iPhones.  Why not, we have apps that we know and use.  And I have a lot of money tied up in my apps. We are comfortable with the way the phones work, and we are happy with iPhones.

I know there are people who hate Apple, and I can live with that. And, I would never try to change your mind.  But, my phone does everything it should and often more than I expect.

As with most things, if we decide to upgrade I will be completely unprepared. Except for the few headlines about the benefits of the newest iPhone I am in the dark. It has a great camera, and makes calls, and is fast, and is cool. I have started reading about the iPhone8 already.

Technical jargon is wasted on me. I do a lot on my phone, I have written blog posts, made movies, compiled comic strips, but as far as computational abilities, processor speeds, refresh rates, don't bother. You might as well be speaking a foreign language, a dead foreign language. It's not that I don't care, well yes it is. I don't care enough to try to decipher the cryptic language of the technically skilled.

Sports is the same, I like sports, but I don't care about zone coverage, or blitz packages, or offensive sets. I don't want to work that hard. That is why I watch the game, for the vicarious thrill of competition. If my team loses I am more than comfortable blaming the officials, luck, fate or the gods of chance. "It wasn't because they weren't trying" is my motto.

Tuesday I had an appointment at the optometrist, or ophthalmologist, let's just say the "eye doctor" and it went well, and poorly, like most doctor's appointments. In the insanely appropriate words of The Grateful Dead, "every silver lining has a touch of grey." It started terribly, I had to put on a bulky pair of terrible looking glasses and find which circle in a string of three looked as though it was raised. There were ten rows, and only the first one had a noticeable difference.

"They all look the same except for the first one." I said, starting to panic. Why didn't I see the difference?

"OK, thank you," the polite young man replied.

Read the smallest line you can.

"Is that bad?' I asked, the room seemed to be getting darker. The corners were becoming rounded, blurred, everything was losing color.

"They're supposed to get increasingly difficult." He answered politely.

"Let me clean my glasses and I will try again." Everything was getting fuzzy, slipping in and out of
focus. I couldn't blink, my eyes stopped watering. What wasn't he telling me?

He sent me back to see the "eye doctor," who said my vision hadn't changed that much, My distance vision was slightly worse, but nothing to be concerned about.

That about covers my week. Stay tuned Here for exciting developments. I don't want to give away anything, but it will be great.

Have a nice weekend, or Thursday, or afternoon, or don't, I don't want to come across as all pushy, and demanding.

Until next time,

Tim

A long overdue security upgrade here at Life Explained.

We here, at Life Explained, are huge, positively huge, fans of technology.  We use Apple stuff, Google stuff, Microsoft stuff, we even looked for some Linux, but they seemed to be completely out at the local gigantic Electronics Stupendous Shop.  We looked all over the place, and couldn't find any boxed Linux.  Or an employee to ask for help.  It is not the best place to buy equipment, but you can get a new movie and a 10 pound (4.53 kilogram) box of chocolate covered raisins, a 2 liter (8.45 cups) bottle of soda, and a couple of packages of Fruit by the Foot ($450.00 dentist bill), while you are picking up a new cell phone, laptop, or microwave.  We love that place.

Obviously, we are huge fans of technology (and snacking, and movies).  So, when we saw the outrageous monthly fee charged for monitoring the security system we jumped into the fray, and came up with a much less expensive, more elegant solution.

We took the panel the thieves former security company had installed and wired it to a dedicated computer.  After running an artificial intelligence routine with a variable to account for human interaction, with the ability to choose between several options we programmed all of the "personality" traits of each employee, past and present into the software.

We felt this would help the computer decide on the best action after carefully weighing all of the alternatives.  We don't want a heartless killing machine watching over the building.  Power requires discretion and choosing when to use force is not to be taken lightly.

This morning we went live.  Here is the video.

We might have to remove some of the "human," out of the algorithm and install a little more "machine."  Still we are saving a bundle on fees every month.  Most of us feel fairly secure, and we have some donuts, somewhere, in the building.