Electronics

About three weeks ago, I lent my MP3 player to my wife so that she could listen to an audiobook while we were at the gym.  Which she did.

Somehow, in the space of two hours, that player - bright red - disappeared.  Don't think it was stolen.  Pretty sure it didn't go into hyperspace, or dissolved into quanta.  But its gone.

Today I received a call from our French exchange student.  It was a text message.  My phone, which is now about 5 years old, received it fine -- but the Verizon So you think you have a communications device package said Don't even TRY to respond to that text.  Our student, you see, still has her French phone number -- her carrier, Free.Com, does not charge her for calls to US numbers, so she can still use it here.  Of course, in the US, where we are more technologically advanced, we do.

Fortunately, she then called the house phone, and I was able to talk with her.  But it made me think again that I really should get that WhatsApp messaging tool, which apparently works well enough to use all over the world.  But WA requires you to go to their website and use your phone's camera to scan a QR code, which I don't think my phone can do.  Not sure, but don't think so.

So now I'm thinking well, maybe I need an MP3 player AND a phone. At which point I think or a phone that HAS an MP3 player in it, like most do, these days.  So I looked at the students phone and - of course - its an iPhone (How'd you pick this one?  Oh, my father knew I needed a phone, so he bought it).  Now, I'm not a big fan of Apple -- can't stand the Oh your phone is more than six months old?  Why aren't you just using two tin cans and string? attitude -- but there ARE things I like about it, like their abillity to synch the contents of the phone to the Apple Cloud, so that if you lose the phone, you have not lost the data.  I know that other phones probably do this too, and I know its been quite some time since It Just Works was a truthful Apple slogan. And the ability to do a remote lock of the phone, or even cause it to dump its data and reinitialize -- or set off an alarm even if the sound is turned off - these are all of interest to me. As well as  the question of protecting the physical phone.  Hers came with a cute little wallet that shields the glass, but I doubt its impact resistant.

I feel myself sinking into the quicksand, while Tim Cook says Don't struggle, relax....

Musing

Apparently, Trump cares what no one thinks.  Not other world leaders, not experts, not members of his own party, certainly not the media (unless it is fawning over him). And yet his supporters love him. They have no basis for this - unless one counts fondness for his willingness to lie, change his story, exaggerate, support injustice, nod approvingly as people get beaten up, and be generally a rich thug. But they do. They don't even seem to care when his ignorance hurts them. Amazing. If Obama did a tenth of what he has done, they'd be waving pitchforks. But then, again, of course, Obama is black, and liberal, and Democratic. He can, therefore, do nothing right. While the orange puke-inducer can do nothing wrong. 

Were the roles reversed, the horde would be calling for impeachment, and their rabid leaders, for assassination.  I'm for impeachment  I think it will happen But with the gutless Republicans in congress now, I may have to wait a long time.  

Reaction

Well, I don't know if Trump has scared the North Korean leadership -- I doubt it -- but I know that he's certainly scared me. 

What I would like to see now is the Secret Service bundling him into a straight-jacket and dropped off on Guam, or perhapps Seoul.  It won't happen, of course, because we always protect the leader , even if that's who got us into the war. 

Next best would be super-Christian and uber- Mormon Pence saying Okay, thats it, fuck it, you're clearly wacko, 25th Amendment, hustle his ass out of here, but since he's such a smiling, nodding, go-along kind of guy who can probably tell you the exact number of days until the end of term (including the asterisk which reads 'unless impeached or otherwise removed from office), the chances of him stepping forward and taking any kind of forceful actionare pretty minimal.  

As are the chances of the Congress doing anything useful.

So I hope we'd not fucked, but I'm not counting on it.  Bastards.