Time to Upgrade My PDA

Friends, Romans, and gentle readers who might or might not be men, the time has come for me to buy a new Personal Data Assistant (PDA). I bought my current PDA two years ago to support a trip to Milwaukee. I was taking a number of photographs and wanted a handy mechanism to capture details about each as well as blog entries that struck me while I was on the road. I’d once bought a miniature cassette recorder for the same purpose, but I realized soon that they would require transcription, a skill I lack. So I bought this PDA to help capture those thoughts and to provide me with instant access to the phone numbers and other data I might need while away from my desk, my computer, and my address book.

My PDA When I bought my PDA, it was top of the line, and I imagine its features are still quite enviable.
Its memory is 80 sheets/160 pages of writable memory. This particular model is compatible with most styluses on the market, including the
erasable and the non-erasable data transfer devices. Unfortunately, I prefer permanent encryption styluses in blue ink; once data is
written with these styluses, the memory is consumed and cannot be re-written. In most cases, 80 sheets should provide enough usage for any
number of lists, ideas, phone numbers, and other data.

This particular PDA, unlike others I’ve owned, does not have plugable memory cartridges that I could swap out after all memory has been
filled.

Notice, too, that I have installed an aftermarket, third-party searching application that will immediately take me to the unused memory.
Unfortunately, the original PDA didn’t include that hardware, which proves that all of those hardware guys are in cahoots.

My PDA This picture identifies the need for the update; the wear and tear of daily use, wherein I thrust the
PDA into my back pocket over and over again, has cracked the external casing. Although the external case hasn’t failed to the point where
the memory’s contents would be lost, I don’t want to risk a catastrophic memory failure, which would occur when I pulled the PDA from my
pocket and its memory devices would spill out behind me, lost to the wind or the vagaries of a mud puddle I might have crossed.
My PDA This particular entry into my PDA’s log denotes its age, as it became
this blog entry. Circa
1993. Back before the earth cooled, and when blogging was not the means of controlling the world.

This particular PDA entry comes from the very trip when I bought this PDA, when it was shining and new.

Yikes, it also refers to an incident in 1996 where I drank champagne alone at Sybaris Fantasy Suites because I’d ended a
relationship after booking the $400 a night room. I’d blush, but it’s two-thousand and something now, and blushing is SO
TWENTIETH CENTURY.

My PDA When I uploaded the information from the PDA to
an eventual blog entry,
a thought, and a reminder for a short story which I have yet to complete, the PDA entry in memory was marked as used, but unfortunately,
that didn’t free the memory for further use. This was a limitation of these old PDAs. Also, inclusion of the words “Insane Clown Posse”
mark a limitation of an obsolete piece of technology.
My PDA Do I remember drinking Mint Juleps at Sutton Place with Jewel Accents? No?

Those must have been some effective Mint Juleps. The whole thing leads to some pleasant speculation and imagination, particularly
to what someone named Jewel Accent must look like….

Aw, crikey, those are carpet styles. Jewel Accent kinda looks like the things I step on when I’m stumbling from the bed to the bathroom at
three in the morning. How exciting is that?

My PDA Yet, when I look upon the amount of memory remaining within my current PDA, I still have a lot of
annotation to perform, a lot of shopping lists to jot, a number of spontaneous ideas to collect, and one or two friends whose numbers I want
to keep handy…. I don’t want to purchase a new PDA just yet.

Because just face it: I have PDA memories, written to disks the size of legal pads or pocket notebooks, from 1990 on. Using the PDAs that I’m used to, with the scratchouts and the incomplete sentences, I have captured memories and trains of thought that I can use for future blog entries, short stories, poems, and whatnot. Were I a slave to Bluetooth or its predecessors Mauvetooth and Aquamolar or other proprietary and since-forgotten file formats, I’d be file.sol with my personal history.

I expect, then, I’ll select another similar PDA when I actually retire this one (in about 40 pages, give or take). Because although I dabble every day in the binary dits and dahs of digital communication, I still value the scratchings in the Noggle TTF that relate my current, older self to the thoughts I had last decade, last year, or only yesterday.

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You Might Be a Felon If….

(Inspired by this book and with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy….)

  • If you have ever poured a cleaning agent or solvent down your drain without first consulting the Material Safety Data Sheet and EPA regulations….you might be a felon.
  • If you have ever told a law enforcement official that you have committed a crime, even if you were joking or being a smart ass…..you might be a felon.
  • If you have ever put a sack of potting soil in a flowerbed before checking with the Army Corps of Engineers to find out if you’re on an officially-designated wetland…..you might be a felon.
  • If you have ever had trouble with a Federal form so you call their helpline and they tell you which box to check and you turn it in, but the helpline people were wrong….you might be a felon.
  • If you are a doctor and your receptionist’s 1s look too much like 7s to a Medicare data entry clerk…..you might be a felon.
  • If you have ever displayed a pellet or BB gun in such a fashion that someone can see it…..you might be a felon.

If only it were a comedy routine and not the law of the land.

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Answering the Rhetorical

Dear Rhetorical Question Answerer:
When did Motley Crue become classic rock?
                                    Bowling for Soup

Dear Bowling for Soup,
Motley Crue began its transition from vital music makers to the classic rock and oldies market when they released Decade of Decadence in 1991. Any time a musical group releases a greatest hits collection, it gambles. The very name greatest hits indicates that there will be no further hits as good, and a retrospective look at the band also makes the casual fan wonder if the band is done. Even if the album includes new material, its target audience is the cult fan who wants to own everything the band puts out and the people who, years later, decide they want to own a collection of the band’s songs.

Looking over Motley Crue’s discography, it proves true enough. Between Dr. Feelgood and the two releases in 1994, two complete high school classes matriculated without new Crue, and you could only hear them on album rock stations and other retrospective-looking outlets.

So to answer your question, BfS, the best date we can give is 1991.

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Top Mispronunciations of Sarah McLachlan’s Name

Like Milla Jovavich, Canadian siren Sarah McLachlan has a name that’s difficult to spell or pronounce from memory. Undoubtedly (used here in the sense of “I am making it up”), Ms. McLachlan has endured people addressing her or writing of her with one or more of the following:

  • Sarah Machlachlanahan.
  • Sarah Mchlandlached.
  • O’Sherrie McLachlan (by Steve Perry, of course).
  • Shiraz McLachlan.
  • Sarah McLockedLAN.
  • Natalie Merchant.

Sure, it’s a gag that amuses me, but will I think it funny when one of these young ladies mocks me in such a fashion? Probably not; I am thin-skinned and overly sensitive.

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Holiday Safety Reminder

Remember, if you try to do your beautiful wife a good turn by picking up her dry cleaning, which she specifically took to the dry cleaners to remove the scent of cigarette smoke from her new apparel:

Do not leave the dry cleaning in the car with your White Castle lunch while you run into the hardware store for twenty minutes.

Failure to heed this warning will totally negate your good hubby points; in fact, it will probably put you into red, parentheses-surrounded points in your wife’s book.

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Top Mispronunciations of Milla Jovavich’s Name

Since Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom is in Utah, I am cutting into his turf with a short humor post like what he does. So I hereby present, sympathetically, the ways that people have certainly mangled poor Milla Jovavich‘s name to her face, probably when she was arguing with the maitre’d at a second tier restaurant in L.A.:

  • Milla Javovavich.
  • Milla Brace Jovanovich.
  • Mylil Jehovahwitness.
  • Mille Bornes.
  • Thoroughly Modern Milla.
  • Miles Jovavich.
  • Milla Jovavavoom.
  • Milla Javovavovich.

Dang, that list of humorous items is harder than it looks.

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Is That An Order?

My wife said to me last night, “Honey?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Never mind,” she commanded.

Which puts me in quite the logical bind. The next time she tells me to do something and I don’t do it, she’ll be angry, but I am only following orders. Of course, if I do the next thing she tells me, I am also not minding.

Just to be safe, I think I shall sit in the recliner and pretend I didn’t hear.

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