SMART? HAHAHA

SMART? HAHAHA

Most of you know that I tend to stay on topics concerning today or tomorrow. I do not focus on ‘the good old ‘days. But today I am going to make an exception when it comes to so-called ‘smart’ appliances.

We moved to the country 2 years ago this weekend and we love it. The house that our son built for us (thank you very much!) came with all new appliances, most of them the ‘smart’ kind.

Last week the igniter on our oven went out. The factory warranty was for 1 year. The repairs for a $40 part cost us 1/3 the total price of a new oven. Made me remember what we used to ‘ignite’ the oven by ticking a match to a hole in the bottom of the oven. That seemed to work well for us when I was growing up and I can’t recall ever having any repair guys come out to our house when I was a kid.

My point is, just why in tarnation do we need ‘smart’ appliances for things that can be done by ourselves? I recall seeing refrigerators with computer screens and cameras to tell you what grocery items you needed to buy or what product has expired.

I use the time and true method to test for expired dates. First does it smell bad? Second, if it’s a liquid, does it flow out of the container or come out in lumps? Third, does it taste all right?  I’ve found cans of vegetables in the back of the pantry that were several years past their ‘expiration’ date and used them. No one died from any of this.

Just how many appliances do you need keeping up with your grocery list? My oven has an app on it to give you recipes and to keep up with your grocery needs. I find a piece of paper with a pencil on the cabinet does a much better job and I can take that with me to the store.

I resent these things having control over my life and making decisions for me that perhaps I don’t want or need. Like many of you, I grew up with water straight out of the tap. No filter, no plastic bottle, just a glass water bottle that needed to be refilled from time to time. My refrigerator has a filter on it that requires it to be changed after a certain period. If you go past the expiration period, the ice maker and water dispenser shuts down. What if want to drink ‘unfiltered’ water? Maybe I like it. How come you are forcing me to do something I might not want to do? We have another refrigerator out in the store room. The ice maker on it was a dud, I bet we had a repair guy out to fix it 5 or 6 times. It made me think back to when you just put water in trays and stuck them into the freezer and voila, after an hour or so you had ice cubes.

Some folks have those ‘smart’ thermostats that adjust their heating and cooling automatically.  Personally, I don’t trust those either. If it’s hooked to the internet, then it seems to me the government can decide about how cool or warm my house should be. Same thing goes for my car. My insurance company requires me to install a little plug-in device that watches how I drive and rewards me with better rates. I think I’m a good driver and appreciate the rate I get, but I don’t need ‘atta boy’ compliments via texts each time I drive back from the store. I consider a ‘good drive’ to be one in which no person or object was damaged. I certainly don’t appreciate being given a sad face when I hard brake. As much as I love having a GPS in my car for directions, I do not like it when you make a wrong turn or miss an exit. Looks to me like they could scold you a little better when they tell you to turn around or make a U-turn instead of shouting out ‘YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY’. I already know I’m going the wrong way; I don’t need anyone yelling at me, especially some non-humanoid thing of undeterminable sex or description.  

Last part of this rant is the never-ending practice of asking for a ‘survey’ after you make in inquiry of some sort about something. Let me state up front that I doubt that any one actually reads or listens to my responses and that no survey is actually ‘short’. They are lying to you about this. If you report everything as horrible and ‘worst’ service ever. No one ever checks back to see why you said this. In the space marked for comments, several times I pasted the batting averages for various baseball players of years gone by. Not once has anyone ever asked me why or to explain.

I was going to continue on about several other topics, but Alexa is telling me I should quit now and rest for a while. Perhaps, she/he is right, I need to calm down for an hour or so. I told her/him and she said that was fine with her/him.

George Owell, we are here…it’s 1984 in the year 2026.

Subscribe if you like, or don’t…

See you next week…Peary Perry

 

I AM A BLESSED MAN ....

 

I AM A BLESSED MAN…

This week a couple of students from UCLA were posting about the things we take for granted. They had been moved into a dorm which had a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean. They marveled at their luck to be able to open their blinds and see something so beautiful. After a few weeks, it became unnoticeable and they were shutting the blinds to reduce the glare on their computer screens. Then several weeks later they were complaining about the brightness and how it made watching television so hard. They complained so much, the dorm administrators moved them to another room. This one has a view of a parking lot. After a week or so, they realized what they had lost.

A week or so ago, our water was turned off for a few hours due to a water main break somewhere close to us. No water to bathe, wash clothing, flush toilets, water plants seemed like a major event for a few hours. Suppose it was off for weeks or months at a time?

Like you, we probably read or view daily reports of someone lamenting their problems with their job, their rent, housing, their cars, prices or whatever. The internet is full of posts of folks sitting in some $150,000 auto sipping a $7.00 cup of whatever and complaining about their current ‘impoverished’ life. Boo-Hoo…can you hear me crying for them? I’m not…

Personally, I think the problem lies with the difference between what we want versus what we need. Do you want a career or need a job? They are very different you know…

We all like really nice cars but let’s be honest. If you want to get from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’, does it really make any difference if it’s in a Porsche or a Ford Fiesta? As long as they run well and aren’t dangerous, then the only difference is comfort. But they get you there just the same.

The same with a job. I suggest that anyone can get a ‘job’ but it may not be the one you want or in a career you spent 5 years in college studying for. The point is, will a job, even if you don’t like it, pay for your existence? Can you get by until you find some alternative that will make you happier?

Now, we get to the crux of the matter, what is your level of existence? If you want to drink coffee lattes at Starbucks for $5 and have your nails done each week, you may have to change your way of living. Housing is expensive, everyone knows this, but you may not be able to afford living in a high rise with lots of amenities and then move to a smaller apartment or have a roommate. There are options that can be explored.

Living in the country has given me a new perspective on needs vs wants. In the city, you went to a hair stylist with an appointment. Here you go to a barber and you walk in. the same thing applies to something like tennis shoes. Kids today want the latest style tennis shoes which can retail for hundreds or thousands of dollars when you can buy a pair on Amazon starting at $35 or so. Certainly not the same as the expensive ones but will it get the job done? Well about the same as the Ford Fiesta and the Porsche. They will suffice for a season.

So, I’m a blessed man with a house, a drivable automobile and a cheap haircut and I’m good to go.

Maybe you are not working in a job you like. Maybe you can’t afford a house or the apartment you are living at right now. But, look at this, if you are reading this, then you are alive and breathing. There are a lot of folks that did not make it through the night, last night.

I’ve never been afraid of work and I have always had plenty to do. It may not have been what I liked or enjoyed, but it certainly has allowed me to survive.

I’m not complaining, I’m thankful for what I have, not what I don’t have. I have all I need, not necessarily all I want.

Perhaps at my elderly, mature, ancient, OLD age, I have become more tolerant of what I can now do as opposed to what I could do. I have no need to travel around the country, I eat simply and well, I sleep well and have enough clothes for each season.

My final blessing point is that I have a wonderful wife who has put up with me for 56 years. She has the patience of Job and why she has been around this long is a continual mystery to me.

I am indeed a very blessed man. I hope you can find your peace in this crazy world we are living in.

See you next week. Peary Perry  

 

MADNESS...

 

MADNESS….     It sems to me that the more ‘inventive’ we get with the gadgets we develop…the more we complicate our lives. Bear with me here. Twenty years ago, you had to memorize phone numbers if you wanted to call someone. You had a ‘phone’ book where you stored all of the numbers you used the most. From time to time, you had to update this book and more than likely you called old friends to check up on them as you went through the updating process. This was especially noticeable during the holiday season when you were making out your Christmas card list as well. Not only would you get someone’s current address, but you’d play catch up on their lives over the past year. You also found out which one of your friends had died since your last call. All of that has gone by the wayside. Now you store all of your numbers on your cell phone or whatever you happen to use, and you scroll down to choose a name to be called, or you simply say … ‘home’ and your phone makes the call for you. In most cases you don’t even recall the numbers of your kids or best friends. If you lose your cell phone it becomes the equivalent of being stranded on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific. In fact, when we are out of ‘cell tower coverage areas’ we often feel like we are on some desert island or remote part of the earth. We cannot seem to be without some form of communication device at all times. I know people who get so paranoid if their phone doesn’t ring that they call themselves to see if the thing is working or not. Recently a friend of mine misplaced his phone and couldn’t retrieve it until the following Monday. You would think his world was over simply because he could not get calls in or out for about 72 hours. Madness. All this new technology over the past 50 or so years is great and all that, but what happens when we leave out the human element? What’s going to happen if we stop socializing in person and only communicate via some form of electronic media? Look around you when you pull up to a stop sign or a red light, everyone in the cars around you has their cell phones out and are totally concentrated upon getting their message of the moment out before the light changes and they must start moving again. Sometimes they are actually texting someone who is riding in the car with them. I’ve been in restaurants and observed 2 people ignoring each other and perhaps texting to each other across a space at arm’s length away. It’s almost as if our society has become afraid to talk to someone in person. Back in the early fifties everyone thought television would be the death of all of us. We were warned not to watch too many hours a week or sit too close to the set. Then we were cautioned about going blind unless we had a television lamp sitting on top of the set itself. I can’t recall hearing about anyone ever being a victim of too much television or being blinded because they didn’t have a television lamp. I will say everyone had one. There was no need to take a chance. Today we have children in our society who never venture outside of their rooms. They only come out at night and avoid direct sunlight. Nearly every new television show has something to do with vampires or zombies. I suppose it must be some sort of cultural thing, not my generation. The youth of today can live entirely online without any need for actual verbal conversation or human contact. Besides texting, you can throw in Facebook, Instagram, ‘X’, Snapchat and you are good to go. Unlock the bedroom door, drop in a pizza every so many hours and you might not see your child until they need a car or money for college. They will surface when these events occur, trust me. Then again, perhaps not. I’ve got friends who haven’t seen their kids for years. They know they are alive since the food tray sitting outside their room is always empty.    When I was a kid, we could not wait to get our driver’s license. Having our own car was a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want to have their own car. It was freedom. Today, these kids seem to choose to use Uber everywhere.   There seems to be this mad rush to collect as many ‘online’ friends as humanly possible. So, you see folks with thousands of ‘friends’ on their web pages, most of these people do not know, or will ever meet but they seem perfectly happy to share every detail of their lives with perfect strangers. Personally, I could not care less about someone I don’t know telling me about what kind of bagel they are eating. Much less their medical history or why they hate their fathers. Who cares? No one, much less me, can deny the fact that computers have enhanced our lives in so many positive ways. It’s just that I think we should slow down and turn the things off at some point in our day and sit on the porch or in the living room with a cold beer or cup of coffee and actually converse with someone, face to face before we lose the ability to do so. So, stop reading this, turn off your computer, turn off that cell phone and walk into your kid’s room or next door and start talking about the weather or politics. You can always get a conversation started if you just try. Face to face conversations are the ones you will remember.     Hit the ‘subscribe’ button….see you next week…Peary Perry