Autumn 2020
Last night I started to translate the beginning of Book 6, La Résistance, Chapter 81 of THE DAWN. It had been a busy day, dealing with new-house matters, and so I decided to make it an early night of translating only The First Page. Get my toe dipped into the foreshadowing waters of this momentous chapter of this momentous book of this momentous volume of this momentous novel.
Moments are made of those minutes of our lives.
This morning, I was text-messaged by my current wireless “provider”, AT&T, of the latest in California leading the way.
AT&T has been notified of a possible upcoming Public Safety Power Shutoff Event in your area estimated to occur between 9/26 and 9/28. Work is underway to limit any wireless service interruptions. Please see www.att.com/outages for updated information related to wireless service in your area.
Where do I begin . . . to tell a story that is aging like the burned-out hippies in California whose head trip has become a real bummer?
First off, this latest love note was sent to me as an AT&T Free Message.
Whew!
I thought I paid through the nose for that one.
Secondly, how many words do you need to tell Your Frustrated Customer: LIGHTS OUT?! Or even THE POWER’S OFF???
Public Safety Power Shutoff Event = The more words used, the less They are saying what is really going on. The writing style is Soviet-esque.
But we bold and brave pioneers in the Golden State, that is now a tarnished mess, know better. We know the entire enchilada has fallen apart on these idiots. Just the other day, or so I am told (because I avoid the sight and sound of the Vampirish Gov like a vampire at dawn), there came yet another proclamation, another enviro-edict-for-election-dollars. The California Version of Cash-for-Clunkers arrived in the form of the newest Unconstitutional Newsom Directive:
By 2035 (when Mr. Receding Pompadour will be very bald) there will be no new gas-powered cars sold in California.
Send all those car dealerships straight to Nevada, Gavin. GOOD JOB!!!
Back to the Love Note, whose use of the Passive Voice indicates the passive-aggressive nature of the latest energy victim, AT&T.
“has been notified” — BY WHOM? The nearly bankrupted PG&E? Just a wild guess.
“Work is underway” — which means the Wine Caves are being fully stocked, as I type, in case of the Inevitable Public Safety Power Shutoff Event.
And, then, there is the wonderful logic to use your computer — that is powerless — to find out about the outages in wireless service that we would rather not mention, or even think about.
I am presently typing on my MacBook Pro, purchased in March 2019. This latest model has somehow developed a video display error, or problem. I do not have a clue as to why there is a dis-colored band on my screen. Sometimes it’s lavender; sometimes it’s gray. I do like the nuanced shades that appear in the gray-disfunction strip, a bit more than the Crayola kindergarten-y colors that Apple uses for most of its chroma.
I get the feeling that Apple people are not nuanced in shades and tones and in the finer elements of color style, of color, or even of style. They’re embodiments of the Typical Californian: no manners, all mouth. No class, all non-recycled trash, especially regarding consideration of others. Sometimes I, a native Northeasterner, am still flummoxed at the vulgar, tacky, cheap displays of a total absence of etiquette among the wizened and fermenting Native Californians who think they are so well-breaded, soooo refined and sensitive and cool and enlightened, even morally superior, to the Hicks out in the Sticks.
They have no idea they’re social clods and uncouth laughing-stocks without a scintilla of propriety or concern toward anyone or anything! But — they invented the Age of Aquarius politesse-hip! They were the avant-garde of innovatively hey-wow guarding the future of the world for . . . themselves, only themselves.
They actually invented burned-out lives, but let’s all be merciful and not mention reality, or the obvious, or the truth to ego-centric, self-absorbed people who never really had a firm fix on how the world works (as in: it does not revolve around you). Most of these bitter geezers are burned up because they cannot afford to retire in this paradise of a state that they voted, during an entire lifetime, to regulate and create into their endless Cloud-Nine on earth.
Speaking of burned-out, there’s no burned-out chip in this Apple, or even a burned-out part of a chip (just burned out forests in the Golden State!). A home-done diagnostic test ruled out that possibility of blown-out circuitry parts.
I do have an alternate Macbook Pro laptop available for my use. And there is another model in a closet, somewhere. That model is the replacement model for the one I received for Christmas 2014. In July 2015, the screen went black, and I knew the dreaded head crash had occurred. I got a quick Doctor Appt. and brought Mr. MacPro to the Apple Doctor at the mall (the only Apple store in all of Placer County) during the July 4th holiday. I calmly stated that the drive had had a head crash. The young whippersnapper was not very convinced of my excellent and experienced diagnosis.
These computer geeks and freaks, who attempt to intimidate non-digital individuals, waste their time on someone like me. I know — from having studied computers, and from having written computer code lonnnng ago, and from having worked in the industry when it was the landing pad for depressives and suicidal sociopaths — it does not take a genius to work with 1s and 0s.
Once, when asked why I did not continue in the field of computer programming, by a guy who had fled the job of systems analyst, I commented:
“Twenty minutes working in that field, and I was gonna be eyeing the razor blade.”
He laughingly agreed!
The young whippersnapper ran a quick diagnostic on Mr. MacPro and confessed to me that I was right. There had been a head crash. He did not know how I’d managed to know something so complicated! And without using the fancy-dan equipment in the Back Room. I gotta say that the newbies at this tech-selling game are not the most enlightened people when it comes to people or being enlightened or even selling, tech or anything.
I was then given a replacement model for my very first MacBook Pro because that very personal Apple laptop, bought on huge discount during the end of 2014, required a new disk drive that was no longer available. That model was, uh humm, an old one from 2013 that the benevolent Apple Inc. had to dump before the next boatload arrived from China. And that model made it through all of 3 years before getting a case of the slows and the occasional blink-and-twitch. I keep that MacBook Pro for sentimental reasons, but, since these laptops operate optimally for only a few years, I contend it’s best to keep at least 2 backup laptops, just in case.
I like to be loaded for bear when composing, like a pro, on the MacBook Pro. I must nonetheless admit that the trouble-shooter in me is trying very hard not to get her pistol out and do an Elvis to the video screen!
Maybe a faulty wiring connection? We do not know. Work is underway though. The appointment to bring the thing to the Apple Genius Bar in the local mall, the Galleria, has been made — for a week from now. Since I am still engaging in my COVID-Mask Boycott, Dear Husband shall have to bring MacBoy into the Apple Doctor that most likely will expect the Human to wear a moon-suit. The Human temperature will also get taken prior to entrance into Apple-World. The mall was made for Karens to troll!
The Shut Your Mouth Event (which is to occur, privately, behind the Covid-Mask) is expected for the citizens, but it just doesn’t happen here in California where the pompous idiots, who dodge the Mask Mandate, are concerned. A fake-emergency power-grab is underway by the slick marxists in our midst. Covering the bureaucratic buttocks and the government glutes is the SOP (standard operating procedure) reason for all of the absurdity. And, believe me, there are a lot of arses and absurdities in this State:
California Leads the Way!