There is an old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” I wonder if that’s apocryphal and someone just ascribed it to the Chinese for effect. Whether or not the curse comes from Wuhan or not I have interesting things to write about today. Yesterday I was trying to post to Instagram. I was reposting pictures from years ago and saw that they needed to be edited. I uploaded them to Instagram and edited there. Then I had to write the hashtags and tag the people in them.
Hey, guess what? It’s the next day. Now to continue my interesting times.
The phone kept rebooting on its own with the cycle shortening. Very soon the phone was never on, always rebooting. I tried to do a hard reboot. It didn’t work. I called tech support and they suggested letting the battery run out. I did. I charged it and tried again. Nothing. I tried that a few times. Once I kept it off for hours. I charged it, started it up, and it loaded! Yay. This was in the middle of the night. I was awake because I had to go to the bathroom. I came back from the bathroom, and it was rebooting again. I took it to a certified Samsung dealer to get it flashed. That’s what I was told it needed. There is no certified Samsung dealer in the Bronx. I had to take the subway to Chelsea. I wasn’t happy about that. When I got on the platform there was one person waiting with no mask on. That’s bad but it gets worse. He started coughing and didn’t cover his mouth. I was nowhere near him, I was disgusted with his cluelessness or selfishness, not scared for myself. On the train it wasn’t bad. I sat by myself with nobody close. I didn’t have to touch any surfaces with my hands. When I got off I did use hand sanitizer. I went to the deal, half a block from the subway, and had to wait for the previous customer to leave. Only one person is let in at a time. Everyone wore a mask and there was a barrier so I could not get close. The only contact was handing him my phone. He said He’d reflash it and to come back in an hour. As I was in Chelsea I went to Trader Joe’s.
I was fortunate, there was no line to get in. I was told that I had to use a shopping cart and that if I wanted to use my own bag I had to pack it myself. They were taking no chances and I was glad of it. I got what I needed and there was only a small line at checkout. No one on one side. The ground was marked off on where to stand. When I checked out I didn’t know how they would do the packing your own bag thing. What he did was put everything back in my cart. There were tables outside to pack things into bags. I had no contact with the cashier, but I did have to key my pin into the CC reader. I went outside, packed my bags, and sanitized my hands.
On the way back to the shop I had to run a gauntlet. There were construction sheds on much of the route. That narrows the sidewalk. There were several places where people positioned themselves on two sides of the path and talked across it; making it impossible to keep 6 feet from them and putting you right in the path of them talking loudly. One guy didn’t have a mask, and then coughed into his hand. Do people just not pay attention? I had my mask on the entire time I was out. It’s really not that big a deal.
There was a line to get into the store. I wasn’t sure if I had to wait on it as I was picking up. When I was the first one on the line someone came out with my phone. They couldn’t fix it. No! There was something wrong with the port and they couldn’t upload the software. They didn’t charge me anything and were pleasant, good businesspeople.
The train was crowded on the ride home. I had to stand at first. Nobody sat down next to anyone else. I had disinfectant wipes with me and wiped down the pole I had held on to. I held the pole through the wipe to keep extra safe. I made it home, washed up and put away what I bought at Trader Joe’s. Later I ordered a new phone, exactly the same as my old phone. It’s my birthday present from my sister Alison. We were going to go to a Broadway show. That’s not happening now. The phone is refurbished. I won’t get it until next week. For this week I’m stuck with the landline. As I don’t go out that’s not such a big deal. If you want my number email or FB message me. I’ll miss Instagram and whatever they are calling the Google app, is it still Google Now or is that three names ago? I like the feed of suggested stories. It’s how I learn about the nonsense I’m interested in, like the DC TV shows. It spooks others but I love that Google knows me well. It’s not a person. It has no opinions of me. It doesn’t think about me. It doesn’t think.
I’ll save whatever ideas I have for tomorrow. As I never do anything I have to make the ideas last. I could make the entire blog rants about people that annoy me online. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I do have an idea to write not about the people but about my annoyance. Some of it is things that objectively shouldn’t bother me.
Wise Madness 