Dancing horse crushes jurassic Mountain kitten maverick
“Ambivalent? I had to be dragged to the upgrade store. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” I told myself. But I had dug my own hole when I purchased a Nokia 920 mobile phone. It used the Windows 8 Operating System and I needed a Microsoft Phone application to synchronize photos and music - and to load apps. But, before I could download from Microsoft, I had to upgrade my operating system.
“It’s a nefarious plot,” I thought as I scanned Apple’s feline-themed operating system upgrade (I was moving from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion). The lengthy upgrade went smoothly. (Did I mention that it took forever?) Later I learned that:
“Apple is ending the cat theme. They moved to the Sarah Palin theme,” I explained.
“Sarah Palin?” Nazy asked.
“That’s right! The next release will be OS Mavericks: the Operating System for soccer Moms.”
Mountain Lion was an initial success. I loaded my music and photos. I selected something from the ‘app store’. (I wasn’t overjoyed by the user experience, but I chalked that up to my lack of history with a new environment.) Then I tried to pay.
The store refused to comply because: purchasing an app for a telephone bought in Switzerland using a credit card with a USA address was ‘not permitted’.
“I fail to see how making it impossible to buy things is a good business practice,” I thought.
I was (more than) somewhat annoyed and that was before the MacBook Pro crashed. It restarted and I sent a ‘strongly worded’ note to Apple. Crashes have become distressingly common since I upgraded to the Mountain Lion, eh, Valley Kitten Operating System.
“I wonder if Apple hired the Blue Screen team from Microsoft,” I thought as I wrote another scathing note to Apple. “And, when it comes to reading mail from customers, they’ve hired the team from United Airlines.”
I am not happy with new upgrade. I suppose that there must be some (well-hidden) enhancements, but most of the changes that I detected do the same things, but less efficiently and counter-intuitively. (i.e. ‘very unAople&rsquo
. Some things even stopped working correctly. The search function, for example, generates a different result every time it is invoked. The default mouse direction was inverted: you move the mouse up, but the arrow goes down. Finally, Apple increased touchpad sensitivity so much that it reacts when I breathe on it. In fact, only muscle-memory from my video-game phase in the 70’s made it possible o capture and corral the surfing cursor. This fact may explain the struct ure of this sentence.
Laptop challenges aside, there were big happenings in our area in the last few weeks.
“Of course we’re going to the parade,” I replied to Nazy’s question. “The Santa Barbara Fiesta Parade is one of the largest equestrian parades in the United States. It’s part of the ‘Old Spanish Days’ festival. We have to go!”
“Lots of horses, Dan.”
“Dancing horses, Nazy. We should have invited Mitra and Stefan.”
“Dancing?”
“Maybe prancing. Ever since Piccolo threw me over the fence, I’ve shunned..”
“You shouldn’t have tried to jump the fence and you should have been smoother with the horse. And when you fell, you should have gotten right back up and tried that jump again.”
“Well, I got right back up. I was going to kick Piccolo, but then I realized that he was much bigger than me, so I kicked some dirt.”
“That was really productive.”
“Right. It made me feel better.”
Nazy and I not only watched the parade (agreeing that after a while, even dancing horses can become boring), we also checked out the Fiesta Pequeña, a concert that uses Mission Santa Barbara as a backdrop. We’re beginning to feel like real Santa Barbarians.
“You may have spelled that wrong, Conan,” Nazy interrupted.
This week we also drove to California to see Mitra. (For more information on the Tango Topics of the visit, click here.) Before dinner, Mitra took us to her..
“... favorite LA museum, Dad. The Museum of Jurassic Technology.”
“There was no technology in the Jurassic Era, Mitra.” I replied.
“This is the lower Jurassic, Dad.”
“That clears it up,” I replied. “I expect to see T-Rex with a telephone.”
While Mitra and Stefan met with the Oxygen Tango Milonga Team in the roof-top ‘tea-room’, Nazy and I explored the museum.
“They have a random collection of..”
“An ‘eclectic’ collection, Nazy,” I corrected.
“Really? What does eclectic mean?”
“In this context, it means: ‘random’. This room, for example, has paintings of the dogs that the Russians put in orbit in the early days of the space race.”
“Interesting, but what does it have to do with the exhibit on trailer parks in North America?”
“North America, but with an emphasis on the Los Angeles area,” I corrected.
“And what about the room with the costume of Madalena Delani, an opera singer killed in a road accident in Argentina?”
“She was killed in a random accident - which may explain the smooth transition to the exhibit about decaying dice. And did you see all of the Noah’s Ark references? Did you now that Delani had no short-term memory? This is definitely a ‘Mitra-Museum’.”
Make sure you see this museum when you’re in Los Angeles,
And, finally, United Airlines. They have disavowed all responsibility for my flight debacle - except for the cancellation in Geneva.
“And the only thing they handled well was the cancellation in Geneva,” I told Nazy. “They moved me to a good hotel for the night.”
“But they lied about a sick pilot and made you stand in-line forever.”
“True..”
“Well Dan. That’s the way airlines act now. You pay for all the ‘frills’: baggage, meals, non-middle seats..”
“Transporting me to my destination is not a frill.”