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A math guy's random thoughts. |
| A math guy's random thoughts. |
| Why I got nothing done yesterday, as in excuses for not writing. The day started with an early morning dental appointment--a routine cleaning that took longer than expected since I'd rescheduled due to an anticipated blizzard that didn't happen. My next stop was to replace my phone. I've been using a Samsung Z-flip phone. I like the phone because of its small size: it doesn't fall out of my shirt pocket when I stoop over. However, the folding screen technology doesn't appear to be quite ready for prime time. This is my second flip phone, and they have both started to have dead spots in the middle of the screen where the fold happens. I've been barraged with promotions from my provider, T-Mobile, with upgrade offers to the new Samsung S25. Since there are substantial discounts available and since my current phone was fast-becoming dysfunctional, I went to the T-Mobile store to investigate the new phone. Since most technology is made abroad, it's also likely that the barrage of tariffs from he-that-will-remain-nameless will soon make technology much more expensive. assuming it's available at all. If you need a new phone or computer, now might be the time to do it. Anyway, the phone is impressive and will fit in my shirt pocket, so I decided to get one. Rather than ordering online (my usual practice), I went ahead and purchased one at the store because there are a number of freebies that come with the phone when you purchase in a store and because they would do (most) of the transfer for me. That wound up taking over two hours. I also stopped to pick up essentials (i.e., coffee), so it was after 2PM when I got home. That commenced about six hours of typing in passwords and otherwise configuring the new phone so that it worked the way I wanted. In between, I fixed dinner. I spent another couple of hours researching incredibly obscure defaults (why are the default settings always wrong?) that stopped me from doing simple but necessary things, but by 10AM today, I'd finally finished configuring the new phone. I think. Until I open another app that doesn't work the way it should. Anyway, basically, all of yesterday got used up, and most of my allotted work time for today as well. Afternnoons are "me-time" (i.e., nap time in the media room), so today is shot, too. The new phone? Now that it's configured, I like it. I put the free cover on it, so when it falls out of my pocket, it won't break. That means no wireless charging, but that's ok by me. I could write a detailed list of how to turn off the many annoying defaults if anyone is interested. EDIT: add another two hours to get my University account working in Outlook instead of Gmail. Another idiot default set incorrectly. |
| Up to now, I've selected songs that inspired stories. This one's a little different: the story inspired the song choice. The story involved is the third of my "Lauderdale Tales"  , "Ozzie's Tale" . In both this story and in the source material, betrayal plays a roll, so I wanted a "theme song" that was about betrayal. The perfect choice, of course, is the Alberto Domínguez Spanish-language song "Perfidia." For the language-impaired--that would include me!--"perfidia" is Spanish for "betrayal." The song was a 1940 Xavier Cugat hit in the US, but I chose the Trini Lopez rendition, partly because the Youtube video includes the lyrics and partly because, well, Trini.The melody will be familiar to most. It certainly was to me, once I heard it, although I couldn't have named the song from just hearing the melody. It's appeared in many places, ranging from films like Casablanca and The Mambo Kings to TV series like Dexter and Sense8. Desi Arnaz sang the Spanish version in the 1941 film The Farmer Takes a Wife, a movie that featured Gloria Swanson's return to movies after a seven year absence. In my story, the song is referenced at the beginning and the end. At the beginning, it's playing in the gift shop at Graceland and at the end it's playing on the radio at the B&B where Ozzie, the protagonist, spent an accidentally perfidious night. The lyrics actually match the story's plot pretty well. |
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Take on me is an excellent choice.
