The Curmudgeonly Professor

Have You Twittered and Tweeted Yet?

The Curmudgeonly Professor embarked on a quest to learn all about Twittering and Tweeting the other day and here is what he learned.  A Tweet is a message no longer than 140 characters on a Twitter account.  A Twitter account is what allows one to Tweet.  It all sounds phenomenally silly, and much of Twitter is, indeed, inane and silly.  But the Twitter world is also a world of serious information from news sources, well known authors and journalists, techies, sports gurus, and innumerable other sources.  By following other Twitter accounts, it is possible to unearth numerous valuable tidbits of information, many of which are linked to other websites.  I was amazed at how many well known and reputable public figures and information sources are on Twitter and, of course, the Twitter world grows by the minute.  So while the Professor was wont to make fun of Twitter at the start, he has since repented and suggests that Twitter is, in fact, an activity worth undertaking.  I am following about 20 Twitter accounts and have the magnificent sum of 8 followers who follow every golden word that I Tweet.  Twittering can be a big waste of time or a stop of a few minutes or less to check the Twitters you are following.  Three cheers for the brilliant college dropouts who invented another milestone in the world of social and global interconnections.  You can either continue to think that Twittering is silly, a reaction largely due to the silly-sounding terms of Twittering and Tweeting, or you can learn something new and potentially useful by playing around with it a bit yourselves.  Go to Twitter.com.  Even a five-year old can manage it.  Consider a Twitter account a mini-blog where you are forced to shut up when you have run up 140 spaces and characters.  A worthy limitation for the Curmudgeonly Professor who tends to run on and on and on.

Blue and Yellow Blossoms: Photos of the Day May 30 2009

 

Blue and Yellow Iris: Photos of the Day May 30 2009

                                           

                                       

The Curmudgeonly Professor Inquires as to Why No one Knows or Tries to Make Anything that Works or Lasts Any More

The Curmudgeonly Professor has waxed eloquent heretofore on Blood's Law of Modern Technology, to wit:

1. Nothing ever works.
2. If it does work, it won't work very long.
3. If it quits working, no one can fix it.

We might add a few additional observations.  If, after a few months, you need to order parts for something, you discover these parts are no longer made.  A new model has just come out, making your six-month old model obsolete, obsolescent, not working, and disgustingly useless.

To illustrate, here are a few examples of worthless POC the Curmudgeonly Professor has dealt with lately.

• We replaced the heat pump on our air conditioner in St. George in about ten years.  Cost: $2,300.
• Our furnace and air conditioner in Salt Lake are about seven years old, and used only half-time.  We find now that both the furnace and air conditioner may have to be replaced, costing around $8-$10,000.  The warranties, of course, are miniscule and long since expired.  No one is willing to stand behind their products any more.  The contractor installed units were clearly marginal.
• I went to Staples today to get a red ink cartridge for my Canon i9900 photo printer.  Sorry, Canon no longer sells that cartridge through retailers.  Just a few years ago, the Canon i9900 was the top-rated consumer large format photo printer on the market.  I was told there were less than 100 of them running in the country today.
• Our dishwasher quit working after about three years.
• Two years ago, I ordered three successive Dell computers, none of which worked, and ended up buying a Mac.
• My Mac computer glitched 2,300 photos, and 5,000 photos were wiped out in some mysterious way.  Moreover, the memory cannot be increased.

Sadly, quality control has gone down the drain.  The reason American car makers are in deep trouble is because people don't want to buy the cars they make in large enough numbers to remain profitable.  My seven year old Toyota Avalon has required replacing one directional signal blinker light in all the time we have had it.  The last Maytag washer we had lasted 27 years.  The last fridge we had lasted 22 years.  The furnance we had in our last house lasted 20 years and was still going strong.

Now the strategy, apparently, is planned obsolescence.  Make it the cheapest way possible from the cheapest possible materials and the minimal quality parts.  Make the parts and replacement components obsolete in a few months so that nothing can be repaired.  The age of modern technology is, indeed, a marvelous age.  But it is also an age that borders on fraud and incompetence in producing and monitoring the quality and durability of the goods we buy.  If we had more confidence in the appliances and goods and services that we buy, we may be more willing to help strengthen the economy by buying more goods.  As it is, I am waiting for my nearly-new appliances to breathe their last gasp, run their last washer load cycle, freeze their last batch of ice cubes, and vacuum their last lint ball from the floor.  And I am mortally afraid of buying anything new.  How will I know how long it will work?  Even though, at my age, I am clearly out of the 20-30 year cycle, it would be nice if I didn't have to haul it to the dump or dispose of it in some other way two or three years down the road.  We have become accustomed to electronic goods such as computers, printers, software, digital cameras, and the like, becoming true throwaways--use it until it breaks or collapses or until the next innovative product hits the market and then toss it in the electronic junk pile.

The Curmudgeonly Professor just wishes people would pay more attention to durability and quality and repairability of consumer goods so we didn't have to feel continually like we have been suckers taken for a ride.

More Tulips from Thanksgiving Point: Photos of the Day May 29 2009

  

Two Baby Robins: Photo of the Day May 28 2009

Not a great photo, but here are the baby robins from the blue eggs posted earlier.  There were three eggs, but I can see only two babies.  When I come anywhere near the nest, they open their beaks awaiting worms and grubs, which I don't have.  So far they have been spared by the neighbor's evil cat.  I hope they make it to adulthood and become full-fledged robins.

How to Be a Poor Sport and to be an Unsportsmanlike Sports Fan

The Curmudgeonly Professor wishes to share his vast lifetime of experience in helping others to recognize how to be a poor sport and how to be unsportsmanlike, as follows:

• Repeat frequently how much you hate the other team.  The "other" team is defined as any team playing the team you wish to win.  By definition, you hate each and every member of the other team, including the coach, the assistant coaches, and the kids who mop the sweat off the floor.
• Explain in detail how much you detest each specific player.  Elaborate on the number of DUI's, drug infractions, personal moral infractions, and the times that each player committed a dirty foul or made a shot at the last second that should have been disallowed and which actually won the game.
• When the team you currently hate then becomes the team that is playing a team you hate even more, then the previously hated team becomes an outstanding, wonderful, team with terrific players who should all be in the Hall of Fame.
• Stay on the refs throughout the game, noting that they could be in a conspiracy to make sure your team gets beat.  Note the number of no-calls, unfair calls, and problematic calls that helped the team you hate win the game.
• Whine about the unfair loss to the hated team for several days, noting that your Sunday School team was manhandled by dirty players, abused by the refs, heard nasty words from the fans, and had their feelings hurt when they lost.
• Don't ever give the hated team credit for a spectacular play, noting, instead, that they simply ran over your fine boys and committed several egregious flagrant fouls on their way to the basket.
• Don't listen to the sideline commentators interview members of the hated team and listen to the interviewee gloat about how they had divine intervention or how their team had more heart or how they were more athletic or how they never gave up and how much they actually, really, respect your team now that they have beat the living @##%$ out of them and have reduced them to a state of weeping humility and total anger.
• Complain incessantly about the sports commentators and about how much they are showing favoritism to the hated team and obviously want your team to lose.
• Criticize the quality of the dancers or cheerleaders or whatever they call the scantily-clad young maidens who gyrate around the floor for brief periods of time to increase team spirit and entertain the males in the audience.
• Never admit to being beat by the other team.  Instead, acknowledge that you have the better team, by far, of Olympian quality, and that you beat yourselves.  The team that scores the most points must never, never, beat you.
• Remember that in two months you won't be able to remember who played in the playoffs anyway so that you can start getting worked up into a state over any possible teams your team may have to play next year.
• With this guidance, you should be able to become an even poorer sport than you already are and you should be able to do your best to diminish the recognition of great athletic skills and to depreciate the behavior of rude and ignorant fans.

St. George Yellow and White Cactus Blossoms and a Mystery Bloom: Photos of the Day May 28 2009

                                        

 

Update Progress Report on Facebook and Twittering and Tweeting

The Curmudgeonly Professor has long been in the vanguard of technological innovation, beginning with learning to type in the ninth grade on an L.C. Smith upright typewriter that was probably fifty years old.  From there, he graduated in data and word processing from high speed punch card sorters to mag cards to 54 MB computers, to Space Invaders, to a monster square black and white TV so we could watch Milton Berle, to an atrocious first edition microwave oven that weighed 300 pounds and probably emitted enough nukes to pollute the universe, to a color TV, to stereo, to eight-tracks, to CDs and DVDs, to Sony Walkmans, to IBM Selectrics, to Matlock reruns.  Thus, the Professor felt he should not remain in ignorance about electronic networking and began a blog, which mushroomed into at least two or three dozen blogs from others who felt idiotic about becoming a blogger to start with and are now merrily blogging away. 

Now he has advanced, much to his disgust, to Facebook, Twittering, and Tweeting, just to be up to date on the latest revolutionary communication technology started by college dropouts in garages who are now worth billions so people can advise others all over the world that they need some Tylenol or are having stomach cramps.  On his Facebook account, he had one friend to begin with, the friend who invited him to join, and he now has all of 27 friends, far short of the 3,289 friends, on average, of my college and school-age descendants.  He took the "What color crayola are you" quiz and discovered he is a green crayola.  He learned that Green Crayolas are "trusting, caring, loving, always content, easily amused, and a blast to be around." 

So much for the validity of the Crayola color exam on Facebook.  What a crock, so to speak.  The Curmudgeonly Professor is a neurotic malcontent hypochondriac pain in the neck who is definitely not a blast to be around.  Now he will go around the rest of his life likening himself to a Green Crayola.

Then he proceeded to take the "general aura" quiz to determine his aura, and discovered he has a purple "general aura" as a "spiritual representation" of who he is, and discovered he is "well balanced."  Well balanced? Are you kidding?  How can a neurotic retired economist be well balanced?  Moreover, the quiz results suggested I should settle more on a specific color.  So which is it?  Am I a green crayola, or do I have a purple aura?  And how can I be both, simultaneously, so to speak?  My spousal unit will be thrilled to learn that I am a blast to be around as a trusting, loving, easily amused person, who is ALWAYS content, and that I am well balanced.

Other than that, the Professor has Tweeted a few whiny Tweets, which has led to 6 persons who are following every golden word that I Tweet from now on as I expand my Twittering expertise.  At least Twittering is a mini-blog, since one is restricted to 140 characters per post, whereas the Professor is wont to wax loquaciously into verbose and lengthy eloquent prose on his blog, which no one has time to read.  So perhaps he will graduate into the world of Tweeting, where one can post two dozen Tweets of 140 characters or less in two minutes flat and get on with things.

Maybe it is time to head out to Kohl's Department Store or Costco to find some new and more timely material to blog about.

The Flower Gardens at Thanksgiving Point: Photos of the Day May 28 2009

 

Progress Report on Twitter: the Curmudgeonly Professor has One Follower!

Yes folks, within the hour the Curmudgeonly Professor acquired two followers.  One of them could not be accessed due to, as the Twitter folks said, nasty activity, and was thus deleted.  The other is a canned news stream which indicated that it wished to follow my pronouncements.

I have nothing to do today and my wife will not accompany me to WalMart, Kohl's, Costco, or even to Carl's Junior for the $1.29 stupendous hamburger.  Thus, I have thought up a little game.  We all need a little game now and then.  I challenge all my blog readers to sign up for Twitter at Twitter.com and let us see how many inane Twitterers we can install by 12:00 p.m. today.  What a novel idea!  I need to know each and every detail of my blog readers' lives.  So get with it.  Sign up and stick a Tweet on it.  Don't be a fuddy duddy.  This task is urgent so don't fool around.  A prize may be awarded to the person who sticks up the 100th Twitter account and the 100th Tweet, but don't count on it.  You will, at least, be famous on this blog.  At least play the game to humor the Curmudgeonly Professor or he will quit posting pictures of flowers and start writing political commentary.

Gladiolus, Iris, Snowballs, and a Big Red Poppy: Photos of the Day May 27 2009

                                               

 

The Curmudgeonly Professor Does Not Twitter; Neither Does He Tweet

What are you doing?  If you had been smart enough to start a web site based on that question, you would now be worth billions and billions of dollars.  What is the matter with you?  The Twitter folks have turned us into a world of voyeurs, each of us anxious to know whether someone in Paris, France or Birmingham AL is now having a cup of coffee, taking a shower, suffering a migraine, reading a racy book, taking a nap, feeling sad, feeling happy, eating 2000 calories worth of carbohydrates, going to work, going to bed, or any one of a million other things we could possibly doing.  The idea is to become connected.  Become connected?

The Curmudgeonly Professor wonders if, in fact, we have reached the point of Diminishing Marginal Utility on being connected.  In case you do not remember what the Principle of Diminishing Marginal Utility means, it means, as defined in the economics texts, that if you eat too many bananas, eventually you will barf.  Have we reached that point yet?  We are connected by electronic umbilical cords and IV tubes to everyone we ever thought of knowing or wanted to know, plus a lot of people we ordinarily could care less about but whom we have developed a curious fascination about so we can keep track of what they had for breakfast.  Thus, we email, we blog.  We Twitter, we Tweet.  We Facebook, we Myspace.  We yap on our cell phones while driving our ten-ton SUVs in heavy traffic.  We text during movies, while riding our bicycles, while piloting aircraft, while running high speed trains, during meals, during class, during Church, during our wedding ceremony.  We want to make certain that everyone in the world knows exactly how we feel at this given moment, exactly what we are thinking, as part of our universal social networking quest.

When we get up in the morning, we don't have time to read the newspaper because we must Twitter and Tweet, check our blogs, check our email, our Facebook page, and our voice messages.  With a high carb instant breakfast, we are on our way out the door, stopping at Starbuck's for a $5 coffee, giving us time to Twitter and Tweet some more, and text everyone to let them know eventually we will get to work.  We get to work, greet our fellow "workers," each of whom is engrossed in their electronic social networking worlds.  We find our own precious cubicle, take off our jacket, and turn on our computer, our cell phones, our Blackberries, and, if necessary, our pacemakers.  This folks, is why we have a recession.  Work does not get done.  Think about it.

Here's how the work day goes:  Check, read, and reply to email:  3 hours.  Check Facebook and post entries, 1 hour.  Twitter and Tweet: 1 hour.  Check voice mail and return calls, 1 hour. Hold Skype multi-person conferences, 1 hour.  We text the person in the next cubicle to tell them what we are doing and find out what they are doing.  We let mommie, sister, brother, husband, girl friend, boy friend, ex girl friend, ex boy friend, ex wife, ex husband, potential bride, potential groom, high school English teacher, the Los Angeles Lakers, know what we are doing, and exactly how we feel at the moment.  When lunch comes around, electronic fatigue has set in, and carpal tunnel syndrome advances, so we make reservations for lunch, which typically lasts until 1:30 or 2:00 p.m., giving us ample time to text on our Blackberries to let everyone know what we are having for lunch.

Afternoon is pretty much a repeat of the morning.  We may redesign our blog.  Search for more friends on Facebook.  Search for more Twitterers and Tweeters so we can be apprised of intimate details of more peoples' lives in real time.  By 5:00 or 6:00 p.m., we head out for the parking lot to be on our way home, our cell phone glued to our ear with one hand, our Blackberry simultaneously being texted with the other hand.  Don't miss a beat.  Don't miss even an infinitismal opportunity to be connected to someone you may scarcely even know.

Arrive home, and greet impeccably dressed June Cleaver in her pearls, her perfectly pressed shirtwaist dress, her hose, her heels, whereupon she asks "How was your day, Ward?"  Whereupon you reassure her that you are totally fatigued and must rest before dinner.  So then the evening electronic connectedness jamboree continues.

If I were still teaching college, I would have to begin each class with the following injunctions:  Turn off your cell phones.  Do not Twitter,  Do not Tweet.  Do not text.  If you do, I will flunk you cold and you will have to sit through this class three or four more times.  And I am not kidding, so don't fool around.

The Curmudgeonly Professor suggests that we declare a National Social Networking Independence week.  We turn off all cell phones.  We disable all Blackberries.  We do not Tweet.  We do not Twitter.  We do not blog.  We might read a book.  What a thought!  We might have a conversation with our wife, husband, children, mother-in-law, neighbor, mailman, or UPS delivery person.  We might clean out the pantry.  We might pick up the crud we have strewn around the house while umbilically connected to everyone in the world.  You get the general idea.

Oh yes.  I almost forgot.  The Curmudgeonly Professor did sign up for Twitter, with a link to his non-existent Tweets at the left.  He did not seem infatuated with following the Tweets of the likes of Governor Schwarzenegger, Shaq, Al Gore, Martha Stewart, et. al.  But in his responsibility to keep his blog viewers fully informed, technologically-wise, at all times, he felt a responsibility to stay ahead of the game, so to speak, even though he is a geezer and is already past the point of Diminishing Marginal Utility.  Thank you for your time and attention.  Have a nice day.

Summer Returns to the Jordan River: Photos of the Day May 26 2009

 

A Duck Visits the Gazebo on the Jordan River Trail: Photos of the Day May 26 2009