December | 2021 | Grumpa Joe's Place

Five Hundred and Fifty and Done

Posted on 18/12/2021 by Grumpa Joe

This morning I conveniently dropped my wife off at the local shopping plaza to do Christmas shopping and then returned home. I grabbed a quick cup of coffee as I texted the Frankfort Lions Club Winter Coat Team to join me in the final coat sort. An hour later I was on the stage at the Founder’s Center where we are storing coats until they are processed. I like ot tell people that we will be on stage singing and dancing as we sort and bag coats. I always get a strange look. As I arrived I spotted Lion Louise dragging a large bag of coats up to the stage. She is my first lieutenant on the team. We dragged our sorting tables into place and attacked the pile of coats. The job is simple we merely place men’s, women’s, and children’s coats onto separate tables. The hardest part of the job is to tell the difference between a man’s and a women’s coat, followed by a teenager’s coat versus an older person’s coat. We don’t take a lot of time to decide it is simpler to make a mistake than it is to eat up time figuring it out.

Lion Mike showed up and I got him started bagging; ten to a bag all of the same gender. Close the bag and mark it with a piece of duct tape designating the gender, M, W, or C. It’s hard work, but somebody has to do it. Within forty-five minutes the three of us had sixteen bags of coats ready for delivery. I pushed the envelope and asked Louise or Mike if they were interested in delivering. Louise raised her hand to take sixty coats to the New Lenox Food Pantry on Monday, they are closed on Saturdays. Mike was headed into the direction of Morningstar Mission resale shop in New Lenox and said he would take sixty coats to them. That left me with forty coats which I drove over to the Salvation Army donation center in Chicago Heights.

The 2021 Winter Coat Drive is formally completed. All total we collected 550 coats from 1 November thru 15 December and delivered them to: The Frankfort Township Food Pantry, The South Suburban Crisis Center serving battered women, The Kibby & Vainney Angles NFP Inc,. serving the homeless of Joliet, Morningstar Mission, and the New Lenox Township Food Pantry. I estimate the dollar value of these used coats to be $5500.00, a sizable donation to the community. The Frankfort Lions have impacted five hundred and fifty people in need at a time when a coat is most appreciated.

Most of us don’t think about what life would be like without a coat to keep us warm during the cold months, but there are people among us who know what I’m talking about. The people who live on the street throughout the winter months are among the ones we target with this drive. I extend my fondest gratitude and thanks to those who donated coats, many with price tags still attached. We know you sacrificed to help others. The Frankfort Food Pantry has 300 families registered, and they are who we service first. I wish them a very warm and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Filed under: Biography, Lions Club, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: Coats, Food Pantry, Homeless | Leave a comment »

Hundred Dollar Mistake

Posted on 17/12/2021 by Grumpa Joe

Last week during a project to get my homemade Christmas card finished I panicked. One of the last steps was to print mailing labels. Over the years I have become very comfortable with Microsoft Word as my word processor. Ten years ago when I switched over to Apple computers I embraced Apple’s word processor called “Pages.” I learned that pages was a neat program, and I really liked it until it came to mailing documents via USPS. I spent hours trying to print labels using Pages but failed. It was clear to me that Steve Jobs at Apple never mailed a letter or Christmas card in his life.

Apple’s rival, Bill Gates saw an opportunity so he invented Word for Apple, and I switched over immediately to Microsoft Word which had ready made buttons designed specifically for mass mailings. I wouldn’t necessarily categorize my Christmas card list as a mass mailing, but there are 200 names on it.

Having Been Summoned By GOD, Morty Angel Arrives In Heaven

A week ago whenever I opened a document from Word that I needed help with I got a notice stating that Office 2016 is retired and you must upgrade. I thought that’s a bunch of BS. I’ll show them. Every time I tried to link my Apple contact list into the Word mailing program, the computer went to sleep. No matter what I did, or how I tried to make the link it didn’t happen. Every time I searched the help screen I got the same message that Office 2016 was retired.

Frustrated, I decided to use a comma separated value scheme and somehow was able to export my contact list as a CSV file. The problem is that I ran into the same message when I opened Excel to establish the file. All this time I am burning up hours and building my frustration level. With my deadline approaching I decided to give in and to buy the upgrade. Bill Gates must have needed a bonus to keep up his lifestyle and Microsoft decided to invent the way to give it to him. I opened my Microsoft account page and hit the button to buy the software which is now called Office 365. Ka-ching $100, and I downloaded and installed it. The installation failed, but left me a love note “this version requires macOS Version 10.15.5. My computer is macOS Version 10.13.6. There was nothing I could do. I checked to see if I could upgrade my machine to a higher level. Nope, not in the cards, my machine is one of the last 32 bit processors sold before Bill needed another raise and invented the 64 bit processor and everyone would have to not only buy the new software they would have to buy a new machine too.

I quickly looked for a way to get a refund. There is nothing I can find in any of the screens that mentions the word refund, or a phone number for customer support. I think Microsoft is a company that is in a big empty building with only a computer inside using artificial intelligence without any living breathing, naturally intelligent people, except for the janitor who rules over an army of Roombas.

So here I sit with a new computer program that I cannot install, nor can I find a way to transfer it to another computer because I lack the intelligence to understand the hundreds of pages of computerese that portend to give the instructions to do so.

After sleeping on the problem for a couple of days I went back to the basics of using the mailing section of Word. Instead of selecting the Apple contact list I selected “New List.” A miracle happened, a drop down menu appeared and there at the very top of the list was the CSV file I made two days ago. Don’t question it I told myself just keep going. I finished the process and printed the labels. My cards are out and in the mail. Next, how do I get a refund?

Filed under: Biography, Cartoons, Motivation | Tagged: Christmas Card, Mass Mailing, Microsoft Word, Office 365 | Leave a comment »

Coats, Coats, and More Coats

Posted on 16/12/2021 by Grumpa Joe

We are in the stretch now and the end is near. The Frankfort Lions Club project to collect used winter coats is declared a minor success. The count at this point is four hundred coats, men’s, women’s, and children’s combined. As luck would have it the temperature this week is between 50-60 degrees F. It is so mild out the thought of winter coats is dim. That will change quickly as the temp will drop again and we will once more scramble for warmth. I couldn’t believe how mild it was yesterday until l dashed out in my tee shirt to clear the mail box at the street. The dash wasn’t necessary it was beautiful. I could sustain life at such a winter temp.

Officially, winter hasn’t yet arrived. There are still five days remaining of fall. On the twenty-first of December we will reach the solstice where the axis of the earth is tilted farthest away from the sun. This tilt produces our shortest day as defined by sunrise and sunset. There will be a miserably short eight hours. In those hours we will strive to continue living a normal life. I remember the days when I spent a good part of one winter in Singapore and was impressed that the change in the length of their day was one hour. They went from having twelve hours of sunshine to eleven. Another thing that impressed me was how quickly it went from light to dark, Here in the mid-west of the USA we experience a gradual darkening which produces beautifully colorful sunsets, mornings are the same but in reverse.

Nevertheless, mankind has adapted to the seasonal changes by marking them with some holidays. The coming of winter brings us Christmas. It is a time when we decorate with lights to remind us that the Christ child was born on Christmas day. The lights also bring us cheer to raise our darkened spirits. Towns all across America decorate the town center with lights and many also have a huge Christmas tree lighted and decorated. Chicago, for instance raises a forty foot tall tree that has been donated by a resident. The tree must pass the muster of the tree inspector and if it does a crew comes out to your front yard, cuts it down, and hauls it to Daley Plaza . There, it is set up, lighted, and decorated for all of us to enjoy. A small cabin is erected beside the tree where Santa Claus holds court and listens to the wishes of kids who come to sit on his knee for a photo.

In my neighborhood there is Ginger Lane. The residents of this curving street have agreed to decorate their front yards and the parkway trees with lights. It turns into a magical ride through town. My wife and I love to walk it after supper end enjoy the gayety of the many colored lights, and the creative ways in which people wind strings of lights around bushes, trees and the house. I guarantee you would not be thinking of man-made global warming when you enjoy this five minute walk.

For years I thought we were the only ones on the planet who lit our spaces up, then I visited Singapore. Believe me they know how to light a place up for a holiday. They begin by decorating their business area for Christmas, and it is amazing. Then, they take a few days break and do it again for Chinese new year. WOW!

Filed under: Biography, family, Lions Club, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: CHinese New Year, Christmas lights, Coats, solstice, sunsets | Leave a comment »

Old People In Their Underwear

Posted on 15/12/2021 by Grumpa Joe

This week I spent an enjoyable evening with my Tuesday night wine group. Ten of us meet weekly to imbibe on the delicacies of grapes fermented and allowed to become what we fondly refer to as wine. The youngest among us is fifty-seven a mere child, and the oldest I am proud to proclaim was me at eighty-three. We started out slowly as usual, but as we began tasting the various bottles like Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, our psyches began to open up and we began to brainstorm. One among us told of his son who wanted to find himself with a career on Youtube. We all looked rather stunned and questioned how in the hell is someone going to make a career out of Youtube?

I turned to Kay who a few meetings back had told me about her grandson and his girlfriend who were making money on their Youtube channel. “Look up Mariah and Bill” on Facebook and you will see their antics. I did. They are a cute couple who specialize in video taping themselves doing various dumb pranks none of which are more than a few minutes long. I thought to myself they have a following that nets them a five figure income every month. It is hard to imagine for an old goat like myself as to how someone can make money on Youtube, but it turns out to be rather simple. If you were to create a Youtube channel for your videos and get people to watch it you could indeed make money at it. I’d say that maybe twenty percent of the people who try this are successful and eighty percent are not. It is a matter of building audience. Every time I watch a video on Youtube the presenter asks me to like his channel and to follow him. When a presenter’s following reaches a certain number, Youtube begins earning money from advertisers, and that is when you begin to get fraction of the advertising income from Youtube. So the simple steps to success are to 1. create content, and 2. build a following.

Getting back to my wine club meeting. I interrupted the conversation to ask Kay to tell us about her grandson’s experience with Youtube. She proceeded to amaze us with the story of Mariah and Bill on Youtube. Bill is now twenty years old, but he began this endeavor when he was eighteen. Today, she said he makes sixty thousand dollars a month doing these stupid funny videos. Then it happened. the focus of the meeting was a discussion on how we could do the same as a group of seniors making money of Youtube. Our friend John piped up, “we could start filming old people in their underwear.” we all laughed hilariously, then began to offer ideas for clips like wearing thongs and speedos, or vintage versus modern, etc. I piped up that I’d like to see the women in the group in their thongs, they all moaned. Then I said “I have a vision of us all wearing TENA diapers.” another longer and louder moan.

The night went on for several minutes of new ideas and lots of laughter. Although it began as a stupid idea, I thought why not? Instead of “Mariah and Bill” about two twenty year olds we could film “Kay and Joe” about two eighty year olds mimicking their grandchildren’s antics and posting them on Youtube and TicTok. Maybe we could supplement our meager retirement income with a shot of new money. If nothing else we would offer the viewing audience some serious laughter. At worst we would have a lot of fun doing something out of the ordinary for senior citizens.

Take a look at the linked videos and tell me if you think Kay and Joe have a chance to be stars of Youtube and TikTok

Filed under: Aging, Biography, Humor | Tagged: Monetizing, Stupid stuff, TikTok, YouTube | Leave a comment »