It is week two of installing and learning the ins and outs of my new computer, and I realize that I will not live long enough to learn it all. Between the iPhone, iMac, and all the supporting programs that make the machine useful to me I’ve lost my voice from screaming at them.
I began using a Grammarly program to punctuate better and write more clearly. It needed an update. I did the update, but it bonged me because the Word program I use also required updating. Excuse me? I clicked the link to take me there without any other recourse but to update Word. It is good that Bill Gates no longer works there and lives in a very private place with tons of security because I would be convicted of murder if he wasn’t protected. Why? I’ll tell you. Since I have regularly had to update my Word 365 program, I mistakenly clicked on re-register instead of as a new customer. Then, the fun began. I got into a circular argument about my wrong password or username. I chased and chased using every user name I usually use with every password I have ever used with Microsoft, and all of them failed. All I want to do is give you money for the privilege of using your valuable knowledge, and you give me shit about my passwords! Thank God, Lovely called me to have dinner. I left the room and did not return until this morning. The first thing on my list was to update my Word program so I could then update my brand new Grammarly program and maybe do something productive.
I went to Microsoft directly and used their online order system this time. I defied them by claiming to be a new customer, thinking their AI would treat me more kindly. It worked. I went through as a new customer using my old username without a password. One difference from yesterday was they quoted 69 dollars for WORD 365, but today it was $79.
My future is uncertain, as I look forward to learning how Microsoft has cleverly hidden all of its standard features behind new buttons on new pages to do the same old things. Only then will I finally be able to update Grammarly and attempt to master the wizardly world of English grammar as presented by Grammarly AI.
There are many things in life that I am unsure of, but there is one thing I am certain of, and that is that there is one Supreme Being that initiated the universe. Be it by the big bang, or what ever other method human scientists can attribute to the argument to support the concept for the creation of the Universe. I strongly believe that a single Being existed before the universe. Believing in a Supreme Being is not a matter of religion even though it is often confused as that. In my mind the Supreme Being is a matter of common sense with which we are all endowed.
Planet Earth is merely a single tiny entity within a universe with billions of stars, Nova’s, black holes, comets, and planets spread throughout. What I do not know, nor does anyone, is if there are other planets with life on them. Common sense and the law of probability steer me toward believing there is. I also believe that our knowledge of the universe if infantile, and that the mathematical laws of physics postulated by Einstein are not etched in stone, and can be challenged even if not understood. The limit on the ability to travel faster than light is one of those laws. Life within the Universe is inconceivable without the ability to travel faster that light. Visits to Earth by unidentified peoples can only be possible if they can travel much faster than that the limit which we have calculated within our physics.
The Supreme Being populated planet Earth with humans, and many lifeforms. The Being allowed humans to evolve into their current form. The Supreme Being also made certain that humans would have the ability to survive in this environment. He gave us the resources and the growth of knowledge to extract from Earth all that we need to survive and thrive. Among these resources were air, water, animals, and plant life to provide sustenance. As man evolved he learned to make fire, and to use animal skins to clothe and protect himself from the elements. Man discovered metals within the planet from which he learned to make into tools and weapons. Man learned that he needed protection from predators larger than himself, and he invented weapons to do so.
Fast forward to the twenty-first century in which we live today. Realize how man has evolved and progressed using the Supreme Being’s gifts to us on this planet. We continue to discover new and exciting elements to add to the periodic table, and each one eventually is found to be an essential to life and human development. One resource with which we have learned to use wisely is biological matter. Man has used the resources of the forests and jungles and the sea to his benefit. Trees for wood to build his buildings, to make paper, and foliage to extract chemicals for medicines, and to recycle into compost to nourish the soil in which all these beneficial things grow. At the beginning of the twentieth century man discovered one of the planet’s most useful gifts, oil.
At first, oil was not considered very useful, but man used his mind to discover uses for this mysterious liquid. Initially, he learned that it was a great substitute for keeping his home lighted. Instead of hunting for whales to extract its oils for this purpose, he learned to use kerosene. At each step of man’s evolution, he used the gifts endowed by the Supreme Being to his purpose. Men tamed large animals to carry loads, to till fields, and to transport loads across distances. Then came oil. Man invented mechanical devices to help him with his work. At first, he used the energy derived from burning wood to convert water into steam. After he realized oil could also be burned to produce heat his mind turned to inventing mechanical devices that would use oil to power them.
Man’s genius was stimulated by the Supreme Being’s gift of oil. His invention and knowledge expanded exponentially by using chemistry to separate oil into many components. The process was called distillation, and has yielded fine lubricating oil, tar, kerosene, gasoline, and more. We all know that gasoline is one of the most beneficial gifts we have on the planet. From oil came more gifts as chemists invented new materials using oil as a feedstock for plastics. Plastics may be a bigger gift to humanity than is gasoline. The number of different plastics and their applications are nearly endless, and many have become indispensable in our lives.
Man has not stopped inventing new uses for the gifts bestowed to us by planet earth. Yet we do not seem to appreciate that these are gifts, as is our intellect to invent, and to use them for our benefit. Throughout the entire evolution of man, he has adapted his circumstances to the gifts bestowed upon him. We are but now beginning to learn how to harness the power of wind and the rays of the sun to power our lives. What man does not want to believe is that the knowledge to turn solar and wind power into useful tools may take a century to develop. Man is over-looking the existing gifts he has been bestowed and dumping them in favor of the under developed resources of solar, and wind before there is a crucial need for them to be used. True, we need to develop them, but we don’t need to panic by leaving our greatest resource in favor of an infantile industry that at this time is not essential nor ready to do the job.
No doubt, man is correctly thinking about developing replacements for our most essential power source, but the time table to do so is not urgent. We have hundreds of years of fossil fuels remaining to consume before wind and solar become an emergency. As the time draws nearer to the end of fossil fuel, man will put his brain into high gear to shift the source of power towards his emergent needs.
Assuming man will succeed in electrifying the planet to eliminate fossil fuels he will be left with the horrifying prospect of finding substitutes for making plastics. Man has not thought this problem through to its finality. Think of a world without plastic. Think of plastic within your own life. Your clothes, tools, shoes, packaging, furniture, housing components, just to name a few are all composed with plastics. Man will be forced to continue to refine fossil fuels to make these products.
The elimination of fossil fuels is a direct rejection of the gift endowed upon him by the Supreme Being. Who is man to be so forward as to reject a magnificent gift as this from the Being? In my statements above, I exposed my belief in a Supreme Being, and now I want to expose another belief which is that for every positive in our life there is an equal and opposite negative. What this leads to is an equally negative Being that counteracts the positive one. The current rejection of the positive Being’s gift may be the work of His negative counter-force. There has to be some explanation for why such a beautiful gift is being rejected by man in favor of the current pipe dream to abandon the gift of fossil fuels to that of under developed power sources.
Jumping into an electric world before we are ready to convert completely away from fossil fuels is a mistake that will condemn planet Earth to extinction. Will we have to retrogress away from forward evolution and increased knowledge to achieve the goal of purifying the air, water and earth of pollutants? Do we really want to evolve backward to the Cro-magnon man who lived on a pristine planet Earth, and feared for his life from other larger carnivores, but breathed only the air polluted only by the gasses of volcanic eruptions?
The conclusion I want to direct the reader toward is to re-examine his conclusions about electrifying Earth completely before it is necessary, or even possible.
Today is the first day of the rest of my life, and it is time to set some new goals. Number one on the list is to create a memorial for my second wife Peggy. It is time that the world learns about how beautiful she was. I can’t promise that it will be today, or tomorrow, but it will take place this winter.
Second on my list is to finish the workshop of my dreams.
Third is to design a new Intarsia pattern and to execute the work for display.
Fourth is to fill my garden with Whirligigs all happily spinning away in unison.
Fifth is to retire from retirement from the Frankfort Lions Club
Sixth is to love my family as much as I can.
Seventh is to beat the squirrel
Eighth is to blow up the Apple facility responsible for scrambling the contents of my iMac with their endless need for passwords and updates trying to make my desktop into an iPhone
Lastly, eight goals as lofty as those listed are enough for any man my age.
Memorialize PeggyRetire from Retirement LionsWhat happens to Apple the next time they revise my iMac!Love my FamilyNew IntarsiaBEAT THE SQUIRRELFinsish Shop of my DreamsFill the yard with spinning wingsDream about Apple’s Next revision backing up!
It seems like just a few minutes ago I woke up. Yet here it is almost noon, and I am just getting to my desk to write something. Time is important to me, and at this age I relish every moment the Lord grants me. It is my opinion that when time “flies” everything is going well, and my happiness index is high. It is when time slows to a “crawl’ that I believe something is seriously wrong.
An example of what I mean when I say time is at a “crawl” is when I am in severe pain as when I had a kidney stone traversing my plumbing last year. It seemed like eternity to get to where it was headed, and I thank God it was a small stone which kept moving. Had it stopped along the way time would have stopped for me, and my happiness index would have dropped to zero. As it was my happiness was almost non-existent. I guess that is what Einstein meant when he postulated his theory that time is relative.
The planet earth is a mere 4.6 billion years old, and the universe is calculated to be 13.7 billion years. When we look at an average life span of man on earth of 78 years we are but a tiny drop in the bucket.
Take an average human who is 78 years old and divide by 4,600,000,000 years then multiply by 100 equals 0.00001695 percent of the total time we exist. I don’t think we can measure things that small using normal devices. Given such a short life span we have to really put our lives into high gear to amount to anything. I guess that might be why it bothers me when I lose a morning to mundane activities instead of amazing, exciting, meaningful actions. What is more surprising is that even with all of the time I waste, that I can count my accomplishments with pride. What scares me is that the time I have ahead of me is far shorter than that which I have lived. It tells me to get off my ass and accomplish something before the last grain of sand passes through the orifice of life’s hour glass. It tells me to take those baby steps, and to take them very fast.
Why I don’t know, but this idea came to me in a dream. Maybe it was the result to a fruitful board meeting with my Lions Club, or maybe it was the cookie I had before going to bed. I dreamed that I stood before my Lions Club and asked them to close their eyes and visualize a scene that our tiny club just completed a fund raising drive and we raised a million ($1,000,000.00) dollars. We’d be so happy, jumping up and down happy. Now begin to see all the things you would use that money to serve our community. What would we do? Now visualize yourself writing down all the possibilities.
The dream wouldn’t end. I just kept looking for answers to my question, how would we use the million to serve our community? Frankfort is a small town (20,000). It is not by any means poor, but there are folks among us that can use help. Nevertheless, we have social network systems in place, we have school districts flush with cash, we have a park district with twenty-eight separate parks scattered throughout the town. Our roads are in good condition, we have street signs and street lights, a public library, several urgent care centers, and get this, four supermarkets, four pharmacies, four fire houses, a 38 man police department and the list goes on. Push harder, you have to dream up how to serve the community with the million dollar treasury.
In my dream, I struck out of any ideas. That is until I began to see new immigrants coming into town. In the past year the USA has allowed two million new immigrants to enter, half of them legally, the other half just walk in and get lost. They will need housing, but there is no low cost housing in Frankfort, perhaps we should develop a tiny house community, or a free eye clinic for vision problems, or a Lions re-sale shop to compete with Goodwill, the Resale Shoppe, and Evelinas’s Red Dresser. Probably the most realistic idea is to build a not for profit business which would serve the club, and the community as a meeting or party venue. You know, a dance hall with a bar and kitchen.
Actually, I am going to present this exercise to the Frankfort Lions Club, and this post is the first draft of a script that I will use. Let me know if you have any ideas to add.
