The Learning Curve -- Starbucks and T-Mobile

Where I am now: inching my way upward, painfully slow.

You are supposed to be able to open your lap-top computer, in Starbucks, and other "hot spots" provided by twenty-first century businesses, and have free immediate access to the internet. Exciting.

But leaning how to do that is a chore.  Since it is such a new idea, it is not set up nicely as a plug and play feature. No one seems to be able to tell you to do this...step one, step two, etc.

I find you have to subscribe to the service via T-mobile wireless.  Just contacting them has been my first chore.  Their web site gave me fits. You have to have a password.  You can get the password by entering your T-Mobile cell phone number on line, and they send you the password on your cell phone.  Then you put the password online and...well, I don't know and what.  Several tries brought only the message:  "Your password is            ."    Blank?  That was no help so I tried telephoning.

Finding their telephone number is difficult.  You'd think a big company with something to sell would be easy...but it isn't.  You get connected all right, to a recorded voice and choices of buttons to push...but none of the options seem to fit what you are after.

A trip to the Mall and the T-Mobile kiosk was no help either.  They had lots of phones to sell, but little help to offer.  They referred me back to Starbucks.

Back to the telephoe. After three hours on the telephone mostly waiting for the next available representative, I find that there is a $29.99 card that I plug into my lap top, that will enable me to connect to Starbucks free service for a year.

Well, that is something, anyway, and worth a try...where is it available in my city?  NOWHERE.  It IS available in Fresno, and hour's drive away.

And that is where I am on the learning curve, still very near the bottom.

Stay tuned.

Life of Other Worlds

Weekend Assignment #102: Do you honestly think there is life out there in the universe? And if so, what kind of life do you think it is?

Extra Credit: Name your favorite (fictional) alien creature.

Oh, yes. Using Carl Sagan's logic: There are billions and billions of stars, so there must be billions and billions of planets, and some must be suitable for life. So logically life must have evolved, or is evolving, on some. 

It is certainly hard to tell what it would be like.  Just on our own planet we have so many different forms we can't count them all. They might be living boulders, intelligent slugs, or sentient vapors.

As for my favorite fictional alien creature I would have to consider ET, Uncle Martin, and Alf.  Alf would win.  He was amiable, unflappable.  He struggled to keep his alien urges in check.  After all, cats were a delicacy on Melmac where he came from.  It was almost all he could do to keep from swallowing the family pet

Dribblist Intimidated

(This is my fifth start on this entry.  Ho Hum.  Been booted four times, and failed to connect on some retries.  Had it all done once, lacking only the SAVE .. and blooey. Don't know if it my computer, or aol.  Are you having more than usual amount of trouble logging on, staying on, and accessing your blog?)

I took my scooter out day before yesterday in hopes of getting some pictures of the blooming almond trees.  I drove my scooter with one hand and held the camera with the other, and was not paying enough attenttion to my driving, and I tipped the blooming thing over.  I went sprawling on the black top and the camera flew too.

Scooters are squat and heavy, and I didn't even know you COULD tip one over.

Did this eighty one year old man jump up and remount his steed, as legend says one should?  Not exactly.  Two passers by came to my rescue.  One set the scooter up and tried to get me up, but it took two of them... they literally lifted me to my feet.  There were no broken hips, so I mounted the scooter and went in search of first-aid for my scraped elbow.

Today, with band-aid still on my elbow, I ventured to the nearby mall.  I scootered very cautiously, and I was pretty jittery. You can be sure I kept both hands on the tiller. 

We had a nice party today.  My tablemate Jim is 87 years old today, and he decided to treat everybody, residents and staff, to store bought pizza, ice cream cake, and Pepsi Cola. There were balloons and candles and we sang happy birthday.  I would like to give a party like that when my birthday comes.

With any luck, I will get this posted before I get booted again. I didn't, and I have no confidence in this attempt...the next morning.

Trouble with Going to Bed Early

... like 9:30 PM, is that you are ready to get up at 1:00 AM.

   That is not so bad, you can read journals for an hour or two, then make a new entry in your own, then turn in again. 

   Good night.

   2:05 AM

Experiment One -- Not a failure --

   -- Just one more thing that does not work.  You learn from every experiment.  You learn what works, or sometimes, what does NOT.

   From the old folks home, four of us walked to Starbucks, I carried my laptop along, to see how to file a journal entry from the coffee shop.  I ordered latte and asked how to connect to internet from there. 

   "You have to be signed on with T-Mobile."  I am not, but I ought to be able to get as far as the "enter your PIN". 

   So I turned it on, but could not see the screen.  By squinting I could tell that I had excellent signal strength, but could not read anything else on the screen.  I moved to a darker corner, and one of my companions shaded the screen while I struggled. 

   My problem?  I could not find the control to make the screen brighter.  Stumped by a simple problem like that.  I closed it up and brought it home. 

   Where am I on the learning curve?  At the very bottom.... how to make the screen brighter.  Actually I have learned two things. (1) You have to subscribe to T-mobile, and (2) you have to be able to make the screen bright.

   Still to come, someday, an entry, right from Starbucks.

Weekend Assignment #101 -- Your Hidden Talent

Name a hidden talent you have, or wish you had. 

I wish I could play the harmonica. Lord knows, I try.  I took eight lessons at the senior center in Blue Springs, Missouri, about 1995. At that time I could play one song, Oh Susannah. On my one harmonica. 

I learned to play a scale: do, re, me, fa, sol, la, ti, do, in the key of C.  Encouraged I added another harmonica in the key of G.  A scale in G sounded just like a scale in C, only a little higher. I learned another song or two. Home Sweet Home was one.

One by one I added to my collection of harmonicas.  My cousin Paul gave me my first Chromatic harmonica.  You know, with a gear shift to play another key...like adding the black keys on the piano... the half notes.

Then I had a revelation: blow on a harminica and you get a chord.  the major chord that the harmonica is made for.  Draw, inhale, on the upper end and you get a different chord... the second chord of most songs... and draw on the lower end and you get a still different chord, the third chord of most songs and tunes.

Most songs use those three major chords.  Now, as if by magic, by blowing and drawing I could play along with other musicians.  I began to "sit in" with the musical groups that came to play at the old folks home.  I got a set of twelve harmonicas, one in each musical key.  Now I could accompany them whatever they played if they but told me the key they were playing in.

I still cannot solo, I can't carry a tune, but I can play along hitting the right chords from time to time and make an accompanyment that amuses me, at any rate. 

From time to time I get on e-bay and buy more harmonicas... and my collection now numbers sixty or more.  In fact I buy low cost harmonicas by the dozen to give away to people who are interesting in trying to learn as I did... a note at a time in the key of C.

That's my hidden talent.

 

My Own Version of AOL Newsquiz

If you have been reading Dribble for a while, you might be able to answer some of these questions.  As always, run your cursor over the answer space to reveal it.

1. Dribblist Chuck Ferris is in which decade of his life? Thirties, fifties, seventies, eighties? Eighties, He is 81.

2. Which of these modes of transportation has Chuck never operated? His own airplane, An electric scooter, a powerboat, A van, A crew racing shell, Stilts, A unicycle? A pogo stick? He kept falling off the unicycle and the pogo stick. He has operated all the others.

3. Which of these pictures does not show a person named Ferris?

They all do.