Life here in Dunwich has become complicated of late. I need to get a new PayPal account open for a project I’m working on. But now you HAVE to have a cell phone number to do that. Very aggravating. I attempted to get the cheapest plan (~$15/mo.) and the cheapest phone but now that combination has bitten me in the butt. The phone won’t do the things that the plan needs to make it work. I spent several hours on with technical support trying to get things working. They sent detailed but cryptic instructions for accomplishing this.
Some of these instructions were like some kind of athletic game show event. Turn on the phone, tap-hold an app, put it on the front screen, pull out the sim card, throw it in the air, catch it with the other hand, pat your head and rub your stomach, sacrifice a goat, say Beetlejuice three times and finally slam the phone into my forehead. And sadly it still didn’t work. But I’ve been accepted onto next season’s Survivor show. Apparently they think I’m willing to do anything.
Well, so be it. I’ll probably get a different phone or plan or both but it has allowed me to wallow in self-pity. I actually had a nightmare last night that was probably brought on by the angst I was feeling about my status as a technophobe. I dreamt I was designing and installing a pharmaceutical process train. And after it was completely done I could see that it would be a death trap for the operators. It would allow highly flammable solvent fumes to come in contact with electrical components that weren’t rated for the hazardous service.
And in the nightmare I was trying to convince management to decommission the equipment I was commissioning without ever using it. It was one of those dreams where it’s obvious there’s no escape but you have no choice but to keep looking for the way out. Maybe I should have blamed Putin’s Price Hike.
Well, anyway, somehow I have to resolve the great smart phone standoff and a whole list of other chores. I’ve got to sell some old lenses, plant some seedlings, get business advice from an expert, make some insurance decisions and figure out what to write about today. And that doesn’t include the fact that I have to catch up on the novel. The last few days I let things slip. Well really I’ve been trying to resolve a problem with the plot. I need to invent some new characters. And it has demotivated me. But I think I figured out what to do.
And it’s raining today. But it’s been a good few days on the site. On Saturday and Sunday I got linked by two aggregators and that accounted for five or six hundred extra readers those days. That was enjoyable. So there have been some wins and some losses. Okay. So, on with the parade! Maybe I’m the the Master of Ceremonies today or maybe I’m the guy with the broom and the trash can cleaning up after the elephants. Either way, I’m moving forward.