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not for her palate
Sunday, January 1 2017
Despite it being both a national holiday and a Sunday, Gretchen put in her usual shift at the bookstore in Woodstock. It's the kind of thing she does for fun, though there is a small paycheck involved. Similarly, a lot of the work I am paid to do is the sort I might otherwise do for fun, and this afternoon I kept obsessing over fussy details in the new multipart reporting features I'd added to the reporting system (of which figuring out how to iterate through an .RTF table was only a part).
This evening, Gretchen made a big pot of Asian noodles with straw mushrooms (which she quickly found "too fungal" for her palate). After watching an episode of Jeopardy, we discovered we had nothing of common interest on the DVR. So I cautiously suggested watching "the least grim episode" of Black Mirror, a show she's been assuming is, much like straw mushrooms, unsuited to her tastes. (She's not a big fan of science fiction, particularly of the dystopian technological variety.) She agreed, and so I started up "San Junipero," the episode that spends near the first half hour in some sort of 1980s beach-side party town with little hint of what it's all about. When I'd watched it the first time, the idea that it could all be some sort of simulated reality was always a given, though Gretchen was less familiar with the show and what its range of possibilities are. At one point she turned to me and asked, "it's all going to be explained, right?" I assured her that it was. I should mention, by the way, that for most of the show I had tears coming out of my eyes; that's how moving the love story is once you know how it all plays out and are watching it again for the nth time.
The exposition, when it arrives, comes as something of an awkward dump. As Gretchen later put it, "Two minutes of two people saying things to each other that two people never actually would." (This is that scene where the older version of Kelly is talking with a nursing home employee who has, for reasons of legalistic altruism, decided to marry the Kelly's new virtual-world friend.) Other than that, though, Gretchen seemed suitably impressed with the show. I don't know if I'll be able to get her to watch any more episodes (perhaps "Be Right Back" or "Nosedive"). But maybe.
I've been finding that the main problem with cheap no-name Chinese electronics is the garish brightness of their LEDs. Perhaps in China having lots of arbitrarily-colored lights shining from beneath your desk is a sign of wealth and prestige, but all it makes me want to do is grab a paintbrush and a tube of opaque acrylic paint.
Indeed, one of the last things I did before going to bed tonight was painting black paint over some superbright white LED indicators on a USB hub. That hub has little switches for each USB port, which will come in handy when the Kodi-based media computer reboots. Frequently that computer doesn't recognize the IR remote when it comes back up, and it's a pain to reach around in the dark behind a piece of electronics to unplug and replug a USB port. But if the USB port is controlled by a switch, that action is accomplished without much effort, frustration, or wear-and-tear.
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