Listening, memory, women's voices

My goto PC for the past couple of years, especially during this period of not having a dumb job has been my Samsung Chromebook which was purchased new for about $250 at least three, perhaps four years ago.  The Lenovo notebook, loaded with MSFT software is rarely used.  The Chromebook in combination with the Google apps meets 99% of my computing needs.  I'm spending a bit of time on the Google apps for business which provide additional functionality...and there are jobs out there.

The high point of the day was chatting Brooklyn, an articulate three-year old, who reminded me that we eat turkeys on Thanksgiving and also showed me how to play a simple game involving flipping a bone in a dogs mouth.  Honestly it was about as much fun as can be, especially when she kindly said  "no, do it like this" and successfully landed a bone in the dog's mouth where I had failed.  I listened to here explanation and still failed.  Kindly she reminded me that I needed to "practice, practice, practice."  I will.   It was some of the best corporate training that I've received.  No criticisim, just directions, positive feedback.

For two days I've been dabbling on a Windows 10 upgrade to a desktop other than this one.  Like this it was running Windows 7 Professional and there is no reason to upgrade given the adequacy of W7 and my affinity for the previously mentioned Chromebook.  Windows backup had consumed all of my storage and I had unwisely saved an image of that PC on that PC so this upgrade has involved movement of files, re-visiting of backup approaches, etc.  With all the cloud options (this PC has Dropbox, Google Drive & MS OneDrive installed) it's pretty simply to lose track of what's what, what PCs are synced and simply leaves me with "where did I put that?" questions all the time.  I'd like a true content management system that would allow meta tagging.

In the midst of the upgrade I reached for an open beverage and sent my Amazon Echo three feet to a concrete floor.  There was no apparent damage.  While picking it up I found that the top rotated and thought that I'd broken the case; it's actually another way of adjusting volume and certainly must have other functionality with the ever-expanding Echo.  In conjunction with Amazon Prime it's  very pleasant and simple.  The SONOS system solutions probably provide better sound...actually they do, but that's another topic.

Earlier today I was listening to Minnesota Public Radio while driving about for the small business.  Someone named Amy, a job 'transition' counselor, was being interviewed and was responding to calls from listeners.  It was more helpful than my oddly ended time with the outplacement firm.  There were many tidbits, the best from an incoming call where the guy said the biggest fault in employment is thinking that any company really cares about your success.  This plays into the general premise that most workers today will change jobs every three years.  The caller was correct.  Oddly enough later I received an email advising me of an upcoming survey from the outplacement firm asking how they did in aiding my transition.  My employer paid a lot of money for this service.  I think I should have simply taken the money.

The Windows 10 upgrade involves a bit of staring at the screen and whatever is in front of one. Over the past two years I've been attempting to organize items, thoughts, ideas, images and mental debris.  I put all my USB storage in a pile on top of a PC case after retrieving the components from vehicles, briefcases, envelopes, etc.  They're generally called 'flash drive memory sticks.' That's probably a good name, differentiating them from USB drives, but I remain perplexed on the 'memory' moniker given that I don't remember why I have so many (this is a partial...two more in my left pants pocket) and I can never remember what's on which one... or on any of them for that manner.

[my windows 10 upgrade is now 52% complete...I'm on day two of periodic messing w/ this]

With no particular point to this entire post I'll close with commentary regarding my 12-15 year old beige keyboard (Compaq, now an extinct company [I have a couple more in reserve]).   There's been little use for function keys since WordPerfect/DOS (also Wordstar) but more importantly there is no 'Escape.' [I believe that F3 was FileSave in WordPerfect & Shift+F7 was 'print' in WordStar]