Category Archives: Technology

May 16, 2012 · 0:00

No, Google, No!

I am what I am because of Google.  Really.

B.G. — Before Google, I was just a regular person.  I knew how to research, knew what books were, where to find them, how to answer certain questions from them.  There were computers, but they were really more for word processing.

Finding out stuff on the internets was just staring, at least for me, fresh from an 8 year “mommy break.”  There were things called “search engines.”  There was “Yahoo” (always a stupid name).  There was “Web Crawler” (Eewwww.  Will I get dirty?)  There was “Ask Jeeves” (for what, I often wondered — a shrimp fork?  A finger bowl?).  But none of these engines had much horsepower.

And then came Google.  And like Athena, the Greek Goddess of wisdom, Google gave me all knowledge — all I had to do was ask.

At my last job in a large international bureaucracy, someone told me about Google in 1999.  I don’t know when you learned about it, but it was news to me.

It took me a while to share.

Now, I wasn’t really greedy.  But suddenly I could find out stuff that made me look brilliant.

Who is the newly appointed Health Minister of Bangladesh?

Who is in charge of HIV research in Thailand?

What was the name of Myanmar before it was Myanmar?  (OK, my bosses knew that one and I didn’t —  but I could pretend I did, which is just as effective with the right snide look on your face.  Google made us geographically challenged Americans look awesome.)

Before I let on, everybody thought I was amazing.  (It’s a good feeling.)

Eventually I shared my secret.  But they already thought I was brilliant.  I just had to keep up the ruse.  Which is way easier than starting from scratch.

So imagine my dismay when I received the following headline in an email message that popped onto my office computer screen when I had a tight deadline:

Google revamps search, tries to think more like a person

Which person are they going to think like?  Will I like what they think?  What if they think like George W. Bush?  Elizabeth Hasselback?  Judge Judy?  Someone else with neither brains, nor heart nor soul? What if Google thinks like John Boehner — shallow and obtuse and tearful?

Google, please don’t change.  You know if you do this, you’ll take another little piece of my heart.

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May 11, 2012 · 0:00

Word Press, Quit Messin’ With Us

It’s been a fun week, now, hasn’t it, Word Press.

You did some really good things this week, like Fresh Pressin’ two of my favorite bloggers, Darla at She’s A Maineiac and Nancy at NotQuiteOld.

And, through Fresh Pressed (which I don’t usually bother with), I stumbled onto a woman who is stomping in my old stomping grounds and blogging about it at The Adventures of Miss Widget.  She has some great pictures of towns and vineyards near Geneva, Switzerland.

But

You knew it was coming.  There is always a “but.”

But automatically subscribing me to every comment on every blog I comment on, well that was nasty.  Of course, it did give me inspiration for my entry into K8did’s first round in her 7 Deadly Sins contest:   Gluttony.

But then it got worse.

Because today I found out that nobody was writing anything.  Nope.  My Fiftyfourandahalf@gmail.com email address was empty when I woke up and it continues to be empty.  Because instead of sending me emails when my bloggin’ buddies post, and when I want to read the comments of folks commenting on some, but not all, well, Word Press, you aren’t doing that any more.

We all have our own preferences, styles and management techniques for reading, commenting, reading comments, etc.  Can we please just keep our own preferences instead of yours?

Let me say this simply:

Word Press, Quit Messing With Us.

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April 17, 2012 · 0:00

Back from Beyond

As you may know, today the Shuttle Discovery took its last flight, from Florida to here in DC, where it will go on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va.

But first it did a victory lap around Washington, DC.  From my office perch across the Potomac, I had a window on the flight.  These pictures were taken by my colleague, Julie Pearce.

 

From my office window. Photo credit: Julie Pearce

And this one:

Photo credit: Julie Pearce

And yup, I’m a lucky girl; I get paid to sit here.

 

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April 17, 2012 · 0:00

To Infinity and Beyond

Monday, Dr. Jim Yong Kim was formally elected to be the next president of the World Bank.  He will take office in June.

Now in recent years, the World Bank has become a wee bit politicized.  And that was even before Paul Wolfowitz became president 10 years ago.  But the mission, the real mission of the World Bank is to reduce poverty and help the people in the less developed world develop.  Dr. Kim is the first president of the World Bank who has worked towards ending illness and its impact on world poverty.  And as our own debates here in the US have shown us, an enormous factor in perpetuating poverty is “mortality and morbidity” — sickness and the toll it takes on society.

Jim Kim is a doctor and anthropologist who has spent his life helping fight poverty and disease.  He co-founded Harvard’s Partners in Health to help get healthcare to folks in developing countries.  He was the head of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS Program, President of Dartmouth University and now President of the World Bank.

Not to mention, a seriously cool rapper:

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Filed under Health and Medicine, Humor, Science, Technology

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March 31, 2012 · 0:00

Who Am I?

Even before computers I found a lot to laugh at.  But since computers?  I’ve found that it’s hard to not laugh at whatever happens to appear in front of my eyes, magically, through the tubes that are the internets.

Just now, while sitting alone here at my kitchen table, sipping a cuppa, I laughed loudly enough to wake up Cooper, who is stone deaf.  Yup, it was that funny.

What was it?  What could it be?  What could make me stop writing what I was writing to share a laugh?

Well, I really don’t know how it happened.  Or I don’t know how I got to the starting gate.  You see, I was Googling pictures for a post when I suddenly found myself at Moondustwriter’s Blog.  I had never seen it before; it’s a photography blog, and the picture on this particular post was a beautiful shot of a rocky beach in the moonlight.  It looks like Maine to me, and I love Maine.  The accompanying poem was beautiful too.  But not being a poetry lover, I was quickly distracted by what I saw on the sidebar:

Can you see it there on the bottom right?  I write like Mark Twain.  Pretty cool, don’t cha think?  Of course, I wanted to know who I write like.  So I clicked on the link.

Wait, wait, come back!  Don’t you want to know what happened next?  Don’t you want to know who it is I write like?  Or like whom I write?

Well, I looked at my list of favorite blog pieces, and chose what I thought was my best:  Both Sides Now, my story about how all my family members die on holidays.  And I learned :

Wow!

Cool.  I like Kurt Vonnegut, but I never considered myself in his league, or even remotely like him.  But I’m guessing the dark humor is Vonnegut-esque.  Interesting.

But, I wondered, are all my posts so dark?  I didn’t think so, so I plugged in another piece:  Downsizing, a story of how hard it is to resist stuff.

And lo and behold, I write like Chuck Palahniuk, who I’d never heard of.  I immediately went to Amazon.com and ordered all of his books though.  That is, of course, what I want anyone who hasn’t heard of me to do when they find that they write like me.  Here’s a sample:

Look, it's even got my face on the cover!

Again, I wasn’t sure that either of these two posts really reflected just who I am.  I mean, my blog is a mish-mash of stuff.  So I tried it again.  And again.  And again.

  • I entered my About page:  David Foster Wallace (damn, more books to buy).
  • I entered Take Me Back, about how Sarah Palin thinks that President Obama wants to go back to pre-Civil War days:  H. P. Lovecraft
  • I entered Color My World, my recent piece about Redbud trees:  Margaret Atwood.  Hey, I’ve read HER!

Lastly, I entered Great Balls of Fire, my piece about my neighbor Beau who built Tara Oaks, and who, I’m sure will soon host Civil War reenactments on his meadow:  this time I was Margaret Mitchell.

Apparently I am either wildly talented or have a multiple personality disorder.

Here’s the link.  Let me know who you are!

Hey, wait, I need to keep checking the link until I find that I am, in fact, Victor Hugo.

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Filed under Awards, Conspicuous consumption, Humor, Music, Technology

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