IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Taking Away - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Looking up the definition of "takeaway" using Google, I found it defined as "a key fact, point or idea to be remembered, typically one emerging from a discussion or meeting". In recent years however, I've been finding something beyond that definition.

We seem to have entered an era where there has often been impetus to do as much harm as possible to as many people as possible by taking away as many things as possible. Please consider the following examples.

1.    After many decades, our town sanitation department decided to take away making trash pickups from cans placed in homeowners' yards. Trash receptacles must now be brought by residents to and from the curb. Being in my mid-seventies and having survived four heart attacks, my outlook on this decision is less than charitable.

http://longisland.news12.com/news/town-of-hempstead-eliminates-backdoor-garbage-pickup-1.11984660     (This URL now deleted.):

2.    The local MTA decided to take away bus service from many parts of this community. As a result, there is no longer any public bus service that passes within walking distance of my home.

3.    For many years, our local electric utility provided postage-paid envelopes with its monthly bills. There was once a radio inteview with a utility company executive who explained that doing so enhanced the rate of prompt remittances from the customer base which was of significant financial benefit.

On September 7, 2018, this slip of paper came in the mail to announce that a decision to take away those postage-paid envelopes.

I have no faith at all in the "security" of paying bills on line which seems to be the company's goal to have customers do. In that regard, I detect the fine hand of newly minted, still wet behind the ears, MBA bean counters and yes, I do mean to exude contempt.

4.    The New York Times has taken away printed television schedules:

I find the attitude of this article's author to be contemptuous of much of The New York Times readership. As written, I infer that those of us who still avail ourselves of on-air broadcasting are not worthy of Ms. Bahr's nor other staff's attention.

I surmise that the real reason for this discontinuance is cost cutting, but that aspect is not mentioned.

5.    Quantity Per Box

The upper box of 190 count has replaced the lower box of 210 count. Of course, this kind of product shrinkage is by no means unprecedented.

6.    Grocery Shopping Hours

We can no longer depend on unfettered grocery store access. Look at these two photos of a nearby King Kullen:

However, for all of the above annoyances (which is what I say most of them are), much more serious takings away have also been seen being attempted and committed in recent years.

These have been earnest efforts made at taking away people's health care access, taking away people's voting opportunities, taking away people's food, taking away people's homes, taking away people's children and most tragically of all, with denials of biological reality and for lack of simple medical common sense, the taking away of people's lives.

Dashed Hopes - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

First:

There used to be a movie theater on Sunrise Highway in Massapequa where we saw Star Trek IV. That was the story about Kirk and company using a Klingon Bird of Prey to bring 20th Century whales into the 23rd Century in order to save Earth from apparent doom. I enjoyed hearing Spock ask Kirk in one great stressful moment if that was a good time for "a colorful metaphor". Sadly, just a few weeks later, that movie theater was shut down and the building was razed.

Not too much later, I saw new construction taking place on that site which looked to me like a new movie theater being put up. My hopes were further raised when I saw a big sign that said "Infiniti". Wow! The first movie they were going to show would be a new sci-fi epic. I wanted that new theater to hurry up and get built so I could see this new film.

I didn't know then that "Infiniti" was a brand new name for a car and that the building was only going to be a car dealership.  (Sigh.)  It's still there, by the way.

Second:

In the summer of 1956, Warner Brothers released a movie called "The Animal World". It was an animated documentary about the history of life and was billed as covering all that was known in paleontology at the time.

OH MY did I ever want to see that.

There had been a "still" from this movie published in Mechanix Illustrated and just to further whet my appetite, I met another kid who had a comic book of "The Animal World". To my dismay though, I couldn't find that comic book in any store for myself.

Each day I would see this movie's ads in the newspapers and each day I asked my parents to take me to see it. Unfortunately, we had to be someplace on this weekend and had to go somewhere else on the next weekend and .......   

Of course, going to see it during the work week was simply out of the question and as the days went by, I knew that this movie was going to be gone soon and I was sure that it would never come back.

Finally!!! On the last Saturday of August 1956, my Dad took me to the Parsons Boulevard theater in Jamaica to see it. According to an ad in The Daily News, that Saturday was going to be the last day in which "The Animal World" would be featured. We arrived at the theater and......   The film's last day had been the day before on Friday. When we'd arrived, it was gone.

I waited through the next forty years in hopes that it might one day be shown on television but that never happened. Years and years and years later, I found a newspaper article about disintegrations of old movie films as a consequence of neglect and improper storage. Several films were cited as having been destroyed this way and, yes, "The Animal World" was one of them. There was nothing left of it except for a few feet of film scraps.   

(Another sigh.)

Outdated Browser Issue - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

A lot of this kind of thing has been happening over here lately:

This PC is running 32-bit Windows Vista which dates back pretty far and unfortunately, within that version of Windows, no further browser updates will work. I can't update Firefox, I can't update Chrome and so it goes.

I've kept this version of Windows all this time because I need/want to keep running the drawing tool Paintbrush which is from even further back in time and which had originally come from Windows 3.1. For a variety of reasons, I have never identified a satisfactory drawing tool replacement for Paintbrush and later versions of Windows won't allow Paintbrush to work.

If I want to update my browser, I have to update my Windows and if I update my Windows, I sacrifice my Paintbrush. This is why I have been holding on so tenaciously to the 32-bit Windows Vista but now that's becoming more and more of a problem.

There's another PC here running 64-bit Windows Vista, yet another running Windows 10, neither of which, of course, will allow Paintbrush to function. Designated as PBRUSH (see below), one can try for compatibility usage of Paintbrush with earlier Windows versions as follows:

However, the only result of trying for emulation of any of the earlier Windows versions is a display like this:

In short, Dear User, the effective Microsoft response to my wanting to use Paintbursh with later verions of Wndows is: "Go away, boy. You bother me!!"

In point of fact, over my years and decades of tangling with various Windows issues of one kind or another, I have never seen any legacy software operate successfully with any attempted choice of "Compatibility".

Have you?

Wisdom - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Now and then, the genuine thing really does come along.

This came to me via a neighborhood bulletin board. The person who posted it there didn't know who authored it, but told me that the Facebook participant suggested passing it along:

A Three-Way Table Lamp Socket Revisited - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Back in August 2020, only seventeen months ago at the time of this writing, I described a three-way table lamp socket breaking down. I replaced that socket and wrote it up at the following URL and included the "Burned Bulb Contact" image below:

https://licn.typepad.com/my_weblog/2020/08/a-three-way-table-lamp-socket-john-dunn-consultant-ambertec-pe-pc.html

Guess what! The replacement socket I installed back then has also failed and it failed in the same way as the first socket did:

What especially annoys me is that this then new socket is labeled "250W" and it was being used with a 50-100-150 Watt bulb for which the lower power fifty watt filament is the one that started flickering as the burned contact was failing, not the higher power filament.

I'd say there is at the very least something of a derating inadequacy at work here.

So, I've replaced the socket again and I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens next.

Firefox Sidebars - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

It seems to have taken place some while ago because I am finding already on line commentary about this topic, but it just happened to happen to me here and I am very disconcerted. The browser Mozilla Firefox appears to have been purged of its screen display sidebars.

For illustration, here's the issue with the Bookmarks Sidebar:

The lower screen picture shown here is from the updated Firefox on my laptop in which I no longer have access to most of the bookmarks I once had. It had been a long list. Using the new bookmark tools, I seem to have access to only a small fraction of those entries via the new "Most Visited" and the new "Other Bookmarks". The new "Bookmarks Toolbar" is nowhere near to being any kind of adequate sidebar replacement.

Much of my complete set of bookmarks seems to have vanished.

Additionally troublesome is that I had very carefully arranged my bookmarks in alphabetical order and now their order of presentation, those bookmarks I can still find, is helter-skelter-scrambled. I cannot rearrange those in the "Most Visited" list and while those in the "Other Bookmarks" list are movable, I think that some seem to have been re-titled against my preferences.

The upper screen picture shown here is from my desktop PC which is running 32-bit Windows Vista which thankfully will not accept an 'updated' browser and therefore has not lost its bookmarks content nor its site access capability.

In a similar vein, the History Sidebar is gone too. That one is less of a loss, but it too ain't there no more.

Has someone lost their mind??

Convenient site access via the Bookmarks Sidebar was the primary reason I preferred the Firefox browser over Chrome or Edge or whatever else. Sidebar removal is now a huge headache as I try to find some other way of efficiently navigating the internet.

Comments?

Hospital Atrocities, Part 2 - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

If you haven't yet read the first essay, please see the following URL and then come back here.

https://licn.typepad.com/my_weblog/2021/12/hospital-atrocities-john-dunn-consultant-ambertec-pe.html

I was in telephone contact today with the Patient Advocate at the above hospital to whom I explained my concerns with the previously described experiences. I don't claim to be an expert interpreter of human response signals, but I think what I spoke of made an impression, especially about the toxicity of the institutional culture. At least I hope so because lives will be at stake.

I have seen such toxicity before.

As an extreme example, I was once employed at this one company where across the hall from my desk there was a row of offices with the corner office occupied by someone from whom over and over again I heard profanity after profanity after profanity emanating from that person's voice.

At one point I started keeping count and within fifteen minutes I heard profanity-1 shouted twelve times, profanity-2 shouted fifteen times, profanity-3 shouted nine times and so forth. (Let your imagination guide you as to what those profanities were. I don't want to actually repeat them.)

As loud as those were, there was an even louder shout at one point of "What?? He's going to get tough with ME?????"

What really astonished me next was the realization that those utterances were also being uttered by mid-level supervisors and even by secretarial staff. The whole environment was hostile, nasty, repugnant and I'll let you fill in any additional adjectives.   

Maybe this was more extreme than the hospital situation was, but it illustrates how top-down abusiveness can permeate and even poison an organization.

Yes, I eventually walked out.

Cattleya Alliance - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Back in that orchid greenhouse at Planting Fields Arboretum, this turned up.

"Cattleya Alliance" refers to a large group of separately identified orchids of which this specimen is only one type. Which type, I have no idea. Maybe the "NL" is supposed to be the identifier.

What struck me at first was the intricacy of the variegation and what struck me second was learning from my wife that among orchid fanciers, it's the colors that are prized and not this apparently commonplace sort of intricate variegation that so caught my inexperienced eye.

For the true Orchid fancier, the sameness of color across this bloom would probably elicit little more than a ho-hum.

Oh, well.

Noticing More Things - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Is someone actually planning to moor a boat along this sidewalk curb?

 

For radiological examinations with feeling?

 

For anyone trying to lose weight?

 

Seen in the produce section of a local supermarket:

 

Fair warning:

Fraud Alert via PEIR - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

We have been participants at the organization PEIR (Personal Enrichment In Retirement) for quite a few years. Many PEIR lecture sessions have been presented at Hofstra University. It is a legitimate organization.

The following message came from PEIR by way of e-mail, albeit some time ago. Still, I thought it worthy of bringing it to your notice:

Eternal vigilance.