I am a big user of online shopping. For Christmas this year other than stocking stuffers I think I bought everything online. Not much can make me more jazzed than free shipping and paying no tax. I like to look at multiple sites and other than the small questionable sites I really don’t have much issue with using my credit card to purchase stuff. I have even ordered stuff directly from China, it took a fair amount of time to get to me but I was very happy with the purchase. Though it is a rarity, every once in a while I find a product is more expensive online and it always makes a dilemma in what I should do. If I have to pay more but I don’t have to pay tax or shipping, where should I purchase it? It always seems to work out to be within a few dollars, and considering how many retail stores have closed over the last five years I feel guilty not helping them out. If the current trend continues there will only be restaurants and smoke shops in our local mall and those will be fighting for the few elderly folks trying to walk the mall for exercise. It is just so easy to sit in my chair and order stuff knowing it will be at my door in a few days. I do like the instant gratification of buying in a store but it is trumped by my cheapskatedness. Pretty soon drone delivery of card board boxes to my seat in the local coffee shop is going to kill all local sales, and I can’t seem to decide if this is a good or bad thing!

I have a very important presentation due tomorrow. It isn’t like I haven’t started on it, I have worked on it for over six months. The problem is while I should be concentrating on getting it done I am finding amazing ways to be distracted. Like rearranging the files on my drive or fixing the display resolution. I even find time to look on Facebook and accept some friend requests. All this is doing is prolonging the inevitable, last-minute cramming. What I did notice is how creative I am about things that are not the most urgent, other projects have come to my mind and I have noted great things I need to do on those, just not today! I have also found I need to stop installing multiple note taking software and just use the one I got. Each of these has one cool feature that I want but downloading all of them and putting one note in it, which is to never be found again is also very distracting. I have started cleaning my desk and washed my coffee cup, caught up on my Bible reading and sent off emails that needed sending. The thing I haven’t done is finish the presentation. The problem may be that the more I look at it the less satisfied I am with it or that really it will never be done. Tomorrow it will be presented, at whatever state of completion it is in no matter how much effort I give it. So perhaps my search for the perfect sports activity wristband on Amazon can continue with a little less guilt.

The other day the Geekdom was set all a flutter when scientists announced they had figured out how to make a light saber. Not just a replica but an actual real working light saber. Never mind that it would be an impractical weapon, with not much use. It is an icon of science fiction and just being able to have a real one would probably be at the top of more than a few parental basement dwellers lists of must haves. It is amazing really to think that scientists can figure this stuff out. Some of the things from shows when I was a kid are now common place thanks to some smart guy using all his brain power and knowledge to create which was once the dream of some potentially drug induced science fiction writer. Things like automatic doors. I remember watching Star trek and seeing them walk from room to room with the doors automatically opening and closing behind them. From what I heard, those doors had to be manually opened and closed by people who were just on the other side with a hand pump or something. Now I run into doors at the supermarket when they don’t open in time or I missed triggering the sensor. It seems that there is a good healthy relationship between Science fiction and real Science. One is the dreamer of  what can be and the other is the maker of reality. Science has to have a great grasp of how things really work in our world to be able to apply those principles to solve problems. Science fiction does not apply rules or logic, it merely says “what if”. Of course not all of what is dreamed can be real, for example I am still waiting on my transporter, but if no one ever dreamed beyond what we have today we would all probably still be living in tents in the desert.

I don’t know if over the weekend you saw the newest Toyota commercial. It starts with two guys sitting on a porch, one of them playing the guitar the other singing. The message of the commercial is that the world is in bad shape, but our cars are good! I don’t know who the marketing genius was who put this one together but I don’t think he will keep his job if this is the best he can do. Either that or they really think we are all idiots. Do they believe that having a specific car is going to make the world OK? Will going fast with our head out the window solve our problems? Maybe if I was a dog! Perhaps in the days of the Soviet Union you could have sold cars this way, but I don’t think that flies with those of us who have been around a while. I do not believe we have to accept that the way it is now is some kind of new “Normal”. This country was founded by people who refused to accept the way things were. They envisioned a better tomorrow and then went about making it happen at great personal expense. How can we now sit here and say, this is as good as it is going to get! I am not going to get political or tell you what to do, what I am going to say is it is time for all of us to do something! When marketing companies start using the fact that things are not good to sell you stuff, you know something is definitely amiss.

A few years back we were going to California to spend Christmas with my family. I thought it would be fun to take the train. So we called to find out how much it would cost. Turns out it would have cost us about five times more per person to ride over flying. That quickly killed that dream. I get the draw of a train ride, it would have allowed us to enjoy the countryside and views along the way, but it would have also taken a couple of days each way. I hate being jammed into an airplane, I do not enjoy the process of going through security and finding your gate in what tries to be an overpriced and over crowded mall. Driving in my car is cheaper but takes a few days like the train but sitting in a car for that long gets to your backside. Really, I could make it in one day but it is easier to do in two. While it can be annoying it gives me an option and if I look at my saving account and see a lack of funds It makes my decision easy to make. I would have probably enjoyed the train but when I can be annoyed for a few hours and arrive at my destination for a few hundred dollars it really isn’t even a question, which I will do. I really think it is too bad that the train is not an option, but the days of trains for travel are really long gone.

As I waited in the ritual line of lunch warmers counting down the time until the microwaves release their food. I wondered, what is next? My food said to nuke it for four minutes, the person in front of me said, “how can a few minutes take so long?” Think about it, before the microwave you had to warm your food in an oven, on the stove or maybe a toaster. Lunch would have to be cold or it would take a while to heat it up. Now I bring in a frozen meal and in minutes I have a roof of my mouth burning meal. But what is next? What will replace the microwave? You have to think that someone out there is trying to figure that out. Some technology company has to be working on some device that just flashes and your food is cooked. What about a combination of food creating and cooking, some sort of molecular converter that materializes the food and heats it at the same time. I saw an article about a burrito vending machine which allows you to pick your fillings which it then puts into a tortilla and dispenses to you. I see this replacing your Taco Bell down the street, why not something that replaces the need to carry food with us? Maybe the next phase is not complete creation but an expanding food machine. You carry something the size of a bouillon cube throw it in the machine and it pops out a three course meal. This would at least make the line for the microwave a bit shorter.

I keep looking at things being announced this week at the CES show in Las Vegas. Being a tech geek I love to see all the new things, my problem is I can’t afford any of them. It wasn’t that long ago I finally got rid of my old Sony tube TV for HD. Now they have they have 4K. I just packed up all the VHS and put it in the attic and now the Blue ray player is out of date! How many formats do I must have to be able to watch my old movies? The 4K looks impressive but until it comes down to Walmart pricing I will be watching my movies old school, and by old school I mean on my Roku or Apple TV or Direct TV, Blue Ray or DVD. At what point will there be no higher resolution or brighter pixels or newer format so I can finally buy one device and not have to replace it a year later? I guess the answer is, when there are no more companies trying to make money!

The Consumer Electronics Show is happening this week in Las Vegas. CES is where all the companies who make stuff we wasted all our Christmas cash on try to show off this year’s model of stuff we don’t need, but want really bad. At least that is their hope, they show off all kinds of technology which may or may not become final products or if they do they will be off the market by march. I don’t know how these companies figure out what they think we will want, whether by research or witch doctor but many seem to be looking a tea leaves instead of anyone I know when it comes to figuring out what to build. One thing I saw today that was announced was a whole line of appliances that can text and email you. Like the ones a few years ago that had TV’s in the door, I am not sure that other than having my frig text me that the light actually goes off when I close the door I don’t see how this would be useful. Maybe if they could connect it to the other hot item wearable tech wristbands, to lock the door when ever I try to open the freezer to get the ice cream. Perhaps they could work together to shock me when I scoop out more than one serving or send disparaging text to the band or my iPhone, about how fat I till I put the carton back. Other great uses might be to allow me to add more time to the drier using my phone if my clothes aren’t dry. Then again they could just make a dryer that actually dries my clothes all the way the first time. Either of these would allow me to keep eating the ice cream the refrigerator let me have.

Asking someone who their favorite band is can be an ordeal you are not ready for. On one of the casual Friday’s I have written about before I saw a co-worker wearing a Pink Floyd Dark side of the Moon tee-shirt. I jokingly made a remark about the band and an hour later realized I had made a huge mistake. Some can take or leave bands or music others have made these bands life coaches. I had a great friend who used to follow his favorite band along the west coast when they played seeing them in every city he could get to. When remarking about the band you could see the pain in his eye’s if it was not favorable. I am not sure what happened to him when they broke up but I’m sure it put his life into a tail spin. He probably had to seek out a new band or perhaps he started attending church, something had to fill the void left. I love music but I just can’t get that into any band. Too many times I have thought of them as role models only to find out their lives are less than admiral. The ability to write good lyrics and string notes together in a pleasing fashion is a great skill I wish I had, but it doesn’t require the person to be an upstanding person. In fact, it seems that this ability is contrary to being well-adjusted in many cases. So as I listen to my eighties rock on Spotify, I will enjoy it not put my hope in it.

How hard can it be to find a chair? The Dad chair as I call it, the chair I sit in and tell the kids to get out of, is on its last leg. I tried to repair it; I used a coat hanger to keep the broken spring in place. I also took a hammer to the other spring which came out of the clip that kept it in place. In the last three weeks I have flipped over the chair to put these fixes back in place twice but they just aren’t going to make it much further. So I went to the local warehouse of furniture to find a replacement. Can I find the same chair? Could they have any chairs in the same color? No! So keeping the perfectly fine ottoman is out of the question. Will they have a chair that perhaps matches the couch we bought there, no! I don’t remember spending that much on a chair the last time and I certainly don’t want to spend that much this time around either. This place has more salesmen than a car dealer and if another one asks me if they can help me I am going to kick some shin. After the third store I wonder how they can name a chair with a price tag that high a “Lazyboy”.  Perhaps a little more coat hanger and hammering will make my old faithful last until a neighbor puts their old faithful out at the curb. Then I could use it and mine to make one good one from the parts.