The following questions come from the weekly Friday 5 blog. Scrivener says, "Please feel free to define TV anyway you wish." - For me TV is well, TV, computer, tablet and smart phone. Mostly I watch TV on my Mac.
BTW, when was the last time you saw a TV with a dial on it?
1. What’s the most boring thing on TV?
Too much to mention. There are so many boring things on TV, but I would guess a test pattern, snow (on old analog TV sets) and the blue screen of death are probably the most boring things on TV. I mean a test pattern. How long can you stand watching this:
2. What’s the most enlightening thing on TV?
Nothing is really enlightening on TV. Perhaps if you are of faith there may be some types of religious programs that you might find enlightening.
3. What’s the most comforting thing on TV?
Free streaming from YouTube, Pluto TV, TUBI TV and other streamers... plus TV stations that you can catch for FREE using an antenna. It is comforting to know that despite annoying ads, a lot of content is available and you don't have to spend a single penny to get it...re: no subscription fees. All the free streams are good for background noise while you do something else. My favorites are music mixes and Airline Videos.
4. What’s the tawdriest thing on TV?
Currently any press conference coming out of The White House.
5. What’s the most thrilling thing on TV?
That changes a lot from time to time. Thrilling can be anything from rocket launches, Dragon spaceflight, Starship, Falcon 9, Falcon Super Heavy, etc. (think Space X) to science fiction TV shows and movies that I watch over and over again: Babylon 5, Star Trek (various), Star Wars, The Expanse, The X Files, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits; anything in space and sci-fi oriented. I also like the Taylor Sheridan produced shows, many which I have yet to watch.... think Yellowstone and several spin-offs.
A lot of Space X content streams live on YouTube and NASA TV. All free of charge. Yay!
This post catches up on two week's worth of Friday 5s. The questions are sourced from the usual place... The Friday 5 blog.
August 5, 2022 - WHMS
WHMS - A radio or TV station or just a fancy way to say "whims".
1. What’s the farthest you’ve ever driven in one trip?
Um.. since I live in Hawaii there is not too many places you can go. They are mostly near, but go over an hour, then that's far. That said... on the Big Island of Hawaii.... Honokaa to Ka'u on the south-side of that island. Did that in 1984 when we took my grandmother on a drive back to the area she grew up during the early years of the last century. It was a fun, multi hour trip for the day that covered more than 200 miles I guess. We did that with my parents' Ford Granada.
I've been to the continent, but none of the trips I drove there were "far"... Las Vegas to the Hoover Dam and a little over the boarder into Arizona... Um.. ok...more sand and desert, we turned back avoiding an even longer, unplanned trip segment.
2. What are you very particular about when ordering in a restaurant?
Make sure they have free iced water. Some restaurants don't. I do not do alcoholic beverages or sugared soft drinks.
3. Which of your friendships goes back the furthest?
My sister! Knew her since 1965 (baby time). We keep in touch. Friendships with my cousins go back more than 50 years, though I am not very close to most of them. After that my ongoing friendships (mainly through Facebook and other social media platforms) with some grade/high school classmates (1970s). After that some of my college friends (late 1970s)... and then professional friends from the 1980s onward. Not mentioning any names, but if you follow me on Facebook, you may know who some of them are.
4. How do you feel about romantic comedy films, and what’s your favorite?
Um... I can live without them... That said, the ones I enjoyed the most:
Splash
Sixteen Candles
Pretty in Pink
Sleepless in Seattle
Romancing the Stone
5. How did you spend last new year’s eve, and how would you like to spend the next?
I stayed at home. I did the same the previous year and will probably do the same this coming new year. Ho hum. Not much to celebrate as I grow older.
6. Bonus question, since it’s the sort not everyone can answer: What’s your favorite song from Oklahoma!?
Checked some YouTube clips. Don't recall any of them, though I do remember Shirley Jones who went on the star in The Partridge Family from 1970 to 1974.
July 29: Scattergories Part 12
This is the random generator one. Let's see which letter option I'm gonna do:
[Spin]
Ding! I gotC and we know "C is for Cookie!"
1. What geographical feature should be renamed in your honor?
Cape of Mad Mel - You know way down south near South Africa and Antarctica. A menace to navigation!
2. Who should play you in a movie about your life?
Clint Eastwood. Heh. One of my favorite actors currently alive, though his characterization of me would probably not match since I associate him with "tough guy" roles. More to my liking and still alive is Tom Hanks.
3. What are you chasing?
Elusive CASH.
4. What’s getting in your way?
Lack of CASH
5. What are you especially grateful for this week?
CASH! I found a dime on the ground the other day. Plus I can use cash to pay for COOKIES! I am always grateful for cookies that I can eat and not the evil ones I have to delete from my browsers.
Here are my answers to the latest Friday 5 blog entry.
1. When did you recently do something on the sly?
If I had to tell anyone, it would not be "on the sly". Pleading the 5th and moving on.
2. Which of your plans for the coming week is still up in the air?
All of them. I live mostly day to day, though I have a plan that will be in motion come January 3. This coming week... nah....
3. What’s happening across the street?
Noise. Big trucks honking their horns, driving to the loading bay area at the nearby supermarket discount store. Directly across the street, cars and other vehicles are passing by, a homeless person is lying on the sidewalk, with birds occasionally chirping.
4. What have you heard recently through the grapevine?
5. What kinds of videos on YouTube are likeliest to send you down the rabbit hole?
I love YouTube mainly because it is FREE and has all kinds of short and long subject videos. Surely most of it is not high brow television, but there are a lot of good stuff to be viewed there. And all of it is FREE... no subscription fees required except for your internet service.
Oh and if you are annoyed by ads, on a Mac computer just use an ad blocker. 99% of the ads are gone. That said the Top 10 video subjects that pull me down the rabbit hole:
1. MUSIC - Whether it is the latest music videos, audio of albums I am thinking of getting or looking up old and obscure music, this is the place to be. Plus there are a ton of full on concert films, concert video clips and documentaries, opinion pieces and everything else about music artists, genres, history, technology, etc.
2. PLANE CRASH VIDEOS - A morbid but fascinating subject. There are several people posting air crash videos and the most interesting ones are those that give you the outcome of the crash investigation as to why that aircraft went down.
3. TECH NEWS and VIEWS - If you are into tech of all types, YouTube has everything. The entire TWIT slate of podcasts and live video stream here for free. Learn a lot about your Mac, iPhone, Android, Windows, Linux, Google and a whole lot more not only on the TWIT channels but also from others. Smartphone videos, internet privacy, dumb phones, old computers, old handheld video games, record players, cassette recorders, TV antennas, cord-cutting are all great subjects for tech news, views, instructional videos. Yay!
4. FOX NEWS CLIPS - Since I don't have cable and am to "pake" to subscribe to any news service, I watch the clips Fox News post to YouTube just to see what Ann Colter, Sean Hannity or my other favorite commentators have to say about the current stupidity in our nation.
4a. STOSSEL - Gotta love John Stossel's videos.... love most of his practical ideas.
5. NEWS in GENERAL - I can also watch live streaming from ABC, NBC and CBS on YouTube... big tornado or other storm hits, you go here and jump from channel to channel... terrorists, war, disasters, political crap live from wherever, yep... you can count on the live feeds from the news networks here... This also includes SKYNEWS, BLOMBERG, The Weather Channel, etc. Good for cheap news junkies (not to forget that a lot of this stuff also streams for free on Pluto TV).
5a: Our local news channels have clips and occasional live feeds. KHON TV, Hawaii News Now, Big Island Video News, Hawaii State Legislature, etc.
6. SPACE - NASA TV, SPACE X and more. IF you love stuff about outer space... well you can watch it all here. Live launches and splashdowns, activities on the space station, views from the space station (24-7 live), planetary exploration, Mars, opinions, history, the future, etc.
7. DUST - Occasionally I love watching the DUST channel full of short, interesting science fiction stories.
8. MOVIES - If you know where to look on YouTube there are free streaming movies. Some fairly well known, others classics and many obscurities + public domain films. YouTube itself has its own free streaming movies (with commercials) as well as pay option movies. But there are others putting movies up that you can watch for free. Can't say they are legit or not, but they are there.
9. DISASTERS - Shipwrecks, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, terrorism, fires, storms, current and historic. I can start on one and never end... go from Titanic to possible calamity that may explode at Yellowstone... and speculative video on the end of the world and when our sun becomes a red giant 5 billion years from now... or was it 5 million? Oh well....
10. And everything else... YouTube bloggers, families, wildlife, animals, cats, dogs, car crashes, Hawaii, stupidity, you name it... it's there. YouTube!
"Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!
When I first posted this, its title began, “Friday 5 for March 11…” Can you tell I dislike autumn?"
Um... it is October 4.
1. When did you last make an adjustment to your daily getting-ready routine?
Started about late July, dealing with an unintentional vehicle. It's a long story that tires me, and I don't want to get into it.
2. When did you last try a new personal hygiene product?
Last week. Don't know if I will change to this... but it is called Magsol Magnesium Deodorant. 3. What food or drink item have you most recently added to your regular consumption?
Nothing too recent. I have to keep on staying on my diet of regular vegetables, fresh fruit, some chicken and fish basically. I have tried and like some of the frozen ready to microwave, low sodium frozen packaged alternative veggies as either a main dish or a supplement. They have some good ones for sale cheap at $2.59 in Target. I am sure they are cheaper on the U.S. mainland.
4. What’s a brand-named product you recently abandoned your loyalty to? Apple.
Once upon a time I used to be a loyal user to all Apple products that I could afford and own. I have owned several Macintosh computers from desktops to recent laptops like the MacBook Pro series.
I bought into the iPod ecosystem and have seven of them in my inventory, including one iPod Touch.
That is where I began to sour.
After several years of ownership of those iPods, I found that the built in batteries don't last very long. When I spend $200, $400, $600 or more for a device, I expect the damn things to last a looong time... much like how my old CRT TV, Radio Shack stereo mixer and other audio gear have lasted... But no... not the iPods... after 5 years of regular use, the batteries drained and did not hold a charge for very long... nearly 10 years on, the iPod Touch like totally died. Will not boot up, not even when placed on the AC powered dock or speakers. I paid $500 for that thing.
If I could easily replace the batteries on these things I would. But to get into any Apple iDevice, you have to pry the darn thing open, fiddle with complex disassembly and reassembly just to get the battery out and put a new one in. Often it will take a rocket scientist like person to do it. In the case of the iPod Touch most websites I went to concluded that to replace the battery is not worth the time and effort... so again they mandate we chuck it. How sad that most users will have to chuck otherwise perfectly working devices on the account of a worn battery!
Apple... you suck!
iPhone? iPad? All potential carriers of the same battery ware problem. I read somewhere that the iPhone doesn't have a very long shelf life as Apple has shown to throttle them down and shutting older models out of their precious, walled gardened ecosystem. At the low end of $800 for an iPhone, to me it is not worth the price you pay if the darn thing is not going to last beyond five years.
Mac OS is a great operating system. I love Mac OS. However newer Macs seem to suffer from the same problem of not lasting as long as their predecessors. What makes me even more sour on many newer Macs is that Apple took away built in ports that we have come to know and love, like the SD card slot and CD drive. They obviously don't want us burning our CDs to iTunes like it was before.
Hell, they even discontinued iTunes, though I kind of understand that since it became a huge feature laden piece of bloatware. I am just afraid that whatever succeeds it will have some kind of utility to rip and burn CDs... even if I have to get an external CD / DVD drive.
The best Mac I ever owned was my Power Mac G4 tower. That was an affordable Mac that had plenty of expansion options. It is too bad that Apple did not continue to make similar models with Intel processors. Now if you want an expandable desktop Mac you have to buy the super expensive MacPro model.
Most Mac models have no expansion and the laptops have the dreaded built in batteries. While I am not totally shut out of considering another new Mac, I am certainly not going to buy into the higher end models.... nor another laptop from Apple. What I am looking at is to go back to the desktop and get a Mac Mini of some sort.
As for a laptop, I bought into Chromebook some years ago, and I am looking to update that to a newer model, at a much lower price over a Mac.
Windows you say? I use those at work. Not going there.
As for portable devices, that leaves me with only Android or some other type of lesser known OS. Sadly Android makers are following in the footsteps of Apple and offering more devices with dreadful built in batteries.
It is lucky that in 2016 when I was forced to switch providers and a phone, I got an Android with a removable battery. I already switch out the battery once and I probably will do it again down the road instead of buying a new phone. That is how these things should be... maximize our investment for the longest time possible. Even Android with their lower prices on the mid-tier are not cheap. All I ask is for the damn things to last.
So what is this stupid obsession with "thin" anyway? Thin is what brought us those dreadful built in batteries on phones, tablets and laptops. Enough already with the built in batteries.
Did I say I HATE BUILT IN BATTERIES? OK. I do.
Are we going to wait for the day when someone's MacBook Pro, iPhone or high end Samsung phone catches fire and explodes a passenger jetliner in the air sending it crashing down to the ground, before the government starts to mandate that all devices with built in batteries are banned from flights? At the rate we are going, this could happen someday.
So to the manufacturer's out there... get off the built in battery bandwagon and offer us devices with easy to remove batteries. It may save lives!
OK.. enough of this rant. I think I'll go spin some vinyl records on my 40-year-old vintage Technics turntable now.
5. What item in your wardrobe have you recently moved out of the regular rotation?
Regularly have to replace socks and underwear... You do too? Right?
I haven't seen any Spiderman movie since Spiderman 3 with Toby Maguire in the lead role from 2007. Questions from Scrivener's Friday 5 blog.
1. What’s the crime like in your neighborhood?
July 2017 HPD report to Ala Moana Neighborhood Board #11:
- Honolulu Police Department (HPD) – A sergeant reported the following:
• June 2017/May 2017 Statistics – There were 14/24 motor vehicle thefts, 11/7 burglaries, 169/158 thefts, 33/34 UEMVs (unauthorized entry into motor vehicles), 16/24 assaults, 3/5 sexual assaults, 1/0 graffiti incidents, and 13/21 drug offenses. Total calls for service were 5,754/6,177.
• Business Security Tips – Tips included installing a video security system, having address numbers visible from the street, and knowing the neighbors to watch out for each other.
Don Quijote – Ammons reported that a resident e-mailed him about loud noise and possible criminal activities at the laundry mat. HPD is aware of the situation and he will follow up with the Third (3rd) Watch. 2. If you could have attended one of those high schools with a specific academic focus, such as performing arts, studio arts, sustainability, science and technology, international languages and diplomacy, or some option you thought of yourself, which would you have chosen when you were thirteen?
Business and Technology - unfortunately they did not teach much of that in the government school system back in the day.... though I hear it may be worst now....
3. What was memorable about a party you remember from high school?
After our senior year dance we stayed at the hotel in Kona. We had some crazy party in the room and I remember calling one of our goofy teachers in the middle of the night (like 2AM in the morning) asking if his refrigerator was running. We were also jumping from bed to bed, playing loud music on the cassette player, eating and throwing chicken bones off the balcony of our 4th floor room or something. It was a long time ago. We were still stupid kids.
4. Which of your older relatives is (or was) the handsomest or prettiest?
My cousin Dorian was Miss Aloha Hawaii in 1972 and was first runner up in the Miss Hawaii pageant. Her talent was dancing the hula to the 1960s novelty song "Puka Puka Pants" that was recorded by JoAnn Campbell. She is a few years older than me.
5. What was homecoming like at your high school? How did you feel about it?
Homecoming was a big thing in small town Honokaa where only one government school serviced the entire area consisting of Honokaa, Waimea, Kukuihaele, Kapulena and Paauilo. Homecoming week consisted of something happening on campus daily for 5 days that led to the big football game of the season. We had like pep rallies, movies, intramurals and one year a gigantic water balloon fight. We also had a bonfire the night before the game and also a parade. Highlight for each class was to build a float and have it parade through town following the 2 bands from the community... the Honokaa County Band and the Honokaa High School Band. I was in the band. And then the big football game which as far as I can remember, our school always lost until 1973 and 1974, in which both years Honokaa was the Big Island Insterscholastic League (BIIF) champions. Honokaa's Class of 1975 which I was part seemed to win several of those parade float trophies or whatever as well as the pep rally stuff... probably because for our small school, we had one of the bigger classes at the time.
When the school turned 100 years old there was a large homecoming parade of a sort where a lot of the older classes showed up for still a special celebration. Some photos from that are shown below.
Honokaa town is laid out in such a way that it was always good to have a parade go through it.
The July 2000 Honokaa School Millennium Parade. Photos by Mel.
Nothing recently. My life is fairly mundane. I don't get giddily excited about anything. Things just happen. They may be good or they may be bad. Sometimes we never know.
2. What most recently left you agog?
The Diamond Head Lighthouse is celebrating their 100th anniversary this year and the U.S. Coast Guard is going to have an open house next month. Most certainly want to check this out. Prior to that, maybe going to my last rock concert to see Ringo Starr.
3. What most recently left you aghast?
My paycheck?
4. What in your life is the most higgledy-piggledy?
I would have to phrase that as "was" because for many years I was mired in household clutter. Had to get it all cleaned out last year. I sold or donated many books, records, tapes and CDs. I regret getting rid of several LPs. 5. What was your week a mish-mash of?
Scheduling.
Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance - trippy old film from 1982 that is compressed into 5 minutes here.
