f1d0

2024.03.29 05.35 1501

220403
Sciatica Oversize Pix

211101
A Day with Mom

211019
Beefless

211007
Custard

201029
A Mild Case of Covid

200625
North York Gen

200322
Seven Days

200229
William Kahan

191015
Couples

191006
Page Fault

191002
Dad Passed Away

181215
Evelyn Berezin Obituary

181022
Thomas L Masson

181019
Avastin

180818
Toronto's Christie Pits Riot

180322
Facebook Scandal

180123
Dance Helps

170424
creating The Mouse

161111
Tell me a story

151224
Chinese Food

151222
Mandy Patinkin's Lesson

151208
Racism by John Metta

151207
Turn Down the Volume

150830
DuPont

150707
Heroes

150626
Barista Flirting

150405
Browser Loses Downloads

150306
Pets In Memoriam

150202
Remove Vosteran

150201
Build a Computer

141231
New Year's Eve

141226
Boxing Day

140815
Stx in the news

140414
In Praise of Meatloaf

140327
Side Effects

140326
exercise induced pulmonary edema

140112
Uncle Seeley

131012
Who Will Reunite Toronto?

130115
Telomerase and Ageing

121231
Salmon

121220
Isolated Day Off

121219
Sandy Hook Shooting

121007
Toronto the Orange

121004
Winning Solitaire

120813
Learning about Android

120728
Car2go

120618
Convocation

120617
Father's Day 2012

120117
Lockdown (article)

111225
RIP Coralee Whitcomb

111201
In Praise of Crap

110920
In Praise of Idleness

110918
Love After 70 (snapjudgment)

110917
Thornhill Fair

110901
Bees in the Garbage

110814
Memories of the EeePC

110626
Legendary Customer Service

110403
to Newmarket and back

101206
borrowing Ti Gar

101005
the oatmeal

100928
three songs

100920
small towns

100919
best dollar stores

100918
KW day two

100917
Waterloo via Galt

100914
Facebook Humbug

020502
Chicken (a story)


110400
2011apr to 2012dec

100800
august-september 2010

100300
march 2010

091200
december 2009

090800
august 2009

090600
june 2009

090400
april 2009

090300
march 2009

index2006
back to 2005-2006

index2004
back to 2003-2004

archive
unmodified old essays and pix

151207 Turn Down the Volume

Yesterday at work, the Jewish Missionaries came into my cafe. More than once, actually.

These are kids, but they're dressed up grey or black suits. No tie. Yes big black fedora.

"Did you know what today is?" he asks me.

"No idea. What is today?" I reply.

"Today is Erev Chanukah. Tonight is we light the first candle. Here, take this." He gives me a bag with a minorah and little introduction to the holiday in a booklet.

So I've been thinking. Here in Canada, do we have to remind anyone (Jewish, Native, Atheist) exactly when 'the night before xmas' is? No, everyone knows.

But here, more than once, perhaps all afternoon, these kids were locating us people who didn't know it was Chanukah. Yes, Us-- I had my eyes open after they met with me, and I served perhaps ten guys and two women carrying the bag of minorah.

One customer confessed, "I'm so glad they told me. I just don't keep track."

November and December are always very hard for me. This year, at least, so far this year, my supervisors understand, and have kept the volume on our sound system low. There was only one night where they cranked it up loud. What is worse, is that one of the girls who was singing was clearly atonal or tone deaf, or something.

Chanukah I forget. But I remember her 'singing' "Five! Gold! Rings!"

For years I've told people that I am The Grinch. That's a reference to Dr Seuss' story about the quintessential green man who hates xmas. He develops an enlarged heart at the end of the story.

I've been such a man. But this year, after thinking about things, and after getting the five different Lubavitch Missionaries in the store, I have a new position.

It's just the loud xmas music everywhere. As The Grinch says in his story, "and the noise, noise, noise!"

I have to admit I don't like noise, noise, noise. I've been turning off the water people leave running around the store just because the sound gets to me. I can hear the noise much better than the guests I need to help out.

But that's not the actual problem here.

There is a pressure from the ever-present music to celebrate something I am not interested in. The music is a slow torture, meant to change my attitude. It's so hard to escape it.

Starbucks was in the news recently, when Trump suggested people boycott Stx because their cups were plain red, without other holiday decor. He suggested people choose Merry Xmas as their name, so people would call it out when the drink was ready.

We'd all recognize it happening if there were loud horns sounding, calling us to prayer. Instead there are loud horns sounding, calling us to shop, to buy presents for everyone.

In Canada, the celebration of Black Friday is new. It is gaining much popularity mind you. If you don't already know, it is the first Friday after American Thanksgiving. I think (I'm not certain) US Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday.

I forget Chanukah, but didn't miss Black Friday. I called my parents, and asked them how things were.

"Don't go!" Dad says. "There is no parking anywhere."

Instead, I fired up my computer, and went to www.bestbuy.ca where I went looking for a cheap terabyte hard drive. I found one! It was 5T, a Western Digital My Book. With tax, delivery, everything, it was $184.

As soon as I finished the purchase, my computer showed signs of infection. Avast, my anti-virus, was jammed by it. It stopped running properly, and would no longer update, giving me some kind of 'no room on hard drive' message. I have 100GB free.

And when I called up Spybot Search and Destroy, I had to keep restarting the computer. This was a very smart bug.

It's not a virus. It didn't seem to try to infect any of my friends or email list, as far as I can tell. It just didn't want to be erased, and wanted to see what I do on the computer.

I went to the Mozilla Forum. The moderator would not post my request for help.

After much reading through lists of Best Buy stuff, I started seeing others posting about this.

Hey, the only reason I became aware of the problem is because my internet is slow, and my computer is also slow. The java script they left running on Firefox would stall, and it told me so. I really wanted to find out where my Firefox stores startup commands, so I could personally find out where the bad guys infected me.

Someone advised that I refresh Firefox. Eeep, when I did that, it changed everything, and lost all of my personal settings. Oh, and it didn't get the problem right away!

Someone else advised that I bite the bullet, and update my Avast antivirus to the new program. I did that. Gawd, my computer, when not doing anything, was running at 60% CPU usage. I had to uninstall Avast.

Since then I went to oldversion.com, and found an Avast, version 5.0 something, and now my computer idles at 3% or less. And it let me download the recent virus definition files.

Somewhere along the way, my computer stopped running this javascript thing, or at least, it stopped stalling my computer.

If you were to visit my home, you would notice much congestion, and many strings of LED lights. I like how they are cold to the touch, and yet, our place is always lit up. For you they may be xmas lights, and for others they may be chanukah candles. For me, they are cheap cold light.

I am reminded of an Old Star Trek episode, where our heroes visit a religious world. The secret heretics have forbidden technology: cold lighting panels! A computer decides when the whole world should celebrate. "Festival! Festival!" All of the believers look like American Russellites, all wearing suits, all walking around slowly. "Do you know the love of Landrew?"

Yes, and Cap'n Kirk goes in, and destroys Xmas for the whole country.

I don't need a Captain Kirk. And I don't want someone dressed as Jesus Christ to bring a bullwhip inside all of the stores, chasing out the evil money changers.

I don't hate xmas. Just turn down the volume, please.

2015 is upon us.