Phone is updating to Lollipop. I don't care about shit like that and would as soon it didn't bother. Except for one thing: Stupid device lost the ability to turn on wireless networks a few weeks ago and maybe this update will fix it.
New job isn't an upgrade as such but it beats the sense of unemployment starting to crowd me. More importantly, I think it a) is well suited to my experience, b) will provide solid training for another job once the term runs out, and c) won't use up so much of my personal bandwidth as many another job would do. I think, because it hasn't started yet. Officially starts Monday. Today I stop taking days off and go in to move my office.
* * *
From there I took a break to start reading Paula, and she said, "Google your first name and city and see if anything on the first page is you." I did, and nothing was. But I saw an article about more change coming to our downtown, and that led to an article about the IMF replacing the mighty U.S. dollar, and that led to an ad for a "detailed analysis" on how that affects you and what you should do about it, and that in turn was one of those videos that cannot be paused but goes on and on and on and on with the useful information apparently at the end.
I saw one of those for something from the Motley Fool, and another that was apparently about foolproof ways to pick up chix, and now this, and I've finally decided that information behind an internet video that can't be paused and needs me to update the plug-in is simply bogus.
I doubt that's a shock to anyone.
* * *
The "up"-grade finished. The first thing I notice about Lollipop (i.e. Android 5, I think) is that I can't get to phone settings. The first thing I want to do is turn on wireless and see what happens, but I don't know the way into settings. Great first impression.
So I tried the other way and nope, the wi-fi thing tries to turn on but gives up, just like before. Sprint had it overnight recently and fixed a programming issue but that didn't really fix it. I guess if they actually knew how to fix things they wouldn't be working in a Sprint store. It's probably new phone time but I don't want a new phone.
* * *
Over there in Paula's Paula poast I mentioned Paula. I'm tempted to write that out. Knowing her was an interesting side trip. There is much I could draw out of it. But not right now. Maybe it would be a good exercise later in writing (semi) fiction. That could work, actually, so long as I know there's a point to it, that I have an idea where the story is going. But does that matter? A lot of fiction just sort of presents a thing and says "here" and doesn't necessarily go anywhere. Right? Or am I wrong about that? I feel out of touch with that world.
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Still no Lollipop for me, although Motorola has finished waiting for it to become stable and has done all it feels it needs to do. They've soaked it for the variants of the Moto X and Moto G etc for each carrier. Verizon is now soaking it. VzW maintains a STRONG stance that NOTHING will break their network, so they hold on to stuff longer, testing it for-fucking-ever until they're satisfied. That's both good and bad.
Swipe down from the top. Tap the teensy image of you (or the thing that looks like a person, if you don't have a profile photo associated with your Google account that's associated with your phone). It should pop open the settings shortcuts, including a gear icon (or whatever Samsung decided they'd use instead of the Android gear icon). Tap the gear icon and you're into the Settings menu.
WHAT NEW JOB!???!!!
Jeezuz, you rely too much on people reading every last word you write, in the order in which you write it, or something, even if the writing was in an email, or it wasn't writing but was a conversation, or was on Facebook (where, we know, things don't come along in the order in which they're written), or on someone's blog that not everyone follows, etc.
I guess the point would be whatever I learned about myself. A good story is enjoyable to read and at the end presents the story's world as having changed in some way. If I did a good job writing it and the reader could tell at the end that I learned something or she did or someone else did, wotevah, then that would be fine and justifies the effort.
I can't believe that after all these years I don't have a sizable inventory of written stories. Oh. Yes, I can.
Oh yes. When I say "no Lollipop for me" I mean on my Phone. I have a Nexus tablet that has had several versions of Lollipop installed on it, the latest coming in day before yesterday, and being 5.1.1.
We wrote simultaneously.
Don't get excited. I didn't change employers. I only managed to avoid having to work for my pay for a few weeks. Every now and then the churn of business throws us into a form of redeployment. This was the first time it amounted to paid vacation. I was sorely tempted (and encouraged by certain others) to stretch it out. I could have taken the whole summer off and still had full beans and bens and looked seriously for a new gig after BMan. But I just, no, I can't. There was too much risk for me in that approach. I didn't want to take advantage, and have my colleagues know I took advantage. Part of me, of course, will always wonder if taking a new job was really the smarter thing to do.
Taking a new job so soon, I should say.
"A lot of fiction just sort of presents a thing and says 'here' and doesn't necessarily go anywhere. Right?"
I'd go along with that. RBH and I were chatting about families and he noted that I had far more interesting variety in my childhood than did he, stuff that could lead to stories. And I said, well, yes, I have things that might or might not make an interesting story in mine that you don't have, your childhood being slightly more "conventional" (whatever that means) than mine. But while it makes good stories to tell at the bar, maybe, it doesn't necessarily lead to a good novel. You gotta have the ability to take nothing and turn it into something. THEN you get the good novel.
So that was kind of the same thing you said.
There are the thrillers and suspense novels that all go somewhere, of course. And every fiction plot needs to have the hook, and the drama, and the resolution or there's no point in writing it, I'd guess.
But I've read some of the more "literary" nouveau stuff and there isn't the suspenseful hook, nor the dramatic conclusion filled with explosions, gunfire, death, and wise-cracking you'll find in suspense, but it STILL seems to present a thing that goes somewhere.
They always go somewhere. Where they go might seem mundane, though. As Dick felt about his childhood versus mine. Or they might be whimsical rather than spectacular. A little life's lesson. Homespun.
I guess.
Stories that seem written to defy the conventional wisdom that they should entertain in some way (e.g. "go somewhere") annoy the fuck out of me, as especially do the magazines that publish them. I've yet to discern any reason why anyone outside of NYC would read The New Yorker, for ex. (My mom subscribed. Well-written articles about the haps in Manhattan, but the fiction? OMG.)
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