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Adrienne Searches on Google

03.13.2011 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

Weed, California, Spring 2009: Adrienne is still somewhat new to computers, and she comes up with things that often elude me.

(Even around the house; she fixed the ‘broken’ garbage disposal; I’d never have thought to use the plumber’s friend plunger!)

She has good results with the search engine, and uses it all the time.

One day I watched, and she types in entire sentences, like “Where can I find a list of all the major dog sanctuaries in the United States?”

I asked her why she didn’t just enter “dog sanctuaries”. [Read more…]

This Newfangled Daylight-Savings Time

03.13.2011 by bloggard // 3 Comments

Dallas, Texas, Spring 1966: Living in Dunia Bean’s apartment on Gillespie street, I worked at the Cabana Hotel. The Cabana is a clone of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, complete with over-sized statues of Venus, David, and the rest of the crew. Inside, a vast two-story lobby with greenish marble floor and a round sunken area with sofas enough for a football team.

Overlooking this magnificance, our front desk where I worked with Dick and Earl, dignified alcoholics. Dick taught me how to get big tips at crowded times, and Earl as a young actor fought swords with Errol Flynn in the movie Captain Blood. That was a while back.

But this was in the spring, and for the first time since the war, Texas was going to have Daylight Savings Time. We were all abuzz.

Paul the Bellman was a portly fellow, balding and gabby. He made big tips because he knew about health food and horoscopes. This was years before such things were popular. His most popular health food remedy was honey and vinegar; he’d recommend it for almost anything.

On the way to the elevators with the guests, he’d ask about their birth-date and provide predictions and prescriptions all the way to the room. Then I suppose it just seemed wrong, to the guest, to tip miserly to the fellow who’d taken such an interest in their fortunes and their health.

Paul the Bellman was very opinionated, and also had an annoying habit of slapping his hand down on the bellman’s marble-topped desk when he was about to speak. This made a loud pop. I think it was his version of banging the Judge’s gavel before pronouncing sentence.

So, while we were all discussing this radical new change, Daylight Savings Time, and how we would set our clocks before we went to bed, Paul returned to the bell desk.

Slap! went his open palm on the marble desk. “Well,” he said, “I know what I’m going to do.” We all stopped talking. He continued. “I’m going to set my clock for one a.m., and then I’m going to wake up, and set it ahead to two a.m.”

We all stared in incomprehension. “Why, Paul?” I asked.

“That way,” he crowed, “I won’t lose an hour’s sleep!”

I grinned. “But Paul,” I said, “If you’re awake when you move it forward, won’t you lose an hour’s wake?”

He pondered this. “Naw,” he said, “You can’t lose an hour’s wake.” We all nodded.

Slap! went his palm on the desk. He scowled. “But those guys better watch out,” he said.

We looked at each other. He went on.

“Because when they’re changing the time, they’re messing with the sun,” he said. “And they’d better not go messing with the sun!”

Thus came Daylight Savings Time to Texas.

How to Save Time with Abbreviations

03.13.2011 by bloggard // 4 Comments

Here’s a handy tip that can yield big savings:

Use abbreviations. For example, when I operated Network Answering Service in San Francisco, we quickly learned to develop standard abbreviations for common things people say. For example, OOT for “out of town”, or WCB for “will call back”.

Other handy abbreviations include PLSC for “please call”, NA for “not applicable”, DBA for “doing business as”, DA for “doesn’t answer”, and OCS for “onward christian soldiers”.

But why limit this to written notes? For example, suppose you want to thank somebody for something, but it’s just a little thing. You want to thank them a little but not a lot. To communicate this precisely, and to save time at the same time, just abbreviate “Thank you” or “Thanks”.

Say: “Thank.”

See, that’s less than “Thanks.”

But wait, there’s more!

You can abbreviate more complex ideas, as well. For example, perhaps you were thinking just now that these are the moments of your life, and this is how you are spending them. Well, in this case, you could save some thinking time by using an abbreviation of “moments”.

For example, you could say “momo”. That would be like one little moment. Or the plural form “momos”, as in “These are the momos of our lives.”

Often the practice of abbreviation yields surprising insights. For example, thinking about how these are the momos of our lives, you might just naturally think about death. And then of course there would be “no more” momos, and you could abbreviate the “no more” as “nomo”.

So you can see, you could speak, or think, very succinctly. You could think about the momos of our lives, and how, when we die, we got nomo momos nomo.

You see how that can save you time?

It can Really Add Up!

Now if you just save a few seconds every couple of hours, then you’ll accumulate several minutes every single week. By the end of the year you’ll have an extra thirty or forty minutes. Over a lifetime you might have hours, or even days, saved up!

And that ain’t bad.

Bishop Nippo Syaku

03.13.2011 by bloggard // 1 Comment

San Francisco, 1975: I saw the flimsy poster, but it was quaint rather than crude. Bishop Nippo Syaku would give some short talks about Zen. In the rawboned Victorian near Filmore street, poor lighting made the room seem drab, but Bishop Nippo lit up the place. The Bishop was a round-faced, cheerful fellow, very chipper he was. He spoke often of the nature of things.”We say, ‘Oh the flower is pretty!’” He beamed, “But flower does not care!”

On this evening, he spoke of how the True Buddhist is without fear. This amazed me, and made me ponder. I raised my hand.

“Yes?”

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. I pointed to an empty chair. “Let’s say the True Buddhist was sitting right there.”

Bishop Nippo nodded.

“And let’s say that a Sabre-Tooth Tiger came through that door.” Everybody looked at the door. I continued, “Now the True Buddhist would feel no fear, but he would jump up and run like hell, correct?”

“Ah!” said Bishop Nippo Syaku. “That is True Buddhist!”

But wait, there’s more!

It can Really Add Up!

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