Here I am speaking again. I have not used this Dragon software for several months. A friend of mine has made a momentous seeming decision in switching from Macintosh to Windows, and a primary reason for this switch seems to be that the Dragon software for Windows is much cheaper than it is for the Macintosh. He intends to use the Dragon software to transcribe a lot of his longhand writing.
What I find uncomfortable about using this software is that I have to sit here stationary at the desk. There doesn’t seem to be any way to use a Bluetooth or wireless microphone in connection with this software. I could look into it again but I think this inability to use such a device is either specific to this version of Dragon or else it can only be accessed at a cost of something like $400 a year, another insidious subscription service that I avoid as much as possible. I am eligible for an upgrade, at half the price of the new version, but I’ve had such bafflingly bad experiences with installing Dragon, with simply purchasing the software, and with the company itself that I don’t know if I should submit myself to the annoyances I’ve known before. Installing Dragon on the laptop nearly bricked the machine. Now it appears to be impossible to install Dragon on that computer. What of the purchase process? I don’t know how such an established company could make it so difficult to buy their software.
I have to get my drivers license renewed and it looks like I have to do it in person if I want to get the EDL, the enhanced driver’s license, which I guess I do. I’m confused if I have to get my vision tested, as it makes no mention of it in the list of required documents but the mailing includes a card for a vision test report. I also have to renew the 181. It’s that time of year.
I will be 50 soon. The number does not mean much to me, at least not yet. Whatever 50 is supposed to feel like, I don’t feel like 50. Is it supposed to be old? Or is 50 the new 40? My bones ache a little more than they used to but I blame it on all those epic walks. The achiness tends to go away when I do not do that for a while, replaced by a certain creakiness.
I think I said otherwise to friends in such but turning 40 was kind of profound for me. I should look for the writing I did about that. It’s just a number, of course, but 40 had me thinking for the first time that this game of life was not really going to last forever, like I might have thought. Until then I expected to live forever in some way. I still want to be immortal in some way, and to be talked about in years to come. I just don’t know the context or cultural realm into which I fit. I could do something so shocking and unexpected that everything I’ve done before would be pored over and studied, however trivial it might have been to me when I did it. But what would that shocking activity be? To do something that would make me synonymous with… something.
On my 40th birthday it was trivia night at the bar. I named our team “Happy 40th Birthday, Mark.” So the trivia announcer repeated that team name every time she had to, which was 7 or 8 times. It made me laugh every time.
I intend to make this website visible to the world (i.e., search engines) sooner or later. I sorta like the way the front page looks but the individual article pages are stiff . The front page is not as colorful as I might have imagined. You have to establish a featured image for there to be a thumbnail on the story link. But much of the time no image is appropriate to the story. There are plenty of other themes like this out there but switching again just feels bothersome.
Yeah, I am talking shop.
Among those old IRC chat logs I found one of which I had absolutely no memory. It’s with a woman who took antidepressants and drank a lot. I am still in contact with her via Facebook, and interact maybe once a year in some passing way. She explained lithium to me. For some reason in this context I asked her if she had ever heard of yohimbe, an herbal supplement that allegedly gives men uncontrollable erections. It had been a fascination of mine since high school, when I saw advertisements for it. I cannot even imagine what magazine or publication I might have had that advertised that stuff. I suspect it was a tiny ad in the back of something akin to the Village Voice, a publication I don’t think I ever saw down south.
I responded to an ad and got a mailing from the makers of that stuff. The company was in Stamford, Connecticut. That has forever been my number one association with Stamford: Boner pills. The mailing made it sound like you take one pill and blast off like a rocket. As a teenager it was tantalizing to me, but I never actually purchased the stuff. They made it sound as if you would take the pill and it would just happen immediately, but I can’t believe that’s even possible. It has to be a matter of context. By that I mean it would be a stimulant if you were actually with somebody, not just sitting on the couch waiting for your junk to come up.
Now that I look at the chat log again and think about it some I think the reason I mentioned Yohimbe in the context of our conversation about anti-depressants was, for one thing, simply because I saw it at the pharmacy earlier when I was buying Ambien at the pharmacy. On top of that she talked about sex a lot and Yohimbe was, or so I thought, supposed to be a stimulant for women, not just men. Or maybe I was just being a creep but thinking I was hilarious.
Speaking of this sort of thing I just bought a fresh batch of underwear. I usually buy this stuff several sizes bigger than what would seem appropriate, but for some reason this time I got a size that actually fits. I don’t like it, it’s just too damn tight. I feel inferior any time I buy that stuff around here at the dollar stores. The packages are almost always marked “slightly imperfect”. I don’t think I have ever purchased “perfect” underwear. Does it even exist? How much better would I feel about life with Perfect Underwear? Maybe Amazon will have perfect underwear for me. Hey I’m turning 50 soon, I deserve it.
…
I should not be surprised, and in fact I am not surprised, but I am still smarting from how deactivating Norton 360 essentially gave me my computer back. I reactivated the firewall but for some reason my IP address is pingable to the world again. That’s not supposed to be like that. Or is it? I seem to remember Windows firewall making you as close to invisible out there as possible. Your IP address would still register with a website you access but otherwise I thought it was untouchable. Well, I’ll let it be a mystery. Mysteries are more fun than answers.
