Odds and Ends

Maybe it’s my age showing but I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with the inability of tech companies to stop making it difficult to use software from other companies seamlessly. They go out of their way to make it hard to use the other service even though everyone I know uses a variety of products from Google, Microsoft, etc. Trying to remember how to go from one to the other along with the correct sign-in credentials causes extravagant use of cuss words from all around the globe.

Tech companies can create incredible products but given their abilities, why can’t they do something about the deluge of spam, using slightly modified font or spelling, telling us we’ve won some gift or prize from some company or other. Of course, the whole point is to get us to sign-in and, give them some innocuous information like our credit card numbers or bank account. It’s been going on for far too long without being addressed. Congress could do…oh, never mind.

On a related note, there are some apps where the flood of political ads, long on divisive symbolism and non-existent in actual factual content create, in me at least, a fast exit from that app. I understand they need the money such ads generate but they’re driving away users. I assisted in making a couple of such ads many years ago which cause me to roll my eyes today wondering how anyone takes such drivel seriously.

Spring has fully arrived. As this is being written, there’s a monsoon going on outside. Let’s hope it’s in the form of snow in the mountains, we’re going to need water this summer and the experts tell us we’re sure to have shortages. If only we could schedule one of these wonderfully cool, rainy, days for August 1st. That does not mean, however, that I’m not looking forward to warm days when we can fire up the grill and experiment with new ideas for dinner.

Baseball season is underway and those of us who don’t get excited about college basketball are grateful. There are multiple teams who are legitimate World Series contenders this year, some of whom haven’t had much success of late. Even if your team isn’t one which can expect to contend, there’s always some anticipation. For example, if you’re a Rockies fan, as of this writing, there are dreams of winning, sooner or later, a second game. I suspect they’ll win at least three or four this year. I plan to spend some time in Denver this summer so hopefully my comments about them doesn’t cause a severe backlash among family and friends. The word “fan” comes from “fanatic” but I doubt there are too many folks who are fanatics about those teams with such inept ownership that they never have a chance right from the git go. Seems to me owners who refuse to even pretend to make an effort to build up a decent team ought to get a different toy to play wi