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Wednesday, June 30, 2021

This video doesn't kill any transmissional stars

 I was able to put two videos together earlier, which are from Thursday, June 24, 2021 and Monday, June 29, 2021.

Thursday's video is what the storms looked like from the eighth floor, right before I got stuck in the elevator. 









Monday's video is the same area, except I waited out the beginning of the storm to do a sort of weird time lapse. Don't mind the random people that come in and start talking. I know it's 6 and a half minutes, but the progression of the rain coming in, is kinda worth it.









Both videos taken on an iPhone 11 and edited in Pinnacle Studio. I'm still working on bettering my editing in this thing. Not sorry. The zooming kind of stinks in this phone because it's hard to keep it focused long enough to capture rain. I wish I had my Canon... 

Anyway.. Stay dry!



Cheers; 

Friday, June 25, 2021

"I'm up on the eleventh floor"

 And I'm watching the rain pour below.


Okay, so the above line isn't the real next line from the song. And I wasn't on the eleventh floor, I was on the eighth. There are no floors higher than that where I work. 

I had an adventure yesterday afternoon. 

We had one of those  torrential downpours where the thunder roared, the lightning crackled and the wall of rain was deeper than the wall of sound.

It was a slow roll of a start - the black clouds coming in, the drip of the drops. 

Then a whip of light and a rumble happened. Next thing you know, it's P O U R I N G. 

Hard. 

Wind is blowing so fierce, the palm trees might topple over if they're not careful. That's when we could see the trees because the rain was so fast and furious, that people reported they saw hail. The weathermen reported this storm front spawns tornados. 

And here I am, at work. I've got my watch charging because there's something running in the background again and it's using all the juice. I've got my work phone on silent and charging because I never took it off the cord. All I've got in my pocket is my personal cell phone and I decide to go up to one of the attached buildings and see if I can see Captiva.

Bad idea.

Where my office is located, there is a central commons area. At the end of one hallway is a set of elevators to one residential building and down another hallway is the other residential building. Both are easy access for the residents. 

So I went to the building that has a better view of Sanibel and Captiva, plus all the mangroves. I took the elevator up to the top floor (eight) and got out. Mind you, it's damn windy out. It's bucketing rain. The floor is slick and a death trap to anyone walking on it, let alone a resident. Why they decided to have painted cement in a part of the country that gets a lot of rain for a few months, is beyond me. 

But carefully I went to each end of the floor and looked across the tops of the trees.

Or tried to.

The rain was coming down so hard, that the tops of the trees were barely visible. I could not see any other buildings or mangrove islands that you usually can spot on a clear day. Some of the closer trees looked like they were stuck in a real heave / dense fog. You know, the type of fog where it's all white on top and as you work down to the ground it starts getting lighter. That's how the trees looked. 

So I had enough of getting drizzled on and I made a bee line to the elevator. I was under cover enough that I was just getting "ocean sprayed" and not "drowned rat".

Don't ask the difference. Ocean spray is like when you go to the ocean and you get misted by the water. Drowned rat is when you look like you've just jumped in the ocean with all your clothes on. Which has happened to me before. The rain has come so quick while I've been working, that I can't get inside and get dry. Mainly because I'm not near my office. So I get drenched to the point I need to empty out my wallet and put toothpicks in it to dry. Put all my cash on paper towels, wipe down my plastic cards...

Anyway, I get on the elevator. I decide to go to the first floor and check the recycle bin. I like trawling the bin because you never know what you'll find (I've found a lot of stuff that's been pitched). 

I get to the first floor. Check the bin. Nothing. Trash has been picked up. Head back to the elevator to go 2 floors down to the Commons area.

Elevator doors open, I step in. Press "C" (commons). Doors shut. 

Next thing I know, it's dark.

Fuck. Power just went out. And I'm stuck in the elevator with just my cell phone.

A phone that doesn't have everyone's work number in it that I would need in an emergency. 

The power outage lasts just a minute but I'm pacing in the elevator. 

I'm panicked. I had felt zero gravity like the blood drained entirely from my body. It was dead ass silent. I felt some negative pressure in my head. I don't know what to do. 

It felt like those scenes in horror movies where the person is knee deep in getting chased or being watched and the killer is about to get them... the sound drops from the scene and there's a close up of the person, worried face, scanning the room. But no sound at all in the scene. 

Yea, I had one of those moments.

I might not like my job, but I don't want to die in an elevator there. 

So I get my phone out. I start texting the girl at the front desk because I have her personal number. I can't remember which building I'm in. I am finding it hard to breathe. 

I don't know what to do. 

It's still silent, although there was just a couple beeps of the elevator restarting and the buttons turning on. But nothing else made a sound. 

I put my phone away and don't text the woman. Instead, I press some of the elevator buttons. I can't be that far down or between floors.

Nothing happened. The buttons lit up but there was no movement. Maybe because I was already moving when the power blipped, so the elevator needs to be restarted to finish its descent. 

I don't know. I'm not moving. Doors aren't opening. I panic some more. 

I try to pry the doors open. I get it cracked enough to see light and doors in front of me.

Yes.. not between floors!

I continue to muster enough strength up to get the doors open enough that I can slide out. 

Which I did. 

Except I was so excited to see the lower level garage (P1), that I didn't realize I wasn't completely level with the ground. 

I step out of the elevator with more of a stumbled jump. 

I was about 2 feet off the ground. 

Getting on solid ground, I closed the doors back up. Walked out the mini lobby, and went to the stairwell. Walked through a short hallway that led to the outside. Opened that door, walked out in the rain, and rain into the Commons area. It wasn't that far of a run, just 10 seconds, so I didn't get all that wet. 

I told the girl at the desk what just transpired and how I was going to text her. She said she wouldn't have heard her phone anyway, as she was in the back room making copies. But she'll call the Call Center and report the elevator being out of commission. Which she did. Explained that I had just been stuck in it and that I had to open the doors myself to get out. Can someone take a look at it?

For the next hour, I just sat at the desk, wondering what in the high hell just happened. It was something you see all the time but don't expect. 

How many times are we in places during storms and don't think something bad will happen? 

I want to know what happens to these residents with wheelchair and walkers and the power goes out. How do they get to ground level if they can't walk so great?

All I know is that I'm never getting in an elevator during a storm again. That's all I know. My fat ass is taking the stairs whenever I need to go higher than the ground level I'm on. So I'll be out of breath for a minute. But at least I won't get trapped again.

Now I've got to get ready for work. At least it's Friday.

Stay safe, stay dry and stay off and out of electrical places.


Cheers;

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Hack the sound

My friend SK an I were knee deep in various conversations this weekend, when I brought up the fact I use my Bluetooth headphones some days to watch movies "on the big screen" at work. By using the headphones, no one ever knows I'm in the room because the doors are shut, the lights are off, and it's usually a day when no one is around (i.e. holiday). 

Trying to explain it to him is convoluted, especially since part of the conversation was that there are some shows he and his girlfriend like to watch together, and there are some that he has to keep the audio on super low for, because she wants to be in the room with him, but doesn't want to watch that show. So by my making various suggestions, here's hoping what he'd choose. 

First, I remember "back in the day" having the rabbit ear antennae headphone kit that attached to the back of the TV and this transmitter station cradled the headset. Whenever you wanted to use it, you'd turn the power on on the dock, turn the headphones on, turn on your TV and have at it. Everyone in the room wouldn't be bothered with whatever you decided to watch yourself and not hinder the grown ups conversation (or a sleeping body in bed next to you... as people tended to use these things for as it is). There are updated versions on Amazon right now. Price ranges from $50 to $100, depending on how knockoff you want to get with brands. "Better" brands (Sony, Bose) are over the $100 mark, but it looks like they're Bluetooth, which isn't great for pairing straight to a TV unless you have a transmitting receiver. So I'd go with the tree thing that used to be everyone's go-to 30 years ago.

Wow, am I aging myself??

The second choices for keeping quiet yet active, would be the set up I've been attempting. 

As I've been doing this mostly at work, I use my handy dandy Lightning to Digital AV Adapter with whatever HDMI cable is local. If I am in the big room with the flying Hitachi projector [which apparently is so old, Amazon doesn't carry it anymore] or the flat screen TV on a rolling cart [same thing. Amazon doesn't carry this TV anymore... it's a no name brand anyway], I have options for size of cabling. It's quite literally a 10 foot cable for the big room and a 4 foot cable for the TV. 




Side note: I personally use the Monoprice HDMI High Speed Cable - 1.5 Feet in my bedroom, as I have the Roku attached to the back of my TV via the TotalMount for Roku (it's the red cable in the next picture). But this is all beside the point. 




Anyway, back to the original concept. 


I take my adapter, plug the lightning into my phone, the HDMI into the adapter, and give it a second to have the phone recognize what I'm doing. 

Then I take my headphones, wake them up, and connect them to the phone. 

























From there, it's a matter of getting the connection screen on my phone, to select (and separate) the video output as well as the audio output. 

For those who need to know how to get the screen and what to look for, swipe down from the right hand (top) corner of the screen. You'll see something that looks like the following picture. You'll end up wanting to look at that "Not playing" area. The arrows are pointing to the spots to watch. That beacon thing will be alternating glow between blue and white. It's finding your Bluetooth stuff. 




If you click on the beacon, the next option is the following:




The "Now Playing" area is finding everything you can mirror to. Bluetooth devices or streaming devices. Where I select my JLab headphones, all audio will go to those, while if I had the HDMI connected, it would also show my TV information. But since I can stream to an Apple TV or Roku device, should I select one of those, video will play on my TV (since the devices are connected... Roku in my room, Apple TV in the living room), I can listen via my headphones. 

As I'm using an iPhone 11, I would think this is all similar to the Androids, or at least they have something similar. If anyone has tried this on a Droid, let me know in the comments.

I do have to point out, that the "trick" to being able to watch things without bothering people around you, only works if you have the right setup. Obviously a flip phone won't be able to run this, as well as maybe older model smart phones. I know I am taking a big leap of assumption that Apple users have updated phones (6 and above), but you might be able to replicate this on a 4 or 5. Just swipe up from the bottom instead of down from the top. If I had an Android, I'd talk about this, but I'm sorry, I don't.

I hope it helps, and SK... if you're reading this... tell your woman I'm trying to help the situation so you don't miss any of your programs while she does her own thing in the same room. LOL


Until next time. Happy watching.


Cheers;

Friday, June 4, 2021

I saw it, I bought it

After talking about Harold and Maude the other day and how I was tempted to buy the book, I ended up doing such. 

It arrived in my mailbox this afternoon.




I didn't realize, at "144 pages", it would literally take an hour to read. 

No, I didn't crack it open to prove it's an hour's worth of time in reading, but seeing how thin the book is, I'm guessing it's going to take no more than 90 minutes to get through it... cover to cover. 


It kind of makes sense, in a way, seeing how the film itself is 90 minutes. So what will be completed first? The book or the movie? 

I don't know; I will have to find out after I finish reading the 384 page (hardcover) Dallas 1963.


I'll fill you in when I'm done! 


Cheers;