Ramblin' with Roger

Happy birthday, friend Carol!

She has a great mom

I could say all sorts of good things about my wonderful friend Carol, who I’ve known since kindergarten.

We danced the Minuet in G together in second grade. When we were in fifth or sixth grade, our teacher read our IQ scores without identifying any individuals; everyone in the class, with the probable exception of her, assumed the highest score belonged to Carol.

Her family had a cottage on a lake in northern Pennsylvania, and her classmates got to go there several times. We also had parties at her house. Her mom was the best of my friend’s moms.

When I was president of student government when we were at Binghamton Central High School, she was the vice president. I saw The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), The Godfather (1972), and likely other films with her.

She was one of three people, besides the justice of the peace and his wife, at my wedding to the Okie in 1972. In 1975, I dropped out of college after breaking up with the Okie and stayed at my grandmother’s too-cold house. I got my respite from there by visiting Carol. It must often have been on Thursday nights because I have a strong recollection of watching The Waltons at her home. I got to go to her wedding in Binghamton a few years later.

There are tons more I could tell you. I must say that when we’re both in Binghamton, we always make a point of seeing each other. Sometimes those meetings were totally unexpected, as neither of us knew beforehand that the other one was in town.

Mid-Hudson

Here’s a story that epitomizes Carol.

Three or four of us from FantaCo, the comic book store in Albany where I worked, went down to New York in the early 1980s. I don’t remember if it was a comic book convention or a visit to our distributor, Seagate, to see Jonni Levas and the late Phil Seuling.

In any case, on the return trip, the car broke down on the Taconic Parkway in the Mid-Hudson Valley. We had no credit cards and insufficient money to get the car towed and fixed. After going through our limited options, I decided to call Carol, who by then lived about 15 miles away. She drove over and paid the auto mechanic. We wrote her a check, which the mechanic would not take from us because we were from out of town. This was a very nice act.

I saw Carol this summer near Binghamton, up from Texas, to visit her mother and siblings. I reminded her of this generous act. She had no recollection of it. It should not have surprised me. She’s so sweet and caring and decent that when she does a kindness, she doesn’t always remember it.

So, dear friend Carol, the happiest of birthdays to you.

The self-checkout register

not the panacea

The expanding universe of the self-checkout register shows up more in my Facebook feed than almost any topic. In general, these are not complimentary observations.

Some people complain about the basic philosophical position that machines are replacing humans. Far more, though, are frustrated by the difficulty of the transactions.

Specifically: they don’t work, fail to accept the coupons or register the incorrect prices. I wonder how often the frustration leads to items being unscanned and stolen. Or for abandoned transactions if the lines get too long.

Last month, when I was at my local Price Chopper grocery store, about a half dozen people were in line to go to the four self-checkout registers. Meanwhile, no one was in line behind the customer nearest human-staffed register. Of course, I went there and was done faster than the folks in line.

CVS

Around the same time, I stopped at CVS to get a small bag of chips and a ginger ale. The store had two self-checkout machines, but the only employee in sight was helping a customer in a wheelchair. Machine #1 had an abandoned transaction, so I went to the other one, which got stuck in a loop. Three frustrated patrons stood behind me.

Know that I had 15 minutes to catch a nearby bus when I walked in, but now it’s been ten minutes, and I was ready to throw up my hands and walk out sans the items.

Fortunately, another human employee noticed the backup. I told them the issues for both machines, and they fixed each in turn; I finished my transaction and caught the bus.

CVS has a habit of sending out user email surveys. I filled this one out with much of the details stated here. In response, I received this: “Thank you for your feedback regarding your experience at CVS Pharmacy on November 06, 2022. Providing exceptional customer care is a priority for us. .Sorry you had a problem with the self checkout you should not of had to wait that long to have the problem fixed. we should have respond much quicker”

(No, I’m not going to nitpick about the typos and grammar errors. Or even complain that my transaction was on the 3rd of November; my COMMENT was lodged on the 6th.)

It depends

I’ve made my peace with automated transactions. Frankly, I prefer the ATM at my bank to the tedious line I got into at my wife’s credit union last month, where the teller had to take a check written to my wife from our church for reimbursement so I could DEPOSIT it. Moreover, as I’ve noted, my bank, since COVID, now allows withdrawals of five- and ten-dollar bills. Yay!

Self-service gas is fine. Well, except at the local Shoprite because the discount card that one is supposed to scan before the credit card goes in doesn’t always register the discounted price.

I’ll admit that it took me a couple of minutes to suss out the kiosk system at a local fast-food restaurant. It is probably because I go there rarely; I don’t have or want their app.

So self-service is fine IF it works. It sucketh big-time when it does not. And according to this CNN piece from July 2022. “In the biggest headache for store owners, self-checkout leads to more losses due to error or theft than traditional cashiers.

“’If you had a retail store where 50% of transactions were through self-checkout, losses would be 77% higher’ than average, according to Adrian Beck, an emeritus professor at the University of Leicester in the UK who studies retail losses.

“Customers make honest errors as well as intentionally steal at self-checkout machines.”

The title of the piece says it all: “Nobody likes self-checkout. Here’s why it’s everywhere.”

December Questions for Sunday Stealing

french revolution

Here are some December Questions for Sunday Stealing.

1. My plans for December

I’m happy that the church choir is singing in person again regularly. We did sing in late 2021, but it was sporadic; half the choir sang one week, then just the soloists, then the other half, then the soloists. It wasn’t easy to get a musical rhythm. We all did sing on Christmas Eve.

2. How energized I feel at this point in the year.

It’s cold, and it’s darker for longer. But it’s not awful.

3. The best things about the holiday season

Music. Singing it, listening to it. BTW, my bud fillyjonk linked to a great piece by the Monkees!

4. Something that changed my perspective on life

The whole year has been a series of Plan B moments.

5. What I seem to get the most comments about

Evidently, I am a very expressive singer. Even strangers have commented on it.

6. The changes I’ve made to my style

I have no style. Or, more correctly, I don’t care about style to be concerned enough to change it.

7. What gets in the way of my success

Overcommitting

The fourth estate

8. News sources I trust the most

I look at LOTS of sources, even ones I don’t particularly trust. It helps inform me how people with different, even, IMO bizarre, thoughts about the world get their ideas.

9. Fictional characters that would easily fit into my life

I thought that certain iterations of Peter Parker, the seeming schlub who is unappreciated, would be a friend.

10. My relationship with spirituality

You’re almost certainly wrong if you think you’ve got it figured out. Mainline churches have liturgies that repeat every three years because one should be taking something new from the stories.

Of course, in my Bible group, we often comment that we’d like to see our pastors tackle some particularly odious passages. We’re in the middle of 2 Kings, some ferocious stuff.

11. How I feel when I’m being retrospective

Depends. Sometimes it is with great appreciation that I have good friends, some of whom I’ve known for half a century or longer. Other times it is with regret that I didn’t deal with someone better.

Artificial intelligence

12. My thoughts on AI technology

I went to DeepAI and used the prompt, “The french revolution was good.” Here’s the result:

the french revolution was good, I wish I could have played," says the former striker. "You don't go into Spain believing you can go there and play there but I think maybe that was the case.

"The pressure is intense at training because you've got to do everything you can to be successful, because in Spain these days a lot of people do that work and do everything you can to get yourself in top form. So I don't know why we haven't worked hard for some time but definitely the feeling has changed for me.

"The pressure on you in training is intense. I have to go out there and play every minute of any game and try to stay mentally sharp. It's nice to be back at home and feel calm in training or off in the dressing room after all these years."

I find some AI art interesting, but other pieces are rather creepy.

This gets into a whole series of philosophical questions about intellectual property. Plus, what is… knowledge/art/writing/creativity?

13. The odd/weird things I do when nobody else is around

I don’t think it’s all that odd. I talk to myself, especially when I’m writing. It helps me think.

14. What do I do when I can’t sleep

Get up and play Wordle. Read newspapers.

15. The winter/holiday season tasks I enjoy

I like buying presents for people who are easy to buy for, such as my daughter. Conversely, my wife is terrible to shop for because she doesn’t hint well.

Happy birthday, Bill!

Guillaume

When I was growing up in Binghamton, NY, I attended Daniel S. Dickinson School from K-9. For some arcane reason, school started both in September and in February. The February classes were smaller as they generally contained people whose birthdays were from December through March.

There were nine of us who went K-9 together and eight who graduated from Binghamton Central High School simultaneously. And I still remember all of their birth months, even though half of them I haven’t seen in decades. Diane in April, Karen and me in March. Bernie, Irene, and Lois in February. David (who stayed an extra semester to play basketball), Carol, and Bill in December.

So I’ve known Bill almost all of my life, which is a great thing. Sometimes I call him on his birthday, which is December 17 or at least send him an email. He lived right across the street from Ellis’ candy store on Mygatt Street, in the middle of the block between Dickinson and Clinton Streets, but he insists that he always went one of the corners and didn’t jaywalk, which sounds right.

In high school, he was that guy who could straddle the different cliques. He was a jock who the longhairs could trust. That’s probably how he got elected as class president.

Get-togethers

A group of us went to our 10th high school reunion. It was a rather meh event, to be honest. But the afterparty was fun. We thought we’d have a gathering of us Dickinson kids. Maybe a year later, Carol, Lois, Karen, and I converged on Bill’s house. We bought food and talked almost all night. It was a grand time. The second and third pictures above are from one of those occasions.

A year or so later, some of us went to his wedding to Brenda; it is a cliche to say she’s beautiful inside and out, but no less accurate for that.

I’d see Bill at random times, such as our 35th(?) reunion. The biggest surprise was when I was taking the Amtrak to NYC a couple of decades ago. I was walking through the train and ran into Bill, which was great.

The last time I saw him was at our last high school reunion in September of 1971 at Ross Park in my hometown.

Happy birthday, Bill! Or happy birthday, Guillaume. (He, like I, took French in high school, the odd stuff one remembers…)

Another STAX Christmas

Booker T. and The MG’s

Some of my favorite sources for holiday music are the various STAX Christmas and compilation albums. Do you know STAX/VOLT of Memphis, TN? The OTHER major source of soul music in the 1960s besides Motown in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Black Christmas – The Emotions. The female vocal trio had its best commercial years after leaving the label with Best Of My Love. This is a black empowerment track.

All I Want For Christmas Is You – Carla Thomas. One of the first names I think of on the label. From 1966, when it got to #11 on Billboard’s special Xmas list, the same year her B-A-B-Y was #3 RB, #14 pop.

Silver Bells (Ray Evans, Jay Livingston) – Booker T. and The MG’s. Released as a 1967 season single. Booker T. Jones was born in 1944 in Memphis, TN.

Who Took The Merry Out Of Christmas – Staple Singers; a downer, social justice song. But I love Pops’ and Mavis’ voices here.

Jingle Bells (James Lord Pierpont) – Booker T. and The MG’s, #20 on the Xmas list in 1966

Gee Whiz It’s Christmas – Carla Thomas. written by Thomas, Steve Cropper, and trumpeter Vinny Trauth. #23 on the Christmas charts in 1963. It was inspired by Carla’s #10 pop/#5 RB hit Gee Whiz (Look In His Eyes)

Sort of a hit

Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday – William Bell. Written by Bell and Booker T. Jones. This went #33 RB in 1968 and was a regional pop hit in the DC area. Born in 1939 in Memphis, he was a prolific songwriter.

The Mistletoe And Me – Isaac Hayes. A keyboard player/songwriter for STAX, the singer died in 2008. This non-album invokes Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Jingle Bells, and We Three Kings, among other songs. I contend that this is a GREAT Christmas song. But I’ve never heard it on the radio

Winter Snow (Isaac Hayes) – Booker T. and The MG’s. Yes, it is a melancholy instrumental. Sometimes the season is like that.