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Thrinters

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Jasmine scurried out the Baby Designer Studio’s back entrance. She desperately needed fresh air to combat a wave of nausea. Was it from the baby or the thought of the marsupial pouch option? She just couldn’t tell. In her haste, she almost knocked down another pregnant woman clearly in her final months, weeks? Jasmine could never really tell.

“Watch it,” the pregnant lady growled, putting her arm out to regain her balance.

“Excuse me,” Jasmine mumbled. She glanced back to see the woman disappear through a discreet side door. A muted orange light cast a soft, glow over this mysterious entrance. Though if you weren’t looking for it, it was easy to overlook.

The pregnant lady, Wanda, took a quick breath to steady herself once the heavy door shut and latched behind her. Her job was hard enough without annoying, privileged, whiny, wanna-be moms from the Baby Designer Studio trampling her down. She ambled slowly to the comfort room.

When Wanda signed up for this job, she had no idea what it would entail. The pitch made it sound like a way to help aspiring parents realize their dreams. Wanda liked to help people, plus the pay was decent. She liked the idea of making dreams happen. Even her job title, “Innovative Dream Consultant, Thrinter,” had originally sounded fancy and important. Until the real work actually started.

Wanda had been approached and convinced to give this job a try under orders of secrecy. Thus she hadn’t consulted anybody else about the job, nor did she fully understand what it involved. All she knew was that she was getting paid to eat properly, attend exercise classes, and live in luxurious accommodations, complete with housekeeping, rent free. A dream come true, at first…

However, the work began. After a few months of pampering, Wanda started treatments. Initially, she didn’t realize what the pear-shaped 3D printers she passed on the way to the treatment rooms signified. As she lay on the table for one of many treatments, her mind hazy from the drugs, the words slowly fit together. It was like a children’s show, sounding out a new word. Three-D + printer, thrinter. That’s what she was now. The pear-shaped ones were trying to replicate what her body did naturally.

The drugs wore off. Wanda emerged from the treatment room, a “thrinter,” certain this last treatment would make somebody’s dreams come true.

Spring Cleaning

Purging Bookmarks

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I’ve had so many things bookmarked in my favorites bar for so long that I’ve started ignoring them. This, of course, negates the benefits of having favorite sites bookmarked. I suppose at one point or another, these links were important. Links bookmarked to read later. Maybe even the result of some research, a curated list of carefully selected sites to review in more detail. In one folder I found a cache of recipes. I recognized some of the recipes as “winners” and others as “wish list” dishes.

The point being that without a conscious decision to revisit our digital caches, they have a tendency to pile up and become obsolete and outdated. Something that was useful ends up becoming junky, digital clutter. Though I see my favorites every time I open a browser, likely dozens of times a day, somehow this doesn’t make them more prominent. If anything, seeing them constantly makes them recede into the background, except for the three I rely on often. It reminded me of something I heard once about putting up signs. A friend of mine disliked using signs to communicate because they quickly become irrelevant. At the time, I vehemently disagreed, but now I see his point. When you pass by something everyday, you stop noticing it, even if it’s useful to you.

In any event, I don’t use about 90% of the bookmarks. And the way I have them organized in my favorites, it’s unlikely I would even notice the ones I might need. I have folders and subfolders of favorites on my bookmark bar. As soon as this realization occurred to me, naturally I had to start purging them. I wiped entire folders with barely a second glance. Many of the links dated back to 2013(!).

My list of favorited bookmarks is so long it extends past the browser bar. Yet another reason why so many gems were being forgotten and overlooked. I even uncovered one treasure that I had desperately searched for months ago. It’s for an obscure YouTube video. No matter how I searched, I couldn’t find this video. The whole time it was tucked away at the bottom of my auxiliary favorites list.

As with other purging projects, time for me to revisit some of my tips and tricks. Review digital caches on a routine basis. Start small, start easy.

Digital Dilemma

The Human Touch: Learning

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This past weekend I made a pizza completely from scratch. Usually I buy the dough pre-made. I’ve been trying different techniques with the pre-made dough for years. Some of the things I’ve adjusted are the length of time to let the dough rise. How I pull and stretch it into the right shape. The pan I use to cook it in, etc. I’m always amazed how so much of pizza making is all in the technique. The dough is simple, but all the details matter.

Homemade Sourdough Pizza margherita

My usual dough supplier stopped making pizza dough leaving me in a lurch. It was time to finally figure out how to make sourdough pizza. I located an old bag of pizza flour in the back of my cupboard that I bought years ago for this reason. I prepped my starter and got ready.

During the pandemic I kept reading about all these procrastibakers. Or people who even started baking so much they ended up opening their own businesses! I suppose with the pandemic, people were home enough to commit to making dough, which requires small amounts of work over a period of days.

I looked up a recipe that didn’t seem too intimidating. As mentioned earlier, it’s not really the recipe that counts. Anybody can get the right ratios of flour, water, starter, and salt. It’s the instructions on technique and details that matter.

Usually I improvise recipes a little, even when making them for the first time. However, this time, I stuck to the script, at least in the beginning. I pulled and stretched my dough at the required intervals. But my dough never seemed to look or react the same way as the one in the recipe. I even watched the video and read some comments to troubleshoot. This also happens when I try to make bread.

Honestly, it’s the kind of thing that could likely be resolved after one conversation with a professional, or an experienced procrastibaker. But searching aimlessly on the internet to figure out why my dough didn’t look or stretch the same, left me short on answers.

Another turning point came when I cooked up the pizza. I strayed from the recipe and took out my dough hours earlier than instructed. Despite my dough difficulties, the pizza came out delicious. I’m tempted to take an in-person course to figure out the small details and gained wisdom.

Digital Dilemma

A New Direction for Search

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As online content proliferates, searching for something becomes harder, yet easier at the same time. The hard part is figuring out what exactly you’re looking for and the best place to look for it. The easy part is typing in the words to find it. For example, I’ve been reading articles about how popular Tik Tok is becoming as a top site for searching. People search it for everything from restaurant reviews to fashion tips and recipes. I even read some people use it for more professional searches such as how to write a cover letter or a resume.

It seems that more people are going to a specific site to search rather than using a broader search engine, such as Google. For example, if I wanted to find a tutorial video on how to do something, I would probably go straight to YouTube rather than searching on Google or DuckDuckGo. Although search engines typically separate results by content type such as news, images, videos, etc. sometimes it’s easier to go straight to the source. Or the perceived source. The danger is the results could be restrictively narrow, biased, or poor quality. Mainstream search engines, however, may not be much better. Secret algorithms rank results, but at least it’s providing options from different resources.

In the early days of internet searching, to be good at it required knowing a whole bunch of commands. Using “” meant a keeping words together as a phrase in the search results. Using the “+” meant combining words together. What I’ve noticed in the past decade is that most search engines will combine search terms with an “and” by default. This limits search results, though the searcher may not realize that about this default feature. All of the terms must appear in the result for it to appear. Whereas using the word “or” in a search broadens the results. Using “or” means the results can contain any of the search terms, but not all of them.

Now, search is great at interpreting natural language. Some search engines will even correct spellings, or assumed mistakes and offer results based on the correction. For example, searching for “aple” will pull up results for “apple.” From that point, the results are a little less successful because without more details it’s impossible to know if the term meant the fruit, the technology company, or something else.

Human Archives

Community

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The past two weekends I attended events sponsored by the local public library. The events were live and in person. Both felt novel and yet, a reminder of how things used to be at the same time. On some level it feels strange to have so many activities available after two years of lockdowns. It also feels strange to navigate social situations, especially ones with lots of people.

One of my favorite things about the public library is its diversity. The library has something for everyone. After all the lockdowns I have a new appreciation for both the variety in library collections and in the patronage. Libraries attract all kinds of people and manage to serve them all in some way or another. Attending these events the past two weekends evidenced that.

I’m always impressed by the adaptations made by public libraries to remain a relevant and viable part of the communities they serve. It’s funny to me that the iconic symbol of a library is books, yet they only represent a fraction of the collections, services, and programs offered by public libraries. In recent years I’ve noticed articles on new and innovative designs to make public libraries attractive and welcoming communal spots.

In my local district they recently removed late fees for the first 30 days. For a certain part of the community late fees represented a barrier to borrow books. I read about libraries in another district acquiring portable hotspots to loan to people who don’t have internet connectivity. Some libraries now carry naloxone in case of an overdose emergency. It never ceases to amaze me how welcoming and prepared libraries are to serve all their patrons.

Another thing I love is how a good public library always makes me feel like I belong to the community. I hope other patrons feel that way, too!

Digital Dilemma, Productivity

There’s an App for Everything!

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About 10 years ago I wrote a post “There’s an App for that.” Back then it seemed that no matter what I wondered about or pondered, there was an app for it. Or the promise of one coming. Whether I needed to monitor my sleep habits, automatically count calories or know if I was stressed out, an app was available.

Flash forward 10 years, now it seems there really is an app for everything. The other week I received a promotional for a free pilates class. However, I wasn’t able to register for my first, promotional class without first downloading the app and then registering. This required me to create another login and password. I found this a little bit annoying and tedious. Before I commit to creating a login and downloading a customized app I like to know if I’m going to use the service more than once. I feel this is a minimal requirement.

Last week I went to the local hospital for an ultrasound. A day or two before the appointment I received an automated text message to remind me. The text also included instructions for, you guessed it, downloading a special hospital app to check in for my appointment. I think I can also check results on the app, too. Since it’s rare for me to visit the hospital for any kind of procedure, fortunately, I didn’t download the special app.

However, when I arrived at the hospital, I was surprised at the manual effort required to register. The admin took my healthcard. Then she used a pen to handwrite my information on a piece of paper I took with me to the appointment! It’s as if processes have no middle ground anymore. As though all process inefficiencies halted to jump ahead with a slick app. This means the options are sleek, streamlined app OR clunky, manual, repetitive, and inefficient process.

I took the paper from the admin and went to the waiting room. The whole time wondering would an app have improved the experience? Would I still have received a piece of paper with my name handwritten on it?

Though I don’t have the answers to these questions, I’m sure there’s an app for that.