Help I think I'm a Geek

Tuesday, 16 June 2015

Help I think I'm a Geek

Help I think I’m a Geek ©

By Michael Casey

Back in 1978 I listened to my brother and applied for a job in computers, I got that job, I stayed 21 years, market research into alcohol sales. Back then people were impressed when you said you worked in computers, 37 years ago, when I was still a teenager. It was a DEC PDP 1170 computer with a row of flashing lights and toggle switches, it was as  big as two wardrobes. There were even tape decks as big as dinner plates, not forgetting a cardreader, because you had to screw on the tapes I still to this day have a very strong twist action. This is perfect for opening and closing bottles of pop or salad cream. The other thing to remember is that we ran out of space, so we had to delete things to make sure the job wouldn’t crash. It was like Wallace and Grommet where they ran out of track and had to race as they hurtled through the living room.

Now in 2015 a home computer will have a terabyte or 1000 gig in plain English. If we had 10% of 1 gig at the time I’ll be amazed. I think when we updated the computers 15 years later we had 4 gig or something. So with this background you can understand my attitude to home computing.

I tidy up, I tidy up every time I finish on the computer, I delete History and any other files I can find, just in case I run out of space. So I still have 60gig plus, but it may as well be 60 bytes, I must tidy up. All because of 1978 in my computer room.  On the night shift I’d come in and the lads had left a trail of stuff for me to tidy up, lads can be like that, just like our own teenagers. So I always spent 20 mins tidying up after them, rather like our kitten Totoro who is running around behind me.

I know somebody who never, and I mean never did a disc cleanup. So their system went slower and slower over the years. I know somebody else who never used their company email account, when they left after 3 years it took an hour for the email to open, as there were thousands of emails waiting to be looked at. There was print room email account which he did look at, but the personal one, never.

I also know of another place where no backups were done and the company could have folded when disaster struck.  Modern companies are not that stupid, law firms save everything to a server, every email and document is numbered and filed away for posterity. So FIFA will have a lot to answer for, not unless the computers or server room are destroyed, though didn’t somebody say their computers were destroyed…..

Now everybody should have, must have an antivirus, AVG, Avast, Avira start the alphabet and ZoneAlarm finishes it, there is Norton in the middle. If you google FREE antivirus then you’ll get a load of results. Just read the reviews and then decide which is for you. In computer terms just like any marketing FREE does not mean FREE, its means FEE in one month’s time, but you can downgrade to a free version.

As they are free you could be tempted to have 2 or 3 on your PC or laptop, and guess what, your processor can be wadding through treacle. Trial and error helps. 360security is a Chinese antivirus, it also tidies up really well, though some will say too well. Again have a look for yourself.

Now when I came out of hospital after my surgery, my triple heart bypass I came home and switched on the computer and everything was gone. My books, my stories, my babies. It took 3 days to restore the computer, it had gone back to factory settings while I was away. I nearly cried, but as you can imagine I had backups.

The simplest thing to do is to use your email. Every time you send an email you copy it to a folder. So you email your mother-in-law after you send it you drag it to the DEVIL folder, or when you email your accountant you drag it to the BASTARD folder, when you email your Rabbi or Priest you drag it to the GOD folder, when you email your daughters you drag it to the DEBT folder. And so on, so that you instantly know what is in each folder. Now for the actual files you attach them to an email and then they are safe.

So you email michaelgcasey@hotmail.comattaching your stuff, once you have sent it you then put the message into a folder, such as FUNNY. What you also do is get a few email accounts, so that you can email your stuff to yourself on Hotmail, yahoo, gmail, gmx, aol and any other account. Now if your computer dies your files are safe, they are on servers all over the world. You can send your stuff to your family and friends with do not delete in subject line.

Of course you should go to Argos or Amazon or PCWorld and get a few USB sticks too. For a few quid your company, and I mean company is safe. I tell my daughter to do all this when she is doing her homework, so how much more important are your company files. You can also download your special stuff to another device you have in the home or at the office.

We all have 1000s of photos of our kids, as we all have digital camera and phones nowadays, so 10,000 photos taken over 10 years are worth protecting. My nephew said he had 5000 photos on his phone, can you believe that? You can pay for storage or you can just use the free storage on Hotmail and Gmail.  30 gig on Hotmail and 15gig on Gmail. And you can get multiple accounts.

Computers are fun, until they go wrong, and computer engineers are all mad, they don’t get the job unless they have a bizarre sense of humour, ditto for industrial printer engineers. I know this to be a fact, so trust me. However you can look after yourself if you are careful.

Get a couple of email accounts. Put everything in a folder after you have sent it. Back up your files to the Gdrive or Hotmail’s drive.  Always make 3 copies at least to usb sticks. Password is not a clever password, Drowssap is better but still not good. Add a few Upper case and numbers too. For example my inside leg is 35, my hair is brown, and I am French, so a good password could be 35BRUNfrancais.

Get an antivirus and use it, and don’t forget to tidy up not unless you want to be like Wallace and Grommet and the train track. My real password is fatBastard2015HeartAttack, but don’t tell anybody.

88888

11/mar/2018

today I've not written anything new.Instead I've had stabbing pains to shoulder and heart and leg. Which sadly is the new norm for me. I don't just sit here smiling like a fool writing stuff, I did do one good deed passing on two old coats belolonging to my girls to the least of our brethren, so Hopefully their prayers will keep me going.

Being Moved

Being Moved ©

By

Michael Casey

Let me try again,I was about write sorry I mean talk to you about Moving then I spotted a piece from was it 6 or 7 years ago so I decided to write something else. This is it. Being Moved. What is the difference you may ask, let me get myself a coffee before I begin. Well I didn’t have enough water in the kettle so I’ll have a half a mug before I start. Then a full mug wen the kettle boils again. A kettle of water is such a simple thing, and when its hot it whistles. Then you have tea or coffee and hospitality and love begins.

At one point in the Casey home we had a giant silver kettle, it must have held a gallon. Enough to make the tea after dinner and then enough water to do the washing up as well. Nobody had central heating in them days with loads of hot water in the tap. The immersion heater was only used once a week for baths. So on a daily basis a large kettle was all that was needed. We tended to wash in the old Belfast sink in the kitchen and have a bath at the weekend,or so it seemed. Normal for everybody in the 60s and early 70s.

Mum use to make us go upstairs to see if dad was ok in the bath, it was a ritual, thinking about it now I’m smiling and moved because it reminds me of my dad, my best friend. We used to hang the bath towel on the upstairs banister too, so many innocent memories that move me.

I can remember the first time dad ever had a shower, we only had a bath at home, it was in 1995 in Ireland. We were on the Grand Tour, which was the final tour in fact. We were visiting all the Casey Clan in County Kerry, and it is a Clan, I have 40 first cousins alone. So we were in the rented cottage. Dad tried the shower once we explained the controls to him. For him it was the greatest invention ever. I can hear his voice saying just how great it was, a simple innocent pleasure a hot shower. It makes me smile now. I can remember him coming home from the steelworks everyday and soaking his feet, sometimes while he had his dinner and watched the news on tv as the kitchen was too cold. He really did work too hard for us. He is the standard I aim for with my own kids, to love my kids as much as I was loved by my own dad. I hope everybody the world over, rich and poor do the same.

We never said I love you to each other, we did not need to. The Parable of the Sower comes to mind, Faith and Love can be very shallow it has to be watered. Sometimes you need family love to protect yourself from the sorrows of the world. But that’s a long long story.

It’s connections that have the power over us, the power of love. Those sunglasses may be rubbish but your sister gave them to you so they are more valuable now, especially since she died, and you felt so guilty because you weren’t there to say goodbye. You wear them when you go onstage to perform to read your poetry, or to sing your songs.

Or just when your are 200metres high above the building site controlling the crane, thanks sister, I couldn’t work with the sun in my eyes without those shades. Then you drop them on the long climb down to the ground, so you are in tears. Your boss gives you his 500dollars designer pair, but you still feel so sad. But he knows the story so he rings a friend in the Caribbean, and gets him to find the exact same pair on Dugdale Street. They are shipped overnight to the building site. 10 dollar shades, cost 500dollars for the express shipping. The next day he hands you the shades, because you are worth it. You thought he was a SOB but now you are touched really touched. He tells you to keep his 500 dollar shades, what he does not tell you is that he got 3 extra pairs just in case you lose them. Crane drivers are like gods, and he knows he needs you. Then he can buy another Caribbean island for himself, once the project is built.

I know you all have things that remind you of your mum or sister, or your lover. Stupid things, nice things, horrible things, but they are things we all treasure because they touch us, because there is love attached to them. Stop right now, pick up a drink of your choice and salute your favourite thing, because really you will be saluting your favourite person. The love behind the thing. You may even be looking in a mirror, your husband bought that for you so you could try on all your favourite clothes which he bought for you. Or in my case at least I bought the mirror, a 1.5 metre square one. Perfect for Selfies, even if the husband is far from perfect.   

Spring has finally Sprung

Spring has finally Sprung, so our central heating breaks down.

I have a title for the next piece

Life is a Rubik Cube not a Jigsaw

The philosophy students amongst you can work that out and see if you are right when I actually write it later on today, pain permitting.

other than that I've  slimmed down the site, you have backup sites to look at if you want to.

1,270,000 words or so now over 15 books. And pain all over my body too, so that's a balance I suppose. Come back later and there may be new stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC

A Child's Eye View

this is from 7 years ago. I'm in too much pain to write anything new today, and just for fun our central heating has broken down, but at least we have an oil heater so we don't turn into ice cubes, or any other rapper.

I'll get back on the horse tomorrow, and write piece 1600 or whatever it is. I have stopped counting individual stories now. Its 1,270,000 Words though. All I need is for you all to buy the books then we could finally move house. 

A Child’s’ Eye View ©

By

Michael Casey

My small daughter had made a  dangly thing, I don’t know how to describe it really. It’s a piece of coloured plastic which has holes in. Well that much is straightforward, then there are flowers and coloured wires hanging from it. A kind of bad hair day made from plastic. In effect its like those doorways which have strips of material  handing down to separate one room from another. There must be a word for it but I’d know it, but I’m  sure somebody will tell me. In films its chip shops and barbers who have these “doors”, I hope you get the picture.

Now that I’ve confused things, let me continue with the tale; though I should add that I have good news to share, I’ve rediscovered Don Camillo again. So I’m expecting a delivery of a Don Camillo omnibus in the post. With such a good feeling I decided to please my small daughter an d find somewhere to display her “art”. WE did think of hanging it in our living room/ kitchen  area, I was about to find a chair to stand on and tie the “art”   to an old curtain rail, but we were overruled by the Voice of Reason which is otherwise know as The Shanghai Mum. If you don’t know Shanghai mums are very strict and don’t appreciate “art”, so me and my daughter were banished from the living room.

We retreated upstairs and we scoured the girls’ room for a location for the modern “art”, in the end we decided if we tied a piece of string to the art we could then hang it up underneath a picture that was on their wall. So we found a ball of string and cut it to the right length, and then attached it to our plastic thingy or watsit, and I was given the task of attaching it to the string that was holding up the painting.

Unfortunately the picture fell off the wall, and even when I found a hammer, all I did was make a mess and the picture fell off the wall again.

So I had failed, Andrew Graham-Dixon would have been moved to tears, so we retreated to my room and hung in on my wall. The plastic “art” was forgotten, the hammer was put away. All that is left are the marks on the wall where the picture had hung for many a year. But at least the girls have a new location where they can put a poster, all they need is gluetac, which is far easier than hammer and nails.

Why are writers and poets so precious?(c) By Michael Casey

Why are writers and poets so precious?(c) 

By Michael Casey

Why are writers and poets so precious?

Are words more important than people.

Do we love our words more than our selves

Our words are our children

But we hate children

We hate people

We just love words

Words are our mistress

Words are our lovers

Words are our whores

We prefer the page

We prefer the pen in our hand

We prefer the soft touch of the keyboard

A woman in our bed is not good enough

A man in our arms does not satisfy us.

No we want words

We want to make love to a dictionary

p.s. I've just burnt my dictionary I'm going to bed with a woman!

 just in case you think I'm making it up about the heart, here's the proof

Trump and Kim go for Fish and Chips

Well I did say months  ago that Kim and Trump should could come to Birmingham, so

maybe now

that they are going for a blind date they may indeed come to Birmingham.

WE have coloured chips.

WE have Druckers cake shop  and coffee place

just behind our Birmingham's Saint Phillips cathedral

We have the Swallow hotel where Bill Clinton stayed when  he was in town

We have a few other nice hotels too.

Please give up your toys Kim, because Trump really really really will nuke you if you do not.

China's squeeze on North Korea is kicking in now too.

So Kim, before the Revolution comes, you need to change or die, as simple as that really.

OR you can jointly share the Nobel Peace Prize with Trump

Birmingham has  a few golf courses too, so you could play around with Donald.

We have some very nice new apartments in The Jewelry Quarter too, so buy a few Kim.

Or you can buy my house from me, the site of my first 16 books, Sweet Sixteen is half done already.

You can boast you live in Michael Casey's the fat silver haired writer in shades former home.

So Kim, you know it makes sense, make Peace, make Love not War, buy property in Birmingham.

Then play golf with the Donald.

Or just be a Flash in the East as Donald vaporises you.

I know which I'd choose.

North Korea is a very beautiful land, and its people should all have full bellies and work for

Samsung. Then the Trumps will build hotels and golf courses galore in North Korea.

Come on Kim, be a Leader, put People first not Nuclear toys.

You only have a few months left. And if you are playing for time while you build worse weapons.

Then Beware. The clock has stopped ticking. Multiple Satellites are watching.

And to encourage you. I can give you all of my books free of charge to read.

Is that a big enough bribe Kim, to keep you and all of North Korea alive.

Flash of Inspiration or Nuclear Flash?



p.s. If you click the link to my other site I have a Korean Translation of one of my books

Still Alive 2015

https://michaelgcaseyfrombirminghamengland.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/trump-and-kim-go-for-fish-and-chips/

https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC

Writing Cookbook

Writing Cookbook ©

By

Michael Casey

They say that too many cooks spoil the broth, and today has been a bit like that. My wife has been working from home and my daughter has a study day before a big exam in Maths and Biology. So I cannot walk around the house naked scratching my large imagination, and if you believe that then you have a bigger imagination than me, or is it hands?

So what is my writing cookbook and do I wash and strain all my words, before peeling them and gently adding virgin olive oil to them? How many pages from a dictionary do I dice and slice before tossing them on top of the melange? Do I roger my thesaurus to get just the right effect. Or do I never used a dictionary, because I want to feel the page, even if I get paper cuts. And is all this just one filthy metaphor, whatever a metaphor is, I assumed it was dating a weather forecaster.

I only use a dictionary as a prop to pose with for a pretentious writer photo, yes those photos. If a word is not in my vocabulary by now then I’m not going to waste my time looking for this or that nuance, which sounds like a cruel curse, calling a boy/man a nuance, or even a nuance of a man. So cruel.

You see after all my years of writing, ok, attempts at being an Artist, I am still a Young Man, I cannot strain, or maybe I don’t want to hurt myself by straining too much. So my words flow, and if I’ve learnt a new word from the DT or the Guardian then I might slip it in, just to pretend to own a dictionary. I casually add a word, like Andrew Pierce does but with name dropping. So I drop a word, or a nice metaphor and smile at my page a la Andrew Pierce. He’ll never read this so don’t go telling him,or he’ll name drop me next. Though his friend with the Mirror might just crack up laughing. The only Michael Casey they know is that Monk who writes all those books about cask ales, about reaching a higher spiritual level.

So you can see I have no cookbook, what I write as all a load of c*&*, nicely presented on the page, so you can hold a pint sorry a litre of cask ale, he is a Mirror man after all, and flick though my words. I don’t follow the Shakespeare recipe, eye of newt and tongue of journalist, and judge’s indigestion. I just go with Flo, no not Flo the cleaner but flow, the flow. I am dancing with words and sometimes if I’m wanton with sentences big and small, that go all the place till I’m breathless and panting. Which can just be my pain getting to me before I can slap on the Movelat, or it can be excitement brought on by a good workout on the page with some words.

Words have power, they can slip, and slide or they can scream and shout and let every single emotion out. And if your words are good then every single metaphor you may have assumed was mentioned previously in this piece become a new reality. Whatever that may or may not mean, its all in your head. I just lead you up the garden path, you may stumble and plant seeds in the flowerbed, or you may open the front door and fall to the floor on the carpet. And no I’m not going to mention that kind of carpet, what kind of writer do you think I am, I have more class. Besides it’s only just been vacuum cleaned.

So I started with a cooking metaphor and it’s morphed into a carpet cleaning salesman metaphor. Thankfully I did not mention shake and vac, that would have been beyond the pale. If you want milk, its in the pale in the milk cooler, if you want to flavour it, then I have some strawberries, to make a smoothie.

I hope you understand now how I work my fingers to the bone, to try and make you all laugh, if I had to flip through pages in a dictionary to get the exact word for this or that then the other words wouldn’t come to the page. I like to be spontaneous, like a Hippy Wordsmith, hey man lets use our vocabulary, lets get a sentence down, don’t frown man, you have to enjoy life, you could die in the night. So come here and use an adverb on me, that’s it and use a few adjectives too. Adverb and Adjectives and some good verbs, hey man I’m feeling Groovy now, why is the room spinning. Or is it that cask ales that Michael Casey the monk makes. Or is Michael Casey the fat silver haired writer is shades from Birmingham the one in England using his similes on us. He’ll go blind you know, too much use of the verbose, he’ll explode like a balloon with letters of the alphabet strewn everywhere.

Which brings us back to cooking, a recipe for a piece of writing is made up from individual letters of the alphabet. An a or a b or a c, put together to form words which are then mixed and occasionally tossed like pancakes to form something delicious an almost as good as chocolate. And if your writing is good it can end in sex, or you may just have to use a dictionary, which could be a metaphor.