volume

TMP — Just a Nit

Fandango12 Comments

Every Monday, Paula Light, with her The Monday Peeve prompt, gives us an opportunity to vent or rant about something that pisses us off. Today my beef is a bit of a nit (i.e., nitpicky).

In my last Who Won the Week post in 2020, I mentioned that I bought a pair of Bluetooth headphones to use while I’m watching TV. Because I’m somewhat “hearing impaired,” when I watch TV, I have to have the volume turned up pretty high in order to hear the audio. Unfortunately, my wife’s hearing is fantastic, and, at the volume I need in order to hear the TV, it’s way too loud for her. She complains that the volume is blasting her out of the room.

The good news is that these headphones do the job quite well. My wife is very happy that she can hear the audio on the TV that is set within the normal human range of hearing. And I’m happy because I can, well, hear the TV audio at all. Everyone wins.

The only “peeve” I have is that whenever I turn on the TV, I have to go to my TV’s sound source settings and delete the headphones as a paired Bluetooth device. Once deleted, I then have to instruct my TV to search for a Bluetooth device. And when it finds my previously paired headphones that I just deleted, I then have to re-pair the same headphones again. I have to do this every damn time I turn the TV on.

Sure, it only takes a minute, so it’s not that big a deal. But because I have to go through these steps each and every time, I leave the TV on all day long just so I only have to do it once a day.

See, I told you it was a nit.

Who Won the Week? 12/27/2020

Fandango21 Comments

FWWTWIt’s the last Sunday in 2020 and time for the last Who Won the Week prompt in 2020. The idea behind Who Won the Week is for you to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

I will be posting this prompt on Sunday mornings (my time). If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

Earlier this month I wrote a post in which I whined about something that was causing a major problem between me and my wife. You may recall that almost a year ago I had surgery to remove a middle ear growth in my left ear. The surgery successfully removed the growth, but not before that damn growth ate a tiny bone in my middle ear that connects the ear drum to the inner ear. Without that tiny bone, sound waves that vibrate the ear drum don’t reach the inner ear, which means that sounds don’t reach the brain. As I result, I am deaf in my left ear.

The hearing in my right ear is a bit underwhelming as it is, so in order to hear the dialogue while my wife and I are watching TV, I have to turn the volume way up. But my wife, who can hear a pin drop from across the room, complained that the TV was way too loud for her.

The solution I came up with was to splurge on a fancy, fairly expensive wireless headphone system. But no matter how I tried to configure it, I couldn’t get the sound to come through both the headphones — so I could hear — and the speakers — so she could hear — at the same time.

Finally, as a last resort, I bought a pair of relatively inexpensive Bluetooth headphones on Amazon.After a bit of finagling with my TV’s settings, I am able to hear the audio from my headphones while my wife can hear it through the TV speakers without the volume so loud it’s practically blasting her from the room.

Hence, I declare that this week’s Who Won the Week winner is my wife. And you know what they say, right? Happy wife, happy life.

What about you? Who (or what) do you think won the week?

It’s All Over…Or Is It?

Fandango27 Comments

Trump had called it “the big one” that would end with the Supreme Court undoing Biden’s substantial Electoral College majority and allowing Trump to serve another four years in the White House.

The “it” in this case was the lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The Texas AG accused the four key swing states, where Biden defeated Trump, of certifying “unlawful election results.” The lawsuit was asking the Supreme Court to declare that the Electoral College votes cast by electors in those four swing states “cannot be counted.”

Seventeen other Republican-led states signed on to the Texas AG’s suit, as did Donald Trump and 126 Congressional Republicans, in a last-ditch effort to try to subvert the will of the majority of the American people and, in the process, to destroy the American democracy.

But a more fragile democracy in the United States than any of us could have imagined, while being tested, has not fallen. Today, the Supreme Court rejected the Texas AG’s lawsuit to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory, ending a desperate attempt to get legal issues rejected by state and federal judges before the nation’s highest court.

In a brief order, the court said that Texas does not have the legal right to sue those states because it “has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.” In other word, Texas, what happened vis-a-vis the election in other states is none of your fucking business.

The Electoral College meets Monday to formally elect Biden as the next president. And that means it’s all over for Trump.

Well, it’s all over but the shouting. But knowing Donald Trump, he’s not going to stop shouting. In fact, he and his supporters will probably turn up the volume to 11.

I know I should be happy with today’s decision by the Supreme Court, but I’m still worried. I am worried about what the mad man who still occupies the Oval Office, and will continue to do so for the next five-plus weeks, will do. I worry that his minions will not stand down. I worry that there will be violence and bloodshed in the streets of our nation.

I hope I’m wrong, but I worry that I’m not.

FOWC with Fandango — Volume

Fandango24 Comments

FOWCWelcome to November 4, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “volume.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.

3TC/MLMM Tale Weaver — The Wall

Fandango6 Comments

B8B4E75B-C70C-499D-A442-5E32EB6DCA94The idea was to have a bipartisan brunch where both sides could have a civil, productive discussion about border security issues. Twelve senators and representatives, plus a handful of business executives, had been invited and the hope was that each side would demonstrate at least a little empathy for the arguments put forth by the other side.

But by the time the meeting had entered its second hour, the temperature in the room had risen, the volume of the voices had gotten louder, and passions were ignited.

The Republicans insisted that the only way to ensure border security was to build Trump’s wall. The Democrats called the wall Trump’s vanity project and nothing but an empty campaign promise.

Any hint of civility had broken down when Larry Ellison, the chairman of Oracle Corporation, and Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple Inc, simultaneously pushed back their chairs, stood up, and left the room together in disgust.

Once outside of the meeting room, Cooked looked over at Ellison and said, “What a bunch of imbeciles.”

Ellison shook his head in agreement and said to Cook, “We should take a broadsword to the bunch of them.”

Written for Paula Light’s Three Things Challenge, where the three things are “oracle,” “brunch,” and “volume.” Also for the Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver prompt where the challenge is to write about a wall. And also for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (empathy), Ragtag Daily Prompt (temperature), Word of the Day Challenge (passion), and Your Daily Word Prompt (broadsword).