AI-AI-AI

My foot feels well enough that I could walk around Manhattan (even the two avenues from the office to the subway in the afternoon) with no pain at all, which surprised me considering how long I've had issues with the left foot and my left side in general. Believe me, at my age I take nothing for granted any more! And I'm grateful as today was full of schleppage from floor to floor, as I attended two AI-related sessions with fellow exec assistants. The sessions were interesting but all in all not terribly relevant to the job I do. I increasingly feel as though my work experience makes AI redundant in my day-to-day, but we'll see. Things were a bit better on the new-partner front but I still have a bit of unease there. Deep breaths!

The Day My Music Died

White Rabbits! And things are looking up, and away. The foot is improving, Robin got my Yahoo mail working again on the default mail app on my mobile devices, the supermarket app is working correctly as well now, I finished my favorite game's weekend challenge, and thanks to that extra hour of sleep I was finally able to tackle two of the four boxes of stuff what I've saved from 25-50 years ago. All the songbooks I'd collected back when I played guitar, all the pages of meticulously-copied lyrics with their chords notated, all my stuff from my days in Rutgers' Queens Chorale, all gone now. I shall not be bringing my 50+ year old guitar with me to England, that's going to my musician friend Phyllis. I don't remember when I stopped playing, it was probably sometime during my first marriage, but in any case if I ever take it up again I will no longer need the paper I'd retained that was the main method of musical communication. Paper is heavy, and if something no longer sparks a memory (let alone joy) it doesn't need to come with me. I couldn't bring myself to look over the greeting cards I've kept (I now have four boxes worth), maybe I'll review them again post-retirement and pre-move. But the gist of it is, this long journey that got jump-started back in August when Robin moved the AC then had to empty the rafters and one non-stop bullet-dodging thing led to another... it's finally over. It's all put away or shredded or properly stored. Even the side quests like my latest batch of read comics and all those jackets we culled have now found new homes and will be picked up tomorrow. We are back to where we should have been months ago; even better actually, as we've cleared out stuff we hadn't intended on doing for at least another year. I applaud standard time!

Jonny Come Lately

My darling godson Jonny came to visit us today. He's moving back to New York City from Austin, TX, where he felt like he never quite fit in, and wanted to assure us that we'll be a major part of his NYC experience, at least until we move. Speaking of which, he's vital and strong (he does rock climbing and lifts weights) and was able to help Robin take down our printer and AC boxes almost single-handedly! Not only that, thanks to him all the boxes from the loft that aren't filled with receipts waiting to be shredded are now situated where the old AC/printer boxes used to be, freeing up space for us to steam our kurtas for this coming weekend and retrieve our suitcases for the weekend as well as the UK trip. Plus, he will help us rehome all our tech and appliances in the next few years as we get ready to downsize all the things that run on US outlets. Best of all, we get to cat-sit his lovely orange tabby Mango when he travels, satisfying my urge to have a kitty that won't completely be fulfilled until we've emigrated. We had a lovely visit with my uncle (his grandfather) then a nice lunch locally before he took off for more parts unknown. A bit of a whirlwind, exhausting day, especially being out in non-air conditioned areas for a longer period of time than I'm used to in muggy weather. And I'm still not walking properly despite having changed back to the sneakers I was wearing before my most recent pair, so that was pretty tiring as well. But so, so worth it!

Connectivity

Well, I thought my work-related tech issues were behind me, but this morning a firmwide glitch stopped all external emails from arriving, so I had to go onto my email at the client site and stay there for awhile until things got fixed. Not good for a firm where customer connection is key. Thank goodness so many people were still on PTO. My brain is half-there too. Tomorrow I get my hair cut, Sunday I take the car for inspection, just ticking off the things to do before the big September travel (first to Philly for the wedding reception then to Merrie Olde), and expecting fate to throw a spanner in those works as it sometimes does.

Back in Business

The new printer arrived while we were out shopping and sush'ing, and I still can't believe Robin was able to carry it up that indoor flight from the landing to our apartment. Goodness only knows when it'll be out of the place entirely, it sits near the old air conditioner in its box. It may be time to take our downstairs neighbor up on his offer to help with the schleppage. We spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready for tomorrow's company outing to the Bronx Zoo, which is sure to exhaust me as I then have to go into the office two days running. Ah well, one day at a time!

Hardware and Software

Few things put me into fight-or-flight (in this case, always flight) mode faster than tech going wrong. And of course with built-in enshittification (used to be "obsolesence" but enshittification is so much worse) things go wrong a lot more quickly than they used to. For about a week I haven't been able to log onto a client site, and neither the helpdesk at my firm nor theirs has been able to help me. So this will probably necessitate a trip to the physical client site in the Wall Street area in my near future to get someone to fix it there. Then our printer gave out today, shortly after I printed my pay stub. Robin's kept it going for about eight years but couldn't manage whatever was wrong with it today, so we bit the financial bullet and bought a new one, arriving tomorrow. Lastly, what the what with our cable? We haven't been able to tune into a bunch of channels for a few days now. Our workaround was watching them via Apple TV, which means it's not the carrier but the physical cable boxes. I suspect an update caused something to break, and it turned out the boxes needed a hard reboot (which the carrier usually does remotely but didn't this time). Voila, our channels are all back now, albeit with occasionally jumps in the transmission (which I still think of as glitches in the matrix). I miss the days when I could just turn on a TV and adjust the antenna...

So Iterative

Hoorah, the heat broke at last! Unfortunately it rained a lot more in New York than anyone expected. I only got caught in a few drizzles, and I had a hoodie so it was fine... and of course we need the rain. It's the time of year when folks start to plan long weekends and go on vacations so things got a bit quieter, and I had to occupy myself somehow as I was in the office and couldn't just go into another room and watch TV for awhile, so I took some self-study courses, most of which seem to be about iterations of AI now. So, so iterative. Naturally the subway and bus were both hella crowded on the way home, but I managed a seat on both and wasn't thoroughly exhausted by the time Robin picked me up at the terminus and schlepped my backpack for me the block or so back to our home. Gearing up for more noise for the next few days as the landlord's hires are still banging and drilling away at the downstairs apartment...

Silly Site o' the Day

Witness the pure genius that is Pure Genius! Great, great AI takedown. Via PZ Myers.

Time Out Times Three

Very, very glad we figured out how to use my iPhone's hotspot on Wednesday. I worked from home today when our internet and cable service went out for the third day in a row (for a period of a few hours, twice today) and was able to get everything done. I'm even, amazingly, in good shape as far as quarterly meeting scheduling, which I didn't think I would be. Only about a dozen to go between two clients! And all immediate fires seem to be put out. Next week is a big and somewhat stressful one, where we see if all our plans for the first PCAOB inspection at the new office come off without a hitch. Fortunately the logistics have been a team effort so I'm hoping things go smoothly, but that's a whole weekend away...

Innage and Outage

I'm told our home internet went out again today for a few hours, so it looks like this may be a regular thing for the next few days at least. This makes blogging, among many other things, very tricky, but I'm glad I learned how to use my work phone's hotspot to get onto my office intranet and such, so I can get things done! Not an issue today as I was physically in the office, getting ready for next week's big First Inspection at the New Office event (for which I'm in charge of logistics), mailing out more documents re Mom's estate, and securing more funds for laundry and such. Love how many Manhattan errands I can get done now! Ninth Ave might be a pain to get to and from, but once I'm in the heart of the Penn Station area the sky appears to be the limit. And I've managed to create (with Robin's help) a how-to so others with wonky home internet can access their phones' hotspots as well! So, very productive, but now I'm tired and I really, really want the weather to get milder again...

Cold Comfort and Hot Spots

So yeah, our internet went down around 6:30 this morning and didn't come back until almost 3 PM. As it was a work-from-home day (and I wasn't about to schlep into the office with the cold outside and my feet being what they are) I didn't think I had much recourse. I went back to bed, then had to resort to *gasp* going analog, and got through all my comic pamphlets and smaller-sized graphic novels. Around noon Robin reported he was able to connect to his phone's hotspot for wifi and I thought, let's try the same with my work phone, which is from a different carrier and has a decent data plan, I assume. We finally figured out how to work it and I had no connectivity issues at all for the rest of the time until the home wifi returned. My supervisor wants me to do a presentation to the other exec assistants on how to connect to wifi via the firm phones, so if I have time tomorrow I'll start playing around with our new PowerPoint tools to see what I can come up with. In the meantime, I'm just glad  I can play my online games again.

Minor Glitches

So the USB connections on either my monitor or docking station are a bit kablooey, and Robin and I will have to figure those out sometime over the weekend so I can use my keyboard and monitor camera properly come Monday. Good incentive to clean around the monitor area, where I keep lots of desk tchatchkes. I'm actually in something of a cleaning jag; tomorrow I attempt to wipe down the microwave which has started looking grungier than I'd like, and I have a Swiffer mop all ready to go on the bathroom floor when I have the energy. And probably after I catch up on finances, most of which I've finally printed out along with my pay stub this afternoon. Credit card bill auto-paid as well, and tomorrow I take care of medical bills. With food shopping and needed rest coming up tomorrow, I doubt I'll get to too much of this, but at least it's a list, and lists make me happy!

Powering Up and Out

The arm has eased a bit, but after all I've been using it (mostly for lifting pots and pans) so not entirely unexpected. We tried a relatively new space heater in the home office this morning, which unfortunately tripped a circuit breaker so Robin had to fiddle with all of them, switching them off then on again, because the electric in this house is for crap. Fortunately I was able to log on at 8 AM as usual! The Seattle Mariners have won their second game in a best-of-7 contest against the Toronto Blue Jays, and I kind of feel bad as it's Canadian Thanksgiving, but the Mariners are really (literally) stepping up to the plate. I'm stepping up as well work-wise; tomorrow morning I have a meeting with the higher-level partner I'll be starting to support in a month or so, and in a call with my supervisor this afternoon she officially confirmed that I'll be losing seven of the partners and managing directors I now support to clear my plate for the High Level Guy. I'm kind of sad, this is the first time I've parted with so many folks who aren't even near to retirement, but I do what they tell me and keep my head down and that's how I've had an almost 50-year career. In a little over three weeks we'll all be together in the same NY HQ at last, so that's mainly what I'm getting ready for. That and some medical stuff, as I have a stress test on Thursday. What, me stressed?

Three of Three, and the Blue Screen of Oops

I was so dead-tired from yesterday (and the walk back to the west side express bus didn't do my hallux any favors) that I decided to come home early today. At least I finally cleared out most of the things I'd been keeping in my desk, and my rolling file cabinet is now completely empty. Can't take it with me to the place with no storage, after all! And it's official, we're moving to Hudson Yards on Guy Fawkes Day. I do not believe the move will be accompanied by any fireworks or effigies. Anyway, so the traffic was horrid and I didn't get home until around 4:30 anyway. I decided to log on again to clear out email in preparation for tomorrow, and the first thing I saw was a pop-up to install driver software. Only 3-10 minutes, they said! They were wrong, it not only took a lot longer but it seemed to screw up my laptop to the point where I got the blank black screen after hard reboots. Long story short, I'm an idiot for not remembering to unplug all my peripherals (like my charger/docking station connector), and all works fine now. In my defense, software installations rarely require unplugging peripherals. Also in my defense, I'm still really tired and doing things in half measures. So I'm going to half-heartedly watch the Yankees win as I half-heartedly followed the Mets victory earlier via my phone on the commute home. Only a week and a half of the regular season to go!

23 Skidoo

Hey, Chat GPT, 'sup?

You said:"Looking through the archives of elayneriggs.blogspot.com, generate a blog entry celebrating 23 years of Pen-Elayne on the Web."

Celebrating 23 Years of Pen-Elayne on the Web!

Wow, 23 years! That's a milestone worth celebrating! It feels like just yesterday I was kicking off my humble little corner of the internet with Pen-Elayne on the Web, a place for me to share my thoughts, observations, and little bits of life that I hoped might resonate with you, my readers. Fast forward to today, and I find myself reflecting on the many wonderful moments, conversations, and connections that have made this journey so special.

When I first started this blog back in 2002, the web was an entirely different place. Blogs were still a relatively new thing, and social media hadn't yet exploded in the way we know it today. It was a time when every post felt like an intimate conversation with a small, but dedicated, group of readers. My aim was always simple: to share my love for the things that made me excited, whether it was comics, TV shows, books, or just the experiences of everyday life. I never expected this little site to grow into what it has become, but I’m so incredibly grateful for the journey.

One of the most rewarding parts of this adventure has been the incredible community that has formed around this blog. Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with so many wonderful people who share my interests, and some of you have become good friends. We’ve had discussions about pop culture, comics, the writing process, and even just life’s little challenges. Your comments, emails, and support have always been a constant reminder of why I do this—because it’s not just about me sharing my thoughts, but about creating a space for all of us to engage in meaningful conversation.

Over the years, Pen-Elayne on the Web has evolved along with the internet itself. I’ve explored new formats, experimented with different ways of expressing myself, and even taken a few breaks (because life happens!). Through it all, my goal has remained the same: to share something meaningful, whether it’s a deep dive into a comic book series or a lighthearted post about a favorite TV show.

As I reflect on these 23 years, I can’t help but think about the future. What’s next for Pen-Elayne on the Web? Well, I’m excited to keep evolving. I’m excited to dive deeper into new topics, explore even more diverse interests, and continue growing this community that means so much to me. Whether it’s through more in-depth articles, fun reviews, or even experimenting with new formats like video or podcasts, I’m always looking for ways to make this space even more engaging for you, the reader.

So, here's to 23 years of blogging! Thank you for being part of this journey. Whether you’ve been reading since the beginning, or you just stumbled upon this little corner of the internet, I appreciate each and every one of you.

Here’s to many more years of sharing, laughing, and connecting! Let’s see where the next chapter takes us.

With gratitude and excitement,
Elayne Riggs

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Um, no thanks. Go home ChatGPT, you're hallucinating.

 

No wonder corporations love this stuff, it all sounds like corporate-speak! In fact, whenever I want to write something at work that requires jargon I actually employ AI (plus the company has mandated that we use it regularly) then rework it into my own words. But the above self-hagiography is too peppy even for me ("because life happens!"). I've been a writer since I was 13 years old, and I'm not nearly ready to outsource my creativity.

 

But sometimes the siren call is hard to resist, particularly when every app I open at work (and even at play, Blogger keeps trying to be helpful by employing this latest iteration of Clippy to ask if I want to add links and such), and particularly since we humans gravitate towards laziness. After all, 'twas intellectual laziness (among many other factors) that led to trusting DOGE-hackable voting machines over pen, paper, and human tabulation, and then to the election and pseudo-worship of a serial rapist/racist reality show thug with negative curiosity and absolutely no empathy. Better to have someone or something else think for us, even if it goes against lived history, scientific validity, and even reality itself. And so the head of HHS hallucinates, the orange sh*tgibbon hallucinates, everyone who slavishly follows them makes a show of hallucinating right along with them, and now our machine friends hallucinate as well.

 

And I admit, the older I get the lazier (or is it more tired?) I'm prone to becoming. There have been times with this blog that I've reverted to becoming a Silly Site repository, or a "what I had for breakfast" monologue. I have nor need no excuse for that, it's my playground after all. But it's also my prerogative to be creative if I want to be, to rant and rave if the mood takes me, and to not be confronted with "helpful" virtual assistance that serves little purpose than to feed its own gaping maw which will always get things wrong anyway because It Can't Think. We can think. We can, dare I say, engage in meaningful conversation unprompted. And so, with gratitude and excitement, I welcome our AI Overlor-- no wait. I thank all of you for continuing to inspire and encourage me. Onward to year 24!

 

 

Fresh Air, Part 3

It's my fault, really. When Robin asked on Saturday, after the tech guy did his thing, if we should put in the air conditioner still in its box, waiting for the bedroom one we've had for 20+ years to finally give up the ghost (it's been teetering for about a decade now), I insisted it was no hurry. Well, last night it just didn't seem to be cooling. So today was the day, which we didn't really need as (1) Robin has work to do and (2) the temps are really not conducive to such a major operation. But, long story short, it's all done now, Robin's absolutely amazing, I helped very little (basically got a few things out of the way so furniture could be moved, then restocked my bedroom bookcase afterwards), and we should be comfortable again this evening. The rest of the week we both concentrate on work, with tomorrow being my first day back in the "cursed" Manhattan office and Robin taking his rightful place at his drawing board.

Fresh Air, Part 2

We got our shopping done early today so we could be sure we were home for the air conditioner tech, who was there essentially to drill holes in our two newest ACs (then plug those holes a bit) to let the water drain out properly so things didn't get all moldy. This was all at the direction of the AC company, which wrote to Robin a few months back that the units needed servicing. He was supposed to be here between 1-3 pm but showed up around 4:30, of course. Silly of us to have all the ACs off in anticipation of his visit, as it got into the mid-80s by the time he finally arrived. But things are cooled down pretty well now in most of the rooms and we're feeling comfy again. Good job too, it's going to be another scorcher of a week!

Fraud to Follow

Alas, the malicious perp tried to take out another credit card on my account, so I woke up today to a fraud alert and the account is now frozen (with the perp kicked out) until such time as I get my new card. The spam emails have slowed down a bit but I still woke up to a few hundred. This too shall pass.  And I have a lovely weekend to look forward to!

Spam, Spam, Spam, Baked Beans, and Spam

I woke up to hundreds of spam emails in both my personal inboxes, and it took forever to delete them and try unsubscribing to all the mailing lists that the malicious perp put me on. They may have also affected my credit card, so I changed my online password and am hoping for the best. Fortunately I was kept busy enough in the office that I didn't have to think about things too much, particularly as I was able to have a lovely lunch as part of a special event I attended. But now that I'm home and still getting rid of spam so I can keep track of actual emails, it's exhausting me again, and it didn't help that there was no NY baseball tonight (although that allowed us to catch up on DVR'ed shows). Hoping for better tomorrow.

Work Life Balance

I began Administrative Professionals Week on a high note. During the weekend all the company apps were wiped from my personal cell phone; and this afternoon the two authenticator apps I use when logging into the client website, which I also need to access for work, were also wiped away and transferred to my new firm-owned cell. I'm still not quite used to having to carry around two cell phones, and tomorrow will be interesting as I'm leaving my laptop at the office when I go to the dentist to get my new crowns fitted, but I'll figure it out as and when. I'm just glad this helps me separate work and life even more, which not coincidentally is one of this week's themes. Now I need to get ready for three consecutive Manhattan days...