Are You Ready To Work From Home?

Unexpectedly, just like that, I'm becoming a telecommuter (thanks, Corona!) I like to have some time to prepare for big life changes -- four months is ideal; one day isn't.

The good news is, I've calmed down a bit since yesterday. My heart palpitations have temporarily subsided.

When people imagine working from home, they assume the transition will be seamless. Working with computer systems over the years, I know better. Anything that can go wrong will.

My home computer is rather slow. It hasn't bothered me much; most of the stuff I do online does not require lightening-fast response time. If Firefox takes two minutes to load a web page, I take my dog outside or swipe through Twitter on my phone. All those computer fixes I procrastinated about have suddenly become crucial. My Windows 10 setup recalcitrantly refuses to install updates. Google tells me this is a "known issue". I've tried several suggestions with no luck. I'm not going down the road of restarting in safe mode and plucking random "host processes" or anything ending with .NET and willy-nilly deleting them in the misguided hope that something magical will happen (the only thing that'll happen is my PC will stop working all together).

I did manage to conduct some system cleanup. I'd forgotten about cccleaner, which I'd had and used on my previous setup. First of all, it's FREE, but most importantly it's efficient and moron-friendly. cccleaner took care of a bunch of unwanted stragglers. My anti-virus software is stunningly efficient. I use Malwarebytes, which is also FREE. I did purchase a subscription a while back, though, since I was so impressed with it. There are free anti-virus programs that also work well:  I've used AVG in the past. If you are looking for recommendations for any kind of program, go to CNET first.

Since I was panicking yesterday and felt that my failed Windows update was crucial, I impulse-purchased a program called RestorO -- big mistake. Not only did it fail to fix my problem, but it created many problems of its own. It was advertised for $27.99, which at the time seemed like a small price to pay for sweet deliverance. They charged my bank account $30.00, but what's a couple bucks here or there, right? Then my trusty Malwarebytes began signalling me every 30 seconds that RestorO was malicious and was causing PUPs, which sound cute, but aren't. Tired and wary of the constant alerts, I tried to delete RestorO -- it refused to leave. Thus I had to search for another free program for removing guests that wouldn't exit. CNET told me to try Revo Uninstaller. It did the trick! Again, FREE.

I've given up on installing that obdurate Windows update -- sometimes one has to know when to surrender. But I did do some needed purging.

On the non-computer side, I submitted an Amazon order for my favorite coffee, which will be delivered Tuesday. Had I known I'd be separated from fresh hot java, I would have been proactive. All my (many) Amazon packages have been previously delivered to my workplace, so finding something on my doorstep will be new.

I won't have my special pens and highlighters and file folders, but I suppose I will improvise. Truth be told, I'm not feeling this. I predict doom. But it has to be done. Either that or my two hundred hours of PTO time will dissipate in a flash.

All I can do is cross my fingers and pray that it all works. There might be upsides -- stay tuned for updates.

The Delight Of A Fluffy Pop Song

Pure pop music is as old as music itself. When I was a kid, what I called rock music wasn't truly rock. It was pop. But I didn't know better. KRAD was our local station and it called itself "rock 'n roll", even though it played everything -- everything -- from Dean Martin to Bobbie Gentry to the Beach Boys to Roger Miller, to every possible incarnation in between. If I heard a song by a new group like the Supremes, I thought, hmm, that's different. I inherently knew that someone like Roy Orbison was rock (at least some of his songs), but I wasn't quite sure why. My brother bought me an album by the Yardbirds and I hated it. That was rock. I considered the Beatles, who magically appeared on the earth in 1964 to be a rock group, but in actuality and hindsight, they really were pop; just a bit more amped-up pop. Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, who were a tiny bit before my time, were more rock than the Beatles.

Pop isn't easy to define, but like obscenity (I guess), you know it when you hear it. A pure pop song should be bouncy. A repeating refrain is a plus. Even if the lyrics are sad, the music should be uplifting. Often it means nothing (which is how I generally prefer my songs, to be frank). Most lyrics that try to be deep are instead insipid. "Deep" songwriters miss the joy of music. I like my music fun; not studious, and especially not angry.

The first pop song I fell in love with, when I was eight years old, was "It's My Party" by Lesley Gore. I was in fact obsessed with it. I used to stand atop our picnic table in the backyard and frug and sing this song a cappella.

By the time I reached the mature age of ten, I liked this:

 

Time moved on (okay, by one year) and by then music had changed. Now it was visual as well as aural.  Granted, the guys were cute, but leave it to Neil Diamond to write an almost perfect pop song:

It was hard to find a good pop song in the seventies. It was hard to find anything good in the seventies. The seventies was a dreary decade. But every era has at least one thing to offer, and as for pop music, the nineteen seventies offered ABBA.

Conversely, the nineteen eighties were rife with pop. I could get into a whole sociological explanation of why people felt better in the eighties and more open to happiness, but it's really quite evident.

This song is glorious in its pop-ness.  

It's almost as if Lesley Gore had been reincarnated, but more blissful.

Sheena wasn't the only one.

Come on, admit it. You liked this song. You really, really boogied on down to this song. Rick Astley was an eighties god:

If you want to just feel good (and who doesn't?), peruse the nineteen eighties pop catalog. I could include another twenty tracks here, but I won't. Springsteen might bemoan how awful President Reagan was; yet he still recorded "Glory Days", so there you go. Sometimes as hard as one tries to be miserable, circumstances budge their way in.

Even as I began listening to country music again in the nineties, I was drawn (albeit reluctantly) to poppish confections. Hate it if you want, but just try not to dance to it:

I submit that pop music is the salve of mankind. 

It's time someone gave pop music its due.

1981

By1981 I had settled into my new routine, working second shift at the hospital, which was the best job I'd ever had up to that point. As a dedicated scaredy-cat, I'd dipped my toe into the waters of a couple of unknowns -- a year in retail, another year as a government employee, until I stumbled upon my true calling.

My hard and fast rule was that I refused to accede the raising of my kids to a miscellaneous daycare worker. Thus, I was relegated to evening positions that involved the requisite changing of the guard -- a husband who came home from his day job at 3:00 and bluffingly assumed family responsibilities while I trundled off to my clinical night job.

I blithely assumed that a father would have his kids' best interests at heart -- until I came home one night at 10:00 and found the Christmas tree askew and its decorations oddly-placed. Disassembled and reassembled into a half-assed facsimile of the decor I'd lovingly put together but one day before. Apparently Dad had been engrossed in a telephone call with one of his friends while two toddlers laid waste to my painstaking bauble-hanging. Before I'd left for work that day, as the final scenes of the movie "Nine To Five" pranced across my TV screen, I'd admired my prodigious decorating skills, and had decided all was right with the world.

Everyone was asleep, so I didn't interrogate anyone, but two and four-year-olds tend to lie anyway. Trust me, little kids are natural-born liars.

I'd apparently semi-abandoned country music by that time, because the songs I remember from that year are almost entirely pop (or what we referred to as "rock").

For a rock pop fan in 1981, the offerings were awesome. I hate purists. I'm not even a purist and I, of anyone, have the bona fides to be one, if we're talking sixties country. I don't know what rock purists remember from that particular year -- The Who? I always hated The Who. The Stones? The Rolling Stones were already old by then, but they refused to pack it in. I never was a Stones fan, either. I've tried.

No, the best singles from 1981 are songs such as these:

(Still one of the best pop songs ever)

If anyone tries to tell you Hall and Oates are not sublime, they are wrong. Just wrong. 

I didn't even know who Bruce Springsteen was in 1981. I would watch the $20,000 Pyramid in the mornings (remember that?) It was hosted by Dick Clark. Some celebrity contestant -- I don't remember who -- was being interviewed by Dick. Clark asked the guy who his favorite rock artist was, and the dude replied that the best rock artist in the whole wide world was Bruce Springsteen. Dick said, "Well, that's your opinion. A lot of people would disagree with you." I was like, who? That was the first time I'd ever heard the name Bruce Springsteen. I still don't think Bruce is the best rock artist in the whole wide world. He's pretty good, though.

(I could give you the secret to why Springsteen's recordings are so good, but then I'd have to kill you.)

I think we'd gotten a special deal on HBO. At the time, HBO replayed the six same movies approximately ten thousand times. That was great if one really liked the movie. Ask me anything about "Nine To Five". Go ahead. Around that time, somebody (hopefully not Harvey Weinstein) convinced Neil Diamond that what he really needed to do was act. That somebody was sorely mistaken. I love Neil Diamond and I love, love George Strait, but neither of them should have ever taken one step in front of a movie camera. Nevertheless, "The Jazz Singer" became one of HBO's six featured movies, and I watched it and watched it again. Lucie Arnaz played the female lead. It was wallowingly schmaltzy, but it featured some good songs:

Two artists from 1981 would later go on to form a super-group. Here's Jeff Lynne:

In case you don't know, the other was George Harrison. George deserves his own damn post, and his hit from that year doesn't have a decent video. Don't take my omission as disrespecting George, because I respect him to pieces.

Country was fully represented in 1981. Those "purists" probably didn't appreciate these two hits, but they can go to hell. These two singles, especially the second one, will live on forever.

I awoke one cold December morning to my AM radio and a disc jockey saying words that seemed like an awful dream. I think he'd just played Ticket To Ride, and I thought, in my haze, well, that's a blast from the past. 

Then he said John was dead. 

I rolled over and flipped the volume dial on my radio. I still recall that green comforter tucked up to my chin and touching its white-etched flowers with my fingertip. 

And then he played this song. 

This song hurt so much because it was exactly, distinctly, the John who had transformed my life. From the tender age of nine, the very first time I'd heard him through my transistor speakers, John became my first love. 

I'd never lost anyone before I lost John. I was twenty-five years old. You don't lose somebody at twenty-five.

1981 was a good year in so many ways. I had two cute but incorrigible sons who romped around in blue-flannel pajamas. I loved my job. I was finally seeing a way out of crushing debt. Pop music was fun -- like music is supposed to be. 

Life doesn't really care how happy or sad we are: