While coming into work today just before lunchtime, I carried with me one of those little remote controls for today’s seminar speaker to use to click through his computer slides (I highly recommend such a remote, by the way, as they completely free you from having to stand next to the computer, often resulting in a better presentation for all concerned).
Thinking idle off-beat thoughts as I sometimes do, I couldn’t resist pointing and experimentally pressing the button a few times. What was I thinking? Well, it would have been nice to:
- STOP the 11:55am bus I just missed, and used the BACK button to bring it back to the stop so I could get on it. This would have been useful since (a) I would have made it to the seminar at the right time, and (b) I’m sure I would have sat next to and talked to that fascinating and beautiful woman I’m supposed to meet on some sort of public transport some day. She must be on that one I just missed since she sure as hell is never on the bus I manage to catch! (Wait… maybe I had my one shot at that and blew it already. I remember now…)
STOP that toddler over there from enthusiastically licking the hand rail (I got a bus 9 minutes later) while his mother is not looking! I’m all for kids interacting a bit with the world to auto-immunize, but this seems a bit of an overdose.- STOP not just my watch, but all time just for about 9 minutes in order to catch up and make the seminar.
Well, none of that happened (you’re probably not surprised to learn), and the remote stayed in my bag for most of the rest of the journey….
A bit later I realized why the button would not work!
You’ve got to plug the little receiver that comes with it into the USB port of whatever you want to control!
I hadn’t done that. Drat! Now why on earth did I not think of that before?
-cvj
Let’s fast-forward this thing and see how it turns out.
Have you ever considered that even as an adult, you pretty much know what texture almost anything you look at would have in your mouth, and pretty much what it would taste like?
As in a Blackberry wouldn’t taste or feel like a blackberry?
Have you ever considered that even as an adult, you pretty much know what texture almost anything you look at would have in your mouth, and pretty much what it would taste like?
Dear Aaron F.,
Bee — I wish my life had an “undo†button ALL THE TIME. ^_^
Yeah, it’s funny isn’t it, how irreversibility is such an essential part of our lives? One might say it’s the source for all our trouble. Best,
B.
Sometimes my husband tries to use the TV remote to turn my volume down! I doesn’t work…
When evening falls tonight, please have a look at the crescent moon with Venus. Lovely. I’d like a Pause button for this!!
Personally i love those universal remote on/off gadgets, that you can use in bars, airports, service stations, public transit hubs, corporate lobbys, etc.. There is nothing like being able to silence all that incessant stupid noise without anyone so much as realizing it had occurred.
For some reason Adam Sadler’s movie with “the remote” came to mind.
With microphones or wireless mouses why wouldn’t that device work without being connected to the USB port?
Hahahahahaha! It’s a bit sad that you didn’t come across anything you wanted to “record.” 🙂
Bee — I wish my life had an “undo” button ALL THE TIME. ^_^
Hey Clifford,
looks as if I have exactly the same remote control 😉 Kind of funny, since I bought it in Germany. The guy told me that thing is called a ‘presenter’. You are totally right, it makes a talk go much more smoothly, since one doesn’t have to hang in front of the laptop to hit space all the time. (So far it has worked with literally every laptop I have plugged it in.)
Regarding you hitting the back button… when I do too much editing of pictures, like late in the night, I have repeatedly had a really weird distortion of reality. At one point I accidentally spilled my coffee and my first thought was ‘UNDO’.
Best,
B.
If everyone had a ‘back’ button for the bus, would it ever reach the end terminus?
If everyone had back and forward buttons, would it ever get anywhere, perpetually oscillating up and down the street erratically?
As far as hand rails go, wallpaper is much more flavoursome, in my opinion. Especially wallpaper covered in little stars, like mine (was). Never been the same since 🙂
There are worse things than handrails.
I once knew a toddler who licked urinals…
Why give a remote only to the seminar speaker? Not only once I have wished to have a remote when sitting in the audience to fast forward the seminar. I tried to draw remote control buttons (play, especially if the seminar doesn’t start because of projector problems, stop, pause fast forward and rewind for obvious reasons but also eject for really bad cases) so I drew them on the back cover of the book in which I take notes from seminars.
Ah, the control the world fantasy.
As I recall from toddlerhood, hand rails taste good. I remember chewing on the vinyl dashboard of my parents’ car during a drive-in movie (this was a while ago), and it tasted good too. They didn’t appreciate the tiny tooth marks I left in the vinyl. The joys of hand-rail licking are lost to us adults, all in the name of sanitation.