Author Archives: treshabarger

Wobbler

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I discovered the elliptical machine at the gym this week. Had to have someone show me how to use it. It looks somewhat similar to the treadmill and as I can walk two miles on the treadmill, I thought I’d start out with 15 minutes on the elliptical.

No, I won’t.

I will start out and immediately decrease the resistance level to its lowest setting and be disappointed there is nothing labeled “for babies.” Within two minutes I know I am in trouble, serious trouble . . . at level one.

I didn’t have on my reading glasses — good thing, too — as I thought that level indicator turned into a frown as I lowered it to level one. I think it was disappointed in me. When I turn on the elliptical, it defaults — humorously and optimistically — to level five.

After five grueling minutes at baby level one, I got off. I’d like to say that I walked to my car, but that’s not true. I wobbled to my car. I have a suspicion I could have joined Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks.

Hello, my name is Tresha and I’m a wobbler.

Search Engines

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Google’s search engine is famous for its results and the secrecy surrounding the search algorithms. I appreciate that the results it lists are actually related to what I typed in. That is not always the case.

Take my local library’s web site. When I enter “Jon Winokur” and select the “author” category (looking for Advice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom from a Dazzling Array of Literary Lights), the first two results listed are for James Garner. Then it includes nine entries for Jon Winokur, none of which are the book I want.

When I search for “Ruth Hayden,” the author of Mrs. Delaney: Her Life and Her Flowers, one result is returned: Sue Grafton’s Writing mysteries : a handbook by the Mystery Writers of America.

I have no idea how they arrive at these “matches.”

It’s not just books where I have search problems — fabric can be just as elusive. I had a jellyroll of Moda’s Summer Breeze II fabric and decided that I wanted yardage of one of those fabrics. I went to my usual super-duper online fabric web site. And when I searched on “Moda Summer Breeze II” (the specific name of the fabric line), I got 2,370 matches with the overwhelming majority of the results having nothing to do with that line of fabric. I wasn’t about to page through 2,370 line items, some of which weren’t even fabric.

So, thank you Google. When I search for Georges Seurat, I get “about 181,000” results and at least the ones on the first page are all related to George Seurat.

Try Again

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I was surfing the web yesterday, perusing some quotes about the sun. The weekly photo challenge for this week is “The Sun” and I wanted to find a quote to accompany my (upcoming) photo.

A survey box popped up and instructed me to answer the questions as a requirement to continue looking at the list of quotes. It said there were two questions. Two questions wasn’t bad, I thought, so I took the survey.

Question 1: Was I a health professional? No.
Question 2: Did I prepare most of the meals in my house? No.

Two questions, two answers and I expected to be on my way.

No.

The survey pop-up box remained visible and all the subsequent quotes were still grayed out. The message the survey box gave me? Try again.

I guess it didn’t like my answers. I left that web site and found another one with quotes, a web site that would let me read its content even though I didn’t prepare most of the meals in my house.