When I press pause, I mean pause

I hate all kinds of timeouts.  Pretty much, they aren't necessary, in my experience, anyway.

When I press the pause button of my DVD player, I want it to stay paused, until I press some other button.

I'm grateful that Panasonic does still make a HDD/DVD recorder.  But the way that pause times out in 5 minutes or so is extemely problematic for me.

With HDD (I haven't tried that on the Panny) I'm not sure what happens.

Are they trying to save the disc, the laser, or both?

Can't the still video just play from memory and have laser at standby during pause???

This is one of so many examples.

My LeGrand doorbell camera I bought a few years ago helpfully has a menu where you can set the "monitor" duration to 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, and hold.

Nice, but "hold" doesn't work.  Now, in some cases this might drain the camera battery.  However, the great great virtue of this unit (I had never seen anything like it) was that you could power it from existing doorbell wiring, which carries low voltage from a transformer, which is how mine is hooked up, so I wanted that "hold" but it doesn't work.  It gives no more time than the 1 minute setting, which often isn't enough even for serious use.

It would have been so nice to have permanent monitor of the outside.

Of course, for the longest time, the limitation of VCR recorders was that the various slow motion features would necessarily time out, to save both the head and the tape.  But many VCR's had multiple slow motion speeds.

Now, with computer playback, where the still or slow motion could hold forever, the still most likely times out (at least due to screen preserver), AND, the slow motion features aren't available at all (and for that reason, I avoid computer playback, and only play from recorders that have the slow motion feature).

Now, it has often been said, that holding stills on various kinds of screens, can cause burn it, stuck pixels, and so on.

I'd held pictures for days on my 2009 Samsung LCD, and never had any burn in or stuck pixels.

Now, I was using only moderate contrast.

But I believe by now, this fear of still images is far over exaggerated.  Maybe if "forever" holds aren't good, how about at least an hour.  And if I don't want any limit, anyway, at least when it can be handled, give me that.

Hospital Parking Lot

If you can find it.

You enter from the street to drive past a sign with lots of arrows.  At the top, in multicolor letters, is the "Children's Hospital."  OK, so I want the adult hospital, so I go look for the next sign...

Next is Emergency, but there the sign also has Children's Hospital on top.  So I'm still not there yet.

I see some outdoor parking, whatever it is for, but there's a big red sign that says "Lot Full."  OK, so much for that.

Next thing I know, I'm back out on the street.  And it takes quite a detour to get back to the Hospital again.

This time, entering from the other entrance/exit, it's that same old sign.  But looking harder I see two visitor parking arrows, pointing in both directions.  So I turn towards the open parking lot I saw before, which I can now see has plenty of open spots, the "Lot Full" sign not apparently being accurate.  Actually, I saw someone else turning in there before realizing that.

I park my car and head for the fanciest looking enormous building, next to the mass parking building the other arrow pointed to.

I get into the General Entrance, I just figured that's what it was because it was a big entrance with lobby on the inside visible through the glass.  There were no signs, arrows, anything.

I go up to the Information Desk, which did have a big sign that said Information Desk.  The website said you could find your Friends room location by asking at the Information Desk.  There was nobody there.  There was no kiosk, or sign either, or literature, just a large round empty desk with room for about 8 people, but nobody there, and nothing else either, except for the big Information Desk sign.

Fortunately my friend had texted me here room number.  So I took the elevator that was near the empty Information Desk.  I didn't know if it was the correct one.  The elevator I took said "South Tower" but my friend had only texted "Tower" in addition to the room number.

Exit the elevator and enter a long long hall.  I notice the numbers are getting smaller going in one direction, and my friend's number is smaller, so I head that direction.

After awhile I notice the number aren't getting smaller very fast, and are mixed with larger numbers on the other side of the hallway, getting larger.

By the time I nearly reach one end of the long long hall, the numers have only fallen about 1/2 the amount they needed to.  But there was a person, so I asked them.  "Oh, you have to go to the end of the hallway," pointing back the way I came, "and then take the first door on the left."

So I walk all the way back from where I started, and more, and entered the door, and there was another hallway.

But here I finally notice some room numbering signs pointing in directions.  So this time I go the correct direction, and finally find the correct room.

Typical: Non-apple applications locked out again and again

If you've been reading my blog, you know that I believe most "security" that is provided by an OS is more about protecting their market share than anything else.  Making it impossible to run software not made or endorsed by them is a good start.

I've come yet another oh-so-typical case tonight.  A foolish friend of mine has sent me Word documents.  I do not have Word installed on my computer, never have.

So, people tell me, I can just use OpenOffice, and indeed I often try.

So I installed OpenOffice, and I get the popup:

"OpenOffice.app" can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.  Yes, of course, OpenOffice.org is an "unidentified developer" as far as Apple is concerned.

OK, so I got to security preferences, and it conveniently says:

"OpenOffice.app was blocked from opening because it is not from an identified developer."

and there is a button saying:

Open Anyway

But, no matter how many times I click on "Open Anyway", nothing happens.  If, after having clicked on "Open Anyway", I go back and click on OpenOffice, I get the original "can't be opened" popup again.

OK, so time for the balls out option.  Back at "Security & Privacy" I can check the box "Allow apps downloaded from Anywhere."   This brings up a warning box, which also warns me that if I don't use this option for 30 days, it will be inactivated.

That's the problem in my life.  I do so many different things, I often don't use apps for years, and when I go back it's like starting all over again, including messing with security malfunctions like this.

OK, so now I'm set, right?

Of course not.  Not for the first 2 times I went through the whole sequence described above sequence.  I still got the "can't be opened" popup.

The third time, just as I was writing this, it worked.

If I hadn't been writing this, I wouldn't have tried a third time.