Paul Merrill | Shiny Bits of Life

April 30, 2023

Font problems

Those of you who have met me know that the first half of my career involved graphic design.

The tool of choice for graphic designers remains a Mac computer.

I recently made a life change that means my main daily tool is once again my beloved Mac. (Yay!)

As a designer, fonts are important.

One of the pain points of most of the applications on my Mac is the list of long fonts. For some of them, to choose an appropriate font means scrolling through a long list.

Font Book is a built-in Apple app that lets users manage their fonts. It allows you to disable some of the fonts. Then they won’t appear in your font list. But many global fonts and useless obscure-styled fonts are not removable.

Life is never perfect.

March 12, 2023

No-Alcohol Beers For the Win

Surprisingly tasty!

I was amazed when I first tasted a beer created by Athletic Brewing. They managed to brew a beer that’s very low in alcohol content and yet tastes like a decent microbrew.

Besides no alcohol, these beers have very low calories. Win-win!

My favorite brew by Athletic is their Free Wave Hazy. When I went to my local Whole Foods to get a refill, I discovered that Athletic Brewing has some competition…

WellBeing takes no-alcohol beer to another level by packaging their beer in pint cans bundled into four-packs. Their Intentional IPA tastes mighty fine – hoppy and refreshing. And their package design is definitely the best.

Brew Dog has several flavors and sell variety packs.

And I’m sure there are more tasty no-alcohol brews from brands that I haven’t discovered.

Warnings and caveats:

These are not cheap. It costs money for these breweries to work their magic.
These beers are for the US market. If you live in England, try Small Beer.
There might be a tiny amount of alcohol in these brews. So if you’re 100% against consuming any alcohol, skip to another aisle in your supermarket.
I avoid beers like Heineken 0.0 and Budweiser Zero. (Basic seltzer water also has no alcohol. But I like basic seltzer water.)

January 16, 2023

A diamond in the rough

I love shopping at the Goodwill. It’s a great way to discover diamonds in the rough.

Amidst furniture that should have been taken to a dumpster and lightly-used wedding dresses, you might find something of great value!

Over the weekend, I dropped by our local Goodwill to buy a specific-sized container. I found a small ceramic masterpiece and avoided a trip to IKEA -making less environmental impact than buying something new.

For me, a trip to the Goodwill is not complete without stopping in the electronics aisle. This time, I discovered a pair of large audiophile speakers, shown above at a 90-degree angle.

These beauties were a brand I had never heard of – Episode. Apparently, they were sold by home theater installers about ten years ago – retailing for $1,500! Goodwill was selling the pair for $80.

They were about three feet tall, very heavy and covered in a deep black gloss finish.

Alas, these speakers were not to be part of my life. Since I’m married, decisions about purchases like this are not made alone. Heather thought they would be too visually overwhelming in our living room. And we don’t fire up our stereo enough to justify that expenditure.

(I could have bought them and tried to sell them on eBay or Craigslist, but it wouldn’t have been worth the hassle.)

Any discussion of the Goodwill would not be complete without mentioning my dad and my daughter.

My dad passed away long before my daughter was born, but they are united in their love of Goodwill stores.

My father was a child of the Great Depression, and poverty was integral to his life. He learned to shop secondhand because back then, everything used was far less expensive than new. (Today, that’s not always true.)

He and my Aunt Mary spent many joy-filled days together scouring countless Goodwill aisles for treasures.

My daughter takes great delight in finding Lululemon apparel at the Goodwill for far less than retail – and reselling it on Poshmark.

Like father, like son, like granddaughter.

December 11, 2022December 11, 2022

The folly of luxury

Paul wearing Apple AirPods Max headphones

A small windfall hit me like welcome summer rain. I decided to celebrate by getting a pair of Apple AirPods Max.

Ebay was the perfect shopping destination. I found a pair in great condition in happy neutral space gray at way less than retail.

Setting them up was super easy. The software interface was very simple to use and had numerous options.

Then reality hit…

The biggest problem I faced was intolerable sound when listening with noise cancellation. My favorite podcasts sounded like the participants were speaking from inside a small narrow tunnel.
Listening in an airplane almost worked. But each time we took off, there was a loud “pop” that Apple’s software injected after detecting a sound made by the airplane.
The magnificent quality construction resulted in a heavy pair of headphones. After an hour or so of listening, they started to get uncomfortable.
The Smart Case seemed like an afterthought. Its design was about a tenth as good as the headphones’ design.
A very minor glitch in the software meant that it never remembered the noise cancellation modes I selected.

So, goodbye AirPods Max. I sold them yesterday on Facebook Marketplace.

I enjoyed exploring this product that I had always been curious about. I only lost $20 in the exchange.

I left with a nice little reminder that the only satisfaction available will be in heaven.

And then I went back to a modest pair of Sony phones.

November 17, 2022November 17, 2022

Estate Sales Are Great

I have this rule that whenever I see an open house at a home on the routes I regularly take to get places, I will go.

An even better alternative to the fun involved in touring a stranger’s home is an estate sale.

Today, I was riding my bike back from a long errand and saw an estate sale on one of my normal routes.

I MUST STOP.

This one was excellent. Sadly, the former residents had moved out probably due to the death of the remaining member of the older married residents. You can see posts on my Instagram feed in the next week or so that reflect this presumption.

The house and the former residents’ belongings were a time capsule from the 1970s.

And I bought a harmonica for $3. (The same one goes for about $25 on ebay.)

What a great way to capture some of the fun of my childhood.

(I never became a true harmonica player… but when I was a kid, harmonicas were something that kids loved, even if they couldn’t play.)

A final sad note… at least one of the former residents of this home was a hoarder. Besides the remaining harmonicas for sale numbering about seven, the homeowner had accumulated six chainsaws! And that doesn’t even count any that may have sold.

(If it’s broken, get a new one and keep the old one.)

September 10, 2022October 1, 2022

England. And the Queen.

Queen Elizabeth II died. You know that.

She was very well loved across the world. I read several well-crafted reflections by both English citizens and Americans about what a wonderful lady she was. Besides being the sovereign of a country for more years than most people live, she was able to ride the balance between leadership and humility. She commanded respect by her character and not by requesting it from her subjects.

So what does a crossing guard toy have to do with the Queen? In some ways, very little. But in other ways, she reflects some of the best parts of English culture. Ms. Lollipop Lady (as it says on the back of her coat in small print) commands respect, though she may not be the fiercest presence you could imagine at a street crossing.

And the Queen reflects consistent branding in England. Around 25 years ago, crossing guards all across England had the same uniform. Likewise, the queen was part of the brand of the English Empire. Her visage appears on currency and postage stamps of several countries. Slowly, Charles will replace the Queen on both money and letters. Sad.

So when I heard about Elizabeth’s passing, I was sad. I know less about Charles. And I promise you, his aura won’t outshine that of his mum.

What a wonderful lady she was.

July 18, 2022

How to solve global warming

Global warming, whether you believe in it or not, is bad.

Or you can say we’re just in a big swing of climate change that will correct itself someday, somehow.

In either case, we can do a little bit here and there to make a difference about the increasing temperatures of our globe.

One small thing that wouldn’t be hard – turn off those lights in downtown offices.

A big plus to this happening is that the coal-fired power plants could run at less capacity at night.

It wouldn’t be that hard to accomplish…

All offices would have motion detector light switches that would turn the lights off between 7 pm and 5 am. If someone were actually working at night, they would just move and the lights would stay on for another hour.

The federal, state and local governments would pass this as a law, giving businesses a year’s advance notice.

Light switch creation and installation businesses would be funded by … well, I came up with the rest and will leave that idea up to you.

The photo was shot by Jörg Angeli and is used under a Creative Commons license.

July 9, 2022

Covid, national parks and the death of reason

an empty parking lot in a us forest service park

Ah, the weekend – a great time to go experience the outdoors!

We drove about 90 minutes from our suburban Denver home to a beautiful high-altitude US Forest Service park above Boulder.

When we arrived at the gate, the park ranger asked, “Do you have a reservation?”

“No.”

Could we buy a park pass there, like in the good old days? No.

The park ranger told us, “If you drive downhill about 20 minutes, you might get enough cell coverage to go on the website to buy a pass.”

Insanity.

We tried. The website had such bad usability and loaded so slowly that it was impossible to buy the necessary pass.

Two weeks later, we went to a different park to enjoy a hike. This was part of the state parks system.

Foiled again. The same exact thing happened – a different website and a different system, but we were again not able to buy a pass.

The first park’s ranger explained that this was a new system put in place since Covid.

Fail.

The photo above shows that apparently others were foiled in their attempts to enter the park… the final parking lot at the trailhead was completely empty.

In the end, that first weekend, we hitched a ride from the park entrance to the trailhead with a couple who knew the system and had a pass beforehand. On the second weekend, we found a decent hike just off a main road.

So we did get to hike, but it was an exercise just to find trails we could use.

June 20, 2022

Such a waste

label of discarded Starbucks Christmas coffee

Every May across the USA, students exit their dorms and apartments and return to their ancestral parental homes.

They leave behind a ton of stuff.

My daughter moved out of her college dorm room for the last time in May. As we were hauling her stuff down to the car, she pointed out the “grab anything you want” pile.

One student had thrown out their Christmas coffee beans. The package was almost full.

Another left a perfectly good Apple USB-C charger.

I grabbed the beans because even though they were not fresh, they would supplement my coffee mixture for a good number of mornings. And I knew I could use the charger somewhere.

We also bolstered our snack stash for the journey home.

That was just the tip of the iceberg.

We didn’t need a couch, and none of the clothing fit my style.

Multiply this by 5,300* and you can imagine the number of truckloads going to landfills – tons and tons of valuable stuff just wasted.

An environmentally-aware entrepreneur could prevent that waste by creating organizations to intercept discarded goods before they enter landfills.

* That is the approximate number of colleges and universities across the USA.

April 10, 2022

It happens.

Occasionally, here at Shiny Bits of Life World Headquarters, we must deal with things that aren’t very shiny.

Sometimes things just happen that cause a loss of time, energy, money and/or relationships.

A very small pain hit my car the other day. (Do cars feel pain?)

I had taken the car for some brake work to a local repair shop. When I came to pick it up, there were tar-like splotches across the hood and roof. A flock of birds had perched on the tree above my car and left their mark.

It took me about an hour of hard scrubbing to remove the birds’ artwork.

Why? What was the purpose of that event?

I will never know.

My pain – or my car’s pain – is so minor compared to what many people face. But here are a few responses that helped me.

I was thankful that it was such a minor incident. One hour of scrubbing is a small drop in the pond of my life.
I was thankful that I have a car that could receive the birds’ offerings.
Letting my negative feelings toward the unseen flock of birds pass through my mind as quickly as possible minimized my pain.

Here’s a rhetorical question (since few people comment on blogs anymore)… what have you found that has helped you deal with bad stuff that just happens?