Rodent free: The Chromebook Edition

The short version:
RantWoman is very happy to have a new Chromebook. The Chromebook has a touch pad but no mouse. RantWoman has NOT fully figured out the keyboard shortcuts but has been able to turn on multiple screen and magnification features, input two different wifi passwords AND to send an email. No rodent needed.

Prequel: you know you are on the frontier, in the technological wild west when you are in a bar with some QA staff and,  even before anyone has had much to drink, the word is do not have wild expectations. There would be a separate conversation thread about entry level jobs but that gets its own attention separately.

So then RantWoman expressed one of her fantasies and got instructions: email me.

RantWoman's fixation and wild fantasy: Bilingualism is good for brains. Bilingualism is good for brains. Bilingualism is good for brains. RantWoman is not even registering an opinion about the world of machine translation. Bilingualism is good for brains. RantWoman would like it very much thank you if Chromevox could detech say Youtube links in different languages and read the titles in the corresponding language. Do not translate them. Just read them in a voice with language appropriate pronunciation, not bad phonetics from a different language. 

A more nuanced version of the fantasy: RantWoman has officially studied a couple languages besides English and is willing to fake it in a couple other languages. RantWoman would like to have the links in languages she has studied read in that language. RantWoman would like for other languages to have configuration options about whether to identify the language displayed and whether to suggest a translation.

RantWoman's fantasy is that people who know different combinations of languages might like the option of configuring which languages get read and which something else happens for. RantWoman's experience is that this sort of fantasy can be easy to articulate but not necessarily easy to code. So it's a fantasy, though RantWoman does naively expect that Google might have a number of different speech engines to invoke as options.

RantWoman's Chromebook has in fact arrived. RantWoman picked it up from her mailbox on Friday. RantWoman left the outermost layer of Amazon packaging at her UPS store. RantWoman has multiple emails but no in-box packing slip. RantWoman  is mildly grumpy that a laptop sleeve she ordered did not come with the pouch promised for cords and earphone.  But onward to RantWoman's next bus and unpacking the Chromebook itself in transit.

The bus ride was about "cooking," coming up with food suitable for a potluck with a bunch of vegans and diverse dietary preferences. RantWoman's preferred travel algorithm: by this time RantWoman was already carrying more than comfortable so RantWoman wanted to get off the bus, shop, and get back on the bus. RantWoman was excited to learn that current Metro through-route math turns the 75 into the 32 so RantWoman was able to jump off the bus at the U-village Safeway, acquire suitable potluck contributions and hop back on the now 32 which takes her blocks closer to her destination than Campus Parkway.

No RantWoman did not fuss with Chromebook during the potluck. Look RantWoman finds noisy social environments exhilarating but hard to deal with and RantWoman is a big nerd, but not THAT big a nerd!