A new season.

Sometimes it isn’t about the seasons in nature. In New Orleans we have other seasons. Mardi Gras. Festival season. And, of course, second line season.

It starts this Sunday with The Valley of Silent Men. We take a two-week break and then it’s on for 47 weeks. The only breaks come with Christmas, Jazzfest and Mardi Gras. There may be some off weeks because the city has raised the parade permits by almost double. Some social and benevolent societies can’t afford that.

Anyway.

This wasn’t the planned picture for today. The image I had in mind and processed turned out to be too small. That’s right, the image was too small. I could have posted something really new. But, I thought I was getting a little too esoteric and didn’t want to go back to something like yesterday’s post.

So.

I thought about my near and far future. Forty seven Sundays. I intend to photograph them all. That is, if my back and hip will let me. We’ll see.

I went with a picture from last second line season as sort of a walk up to this years season.

Aside from that, today seems to be the rebooting day for a lot of my software. First, Apple rebooted my calendar and image storage. You know, enter a password and go. I only use that for iPhone pictures, so it’s no big deal. I do use their calendar.

Along comes Google. They provide my email, another calendar and storage. I entered the password and they wanted my phone number, which they don’t have. When I entered that, they wanted to send a text with a code that I would have to enter to prove it was me.

Hey Google. I’m working. My life isn’t about programming and knowing everything there is to know about everybody in the world.

I hit the cancel button. I hit the skip button. If they need my telephone number they can search for it. They’re Google.

This happens repeatedly with tech companies. I just hate calling somebody with a question or problem. Whoever I reach thinks that I’m only about technology. If that’s not bad enough, they think I have nothing but time for them to experiment. You would think on 20-year-old software, they’d know the answers. Finally, try talking to two techs at the same company about the same ongoing problem and you’ll never get the same answer.

I think this is intentional. I think all of these companies — Apple especially — want very little to do with their customers. They force you into FAQs, or user forums, or just plain old Googling.

See? I’m back to Google.

And, so it goes.