Artificial intelligence
A few evenings ago I was down in the pub when one of the Lads admired my pipe lighter.
I had some problems with lighters over the past couple of years and the one I have now is a Peterson which is a sort of superior version of the American “Old Boy” and a lot cheaper. It replaced another Peterson which fell apart just after I bought it. The latest one though has been working brilliantly for well over a year and the only problem I ever had with it is that sometimes the flint sticks and has to be reloaded.
So I sat there on my stool extolling the virtues of my lighter. I said it was reliable and my pal admired its looks. I could tell he was envious so I told him where to buy one.
Later, I was at home and decided to light up.
Yes, you’re ahead of me.
The fucking thing refused to light.
The gas tank was full and the flint had loads of life but for some reason it just wouldn’t work. I cleaned it, I scrubbed it, I poked needles in the gas jets but all to no avail.
I used a disposable one for the first time in many months.
I have come across this strange phenomenon before. There was the time Herself bought me a raincoat on the journey to West Cork and it resulted in a massive heatwave and drought. If I replace the windscreen wipers on the car, we are guaranteed another drought. Herself bought me crampons for my boots after a winter of snow, so I wouldn’t slip on the way to the pub, and we haven’t had any snow since. The list is endless. And now the mere mention of something good turns it bad. I’m not superstitious but I do sometimes wonder….
Herself saw my frustration with my lighter and suggested I buy a new one for my birthday [in this house we buy presents for ourselves rather than for each other as we tend to know better what we want]. I dillied and dallied but in the end decided that maybe she was right – time to buy a new one and all I had to do was wait until the shops reopened after the long break.
Guess what?
Yes, you’re ahead of me again.
No sooner had I decided to buy a new lighter than the old one started to work perfectly again.
Of course, now that I have written that it’s working, it will doubtless fail again before the day is out.
Likewise we are probably going to have a blizzard within days.
My Zippo lighter is over 15 years old and works everytime except when I fail to fill it or replace the flint. Anyways they’re made right here in Pa..
I have a Zippo somewhere [adapted for the pipe]. My main problems were the taste off the fuel and the fact that I seemed to spend my time refilling it [and spilling the stuff everywhere!]. It does work though!
Yes, it’s funny how things like that happen.
For me, it’s a case of whenever I find a product that I really like, they stop making / selling it. It happens all the time.
In fact only today I was on a Thai based forum I frequent, and the thread I contributed to was on the subject of ‘What’s your favourite beer in Thailand?’, or something like that. I wrote that after much diligent research over the years I had found that I really quite liked ‘Chang Draught’, which was quite different to the ‘Chang. classic, which I don’t much like. So of course a couple of years later, Chang stopped making ‘Chang Draught’.
A couple of years ago I discovered that the big supermarket chain here were selling Brittany butter (the one with big chunks of sea salt in it). Oh yay! Brilliant!
Bugger me, a month later it disappeared from the shelves, never to be seen again.
About five years ago, after much trial and error, we finally found a white wine that my wife liked (she hardly drinks at all, really, not what I call drinking, anyway) and didn’t give her a headache, a Californian Chardonnay. Hoorah! Three Cheers! Finally!
Yep, you guessed it. Two months later, it was gone forever.
And so it goes on, to the extent that the running joke when we’re in the supermarket is “Whatever you do, don’t say you like it…”
Fuck, I just tried to edit out the html which I now realise your site doesn’t support, and it didn’t let me. that link should read http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/ , not that it will be of any interest to anyone here I shouldn’t think. I guess you’ve got those silly buttons for links. I’m not very good with buttons.
Oh, it did let me. I just had to refresh for it to show.
There is a wee button [fourth from the right] that allows links. Just highlight the text you want to link and click the button. Then just enter the URL.
I had to log out to test and immediately found myself locked out of the site! Discovered that a plugin was causing problems so replaced it with another make. It’s a cache plugin so possibly it might have an effect on your weird problem???
I think everyone is in that same boat. If I buy a car , television or computer or anything expensive it seems to vanish off the Interweb the moment I look for spare parts or even specifications. Likewise we discovered a rather nice stir-fry thing in the supermarket and within a couple of weeks it vanished off the shelves never to be seen again.
We’re jinxed!
Or a heatwave.
I blame Warble Gloaming.
We’re suffering the effects of Climate Change at the moment but it will be gone in a day or two according to the forecast.
I don’t buy much stuff, so the disappearing product is hardly a problem. However, we often lose things. The one certain way to find them again after thorough and intensive searching is to buy, beg, borrow or steal another and the old item reapears as if by magic. We now have two of most common things.
Happy New Year – whenever you want it to be.
I’m relieved to find I’m not the only one affected by the disappearing-from-shelves blight. I’d been thinking it was maybe my poor taste….
If you contact an expert on Zippos, health, tobacco, cannabis or electric cars or raising children, just remember that –
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.