Who's Number One in 2021

     In about two weeks, I will be doing my annual tabulations on what the number one song of the year will be.  Last year, I did my first ever spreadsheet to help me out.  This year, I might go back to pencil and paper, and my calculator.  Doing things the old-fashioned way took about two hours at most.  The spreadsheet took al least twice that amount of time spread over two days.  Now, that might be because I had never made a spreadsheet before, but I could be wrong.  Anyway, we'll see what will turn up. I have narrowed down my choices of what the top song will be to three potential songs.  These estimates are very loose, so I wouldn't put too much credit in with them.  However, I am confident that the winner will be one of these three songs.  First off is "Butter" by BTS.  It spend two months at number one, but it also debuted at that spot.  The song fell out of the top ten relatively fast after that run, so it didn't get to rack up extra points for longevity.  Second is "driver's license" by Olivia Rodrigo.  It also debuted high and spent about two months at the top.  It fell out of the top ten much more slowly, so it got to rack up some nice bonuses. It's main downside was that her follow ups quickly drowned out the original, pushing it down faster, but not entirely out.  The final nominee is "Levitating" by Dua Lipa, with or without Da'Baby.  That is the main detraction for the song, as controversy surrounded the rapper, possibly causing the remix of the song from reaching number one.  The song was still allowed to chart, as the original album version, so the song stayed on the charts.  And stay it did.  It has been charting for over a year now, pretty much the only song this year that has stayed in the top ten for almost all of this time.  While it only peaked at number two, it has been hanging around the top ten for ten months!  In fact, it outlasted its two follow-up singles, "Cool" and "Love Again."  Only her duet with Elton John, "Cold Heart," has been able to finally overtake it, and that is just barely as "Levitating" finally seems to be leaving the top ten.  With Christmas songs starting to chart, I'm not sure what will happen next, but the last few weeks of the year chart with the following year. There is a traditional of songs that haven't reached number one to wind up as the number one song of the year.  It isn't often, but it has occurred.  Chart longevity can beat out long stretches at number one, but I have a feeling this year could be close.  I'll post my final calculations, and the actual results, next month.  See me then.

What's My Holiday Again?

     Thanksgiving is just next Thursday, and there are already a ton of places decorated for Christmas.  Sure, there are a few inflatable turkeys out there.  Strangely enough, they are almost always the same one, although I have seen at least one with a different facial expression.  I mean, should all of these turkeys look so happy for Thanksgiving?  This one turkey I saw was more sullen than happy, but that is understandable.  This year, the house that had the zombie pilgrim its hand place just below its belt in a suggestive manner didn't do anything this year.  It had over a dozen figures, the last of which was taken down barely a week ago.  However, the 'Beetlejuice' mannequin is still on the porch, if you know where to look for it.  More importantly, many people started to decorate for Christmas the days after Halloween.  I feel that is just a little too early.  In the pace of a few days, many homes started to go all out this week. One home, that I don't usually pass, had put up over a dozen inflatables in the yard over the past two days. They weren't up today, but I could see them lying on the grass.  The weirdest thing though is the number of places with Halloween decorations still up.  Now, I'm not talking about generic autumnal decor, because that is still appropriate for the season.  No, I'm talking about actual things that could only be for Halloween.  For instance, the stable that had multiple skeletons, including one of a horse, didn't take them down until this past weekend.  The house with the skeleton climbing a pole still has it up, although almost the rest of its autumn decor has been removed.  Just this morning, I drove by a house which still had cloth 'ghosts' hanging from a tree and other decorations on its porch.  Two weeks is more than enough time to take everything down.  For my store, I will start taking down the leaves this Friday so that the window can be cleaned before the big Christmas decorating starts.  The rest of the stuff will come down by next Monday.  Everything for Christmas should be up by the day after Thanksgiving, but it probably won't.  If it was up only to me, everything would be done by then.  I've done it once before, without any help.  However, if I delegate some chores, my part get done faster, but their tasks take at least a day longer than I think they should.  There might be a few new details this year, but it's too early to know for sure.

Just Another Missing Brick on My Wall

 I have played many games via my Facebook account.  Many, many games; many, many times.  I deleted some over the years, for various reasons.  Some I technically still have active, even if I haven't played them in weeks, or months.  However, I have been ignoring more games than usual lately.  Hey, when you 'accidentally' net up two, three hour of bonuses on Candy Crush Saga one is all but bound to try and use as much of them as possible.  Blame it on all of the competitions that have been set up lately.  For instance, I had made it to the second round of their recent 'All-Star' contest.  I missed out on my first chance to enter the next round, but I still had the consolation bracket.  I had to place the top score two days in a row to make it through to the next round.  I easily won the first day, but I had numerous problems the second day.  For some reason, I couldn't get full access to the game at work.  I would log on, but my winning streak bonus wouldn't show up, or I would be starting on a beginner level instead of my own current one in the low 8,000s.  I couldn't rack up the points needed to vie.  By the time I got home, with the clearer wifi signal, there wouldn't have been enough time for me to get the points to move on.  That really irked me.  I recently place second in a competition over the weekend, but even that doesn't seem completely fair.  Saturday night, I was in second place just about 10,000 points behind first place.  The next day, first place had over twice as many points as I had, almost three times.  Now, I know certain levels can net you super high number of points, especially with the first time playing modifier, but that was stupid high.  Currently, I am leading the first part of the next challenge and all but certain to make it to the second part team-challenge.  Unfortunately, something had to give with all of this 'candy-crushing.'  Some games, I have only played a few rounds, just enough to activate the daily bonuses and move on.  Other games, I still play diligently and competitively, because of the way those games have challenges.  In all of this confusion, I lost a game.  I don't know how, but it is gone from my Facebook page.  It was called "Brick-Breaker-something-something."  It was one of a batch of similar instant games.  Now, on Facebook, I believe one can have only one instant game set up.  Once you select a new one, the original one fades from one's collection, but can be re-selected.  Last Thursday night, I tried to access my 'Brick' game, only to discover a different game was now in its place.  I don't remember accidentally switching it out, but I tried to find it again.  The game was no longer listed in the featured games.  I searched Facebook's Gaming section.  Still no luck.  The game wasn't even listed under my activity log.  I couldn't even find it in a search of Facebook sites.  It was like the game never existed.  Since I can't remember the game's full name, searching for it has been hard, but I have a nagging doubt that I will never see it again.  I admit, it wasn't a top favorite game, but I did enjoy it once, when I didn't have as much Candy Crush on my mind.  I don't fully mind that it has gone, but I wish it hadn't.

Do You Know the Way to Monterey

 Last week, something strange happened after I finished reading my last regular reading assignment from the online course materials for one of my grad school classes.  It was a late Restoration era British comedy-of-manners that took me two hours to get through.  I could've finished sooner, but I kept nodding off and had to reread some sections.  Trust me, it wasn't as boring as it sounds.  Anyway, after I signed off, I noticed that I had a new notification on my computer.  Usually, these things don't pop up when I'm at work.  The wifi connection is too unstable most of the time.  However, this time it came through.  I had a new upgrade to install, a big one.  This was the upgrade for the MacOS known as Monterey.  I knew this was coming this past month, but the exact timing had slipped from me.  I had a lot going on these past two weeks.  It is the latest update in their series of California themed names.  I think I liked the big cat themed names, but that was years before I got my MacBook.  Anyway, I did a quick web search to see if the OS had actually dropped.  It had, and I read a few articles about it.  Then, I did nothing.  For one, downloading something as big as a new OS would take a fairly long time.  Even longer with my weak wifi at work.  I noticed the notification less than an hour before closing.  Nowhere near enough time for the download.  Furthermore, I didn't download Monterey after I got home that night, either.  I never upgrade my OS the first few days after it drops.  I like to see if any problems pop up.  Bugs get revealed that first week pretty frequently.  Also, I get afraid that I could lose important files.  I usually wait a month or so before I do anything.  Since I have important documents relating to my classes right now, I think waiting until at least after the semester is over would be prudent.  I will upgrade, though.  This could be the last one I will ever get to use.  Last year's update had a few minor features that my computer was unable to handle.  This year has a few major features that I will be missing out on.  Admittedly, I don't think I would be using all of them anyway, but it is still an issue.  MacBooks made before 2016 can't even handle the basic features anymore.  I predict about a fifty percent chance that I will not be able to use next year's update.  This drops to around twenty percent the following year, and pretty much zero in 2024.  Hopefully by then, I will already have a new desktop model and just use the MacBook for travel or secondary functioning. Until that time, I will be doing what I can with what I've got.  Maybe even getting a tablet or smartphone so I can finally really use some of the compatibility features that would really be fun.