The Crack of Dawn #754

Volume #754

4/15/25

Newsletter #754

The Crack of Dawn

Somewhere in the last innumerable updates, Word installed their A.I. program, Copilot. Did they ask me if I wanted it? No, of course not. When I saw that it had taken over the initial blank page of a new document with instructions for Copilot, I was horrified. As a writer, the opening blank page is important, and you must face it. You take on the responsibility of filling it. With something, anything, doesn’t matter. Or you can use Copilot to write it for you. I then spent several hours attempting to remove Copilot from my computer—I watched a couple of Google videos showing how to do it—and I still couldn’t do it. My assessment is that it’s unremovable. So I must ignore it. No, I don’t want you to write my thing for me. That’s my job, don’t try and take it away. Me personally, I turned off Word’s grammar and punctuation check from the beginning. I believe those things are also my job. Although, spellcheck is invaluable.

However, when I take my newsletter over to Substack, and drop it into their form, I’m now subjected to their punctuation and grammar check program. Blue underlines appear across the document, indicating upcoming disputes between me and their punctuation program. This program mistakenly believes that the word, “So,” always has a comma after it. I cry, “Bullshit!” That comma implies something, and removing that comma means something else. In their favor, the Substack program does suggest two or three commas that I should have put in, but didn’t, so it’s not worthless. We don’t have many disputes, but when we do, I always win, and it never changes.

However, since we’re on the subject, I’ve been writing with MS Word since it initially came out in 1990, version 3.0. Then came 6.0, then docx, then . . . Copilot, I guess. All right, fine. There are bugs in MS Word that have been there for 35 years. For instance, when I am writing a screenplay and have centered dialogue, Word mistakenly keeps capitalizing each line. Word capitalizes many things incorrectly. I’m used to fixing its problems, so I just do it. I’m just saying, is all.

Oh, here’s another good thing to bitch about. When using Uber Cars, as I often do, first you can see a car icon of the Uber Car driving along a map, hopefully coming toward you. It also shows where I am, like in my house, and it has a has a flashing dotted line indicating where I should go to be picked up, at the “Pickup Spot,” which is in this case down my driveway to the street. OK, great. That’s where I was going anyway. But many times, I come out of a doctor’s office on a main road (many of my doctors, incidentally, are on the same road), but the “pickup spot” is up the street or around the block in a subdivision. I was fooled by this a couple of times early on, running around the block. Fool me once. Now I completely ignore it, go where my instincts tell me to go, and that works fine.

I also had my first angry, contentious, Uber Car experience, and I started it. But not really.

One day recently, an Uber Car pulled up to my house, like so many have before. Since it says the driver’s first name, I try to use it, and often then they use my name back. Anyway, that’s not what happened here. This driver’s name was Charles. A 50-year-old black American man, wearing kind of big headphones, and so deep in a personal conversation that he didn’t even acknowledge my entrance into his car, at all. As we slowly drove away from my house, Charles continued to have a full-fledged conversation, I said, “Charles.” He completely ignored me because he couldn’t hear me. I repeated myself, but this time louder, “Charles,” Now he looked back at me. I asked plainly, “Do you intend to continue this phone conversation while I’m in the car?” He said, “Yeah. Maybe. So what?” I said, “Stop the car,” which he did. I said, “I’ll get out here,” about a half block from my house. But he kept driving slowly around the block, returning me back to my house. He said, “What the fuck do you know about it?” and I said, “I take Ubers a lot, and fuck you, you rude prick,” and as I got out of the car, he said, “No, fuck you,” then I slammed his door. Charles sped away.

Mumbling under my breath, “What an asshole,” I called for another Uber Car. It was there in 4 minutes, which is ridiculously fast. This Uber driver was a very heavyset, 24-year-old black guy, with awesome dreads who absolutely reeked of marijuana. That’s perfectly okay with me, but maybe not with everyone else. Anyway, we had a funny ride out to my dentist’s office. When we got there, stopped in the parking lot, he turned around and asked seriously, “Do I really smell like weed?” I said, “Dude, you really smell like weed. Maybe you should go and get one of those little pine trees or some Febreze.” He smiled, said, “Thanks, man,” and left.

Then I went into the dentist’s office.

I started as I’ve ended this piece, with no subject. Just for the sheer love of the process of doing it.

It looks like it’s gonna rain here.