December 7, 2018
Dear Everyone:
Two-and-a-half years ago, I acquired a
tablet computer I named
“Petruchio”. I wanted it for
the convenience of not having to get up and walk over to the more
conventional computer every time I wanted to look something up.
It’s not that I was too lazy to get up and walk over to the other
PC; the problem was that I couldn’t remember what I had gone over there
to look up. This kind of
forgetfulness is not a symptom of advancing age.
I’ve had it for years.
Having the tablet close to hand reduced the amount of time to
forget what I wanted to do.
I also found the tablet to be very helpful when I travelled as it was
far lighter than the more conventional laptop.
Apparently, as I was going through the usual initiation stage,
Microsoft took it upon itself to automatically register me with its
online gaming platform, Xbox.
Thus, I became “SquigglyPanic71”.
I downloaded some free games, like
Solitaire and
Mahjong.
And
Jigsaw Puzzles.
I found the Jigsaw Puzzles especially satisfying.
First of all, each collection of puzzles came in four levels.
The Easy level, consisting of about 12-24 pieces, took about 3-5
minutes to complete. When I
completed the first few puzzles in a collection, the system would unlock
the next puzzle. This
provided incentive to complete more puzzles.
When all the Easy puzzles were completed, it was on to the next level:
Medium, which consisted of about 50-60 pieces.
This took longer to complete.
Like, about 10 minutes.
Once I had finished all the Medium puzzles, it was on to the more
difficult level, named “Hard”, with just under 100 pieces.
A Hard puzzle could take as much as 15-20 minutes.
And then there was Expert, at around 150-220 pieces.
Each time, the picture was the same as before; it was just cut up
into more, smaller pieces.
An Expert level puzzle could chew up anywhere from a half-hour to over
an hour.
For additional incentive, each time I finished a puzzle I acquired
points. Plus bonus points
for completing a puzzle that was new to me.
Naturally, the system doesn’t reward you for doing the same
puzzle multiple times, other than the standard number of points
available.
I got into the habit of doing puzzles in the evening, while watching TV.
And the beauty of the system is that if I can’t finish a puzzle
on the first try, I can simply close down the program.
When I start it up again, there’s my current work, sitting right
there, waiting for me. No
herding pieces into a corner of the dining table, or shifting them into
a box lid.
In no time, I had completed all the puzzles in the collections that I
started out with. No
problem.
Microsoft has lots of collections of puzzles available for downloading.
But they’re not all free.
In fact, most of them are not free.
It’s like a drug dealer that gets you hooked, then starts
charging for his “product”.
In fact, a collection of 10 puzzles can cost as much as $1.49.
Or 3400 points.
That’s where those points that I had accrued came into play.
I could download a new collection, pay for it with points, then
replace those points as I finished more puzzles.
Can we see a pattern forming here?
The next thing you know, I had so many collections downloaded that I
didn’t know which ones I had completed and which ones were waiting to be
completed. Recently, I
decided to start a list, using the
Excel that was right there on the
tablet.
It turns out that Petruchio has over 70 collections of puzzles sitting
on his hard drive. And I
currently have 355,715 points waiting to be converted into more
collections. Add to that,
Microsoft recently added two more levels to all the collections, including
the ones that I already have.
The levels are “Master” and “Grand Master”.
I just have to remember not to lean forward when searching for that one
particular piece that’s shaped like a little right-handed man with just
a smidgen of yellow on his arm that should fit into the
butterflyfish
on its left side. All that
leaning is hell on my back.
Love, as always,
Pete
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