This 2015 book by Robert Moss is subtitled “Playing With Signs, Symbols, and Synchronicity in Everyday Life.” It’s an easy, first-person read built upon the premise that “the world speaks to us through coincidence and chance encounters.” But only if we are listening.

I’m not typically hooked by a book’s title, but this one grabbed my attention. Largely because I once bought the charming “Professor Pam’s Urban Divination Deck” from an Etsy shop, and one of its archetypes is “the mysterious puddle” — a phenomenon that happens on our front sidewalk. Furthermore, a life-changing book I’ve read is Coincidance: A Head Test, written by personal saint Robert Anton Wilson. Given these two signs from the universe, how could I resist this book? After all, there’s the old saying that “coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” Clearly, this book had something to teach me.

The book includes many of the author’s personal stories of synchronicity, which I wasn’t so fond of, as it’s often like reading someone else’s overnight dreams. But he made them as interesting as possible and justified their inclusion by quoting Mark Twain — “I do not wish to hear about the moon from someone who has not been there.”

Thankfully, the bulk of the book is not about the author’s experiences with synchronicity. It’s about recognizing and discovering your own meaningful coincidences. And the book is filled with interesting exercises you can use to tune in to "messages from the universe.” One of these is bibliomancy, or “book-dipping,” which is a basic way to put this whole bit of nonsense to a test. But, fair warning, sometimes you learn what you need, not what you want.

Just a few of the many snippets that caught my attention:

• The term synchronicity is a modern invention of Jung’s. He coined it because people have a hard time talking about coincidence.
• The term kledon refers to something you hear, such as a snippet of conversation. Or, I suppose, from a spirit radio. See wikipedia for more.
• The term kairomancy is the author’s coined word that refers to divination by recognition of meaningful moments.
• Every so often a synchronistic event is simply a rhyme, rather than an obvious coincidence.
• The term weird has a fascinating etymology.
• If you’re of a scientific mind, consider that synchronistic events (and déjà vu) may be related to happenings in parallel dimensions. (See time-reversed interference, which is an actual subject of study.)

If you’re going to read a book like this, I highly recommend that you give yourself permission to imagine — a sadly repressed trait among contemporary adults. (See another review I wrote for more on this.)

I bought my copy from the Amazon. Your local woo-woo shop will likely have it, if not another half-dozen books by this prolific author.

I’m adding a new camera system to my automated home. I chose the EufyCam 2C Pro system, partially because it’s made by Anker, but mostly because it supports HomeKit Secure Video.

However, it was a major headache getting the system configured to use HomeKit. The issue is that the process of adding the HomeBase2 as a HomeKit accessory would fail. I tried doing it in HomeKit directly, and I tried doing it through the Eufy Security app. Adding the HomeBase2 would always fail.

Making it even more frustrating, each attempt took several minutes, and seemed to work until the final step. HomeKit found the HomeBase, it asked for its location and camera names, and so on. It wasn’t until the final step when it would eventually timeout with a frustrating “Accessory not found” error. Well, FU HomeKit, you found it just fine five minutes ago when I started this process!

How did I finally resolve it? By (inconveniently) connecting the HomeBase directly to the router. (I previously had it, like everything else in my home, connected to a switch. A professional-grade switch, I might add, not some cheap Amazon Basics crap.) Once I moved the connection, adding the accessory was fast and smooth. Apparently, the HomeBase (or maybe HomeKit) doesn’t like being behind a switch. Word to the wise.

If a company can’t provide at least minimally competent customer service before delivering the product, take that as a sign that you should bail on the deal. I did.

Here are the highlights of how CenturyLink makes it hard to be their customer:

1. Require a long lead-time to install residential fiber Internet service. Your competitor, Cox, says they offer next day installation. But screw that, make people wait nearly a week.
2. During that week of waiting, pester the customer with multiple email and text messages, insisting they need to come to a website for the latest installation updates.
3. When the customer comes to the website, give them a garbled summary, so they won’t know what time to expect the installer.

4. On the day of install, have your tech entirely ignore the instructions they were given by the community’s security guard so that the tech will be unable to access the customer’s neighborhood.
5. Have the tech call the customer, seemingly to obtain the instructions already given, but when the call drops before either party can utter a word, turn around and leave the area. IMPORTANT: When the customer calls you back, don’t answer. And never, ever respond to the voice mail left by the customer.
6. Mark the installation order as ‘location unavailable,’ and reschedule it for more than 40 days in the future. But do not tell the customer you’ve done so. Let them call dispatch and ask WTF is going on.

Sean Kelly and Rosemary Rogers are the authors of “A Guide to the Whole Damned Bunch,” which is probably the most unique book on my reference shelf. (Where it stands between the Oxford dictionaries of Superstitions and Euphemisms.)

The best way to describe this book is that it’s a “Who’s Who in Hell,” but I’m guessing the publishers couldn’t use that analogy for trademark reasons. Not only does the book list countless known and identified demons, but it also lists people infamous for their mortal sins, all of whom surely now reside in the fiery pits. Politicians, popes, actors, murderers, and all walks of life are represented. Each with a discussion of the actions that damned their souls.

Interspersed throughout are pithy and memorable quotes, such as “Hell is a pocket edition of Chicago” — a quip from antisemite, prohibitionist, and Englishman, John Burns.

Like all good reference books, every time I look up something, I experience serendipitous delight. For example:

• As of 1996, 85% of Americans believe Hell exists
• According to Papal decree, unbaptized babies and Protestants go to Limbo, not Hell. This implies that hell is populated with Catholics.
• Iya is a Sioux malevolent spirit whose foul breath spreads illness
• Divel was the common spelling of devil in the 1600s.
• Adrian IV, the first and only English-born Pope, ceded Ireland to the English, causing no end of trouble.
• While looking up John Dee (whose mortal sin was sorcery) I noticed the listing for Pierre David. David was a mid-1600s priest who committed blasphemy by issuing dildos to the nuns of his parish and insisting that they attend mass in the nude, à la the Garden of Eden.
• The demon Hael causes gossip, and is known for teaching the art of writing letters.

Another interesting discovery was Belphagor. He’s an Old Testament devil, known for sloth and carnality, who was worshiped by the Moabites. This entry caught my eye because, while I knew the name of the imp guarding my book cabinet, I knew nothing of his story.

I bought my copy of “Who in Hell…” second-hand at a local Half Price Books (a great place to find reference books), but if you would rather not depend on happenstance, you can find it via the Amazon too.

There are many reasons why Dropbox sucks. (Go ahead, Google it, the results are shameful) But here is the latest from me. About 98% of the time when I boot my computer, this error message appears. Dismissing the error and restarting Dropbox makes it go away, and the status that the app reports is that everything is just fine.

Here's what's wrong with the error message:
- It does not tell you how to contact support, only that you should.
- The Help button it refers to does not exist.
- The text implies that the user did something wrong.
- The text implies a specific problem that is vague and not actionable. (And incorrect, based on the error log it references)
- The file it references is a Python crash log. (Completely unhelpful to anyone but Dropbox programmers.)

I tweeted Dropbox Support about this error, and they said to reply with a DM and attach the error log. Twitter does not allow text attachments, and the error log exceeds the maximum tweet length. It also exposes information that I consider to be private.

Remind me again why I'm paying for a premium Dropbox account?