Chrome-plated blog writing
January 17, 2016
CJ is displeased that the Chromebook, not she, is my lap.
The hard drive of my trusty old G4 iBook pooped out a few years ago. I briefly made it go again by installed a new SSD drive, but after a few boots, it went back to not working. The iBook was my auxiliary computer that I used mainly for writing, so I didn’t pursue any further repair efforts.
I had been trying to make due with writing on my iPad. I can do okay touch-typing on the virtual keyboard (though I find I downsize to using only three fingers on each hand rather than all four), and I think I probably could have continued that way if only the screen were bigger. I like the writing app that I use, iaWriter, except for the part where it only shows you about six or eight lines at a time. I understand the rationale behind that, so that you focus on the current words spewing forth from your brain through your fingertips rather than always being distracted by going back and editing, but when I write these blog posts, it’s really handy to refer to earlier portions, as I frequently go off on tangents, or because the way forward is often revealed after looking and pondering what has already been written.
The volume of my writing dropped off drastically once I no longer had a real laptop on which to type. I miss writing–though I’m less sure you all miss my ramblings as much–so last week I took action. I drank the Apple kool-aid a long, long time ago, so it pains me that I have settled, due to the unignorable price difference, on a Toshiba Chromebook as my new laptop.
At least I think I have.
It feels zippy and responsive when I navigate around and the display looks crisp and bright. Because the price is so low, I was comfortable splashing out for one size larger than the smallest. It’s lightweight but feels substantial, and as a machine, has impressed me overall.
But what I have quickly become uncomfortable with is the realization that the Chrome OS is just an interface for the online Google environment and that there are no actual applications local to the computer, and certainly none that aren’t Google things. I am uncomfortable having to be logged in to all of the Google universe in order to just write this blog post. I’m not a privacy conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do prefer not to make it any easier than necessary for sites and environments to rake in all that information about me. I log in if I need to, but I log back out of most sites when I finish actively using them. Especially Google properties. Hence, my reservations about this Chromebook.
I figure that if I ordered an old-fashioned, spinny hard drive for my iBook, it would run again. I hypothesize that the SSD drive was simply too-modern technology for the poor beast. Or I could upgrade and spend what I need to for a basic Macbook flavor. This has been a trial blog post, if you will, to see how comfortable I am with this Chromebook.
But I think in my heart, I’ve already made my decision.
Eulogy for a person who’s still alive
October 5, 2013
The last thing Kelly would have wanted would have been to have to talk about herself, especially if it were in the third person. It’s true that if you were talking to her, she’d frequently interrupt with “related stories,” but they were always in the first person. She liked to think of it as an endearing personality quirk—the stories were related—but in the end she figured that she likely was just annoying to the other speaker. She tried to control the impulse with only moderate success. The issue probably stemmed from her general enthusiasm for things she liked and her desire to seem relevant.
Which is not to say that she liked people—she’d be the first to tell you that she didn’t. But sometimes actions—or interruptions—spoke louder than words.
Kelly liked to say that she inherited the best from each of her parents. Her mother was an extrovert and loved talking to anybody who would listen, and even if they wouldn’t. She, too, was generally enthusiastic about most things. Kelly’s father, on the other hand, was a quieter, more reserved sort who never made a spectacle of himself. So though Kelly knew that she often was loud and boisterous in her enthusiasm, she pretended that she knew when to dial it back and stop the stampede. Moderate success.
Anybody who is a friend of Kelly’s knows that in recent years, two of the things she was most enthusiastic about were writing and craft beer. And if you asked Kelly herself, she’d tell you that one of her favorite activities was to write her blog while she was drinking beer—and getting kind of tipsy while doing it. If she were here right now, which we know she is in spirit, she’d want everyone to stop moping and go enjoy something you love.
One of the things Kelly wouldn’t hesitate to say she loved most was London, England. She had hoped to move there one day but unfortunately, that’s a dream which will now remain unfulfilled. And that seems like a good way to draw this to a conclusion. If she were here now and succumbing to clichés, she’d say, “Go for it!” One of her philosophies of life was that you won’t know if you don’t ask which, on occasion, led to awkward moments. But she felt that though the answer might have been no, it might well have been yes. And if it would have been yes, wouldn’t you be disappointed not to have found that out?
Blogger Idol
September 21, 2013
You’ve heard me mention before—I’m impressionable. So when my friend casually mentioned that I should enter this year’s Blogger Idol contest, that was pretty much all it took. For the last week, that notion has been niggling in the back of my brain and now that the deadline for auditioning is all but past, I’ve decided that I must spring into action and put myself out there to be judged by the world.
Of course, as a public blog under my own, real name, it’s already out there being judged by the world. Only now, if I’m chosen to continue, I’m going to have to do things to actually promote and try to improve it and gain readership.
It’s not that my goal is to make this some big thing. I write for myself, and if a few people pause to read an entry or two, well, that’s just dandy. I write because I like to write.
But I do like a challenge. And one of my favorite methods of blogging is if I am given a topic. My source used to be a website that engaged in daily “assignments.” Most often that would amount to taking a photo based on some community-voted theme. I would use my photo as the jumping-off point for some writing. That website petered out and so did the frequency of my blogging.
But recently, that wonderful blogger Chantelle over at Fat Mum Slim posted a list of fifty topic ideas, and that was just the jump-starter I needed. I have written through #7 and I have #8 ready to go. I’ve managed not to study the list too hard, so that each next topic is fairly unpremeditated. I like it that way.
And that’s why this Blogger Idol contest is interesting to me. Sure, I could win great prizes like money to spend on Marware, whose awesome leather iBook laptop satchel I have owned and loved for years, and a host of other web-, design-, and life-related services. But the real appeal is the chance to participate in the weekly assignments over which I will have no control. That’s just the way I like it!
So watch this space, as they say! If I pass the audition, I’ll post updates on how you can help pull me through from week to week.
Thanks for reading!
The robot kills an afternoon at the movie theatre
August 27, 2013
The robot shuffled into the country movie theatre. Its expectations were low. It was winter and the place was rundown, so it wasn’t surprised to learn that the heater wasn’t functioning. But the robot had a Saturday afternoon to kill, so it bought a ticket anyway and settled into a threadbare seat in the middle of the third row from the back.
The robot and the canary had the day off from the game they played with each other. They both enjoyed following the stock market. They found it intriguing to watch the ups and downs and imagined that profiting from it was much like making one’s fortune with a sword in medieval times, or at least the robot did. The canary wasn’t old enough to know anything about medieval times.
The robot, having traveled from the next inhabited system over, was very old. Its planet had the technology to build it itself and to build a ship to send it off on an adventure, but not to speed up the travel much. So the robot figured it was, well, it didn’t know exactly, so it chose the level of the Nasdaq on the day it arrived, and declared itself to be 3,578 years old plus two, for the two years it had been tested after being built. The robot was 3,580 years old.
The canary had a much easier time with its age. It knew it was the same age as the child in its house, and that was simple to remember because once a year the child’s family would have a party and the canary would count the number of candles on the cake thrust before the child. The canary was four.
The robot and the canary had met purely by accident. The robot’s first assignment was to locate 81RTHD47, another robot. The robot’s capsule had landed in the front yard in a suburban cul du sac, and it couldn’t believe its luck when it stumbled out of the pod and immediately laid its visual sensors on a sign that said “JEREMY’S 81RTHD47 PARTY HERE!” It didn’t know what a JEREMY or a PARTY was but it thought it very fortunate that 81RTHD47’s whereabouts were so conveniently labeled and immediately activated its retrieval mode.
The robot crashed into the building behind the sign. Its auditory sensors registered vocal music that included the word JEREMY. It moved toward the sound but was momentarily held at bay by rubbery pods of air that floated around JEREMY.
The robot quickly ascertained that 81RTHD47 was hidden somewhere in the building. It began smashing any compartments or walls that might be concealing the other robot. When the entire interior of the building was in shambles, the robot reluctantly concluded that 81RTHD47 was not on the premises after all.
As the robot picked its way through the debris, feeling like a failure for lack of success in the mission, it was distracted by a flash of yellow that flitted past its visual sensors. The color was accompanied by a different form of music, this more lighthearted and uplifting than the previous vocal sounds. The canary wished to thank the creature that had toppled its metal prison and set it free. And so the robot and the canary had become acquainted. They shared a beer that had rolled out of the toppled refrigerator and found they had much in common, not least an interest in both swords and numerical patterns.
So the robot and the canary had combined their ages. They were 3,584. For 3,584 minutes at a stretch, they would each play the stock market separately. At the end of the 3,584 minutes, or sixty days (they rounded to the nearest whole number), they would come together and see which of them had played the market most skillfully. The loser had to buy dinner the following weekend. On Monday they started the next round.
And so it was that the robot was passing a Saturday afternoon in an unheated theatre waiting for a bad movie to start, before its dinner date with a canary.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
My blogging topic tonight was the worst movie I ever did see but since I generally don’t get too worked up about movies, I instead went with a random word generator short story. I use randomly generated words (country, heater, robot) to get started, and every time I get stuck I generate another word to move the piece along. The random words are in bold. I try really hard not to censor the words or myself. It’s a good exercise and in the spirit of today’s blog subject prompt, I worked movie viewing into it. Here’s a previous story I wrote this way. This is the random word generator I used tonight.
The day in shopping: ugh turned into ahhh
November 25, 2012
It’s not that I’m into Black Friday shopping, or even shopping, but I needed a new sleeping bag winter coat and today was the day I had the time and cash flow to take care of it. So I set off.
MicroCenter. Lucky for me, MicroCenter and Burlington Coat Factory are in the same strip mall. I popped into MicroCenter to get an HDMI iPad cable. Last weekend I discovered (belatedly) the joy of Netflix online. Happy day! Unfortunately though, the G4ness of my old PowerMac that I have hooked up to my TV isn’t acceptable to Netflix. Then I thought, well, I can hook up my iPad.
This is what the day boiled down to, besides getting (putting on layaway) my coat. I learned last night that the new restaurant of one of my favorite food trucks, World Street Kitchen, was soft-opening this weekend, so stopping there on my way home from horrible shopping was to be my reward. Only the shopping wasn’t so horrible, so really, it was just the frosting on the cake. The menu is expanded from the truck plus they have adult beverages.
So here I am, testing my new iPad keyboard at the bar. I can confidently say that it has allowed me to write with more pace and accuracy than the on-screen keyboard did, despite the beers I’ve been trying (and I’ve tried all new ones here at Acadia). The external keyboard is definitely the way to go with an iPad, and once I get the case version I think the set-up will take over nicely from a small laptop such as my (once again) G4 iBook, as I had hoped, and that’s a good thing.
It’s just another frantic Friday
November 17, 2012
Inertia, part 4: the London dream lives on
November 26, 2011
I’m not sure I’d exactly call it progress on the moving-to-London dream, but I did do something useful last night. I looked at rents over there for the first time. I can’t believe I never did that before.
I was pleased to learn that it’s not as outrageously expensive as I had been psyching myself up for all this time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not exactly cheap, and I don’t imagine home ownership will really be an option. But in the area where I stayed during my last visit in summer 2010, I could find a 1-bedroom place comparable to the apartment I lived in for eleven years before I bought my condo for maybe twenty percent more than I’d pay here. And anyway, London’s a big town. There will be something somewhere that’s within my budget.
So that part of the plan is going well.
Action taken: checked out rent prices.
Then I looked around my place. The stuff. Then I checked in on another unit in my building that has been for sale for well over a year, probably closer to two. The mortgage. The diminished selling price.
Depression.
Action taken: I engaged in one of my known coping mechanisms for restlessness and “depression.” I just cut off all of my hair.
The other unit is currently listed for eighty percent of what I paid for mine. And she’s got it looking a whole lot better than mine not least because she has about ten percent of the possessions that I have. My decision to purchase was rash. If I had shown interest but not acted, I probably could have waited out a reduction in price, because I think the guy had been trying to sell for a while before I showed up. But me being me, I forged right ahead. This was right at the end of the housing boom. Double whammy to me.
It was right at the end of the housing boom. Within six months the bottom had fallen out of housing prices. The market, like me, is still depressed. So part of my procrastination about London has necessarily been a waiting game for selling prices to climb a little. They haven’t. I had currently been figuring that if I put it on the market today, I’d be able to get around what my neighbor has dropped her price to. I’m not thinking that any more. Like I said, hers is nicer. The only disadvantage it has over mine is that the main water shut-off for the entire building is in that unit. Maybe that’s a deal-breaker.
Action taken: I just emailed a different neighbor who also put his place up for sale. Difference is, his sold in weeks. I want to consult with his agent.
Regardless of any issues about price, I know that I need to do a lot of spiffing up in here. The first thing to do would be to replace the carpet that I have hated since Day One. Sure, it was brand new but it wasn’t very good quality, I don’t think, and in the intervening years, the animals have kind of had their way with it, not that most of that couldn’t be cleaned, but I hate the carpet. I’ve always thought that installing that fake hardwood stuff would be the way to go. But I wonder how that would work with my ground floor floor that is always sinking and cracking because things are always shifting and settling. I’ll probably end up just putting in new carpet again.
Actually the first thing to do will be to get rid of most of my worldly possessions, because I never even glance at most of them. I mean, look at all these books. When was the last time I touched one of them? It’s been a lo-o-o-ong time. I suppose I’d keep the ones I’ve written and some of the ones I’ve designed. But all the others? I’ll get a Kindle, motherfuckers.
Actions required: 1) Figure out where to eco-dispose of books. There probably aren’t that many that would interest the used book store. 2) Re-rip all of my music CDs at a higher bitrate, then jettison their asses, too. 3) Be realistic. Even if I could fit into all those clothes again some day in the distant future, I’m not going to want to wear them. And if it’s the distant future, I’ll be in London and it will have been cheaper to buy new stuff than move old stuff overseas. Donate, donate, donate.
There are a few large items I would take with me—my cuckoo clock, Grandma Doudna’s embroidered map of my grandparents’ travels, Grandma Hetzel’s platform rocking chair, and my rabbit lamp. All other bets are off.
In addition to things, there are two cats and a rabbit. The cats are young, they’ll be fine getting their pet passports stamped. But my rabbit is almost nine, which is up there for a bun. The unofficial influence on my London timeline has been waiting out my rabbit’s life. At first blush that sounds cold, I know, but I’m only thinking of him. Rabbits are not as sturdy as cats or dogs and though I would take him along in a heartbeat if he were young, he is not and at this point I’d never subject him to the stress of air travel. He’s still going strong, bless him (though his diminished litterbox habits are part of the new carpet equation).
Eventually we must address the legal aspect to all of this. The general information that I have learned is that I must have a job lined up in advance so that my employer can get my work visa, or something like that. But artistic types such as musicians and authors seem to have plenty of wiggle room. Authors, you say? Why, I do have many author credits in the U.S. Library of Congress! It would just be too much to hope for that my kind of authoring would be the sort that would allow my to circumvent the usual employment requirements. I haven’t investigated in a number of years.
Action required: look at immigration rules again. See if I can take my US work self in a direction that allows me to take advantage of any UK immigration “other” options.
Then there’s the whole money part. I’m certain I would have enough cash to finance the move once I sold my place, even with a crummy selling price because a couple of years ago there was a significant pay-down on my principal. But before that, I’d have to pay for the improvements. To that end, I’m thinking that I ought not to spend my next tax refund on another visit to London like I would like to do. Rather, I ought to mostly put it toward the improvements. In addition to the carpet, I’m quite sure I’d be advised to get new appliances. And that’s something that would benefit me anyway. So even if I didn’t end up selling for a while, I’d be happy about that.
In addition, I was already thinking about not returning to bowling next year. That is, until I recently got a lesson and am more interested in it again. But if I didn’t bowl, I could instead put at least some of that $2700 for a year’s worth into the London Fund.
The same could be said for the money I’d save if I cancelled my cable television subscription. The added benefit would be that I wouldn’t be watching TV all the time and could concentrate on more useful activities, such as throwing out stuff or doing extra work to steer myself in the right immigration direction.
I think that about sums it up. The one thing I have the power to start doing now is getting rid of stuff. And that would be a good idea regardless.
———————–
To read my previous bemoaning on this topic, please refer to Inertia, part 1 (history of the dream in which I compare myself to a large, brick building), Inertia, part 2 (I am lazy like a potato sitting on the couch), and Inertia, part 3 (nothing’s changed for me but the large, brick building is making progress).
The large, brick building is now open for business as the Cowles Center for Dance and Performing Arts. It got off its ass and did something.
Open letter of application
April 14, 2011
Dear the3six5,
For weeks, nay, months, I have been waiting to find the perfect time to write the perfect email to you to apply for an author spot on your interesting blog. I should have known better. The perfect time never happens. And the other perfection is in the eye of the beholder.
Tonight I have finally gotten fed up with my inaction and fairly quickly come around to the notion of turning tonight’s entry on my own blog into my application to your blog.
All along, I had been planning to give you the link to my blog as my resumé for your project. Because what better way to demonstrate that on any given day, I can write about something, anything, than to show you that I do.
I like to write but I hate coming up with ideas, so this is where I confess that it’s not entirely my own imagination that drives my blog. For a year and three-quarters I have been playing on tweaktoday.com where we do something different every day, documenting said thing, most often, with an original photo, but sometimes with a video. It eventually occurred to me that using our daily mission as the jumping-off point for my blog would be an easy way to overcome that bit of laziness. But it would still be a challenge because by letting an outside influence dictate my direction, I wouldn’t get to write about something near and dear to me a lot of the time. So for a year and a half, I’ve been taking what the community dealt me. I think it’s gone pretty well.
It’s ironic that today, when I finally apply to you, the mission chosen on tweaktoday.com is by me and that no one, including myself, has submitted anything.
That doesn’t mean that I can’t write. And I’ll even write on a holiday, such as my birthday or Christmas. And look, this letter just happens to be 354 words long, almost perfectly fitting your author guidelines.
Sincerely,
Kelly Doudna
The rabbit in the kitchen with a knife
December 29, 2010
My first thought was to make this a 3-D zucchini sculpture, but as soon as I picked up the knife I knew that would be overly ambitious. So instead I made a simple, woodcut-like carving. Now what?
The alien quietly kicked the electronic dead body. It was dead. It didn’t react. The alien thought for a moment. Maybe the body simply needed some hydrotherapy to restore it, but it was unready to make the decision. The alien thought for thirty seconds longer. Then, with one boisterous gesture, it grabbed the electronic dead body and plunged it into the pot of boiling water. And waited. While it waited, it poured itself a small aperitif of sherry.
The water bubbled in anger, the alien sipped, and gradually, those two things conspired to make the alien’s stomach itself burble. The alien was quite hungry. It gazed longingly into the pot at the electronic dead body. Although the boiling water was splashy, the alien could see that a transformation was taking place in the cauldron. The protracted hydrotherapy had caused the electronic dead body to transform into an edible zucchini.
The alien’s revery was interrupted by the doorbell.
Phrases and words in bold came from random generators. I went where they took me, for better and for worse. The initial sentence came from here. Subsequent words were generated here. Another fun creative writing mini-exercise.
Hooli G. An versus the robot
December 10, 2010
And so, the robot quickly spat on the green book. It experienced only a moment of remorse. “I don’t suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it!” it monotoned in a metallic voice. “However, that doesn’t mean that things are going as planned.”
The robot shuffled off. It was winter, so it moved more slowly. This meant Hooli G. An had to wait. The stress was enough to give her a nosebleed. Her one goal was to get to the green book before the acid from the robot’s saliva disintegrated it. Time was of the essence. Up until this point, the plan had seemed well-choreographed, but now she was beginning to conclude it was an irreversible misunderstanding between all parties involved. And really, it might not be just the robot who was insane.
As various scenarios ran through the hooligan’s thoughts, she realized she was having trouble breathing. “I’ve come too far for it to end in asphyxiation,” she opined, ‘but I’m a little unsure … “ and things went black.
When Hooli regained consciousness, her first thought was, a happy pair they made, so beauteously laid beneath the gay illuminations all along the promenade. As lucidity set in, she realized that didn’t make any sense. If she were going to complete the mission and depict herself with anything approaching credibility, she had to shake the cobwebs off fast and get back to the business of saving the green book. Dithering about would not do. The time for jocularity was past. She had to get serious.
Hooli sat up and surveyed her surroundings. Wherever she had been taken, the place was definitely in disrepair. And at least her captors hadn’t tied her up or put her in a straightjacket, she thought thankfully. It was just then that her robot adversary entered the space. Hooli didn’t hesitate to give it a piece of her mind.
“I will not let some two-bit, tin-can robot—who might be insane despite the logic of your programming—cost me this mission,” she ranted. “This whole situation”—she gestured vaguely around the room—”is, I have to admit, somewhat unanticipated. But it is not insurmountable.” The robot meeped non-commitally. Hooli went on. “My whole life, I have been self-supporting. Retrieving the green book is supposed to be my last mission and I’m not going to let you spoil it.”
The lime-green lasers of the robot’s eyes shone into Hooli’s. It appeared to be unfazed by her declarations. It stood there calmly, maddeningly. She didn’t actually know what to do. Hooli furrowed her brows and considered options as quickly as she could, given her puny human brain. When this was over, she’d need therapy for sure.
The rules of her employers were restrictive, that much was certain. But with each passing minute, she believed the guidelines were less and less relevant. Then she saw the hutch against the side wall of the room and, more importantly, spied the green book on the far end. She glanced up to the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Insects orbited it like planets around a sun. An idea began to take shape.
Earlier in the day for lunch, Hooli had eaten some Chinese take-out. The fortune cookie had advised, “Don’t eat any Chinese food today or you’ll be very sick!” Robots, of course, didn’t eat food, but they still needed additives in order to maintain their functionality. It was winter and the robot looked stiff. Hooli took her one, her last, chance.
“You haven’t gotten your winter weight robot oil yet, have you?” she wondered with what was, she hoped, an air of nonchalance. “Your joints must be rubbing like a molar on a canker sore.” Once again, the robot meeped non-commitally. “I had a sneaking suspicion,” she said.
Hooli drew in a deep breath. This was her best chance to destroy the robot. “It’s your lucky day, robot, because for some mysterious reason, I happen to have winter weight robot oil with me. It’s right here in this glitzy canister.” She pulled a rhinestone-encrusted object from her bag. She shook it so that the motion caused the myriad of facets to catch and reflect the light from that single lightbulb. The robot was bedazzled. To add to the confusion, she made a finger moustache.
The robot, who had initially looked rather roguish when it had been spitting acid on the green book, now had the air of a crumpled soda can. It was powerless to defy the sparkles coming from Hooli’s blinged-up reusable water bottle.
“Sorry, robot, but you’re going to have to take a rain check on world domination. I know that as a machine, you’re used to dealing with exactitudes, but that’s where I have the upper hand. I am not logical. This is not a tug of war. I’m taking the book. You may not admit to being insane, but I am a lunatic!”
The robot waved its arms rather lamely as Hooli continued to waggle her rhinestone bottle in the light. She grabbed the green book and was pleased to see that the aqueous coating on the cover had slowed the effects of the robot’s acid. She exited via the wrought iron fire escape ladder and gave a satisfied nod of her head once she was clear of the building. Hooli G. An was back in control.
Credits: Phrases and words in bold came from random generators. I went where they took me, for better and for worse. The initial sentence came from here. Subsequent words (other than the “Hooli G. An” name, which was inspired by a friend’s comment elsewhere) were generated here. Alien poster from here. All in all, a fun creative writing exercise.
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 