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Yeah, I know---that's what I do for a better mouse---and I could unplug the ergonomic keyboard from my main computer.
Ultimately I don't want to clutter this laptop's hard drive with my writing. I bought it to write a diary in---I came to the realization I couldn't read my own handwriting when I went back looking for information---but I'll make use of it while I shop for something better. (Probably online---I bought this laptop online.)
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Y'know, buying a computer is almost as much trouble as getting rid of one with computer problems.
I bought one; it arrived yesterday, and this morning I tried to set it up. "Tried" is the key word here, because I found that nowhere on the thing is a proper plug for a monitor cable!
Evidently there are three ways to connect...and the cables I got and the connectors I have can only accommodate a video connection two ways---neither of which the computer can do.
I will have to get a new adapter or cable, but I can't today, or for a couple of days, so I'm stuck now with two computers that don't work right and one laptop that does...
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Well, I got the cable adapter---or should it be "adaptor?"---and plugged it in. Works fine so far, downloaded some stuff right away, more to come. I'm on it now.
So far, so good...but it would seem a lot of the over-the-counter gear is less elaborate than it used to be...fewer ports and features and such. I suppose the action has shifted to handhelds and smart phones...
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quote:Originally posted by Disgruntled Peony: My store manager's last day was yesterday (she's going into marketing) and I'm interviewing for the position tomorrow.
I have all the butterflies in my stomach. ALL OF THEM.
Good success to you.
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Things seem to have gone decently... They're sending me a control self assessment to do at home. They want to move fast on filling the management position so I should hear back from them one way or the other by next Friday at the latest.
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quote:Originally posted by Grumpy old guy: Qapla' Disgruntled Peony.
Phil.
It's been so long since I actively watched Star Trek that I had to break out my 'How to Speak Klingon' book. XD I might have to rectify that at some point.
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Great! Hope it meets all of your expectations and even exceeds them in all the best ways.
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Well, some of my expectations are that it's going to continue eating into any and all of my free time until I can get another shift supervisor hired, but honestly I have a pretty good idea of what I'm looking forward to. Enough of it is good that I'm willing to weather the bad. (And, hell, even if the store ends up closing in a year or three because of the merger, that'll be okay. I just want to make sure we start doing better than we had been.)
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I'm staying up way later than I should tonight because I work a close/open shift setup tonight/tomorrow but but but my husband preordered Deadpool on Bluray and I have to watch it. For the third time. (First two times were in theaters.)
Loving this movie probably makes me a terrible person. ...But that's okay.
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And deep gratitude to those we remember on this day, for their great sacrifice to keep our freedom and our way of life strong.
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Speaking of the cross dressing statues that show up in various cities at certain time of the year--around here we have piles of frames that show up every year at this time. They just pop into existence as far as anyone knows.
An explanation here:
Here in Calif you can only sell fireworks individually for a very short period of time every year. And none that explode. Charities sell them for around five days every year. Thus the frames. The piles show up in various parking lots at least a week before fireworks can be sold. Between then and the second day they can be sold the frames just form into booths.
I have lived here over 30 years and just last year I saw something that shows where they come from. I saw a flat bed semi with a few piles on it. It looked parked so nothing was moving. And the last two years I saw one group putting the frames together but usually I see nothing, they just appear and then form into booths.
So the piles have been there for a week or so and a couple of booths have been put together-mysterously
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We get those down here in Florida, but sometimes they just take over abandoned stores for the season. And they tend to linger on beyond the Fourth of July, too...
Christmas gets the Christmas tree tents...Easter gets the candy displays in the supermarkets...Halloween gets them, too, but they tend towards the orange-and-black...Thanksgiving gets strange and mysterious turkey and / or ham displays...and the Fourth of July gets fireworks...
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I didn't get to this yesterday but the 22nd was my birthday
This may sound rude or worse but I have already asked three groups of people, so I will take the chance. I wonder if anyone who reads this could do something for me for my birthday? Tell five people about my books. In person, E-mail, on your blog, twitter etc.
Yes, I can return the same to you on your birthday.
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Around here, we have some stories selling fireworks-in packages-but they don't usually make a big deal about it.
But those booths, I referenced, are covered with posters for the fireworks sold. It's usually the same two companies that each sell many of the same types. The companies can change however. A while back there were Freedom fireworks and Red Devil. Now it's Phantom and I just forgot the other one. I think there is a third but there are only a couple booths that sell that brand. 14 some booths sell the other two. They sell until sound down the Fourth. And sundown is late this time of year-8:30+ maybe.
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A very late Happy Fourth and a few thoughts on the subject
Just wanted to say a few words about Founding of the US. In other words finally I am doing my own 4th of July greeting.
Each Fourth my local paper prints a copy of the Declaration. Today I was reading excerpts from it and got to the place where they listed their grievances with England. A wide assortment of real hurts and problems. But it hit me that many terrorists-not so much Radical Muslims who do their awful deeds for other reasons-use similar lists to justify terror. But our founders went another way. This was a Declaration of Independence not a declaration of terrorism. The first is the way to go not the second when you have grievances with another country. Yes, our Declaration led to violence-war. People got killed but it was straight up war not terrorism. And many bad things happened to the signers of our Declaration. Many were hung, some saw their children killed. One had to order the shelling of an ancestral home filled with memories and antiques. The British officer thought he wouldn’t give that order which is why the officer moved his men into it. The list of injuries and death for the signers goes on and I don’t have time to list each one. Which on a side note, and pardon the slip into today’s political debates, busts a few liberals’ desire to believe that the founders were greedy, selfish businessmen who just wanted to stop paying taxes.
So the whole thing was good. The Liberty and restrictions on government, including a list of our rights that are protected, that were on purpose included in the Constitution are all good. And has served us well.
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An example of a similar scenario. The restaurant owner took the advice of my kitchen manager subordinate and rearranged the cooking appliances so that the faster, short order equipment was closer to the server food pickup station. Unbeknown to me. The next daytime shift turned on the equipment and set the exhaust fan to a low speed setting.
I come into work and feel something is awry, that kind of moment when time stops. Next I know, the fire suppression system lets loose and blankets the kitchen in baking soda.
But for a piece of special knowledge that the temperature-range sensitive fusible links in the exhaust hood needed to also be rearranged, and that lack of awareness by the owner and subordinate, the fire suppression system wouldn't have tripped. I knew, but no one consulted the fire suppression system company or me.
As it was, because the system tripped, a fire alarm signal went out to the fire department. The fire marshal cited the restaurant for an equipment violation, a costly fine. The system restoration call was also costly. The responsible parties bolted and left the onerous cleanup to me alone. Duh-huh.
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Nothing like (a) not being consulted by those who have no idea what they or you actually do or know, and (b) having to clean up after because of the mess caused when (a) happens. If you hadn't said "restaurant," I would'a thought you worked for the post office...
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A sibling worked for the post office and retired therefrom. One tour was at a Florida sorting unit, others, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia. The job was technology maintenance crew management though really about mitigating dysfunctional workplaces; that's what administration really wanted. Bureaucracy and dysfunction don't have to be synonymous; however, they most often are.
An instinct for adjusting dysfunctional cultures runs in the family, because the family is dysfunctional to a toxic degree and knows it, knows how to cope with it. I'd rather not endure all the drama, and rather tend toward withdrawal. Soon after the fire suppression system discharge at the restaurant, one more in a rapid string of dysfunctional malfunctions, I quit and went to work elsewhere.
I can't get a government job of any kind. A bureaucratic malfunction in my early adulthood caused a selective service registration bar. I don't meet that civil service job criteria. It stands out loud on my background details. I wasn't allowed to register for the draft because the draft ended soon after my eighteenth birthday. The draft board turned me away because they didn't want to bother during the span from when the legislation was enacted to when it was official: 29 March 1975 enactment through 1 July 1975 official implementation date.
By the time the draft registration resumed, 2 July 1980, I was too old to register. Shows up as unregistered though required to and didn't on every government background check's job application that I've attempted: municipal, state, and federal. The last time, the interviewer told me that was the bar. Prior applications were just declined for no expressed reason, many through my middle adulthood years. Asked my congresspersons for consideration and they too told me, nope, it was my fault, not gonna fix my mess for me.
I'm an honorably discharged veteran, too, though of no distinction. Military service makes no difference with that failed to register for the draft mark on my background details.
Fallen in between the cracks; this is me.
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You can make your own miniatures, for D&D or what have you.
I suppose there is tangential writing relevance, since it can help someone visualize their characters. In any case, it's fun. Posts: 745 | Registered: May 2015
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I'm sure Aaron Sorkin writes better dialogue than I do, but then I've started more than a few sentences with "Dammit!" I just wanted to get that off my chest.
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A central convention of Sorkin's dialogue aesthetic is a greater filibuster-like monologue emphasis than conversational dialogue. A strength, in that the method realistically imitates Sorkin's portrayed discourse communities' speech habits: lawyers, politicians, academic, corporate, and military leadership, celebrities, and pundit commentators: public politics, in other words. For me, though, the method wears from my overexposure to those communities' speech habits.
Odd thing about emotionally charged interjections, like "dammit," at the start of a speech -- they hold the floor, filibuster, from curiosity evoked by what there is to be emotional about anyway -- darn it, heck and libel, slander and calumny, for cripes' sake, geekus crow.
For me, prior emotional context and texture are warranted for interjections. Interjections are reaction effects, usually. Otherwise, they arise causeless from a disembodied voice and causality vacuum.
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extrinsic, have you seen the ads for Sorkin's Master Class? With all due respect to Sorkin, I've loudly proclaimed "damn it" at the beginning of many an inquiry.
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I have and sampled the content. Scripts are scripts and teaching the writing thereof entails as many terms as, if not more than, prose technique discourses. Curious how many different terms substitute for motivations, stakes, and tone. Seems every writer of the past hundred and sixty years who explicates dramatic techniques uses different terms for the same core principles.
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Been watching this "Beverly Hillbillies" first season DVD set I got the other week. What's most interesting---downright startling---are the original sponsor commercials included. The cast---and in character!---hawk cereals (Kellogg's Cornflakes) and cigarettes (Winstons). I know such things ran that way...but it's still startling to see them, particularly the cigarette ads. But they need to be seen---because, sometimes, plot points in the episode are resolved within the commercial.
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Television's true initial cultural and commercial function was, still is, advertisement. Entertainment content is the persuasion to receive advertisement. Entertainment content packages ad content. Of late, though, product placement has become more subtle than previous and more attuned to audience focus targets.
The '70s though '80s era, when tobacco and alcohol TV ads were prohibited or restricted, inspired product placement subtlety; plus, negative product placement inspired corporate backlashes that, in turn, led to prohibitions or licensing of product placement.
Many of the '50s and '60s era ad broadcasts entailed entertainment content aligned to and in dramatic support of what viewers consider the main content. However, then as now, ad content remains commercial TV's broadcast priority. The actual entertainment content, the reason why viewers tune is, is a distant second emphasis -- why much of television content is often mediocre at best.
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Inventory at my work is finally over with. I am displeased with the results, but at least now my store can resume some level of sanity. Not sure if the same can be said for me, but I survived.
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Last week I stopped at an intersection glanced at a new sign on the side of a building-looked again and stared. Yep it's that time again
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Sooooo, I know most of you probably don't play D&D and/or Pathfinder, but you'll probably still be able to appreciate the ridiculousness/awesomeness that is my character in a game I play off and on.
My character is a true neutral cleric with the ability to channel both positive and negative energy (which basically means she can heal or harm people depending on what makes sense to her at the time). One of her major character goals is to become a lich (so, a sentient undead that's nigh impossible to kill under the right circumstances).
She's also a necromancer. She recently acquired three zombie Guardian Naga and eight zombie Nagaji. The Nagaji each have guns of never-ending magic missiles (2d4+1 damage apiece, which isn't a lot from one creature but hits pretty hard when all eight of them strike in tandem). I have this mental image of the zombie Nagaji riding the zombie Guardian Nagas and firing those guns as they go.
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My work as an editor of legal and business documents, "proofreader" in the vernacular, though much more than mere conformance of grammar; style too, and rhetoric, and limited mostly to diction, organization, and punctuation considerations, this week has so far been especially brutal. A recent new client or two has increased the work load. Though more paid work is no reasonable complaint -- I'll complain at the bank, right?
No, the brutal work feature this week has been writings about corruption in high places that resulted in severe travesties to many individuals; ugly, ugly, cruel inhumanity and rigidly secret public corruption, uncalled-for deaths, and untoward physical and emotional abuse of the worst kinds imaginable.
You think it doesn't emotionally affect you, too, though you as well suffer distantly similar abuse. Maintenance of an objective outlook is required for the work, and secrecy, oath sworn to secrecy under penalty of contempt indictments, for pragmatic reasons, and all will come out anyway in its due time, though never through you, and you must quash your emotions and keep a steady, silent keel. Another type person, myself, too, at a younger, oblivious age, would self-medicate for solace, consolation, coping strategy, from some kind of self-comfort practice: alcohol, mood altering drugs, recreational games, gambling, shopping, adult activities, wink-wink, or talk about it with close acquaintances. Nope, cannot ever do the latter, not even one word.
I'm disallowed self-comfort activities anymore. To say the least, many are they toxic for me now, toxic from me to others, too, and for some time since; they will kill me immediately if not sooner. Instead, my emotions privately rise as they will, anger most, part bidden, part unbidden, and part bated by meditations of what can I do.
For some time I have pondered many a midnight candle burnt. What can I do? What is my duty to the common good? I am no wheat farmer, tuna fisher, nor lumberjack or athlete or stage or screen performer, nor the Beast itself, a politician, nor a cleric, though I have dabbled at those vocations. I am an aggravated voice longed to be heard. I am a writer.
The course of my meditations has taken me around and around, up, down, sideways, diagonals, skews and slants, crests and troughs, back and forth, into and beyond the abyss, through and through -- seeks a distinctive center of focus. Earlier this year, I realized my life's calling, albeit late in life. This was not the end, but a means. Further focal meditations of my calling pursued method, message, intent, meaning, and, most of all, my moral duty.
Several epiphanies along the sacred Poet's Journey arose to nudge me onto sidetracks that, at first and for a while, seemed mere distractions, that wouldn't leave off, and became focuses incrementally.
This last epiphany, due to this week's onerous work, has coalesced into a much strove for one distinction direction, albeit of an intangible yet tangible characteristic as well. That is, satire's practical irony entails artful and persuasive misdirections for expression of an important message. One message per narrative; one overall, too; one to persuade them all.
Humanity's inhumanity to humanity is rife and ripe for satire. This is most of all, to me, the physics' three-body problem applied to human society; to wit: a small body is at the mercy of two large gravitational masses' influences. If there's a scientific principle that most applies to timeless, relevant, and current social events, that one does.
This from my "day job."
I did enter this vocation with an intent to inform my writing skills, mostly master matters of mechanics; however, never did I consider that I also would discover my life and writing calling from it. Curious that I did think I would find individual topics for prose expression; never did I think the work would inform my whole larger consideration of a single focal area: Satire about large human institutions that brutalize individuals: at times, indifferently; at times, by design; always callously. Timeless, relevant, and current, for sure; and risky -- need say no more on that latter, risks, yet you consider that closely considered.
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The Hero's Dilemma writ large upon the real world: To act or not to act. Both choices have detrimental consequences for the Hero creating internal conflict and tension.
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What about external to a narrative conflict and tension: scandal and controversy? Some many much will be outraged if I manage my subversive mischief's intents artfully. Those are the risks that concerned me. Jonathan Swift and Maria Edgeworth manage those.
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I've determined my course. Act such that the act appears to be no act at all, maybe at most, overtly, the nightmares of a simpleton sojourner bent on a hapless stumble into the abyss.
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The strategic pivot is, by appeal, build support consensuses that do battle with anti-consensuses, as literature's factional disputes always have been. The friend of my friend is my friend. They draw away fire and draw fire to them and exhaust their opponents' fire.
However, the substantive composition strategy is to appeal to both pro and con and other consensuses such that they contest mostly about who stakes ownership right, who has strongest claim to best position on the coattails, or bridal dress train, or bandwagon. They won't even agree about what ownership they ride on. Meanwhile, the message presses its ironic subversion design.
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Just finished writing some villain dialogue. Read it over--sounds like a GEICO commercial. When you write like me, you write crappy dialogue--its what you do.
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Villains come in vanilla, Scoville hellfire, feldspar, and deep-space vacuum flavors, whatever: rascal, scamp, imp, rogue, scoundrel, etc.
Is it not what a villain does more so than how one sounds, spoken word-wise, verbal in the case of written word recordation?
The "It's what you do" Geico ad cycle to me is cynically sarcastic, villainously vile enough on the content alone. When you're a villain, you channel Simon Legree, villain of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852. It's what you do -- which paints with the broad brush of stereotyped characters al la difference intolerance bigotry.
It's what "you" do that makes a villain villainous, not how one sounds, per se, right? Of late, much aural-visual entertainment content contains deemed as antisocial this or that motifs; tobacco use anymore is huge for painting villain characters, plus heavy-set physiques, other contraband substance users, leering lusters' glares, Snidely Whiplash-type wrathful brow beaters, angry, hateful meathead lunks toting concealed knives and firearms wherever, gluttons, misers, green-eyed jealous envy-ers, cack-handed, slack-jawed, unkempt slob sloths, and as well proud, misguided elitists and intellectuals with selfish agendas and designs. For villain-hero narratives, some character type must be the target victim of satire's attack upon some behavior and persona identity type.
Actions speak louder than words. It's what "you" do. It is.
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Yesterday, in the middle of picking a fight with a Pacific Islander three times my size, I was called an "Old Man". That hurt!
I also learned two important safety tips: First, never pick a fight while sitting on a motorcycle and, second, quick thinking can save you in an untenable the situation. Two important phrases: "Federal Police" and "Deportation" came into effective play.
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