Strain, Silly Drivers and Strange Suppositions

The word of the week is eschew.

June 23 - Printed Perfection

Small victories are a key to life.

Case in point: my printer.

Why, you ask, is a printer important? Well, apart from the fact that you paid money for it, it can print things - silly question, really. I've used my Canon ip4500 for 7 years now to print all manner of things: photos, handouts for my writing group, parts of various drafts of my novel, maps… the list goes on. Yet for the last 6 months, my poor ip4500's been out of commission, taken down by a print head that gave up the ghost and leaving printouts with nasty lines all over them.

Now, I mention this because this is the EXACT situation that people coming into Staples often told me about. How they loved their old printer( it's a workhorse / great pictures / just bought a whole new pack of ink for it before it crapped out )and didn't want to replace it, but they had to, in the end. Toss old printer, buy new one, repeat in 2 to 5 years, give or take.  Keeps the manufacturers happy.

Flip lever, replace printhead. Why aren't they ALL made this way?

Back to me: I bought a Canon back in the day because the printheads are replaceable - now they're not, but for a long time they were. So you just replaced the printhead and not the entire printer, all with the flip of the lever… and a smaller zap to your wallet. Turns out though, that at $100 a printhead( even re-manufactured! )it's cheaper nowadays for me to replace the ip4500 than to effect a repair via eBay parts.

Which I would have, had not fate intervened. A customer a few weeks ago brought in their old ip4500 to Staples, found out it had an error that couldn't be fixed cheaply and so bought a new printer. Leaving said Canon malfunctioning  printer( identical to mine )behind to be recycled. 

With a perfectly-good printhead inside.

Needless to say, I'm quite happy with the result. A lot of careful cleaning, some testing and clickety-clack: I have a like-new inkjet printer again, all set to print out whatever I want it to.

Ironically, I won't be up to much for the next six months, but at least I know it's there when I need it.

Colour me happy!

June 24 - 400K words?

I've written a fair number of words in my life, when I think about it.

As I've mentioned before, this blog itself is well over half a million words now, after seven years of writing every week. My novel's third draft is almost 150,000 words and when I think about the other stories I've written over the years, you could probably put in another hundred thousand words or so, getting my total close to three quarters of a million words in the last 20 years or so.

Which is not a lot compared to Jamie Todd Rubin, who wrote 400,000 words in a single year.

It sounds impossible, but he documented the process for which he used Google Docs to keep an accurate account of what he was producing everyday. Given that he is a published science fiction writer and blogger, his methods obviously bear examining to see how I might learn from them.

One thing that I did notice is that he uses a noise-canceling headset to tune out his surroundings. It's something that I've considered over the years but rejected due to the cost: a good headset will easily run around $300 to $400, which is way out of my budget, unfortunately.

The key thing that Jamie mentions is to write every single day, something that I'm still not quite in the habit of. I do think on my writing and notate every day, but I don't yet have a set amount of time that I sit down to write to the exclusion of all else. I'm thinking that I may do this in the morning, before work, by getting up earlier and use the time to collate my notes so that I can be ready to write in the evenings after I'm home from work and simply have to put the pieces together, so to speak.

I'll be trying this out very soon, I think, and I'll let you know how it goes.

June 25 - Near Misses

I was almost run over today.

No, that sounds too tame, too brief. How about this:

A car screeched to a halt less than a foot away from me, going from 60kph to ZERO after the driver suddenly realized the light was red and people - including ME! - were crossing the street while other cars were also going the OTHER way.

It could have really ruined my day, and his.

Almost: I was a foot in FRONT of his bumper...

What happened was this: a large dump truck was turning left at the lights, around the corner where I was standing, waiting to cross. The truck blocked my view of traffic to my left, as well as blocking Silly Driver's view of the light, which had turned red while the truck finally got through its turn. The crossing light said 'Walk' and everyone stepped off the curbs… which is when Silly Driver realized that the empty curbside lane( the other lane was taken up by stopped cars; hint much? )should NOT have been used to speed his journey to work / school. He slammed on the brakes just in time, as I caught him in the corner of my eye, realizing his car was moving FAR too fast. A second of tire screeches and Silly Driver's car was sitting IN the intersection while I and the lady next to me shook ourselves and finished crossing; Silly Driver was ducking to pick up something from his passenger footwell and refused any eye contact.

 
No harm, no foul, right? All the same, I had a good bit of cold-sweat shakes for a brief minute once safely across and away from the road. It was THAT close and ALL I'd been able to think about as I stood staring at Silly Driver's bumper was how an accident would just ruin my brand-new pair of pants.

Weird, eh?

Ten years ago this cartoon came out... and we've learned little since.

It also got me thinking: what if I'd been hit and had to spend the summer( AGAIN! )in the hospital? Sure, I'd be covered by insurance( I have a fair bit for this sort of thing )but that's assuming I was only injured.

What if I'd been killed? A headsmack the wrong way off his windshield or the ground and that'd have been it; he wasn't going slowly, I'll remind you. I'd definitely have broken limbs and likely more.

If I'd bought the big one, then nobody would be around to write my stories. My second book would remain unwritten, as would the third and ALL the other stories I have sitting around in my head - especially the ones I don't know are there yet. Nothing would have been published and well, it'd be rather disappointing for me to stare at glumly from whatever afterlife you happen to believe in.

Plus, I'd be gone and a few people would miss me. More than a few, I like to believe, and I'd definitely miss being around, that's for sure. All you folks are great and I'm not ready to disappear just right now.

I'm choosing to take this as a sign that I Should Write My Books - Sooner, Not Later. I think that's a healthy way of looking at things, don't you?

Also, I'm going to be even MORE careful crossing the road, even in 'sleepy' Victoria!

June 26 - Proof of parallel universes?

Something I forgot to mention yesterday: a receipt.

Well, let me backtrack a little. One of the first things I do at work in the morning is to 'tape' the invoices I get, which means I pull out a quaint old-style printing calculator to add up all the bits on the invoice to ensure everything matches up and that the service provider hasn't made an error. Fairly simple.

Yet my first receipt of the day… wasn't. Have a look:

One of these totals is not like the other...

Now, since you're wondering what's weird about that receipt, let me fill you in.

It's the first receipt I did that day, simply adding two sums: 337.500 + 16.88, which gets you $354.38.

Only, the first time I did it, I got $356.88. Which is WRONG.

Very, very wrong. As in, the calculator SHOULD NOT have been able to give me that total.

Blinking, I zeroed the calculator and added the two sums again, getting the correct total of $354.38. I've NO idea why( or HOW )the calculator could screw up a simple addition. I checked a few more times and got the correct total of $354.38 each time, leaving me to wonder what had happened.

My theory: I'd just caught the edge of a parallel universe, where things are similar but different, enough so that small errors were still occurring and I'd caught the edge of one. Meaning that the accident I'd avoided this morning by the narrowest of margins had, in fact, caused me to be injured in other parallel lines whereas I was perfectly all right in this one… but experiencing echoes of the others.

I'm just going to go with that - because if you can't trust a calculator, well then, you're really screwed in this universe. AND I happen to like the way things turned out for me with a lack of injury this week.

One the same note, I had a minor and amusing conversation with a stranger on FBook today along the same lines. An artist had posted a picture to one of the groups I belong to, asking for an opinion as to which of the two paintings she'd created was better. I looked at the picture, then replied "The third one you haven't made yet." She replied to my comment with this:

Peter, how did you know I have to make another? Or was that a joke? I do have to make another though, it is funny that you would say that not knowing that I would. I have chills.

 

How did I know? I just… did. It's been a really weird week. What's next? The X-Men appearing in my kitchen?

If so, I could get rid of my can opener with Wolverine around…

June 27 - Eye Owies

My eyes failed me today.

More specifically, my week caught up to me by way of eyestrain.

Late in the afternoon today, I noticed that I was having trouble seeing my computer screen. I adjusted the lights on my desk and kept working, but a few hours before quitting time I was having real difficulties seeing at any distance and I had to take some frequent breaks in order to finish what was on my desk.

Once I got home, the problem was even worse: I couldn't read my cell phone at either at arms length or up close. My right eye ached and I immediately put a cool cloth over my eyes to rest for about half an hour, which seemed to help a little. I did some research on the big screen using my PC, looking up remedies for eyestrain, of which there are quite a few.

01100101 01111001 01100101 00001010 = eye

It was quite a surprise to me, as I've had no problems at all for the last month while working at my desk. My eyes are changing as I age though so I suppose it's inevitable that this should come about. It's also true that I haven't worked a desk job before where I had to focus my eyes at the same distance for hours at a time without any break intervals in between like wandering around a retail store or looking out at the lobby or through windows on a regular basis.

The rest of my evening was low-key, with little work being done on my novel save juggling ideas in my head. My sister and I watched most of the movie Sunshine, which I happen to like the concept of and in my opinion it was decently executed despite being a little dry overall.

Kind of like my eyes at the moment, when you think about it.

June 28 - Being Blind

I needed some inspiration this week and found it in an unlikely place.

Most of you may be familiar with the story of Helen Keller, the woman who lost her sight and hearing at 19 months old when she contracted meningitis. It's a story as inspiring as any I've heard, where someone trapped inside a cage of their own body fights to reach out and succeeds beyond anyone's imagination.

What I also wasn't aware of is that there's rare video of Helen Keller available now, thanks to the Internet and individuals determined to keep her inspiration alive. Below you'll find a video where Helen speaks about her greatest regret, which is something so simple that we all take for granted yet for her it was something she never mastered despite her incredible will and determination:

In the afternoon today, I installed a text-to-speech app called @Voice Aloud Reader on my phone. Essentially, you copy text from any source( via your phone )then paste it into @Voice and that is you and it reads it aloud - rather nicely too, I must say. There are numerous voices that you can download in various accents( free while in Beta, too! )and they sound very natural compared to voices available even a few years ago. I'm not an audiobook person, but this was a nice solution to what I hope is a temporary problem with my eyes, allowing me to 'read' a few more chapters in my current Kindle book while my eyes rest a bit.

Next up: getting the app to read MY OWN book aloud - yay!

June 29 - Second Day Off

Yesterday and today I did get some writing done on my second novel.

Admittedly, it wasn't nearly as much as I wanted to get done, given the discomfort I was in from my eyestrain. Using my voice recognition tools, I was able to write scene-by-scene summaries for several more chapters, which I'm doing in much more detail than I did for my first book. I think of these summaries as a much more detailed 'map' of where I want to go with each small part of the book; each summary is at least a paragraph or two in length and sets down some fairly precise ideas about what the scene is about. The outline that will result from these summaries will probably be 10,000 to 20,000 words in size, which is a small novella in itself and one that I can refine as I go along as needed.

Later in the afternoon I went to see my eye doctor, whose office is conveniently open seven days a week. He examined my eyes thoroughly and was pleased to tell me that there was no underlying condition that could be the cause of my eye difficulties this week. I was due for a checkup anyway, as it's been a year and a half since I was last in, so I was happy to hear that it was simple eyestrain that was the cause of my discomfort. He recommended that I purchase a prescription pair of computer glasses from a retailer( online or local ) to use it work in order to maximize the efficiency of my eyes need for focus at the short distance I'll be working at when using my computer daily.

This was pretty much what I had expected, but it was a relief to hear that there was no other difficulty detected. Given that my mother has Sjogren's Syndrome, which causes among other things very dry eyes, I'll be happy to simply scout out the best price for computer glasses in the next day or two and place an order. My preliminary searches today turned up a few candidates, though I was surprised to find out that there are very few Canadian retailers who deal with this specific type of prescription glasses despite the fact that tens of thousands of office workers must need new glasses every year.

To me, that sounds like a prescription for the business idea. Anyone want to start up an optical company?

That's all I have for you this week. Thank goodness I'm only working 4 days, thanks to Canada Day on Tuesday, which should give my eyes a break. I'll be following through with a LOT more regular eye-breaks at work; I CANNOT allow ANY eye issues to interfere with the completion of my second novel. It's just one more challenge to face of many on the path...